Clipped hair may cause headache.
The Huzuls of the Carpathians imagine that if mice get a person's shorn hair and make a nest of it, the person will suffer from headache or even become idiotic.[936] Similarly in Germany it is a common notion that if birds find a person's cut hair, and build their nests with it, the person will suffer from headache;[937] sometimes it is thought that he will have an eruption on the head.[938] The same superstition prevails, [pg 271] or used to prevail, in West Sussex. “I knew how it would be,” exclaimed a maidservant one day, “when I saw that bird fly off with a bit of my hair in its beak that blew out of the window this morning when I was dressing; I knew I should have a clapping headache, and so I have.”[939] In like manner the Scottish Highlanders believe that if cut or loose hair is allowed to blow away with the wind and it passes over an empty nest, or a bird takes it to its nest, the head from which it came will ache.[940] The Todas of southern India hide their clipped hair in bushes or hollows in the rocks, in order that it may not be found by crows, and they bury the parings of their nails lest they should be eaten by buffaloes, with whom, it is believed, they would disagree.[941]
Cut hair may cause rain, hail, thunder and lightning. Magical uses of cut hair.
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 Tyrol, witches are supposed to use cut or combed-out hair to make hailstones or thunderstorms with.[942] Thlinkeet Indians have been known to attribute stormy weather to the rash act of a girl who had combed her hair outside of the house.[943] 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,[944] that is, when the mischief was already done. In the Highlands of Scotland it is said that no sister should comb her hair at night if she have a brother at sea.[945] 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 the Anzikos begged the missionaries to give him half their beards as a rain-charm.[946] When Du Chaillu had his hair cut among the Ashira of West [pg 272] Africa, the people scuffled and fought for the clippings of his hair, even the aged king himself taking part in the scrimmage. Every one who succeeded in getting some of the hairs wrapped them up carefully and went off in triumph. When the traveller, who was regarded as a spirit by these simple-minded folk, asked the king what use the clippings could be to him, his sable majesty replied, “Oh, spirit! these hairs are very precious; we shall make mondas (fetiches) of them, and they will bring other white men to us, and bring us great good luck and riches. Since you have come to us, oh spirit! we have wished to have some of your hair, but did not dare to ask for it, not knowing that it could be cut.”[947] The Wabondei of eastern Africa preserve the hair and nails of their dead chiefs and use them both for the making of rain and the healing of the sick.[948] The hair, beard, and nails of their deceased chiefs are the most sacred possession, the most precious treasure of the Baronga of south-eastern Africa. Preserved in pellets of cow-dung wrapt round with leathern thongs, they are kept in a special hut under the charge of a high priest, who offers sacrifices and prayers at certain seasons, and has to observe strict continence for a month before he handles these holy relics in the offices of religion. A terrible drought was once the result of this palladium falling into the hands of the enemy.[949] 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.[950]
Cut hair and nails may be used as hostages for good behaviour of the persons from whose bodies they have been taken.
If cut hair and nails remain in sympathetic connexion with the person from whose body they have been severed, it is clear that they can be used as hostages for his good behaviour by any one who may chance to possess them; for on the principles of contagious magic he has only to [pg 273] injure the hair or nails in order to hurt simultaneously their original owner. Hence when the Nandi have taken a prisoner they shave his head and keep the shorn hair as a surety that he will not attempt to escape; but when the captive is ransomed, they return his shorn hair with him to his own people.[951] For a similar reason, perhaps, when the Tiaha, an Arab tribe of Moab, have taken a prisoner whom they do not wish to put to death, they shave one corner of his head above his temples and let him go. So, too, an Arab of Moab who pardons a murderer will sometimes cut off the man's hair and shave his chin before releasing him. Again, when two Moabite Arabs had got hold of a traitor who had revealed their plan of campaign to the enemy, they contented themselves with shaving completely one side of his head and his moustache on the other, after which they set him at liberty.[952] We can now, perhaps, understand why Hanun King of Ammon shaved off one-half of the beards of King David's messengers and cut off half their garments before he sent them back to their master.[953] His intention, we may conjecture, was not simply to put a gross affront on the envoys. He distrusted the ambitious designs of King David and wished to have some guarantee of the maintenance of peace and friendly relations between the two countries. That guarantee he may have imagined that he possessed in half of the beards and garments of the ambassadors; and if that was so, we may suppose that when the indignant David set the army of Israel in motion against Ammon, and the fords of Jordan were alive with the passage of his troops, the wizards of Ammon were busy in the strong keep of Rabbah muttering their weird spells and performing their quaint enchantments over the shorn hair and severed skirts in order to dispel the thundercloud of war that was gathering black about their country. Vain hopes! The city fell, and from the gates the sad inhabitants trooped forth in thousands to be laid in long lines on the ground and sawed asunder or ripped up with harrows or to walk into the red glow of the [pg 274] burning brick kilns.[954] Again, the parings of nails may serve the same purpose as the clippings of hair; they too may be treated as bail for the good behaviour of the persons from whose fingers they have been cut. It is apparently on this principle that when the Ba-yaka of the Congo valley cement a peace, the chiefs of the two tribes meet and eat a cake which contains some of their nail-parings as a pledge of the maintenance of the treaty. They believe that he who breaks an engagement contracted in this solemn manner will die.[955] Each of the high contracting parties has in fact given hostages to fortune in the shape of the nail-parings which are lodged in the other man's stomach.
Cut hair and nails are deposited in sacred places, such as temples and cemeteries, to preserve them from injury. Cut hair and nails buried under certain trees or deposited among the branches.
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.”[956] 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.”[957] The shorn locks of a chief were gathered with much care and placed in an adjoining cemetery.[958] The Tahitians buried the cuttings of their hair at the temples.[959] In the streets of Soku, West Africa, a modern traveller observed cairns of large stones piled against walls with tufts of human hair inserted in the crevices. On asking the meaning of this, he was told that when any native of the place polled his hair he carefully [pg 275] gathered up the clippings and deposited them in one of these cairns, all of which were sacred to the fetish and therefore inviolable. These cairns of sacred stones, he further learned, were simply a precaution against witchcraft, for if a man were not thus careful in disposing of his hair, some of it might fall into the hands of his enemies, who would, by means of it, be able to cast spells over him and so compass his destruction.[960] When the top-knot of a Siamese child has been cut with great ceremony, the short hairs are put into a little vessel made of plantain leaves and set adrift on the nearest river or canal. As they float away, all that was wrong or harmful in the child's disposition is believed to depart with them. The long hairs are kept till the child makes a pilgrimage to the holy Footprint of Buddha on the sacred hill at Prabat. They are then presented to the priests, who are supposed to make them into brushes with which they sweep the Footprint; but in fact so much hair is thus offered every year that the priests cannot use it all, so they quietly burn the superfluity as soon as the pilgrims' backs are turned.[961] The cut hair and nails of the Flamen Dialis were buried under a lucky tree.[962] The shorn tresses of the Vestal virgins were hung on an ancient lotus-tree.[963] In Morocco women often hang their cut hair on a tree that grows on or near the grave of a wonder-working saint; for they think thus to rid themselves of headache or to guard against it.[964] In Germany the clippings of hair used often to be buried under an elder-bush.[965] In Oldenburg cut hair and nails are wrapt in a cloth which is deposited in a hole in an [pg 276] elder-tree three days before the new moon; the hole is then plugged up.[966] 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.[967] In Amboyna, before a child may taste sago-pap for the first time, the father cuts off a lock of the infant's hair, which he buries under a sago-palm.[968] In the Aru Islands, when a child is able to run alone, a female relation shears a lock of its hair and deposits it on a banana-tree.[969] In the island of Rotti 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 polled with much ceremony. As each of the friends who are invited to the ceremony enters the house he goes up to the child, snips off a little of its hair and drops it into a coco-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.[970] 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 wherever they are not likely to be disturbed by beasts. For “they have a superstition that disease will follow the disturbance of such remains by animals.”[971]
Cut hair and nails may be stowed away for safety in any secret place.
Often the clipped hair and nails are stowed away in any secret place, not necessarily in a temple or cemetery or at a tree, as in the cases already mentioned. Thus in Swabia you are recommended to deposit your clipped hair in some spot where neither sun nor moon can shine on it, for example in the earth or under a stone.[972] In Danzig it is buried in a [pg 277] bag under the threshold.[973] 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.[974] The same fear seems to be general in Melanesia, and has led to a regular practice of hiding cut hair and nails.[975] In Fiji, the shorn hair is concealed in the thatch of the house.[976] Most Burmese and Shans tie the combings of their hair and the parings of their nails to a stone and sink them in deep water or bury them in the ground.[977] 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.[978] 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.[979] At the end of the period of his studentship a Brahman has his hair shaved and his nails cut; and a person who is kindly disposed to him gathers the shorn hair and the clipped nails, puts them in a lump of bull's dung, and buries them in a cow-stable or near an adumbara tree or in a clump of darbha grass, with the words, “Thus I hide the sins of So-and-so.”[980] The Madi or Moru tribe of central Africa bury the parings of their nails in the ground.[981] In Uganda grown people throw away the clippings of their hair, but carefully bury the parings of their nails.[982] The A-lur [pg 278] are careful to collect and bury both their hair and nails in safe places.[983] The same practice prevails among many tribes of South Africa, from a fear lest wizards should get hold of the severed particles and work evil with them.[984] The Caffres 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 secret spot, but when one of them cleans the head of another he preserves the vermin which he catches, “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.”[985] 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.[986] Similarly the Wahoko of central Africa take pains to collect their cut hair and nails and scatter them in the forest.[987] The Asa, a branch of the Masai, hide the clippings of their hair and the parings of their nails or throw them away far from the kraal, lest a sorcerer should get hold of them and make their original owners ill by his magic.[988] In North Guinea the parings of the finger-nails and the shorn locks of the head are scrupulously concealed, lest they be converted into a charm for the destruction of the person to whom they belong.[989] For the same reason the clipped hair and nail-parings of chiefs in Southern Nigeria are secretly buried.[990] Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia loose hair was buried, hidden, or thrown into the water, because, if an [pg 279] enemy got hold of it, he might bewitch the owner.[991] In Bolang Mongondo, a district of western Celebes, the first hair cut from a child's head is kept in a young coco-nut, which is commonly hung on the front of the house, under the roof.[992] To spit upon the hair before throwing it away is thought in some parts of Europe to be a sufficient safeguard against its use by witches.[993] Spitting as a protective charm is well known.[994]