In Eastern tales the Faith-token ordinarily assumes the form of a flower. In the Tutinameh, a soldier’s wife gives her husband on his departure a rose which will remain fresh while she preserves her purity.[25.1] In the Kathá-sarit-Ságara, the god Siva appears in a dream to Guhasena and his wife Devasmitá when they are about to part, and gives them a red lotus apiece, saying: “Take each of you one of these lotuses in your hand. And if either of you shall be unfaithful during your separation, the lotus in the hand of the other shall fade, but not otherwise.” When they awoke, each beheld in the other’s hand a red lotus, “and it seemed as if they had got one another’s hearts.”[25.2] In a modern folktale obtained in the Panjáb the kind of flower is not specified, but the incident is the same.[25.3] The token appears also as a flower or a garland in several of the European romances of chivalry; and in a Hungarian märchen a king, going to war, gives to his two daughters two wreaths which will wither if they lose their maidenhood.[25.4] In a modern folksong of one of the Greek islands, an apple-tree, questioned why it withers, replies:
“They plighted a youth and maiden beneath my shelter;
They swore by my branches that they would cling together,
And now, because I know they part, my leaves are turning yellow.”[25.5]
These stories have their counterpart in practice. Siva, the Hindu god who is the agent in one of the stories just quoted, is a phallic deity. Among the Mech of Bengal, a Mongoloid tribe just now in a transitional state of religion between animism and the Hinduism which is macadamising the innumerable aboriginal cults of India, a sij plant (Euphorbia Indica) grows in the courtyard of every house. This plant is carefully tended as the abode of Siva and the emblem of conjugal fidelity. If its leaves wither, something is wrong with one of the women of the household.[26.1] A curious superstition of an analogous kind was commonly practised among our own countrymen within the memory of men only a few years dead. Lovers who desired to know how they should succeed in their suit carried flowers called bachelors’ buttons in their pockets, and judged of their good or bad success by the flowers’ growing or not growing there.[26.2] So it is noted among the superstitions prevalent in France two hundred years ago, that, in order to know which of three or four persons loved one the best, a corresponding number of thistles should be taken, the buds cut off, and to each plant should be imputed the name of one of the persons concerning whom it was intended to inquire. The thistles were then to be placed under the head of the inquirer’s bed; and the one representing the person who had most affection would put forth new buds.[26.3] At Siena a maiden who wished to know how her love progressed kept and tended a plant of rue. While it flourished all went well; but if it withered it was a sign that the love she desired had failed her.[26.4]
In the ballad of Hind Horn the king’s daughter gives the hero a jewelled ring. As long as the stone keeps its colour, he may know that she is faithful; but if it change its hue, he may ken she loves another man. Professor Child, commenting on the ballad, adduces not merely several variants and romances on the same subject, but also a Roumanian ballad wherein a prince going to war gives his wife a ring which will rust if he be dead, and a Silesian story and another British ballad where the ring breaks in twain.[27.1] In these ballads and stories we probably have the real meaning of plighting the troth in the marriage service with a ring. Bacon, somewhere discussing the superstition, gravely suggests that a trial should be made by two persons of the effect of compact and agreement; that a ring should be put on for each other’s sake, to try whether, if one should break his promise, the other would have any feeling of it in his absence. The hero of a North German tale receives from his bride the day after marriage a snow-white shirt, which will turn black if she die, and become stained and spotted if she be untrue.[27.2] A Hungarian tradition speaks of a carbuncle which lighted up the neighbourhood of a lake in the Carpathians while the consort of the king of the water-fays was true to him; but when she fell in love with a mortal prince it lost its splendour, and the king with his golden palace and all his treasures sank into the black depths of the lake.[27.3] The Faith-token is a piece of machinery too suggestive to be overlooked by poets and dramatists of more refined art than the mediæval romancers. Davenant mentions an emerald, not set like the Carpathian carbuncle on a palace tower, but worn by a lady, and growing pale when her husband is unfaithful. Massinger’s play of The Picture turns upon a portrait of his wife given to the parting knight, Mathias, by “a great scholar,” or magician, with these instructions:
“Carry it still about you, and as oft
As you desire to know how she’s affected,
With curious eyes peruse it: while it keeps
The figure it now has, entire and perfect,
She is not only innocent in fact,
But unattempted; but if once it vary
From the true form, and what’s now white and red
Incline to yellow, rest most confident
She’s with all violence courted, but unconquer’d;
But if it all turn black, ’tis an assurance
The fort by composition or surprise
Is forced or with her free consent surrender’d.”
I do not propose, however, to trace the Faith-token through literature. If a gift of doubtful benefit to a jealous lover, many a literary artist in search of a plot has found it useful. Our business is with the Life-token, to which we may now return. Tales of life-tokens credited as facts are not very numerous. Perhaps one or two of the stories already mentioned may be included in that category. The rest may be treated together with superstitions and customs.
In many variants of the Perseus cycle, as well as in many of the märchen cited in the present chapter, we have found the life-token to be a tree planted before or at the time of the hero’s birth, or sometimes planted by himself or merely indicated by him. In the Smyrnæan tale, it will be remembered, the queen plants a pumpkin on the birth of each of her sons. The pumpkin brings forth one fruit, wherein the strength of the boy resides; and when it is cut the boy falls ill. As I have already pointed out, the pumpkin would seem here to be the life itself, and not merely the life-token. A distinction between the life and the life-token is generally observed in märchen. On the one hand, we have the story of Punchkin with his hidden soul, in which the magician, or demoniacal enemy of the hero, cannot be slain by any evil inflicted on his own body. His soul, or life, must be sought out in a distant spot where, enveloped in various coverings and protected by numerous defences, is a parrot, or an egg, to destroy which is to kill the magician. On the other hand, we have in the variants of The King of the Fishes and other types the mysterious token left at home while its owner sallies forth in search of adventures. If he fall, or suffer reverses, the token at home, if a tree or a flower, withers; if a knife, or a phial of liquid, or some other article, it drops blood, or rusts, or changes colour, or indicates in some other manner its sympathy with the hero’s fortunes.
This broad distinction is natural in a story the plot of which is made to depend upon it. It is easy to understand, however, that the distinction could not be maintained in any corresponding practical superstition. To assume, for instance—what is quite possible—that the lives of the monks of Saint Maurice were actually believed to be bound up with those of the fishes in the fishpond of the monastery, how could it be determined whether a fish’s death caused the death of one of the brethren or only betokened it? In the course of the following pages we shall meet with many cases of sympathy between a child and a tree or other object. The child’s death and the withering of the tree, or some other corresponding change, are believed to be coincident. Experience will very soon show that sometimes the injury may happen to the child, sometimes to the life-token. If the superstition survive, it can only do so by supposing that both alike are vulnerable, and that the consequences of an injury to either are mysteriously transmitted to the other.[30.1] Even in a story, however, the distinction between the Life-token and the “External Soul,” as Mr. Frazer calls it, is not always maintained. In the tale of Prince Lionheart, referred to at the beginning of this chapter, the hero derives his origin from a barleycorn. His life-token, multiplied in a lavish oriental manner by three, consists of three barley-plants. It is noteworthy that he directs that every one of them shall be carefully tended, for so long as they flourished he would be alive and well, and, on the contrary, if they drooped, misfortune would be at hand: implying that his life and prosperity were dependent upon them. His external soul proper is a sword. When its hilt comes off, his head falls, and at the same instant the ear of each of the barley-plants snaps. Other stories may easily be recalled where a plant as the hero’s life-token is commended to the special care of the friend or kinsman left behind, as if injury to the plant would affect its absent owner. We shall, accordingly, be justified in treating the Life-token and the External Soul as almost always one and the same thing in belief and custom.
In the Popol Vuh, the twin divinities, Hun Ahpu and Xbalanque, whose birth I have already described in Chapter v., on starting for the realm of Xibalba to avenge their father’s death, plant each a cane in the midst of their grandmother’s dwelling, that she may know by its flourishing or fading whether they are alive or dead.[31.1] According to a tradition of the province of Berri, in central France, a local saint, Honoré de Buzançais, who flourished at the end of the thirteenth century, in setting forth on a journey told his mother that, by means of a certain laurel which had been planted the day he was born, she would at any time be able to learn how he fared. The tree would languish if he were ill, and wither if he died. He was murdered, and the laurel withered at the same instant.[31.2] On the island of Tahiti, a sacred tree, resembling the banian of India, was said to have shot forth a new tendril at the birth of one of the kings whose inauguration is described by Ellis; and this branch reached the ground when the inauguration took place.[31.3] So Suetonius tells us that thrice when the mother of the Emperor Vespasian gave birth to a boy a certain ancient oak-tree belonging to the Flavian gens and sacred to Mars put forth a new shoot; and when the Emperor himself was born the shoot was of such vitality that it grew to the size of the old trunk itself.[31.4]
These are legends. In actual life, among the Maori, when the navel-string came off a newborn child, the child was carried to a priest. The cord was buried in a sacred place; and over it a young sapling was planted, which was expressly regarded as the babe’s “Sign of Life,” or life-token.[31.5] Another account states that the placenta was buried and a tree planted over the spot. “Instances have been known of territorial right being claimed in consequence of the placenta and umbilical cord having been buried in the vicinity, the tree being pointed to as evidence.” Elsewhere in New Zealand the cord was buried by the mother at the foot of some out-of-the-way tree or bush, with certain mystic words. If the tree or bush decayed or died, the child would not be expected to live long.[32.1] In Southern Celebes a cocoa-nut is planted at the child’s birth, and watered with the water in which the cord and after-birth have been washed. The tree, as it grows up, is called the “contemporary” of the child.[32.2] In Old Calabar a palm-tree is planted, so as to grow with the child, and the after-birth is buried beside it.[32.3] The superstition is not confined to these distant lands. In Pomerania the after-birth is buried at the foot of a young tree; in Mecklenburg it is merely cast there; in either case the child will grow with the tree, and thrive as it thrives.[32.4]