Building, in early ages, was not so lightly taken in hand as at present, and the principles of architectural construction were ill understood. If the walls showed tokens of settlement, the reason supposed was that the earth had not been sufficiently propitiated, and that she refused to bear the superimposed burden.
Plutarch says that when Romulus was about to found the Eternal City, by the advice of Etruscan Augurs, he opened a deep pit, and cast into it the “first fruits of everything that is reckoned good by use, or necessary by nature,” and before it was closed by a great stone, Faustulus and Quinctilius were killed and laid under it. This place was the Comitium, and from it as a centre, Romulus described the circuit of the walls.[1] The legend of Romulus slaying Remus because he leaned over the low walls is probably a confused recollection of the sacrifice of the brothers who were laid under the bounding wall. According to Pomponius Mela, the brothers Philæni were buried alive at the Carthaginian frontier. A dispute having arisen between the Carthaginians and Cyrenæans about their boundaries, it was agreed that deputies should start at a fixed time from each of the cities, and that the place of their meeting should thenceforth form the limit of demarcation. The Philæni departed from Carthage, and advanced much farther than the Cyrenæans. The latter accused them of having set out before the time agreed upon, but at length consented to accept the spot which they had reached as a boundary line, if the Philæni would submit to be buried alive there. To this the brothers consented. Here the story is astray of the truth. Really, the Philæni were buried at the confines of the Punic territory, to be the ghostly guardians of the frontier. There can be little doubt that elsewhere burials took place at boundaries, and it is possible that the whipping of boys on gang-days or Rogations may have been a mediæval and Christian mitigation of an old sacrifice. Certainly there are many legends of spectres that haunt and watch frontiers, and these legends point to some such practice. But let us return to foundations.
In the ballad of the “Cout of Keeldar,” in the minstrelsy of the Border, it is said,
“And here beside the mountain flood
A massy castle frowned,
Since first the Pictish race in blood
The haunted pile did found.”
In a note, Sir Walter Scott alludes to the tradition that the foundation stones of Pictish raths were bathed in human gore.
A curious incident occurs in the legend of St. Columba, founder of Iona, which shows how deep a hold the old custom had taken. The original idea of a sacrifice to propitiate the earth was gone, but the idea that appropriation of a site was not possible without one took its place. The Saint is said to have buried one of his monks, Oran by name, alive, under the foundations of his new abbey, because, as fast as he built, the spirits of the soil demolished by night what he raised by day. In the life of the Saint by O’Donnell (Trias Thaumat.) the horrible truth is disguised. The story is told thus:—On arriving at Hy (Iona), St. Columba said, that whoever willed to die first would ratify the right of the community to the island by taking corporal possession of it. Then, for the good of the community, Oran consented to die. That is all told, the dismal sequel, the immuring of the living monk, is passed over. More recent legend, unable to understand the burial alive of a monk, explains it in another way. Columba interred him because he denied the resurrection.
It is certain that the usage remained in practice long after Europe had become nominally Christian; how late it continued we shall be able to show presently.