Sometimes the desired object is supposed to be attained by treating with high distinction one or two chosen individuals of the obnoxious species, while the rest are pursued with relentless rigour. In the East Indian island of Bali, the mice which ravage the rice-fields are caught in great numbers, and burned in the same way that corpses are burned. But two of the captured mice are allowed to live, and receive a little packet of white linen. Then the people bow down before them, as before gods, and let them go.[816] In the Kangean archipelago, East Indies, when the mice prove very destructful to the rice-crop, the people rid themselves of the pest in the following manner. On a Friday, when the usual service in the mosque is over, four pairs of mice are solemnly united in marriage by the priest. Each pair is then shut up in a miniature canoe about a foot long. These canoes are filled with rice and other fruits of the earth, and the four pairs of mice are then escorted to the sea-shore just as if it were a real wedding. Wherever the procession passes the people beat with all their might on their rice-blocks. On reaching the shore, the canoes, with their little inmates, are launched and left to the mercy of the winds and [pg 279] waves.[817] When the farms of the Sea Dyaks or Ibans of Sarawak are much pestered by birds and insects, they catch a specimen of each kind of vermin (one sparrow, one grasshopper and so on), put them in a tiny boat of bark well-stocked with provisions, and then allow the little vessel with its obnoxious passengers to float down the river. If that does not drive the pests away, the Dyaks resort to what they deem a more effectual mode of accomplishing the same purpose. They make a clay crocodile as large as life and set it up in the fields, where they offer it food, rice-spirit, and cloth, and sacrifice a fowl and a pig before it. Mollified by these attentions, the ferocious animal very soon gobbles up all the creatures that devour the crops.[818] In some parts of Bohemia the peasant, though he kills field mice and grey mice without scruple, always spares white mice. If he finds a white mouse he takes it up carefully, and makes a comfortable bed for it in the window; for if it died the luck of the house would be gone, and the grey mice would multiply fearfully in the dwelling.[819] In Albania, if the fields or vineyards are ravaged by locusts or beetles, some of the women will assemble with dishevelled hair, catch a few of the insects, and march with them in a funeral procession to a spring or stream, in which they drown the creatures. Then one of the women sings, “O locusts and beetles who have left us bereaved,” and the dirge is taken up and repeated by all the women in chorus. Thus by celebrating the obsequies of a few locusts and beetles, they hope to bring about the death of them all.[820] When caterpillars invaded a vineyard or field in Syria, the virgins were gathered, and one of the caterpillars was taken and a girl made its mother. Then they bewailed and buried it. Thereafter they conducted the “mother” to the place where the caterpillars were, consoling her, in order that all the caterpillars might leave the garden.[821] On the first of [pg 280] September, Russian girls “make small coffins of turnips and other vegetables, enclose flies and other insects in them, and then bury them with a great show of mourning.”[822] In South Africa a plague of caterpillars is removed by a number of small Caffre girls, who go singing through the fields. They wail as they pass through the languishing crops, and thus invoke the aid and pity of some ancestral spirits. The mournful rite ends with a dance on a plot of ground overlooking the fields.[823]
Ceremony performed by Baronga women to drive insects from the crops.
On the shore of Delagoa Bay there thrives a small brown beetle which is very destructive to the beans and maize. The Baronga call it noonoo. In December or January, when the insects begin to swarm, women are sent to collect them from the bean-stalks in shells. When they have done so, a twin girl is charged with the duty of throwing the insects into a neighbouring lake. Accompanied by a woman of mature years and carrying the beetles in a calabash, the girl goes on her mission without saying a word to any one. At her back marches the whole troop of women, their arms, waists, and heads covered with grass and holding in their hands branches of manioc with large leaves which they wave to and fro, while they chant the words, “Noonoo, go away! Leave our fields! Noonoo, go away! leave our fields!” The little girl throws her calabash with the beetles into the water without looking behind her, and thereupon the women bellow out obscene songs, which they never dare to utter except on this occasion and at the ceremony for making rain.[824]
Images made of vermin as a charm to get rid of them.
Another mode of getting rid of vermin and other noxious creatures without hurting their feelings or shewing them disrespect is to make images of them. Apollonius of Tyana is said to have cleared Antioch of scorpions by making a [pg 281] bronze image of a scorpion and burying it under a small pillar in the middle of the city.[825] Further, it is reported that he freed Constantinople from flies by means of a bronze fly, and from gnats by means of a bronze gnat.[826] In the Middle Ages Virgil passed for an enchanter and is said to have rid Naples of flies and grasshoppers by bronze or copper images of these insects; and when the waters of the city were infested by leeches, he made a golden leech, which put a stop to the plague.[827] It is reported that a mosque at Fez used to be protected against scorpions by an image of a bird holding a scorpion in its beak.[828] An Arab writer tells of a golden locust which guarded a certain town from a plague of locusts; and he also mentions two brazen oxen which checked a murrain among cattle.[829] Gregory of Tours tells us that the city of Paris used to be free of dormice and serpents, but that in his lifetime, while they were cleaning a sewer, they found a bronze serpent and a bronze dormouse and removed them. “Since then,” adds the good bishop, “dormice and serpents without number have been seen in Paris.”[830] When their land was overrun with mice, the Philistines made golden images of the vermin and sent them out of the country in a new cart drawn by two cows, hoping that the real mice would simultaneously depart.[831] So when a swarm of serpents afflicted the Israelites in the desert, they made a serpent of brass and set it on a pole as a mode of staying the plague.[832]
§ 2. Mouse Apollo and Wolf Apollo.
Greek gods who took titles from vermin. Mouse (Smintheus) Apollo.
Some of the Greek gods were worshipped under titles derived from the vermin or other pests which they were supposed to avert or exterminate. Thus we hear of Mouse Apollo,[833] Locust Apollo,[834] and Mildew Apollo;[835] of Locust Hercules and Worm-killing Hercules;[836] of Foxy Dionysus;[837] and of Zeus the Fly-catcher or Averter of Flies.[838] If we could trace all these and similar worships to their origin, we should probably find that they were at first addressed, not to the high gods as the protectors of mankind, but to the baleful things themselves, the mice, locusts, mildew, and so forth, with the intention of flattering and soothing them, of disarming their malignity, and of persuading them to spare their worshippers. We know that the Romans worshipped the mildew, the farmer's plague, under its own proper name.[839] The ravages committed by mice among the crops both in ancient and modern times are notorious,[840] and according to [pg 283] a tradition which may be substantially correct the worship of the Mouse (Smintheus) Apollo was instituted to avert them.[841] The image of a mouse which stood beside Apollo's tripod in the god's temple in the Troad,[842] may be compared with the golden mice which the Philistines made for the purpose of ridding themselves of the vermin; and the tame mice kept in his sanctuary, together with the white mice which lived under the altar,[843] would on this hypothesis be parallel to the white mice which the Bohemian peasant still cherishes as the best way of keeping down the numbers of their grey-coated brethren.[844] An Oriental counterpart of the Mouse Apollo is the ancient pillar or rude idol which the Chams of Indo-China call yang-tikuh or “god rat,” and to which they offer sacrifices whenever rats infest their fields in excessive numbers.[845]
Wolfish Apollo.