CHAPTER XX.
THE MEDUSA-WITCH IN SAGA AND SUPERSTITION.
Belief of a more or less serious character in the power of the witch’s hair is one for which readers who have followed the arguments and illustrations of previous chapters will not have been wholly unprepared. If a belief not very often exhibited in sagas, it is yet, as we might anticipate, not wholly absent. The Goodwife of Laggan, a Highland witch, one day showed herself in the form of a shivering, weather-beaten cat to a hunter, who was warming himself during a storm in his hunting-hut, in the forest of Gaick in Badenoch. His hounds were stretched by his side, his only company. As the cat entered they bristled up and rose to attack her. There is no record that the hunter was astonished when the terror-stricken cat addressed him with a human voice and the rhetoric of a century ago: “Great hunter of the hills, I claim your protection. I know your hatred to my craft, and perhaps it is just. Still spare, oh spare a poor jaded wretch, who thus flies to you for protection from the cruelty and oppression of her sisterhood!” On the contrary, he pacified his dogs, and invited her to come forward to the fire and warm herself. “Nay,” she replied, if we are to believe the grandiloquent reporter of the interview, “in the first place you will please bind with this long hair those two furious hounds of yours, for I am afraid they will tear my poor hams to pieces. I pray you, therefore, my dear sir, that you would have the goodness to bind them together by the necks with this long hair.” Here the hunter smelt mischief; so, instead of binding his dogs, he threw the hair across a beam of wood which connected the couple of the bothy. Supposing the dogs bound, the cat then drew near to the fire and sat down to dry herself. In a few minutes she began to grow. “A bad death to you, you nasty beast,” exclaimed the hunter jocosely, “you are getting very large.” “Ay, ay,” answered the cat, “as my hairs imbibe the heat they naturally expand.” But she grew bigger and bigger, until in the twinkling of an eye, she transformed herself into her proper likeness of the Goodwife of Laggan, and thus addressed the man: “Hunter of the hills, your hour of reckoning is arrived. Behold me before you, the avowed champion of my devoted sisterhood, of whom Macgillichallum of Razay and you were always the most relentless of enemies. But Razay is no more. His last breath is fled. He lies a lifeless corpse on the bottom of the main; and now, Hunter of the hills, it is your turn.” With these words the witch made a terrific spring at the hunter; and the dogs in their turn leaped up at her. A tremendous conflict ensued. “Fasten, hair, fasten,” she cried repeatedly, thinking the dogs were bound by it. The hair, obediently coiling round the beam, fastened so effectually that at last it snapt the timber in twain. Finding herself overmatched, she tried to flee. But the hounds had fixed themselves in her breasts; nor did they loose their hold as she trailed them after her, until she had all-to broken every tooth in their heads. Then changing herself into a raven she flew away over the mountains, while the bleeding dogs crept back to their master’s feet to die. When the hunter returned to his home, the Goodwife of Laggan was found sick unto death. I spare my readers the edifying scene wherein she most properly acknowledged her crimes in the presence of the hunter and all her neighbours, before breathing her last. It is written by Mr. Stewart in the purest Johnsonese he could command, together with the further narrative of the apparition which announced that the Evil One had finally seized her soul before it had time to reach the protection of the sacred precincts of the churchyard of Dalarossie.[114.1]
The Eskimo have a tradition pertinent to our present point. Off the southernmost part of Greenland was an island to which many of the inhabitants of the mainland objected, because it cut them off from the open sea. Two of them accordingly went in their kayaks and, fastening a hair from the head of a little child to the far side of the island, pulled away to the north, chanting a magic lay. Another old man, however, desired to retain the island; and he from the main shore held it by a thong of sealskin. The contest lasted for a while; but at length the hair and the magical song prevailed. The island was floated off and planted in front of Ilulissat, where it is now known as Disco Island.[114.2] Similarly, the people of the Lewis aver that their island once formed part of France. The Wickings having conquered a province of that country determined to carry it to Norway. They, therefore, made a cable of four strands, one of heather, one of hemp, another of wool, and another of woman’s hair, and fixed it to the cliffs. For a time their enterprise promised success. But a large piece, now called Ireland, broke off and sank. A storm came on; and one portion after another broke away to form the Hebrides. By-and-bye their cable itself snapped, and they were forced to leave the Lewis and adjacent islands in the situation they at present occupy. On the western side of the Butt of Lewis is a fine natural arch, called the Suil an Rodh, “the eye of the butt.” This was the hole drilled through the cliff in days of yore by the Wickings to hold their cable; and it is the best proof of the truth of the tradition.[115.1]
Allied to the enchanted hair of these tales is the fetter that binds Fenri the wolf. It is spun from the sound of a cat’s footsteps, a woman’s beard, the roots of a stone, a bear’s sinews, a fish’s breath, and a bird’s spittle; and it is as soft and smooth as a silken string.[115.2] So likewise when Finn MacCumhail hunted in high Keshcorran, Conaran, son of Imidel, a chief of the Tuatha De Danann, bade his three daughters, that were full of sorcery, take vengeance upon the hero. Accordingly the beldams went and sat in the entrance of a cave. “Upon three crooked and wry sticks of holly they hung as many heathenish bewitched hasps of yarn, which they began to reel off lefthandwise in front of the cave.” The attention of Finn and his companion, Conan Mael MacMorna, was attracted; they approached to view the women, and passed through the hasps; “whereupon a deadly tremor occupied them, and presently they lost their strength, so that by those valiant hags they were fast bound indissolubly. Another pair of the Fianna came, and with them the sons of Nemhuann: through the yarn they passed to where Finn and Conan were; they too lost their power, and by the same hags were lashed down in rigid bonds. These warriors then they carried away into the cave.” Oscar and MacLugach, and in short “the children of Smól and the Fianna all” were drawn to the spot, and when they saw the yarns their pith and valour departed: “there was not in any one man of them all so much as a newly delivered woman’s strength.” Both gentle and simple, they were bound, “so that as helplessly pinioned and tightly tethered culprit-prisoners the hags transported them into black, mysterious holes, into dark, perplexing labyrinths.” When the witches could find no further straggler of the Fianna, they were about to hew their prisoners to pieces. The great-souled Goll MacMorna, however, was yet at large. He attacked and destroyed two of the hags; the third he spared in consideration of her setting the prisoners free. But when another sister appeared to avenge those who were slain, he fought her also, and drove his sword through her heart.[116.1]
The story of the Enchanted Cave of Keshcorran is perhaps dangerously near the border line of sagas and märchen. But it is difficult to say that the Irish had entirely abandoned their belief in the real truth of the adventures attributed to the Fianna. Nations, especially nations involved in a struggle for national existence, do not easily part with a literal interpretation of traditions which are their birthright. The Iroquois likewise held to the actual existence of the supernatural personages of the following tale; but how far they credited the adventures of the human beings may admit of a difference of opinion. Ten brothers whose parents were dead resided with their uncle. One by one the elder ones, going out to hunt, failed to return, until at last only the youngest was left. He and his uncle found in the woods and befriended a strange man, who turned out to be a brother of the Great Head, a creature consisting simply of a head, made terrific with huge eyes and long hair. The Great Head had his home upon a rock over which his hair streamed in shaggy fierceness; and when the hurricane swept across the land it was his voice that was heard howling through it. One day the Great Head came to the lodge. Aided by his brother, the uncle and nephew succeeded in conciliating him, and induced him to take the youth to the witch who had fordone his elders, and revenge their deaths. They heard the witch crooning her magical song. When she uttered the word Schis-t-ki-añ, the objects of her spells turned to dry bones. The Great Head said to the youth: “I will ask the question, ‘How long have you been here?’ and the hair will fall from my head and you must replace it, and it will grow fast; and then I will bite her flesh and pull it from her, and as it comes off you must take it from my mouth and throw it off, saying, ‘Be a fox, a bird, or anything else,’ and it will then run off never to return.” The young man obeyed these instructions; and the witch was soon brought to sue for mercy. But the Great Head replied: “You had no mercy; see the dry bones; you must die.” In this way they slew her; her flesh was turned into beasts and birds and fish; her bones they burnt to ashes. Then they sought for the bones of her victims, and placed together in rows the bones of the nine elder brothers. The Great Head flew over them on a tempest, and called out of the wind to the nine brothers to awake. They heard his voice, and arose to life, shouting for joy at seeing each other and their youngest brother again.[117.1]
The instrument of enchantment in this Iroquoian tradition is not the magical fetter, but the magical word; whereof we seem to find a reminiscence (perhaps of the fetter also) in the sequel of Thorkill’s second voyage as recounted in the veracious pages of Saxo. Gorm Haraldson, king of Denmark, having grown old, was tormented with the question that still troubles mankind of the immortality and fate of the soul. Wherefore he sent Thorkill, who had in former days led him and three hundred of his warriors through mysterious regions, for certain information to Utgard-Loki, his god. On the hero’s return it was prophesied to Gorm that he would suddenly die if he learnt the tidings Thorkill had brought. Men were accordingly hired by the king’s command to put the adventurer to death. But he foiled the design and reproached his master for the ingratitude he displayed. The king, then, overcome by curiosity, bade Thorkill relate in order what had happened to him. Thorkill had such unfavourable revelations to make of Utgard-Loki that Gorm Haraldson could not endure to hear them. “His very life could not brook such words, and he yielded it up in the midst of Thorkill’s narrative. Thus,” piously adds the chronicler, “whilst he was so zealous in the worship of a false god, he came to find where the true prison of sorrows really was. Moreover, the reek of the hair, which Thorkill plucked from the locks of the giant,” and brought back with him, “to testify to the greatness of his own deeds, was exhaled upon the bystanders, so that many perished of it.”[118.1]
The truth is that in the lower stages of culture supernatural power is ascribed, not merely to special words, but to any curses. Illustrations of this attitude of mind are needless; for in the horror with which even the least superstitious of us listen when we are by some accident compelled to hear an outburst of imprecation, we may trace more than mere revulsion from the spirit of vulgar hatred and anger dictating it: our revulsion bears at least a tinge of fear and ghastly anticipation of doom upon him who dares to call down evil, if not upon the object of his wrath. Properly performed, however, by the priest on the first day of Lent, and uttered in merely general terms “gathered out of the seven-and-twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy and other places of Scripture,” we devoutly repeat Amen to every clause, and make believe that we desire to escape “the dreadful judgment hanging over our heads and always ready to fall upon us,” by thus transferring the weight of condemnation to sinners worse than ourselves. Originally special virtue was doubtless attached, as it still is by savages, to the proper sequence of words and the suitable accompaniment of rites. In a Chaldean conjuration the effect is thus described:
“The malicious imprecation acts on man like a wicked demon,
the voice which curses has power over him;
the voice which curses has power over him;
the malicious imprecation is the spell [which produces] the disease of his head.
The malicious imprecation slaughters this man like a lamb;…
the voice which curses covers him and loads him like a veil.”[119.1]
Nor is it altogether improbable that certain of the Psalms which are such a stumblingblock to Christians may have been held, when correctly chanted, to have a direct influence over the objects of the psalmist’s holy ire? When a native of Borneo has planted fruit-trees, and they are bearing, he places some round stones in cleft sticks near the trees, and then proceeds to curse anybody who may venture to steal the fruit, calling on the stones to witness the anathema. The curse is to this effect: “May whoever steals my fruit suffer from stones in the stomach as large as these stones, and, if necessary, become a figure of stone!” And woe betide the man who in defiance of this curse dares to pluck the fruit![120.1]
But neither the form of the malediction nor the accurate performance of a ceremony is an invariable requirement. A few illustrations of the petrifying potency of curses, oftentimes the more awful because uttered in mere carelessness or wantonness, may be given from peoples on different levels of civilisation. An Altaic tale relates that Sartaktai was building a stone bridge over the Katunya; and in order to complete it by the following day it was necessary that his son should preserve continence. The young man, however, disregarded his father’s taboo, and frustrated the work. Wherefore the old man cursed his daughter-in-law, so that she stands, a white rock on one side of the river, and cursed and spat upon his son, so that he remained on the other side, the mountain called to-day Täldäkpän.[120.2] A local legend concerning the fort of Jangada, in India, attributes its erection to Râjâ Kesari, who built it of lac, or sealing-wax, in order that missiles discharged against it should be held by its natural tenacity. The secret was betrayed to a besieging army by an old woman; and the walls began to melt under the power of the fire and bellows she advised the soldiers to use. The râjâ, as he died in the trench with sword in hand, cursed the traitress to be turned into stone. The curse was immediately fulfilled, as witness the satti pillar outside the fort, regarded as her image to this day.[121.1] At a certain farmhouse in Iceland it befell that several years successively the inmates who were left to take care of the house while their fellows went to church on Christmas Eve were found the next morning either stark mad or dead. Naturally nobody cared to stay in the place; but at last a young girl was found brave enough to do so. During the night something came to the window, and began to praise her hands. She was ready at once with a spirited retort. Her eyes and her feet were then made the subject of eulogy by the mysterious visitor, who got from the maiden each time a proper answer. By-and-bye the creature mentioned the dawn standing ready to appear. “Stand thou, too, and become stone, and hurt no one!” exclaimed the girl. And when the people returned from church in the morning they were astounded to see a big stone standing before the window; and there it remains ever since.[121.2] There is a hill on the boundary of the manor of Bagdad near Wirsitz, in the province of Posen, surmounted by a great stone of a reddish colour, somewhat in the form of a gravestone. This was formerly a girl who went out with her mother to gather wild strawberries in the pine-wood which then covered the height. The mother wandered off in another direction, and lost her daughter. Not being able to find her, she angrily shouted: “As you are not coming, turn to stone!” Her prayer was instantly answered, as in a similar case at Strelno, in the same province, where a lazy slut going with her pitcher to the spring, and being unconscionably long on the errand, was cursed by a fellow-servant, under whose orders she was, and transformed into stone. The block is shown at the village of Mlyny, near the town; and at a distance it is said to bear some resemblance to a girl with a pitcher. Nor is this the only tale of the kind current in Posen. A great stone, whose top was not unlike a roof, lay several years ago on the boundary between Czempin and Piechanin, and was held to be the roof of a castle, enchanted by a wizard who had begged a night’s lodging there in vain. His curses buried the castle in the earth, and turned its inhabitants and dependants into a number of smaller stones which lay around the large one.[122.1] Near Gbel, in Bohemia, is a stone called The Enchanted Huntsman. A luckless hunter, we learn, pursued and shot at a roe, which thereupon changed into an old hag, and cried out: “How dare you shoot at me? I am the witch Nera! But you with your pack shall be turned into stone and guarded for ever with invisible flames!” Since that hour none dares to go near the stone at midnight, lest he be consumed by the flames.[122.2] A witch is likewise the agent of evil in the Rollright legends. The King-stone at Rollright was once a king indeed, who was bent on the conquest of all England. He had got as far as the hill on which Rollright stands when the witch appeared. From the crest of the hill the village of Long Compton is visible in the combe below. The king was approaching the top when the witch addressed him: “Seven long strides shalt thou take, and—