Even more widespread and prominent than the custom of offering blood, or of making a libation, or of overcoming a special barrier, at the threshold, or of anointing or stamping the posts or lintel of the doorway as a sign of the covenant, at the time of a marriage, and as a part of the ceremony, is the habit of causing the bride to cross the threshold with care, without stepping upon it. This custom is of well-nigh world-wide observance, and it has attracted the attention of anthropologists and students of primitive customs. A favorite method of explaining it has been by calling it a survival of the practice of “marriage by capture;” but this is nothing more than an unscientific guess, in defiance of the truth that persistent popular customs have their origin in a sentiment, and not in a passing historic practice. The earliest mentions of this custom, of the bride’s crossing the threshold without stepping on it, show it as a voluntary religious rite; and there are traces of its recognition in this light from the earliest times until now.
In the Vedic Sutras, or the sacrificial rules of the ancient Hindoo literature, it is specifically declared that a bride, on entering her husband’s home, shall step across the threshold, and not upon it. She is not lifted over the door-sill, but she voluntarily crosses it. Thus it is said: “When (the bridegroom with his bride) has come to his house, he says to her, ‘Cross (the threshold) with thy right foot first; do not stand on the threshold.’”[92] In this ancient ceremony, grains of rice are poured on the heads of the bridegroom and his bride.[93] This modern custom has, therefore, a very early origin. And again: “He makes her enter the house (which she does) with her right foot. And she does not stand on the threshold.”[94]
Putting the right foot forward seems to be a matter of importance in various primitive religions. “Put your right foot first” is a maxim ascribed to Pythagoras.[95] In his description of the proportions of a temple, the Roman architect Vitruvius said: “The number of steps in front should always be odd, since, in that case, the right foot, which begins the ascent, will be that which first alights on the landing of the temple.”[96] A Muhammadan is always careful to put his right foot first in crossing over the threshold of a mosk.[97]
Among the Albanians, when the bride is taken to the home of the bridegroom, accompanied by the vlam, or “the friend of the bridegroom,” it is said that “particular care is taken that the threshold should be crossed with the right foot foremost.”[98] Here, as in India, the crossing of the threshold is a voluntary act. The bride is not lifted over, but crosses of her own accord. If she be veiled, the lifting is a necessity.
In Madagascar, “on entering a house, especially a royal house, it is improper to use the left foot on first stepping into it. One must ‘put one’s best (or right) foot foremost.’”[99]
The bride, in Upper Syria, is sometimes carried across the threshold of the bridegroom’s house by friends of the bridegroom.[100] She, of course, is veiled.
When the bride reaches the outer gate of her husband’s residence, in Egypt, the bridegroom meets her, enveloped as she is in her cashmere shawl, clasps her in his arms, and carries her across the threshold, and up to the doorway of the female apartments.[101]
In portions of Abyssinia, the bridegroom carries his bride from her home to his, bearing her across the threshold as he enters his house.[102]
So, also, it is among the more primitive tribes in West Africa. The bride is carried over the threshold in a rude chair, or on the shoulders of her friends, into her new home.[103]
There are traces of a similar custom in the marriage ceremonies of ancient Assyria.[104]
Again, it is said to be found among the Khonds of Orissa,[105] the Tatars,[106] and the Eskimos.[107]
In ancient Greece[108] and in ancient Rome[109] the lifting of the bride over the threshold of her new home was an important part of the marriage ceremony. Classic writers had their explanations of this custom, as certain modern anthropologists have theirs, but the origin of the ceremony was earlier than they imagined.
In unchanging China the use of fire on the threshold altar, in connection with the marriage ceremony, is continued to the present day. The bride is borne in a sedan-chair to the house of the bridegroom, accompanied by a procession of friends and musicians. “On arriving at the portal of the house, the bridegroom taps the door of the sedan-chair with his fan, and in response, the instructress of matrimony, who prompts every act of the bride, opens the door and hands out the still enshrouded young lady, who is carried bodily over a pan of lighted charcoal, or a red-hot coulter laid on the threshold, while at the same moment a servant offers for her acceptance some rice and preserved prunes.”[110]
Again, it is burning straw that is thrown upon the door-sill, and is half extinguished before the Chinese bride is led to step across it. The instructress says at this point:
Fire, like blood, stands for life in the primitive mind; and fire, like blood, has its place on the altar. Indeed, as the first threshold altar was the hearthstone, it was the place of the household fire. The sacredness of the domestic fire is recognized in all the Hindoo religious literature; and a Hindoo couple, on beginning their married life, must have a care to enter a new home bringing their sacred altar fire with them.[112] In ancient Greece, the mother of the bride accompanied her daughter to the threshold of her new home, bearing a flaming torch “kindled at the parental hearth, according to custom immemorial.”[113] A torch was similarly borne in the Roman marriage ceremonies.[114] This custom is referred to in the term “hymen’s torch,” or the “nuptial torch.” “In Cicero’s time, they did not distinguish the hearth-fire from the Penates, nor the Penates from the Lares.”[115] The bride, in India, in China, in Greece, and in Rome, worshiped at the altar-fire of her new home.
A connecting link between the altar fire and the nuptial torch is found in a marriage custom of the Erza, of the Mordvins, in Russia. On the eve of the wedding day the bridegroom’s family make ready for the bride. “A thick candle, and several thinner ones, have ... been made ready for the occasion. The bridegroom’s father lights the smaller ones before the holy pictures [in use in families of the Greek Church], but sets up the large one on the threshold. It is called ‘the house candle.’” The father then prays for the new couple.[116]
A survival of an ancient Slavic custom, of covenanting together by crossing together an altar fire, would also seem to exist in Russia in the practices of young people at the “Midsummer Day” festival. A Russian writer says of these festivals: “More than once have I had an opportunity of being present at these nightly meetings, held at the end of June, in commemoration of a heathen divinity. They usually take place close to a river or pond; large fires are lighted, and over them young couples, bachelors and unmarried girls, jump barefoot.”[117]
There is a custom of wooing among the Moksha, of the Mordvins, that brings the threshold-altar idea into prominence. The parents of the wooer first make gifts, at their home, to the household goddesses. “These gifts consist of dough figures of domestic animals, which are placed under the threshold of the house and of the outside gate, while prayer is made to the goddesses and to deceased ancestors. The father [of the bridegroom] then cuts off a corner of a loaf placed on the table, and at the time of the offering scoops out the inside and fills it with honey. At midnight he drives in profound secrecy to the house of the bride elect, places the honeyed bread on the gate-post [of her house], strikes the window with his whip, and shouts: ‘Seta! I, Veshnak Mazakoff, make a match between thy daughter and my son Uru. Take the honeyed bread from thy gate-post, and pray.’”[118] The images of domestic animals would here seem to stand for the slaughtered animals formerly offered at the threshold altar; and the linking of the altars of the two homes by offerings and prayer would seem to indicate the desire for a sacred covenant. When the bride is received at the bridegroom’s house, a notch is cut “with an ax in the door-post to mark the arrival of a new addition to the family.”
Among the Erza, of the same province, the bride, on the day of “the girl’s feast,” preceding her marriage, “takes mould [earth] from under the threshold [of her parental home] with her finger-tips, and thrusts it into her bosom,” as she goes out to seek a farewell blessing from her friends. In the bridegroom’s home, meanwhile, a lighted candle is placed on the threshold of the door; and, in some regions, when he and his friends go to the bride’s house to bring her to his home, he and they are met at the door by her parents with the covenanting bread and salt, and the words, “Be welcome, come within.” As the bride is borne out of her old home to go to her new one, she and her party “all halt and bow to the gate, for there, or in the courtyard, is the abode of the god that protects the dwelling-place. The following prayer is made to him: ‘Kardas Sarks, the nourisher, god of the house, do not abandon her that is about to depart; always be near her just as thou art here.‘” When she reaches her new home, she is carried (over the threshold), in the arms of some of her party, into the house of the bridegroom, carrying a lighted candle.[119]
The custom survived in portions of Scotland, as recently as the beginning of this century, of lifting a bride over the threshold, or the first step of the door. A cake of bread, prepared for the occasion, was, at the same time, broken by the bridegroom’s mother over the head of the bride. The bride was then led directly to the hearth, and the poker and tongs, and sometimes the broom, were put into her hands “as symbols of her office and duty.”
Lifting the bride over the threshold has been practiced in recent times, in England, Ireland, and the United States.[120]
Both bride and bridegroom were carried, on the shoulders of their elders, across the threshold of their new home, and laid on their bridal bed, in the marriage ceremonies of some of the tribes of Central America. And again the bridegroom carried his bride in this way.[121] In either case, it was the crossing of the threshold without stepping on it that was the thing aimed at.
In the building of a house, as a new home, the prominence given to the laying of the threshold, or to its dedicating by blood, is another indication, or outcome, of its altar-like sacredness. In Upper Syria a sacrifice is often made at the beginning of the building of a new house, and again at the first crossing of its threshold. “When a new house is built,” among the Metâwileh, “the owner will not reside in it until, with certain formalities, a black hen has been carried several times round the house and slaughtered within the door,” as if in covenant dedication of the house.[122]
Among the Copts in Egypt, when the threshold of a new house is laid, the owner slaughters a sheep or a goat on the threshold, and steps over the blood, as if in covenant for himself and his household with Him to whom all blood, as life, belongs. Then he divides the sacrificed victim among his neighbors; and they in turn come and step across the blood on the threshold, invoking as they do so a blessing on the new house and its owner, while coming into covenant with him.[123]
The foundation-stone of a new building is, in a sense, the threshold of that structure. Hence to lay the foundations in blood is to proffer blood at the threshold. Traces of this custom are to be found in the practices or the legends of peoples wellnigh all the world over.[124] Apparently the earlier sacrifices were of human beings.[125] Later they were of animals substituted for persons. The idea seems to have been that he who covenanted by blood with God, or with the gods, when his house, or his city, was builded, was guarded, together with his household, while he and they were dwellers there; but, if he failed to proffer a threshold sacrifice, his first-born, or the first person who crossed the bloodless threshold, would be claimed by the ignored or defied deity.
There is, indeed, a suggestion of this idea in the curse pronounced by Joshua, when he destroyed the doomed city of Jericho, against him who should rebuild its walls, he not being in covenant with and obedient to the Lord. “Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: with the loss of his firstborn shall he lay the foundation thereof, and with the loss of his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.”[126] A later record tells of the fulfilment of this curse. It says of the reign of Ahab: “In his days did Hiel the Bethel-ite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof with the loss of Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof with the loss of his youngest son Segub; according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by the hand of Joshua the son of Nun.”[127]
Human sacrifices, in order to furnish blood at the foundations of a house, or of a public structure, have been continued down to recent times, or to the present, in some portions of the world; and there are indications in popular tradition that they were frequent in a not remote past.
It is said that at the building of Scutari, in Asia Minor, “the workmen were engaged on its fortifications for three years, but the walls would not stand. Then they protested that the only possible way to succeed was to lay under or in them a living human being. They accordingly laid hold of a young woman who brought them dinner, and immured her.”[128]
According to a story in China, when the bridge leading to the site of St. John’s College, in Shanghai, was in process of building, an official present took off his shoes, as indicating his rank, and threw them into the stream, in order to stay the current, and enable the workmen to lay the foundations. Finding this unavailing, he took off his garments and threw them in. Finally he threw himself in, and as his life went out the workmen were enabled to go on with their building. To this day the belief is general that that structure stands fast because of this sacrifice.[129]
“When the walls of Algiers were built of blocks of concrete [by Muhammadans], in the sixteenth century, a Christian captive named Geronimo was placed in one of the blocks and the rampart built over and about him. Since the French occupation of Algiers a subsidence in the wall led to an examination of the blocks, and one was found to have given way. It was removed, and the cast of Geronimo was discovered in the block. The body had gone to dust, and the superincumbent weight had crushed in the stone sarcophagus.”[130]
A story told among the Danes is, that “many years ago, when the ramparts were being raised round Copenhagen, the wall always sank, so that it was not possible to get it to stand firm. They therefore took a little innocent girl, placed her in 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 with earth to the sound of drums and trumpets. By this process the walls were made solid.”[131]
“Thuringian legend declares that to make the castle of Liebenstein fast and impregnable, a child was bought for hard money of its mother, and walled in. It was eating a cake while the masons were at work, the story goes, and it cried, ‘Mother, I see thee still;’ then later, ‘Mother, I see thee a little still;’ and as they put in the last stone, ‘Mother, now I see thee no more.’”[132]
A similar story is told of a Slavic town on the Danube. A plague devastated it, and it was determined to build it anew, with a new citadel. “Acting on the advice of their wisest men, they sent out messengers before sunrise one morning in all directions, with orders to seize upon the first living creature they should meet. The victim proved to be a child (Dyetina, archaic form of Ditya), who was buried alive under the foundation-stone of the new citadel. The city was on that account called Dyetinets [or Detinetz], a name since applied to any citadel.”[133]
It is even said that “when, a few years ago, the Bridge Gate of the Bremen city walls was demolished, the skeleton of a child was found imbedded in the foundations.”[134]
A Scottish legend tells that St. Columba found himself unable to build a cathedral on the island of Iona unless he would secure its stability and safety by the blood of a human sacrifice. Thereupon he took his companion, Oran, and buried him alive at the foundations of the structure, having no trouble after that.[135]
And it is said that under the walls of the only two round towers of the ancient Irish examined, human skeletons were found buried.[136]
Until the transfer of Alaska to the United States, in 1867, by the Russian government, human sacrifices at the foundation of a new house were common in that portion of America. The ceremonies are thus described by one familiar with them: “The rectangular space for the building is ... cleared, a spot for the fireplace designated, and four holes dug, wherein the corner posts are to be set.... A slave, either man or woman who has been captured in war or is even a descendant of such a slave, is blindfolded and compelled to lie down face uppermost, in the place selected for the fireplace [the site of the domestic altar]. A sapling is then cut, laid across the throat of the slave, and, at a given signal, the two nearest relatives of the host sit upon the respective ends of the sapling, thereby choking the unhappy wretch to death. But the corner posts must receive their baptism; so four slaves are blindfolded, and one is forced to stand in each post-hole, when, at a given signal, a blow on the forehead is dealt with a peculiar club ornamented with the host’s coat of arms.” It is said that even to the present time, on the building of a house in Alaska, “the same ceremonies are enacted, with the exception of the sacrifices, which are prevented by the United States authorities.”[137]
In Hindoostan, Burmah, Tennasserin, Borneo, Japan, Galam, Yarriba, Polynesia, and elsewhere, there are modern survivals of this foundation-laying in blood.[138] It would seem, indeed, to have been wellnigh universal as a primitive usage.
Popular ballads give other indications of such customs, in various lands. “In a song, of which there are several versions, of the building of the bridge of Arta, it is told how the bridge fell down as fast as it was built, until at last the master-builder dreamed a dream that it would only stand if his own wife were buried alive in the foundations. He therefore sends for her, bidding her dress in festival attire, and then finds an excuse to make her descend into the central pile, whereupon they heap the earth over her, and thus the bridge stands fast.”[139]
“In another song the same story is told of the Bridge of Tricha, with the difference only that it is a little bird that whispers in the architect’s ear how the pile may be made to stand. A similar superstition connected with the building of the monastery Curtea de Argest, in Wallachia, forms the subject of a fine poem by the Roumanian poet Alexandri.”[140]
There is an indication of a like custom among the Vlachs in Turkey, as shown in their folk-poetry. The ballad of the “Monastery of Argis” tells of such an incident, in which the master-builder Manoli plays a part.[141]
Various substitutes for human offerings at the laying of a foundation-stone, or a threshold, have been adopted in different countries. Thus, in modern Greece, “after the ground has been cleared for the foundations of a new house, the future owner, his family, and the workmen attend, together with the pappas [the priest] in full canonicals, accompanied by incense, holy water, and all due accessories. A prayer is said, and those present are aspersed, and the site is sprinkled with the consecrated water. Then a fowl or a lamb, which you have noticed lying near with the feet tied together, is taken by one of the workmen, killed and decapitated, the pappas standing by all the while, and even giving directions; the blood is then smeared on the foundation-stone, in the fulfilment of the popular adage that ‘there must be blood in the foundation.’”[142]
The modern Greek term for this ceremony, stoicheionein, would seem to indicate a sacrifice to the deity of the threshold, or the foundation.
“The Bulgarians, it is said, when laying a house foundation, take a thread, and measure the shadow of some casual passer-by. The measure is then buried under the foundation-stone, and it is expected that the man whose shadow has been thus treated will soon become but a shade himself.... Sometimes a victim is put to death on the occasion; the foundations being sprinkled with the blood of a fowl, or a lamb, or some other species of scapegoat.”[143]
Among the Russian peasants the idea prevails that the building of a new house “is apt to be followed by the death of the head of the family for which the new dwelling is constructed, or that the member of the family who is the first to enter it will soon die. In accordance with a custom of great antiquity, the oldest member of a migrating household enters the new house first; and in many places, as, for instance, in the Government of Archangel, some animal is killed and buried on the spot on which the first log or stone is laid.”[144]
The “upper corner” of a house, in Russia, is peculiarly sacred, having even more honor than the doorway threshold in the ordinary home. Yet this upper corner seems to be in a sense the real threshold, or foundation corner, of the building. A cock is the ordinary victim sacrificed “on the spot which a projected house is to cover.” The head of this cock is buried “exactly where the ‘upper corner’ of the building is to stand.” And this corner is thenceforward a sacred corner. Opposite to it is the stove. It is called the “great” and the “beautiful” corner. The family meal is eaten before it, and every one who enters the cottage makes obeisance toward it. Formerly ancestral images are supposed to have been in that corner, and now holy pictures are there.[145] It would seem to be in accordance with this idea that the foundation-stone, or threshold, of a new building, which in civilized lands is now laid with imposing ceremonies, is known as the “corner-stone.” Yet the “corner-stone” of a modern building is sometimes at the corner of the central doorway.[146]
It is worthy of note that in ancient Egypt the one door of an ordinary dwelling-house was placed at one side, or end, of the front wall, and not in the center; so that the corner-stone of the building was literally a portion of the threshold.[147] The same was true of many an old-time New England house; the “front door” was at the left-hand side (as one approached the house) of the gable end. Thus the threshold of the door was often the corner-stone.
Ancient Romans were accustomed to place statues and images, instead of living persons, under the foundations of their buildings, as has been shown by recent researches in and about Rome.[148] In one instance, where a fine statue of colossal size and in perfect preservation was unearthed, at the foundations of a convent which was being enlarged, “by order of the monks, it was buried again,” as if in deference to the primitive belief that it was essential to the stability of the structure.[149]
There is a Swedish tradition “that under the altar in the first Christian churches a lamb was usually buried, which imparted security and duration to the edifice.”[150] And, “according to Danish accounts, a lamb was buried under every altar, and a living horse was laid in every churchyard before a human corpse was laid in it. Both lamb and horse are to be seen occasionally in the church- or grave-yard, and betoken death. Under other houses pigs and hens were buried alive.”[151]
A new sacrificial stone, or altar of sacrifice, laid on the summit of a Mexican temple, in 1512, was consecrated by Montezuma by the blood of more than twelve thousand captives.[152]
When the new railroad was built between Jaffa and Jerusalem, a few years ago, there were sacrifices of sheep at its beginning. And there were similar sacrifices at the foundations of the Turkish building, at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago.
In all these facts or legends, blood on the threshold of the building, in the foundation-stones of the structure, is shown to have been deemed an essential factor in a covenant with, or in propitiation of, the deity of the place.
Because the threshold is recognized as an altar, nearness to the altar is nearness to God, or to the gods worshiped at that altar. Hence appeals are made and justice is sought at the gate, or at the threshold, as in the presence of deity.
To present one’s self at the tent doorway, or to lay hold of the supports, or cords, at the entrance of an Arab’s “house of hair,” is recognized as an ever-effective appeal for hospitality in the East. Even an enemy can thus secure the protection of the home sanctuary.[153]
In the excavation of Tell-el-Hesy, in Southwestern Palestine, supposed to cover the remains of ancient Lachish,[154] Dr. Petrie discovered various ornamented door-jambs. In one case a simple volute on a pilaster slab suggested to Dr. Petrie “a ram’s horn nailed up against a wooden post;” and “he sees in this the origin of the type of the ‘horns of the altar,’[155] so often mentioned in temple architecture.”[156] If Dr. Petrie be correct in this thought, the horns of the altar were first of all at the house doorway, above the threshold altar.
One of the fundamental laws of the Afghans makes it incumbent on a host to “shelter and protect any one who in extremity may flee to his threshold, and seek an asylum under his roof.” Property or life must be sacrificed in his behalf, if need be. “As soon as you have crossed the threshold of an Afghan you are sacred to him, though you were his deadly foe, and he will give up his own life to save yours.” A favorite poem of the Afghan, entitled, “Adam Khan and Durkhani,” tells of a son who killed his father because that father had betrayed a refugee who sought the sanctuary of his threshold. And all Afghans honor the memory of that son.[157]
Among the Arabs of the Syrian desert, when a man would leave his own tribe and join himself to another, he takes a lamb or a goat with him, and presents himself at the entrance of the tent of the shaykh of the tribe he would find a home in. Slaying the animal there, and allowing its blood to run out on the ground at the threshold of the tent, he makes his appeal to the shaykh to accept him as a member of his tribe, or as a son by adoption. And this appeal has peculiar force, as a voice by blood.[158]
When a man among these tribes is in peril of his life, pursued by an enemy, he can similarly make an appeal for sanctuary at the threshold altar of a shaykh’s tent, with a like outpouring of the blood of an animal brought by him; and protection must be granted him by the shaykh. It is as though he had laid hold of the “horns of the altar.” So, again, when a man would be reconciled with an enemy who has cause for bitter hostility, he goes to the tent of that enemy and sacrifices an animal at the threshold, with an appeal for forgiveness. This offering of a threshold sacrifice secures his safety.
In other portions of Arabia this same idea finds a different but similar expression. “With bare and shaven head the offender appears at the door of the injured person, holding a knife in each hand, and, reciting a formula provided for the purpose, strikes his head several times with the sharp blades. Then drawing his hands over his bloody scalp, he wipes them on the door-post. The other must then come out and cover the suppliant’s head with a shawl [covering the offense, in covering the offender], after which he kills a sheep, and they sit down together at a feast of reconciliation.”[159]
A record on a Babylonian clay tablet, of the twenty-eighth year of Nebuchadrezzar, affirms that “on the second day of the month of Ab” a certain “Imbiʿa shall bring his witness to the gate of the house of the chief Bel-iddin, and let him testify” as to a certain matter.[160] The gate of the chief man, or local magistrate, would here seem to have been the recognized court of justice.
In the palace ruins at Persepolis and Susa, the great doorways show, in their architecture, the influence of Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt. And in the relief sculpture of those doorways there is seen a representation of “the king sitting on his throne rendering justice at his palace gate.”[161]
At one of the gates of modern Cairo, the writer has seen a venerable Arab sitting in judgment on a case submitted to him by the contestants. And such a scene may be often witnessed at the gates of an Oriental city.
In accordance with this primitive idea, it became a custom in India for one who would obtain justice from another to seat himself at the door of a house, or a tent, and refuse to move from that position until he starved to death, unless his claim were heeded. If the suitor died at the door, or the household altar, the sin of his death rested upon the householder. The suitor’s blood cried out against the evil-doer.
Even to the present time appeals at the household altar are made in blood, in portions of India. A case recently before the British court in Kathiawar involved an illustration of such an appeal. One of the Charaus, a caste of heralds, had become responsible with his life, according to custom, for the repayment of a loan made to a land owner. The land owner delayed payment, and seemed disposed to avoid it. “The herald and his brother, with their old mother for a sacrifice, went to the door of the debtor’s house and demanded payment, as their family honor was at stake. When the land owner would not pay, the herald struck off the head of his mother with his sword before the door, the brother at the same time wounded (intending to kill) the debtor, and the two brothers sprinkled the mingled blood of the sacrifice on the householder’s door-posts. The land owner, smitten by public infamy and the guilt of the matricide, starved himself to death.”[162] References to this responsibility of the heralds are found in the Mahabharata.[163]
Even where the primitive custom of sacrificing at the doorway has died out, there sometimes seems to be a survival of it in popular phraseology. Talcott Williams, of Philadelphia, relates an incident of his experiences in Morocco, which illustrates this. He says: “As I was riding through the Soko at Tangier on a morning in June, 1889, a servant stopped me, and said: ‘Four men, from near Azila (a town on the seacoast of Morocco, about thirty miles away), are waiting for you at the gate of the house of Mr. Perdicarus, and they have killed a sheep.’ ‘What have they killed a sheep for?’ said I. ‘Oh!’ said the servant, ‘I don’t mean that they have actually killed a sheep, but they are sitting at the gate, asking for your help, and expect you to aid them in their trouble, because they have heard that you have influence with the American consul, and are a man of importance in your own country, and we call that “killing a sheep.”’ I think he added ‘at the gate,’ but my memory is not perfectly clear at this point. I rode on to the house of my friend, where I was stopping, and found there the kinsman of a sheikh, who had been imprisoned by the American consul. They seized my horse’s bridle, and, with the usual Oriental signs of respect, refused to let me dismount until I had heard them and their plea for help.
“I was told by my own servant and the other Orientals there, that this plea ‘at the gate,’ accompanied as it was by the readiness to ‘kill a sheep,’ was one which no man in Morocco would dream of disregarding. I made some inquiry on the subject afterwards, and found that the habit of sitting at the gate waiting for a man of supposed influence or authority, while absent, to return to his house, often actually accompanied, though less frequently at present, by the slaughter of a sheep, whose blood is poured across the road over which he must pass, was a form used only in cases of dire necessity, and one to which a man with whom other pleas would avail nothing, felt compelled to give attention. I am glad to add that in my own case this ancient rite was not without its fruits to those who had used it.”[164]
See the Bible references to this idea. Moses stood “in the gate of the camp,” at a crisis hour in Israel’s history, when he would execute judgment in the Lord’s cause.[165] All Israel was aroused to do judgment against the sinning Benjamites because of the appeal of the dying woman who fell at the door of the house, “with her hands upon the threshold.”[166] Boaz “went up to the gate,” to meet the elders there, when he would covenant to do justice by Ruth and the kinsman of Naomi.[167] Absalom sat in “the way of the gate” when he would show favor to those who came there with their appeals for justice.[168] And when Absalom was dead, David as king was again sitting in the gate.[169] Zedekiah, the king of Judah, was sitting in the gate of Benjamin when Ebed-melech appealed to him in behalf of Jeremiah.[170] Daniel’s post of honor in Babylon was “in the gate of the king,” as a judge in the king’s name.[171]
Wisdom, personified, says of him who would seek help where it is to be obtained: