At the outset of this book two questions were proposed for answer; Why had the priest of Nemi (Aricia) to slay his predecessor? And why, before doing so, had he to pluck the Golden Bough? Of these two questions the first has now been answered. The priest of Nemi, if I am right, embodied in himself the spirit, primarily, of the woods and, secondarily, of vegetable life in general. Hence, according as he was well or ill, the woods, the flowers, and the fields were believed to flourish or fade; and if he were to die of sickness or old age, the plant world, it was supposed, would simultaneously perish. Therefore it was necessary that this priest of the woodlands, this sylvan deity incarnate in a man, should be put to death while he was still in the full bloom of his divine manhood, in order that his sacred life, transmitted in unabated force to his successor, might renew its youth, and thus by successive transmissions through a perpetual line of vigorous incarnations might remain eternally fresh and young, a pledge and security that [pg 224] the buds and blossoms of spring, the verdure of summer woods, and the mellow glories of autumn would never fail.
But we have still to ask, What was the Golden Bough? and why had each candidate for the Arician priesthood to pluck it before he could slay the priest? These questions I will now try to answer.
It will be well to begin by noticing two of those rules or taboos by which, as we have seen, the life of divine kings or priests is regulated. The first of the rules to which I desire to call the reader's attention is that the divine personage may not touch the ground with his foot. This rule was observed by the Mikado of Japan and by the supreme pontiff of the Zapotecs in Mexico. The latter “profaned his sanctity if he so much as touched the ground with his foot.”603 For the Mikado to touch the ground with his foot was a shameful degradation; indeed, in the sixteenth century, it was enough to deprive him of his office. Outside his palace he was carried on men's shoulders; within it he walked on exquisitely wrought mats.604 The king and queen of Tahiti might not touch the ground anywhere but within their hereditary domains; for the ground on which they trod became sacred. In travelling from place to place they were carried on the shoulders of sacred men. They were always accompanied by several pairs of these sacred men; and when it became necessary to change their bearers, the king and queen vaulted on to the shoulders of their new bearers without letting their feet touch the [pg 225] ground.605 It was an evil omen if the king of Dosuma touched the ground, and he had to perform an expiatory ceremony.606 The king of Persia was never seen on foot outside his palace.607
The second rule to be here noted is that the sun may not shine upon the divine person. This rule was observed both by the Mikado and by the pontiff of the Zapotecs. The latter “was looked upon as a god whom the earth was not worthy to hold, nor the sun to shine upon.”608 The Japanese would not allow that the Mikado “should expose his sacred person to the open air, and the sun is not thought worthy to shine on his head.”609 The heir to the throne of Bogota in Colombia, South America, had to undergo a severe training from the age of sixteen; he lived in complete retirement in a temple, where he might not see the sun nor eat salt nor converse with a woman.610 The heir to the kingdom of Sogamoso in Colombia, before succeeding to the crown, had to fast for seven years in the temple, being shut up in the dark and not allowed to see the sun or light.611 The prince who was to become Inca of Peru had to fast for a month without seeing light.612
Now it is remarkable that these two rules—not to touch the ground and not to see the sun—are observed either separately or conjointly by girls at puberty in [pg 226] many parts of the world. Thus amongst the negroes of Loango girls at puberty are confined in separate huts, and they may not touch the ground with any part of their bare body.613 Amongst the Zulus and kindred tribes of South Africa, when the first signs of puberty show themselves “while a girl is walking, gathering wood, or working in the field, she runs to the river and hides herself among the reeds for the day so as not to be seen by men. She covers her head carefully with her blanket that the sun may not shine on it and shrivel her up into a withered skeleton, assured result from exposure to the sun's beams. After dark she returns to her home and is secluded” in a hut for some time.614
In New Ireland girls are confined for four or five years in small cages, being kept in the dark and not allowed to set foot on the ground. The custom has been thus described by an eye-witness. “I heard from a teacher about some strange custom connected with some of the young girls here, so I asked the chief to take me to the house where they were. The house was about twenty-five feet in length, and stood in a reed and bamboo enclosure, across the entrance to which a bundle of dried grass was suspended to show that it was strictly ‘tabu’. Inside the house were three conical structures about seven or eight feet in height, and about ten or twelve feet in circumference at the bottom, and for about four feet from the ground, at which point they tapered off to a point at the top. These cages were made of the broad leaves of the pandanus-tree, sewn quite close [pg 227] together so that no light, and little or no air could enter. On one side of each is an opening which is closed by a double door of plaited cocoa-nut tree and pandanus-tree leaves. About three feet from the ground there is a stage of bamboos which forms the floor. In each of these cages we were told there was a young woman confined, each of whom had to remain for at least four or five years, without ever being allowed to go outside the house. I could scarcely credit the story when I heard it; the whole thing seemed too horrible to be true. I spoke to the chief, and told him that I wished to see the inside of the cages, and also to see the girls that I might make them a present of a few beads. He told me that it was ‘tabu,’ forbidden for any men but their own relations to look at them; but I suppose the promised beads acted as an inducement, and so he sent away for some old lady who had charge, and who alone is allowed to open the doors.... She had to undo the door when the chief told her to do so, and then the girls peeped out at us, and, when told to do so, they held out their hands for the beads. I, however, purposely sat at some distance away and merely held out the beads to them, as I wished to draw them quite outside, that I might inspect the inside of the cages. This desire of mine gave rise to another difficulty, as these girls were not allowed to put their feet to the ground all the time they were confined in these places. However, they wished to get the beads, and so the old lady had to go outside and collect a lot of pieces of wood and bamboo, which she placed on the ground, and then going to one of the girls, she helped her down and held her hand as she stepped from one piece of wood to another until she came near enough to get the beads I held out to [pg 228] her. I then went to inspect the inside of the cage out of which she had come, but could scarcely put my head inside of it, the atmosphere was so hot and stifling. It was clean and contained nothing but a few short lengths of bamboo for holding water. There was only room for the girl to sit or lie down in a crouched position on the bamboo platform, and when the doors are shut it must be nearly or quite dark inside. The girls are never allowed to come out except once a day to bathe in a dish or wooden bowl placed close to each cage. They say that they perspire profusely. They are placed in these stifling cages when quite young, and must remain there until they are young women, when they are taken out and have each a great marriage feast provided for them.”615
In some parts of New Guinea “daughters of chiefs, when they are about twelve or thirteen years of age, are kept indoors for two or three years, never being allowed, under any pretence, to descend from the house, and the house is so shaded that the sun cannot [pg 229] shine on them.”616 Among the Ot Danoms of Borneo girls at the age of eight or ten years are shut up in a little room or cell of the house and cut off from all intercourse with the world for a long time. The cell, like the rest of the house, is raised on piles above the ground, and is lit by a single small window opening on a lonely place, so that the girl is in almost total darkness. She may not leave the room on any pretext whatever, not even for the most necessary purposes. None of her family may see her all the time she is shut up, but a single slave woman is appointed to wait on her. During her lonely confinement, which often lasts seven years, the girl occupies herself in weaving mats or with other handiwork. Her bodily growth is stunted by the long want of exercise, and when, on attaining womanhood, she is brought out, her complexion is pale and wax-like. She is now shown the sun, the earth, the water, the trees, and the flowers, as if she were newly born. Then a great feast is made, a slave is killed, and the girl is smeared with his blood.617 In Ceram girls at puberty were formerly shut up by themselves in a hut which was kept dark.618
Amongst the Aht Indians of Vancouver Island, when girls reach puberty they are placed in a sort of gallery in the house “and are there surrounded completely with mats, so that neither the sun nor any fire can be seen. In this cage they remain for several days. Water is given them, but no food. The longer a girl remains in this retirement the greater [pg 230] honour is it to the parents; but she is disgraced for life if it is known that she has seen fire or the sun during this initiatory ordeal.”619 Amongst the Thlinkeet or Kolosh Indians of Alaska, when a girl shows signs of womanhood she is shut up in a little hut or cage, which is completely blocked up with the exception of a small air-hole. In this dark and filthy abode she had formerly to remain a year, without fire, exercise, or associates. Her food was put in at the small window; she had to drink out of the wing-bone of a white-headed eagle. The time has now been reduced, at least in some places, to six months. The girl has to wear a sort of hat with long flaps, that her gaze may not pollute the sky; for she is thought unfit for the sun to shine upon.620 Amongst the Koniags, an Esquimaux people of Alaska, girls at puberty were placed in small huts in which they had to remain on their hands and knees for six months; then the hut was enlarged enough to let them kneel upright, and they had to remain in this posture for six months more.621
When symptoms of puberty appeared on a girl for the first time, the Indians of the Rio de la Plata [pg 231] used to sew her up in her hammock as if she were dead, leaving only a small hole for her mouth to allow her to breathe. In this state she continued so long as the symptoms lasted.622 In similar circumstances the Chiriguanos of Bolivia hoisted the girl in her hammock to the roof, where she stayed for a month; the second month the hammock was let half way down from the roof; and in the third month old women, armed with sticks, entered the hut and ran about striking everything they met, saying they were hunting the snake that had wounded the girl. This they did till one of the women gave out that she had killed the snake.623 Amongst some of the Brazilian Indians, when a girl attained to puberty, her hair was burned or shaved off close to the head. Then she was placed on a flat stone and cut with the tooth of an animal from the shoulders all down the back, till she ran with blood. Then the ashes of a wild gourd were rubbed into the wounds; the girl was bound hand and foot, and hung in a hammock, being enveloped in it so closely that no one could see her. Here she had to stay for three days without eating or drinking. When the three days were over, she stepped out of the hammock upon the flat stone, for her feet might not touch the ground. If she had a call of nature, a female relation took the girl on her back and carried her out, taking with her a live coal to prevent evil influences from entering the girl's body. Being replaced in her hammock she was now allowed to get some flour, boiled roots, and water, but might not taste salt or flesh. Thus she continued to the end [pg 232] of the first monthly period, at the expiry of which she was gashed on the breast and belly as well as all down the back. During the second month she still stayed in her hammock, but her rule of abstinence was less rigid, and she was allowed to spin. The third month she was blackened with a certain pigment and began to go about as usual.624
Amongst the Macusis of British Guiana, when a girl shows the first signs of puberty, she is hung in a hammock at the highest point of the hut. For the first few days she may not leave the hammock by day, but at night she must come down, light a fire, and spend the night beside it, else she would break out in sores on her neck, throat, etc. So long as the symptoms are at their height, she must fast rigorously. When they have abated, she may come down and take up her abode in a little compartment that is made for her in the darkest corner of the hut. In the morning she may cook her food, but it must be at a separate fire and in a vessel of her own. In about ten days the magician comes and undoes the spell by muttering charms and breathing on her and on the more valuable of the things with which she has come in contact. The pots and drinking vessels which she used are broken and the fragments buried. After her first bath, the girl must submit to be beaten by her mother with thin rods without uttering a cry. At the end of the second period she is again beaten, but not afterwards. She is now “clean,” and can mix again with people.625 Other Indians of Guiana, after keeping the girl in her [pg 233] hammock at the top of the hut for a month, expose her to certain large ants, whose bite is very painful.626 The custom of stinging the girl with ants or beating her with rods is intended, we may be sure, not as a punishment or a test of endurance, but as a purification, the object being to drive away the malignant influences with which a girl at such times is believed to be beset and enveloped. Examples of purification, both by beating and by stinging with ants, have already come before us.627 Probably, beating or scourging as a religious or ceremonial rite always originated with a similar intention. It was meant to wipe off and drive away a dangerous contagion (whether personified as demoniacal or not) which was supposed to be adhering physically, though invisibly, to the body of the sufferer.628 The pain inflicted on [pg 234] the person beaten was no more the object of the beating than it is of a surgical operation with us; it was a necessary accident, that was all. In later times such customs were interpreted otherwise, and the pain, from being an accident, became the prime object of the ceremony, which was now regarded either as a test of endurance imposed upon persons at critical epochs of life, or as a mortification of the flesh well pleasing to the god. But asceticism, under any shape or form, is never primitive. Amongst the Uaupes of Brazil a girl at puberty is secluded in the house for a month, and allowed only a small quantity of bread and water. Then she is taken out into the midst of her relations and friends, each of whom gives her four or five blows with pieces of sipo (an elastic climber), till she falls senseless or dead. If she recovers, the operation is repeated four times at intervals of six hours, and it is considered an offence to the parents not to strike hard. Meantime, pots of meats and fish have been made ready; the sipos are dipped into them and then given to the girl to lick, who is now considered a marriageable woman.629
When a Hindoo maiden reaches maturity she is kept in a dark room for four days, and is forbidden to see the sun. She is regarded as unclean; no one is [pg 235] allowed to touch her. Her diet is restricted to boiled rice, milk, sugar, curd, and tamarind without salt.630 In Cambodia a girl at puberty is put to bed under a mosquito curtain, where she should stay a hundred days. Usually, however, four, five, ten, or twenty days are thought enough; and even this, in a hot climate and under the close meshes of the curtain, is sufficiently trying.631 According to another account, a Cambodian maiden at puberty is said to “enter into the shade.” During her retirement, which, according to the rank and position of her family, may last any time from a few days to several years, she has to observe a number of rules, such as not to be seen by a strange man, not to eat flesh or fish, and so on. She goes nowhere, not even to the pagoda. But this state of retirement is discontinued during eclipses; at such times she goes forth and pays her devotions to the monster who is supposed to cause eclipses by catching the heavenly bodies between his teeth.632 The fact that her retirement is discontinued during an eclipse seems to show how literally the injunction is interpreted which forbids maidens entering on womanhood to look upon the sun.
A superstition so widely diffused as this might be expected to leave traces in legends and folk-tales. And it has done so. In a modern Greek folk-tale [pg 236] the Fates predict that in her fifteenth year a princess must be careful not to let the sun shine on her, for if this were to happen she would be turned into a lizard.633 A Tyrolese story tells how it was the doom of a lovely maiden to be transported into the belly of a whale if ever a sunbeam fell on her.634 In another modern Greek tale the Sun bestows a daughter upon a childless woman on condition of taking the child back to himself when she is twelve years old. So, when the child was twelve, the mother closed the doors and windows, and stopped up all the chinks and crannies, to prevent the Sun from coming to fetch away her daughter. But she forgot to stop up the key-hole, and a sunbeam streamed through it and carried off the girl.635 In a Sicilian story a seer foretells that a king will have a daughter who, in her fourteenth year, will conceive a child by the Sun. So, when the child was born, the king shut her up in a lonely tower which had no window, lest a sunbeam should fall on her. When she was nearly fourteen years old, it happened that her parents sent her a piece of roasted kid, in which she found a sharp bone. With this bone she scraped a hole in the wall, and a sunbeam shot through the hole and impregnated her.636 [pg 237] The old Greek story of Danae, who was confined by her father in a subterranean chamber or a brazen tower, but impregnated by Zeus, who reached her in the shape of a shower of gold, perhaps belongs to the same class of tales. It has its counterpart in the legend which the Kirgis of Siberia tell of their ancestry. A certain Khan had a fair daughter, whom he kept in a dark iron house, that no man might see her. An old woman tended her; and when the girl was grown to maidenhood she asked the old woman, “Where do you go so often?”—“My child,” said the old dame, “there is a bright world. In that bright world your father and mother live, and all sorts of people live there. That is where I go.” The maiden said, “Good mother, I will tell nobody, but show me that bright world.” So the old woman took the girl out of the iron house. But when she saw the bright world, the girl tottered and fainted; and the eye of God fell upon her, and she conceived. Her angry father put her in a golden chest and sent her floating away (fairy gold can float in fairyland) over the wide sea.637 The shower of gold in the Greek story, and the eye of God in the Kirgis legend, probably stand for sunlight and the sun. The idea that women may be impregnated by the sun is not uncommon in legends,638 and there are even traces of it in marriage customs.639
[pg 238]The ground of this seclusion of girls at puberty lies in the deeply engrained dread which primitive man universally entertains of menstruous blood. Evidence of this has already been adduced,640 but a few more facts may here be added. Amongst the Australian blacks “the boys are told from their infancy that, if they see the blood, they will early become gray-headed, and their strength will fail prematurely.” Hence a woman lives apart at these times; and if a young man or boy approaches her she calls out, and he immediately makes a circuit to avoid her. The men go out of their way to avoid even crossing the tracks made by women at such times. Similarly the woman may not walk on any path frequented by men, nor touch anything used by men; she may not eat fish, or go near water at all, much less cross it; for if she did, the fish would be frightened, and the fishers would have no luck; she may not even fetch water for the camp; it is sufficient for her to say Thama to ensure her husband fetching the water himself. A severe beating, or even death, is the punishment inflicted on an Australian woman who breaks these rules.641 The Bushmen think that, by a glance of a girl's eye [pg 239] at the time when she ought to be kept in strict retirement, men become fixed in whatever position they happen to occupy, with whatever they were holding in their hands, and are changed into trees which talk.642 The Guayquiries of the Orinoco think that, when a woman has her courses, everything upon which she steps will die, and that if a man treads on the place where she has passed, his legs will immediately swell up.643 The Creek and kindred Indians of the United States compelled women at menstruation to live in separate huts at some distance from the village. There the women had to stay, at the risk of being surprised and cut off by enemies. It was thought “a most horrid and dangerous pollution” to go near the women at such times; and the danger extended to enemies who, if they slew the women, had to cleanse themselves from the pollution by means of certain sacred herbs and roots.644 Similarly, among the Chippeways and other Indians of the Hudson Bay Territory, women at such seasons are excluded from the camp, and take up their abode in huts of branches. They wear long hoods, which effectually conceal the head and breast. They may not touch the household furniture nor any objects used by men; for their touch “is supposed to defile them, so that their subsequent use would be followed by certain mischief or misfortune,” such as disease or death. They may not walk on the common paths nor cross the tracks of animals. They “are never permitted to walk on the ice of rivers or lakes, or near the part where the men are hunting beaver, or where [pg 240] a fishing-net is set, for fear of averting their success. They are also prohibited at those times from partaking of the head of any animal, and even from walking in or crossing the track where the head of a deer, moose, beaver, and many other animals have lately been carried, either on a sledge or on the back. To be guilty of a violation of this custom is considered as of the greatest importance; because they firmly believe that it would be a means of preventing the hunter from having an equal success in his future excursions.”645 So the Lapps forbid women at menstruation to walk on that part of the shore where the fishers are in the habit of setting out their fish.646
Amongst the civilised nations of Europe the superstitions which have prevailed on this subject are not less extravagant. In the oldest existing cyclopaedia—the Natural History of Pliny—the list of dangers apprehended from menstruation is longer than any furnished by savages. According to Pliny, the touch of a menstruous woman turned wine to vinegar, blighted crops, killed seedlings, blasted gardens, brought down the fruit from trees, dimmed mirrors, blunted razors, rusted iron and brass (especially at the waning of the moon), killed bees, or at least drove them from their hives, caused mares to miscarry, and so forth.647 Similarly, in various parts of Europe, it is still believed that if a woman in her courses enters a brewery the beer will turn sour; if she touches beer, wine, vinegar, or milk, it will go bad; if she makes [pg 241] jam, it will not keep; if she mounts a mare, it will miscarry; if she touches buds, they will wither; if she climbs a cherry-tree, it will die.648
Thus the object of secluding women at menstruation is to neutralise the dangerous influences which are supposed to emanate from them at such times. That the danger is believed to be especially great at the first menstruation appears from the unusual precautions taken to isolate girls at this crisis. Two of these precautions have been illustrated above, namely, the rules that the girl may not touch the ground nor see the sun. The general effect of these rules is to keep the girl suspended, so to say, between heaven and earth. Whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to the roof, as in South America, or elevated above the ground in a dark and narrow cage, as in New Ireland, she may be considered to be out of the way of doing mischief, since, being shut off both from the earth and from the sun, she can poison neither of these great sources of life by her deadly contagion. In short, she is rendered harmless by being, in electrical language, insulated. But the precautions thus taken to isolate or insulate the girl are dictated by a regard for her own safety as well as for the safety of others. For it is thought that the girl herself would suffer if she were to neglect the prescribed [pg 242] regimen. Thus Zulu girls, as we have seen, believe that they would shrivel to skeletons if the sun were to shine on them at puberty, and in some Brazilian tribes the girls think that a transgression of the rules would entail sores on the neck and throat. In short, the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force which, if not kept within bounds, may prove the destruction both of the girl herself and of all with whom she comes in contact. To repress this force within the limits necessary for the safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in question.
The same explanation applies to the observance of the same rules by divine kings and priests. The uncleanness, as it is called, of girls at puberty and the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive mind, differ from each other. They are only different manifestations of the same supernatural energy which, like energy in general, is in itself neither good nor bad, but becomes beneficent or maleficent according to its application.649 Accordingly, if, like girls at puberty, divine personages may neither touch the ground nor see the sun, the reason is, on the one hand, a fear lest their divinity might, at contact with earth or heaven, discharge itself with fatal violence on either; and, on the other hand, an apprehension, that the divine being, thus drained of his ethereal virtue, might thereby be incapacitated for the future performance of those supernatural functions, upon the proper discharge of which the safety of the people and even of the world is believed to hang. Thus the rules in question fall under the head of the taboos which we examined in the second chapter; they are intended to preserve the life [pg 243] of the divine person and with it the life of his subjects and worshippers. Nowhere, it is thought, can his precious yet dangerous life be at once so safe and so harmless as when it is neither in heaven nor in earth, but, as far as possible, suspended between the two.650