The traditions of Copenhagen are, that when the ramparts were being raised the earth always sank, so that it was impossible to get it to stand firm. They therefore took a little innocent girl, placed her on a chair by a table, and gave her playthings and sweetmeats. While she thus sat enjoying herself, twelve masons built an arch over her, which when completed they covered over with earth, to the sound of music with drums and trumpets. By this process they are, it is said, rendered immovable.[2]

It is an old saying that there is a skeleton in every house, a saying which at one time was practically a fact. Every house in deed and in truth had its skeleton, and moreover every house was designed not only to have its skeleton, but its ghost also. The idea of providing every [p 34] building with its ghost as a spiritual guard was not of course the primary idea; it developed later out of the original pagan belief of a sacrifice associated with the beginning of every work of importance. Partly with the notion of offering a propitiatory sacrifice to mother earth, and partly also with the idea of securing for ever a portion of soil by some sacrificial act, the old pagan laid the foundation of his house in blood.

The art of building in early ages was not well understood, and the true principles of architecture and construction were but little appreciated. If the walls of a building showed any signs of settlement the reason was supposed to be that the earth had not been sufficiently propitiated, and that as a consequence she refused to carry the burden imposed upon her.

It is said that when Romulus was about to found the city of Rome he dug a deep pit and cast into it the “first fruits of everything that is reckoned good by use, or necessary by nature,” and before the pit was closed up by a great stone, Faustulus and Quinctilius were killed and laid under it. The legend of Romulus slaying his twin brother Remus because he jumped the walls of the city to show how poor they were, [p 35] probably arises out of a confusion of the two legends and has become associated with the idea of a sacrificial foundation. To the present day there is a general Italian belief that whenever any great misfortune is going to overtake the city of Rome the giant shadow of Remus may be seen walking over the highest buildings in the city, even to the dome of St. Peter’s.

Sacrifice was not by any means confined to the foundations of buildings only. A man starting on a journey or on any new and important work would first offer a sacrifice. A ship was never launched without a sacrifice, and the christening of a vessel in these days with a bottle of wine is undoubtedly a relic of the time when the neck of a human being was broken and the prow of the vessel suffused with blood as a sacrificial offering.

In our own time the burial of a bottle with coins under a foundation stone is the faded memory of the immuring of a human victim. So hard does custom and superstition die that even in the prosaic nineteenth century days we cannot claim to be altogether free from the bonds and fetters with which our ancestors were bound.

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Grimm, in his German Mythology, tells us: “It was often considered necessary to build living animals, even human beings, into the foundations on which any edifice was reared, as an oblation to the earth to induce her to bear the superincumbent weight it was proposed to lay upon her. By this horrible practice it was supposed that the stability of the structure was assured as well as other advantages gained.” Of course the animal is merely the more modern substitute for the human being, just in the same manner as at the present day the bottle and coins are the substitute for the living animal. In Germany, after the burial of a living being under a foundation was given up, it became customary to place an empty coffin under the foundations of a house, and this custom lingered on in remote country districts until comparatively recent times.

With the spread of Christianity the belief in human sacrifice died out. In 1885, Holsworthy Parish Church was restored; during the work of restoration it was necessary to take down the south-west angle of the wall, and in this wall was found, embedded in the mortar and stone, a skeleton. The wall of this part of the church [p 37] had settled, and from the account given by the masons it would seem there was no trace of a tomb, but on the contrary every indication that the victim had actually been buried alive—a mass of mortar covered the mouth, and the stones around the body seemed to have been hastily built. Some few years ago the Bridge Gate of the Bremen city walls was taken down, and the skeleton of a child was found embedded in the foundations.[3]

The practice of our masons of putting the blood of oxen into mortar was no doubt in the first instance associated with the idea of a sacrifice; however this may be, the blood had no doubt a real effect in hardening the mortar, just the same as treacle, which has been known to be used in our days. The use of cement when any extra strength is needed has put aside the use of either blood or treacle in the mixing of mortar.

It is a curious instance of the wide spread of the belief in blood as a cement for ancient buildings that Alá-ud-din Khilji, the King of Delhi, A.D. 1296–1315, when enlarging and strengthening the walls of old Delhi, is reported to have mingled in the mortar the bones and [p 38] blood of thousands of goat-bearded Moghuls, whom he slaughtered for the purpose. A modern instance is furnished by advices which were brought from Accra, dated December 8th, 1881, that the King of Ashantee had murdered 200 girls, for the purpose of using their blood to mix with the mortar employed in the building of a new palace.