When the head was considered so sacred that it might not even be touched without grave offence, it is obvious that the cutting of the hair must have been a delicate and difficult operation. The difficulties and dangers which, on the primitive view, beset the operation are of two kinds. There is first the danger of disturbing the spirit of the head, which may be injured in the process and may revenge itself upon the person who molests him. Secondly, there is the difficulty of disposing of the shorn locks. For the savage believes that the sympathetic connection which exists between himself and every part of his body continues to exist even after the physical connection has been severed, and that therefore he will suffer from any harm that may befall the severed parts of his body, such as the clippings of his hair or the parings of his nails. Accordingly he takes care that these severed portions of himself shall not be left in places where they might either be exposed to accidental injury or fall into the hands of malicious persons who might work magic on them to his detriment or death. Such dangers are common to all, but sacred persons have more to fear from them than ordinary people, so the precautions taken by them are proportionately stringent. The simplest way of evading the danger is of course not to cut the hair at all; and this is the expedient adopted where the danger is thought to be more than usually great. The Frankish kings were not allowed to cut their hair.[675] A Haida medicine-man may neither cut [pg 194] nor comb his hair, so it is always long and tangled.[676] Amongst the Alfoers of Celebes the Leleen or priest who looks after the rice-fields may not cut his hair during the time that he exercises his special functions, that is, from a month before the rice is sown until it is housed.[677] In Ceram men do not cut their hair: if married men did so, they would lose their wives; if young men did so, they would grow weak and enervated.[678] In Timorlaut, married men may not cut their hair for the same reason as in Ceram, but widowers and men on a journey may do so after offering a fowl or a pig in sacrifice.[679] Here men on a journey are specially permitted to cut their hair; but elsewhere men travelling abroad have been in the habit of leaving their hair uncut until their return. The reason for the latter custom is probably the danger to which, as we have seen, a traveller is believed to be exposed from the magic arts of the strangers amongst whom he sojourns; if they got possession of his shorn hair, they might work his destruction through it. The Egyptians on a journey kept their hair uncut till they returned home.[680] “At Tâif when a man returned from a journey his first duty was to visit the Rabba and poll his hair.”[681] The custom of keeping the hair unshorn during a dangerous expedition seems to have been observed, at least occasionally, by the Romans.[682] Achilles kept unshorn his yellow hair, [pg 195] because his father had vowed to offer it to the river Sperchius if ever his son came home from the wars beyond the sea.[683] Again, men who have taken a vow of vengeance sometimes keep their hair unshorn till they have fulfilled their vow. Thus of the Marquesans we are told that “occasionally they have their head entirely shaved, except one lock on the crown, which is worn loose or put up in a knot. But the latter mode of wearing the hair is only adopted by them when they have a solemn vow, as to revenge the death of some near relation, etc. In such case the lock is never cut off until they have fulfilled their promise.”[684] Six thousand Saxons once swore that they would not cut their hair nor shave their beards until they had taken vengeance on their enemies.[685] On one occasion a Hawaiian taboo is said to have lasted thirty years “during which the men were not allowed to trim their beards, etc.”[686] While his vow lasted, a Nazarite might not have his hair cut: “All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head.”[687] Possibly in this case there was a special objection to touching the tabooed man's head with iron. The Roman priests, as we have seen, were shorn with bronze knives. The same feeling probably gave rise to the European rule that a child's nails should not be cut during the first year, but that if it is absolutely necessary to shorten them they should be bitten off by the mother or nurse.[688] For [pg 196] in all parts of the world a young child is believed to be especially exposed to supernatural dangers, and particular precautions are taken to guard it against them; in other words, the child is under a number of taboos, of which the rule just mentioned is one. “Among Hindus the usual custom seems to be that the nails of a first-born child are cut at the age of six months. With other children a year or two is allowed to elapse.”[689] The Slave, Hare, and Dogrib Indians of North America do not cut the nails of female children till they are four years of age.[690] In some parts of Germany it is thought that if a child's hair is combed in its first year the child will be unlucky;[691] or that if a boy's hair is cut before his seventh year he will have no courage.[692]
But when it is necessary to cut the hair, precautions are taken to lessen the dangers which are supposed to attend the operation. Amongst the Maoris many spells were uttered at hair-cutting; one, for example, was spoken to consecrate the obsidian knife with which the hair was cut; another was pronounced to avert the thunder and lightning which hair-cutting was believed to cause.[693] “He who has had his hair cut is in the immediate charge of the Atua (spirit); he is removed from the contact and society of [pg 197] his family and his tribe; he dare not touch his food himself; it is put into his mouth by another person; nor can he for some days resume his accustomed occupations or associate with his fellow men.”[694] The person who cuts the hair is also tabooed; his hands having been in contact with a sacred head, he may not touch food with them or engage in any other employment; he is fed by another person with food cooked over a sacred fire. He cannot be released from the taboo before the following day, when he rubs his hands with potato or fern root which has been cooked on a sacred fire; and this food having been taken to the head of the family in the female line and eaten by her, his hands are freed from the taboo. In some parts of New Zealand the most sacred day of the year was that appointed for hair-cutting; the people assembled in large numbers on that day from all the neighbourhood.[695] It is an affair of state when the king of Cambodia's hair is cut. The priests place on the barber's fingers certain old rings set with large stones, which are supposed to contain spirits favourable to the kings, and during the operation the Brahmans keep up a noisy music to drive away the evil spirits.[696] The hair and nails of the Mikado could only be cut while he was asleep,[697] perhaps because his soul being then absent from his body, there was less chance of injuring it with the shears.
But even when the hair and nails have been safely cut, there remains the difficulty of disposing of them, [pg 198] for their owner believes himself liable to suffer from any harm that may befall them. Thus, an Australian girl, sick of a fever, attributed her illness to the fact that some months before a young man had come behind her and cut off a lock of her hair; she was sure he had buried it and that it was rotting. “Her hair,” she said, “was rotting somewhere, and her Marm-bu-la (kidney fat) was wasting away, and when her hair had completely rotted, she would die.”[698] A Marquesan chief told Lieutenant Gamble that he was extremely ill, the Happah tribe having stolen a lock of his hair and buried it in a plantain leaf for the purpose of taking his life. Lieut. Gamble argued with him, but in vain; die he must unless the hair and the plantain leaf were brought back to him; and to obtain them he had offered the Happahs the greater part of his property. He complained of excessive pain in the head, breast and sides.[699] When an Australian blackfellow wishes to get rid of his wife, he cuts off a lock of her hair in her sleep, ties it to his spear-thrower, and goes with it to a neighbouring tribe, where he gives it to a friend. His friend sticks the spear-thrower up every night before the camp fire, and when it falls down it is a sign that his wife is dead.[700] The way in which the charm operates was explained to Mr. Howitt by a Mirajuri man. “You see,” he said, “when a blackfellow doctor gets hold of something belonging to a man and roasts it with things, and sings over it, the fire catches hold of the smell of the man, and that settles the poor fellow.”[701] In Germany it is a common [pg 199] notion that if birds find a person's cut hair, and build their nests with it, the person will suffer from headache;[702] sometimes it is thought that he will have an eruption on the head.[703] Again it is thought that cut or combed out hair may disturb the weather by producing rain and hail, thunder and lightning. We have seen that in New Zealand a spell was uttered at hair-cutting to avert thunder and lightning. In the Tirol, witches are supposed to use cut or combed out hair to make hail-stones or thunder-storms with.[704] Thlinket Indians have been known to attribute stormy weather to the fact that a girl had combed her hair outside of the house.[705] The Romans seem to have held similar views, for it was a maxim with them that no one on shipboard should cut his hair or nails except in a storm,[706] that is, when the mischief was already done. In West Africa, when the Mani of Chitombe or Jumba died, the people used to run in crowds to the corpse and tear out his hair, teeth, and nails, which they kept as a rain-charm, believing that otherwise no rain would fall. The Makoko of Anzikos begged the missionaries to give him half their beards as a [pg 200] rain-charm.[707] In some Victorian tribes the sorcerer used to burn human hair in time of drought; it was never burned at other times for fear of causing a deluge of rain. Also when the river was low, the sorcerer would place human hair in the stream to increase the supply of water.[708]
To preserve the cut hair and nails from injury and from the dangerous uses to which they may be put by sorcerers, it is necessary to deposit them in some safe place. Hence the natives of the Maldives carefully keep the cuttings of their hair and nails and bury them, with a little water, in the cemeteries; “for they would not for the world tread upon them nor cast them in the fire, for they say that they are part of their body and demand burial as it does; and, indeed, they fold them neatly in cotton; and most of them like to be shaved at the gates of temples and mosques.”[709] In New Zealand the severed hair was deposited on some sacred spot of ground “to protect it from being touched accidentally or designedly by any one.”[710] The shorn locks of a chief were gathered with much care and placed in an adjoining cemetery.[711] The Tahitians buried the cuttings of their hair at the temples.[712] The cut hair and nails of the Flamen Dialis were buried under a lucky tree.[713] The hair of the Vestal virgins was hung upon an ancient lotus-tree.[714] In Germany [pg 201] the clippings of hair used often to be buried under an elder-bush.[715] In Oldenburg cut hair and nails are wrapt in a cloth which is deposited in a hole in an elder-tree three days before the new moon; the hole is then plugged up.[716] In the West of Northumberland it is thought that if the first parings of a child's nails are buried under an ash-tree, the child will turn out a fine singer.[717] In Amboina before a child may taste sago-pap for the first time, the father cuts off a lock of the child's hair which he buries under a sago palm.[718] In the Aru Islands, when a child is able to run alone, a female relation cuts off a lock of its hair and deposits it on a banana-tree.[719] In the island of Roti it is thought that the first hair which a child gets is not his own and that, if it is not cut off, it will make him weak and ill. Hence, when the child is about a month old, his hair is cut off with much ceremony. As each of the friends who are invited to the ceremony enters the house he goes up to the child, cuts off a little of its hair and drops it into a cocoa-nut shell full of water. Afterwards the father or another relation takes the hair and packs it into a little bag made of leaves, which he fastens to the top of a palm-tree. Then he gives the leaves of the palm a good shaking, climbs down, and goes home without speaking to any one.[720] Indians of the Yukon territory, Alaska, do not throw away their cut hair and nails, but tie them up in little bundles and place them in the crotches of trees or anywhere where they will [pg 202] not be disturbed by animals. For “they have a superstition that disease will follow the disturbance of such remains by animals.”[721] The clipped hair and nails are often buried in any secret place, not necessarily in a temple or cemetery or under a tree, as in the cases already mentioned. In Swabia it is said that cut hair should be buried in a place where neither sun nor moon shines, therefore in the ground, under a stone, etc.[722] In Danzig it is buried in a bag under the threshold.[723] In Ugi, one of the Solomon Islands, men bury their hair lest it should fall into the hands of an enemy who would make magic with it and so bring sickness or calamity on them.[724] The Zend Avesta directs that the clippings of hair and the parings of nails shall be placed in separate holes, and that three, six, or nine furrows shall be drawn round each hole with a metal knife.[725] In the Grihya-Sûtras it is provided that the hair cut from a child's head at the end of the first, third, fifth, or seventh year shall be buried in the earth at a place covered with grass or in the neighbourhood of water.[726] The Madi or Moru tribe of Central Africa bury the parings of their nails in the ground.[727] The Kafirs carry still further this dread of allowing any portion of themselves to fall into the hands of an enemy; for not only do they bury their cut hair and nails in a sacred place, but when one of them cleans the head of another he preserves the insects which he [pg 203] finds, “carefully delivering them to the person to whom they originally appertained, supposing, according to their theory, that as they derived their support from the blood of the man from whom they were taken, should they be killed by another the blood of his neighbour would be in his possession, thus placing in his hands the power of some superhuman influence.”[728] Amongst the Wanyoro of Central Africa all cuttings of the hair and nails are carefully stored under the bed and afterwards strewed about among the tall grass.[729] In North Guinea they are carefully hidden (it is not said where) “in order that they may not be used as a fetish for the destruction of him to whom they belong.”[730] In Bolang Mongondo (Celebes) the first hair cut from a child's head is kept in a young cocoa-nut, which is commonly hung on the front of the house, under the roof.[731]
Sometimes the severed hair and nails are preserved, not to prevent them from falling into the hands of a magician, but that the owner may have them at the resurrection of the body, to which some races look forward. Thus the Incas of Peru “took extreme care to preserve the nail-parings and the hairs that were shorn off or torn out with a comb; placing them in holes or niches in the walls, and if they fell out, any other Indian that saw them picked them up and put them in their places again. I very often asked different Indians, at various times, why [pg 204] they did this, in order to see what they would say, and they all replied in the same words, saying, ‘Know that all persons who are born must return to life’ (they have no word to express resuscitation), ‘and the souls must rise out of their tombs with all that belonged to their bodies. We, therefore, in order that we may not have to search for our hair and nails at a time when there will be much hurry and confusion, place them in one place, that they may be brought together more conveniently, and, whenever it is possible, we are also careful to spit in one place.’ ”[732] In Chile this custom of stuffing the shorn hair into holes in the wall is still observed, it being thought the height of imprudence to throw the hair away.[733] Similarly the Turks never throw away the parings of their nails, but carefully keep them in cracks of the walls or of the boards, in the belief that they will be needed at the resurrection.[734] Some of the Esthonians keep the parings of their finger and toe nails in their bosom, in order to have them at hand when they are asked for them at the day of judgment.[735] The Fors of Central Africa object to cut any one else's nails, for should the part cut off be lost and not delivered into its owner's hands, it will have to be made up to him somehow or other after death. The parings are buried in the ground.[736] To spit upon the hair before throwing it away is thought in some parts of Europe sufficient to prevent [pg 205] its being used by witches.[737] Spitting as a protective charm is well known.
Some people burn their loose hair to save it from falling into the power of sorcerers. This is done by the Patagonians and some of the Victorian tribes.[738] The Makololo of South Africa either burn it or bury it secretly,[739] and the same alternative is sometimes adopted by the Tirolese.[740] Cut and combed out hair is burned in Pomerania and sometimes at Liége.[741] In Norway the parings of nails are either burned or buried, lest the elves or the Finns should find them and make them into bullets wherewith to shoot the cattle.[742] This destruction of the hair or nails plainly involves an inconsistency of thought. The object of the destruction is avowedly to prevent these severed portions of the body from being used by sorcerers. But the possibility of their being so used depends upon the supposed sympathetic connection between them and the man from whom they were severed. And if this sympathetic connection still exists, clearly these severed portions cannot be destroyed without injury to the man.
Before leaving this subject, on which I have perhaps dwelt too long, it may be well to call attention to the motive assigned for cutting a young child's hair in Roti.[743] In that island the first hair is regarded as a danger to the child, and its removal is intended to avert the danger. The reason of this may be that as a [pg 206] young child is almost universally supposed to be in a tabooed or dangerous state, it is necessary, in removing the taboo, to destroy the separable parts of the child's body on the ground that they are infected, so to say, by the virus of the taboo and as such are dangerous. The cutting of the child's hair would thus be exactly parallel to the destruction of the vessels which have been used by a tabooed person.[744] This view is borne out by a practice, observed by some Australians, of burning off part of a woman's hair after childbirth as well as burning every vessel which has been used by her during her seclusion.[745] Here the burning of the woman's hair seems plainly intended to serve the same purpose as the burning of the vessels used by her; and as the vessels are burned because they are believed to be tainted with a dangerous infection, so, we must suppose, is also the hair. We can, therefore, understand the importance attached by many peoples to the first cutting of a child's hair and the elaborate ceremonies by which the operation is accompanied.[746] Again, we can understand why a man should poll his head after a journey.[747] For we have seen that a traveller is often believed to contract a dangerous infection from strangers and that, therefore, on his return home he is obliged to submit to various purificatory ceremonies before he is allowed to mingle freely with his own people.[748] On my hypothesis the polling of the hair is simply one of these purificatory or disinfectant ceremonies. The cutting of the hair after a vow may have the same meaning. It is a way of ridding the [pg 207] man of what has been infected by the dangerous state of taboo, sanctity, or uncleanness (for all these are only different expressions for the same primitive conception) under which he laboured during the continuance of the vow. Similarly at some Hindu places of pilgrimage on the banks of rivers men who have committed great crimes or are troubled by uneasy consciences have every hair shaved off by professional barbers before they plunge into the sacred stream, from which “they emerge new creatures, with all the accumulated guilt of a long life effaced.”[749]
As might have been expected, the superstitions of the savage cluster thick about the subject of food; and he abstains from eating many animals and plants, wholesome enough in themselves, but which for one reason or another he considers would prove dangerous or fatal to the eater. Examples of such abstinence are too familiar and far too numerous to quote. But if the ordinary man is thus deterred by superstitious fear from partaking of various foods, the restraints of this kind which are laid upon sacred or tabooed persons, such as kings and priests, are still more numerous and stringent. We have already seen that the Flamen Dialis was forbidden to eat or even name several plants and animals, and that the flesh diet of the Egyptian kings was restricted to veal and goose.[750] The Gangas or fetish priests of the Loango Coast are forbidden to eat or even see a variety of animals and fish, in consequence of which their flesh diet is extremely limited; often they live only on herbs and roots, though they may drink fresh blood.[751] The heir to the throne of [pg 208] Loango is forbidden from infancy to eat pork; from early childhood he is interdicted the use of the cola fruit in company; at puberty he is taught by a priest not to partake of fowls except such as he has himself killed and cooked; and so the number of taboos goes on increasing with his years.[752] In Fernando Po the king after installation is forbidden to eat cocco (arum acaule), deer, and porcupine, which are the ordinary foods of the people.[753] Amongst the Murrams of Manipur (a district of Eastern India, on the border of Burma), “there are many prohibitions in regard to the food, both animal and vegetable, which the chief should eat, and the Murrams say the chief's post must be a very uncomfortable one.”[754] To explain the ultimate reason why any particular food is prohibited to a whole tribe or to certain of its members would commonly require a far more intimate knowledge of the history and beliefs of the tribe than we possess. The general motive of such prohibitions is doubtless the same which underlies the whole taboo system, namely, the conservation of the tribe and the individual.
It would be easy to extend the list of royal and priestly taboos, but the above may suffice as specimens. To conclude this part of our subject it only remains to state summarily the general conclusions to which our inquiries have thus far conducted us. We have seen that in savage or barbarous society there are often found men to whom the superstition of their fellows ascribes a controlling influence over the general course of nature. Such men are accordingly adored and treated as gods. Whether these human divinities [pg 209] also hold temporal sway over the lives and fortunes of their fellows, or whether their functions are purely spiritual and supernatural, in other words, whether they are kings as well as gods or only the latter, is a distinction which hardly concerns us here. Their supposed divinity is the essential fact with which we have to deal. In virtue of it they are a pledge and guarantee to their worshippers of the continuance and orderly succession of those physical phenomena upon which mankind depends for subsistence. Naturally, therefore, the life and health of such a god-man are matters of anxious concern to the people whose welfare and even existence are bound up with his; naturally he is constrained by them to conform to such rules as the wit of early man has devised for averting the ills to which flesh is heir, including the last ill, death. These rules, as an examination of them has shown, are nothing but the maxims with which, on the primitive view, every man of common prudence must comply if he would live long in the land. But while in the case of ordinary men the observance of the rules is left to the choice of the individual, in the case of the god-man it is enforced under penalty of dismissal from his high station, or even of death. For his worshippers have far too great a stake in his life to allow him to play fast and loose with it. Therefore all the quaint superstitions, the old-world maxims, the venerable saws which the ingenuity of savage philosophers elaborated long ago, and which old women at chimney corners still impart as treasures of great price to their descendants gathered round the cottage fire on winter evenings—all these antique fancies clustered, all these cobwebs of the brain were spun about the path of the old king, the human god, who, immeshed in them like [pg 210] a fly in the toils of a spider, could hardly stir a limb for the threads of custom, “light as air but strong as links of iron,” that crossing and recrossing each other in an endless maze bound him fast within a network of observances from which death or deposition alone could release him.
To students of the past the life of the old kings and priests thus teems with instruction. In it was summed up all that passed for wisdom when the world was young. It was the perfect pattern after which every man strove to shape his life; a faultless model constructed with rigorous accuracy upon the lines laid down by a barbarous philosophy. Crude and false as that philosophy may seem to us, it would be unjust to deny it the merit of logical consistency. Starting from a conception of the vital principle as a tiny being or soul existing in, but distinct and separable from, the living being, it deduces for the practical guidance of life a system of rules which in general hangs well together and forms a fairly complete and harmonious whole. The flaw—and it is a fatal one—of the system lies not in its reasoning, but in its premises; in its conception of the nature of life, not in any irrelevancy of the conclusions which it draws from that conception. But to stigmatise these premises as ridiculous because we can easily detect their falseness, would be ungrateful as well as unphilosophical. We stand upon the foundation reared by the generations that have gone before, and we can but dimly realise the painful and prolonged efforts which it has cost humanity to struggle up to the point, no very exalted one after all, which we have reached. Our gratitude is due to the nameless and forgotten toilers, whose patient thought and active exertions have largely made [pg 211] us what we are. The amount of new knowledge which one age, certainly which one man, can add to the common store is small, and it argues stupidity or dishonesty, besides ingratitude, to ignore the heap while vaunting the few grains which it may have been our privilege to add to it. There is indeed little danger at present of undervaluing the contributions which modern times and even classical antiquity have made to the general advancement of our race. But when we pass these limits, the case is different. Contempt and ridicule or abhorrence and denunciation are too often the only recognition vouchsafed to the savage and his ways. Yet of the benefactors whom we are bound thankfully to commemorate, many, perhaps most, were savages. For when all is said and done our resemblances to the savage are still far more numerous than our differences from him; and what we have in common with him, and deliberately retain as true and useful, we owe to our savage forefathers who slowly acquired by experience and transmitted to us by inheritance those seemingly fundamental ideas which we are apt to regard as original and intuitive. We are like heirs to a fortune which has been handed down for so many ages that the memory of those who built it up is lost, and its possessors for the time being regard it as having been an original and unalterable possession of their race since the beginning of the world. But reflection and inquiry should satisfy us that to our predecessors we are indebted for much of what we thought most our own, and that their errors were not wilful extravagances or the ravings of insanity, but simply hypotheses, justifiable as such at the time when they were propounded, but which a fuller experience has proved to be inadequate. It is only by the [pg 212] successive testing of hypotheses and rejection of the false that truth is at last elicited. After all, what we call truth is only the hypothesis which is found to work best. Therefore in reviewing the opinions and practices of ruder ages and races we shall do well to look with leniency upon their errors as inevitable slips made in the search for truth, and to give them the benefit of that indulgence which we may one day stand in need of ourselves: cum excusatione itaque veteres audiendi sunt.