When a Magyar maiden would win the love of a young man, or would bring evil on him because of his reluctance, she seeks influence over him by means of the sacred threshold. “She must steal something from the young man, and take it to a witch, who adds to it three beans, three bulbs of garlic, a few pieces of dry coal, and a dead frog. These are all put into an earthenware pot, and placed under the threshold,” with a prayer for the object of her desire.[[47]]
A superstition is prevalent in Roumania, that if a bat, together with a gold coin, be buried under the threshold, there is “good luck” to the house.[[48]] Various superstitions, in connection with the bat are found among primitive peoples.[[49]]
In Japan, the threshold of the door is sprinkled with salt, after a funeral, and as a propitiatory sacrifice in time of danger.[[50]] Salt represents blood.
Among the Dyaks of Borneo, a pig’s blood is sprinkled at the doorway to atone for the sin of unchastity by a daughter of the family. Again, the blood of a fowl is sprinkled there at the annual festival of seed-sowing, with prayers for fecundity and fertility.[[51]]
“On New Year’s morning, along the coast [in Aberdeenshire] where seaweed is gathered, a small quantity is laid down at each door of the farm-steading [the buildings of the homestead], as a means of bringing good luck.” And fire and salt are put on the threshold of the byre-door before a cow leaves the building after giving birth to a calf.[[52]]
Of portions of Ireland, it was said, early in this century: “On the 11th of November, every family of a village kills an animal of some kind or other; those who are rich kill a cow or sheep, others a goose or a turkey; while those who are poor ... kill a hen or a cock, and sprinkle the threshold with the blood, and do the same in the four corners of the house; ... to exclude every kind of evil spirit from the dwelling.”[[53]]
Holes bored in the door-sill, and plugged with pieces of paper on which are written incantations, a broom laid across the door-sill, or “three horseshoes nailed on the door-step with toes up,” are supposed to be a guard against witches or evil spirits in portions of Pennsylvania to-day.[[54]] Many a Pennsylvanian is unwilling to cross, for the first time, the threshold of a new home, without carrying salt and a Bible.
Among the Indians in ancient Mexico there was an altar near the door of every house, with instruments of sacrifice, and accompanying idols.[[55]]
“Threshold” and “foundation” are terms that are used interchangeably in primitive life. The sacredness of the threshold-stone of a building pivots on its position as a foundation stone, a beginning stone, a boundary stone. Hence the foundation stone of any house, or other structure was sacred as the threshold of that building. According to Dr. H.V. Hilprecht, in the earlier buildings of Babylonia the inscriptions and invocations and deposits were at the threshold, and later under the four corners of the building; but when they were at the threshold they were not under the corners, and vice versa. It would seem from this that the corner-stone was recognized as the beginning, or the limit, or the threshold, of the building. It may be, therefore, that the modern ceremonies at the laying of a “corner-stone” are a survival of the primitive sacredness of a threshold-laying.[[56]]
It would seem, moreover, as if the sanctity of the threshold as the primitive altar were, in many places, in the course of time transferred to the family hearth. In the primitive tent the household fire was at the entrance way, as it is in the tents of the East to-day. Where Arabs have camped on an Eastern desert, the place of the shaykh’s tent can always be known by the blackened hearthstones at its entrance, or threshold, where he welcomed guests to the hospitality of his tribe and family by the sharing of bread and salt, or by the outpouring of the blood of a slaughtered lamb or kid.