“Thuringian legend declares that to make the castle of Liebenstein fast and impregnable, a child was bought for hard money of its mother, and walled in. It was eating a cake while the masons were at work, the story goes, and it cried, ‘Mother, I see thee still;’ then later, ‘Mother, I see thee a little still;’ and as they put in the last stone, ‘Mother, now I see thee no more.’”[[132]]
A similar story is told of a Slavic town on the Danube. A plague devastated it, and it was determined to build it anew, with a new citadel. “Acting on the advice of their wisest men, they sent out messengers before sunrise one morning in all directions, with orders to seize upon the first living creature they should meet. The victim proved to be a child (Dyetina, archaic form of Ditya), who was buried alive under the foundation-stone of the new citadel. The city was on that account called Dyetinets [or Detinetz], a name since applied to any citadel.”[[133]]
It is even said that “when, a few years ago, the Bridge Gate of the Bremen city walls was demolished, the skeleton of a child was found imbedded in the foundations.”[[134]]
A Scottish legend tells that St. Columba found himself unable to build a cathedral on the island of Iona unless he would secure its stability and safety by the blood of a human sacrifice. Thereupon he took his companion, Oran, and buried him alive at the foundations of the structure, having no trouble after that.[[135]]
And it is said that under the walls of the only two round towers of the ancient Irish examined, human skeletons were found buried.[[136]]
Until the transfer of Alaska to the United States, in 1867, by the Russian government, human sacrifices at the foundation of a new house were common in that portion of America. The ceremonies are thus described by one familiar with them: “The rectangular space for the building is ... cleared, a spot for the fireplace designated, and four holes dug, wherein the corner posts are to be set.... A slave, either man or woman who has been captured in war or is even a descendant of such a slave, is blindfolded and compelled to lie down face uppermost, in the place selected for the fireplace [the site of the domestic altar]. A sapling is then cut, laid across the throat of the slave, and, at a given signal, the two nearest relatives of the host sit upon the respective ends of the sapling, thereby choking the unhappy wretch to death. But the corner posts must receive their baptism; so four slaves are blindfolded, and one is forced to stand in each post-hole, when, at a given signal, a blow on the forehead is dealt with a peculiar club ornamented with the host’s coat of arms.” It is said that even to the present time, on the building of a house in Alaska, “the same ceremonies are enacted, with the exception of the sacrifices, which are prevented by the United States authorities.”[[137]]
In Hindoostan, Burmah, Tennasserin, Borneo, Japan, Galam, Yarriba, Polynesia, and elsewhere, there are modern survivals of this foundation-laying in blood.[[138]] It would seem, indeed, to have been wellnigh universal as a primitive usage.
Popular ballads give other indications of such customs, in various lands. “In a song, of which there are several versions, of the building of the bridge of Arta, it is told how the bridge fell down as fast as it was built, until at last the master-builder dreamed a dream that it would only stand if his own wife were buried alive in the foundations. He therefore sends for her, bidding her dress in festival attire, and then finds an excuse to make her descend into the central pile, whereupon they heap the earth over her, and thus the bridge stands fast.”[[139]]
“In another song the same story is told of the Bridge of Tricha, with the difference only that it is a little bird that whispers in the architect’s ear how the pile may be made to stand. A similar superstition connected with the building of the monastery Curtea de Argest, in Wallachia, forms the subject of a fine poem by the Roumanian poet Alexandri.”[[140]]
There is an indication of a like custom among the Vlachs in Turkey, as shown in their folk-poetry. The ballad of the “Monastery of Argis” tells of such an incident, in which the master-builder Manoli plays a part.[[141]]