Schurig (“Chylologia,” p. 795) repeats the story to the effect that the Laplanders calked the inner seams of their ships with the ordure of virgins to increase their speed. The Laplanders, when any of their reindeer die of disease, abandon their camp, being careful “to burn all the excrement of the animal before they depart.”—(Leem’s “Account of Danish Lapland,” in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 484. See previous citations from Sauer in regard to the Yakuts of Siberia.)
The story was current in California, about twenty years since, that the immigrants to that state from Missouri and Arkansas, in the gold-mining days, had the custom of depositing their evacuations, before starting on the march of the day, in the camp-fires of the preceding night. Nothing was learned of the meaning, if any, of the custom. Nursing women sprinkled a few drops of their milk on the burning coals in the fireplace, to ensure an abundant flow.—(Etmuller, vol. i. p. 68.)
The author has been fortunate in obtaining a copy of the address of Mr. James Mooney, of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., upon the “Medical Mythology of Ireland.”
This interesting and extremely valuable contribution, which can be found in the “Transactions of the American Philosophical Society for 1887,” leaves no uncertainty in regard to the mystic powers ascribed by the Celtic peasantry to both urine and ordure. Urine and chicken-dung are shown to be potent in frustrating the mischief of fairies; “fire, iron, and dung” are spoken of as the “three great safeguards against the influence of fairies and the infernal spirits.” Dung is carried about the person, as part of the contents of amulets; and children suffering from convulsions are, as a last resort, bathed from head to foot in urine, to rescue them from the clutches of their fairy persecutors. See also p. 377, in regard to the “dwarves,” who, in England, seem to be the same as fairies.
Du Chaillu, in his “Land of the Midnight Sun,” makes no reference to the use, in any manner, by the inhabitants of that region, of excrementitious materials for any purposes. His stay was of such an extremely short duration, that his observations cannot be compared with those made by Leems and others, from whom information has already been extracted.
A curious survival, in France, of the Parsi custom of the “Nirang” is demonstrated in the May number of “Mélusine,” Paris, 1888, entitled “Le Nirang des Parsis, en Basse Bretagne.”
“J’ai passé mon enfance, jusqu’à l’âge de quatorze ans, dans un vieux manoir breton, du nom de Keramborgne, dans la commune de Plouarte, arrondissement de Lannion. Le manoir paternel était bien connu des malheureux et des mendiants errants ... qui venaient demander le vivre et le couvert pour la nuit.... Parmi les pauvres errants qui étaient les hôtes les plus assidus de Keramborgne ... se trouvait une vieille femme nommée Gillette Kerlohiou, qui connaissait toutes les nouvelles du pays ... et, de plus, avait la réputation d’être quelque peu sorcière, et de guérir certaines maladies par des oraisons et des herbes dont elle seule avait le secret.... Un matin que Gillette avait passé la nuit à l’étable ... elle marmottait des prières.... Une vache s’étant mise à uriner, la vieille mendiante se précipita vers elle, reçut de l’urine dans le creux de sa main et s’en frotta la figure à plusieurs reprises.... Ce que voyant le vacher, il la traita de salope et de vieille folle. Mais Gillette lui dit, sans s’émouvoir: ‘Rien n’est meilleur, mon fils, que de se laver la figure, le matin, en se levant, avec de l’urine de la vache, et même avec sa propre urine si l’on ne peut se procurer de celle de vache. Quand vous avez fait cette ablution, le matin, vous êtes, pour toute la journée, à l’abri des embûches et des méchancetés du diable, car vous devenez invisible pour lui.’”
The writer of the above, M. F.-M. Luzel, learned from the other peasants and beggars standing about that the belief expressed by the old woman was fully concurred in by her comrades.
“Nos paysannes de France se lavaient les mains dans leur urine ou dans celle de leurs maris, ou de leurs enfants, pour détourner les maléfices ou en empêcher l’effet.”—(Réclus, “Les Primitifs,” p. 98.)
Father Le Jeune must have been on the track of something corresponding to an ur-orgy among the Hurons when he learned that the devil imposed upon the sick, in dreams, the duty of wallowing in ordure if they hoped for restoration to health.[81]