With some savages a special reason for respecting the bones of game, and generally of the animals which they eat, is a belief that, if the bones are preserved, they will in course of time be reclothed with flesh, and thus the animal will come to life again. It is, therefore, clearly for the interest of the hunter to leave the bones intact, since to destroy them would be to diminish the future supply of game. Many of the Minnetaree Indians “believe that the bones of those bisons which they have slain and divested of flesh rise again [pg 123] clothed with renewed flesh, and quickened with life, and become fat, and fit for slaughter the succeeding June.”388 Hence on the western prairies of America, the skulls of buffalos may be seen arranged in circles and symmetrical piles, awaiting the resurrection.389 After feasting on a dog, the Dacotas carefully collect the bones, scrape, wash, and bury them, “partly, as it is said, to testify to the dog-species, that in feasting upon one of their number no disrespect was meant to the species itself, and partly also from a belief that the bones of the animal will rise and reproduce another.”390 In sacrificing an animal the Lapps regularly put aside the bones, eyes, ears, heart, lungs, sexual parts (if the animal was a male), and a morsel of flesh from each limb. Then, after eating the rest of the flesh, they laid the bones etc. in anatomical order in a coffin and buried them with the usual rites, believing that the god to whom the animal was sacrificed would reclothe the bones with flesh and restore the animal to life in Jabme-Aimo, the subterranean world of the dead. Sometimes, as after feasting on a bear, they seem to have contented themselves with thus burying the bones.391 Thus the Lapps expected the resurrection of the slain animal to take place in another world, resembling in this respect the Kamtchatkans, who believed that every creature, down to the smallest fly, would rise from the dead and live underground.392 On the [pg 124] other hand, the North American Indians looked for the resurrection of the animals in the present world. The habit, observed especially by Mongolian peoples, of stuffing the skin of a sacrificed animal, or stretching it on a framework,393 points rather to a belief in a resurrection of the latter sort. The objection commonly entertained by primitive peoples to break the bones of the animals which they have eaten or sacrificed394 may be based either on a belief in the resurrection of the animals, or on a fear of intimidating the other creatures [pg 125] of the same species and offending the ghosts of the slain animals. The reluctance of North American Indians to let dogs gnaw the bones of animals395 is perhaps only a precaution to prevent the bones from being broken. There are traces in folk-tales of the same primitive belief that animals or men may come to life again, if only their bones are preserved; not uncommonly the animal or man in the story comes to life lame of a limb, because one of his bones has been eaten, broken, or lost.396 In a Magyar tale, the hero is cut in pieces, but the serpent-king lays the bones together in their proper order, and washes them with water, whereupon the hero comes to life again. His shoulder-blade, however, had been lost, so the serpent-king supplied its place with one of gold and ivory.397 Such stories, as Mannhardt has seen, explain why Pythagoras, who claimed to have lived many lives, one after the other, was said to have exhibited his golden leg as a proof of his supernatural pretensions.398 Doubtless he was reported to have explained that at one of his resurrections a leg had been broken or mislaid, [pg 126] and that it had been replaced with one of gold. Similarly, when the murdered Pelops was restored to life, the shoulder which Demeter had eaten was replaced with one of ivory.399 The story that one of the members of the mangled Osiris was eaten by fish, and that, when Isis collected his scattered limbs, she replaced the missing member with one of wood,400 may perhaps belong to the same circle of beliefs.
There is a certain rule observed by savage hunters and fishers which, obscure at first sight, may be explained by this savage belief in resurrection. A traveller in America in the early part of this century was told by a half-breed Choctaw that the Indians “had an obscure story, somewhat resembling that of Jacob wrestling with an angel; and that the full-blooded Indians always separate the sinew which shrank, and that it is never seen in the venison exposed for sale; he did not know what they did with it. His elder brother, whom I afterwards met, told me that they eat it as a rarity; but I have also heard, though on less respectable authority, that they refrain from it, like the ancient Jews. A gentleman, who had lived on the Indian frontier, or in the nation, for ten or fifteen years, told me that he had often been surprised that the Indians always detached the sinew; but it had never occurred to him to inquire the reason.”401 James Adair, who knew the Indians of the South Eastern States intimately, and whose theories appear not to have distorted his view of the facts, observes that “when in the woods, the Indians cut a small piece out of the lower part of the thighs of the deer they kill, lengthways [pg 127] and pretty deep. Among the great number of venison-hams they bring to our trading houses, I do not remember to have observed one without it.... And I have been assured by a gentleman of character, who is now an inhabitant of South Carolina, and well acquainted with the customs of the Northern Indians, that they also cut a piece out of the thigh of every deer they kill, and throw it away; and reckon it such a dangerous pollution to eat it as to occasion sickness and other misfortunes of sundry kinds, especially by spoiling their guns from shooting with proper force and direction.”402 In recent years the statement of Adair's informant has been confirmed by the French missionary Petitot, who has also published the “obscure story” to which Hodgson refers. The Loucheux and Hare-skin Indians who roam the bleak steppes and forests that stretch from Hudson's Bay to the Rocky Mountains, and northward to the frozen sea, are forbidden by custom to eat the sinew of the legs of animals. To explain this custom they tell the following “sacred story.” Once upon a time a man found a burrow of porcupines, and going down into it after the porcupines he lost his way in the darkness, till a kind giant called “He who sees before and behind” released him by cleaving open the earth. So the man, whose name was “Fireless and Homeless,” lived with the kind giant, and the giant hunted elans and beavers for him, and carried him about in the sheath of his flint knife. “But know, my son,” said the giant, “that he who uses the sky as his head is angry with me, and has sworn my destruction. If he slays me the clouds will be tinged with my blood; they will be red with it, probably.” Then he gave the man an axe made of the [pg 128] tooth of a gigantic beaver, and went forth to meet his enemy. But from under the ice the man heard a dull muffled sound. It was a whale which was making this noise because it was naked and cold. Warned by the man, the giant went toward the whale, which took human shape, and rushed upon the giant. It was the wicked giant, the kind giant's enemy. The two struggled together for a long time, till the kind giant cried, “Oh, my son! cut, cut the sinew of the leg.” The man cut the sinew, and the wicked giant fell down and was slain. That is why the Indians do not eat the sinew of the leg. Afterwards, one day the sky suddenly grew red, so Fireless and Homeless knew that the kind giant was dead, and he wept.403 This myth, it is almost needless to observe, does not really explain the custom. No people ever observed a custom because a mythical being was said to have once acted in a certain way. But, on the contrary, all peoples have invented myths to explain why they observed certain customs. Dismissing, therefore, the story of Fireless and Homeless as a myth invented to explain why the Indians abstain from eating a particular sinew, it may be suggested404 that the original reason for observing the custom was a belief that the sinew in question was necessary to reproduction, and that deprived of it the slain animals could not come to life again and stock the steppes and prairies either of the present world or of the spirit land. We have seen that the resurrection [pg 129] of animals is a common article of savage faith, and that when the Lapps bury the skeleton of the male bear in the hope of its resurrection they are careful to bury the genital parts along with it.405
Besides the animals which primitive man dreads for their strength and ferocity, and those which he reveres on account of the benefits which he expects from them, there is another class of creatures which he sometimes deems it necessary to conciliate by worship and sacrifice. These are the vermin that infest the crops. To rid himself of these deadly foes the farmer has recourse to a thousand superstitious devices, of which, though many are meant to destroy or intimidate the vermin, others aim at propitiating them and persuading them by fair means to spare the fruits of the earth. Thus Esthonian peasants, in the Island of Oesel, stand in great awe of the weevil, an insect which is exceedingly destructive to the grain. They give it a euphemistic title, and if a child is about to kill a [pg 130] weevil they say, “Don't do it; the more we hurt him, the more he hurts us.” If they find a weevil they bury it in the earth instead of killing it. Some even put the weevil under a stone in the field and offer corn to it. They think that thus it is appeased and does less harm.406 Amongst the Saxons of Transylvania, in order to keep sparrows from the corn, the sower begins by throwing the first handful of seed backwards over his head, saying, “That is for you, sparrows.” To guard the corn against the attacks of leaf-flies (Erdflöhe) he shuts his eyes and scatters three handfuls of oats in different directions. Having made this offering to the leaf-flies he feels sure that they will spare the corn. A Transylvanian way of securing the crops against all birds, beasts, and insects, is this: After he has finished sowing, the sower goes once more from end to end of the field imitating the gesture of sowing, but with an empty hand. As he does so he says, “I sow this for the animals; I sow it for everything that flies and creeps, that walks and stands, that sings and springs, in the name of God the Father, etc.”407 The following is a German way of freeing a garden from caterpillars. After sunset or at midnight the mistress of the house, or another female member of the family, walks all round the garden dragging a broom after her. She must not look behind her, and must keep murmuring, “Good evening, Mother Caterpillar, you shall come with your husband to church.” The garden gate is left open till the following morning.408
Sometimes in dealing with vermin the farmer [pg 131] resorts neither to unmitigated severity nor to unbounded indulgence, but aims at adopting a judicious compromise between the two; kind but firm, he tempers severity with mercy. An ancient Greek treatise on farming advises the husbandman who would rid his lands of mice to act thus: “Take a sheet of paper and write on it as follows: ‘I adjure you, ye mice here present, that ye neither injure me nor suffer another mouse to do so. I give you yonder field’ (here you specify the field); ‘but if ever I catch you here again, by the Mother of the Gods I will rend you in seven pieces.’ Write this, and stick the paper on an unhewn stone in the field before sunrise, taking care to keep the written side uppermost.”409 Sometimes the desired object is supposed to be attained by treating with high distinction one or two chosen individuals of the obnoxious species, while the rest are pursued with relentless rigour. In the East Indian island of Bali, the mice which ravage the rice-fields are caught in great numbers, and burned in the same way that corpses are burned. But two of the captured mice are allowed to live, and receive a little packet of white linen. Then the people bow down before them, as before gods, and let them go.410 In some parts of Bohemia the peasant, though he kills field mice and gray mice without scruple, always spares white mice. If he finds a white mouse he takes it up carefully, and makes a comfortable bed for it in the window; for if it died the luck of the house would be gone, and the gray mice would [pg 132] multiply fearfully in the house.411 When caterpillars invaded a vineyard or field in Syria, the virgins were gathered, and one of the caterpillars was taken and a girl made its mother. Then they bewailed and buried it. Thereafter they conducted the “mother” to the place where the caterpillars were, consoling her, in order that all the caterpillars might leave the garden.412 On the 1st of September, Russian girls “make small coffins of turnips and other vegetables, enclose flies and other insects in them, and then bury them with a great show of mourning.”413
In these latter examples the deference shown to a few chosen individuals of the species is apparently regarded as entitling a person to exterminate with impunity all the rest of the species upon which he can lay hands. This principle perhaps explains the attitude, at first sight puzzling and contradictory, of the Ainos towards the bear. The flesh and skin of the bear regularly afford them food and clothing; but since the bear is an intelligent and powerful animal, it is necessary to offer some satisfaction or atonement to the bear species for the loss which it sustains in the death of so many of its members. This satisfaction or atonement is made by rearing young bears, treating them, so long as they live, with respect, and killing them with extraordinary marks of sorrow and devotion. Thus the other bears are appeased, and do not resent the slaughter of their kind by attacking the slayers or deserting the country, and thus depriving the Ainos of one of their means of subsistence.
[pg 133]Thus the primitive worship of animals assumes two forms, which are in some respects the converse of each other. On the one hand animals are respected, and are therefore neither killed nor eaten. Totemism is a form of this worship, if worship it can be called; but it is not the only form, for we have seen that dangerous and useless animals, like the crocodile, are commonly revered and spared by men who do not regard the animal in question as their totem. On the other hand animals are worshipped because they are habitually killed and eaten. In both forms of worship the animal is revered on account of some benefit, positive or negative, which the savage hopes to receive from it. In the former worship the benefit comes either in the positive form of protection, advice, and help which the animal affords the man, or in the negative one of abstinence from injuries which it is in the power of the animal to inflict. In the latter worship the benefit takes the material form of the animal's flesh and skin. The two forms of worship are in some measure antithetical: in the one, the animal is not eaten because it is revered; in the other, it is revered because it is eaten. But both may be practised by the same people, as we see in the case of the North American Indians, who, while they revere and spare their totem animals, also revere the animals and fish upon which they subsist. The aborigines of Australia have totemism in the most primitive form known to us, but, so far as I am aware, there is no evidence that they attempt, like the North American Indians, to conciliate the animals which they kill and eat. The means which the Australians adopt to secure a plentiful supply of game appear to be based not on [pg 134] conciliation, but on sympathetic magic,414 a principle to which the North American Indians also resort for the same purpose.415 If this is so, it would appear that the totemistic respect for animals is older than the other, and that, before hunters think of worshipping the game as a means of ensuring an abundant supply of it, they seek to attain the same end by sympathetic magic. This, again, would show—what there is good reason for believing—that sympathetic magic is one of the earliest means by which man endeavours to adapt the agencies of nature to his needs.
Corresponding to the two distinct types of animal worship, there are two distinct types of the custom of killing the animal god. On the one hand, when the revered animal is habitually spared, it is nevertheless killed—and sometimes eaten—on rare and solemn occasions. Examples of this custom have been already given and an explanation of them offered. On the other hand, when the revered animal is habitually killed, the slaughter of any one of the species involves the killing of the god, and is atoned for on the spot by apologies and sacrifices, especially when the animal is a powerful and dangerous one; and, in addition to this ordinary and everyday atonement, there is a special annual atonement, at which a select individual of the species is slain with extraordinary marks of respect and devotion. Clearly the two types of sacramental killing—the Egyptian and the Aino types, as we may call them for distinction—are liable to be confounded by an observer; and, [pg 135] before we can say to which type any particular example belongs, it is necessary to ascertain whether the animal sacramentally slain belongs to a species which is habitually spared, or to one which is habitually killed by the tribe. In the former case the example belongs to the Egyptian type of sacrament, in the latter to the Aino type.
The practice of pastoral tribes appears to furnish examples of both types of sacrament. “Pastoral tribes,” says the most learned ethnologist of the day, “being sometimes obliged to sell their herds to strangers who may handle the bones disrespectfully, seek to avert the danger which such a sacrilege would entail by consecrating one of the herd as an object of worship, eating it sacramentally in the family circle with closed doors, and afterwards treating the bones with all the ceremonious respect which, strictly speaking, should be accorded to every head of cattle, but which, being punctually paid to the representative animal, is deemed to be paid to all. Such family meals are found among various peoples, especially those of the Caucasus. When amongst the Abchases the shepherds in spring eat their common meal with their loins girt and their staffs in their hands, this may be looked upon both as a sacrament and as an oath of mutual help and support. For the strongest of all oaths is that which is accompanied with the eating of a sacred substance, since the perjured person cannot possibly escape the avenging god whom he has taken into his body and assimilated.”416 This kind of sacrament [pg 136] is of the Aino or expiatory type, since it is meant to atone to the species for the possible ill-usage of individuals. An expiation, similar in principle but different in details, is offered by the Kalmucks to the sheep whose flesh is one of their staple foods. Rich Kalmucks are in the habit of consecrating a white ram under the title of “the ram of heaven” or “the ram of the spirit.” The animal is never shorn and never sold; but when it grows old and its owner wishes to consecrate a new one, the old ram must be killed and eaten at a feast to which the neighbours are invited. On a lucky day, generally in autumn when the sheep are fat, a sorcerer kills the old ram, after sprinkling it with milk. Its flesh is eaten; the skeleton, with a portion of the fat, is burned on a turf altar; and the skin, with the head and feet, is hung up.417
An example of a sacrament of the Egyptian type is furnished by the Todas, a pastoral people of Southern India, who subsist largely upon the milk of their buffaloes. Amongst them “the buffalo is to a certain degree held sacred” and “is treated with great kindness, even with a degree of adoration, by the people.”418 They never eat the flesh of the cow buffalo, and as a rule abstain from the flesh of the male. But [pg 137] to the latter rule there is a single exception. Once a year all the adult males of the village join in the ceremony of killing and eating a very young male calf,—seemingly under a month old. They take the animal into the dark recesses of the village wood, where it is killed with a club made from the sacred tree of the Todas (the tûde or Millingtonia). A sacred fire having been made by the rubbing of sticks, the flesh of the calf is roasted on the embers of certain trees, and is eaten by the men alone, women being excluded from the assembly. This is the only occasion on which the Todas eat buffalo flesh.419 The Madi or Moru tribe of Central Africa, whose chief wealth is their cattle, though they also practice agriculture, appear to kill a lamb sacramentally on certain solemn occasions. The custom is thus described by Dr. Felkin. “A remarkable custom is observed at stated times—once a year, I am led to believe. I have not been able to ascertain what exact meaning is attached to it. It appears, however, to relieve the people's minds, for beforehand they evince much sadness, and seem very joyful when the ceremony is duly accomplished. The following is what takes place: A large concourse of people of all ages assemble, and sit down round a circle of stones, which is erected by the side of a road (really a narrow path). A very choice lamb is then fetched by a boy, who leads it four times round the assembled people. As it passes they pluck off little bits of its fleece and place them in their hair, or on to some other part of their body. The lamb is then led up to the stones, and there killed by a man belonging to a kind of priestly order, who takes some of the blood and sprinkles it four times over the people. He [pg 138] then applies it individually. On the children he makes a small ring of blood over the lower end of the breast bone, on women and girls he makes a mark above the breasts, and the men he touches on each shoulder. He then proceeds to explain the ceremony, and to exhort the people to show kindness.... When this discourse, which is at times of great length, is over, the people rise, each places a leaf on or by the circle of stones, and then they depart with signs of great joy. The lamb's skull is hung on a tree near the stones, and its flesh is eaten by the poor. This ceremony is observed on a small scale at other times. If a family is in any great trouble, through illness or bereavement, their friends and neighbours come together and a lamb is killed: this is thought to avert further evil. The same custom prevails at the grave of departed friends, and also on joyful occasions, such as the return of a son home after a very prolonged absence.”420 The sorrow thus manifested by the people at the annual slaughter of the lamb clearly indicates that the lamb slain is a divine animal, whose death is mourned by his worshippers,421 just as the death of the sacred buzzard was mourned by the Californians and the death of the Theban ram by the Egyptians. The smearing each of the worshippers with the blood of the lamb is a form of communion with the divinity;422 the vehicle of the divine life is applied externally instead of being taken internally, as when the blood is drunk or the flesh eaten.
[pg 139]The form of communion in which the sacred animal is taken from house to house, that all may enjoy a share of its divine influence, has been exemplified by the Gilyak custom of promenading the bear through the village before it is slain. A similar form of communion with the sacred snake is observed by a Snake tribe in the Punjaub. Once a year in the month of September the snake is worshipped by all castes and religions for nine days only. At the end of August the Mirasans, especially those of the Snake tribe, make a snake of dough which they paint black and red, and place on a winnowing basket. This basket they carry round the village, and on entering any house they say—
They then present the basket with the snake, saying—
Strictly speaking, a cake and butter should be given, but it is seldom done. Every one, however, gives something, generally a handful of dough or some corn. In houses where there is a new bride or whence a bride has gone, or where a son has been born, it is usual to give a rupee and a quarter, or some cloth. Sometimes the bearers of the snake also sing—
When every house has been thus visited, the dough snake is buried and a small grave is erected over it. Hither during the nine days of September the women [pg 140] come to worship. They bring a basin of curds, a small portion of which they offer at the snake's grave, kneeling on the ground and touching the earth with their foreheads. Then they go home and divide the rest of the curds among the children. Here the dough snake is clearly a substitute for a real snake. This is proved by the fact that in districts where snakes abound the worship is offered, not at the grave of the dough snake, but in the jungles where snakes are known to be. Besides this yearly worship performed by all the people, the members of the Snake tribe worship in the same way every morning after a new moon. The Snake tribe is not uncommon in the Punjaub. Members of it will not kill a snake and they say that its bite does not hurt them. If they find a dead snake, they put clothes on it and give it a regular funeral.423
Ceremonies closely analogous to this Indian worship of the snake have survived in Europe into recent times, and doubtless date from a very primitive paganism. The best-known example is the “hunting of the wren.” By many European peoples—the ancient Greeks and Romans, the modern Italians, Spaniards, French, Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, English, and Welsh—the wren has been designated the king, the little king, the king of birds, the hedge king, etc.,424 and has been reckoned amongst those birds which it is extremely unlucky to kill. In England it is thought that if any one kills a wren or harries its nest, he will infallibly break a bone or [pg 141] meet with some dreadful misfortune within the year;425 sometimes it is thought that the cows will give bloody milk.426 In Scotland the wren is called “the Lady of Heaven's hen,” and boys say—
At Saint Donan, in Brittany, people believe that if children touch the young wrens in the nest, they will suffer from the fire of St. Lawrence, that is, from pimples on the face, legs, etc.428 In other parts of France it is believed that if a person kills a wren or harries its nest, his house will be struck by lightning, or that the fingers with which he did the deed will shrivel up and drop off, or at least be maimed, or that his cattle will suffer in their feet.429 Notwithstanding such beliefs, the custom of annually killing the wren has prevailed widely both in this country and in France. In the Isle of Man last century the custom was observed on Christmas Eve or rather Christmas morning. On the 24th of December, towards evening, all the servants got a holiday; they did not go to bed all night, but rambled about till the bells rang in all the churches at midnight. When prayers were over, they went to hunt the wren, and having found one of these birds they killed it and fastened it to the top of a long pole with its wings extended. Thus they carried it in procession to every house chanting the following rhyme—
After going from house to house and collecting all the money they could, they laid the wren on a bier “with the utmost solemnity, singing dirges over her in the Manks language, which they call her knell; after which Christmas begins.” After the burial the company outside the churchyard formed a circle and danced to music. About the middle of the present century the burial of the wren took place in the Isle of Man on St. Stephen's Day (December 26th). Boys went from door to door with a wren suspended by the legs in the centre of two hoops which crossed each other at right angles and were decorated with evergreens and ribbons. The bearers sang certain lines in which reference was made to boiling and eating the bird. If at the close of the song they received a small coin, they gave in return a feather of the wren; so that before the end of the day the bird often hung almost featherless. The wren was then buried, no longer in the churchyard, but on the sea-shore or in some waste place. The feathers distributed were preserved with religious care, it being believed that every feather was an effectual preservative from shipwreck for a year, and a fisherman would have been thought very foolhardy who had not one of them.430
In Ireland the “hunting of the wren” still takes place in parts of Leinster and Connaught. On Christmas Day or St. Stephen's Day the boys hunt and kill the wren, fasten it in the middle of a mass of holly and ivy on the top of a broomstick, and on St. Stephen's Day go about with it from house to house, singing—
[pg 143]