When a Brandenburg rustic has bought a horse in a neighboring town and rides him homeward, he dismounts at the boundary line of his own village, and, gathering a handful of his native soil, he throws it backward over the line to prevent the animal’s being bewitched. In Bohemia the chief signs of bewitchment in a horse are thought to be shivering, profuse sweating, and emaciation. A charm against this consists in drawing one’s shirt inside out over one’s head, and using it as a wherewithal to groom the animal,—a method which may be acceptable to superstitious jockeys and hostlers, but which will hardly commend itself to a fastidious horse-owner.[159]
XII. HORSES’ HEADS AS TALISMANS
In early times it was customary to use horses’ heads as talismans, by means of which also the ancient heathen nations practiced various magical arts. Grimm says in his “Teutonic Mythology” that the Scandinavians had a custom of fastening a horse’s head to a pole, with the mouth propped open with a stick. The gaping jaws were then turned in the direction whence an enemy was likely to come, in order to cast over him an evil spell. This contrivance was known as a spite-stake, or nithing-post. In Mallet’s “Northern Antiquities” (p. 156, 1890), it is related that Eigil, a famous Icelandic bard, on being banished from Norway in the ninth century, fixed a stake in the ground and fastened thereon a horse’s head, saying meanwhile: “I here set up a nithing-stake, and turn this my banishment against King Eirek and Queen Gunhilda.” Then, pointing the horse’s head toward the interior of Norway, he uttered a solemn imprecation against the protecting deities of the land, invoking evil upon them, and expressing a wish that they might be compelled to wander about and never find rest until they had driven forth the hated king and queen. In these cases the horse’s head was magically employed as an instrument for working evil upon an enemy, but later the same symbol was widely used among northern peoples as a talisman against evil.
Not alone in remote antiquity, but throughout the Middle Ages, the old pagan device of the spite-stake continued to be employed by the Teutonic peoples; and even after the Reformation, as late as the year 1584, a mare’s skull placed upon a pole was a favorite means for driving away rats and other vermin in Germany. The principle involved appears to have been always the same, namely, the power of averting evil supposed to be a magical attribute of horses’ heads; and this power was not only effective against human enemies, but likewise against the spirits of evil.[160]
When the Roman general Cæcina Severus reached the scene of Varus’s defeat by the German tribes under their chieftain Arminius, in the year 9 A. D., near the river Weser, he saw numbers of horses’ heads fastened to the trunks of trees. These were the heads of Roman horses which the Germans had sacrificed to their gods.[161]
In the fifteenth century a savage tribe known as the Wends had a practice of placing a horse’s head in the crib or manger to counteract the influence of evil spirits, and to prevent their horses from being ridden by the Night Hag. And in many countries analogous notions, veritable relics of paganism, exist in full force to-day. Thus in Mecklenburg and Holstein it is a common usage to place the carved wooden representations of the heads of horses on the gables of houses as safeguards, and when fixed upon poles in the vicinity of stables they are thought to ward off epizoötics. In Mecklenburg, also, horses’ heads, when placed beneath the pillows of the sick, are believed to act as febrifuges, and in Holland they are hung up over pigsties. The fore-parts of horses are to be seen on the gables of old houses in the Rhætian Alps, “carved out of the ends of the intersecting principals.”[162]
The use of horses’ heads as talismans is thought to have some connection with the ancient pagan sacrificial offerings of horses. Adherence to the latter custom was formerly regarded as a pledge of loyalty to heathenism, and conversely its renunciation was a sign of adopting the new religion. In the tenth century the Norwegian king Hakon Athelstan, known as “Hakon the Good,” endeavored persistently to extirpate heathen idolatry in his kingdom, but without much success, owing to the vigorous opposition of his people. At one of their great Yule-tide festivals the king was urged to eat some horse’s flesh as a proof of devotion to the old faith, and on his refusal to do this they wished to kill him.
On another occasion King Hakon so far yielded to the importunities of his people as to inhale the steam from a kettle of horse-broth. He also drank some Yule-beer, holding the cup in his left hand, while with his right he made the sign of the cross, which the pagan mind conceived to be the symbol of Thor’s hammer. Finally he was even induced to eat a couple of mouthfuls of horse-flesh, an act which his people accepted as a satisfactory guarantee of his orthodoxy.[163]
Among the newly converted Northern nations the use of horse-flesh as food fell into disrepute, and the practice was looked upon as a secret sacrifice to the old idols, while those indulging in it were punished as obdurate pagans.[164]
The employment of horses’ heads as talismans, a custom doubtless originating in heathendom, has been thought not only to suggest the sacrificial offering of a horse, but also to symbolize the religious dedication of a building placed under the protective influence of such a symbol. For among the ancient Teutons the horse was held to be the most holy of animals, and auguries were derived from the neighings of white horses in their sacred groves. There exists, moreover, among German peasants a widespread belief that the placing of carved wooden representations of horses’ heads upon house-gables is an act of homage to the Deity, whose blessing and benediction are thereby invoked upon the dwellings thus adorned, and upon the inmates as well. When, however, the heads are directed outwards, in order to ward off evil, the principle involved is evidently akin to that of the pagan spite-stake, of which mention has been made.