Closely connected with the Life-token, as we have already seen, is divination concerning the prospects of life of persons who are not absent. This is a wide subject; and here we can only select a few examples among those whose form is similar to those of the Life-token. The Thuringian practice of divining as to absent members of the family seems to be one of several Teutonic methods of divination by the baking of bread. The decrees of Burchard of Worms, issued probably early in the eleventh century, refer to the omen drawn on the first of January by baking a loaf of bread in the name of any one and noting how it rises and whether it becomes compact and light. Another practice is described, of sweeping the hearth and placing grains of barley on the heated place: if the grains popped, they indicated danger; otherwise, if they remained quiet.[47.3] At Rauen, in the north of Germany, if a newly baked loaf have a crack, one of the family will die.[48.1] In Suffolk, to overturn a loaf in the oven is to have a death in the house.[48.2] In Saxony on the Bohemian border the same augury is obtained by making as many little cakes as there are persons in the house, giving to each cake the name of one of the persons, and punching a hole in it with your finger. He whose hole closes up in baking will die.[48.3] In Hungary on Saint Lucien’s Day a feather is stuck in each cake, and the death-augury is drawn if the feather be burnt in baking. On Christmas Eve in many places every one eats a nut and fills the shell with water. If the shell be dry by the next morning he must die during the year.[48.4]
Divination from the burning of candles is well known. On Twelfth Night, in some parts of Ireland, as for example in Leitrim and Roscommon, rushes were gathered and made into rushlights, each of the length of six inches. They were stuck into a cake of cow-dung and named from the members of the family. Then they were all lighted, and the family knelt around them, telling their beads. The taper that burnt out first indicated who should die soonest.[48.5] So Meleager’s life, according to the classical story, departed when the brand expired whereon it depended. In Thuringia, if an altar-light go out of itself, one of the priests will die; but it does not appear whether the candle must be entirely consumed.[48.6] In some towns of North Germany it is a common practice on a child’s birthday to give him a cake with a “Life-light” placed on it. The light must not be blown out, but suffered to burn to the end.[49.1] This is contrary to the general rule at Chemnitz, and elsewhere, which declares that when a candle goes out of itself, some one in the house will die—a superstition especially regarded on Christmas Eve.[49.2] In Iceland, if a man let a light die out slowly, he will have a long death-struggle.[49.3] On the other hand, the Romans, if we may trust Plutarch, never extinguished a lamp, but suffered it to burn out.[49.4] Omens of this kind are frequently drawn at weddings. Two candles represent the bride and bridegroom: the one whose candle first expires will die first. Such is the belief in Thuringia and Esthonia, as well as in Italy. Among the Southern Slavs and among the Bretons the altar-candle opposite either of the spouses during the ceremony is the one whose conduct in this respect is regarded. At Chemnitz it was customary to allow the light to burn clean out in the bride-chamber, perhaps for the same reason.[49.5]
In Denmark, Saint John’s-wort (hypericum) is gathered on Saint John’s Day, and the plants are set between the beams under the roof. If one of them grow upwards toward the roof, he whom it represents will have a long life; if downward, sickness and death are betokened.[50.1] The Saxons of Transylvania, and the Hungarians, are said to place as many billets of wood as there are members of the family present on Saint Sylvester’s Night (New Year’s Eve) in the open air on or against a wall or a tree, giving each billet the name of a person. Any of them falling before the morning forecasts the death of him whose billet falls. Or a rag is thrown on a tree, and if it be there in the morning the thrower expects luck in the coming year. On Saint John’s Day wreaths are made of marsh-marigolds and thrown singly thrice on the roof. If anybody’s wreath remain up, he will die before the next summer.[50.2] The same principle is embodied in the Maori custom of divining by means of sticks. Before they go to war they put up two sticks, or two rows of sticks, with certain ceremonies. From the way in which the wind blows the sticks or the manner in which they fall, if thrown, omens are drawn as to the success of the war, or the fate of the inquirer.[50.3] The Gipsies of the Danubian countries divine as to the fate of their relatives by putting flowers—apparently willow flowers—in a sieve on Saint George’s Eve, one for each member of the family. He whose flower is found withered the next morning will die first.[51.1] In the Isle of Man, at Hollantide, “as well as on the last night of the year, ivy-leaves marked with the name of the family were put into water, and if one of the leaves withered it was supposed that the person whose name was on it would die before the end of the year.”[51.2]
The tales and superstitions we have examined in this chapter are conclusive as to the wide range of a belief in the mysterious connection of a man’s life and health with some object external to himself. And they point with equal certainty to the belief that this connection originates in some relationship, either natal or established subsequently to birth by possession or ownership, or by appointment of the person concerned. In other words, the external object is believed to be, or to contain, a part of the man himself, or the man and the external object are regarded as two parts of a greater whole. This is the reason why, in märchen belonging to The King of the Fishes and other types, the tree growing in the garden at home is an index of the adventurer’s fate in the palace of the Medusa-witch. Both the tree and the hero are sprung from the magical fish; both are of his substance; and hence their sympathy. So, among the Maories and in Pomerania, when the navel-string or after-birth is buried and a tree planted over it, the latter would be conceived to absorb the substance of the object at its root—that is to say, of something which is already part of the child himself—and in that way become connected with him. Our evidence, though extending from Polynesia and Melanesia to the East Indies, though good for Germany and for portions of the American continent, does not directly establish the practice of such burials as universal. But such a custom is a fair inference wherever we find the planting of a tree at birth, especially where, as in the majority of cases, the tree is looked upon as betokening the child’s fate. Yet the custom could not have been one of the most archaic. It must have been unknown so long as mankind were wanderers having no settled places of abode or defined territory. Earlier than this, therefore, must have been the belief that some other relic such as hair, weapons, ornaments or clothes, which had been in contact with their owner’s body, or even some more arbitrary thing appointed by him, acquired the mysterious connection of which I am speaking. By constant use, or by habitual wear, things not originally part of a man would become inseparably associated with him in the minds of all his acquaintance, impregnated with his personality, identified with his corporeal presence. After a while mere ownership would be enough to warrant the ascription of this quality, at least to any portable object. The Maori claims of territorial right, based upon the burial of the claimant’s after-birth and navel-string, are instances of the subtle bond in native thought between ownership and a personal substance like that which was supposed to penetrate the trees whose existence was appealed to as evidence. True, these claims could only be made by members of a settled community, or of one whose limits of wandering were fixed. But the state of thought they disclose is thoroughly archaic, rooted in a still ruder past.
Not only, however, is a man’s property credited with the mysterious sympathy which enables it to become his life-token. It is not even necessary for him to appoint a life-token for himself, whether part of his property or not. Both in the stories and in actual life, and that very low down in savagery, a kinsman is represented as able to appoint a life-token, or at all events to divine, by the condition of a perfectly arbitrary object, what is the fate of an absent person. This power is with one exception limited to a kinsman. In the last resort it is possible to obtain tidings of a distant friend through a sorcerer. Here other beliefs are brought into play. Setting this exceptional case aside, we may class all the others together under the heads of Life-tokens—
1. By original corporeal connection with the absent person.
2. By virtue of his ownership.
3. By his appointment.
4. By corporeal connection with a kinsman of the absent person.
5. By virtue of a kinsman’s ownership.
6. By a kinsman’s appointment.
The appointment of a life-token not belonging to the person concerned, or his kinsman, was, we may assume, at first by a magical formula, as in the instance of the taboo set upon the banana by the twins in the Melanesian story. In this way a consecration to the speaker, an ἀνάθεμα, was performed, which would have the effect of ownership. In course of time, and of the changes wrought by advancing civilisation, the taboo would be forgotten; and a simple declaration of the intention to make the object his life-token would remain. The cases of appointment thus resolve themselves into ownership; and ownership, as we have seen, is nothing but an extension of the idea of corporeal connection. The reason why the corporeal connection with a kinsman, or his ownership of the life-token, is equivalent to that of the absent hero, is because the kinsman, being of the same stock as the hero, is deemed to have an original corporeal bond with him like that of the tree in the märchen growing from the bones or scales of the fish from whose flesh the hero is sprung. They are both of the same substance, two parts of a greater whole. This will be brought out more clearly as we proceed. We are then face to face with the question why separated portions of the same substance should remain in such sympathy with one another that the condition of the one will betoken the condition of the other. To explain this we must enter upon a wider survey of savage customs and superstitions.
CHAPTER IX.
WITCHCRAFT: SYMPATHETIC MAGIC.
There are certain common folktale incidents we must first of all notice, though it is unnecessary to do so at any great length. One of them is found in a group of tales which I have elsewhere ventured to classify under the name of The Teacher and his Scholar. A Greek variant of these, from the island of Syra, referred to in an earlier chapter, runs thus: A disguised demon promises children to a childless king on condition of his repaying him with the eldest. The demon thereupon gives the king an apple, to be eaten, one half by himself and the other half by the queen. Three sons are born; and the eldest is, notwithstanding all precautions, carried off by the demon. After some time he finds means to escape from his master’s clutches, accompanied by a princess whom the demon has held captive. During his term of service he has learned how to transform himself at will; and on parting for a while from the princess he takes lodgings with an old woman. To make money, he changes into a mule, which his hostess offers for sale; but he charges her to retain the halter. Afterwards he changes into a bath-house, whereof she is to keep the key. By this precaution he is able to return to his own form. Finally he changes into a pomegranate, which his father plucks; but the demon by a trick nearly succeeds in getting possession of it. It falls in pieces, and the seeds are scattered. The demon then takes the shape of a hen and chickens; whereupon the hero becomes a fox and kills the hen and chickens, but loses his eyes, for the hen has eaten two of the seeds. He afterwards recovers his sight and marries the princess.[56.1]
The incident, here found, of the Transformation-fight occurs all over Europe, and as far to the east as India. Its best-known variant is embodied in the story of the Second Calender in the Arabian Nights; but the Siddhi-Kür contains one far more ancient, if we have regard to the time when it was written down, though more modern in form than many of the most recently collected folktales. Welsh tradition, as we have seen, identifies the incident with the name of Taliessin. Ovid describes metamorphoses undergone by Metra, daughter of Erisichthon, in her flight from the successive masters to whom her ravenous father sold her in order to procure himself food.[56.2] But all these tales ignore the point which is important for our present inquiry, namely, the divisibility of the hero’s person. It comes out, however, quite clearly in the story just quoted, and is exhibited in a twofold manner. There is, first, the halter, or bridle, which must be retained by the vendor, else the horse, or mule, will not be able to escape and return to human form. Here the halter is probably the external soul. So long as it is free its owner cannot be held within the purchaser’s power. Secondly, there is the pomegranate, which falls into a thousand pieces. In northern and western Europe, where the pomegranate grows not, a heap of grain takes its place.[57.1] In Cashmere it becomes a rose. In the Turkish romance of The Forty Vezirs, the rose, in falling, changes to millet.[57.2] The pomegranate bursts, and its seeds are scattered; the petals of the rose drop in a shower; the grains of corn or millet are shed abroad. But the hero is still in existence although divided thus. He cannot be destroyed until every seed, every petal, every grain has been devoured. So long as a single seed, petal, or grain escapes he can be restored to his pristine form. In the same way in a North American tale the hero in the shape of an eagle is killed, and repeatedly restored from a single feather. The power of self-reconstitution from a fragment is frequently attributed to wizards, not merely in tales but in living superstitions, and in both tales and superstitions affords a reason for the entire destruction of a magical foe.[57.3] For this cause, too, the hero of the Greek story kills the hen and all the chickens into which the demon transforms himself—a third example in the same tale of personal divisibility.