Knots and locks used as protective amulets in Russia and elsewhere.
In Russia amulets often derive their protective virtue in great measure from knots. Here, for example, is a spell which will warrant its employer against all risk of being shot: “I attach five knots to each hostile, infidel shooter, over arquebuses, bows, and all manner of warlike weapons. [pg 307] Do ye, O knots, bar the shooter from every road and way, lock fast every arquebuse, entangle every bow, involve all warlike weapons, so that the shooters may not reach me with their arquebuses, nor may their arrows attain to me, nor their warlike weapons do me hurt. In my knots lies hid the mighty strength of snakes—from the twelve-headed snake.” A net, from its affluence of knots, has always been considered in Russia very efficacious against sorcerers; hence in some places, when a bride is being dressed in her wedding attire, a fishing-net is flung over her to keep her out of harm's way. For a similar purpose the bridegroom and his companions are often girt with pieces of net, or at least with tight-drawn girdles, for before a wizard can begin to injure them he must undo all the knots in the net, or take off the girdles. But often a Russian amulet is merely a knotted thread. A skein of red wool wound about the arms and legs is thought to ward off agues and fevers; and nine skeins, fastened round a child's neck, are deemed a preservative against scarlatina. In the Tver Government a bag of a special kind is tied to the neck of the cow which walks before the rest of a herd, in order to keep off wolves; its force binds the maw of the ravening beast. On the same principle, a padlock is carried thrice round a herd of horses before they go afield in the spring, and the bearer locks and unlocks it as he goes, saying, “I lock from my herd the mouths of the grey wolves with this steel lock.” After the third round the padlock is finally locked, and then, when the horses have gone off, it is hidden away somewhere till late in the autumn, when the time comes for the drove to return to winter quarters. In this case the “firm word” of the spell is supposed to lock up the mouths of the wolves. The Bulgarians have a similar mode of guarding their cattle against wild beasts. A woman takes a needle and thread after dark, and sews together the skirt of her dress. A child asks her what she is doing, and she tells him that she is sewing up the ears, eyes, and jaws of the wolves so that they may not hear, see, or bite the sheep, goats, calves, and pigs.[1135] Similarly in antiquity a witch fancied that she could shut the mouths of her enemies by sewing up the mouth of a fish [pg 308] with a bronze needle,[1136] and farmers attempted to ward off hail from their crops by tying keys to ropes all round the fields.[1137] The Armenians essay to lock the jaws of wolves by uttering a spell, tying seven knots in a shoe-lace, and placing the string between the teeth of a wool-comber, which are probably taken to represent the fangs of a wolf.[1138] And an Armenian bride and bridegroom will carry a locked lock on their persons at and after marriage to guard them against those evil influences to which at this crisis of life they are especially exposed.[1139] The following mode of keeping an epidemic from a village is known to have been practised among the Balkan Slavs. Two old women proceed to a spot outside the village, the one with a copper kettle full of water, the other with a house-lock and key. The old dame with the kettle asks the other, “Whither away?” The one with the lock answers, “I came to lock the village against mishap,” and suiting the action to the words she locks the lock and throws it, together with the key, into the kettle of water. Then she strides thrice round the village, each time repeating the performance with the lock and kettle.[1140] To this day a Transylvanian sower thinks he can keep birds from the corn by carrying a lock in the seed-bag.[1141] Such magical uses of locks and keys are clearly parallel to the magical use of knots, with which we are here concerned. In Ceylon the Singhalese observe “a curious custom of the threshing-floor called ‘Goigote’—the tying of the cultivator's knot. When a sheaf of corn has been threshed out, before it is removed the grain is heaped up and the threshers, generally six in number, sit round it, and taking a few stalks, with the ears of corn attached, jointly tie a knot and bury it in the heap. It is left there until all the sheaves have been threshed, and the corn winnowed and measured. The object of this ceremony is to prevent the devils from diminishing the quantity of corn in the [pg 309] heap.”[1142] Knots and locks may serve to avert not only devils but death itself. When they brought a woman to the stake at St. Andrews in 1572 to burn her alive for a witch, they found on her a white cloth like a collar, with strings and many knots on the strings. They took it from her, sorely against her will, for she seemed to think that she could not die in the fire, if only the cloth with the knotted strings was on her. When it was taken away, she said, “Now I have no hope of myself.”[1143] In many parts of England it is thought that a person cannot die so long as any locks are locked or bolts shot in the house. It is therefore a very common practice to undo all locks and bolts when the sufferer is plainly near his end, in order that his agony may not be unduly prolonged.[1144] For example, in the year 1863, at Taunton, a child lay sick of scarlatina and death seemed inevitable. “A jury of matrons was, as it were, empanelled, and to prevent the child ‘dying hard’ all the doors in the house, all the drawers, all the boxes, all the cupboards were thrown wide open, the keys taken out, and the body of the child placed under a beam, whereby a sure, certain, and easy passage into eternity could be secured.” Strange to say, the child declined to avail itself of the facilities for dying so obligingly placed at its disposal by the sagacity and experience of the British matrons of Taunton; it preferred to live rather than give up the ghost just then.[1145] A Masai man whose sons have gone out to war will take a hair and tie a knot in it for each of his absent sons, praying God to keep their bodies and souls as firmly fastened together as these knots.[1146]
The magical virtue of a knot is always that of an impediment or hindrance whether for good or evil.
The precise mode in which the virtue of the knot is [pg 310] supposed to take effect in some of these instances does not clearly appear. But in general we may say that in all the cases we have been considering the leading characteristic of the magic knot or lock is that, in strict accordance with its physical nature, it always acts as an impediment, hindrance, or obstacle, and that its influence is maleficent or beneficent according as the thing which it impedes or hinders is good or evil. The obstructive tendency attributed to the knot in spiritual matters appears in a Swiss superstition that if, in sewing a corpse into its shroud, you make a knot on the thread, it will hinder the soul of the deceased on its passage to eternity.[1147] In coffining a corpse the Highlanders of Scotland used to untie or cut every string in the shroud; else the spirit could not rest.[1148] The Germans of Transylvania place a little pillow with the dead in the coffin; but in sewing it they take great care not to make any knot on the thread, for they say that to do so would hinder the dead man from resting in the grave and his widow from marrying again.[1149] Among the Pidhireanes, a Ruthenian people on the hem of the Carpathians, when a widow wishes to marry again soon, she unties the knots on her dead husband's grave-clothes before the coffin is shut down on him. This removes all impediments to her future marriage.[1150] A Nandi who is starting on a journey will tie a knot in grass by the wayside, as he believes that by so doing he will prevent the people whom he is going to visit from taking their meal till he arrives, or at all events he will ensure that they leave enough food over for him.[1151]
The rule that at certain magical and religious rites the hair should be loose and the feet bare is probably based on a fear of the impediment which is thought to be caused by any knot or constriction. Custom of going on certain solemn occasions with one shoe on and one shoe off.
The rule which prescribes that at certain magical and religious ceremonies the hair should hang loose and the feet [pg 311] should be bare[1152] is probably based on the same fear of trammelling and impeding the action in hand, whatever it may be, by the presence of any knot or constriction, whether on the head or on the feet of the performer. This connexion of ideas comes out clearly in a passage of Ovid, who bids a pregnant woman loosen her hair before she prays to the goddess of childbirth, in order that the goddess may gently loose her teeming womb.[1153] It is less easy to say why on certain solemn occasions it appears to have been customary with some people to go with one shoe off and one shoe on. The forlorn hope of two hundred men who, on a dark and stormy night, stole out of Plataea, broke through the lines of the besieging Spartans, and escaped from the doomed city, were shod on the left foot only. The historian who records the fact assumes that the intention was to prevent their feet from slipping in the mud.[1154] But if so, why were not both feet unshod or shod? What is good for the one foot is surely good for the other. The peculiar attire of the Plataeans on this occasion had probably nothing to do with the particular state of the ground and the weather at the time when they made their desperate sally, but was an old custom, a form of consecration or devotion, observed by men in any great hazard or grave emergency. Certainly the costume appears to have been regularly worn by some fighting races in antiquity, at least when they went forth to battle. Thus we are told that all the Aetolians were shod only on one foot, “because they were so warlike,”[1155] and Virgil represents some of the rustic militia of ancient Latium as marching to war, their right feet shod in boots of raw hide, while their left feet were bare.[1156] An oracle warned Pelias, king of Iolcus, to beware of the man with one sandal, and when Jason arrived with a sandal on his right foot but with his left foot bare, the king recognised the hand of fate. The [pg 312] common story that Jason had lost one of his sandals in fording a river was probably invented when the real motive of the costume was forgotten.[1157] Again, according to one legend Perseus seems to have worn only one shoe when he went on his perilous enterprise to cut off the Gorgon's head.[1158] In certain forms of purification Greek ritual appears to have required that the person to be cleansed should wear a rough shoe on one foot, while the other was unshod. The rule is not mentioned by ancient writers, but may be inferred from a scene painted on a Greek vase, where a man, naked except for a fillet round his head, is seen crouching on the skin of a sacrificial victim, his bare right foot resting on the skin, while his left foot, shod in a rough boot, is planted on the ground in front of him. Round about women with torches and vessels are engaged in performing ceremonies of purification over him.[1159] When Dido in Virgil, deserted by Aeneas, has resolved to die, she feigns to perform certain magical rites which will either win back her false lover or bring relief to her wounded heart. In appealing to the gods and the stars, she stands by the altar with her dress loosened and with one foot bare.[1160] Among the heathen Arabs the cursing of an enemy was a public act. The maledictions were often couched in the form of a satirical poem, which the poet himself recited with certain solemn formalities. Thus when the young Lebid appeared at the Court of Norman to denounce the Absites, he anointed the hair of his head on one side only, let his garment hang down loosely, and wore but one shoe. This, we are told, was the costume regularly adopted by certain poets on such occasions.[1161]
The intention of going with one shoe on and one shoe off on such occasions seems to be to free the man so attired from magical constraint and to lay it on his enemy.
Thus various peoples seem to be of opinion that it stands a man in good stead to go with one foot shod and one foot bare on certain momentous occasions. But why? The explanation must apparently be sought in the magical virtue attributed to knots; for down to recent times, we may take it, shoes have been universally tied to the feet by latchets. Now the magical action of a knot, as we have seen, is supposed to be to bind and restrain not merely the body but the soul,[1162] and this action is beneficial or harmful according as the thing which is bound and restrained is evil or good. It is a necessary corollary of this doctrine that to be without knots is to be free and untrammelled, which, by the way, may be the reason why the augur's staff at Rome had to be made from a piece of wood in which there was no knot;[1163] it would never do for a divining rod to be spell-bound. Hence we may suppose that the intention of going with one shoe on and one shoe off is both to restrain and to set at liberty, to bind and to unbind. But to bind or unbind whom or what? Perhaps the notion is to rid the man himself of magical restraint, but to lay it on his foe, or at all events on his foe's magic; in short, to bind his enemy by a spell while he himself goes free. This is substantially the explanation which the acute and learned Servius gives of Dido's costume. He says that she went with one shoe on and one shoe off in order that Aeneas might be entangled and herself released.[1164] An analogous explanation would obviously apply to all the other cases we have considered, for in all of them the man who wears this peculiar costume is confronted with hostile powers, whether human or supernatural, which it must be his object to lay under a ban.
Rings also are regarded as magical fetters which prevent the egress or ingress of spirits.
A similar power to bind and hamper spiritual as well as bodily activities is ascribed by some people to rings. Thus in the Greek island of Carpathus, people never button the clothes they put upon a dead body and they are careful to [pg 314] remove all rings from it; “for the spirit, they say, can even be detained in the little finger, and cannot rest.”[1165] Here it is plain that even if the soul is not definitely supposed to issue at death from the finger-tips, yet the ring is conceived to exercise a certain constrictive influence which detains and imprisons the immortal spirit in spite of its efforts to escape from the tabernacle of clay; in short the ring, like the knot, acts as a spiritual fetter. This may have been the reason of an ancient Greek maxim, attributed to Pythagoras, which forbade people to wear rings.[1166] Nobody might enter the ancient Arcadian sanctuary of the Mistress at Lycosura with a ring on his or her finger.[1167] Persons who consulted the oracle of Faunus had to be chaste, to eat no flesh, and to wear no rings.[1168]