According to early notions, men require wives and servants not only during their life-time, but after their death. The surviving relatives want to satisfy their needs, out of affection or from fear of withholding from the dead what belongs to them—their wives and their slaves. The destruction of innocent life seems justified by the low social standing of the victims and their subjection to their husbands or masters. However, with advancing civilisation this sacrifice has a tendency to disappear, partly, perhaps, on account of a change of ideas as regards the state after death, but chiefly, I presume, because it becomes revolting to public feelings. It then dwindles into a survival. As a probable instance of this may be mentioned a custom prevalent among the Tacullies of North America: the widow is compelled by the kinsfolk of the deceased to lie on the funeral pile where the body of her husband is placed, whilst the fire is lighting, until the heat becomes intolerable.302 In ancient Egypt little images of clay, or wood, or stone, or bronze, made in human likeness and inscribed with a certain formula, were placed within the tomb, presumably in the hopes that they would there attain to life and become the useful servants of the dead.303 So also the Japanese304 and Chinese, already in early times, placed images in, or at, the tombs of their dead as substitutes for human victims; and these images have always been considered to have no less virtual existence in the next world than living servitors, wives, or concubines. In China the original immolations were, moreover, replaced by the custom of allowing the nearest relatives and slaves of the deceased simply to settle on the tomb, instead of entering it, there to sacrifice to the manes, and by prohibiting widows from remarrying.305

The practice of sacrificing human beings to the dead is not exclusively based on the idea that they require servants and companions. It is extremely probable that the funeral sacrifice of men and animals in many cases involves an intention to vivify the spirits of the deceased with the warm, red sap of life.306 This seems to be the meaning of the Dahoman custom of pouring blood over the graves of the ancestors of the king.307 So, also, in Ashanti “human sacrifices are frequent and ordinary, to water the graves of the Kings.”308 In the German folk-tale known under the name of ‘Faithful John,’ the statue said to the King, “If you, with your own hand, cut off the heads of both your children, and sprinkle me with their blood, I shall be brought to life again.”309 According to primitive ideas, blood is life; to receive blood is to receive life; the soul of the dead wants to live, and consequently loves blood. The shades in Hades are eager to drink the blood of Odysseus’ sacrifice, that their life may be renewed for a time.310 And it is all the more important that the soul should get what it desires as it otherwise may come and attack the living. The belief that the bloodless shades leave their graves at night and seek renewed life by drawing the blood of the living, is prevalent in many parts of the world.311 As late as the eighteenth century this belief caused an epidemic of fear in Hungary, resulting in a general disinterment, and the burning or staking of the suspected bodies.312 It is also possible that the mutilations and self-bleedings which accompany funerals are partly practised for the purpose of refreshing the departed soul.313 The Samoans called it “an offering of blood” for the dead when the mourners beat their heads with stones till the blood ran.314

Finally, as offenders are sacrificed to gods in order to appease their wrath, so manslayers are in many cases killed in order to satisfy their victims’ craving for revenge. In the next chapter we shall see that the execution of blood-revenge largely falls under the heading of “human sacrifice for the dead.”

CHAPTER XX

BLOOD-REVENGE AND COMPENSATION—THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH

ACCORDING to early custom, a person who takes the life of another may himself be killed by the relatives of his victim, or some other member of his family, clan, or tribe may be killed in his stead.1 The custom of blood-revenge is found among a host of existing savages and barbarians, and has long survived among many peoples who have reached a higher degree of culture.

We meet with blood-revenge in the midst of Japanese civilisation, not as a mere fact, but as a legally permitted custom. The avenger had only to observe certain prescribed formalities and regulations: there was a regular official to whom he must announce his resolve, and he must fix the time within which he would carry it out. The way in which the enemy was killed was of no importance, except that, even in ancient times, the man who had recourse to assassination was reprehensible.2 Among the Hebrews blood-revenge continued to exist during the periods of the Judges and Kings, and even later; under the Old Kingdom, says Wellhausen, “the administration of justice was at best but a scanty supplement to the practice of self-help.”3 It is a rule among all the Arabs that whoever sheds the blood of a man owes blood on that account to the family of the slain person.4 Says the Koran:—“O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you for the slain.”5 In ancient Eran blood-revenge survived the establishment of tribunals.6 There is evidence left of its prevalence in early times among the Aryan population of India, though no mention is made in the Sûtras of blood revenge as an existing custom.7 Among the Greeks it was only in the post-Homeric age that it was given up as a fundamental principle, the avenger being transformed into an accuser.8 In Gaul and Ireland, though justice was administered by Druids or Brehons, their judgments seem to have been merely awards founded upon a submission to arbitration, the injured person being at liberty to take the law into his own hands and redress himself.9 In the preface to the Senchus Mór we read that retaliation prevailed in Erin before Patrick, and that Patrick brought forgiveness with him.10 Among the clans of Scotland, as is well known, the blood-feud has existed up to quite modern times; in the Catholic period even the Church recognised its power by leaving the right hand of male children unchristened, that it might deal the more unhallowed and deadly a blow to the enemy.11 In England it was at least theoretically possible down to the middle of the tenth century for a manslayer to elect to bear the feud of the kindred of the slain, instead of paying the wer;12 and long after the Conquest we still meet with a law against the system of private revenge.13 In Frisland, Lower Saxony, and parts of Switzerland, the blood-feud was practised as late as the sixteenth century.14 In Italy it prevailed extensively, even among the upper classes, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.15 In Corsica,16 Albania,17 and Montenegro,18 it exists even to this day.

Blood-revenge is regarded not only as a right, but as a duty. We are told that the holiest duty a West Australian native is called on to perform is that of avenging the death of his nearest relation. “Until he has fulfilled this task, he is constantly taunted by the old women; his wives, if he be married, would soon quit him; if he is unmarried, not a single young woman would speak to him; his mother would constantly cry, and lament she should ever have given birth to so degenerate a son; his father would treat him with contempt, and reproaches would constantly be sounded in his ear.”19 Among the tribes of Western Victoria “a man would consider it his bounden duty to kill his most intimate friend for the purpose of avenging a brother’s death, and would do so without the slightest hesitation.”20 In his description of the Eskimo about Behring Strait, Mr. Nelson states that blood-revenge is considered a sacred duty among all the Eskimo, a duty incumbent on the nearest male relative; if the son of the murdered man is an infant, it rests with him to seek revenge as soon as he attains puberty.21 Among the Dacotahs “no one can escape this law of retaliation; public opinion would brand with disgrace whoever fled under such circumstances.”22 The Brazilian aborigines consider it a moral obligation, a matter of conscience, for a son, a brother, or a nephew, to avenge the death of his relative.23 Speaking of the Guiana Indians, Sir E. F. Im Thurn observes that, “in all primitive societies where there are no written laws and no supreme authority to enforce justice, such vengeance has been held as a sacred duty.”24 Confucius affirmed, in the strongest and most unrestricted terms, the duty of avenging the murder of a father or a brother.25 In Japan “the man who was weak enough not to try to put to death the murderer of his father or his lord, was obliged to flee into hiding; from that day, he was despised by his own companions.”26 The Lord said to Moses:—“The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer; when he meeteth him, he shall slay him.”27 A similar rule, as we have seen, is laid down in the Koran.28 The idea that blood-revenge is a sacred duty incumbent on the kindred of the deceased was probably held by all so-called Aryan peoples.29 It still prevails in Albania,30 Montenegro,31 and Corsica. “Not to take revenge is considered by the genuine Corsicans as degrading…. Any one who shrinks from avenging himself … is allowed no rest by his relations, and all his acquaintances upbraid him with pusillanimity.”32

The duty of blood-revenge is, in the first place, regarded as a duty to the dead, not merely because he has been deprived of his highest good, his life, but because his spirit is believed to find no rest after death until the injury has been avenged.33 The disembodied soul carries into its new existence an eager longing for revenge, and, till the crime has been duly expiated, hovers about the earth, molesting the manslayer or trying to compel its own relatives to take vengeance on him.

According to Yakut beliefs, a person who is murdered becomes a yor, that is, his ghost never comes to rest.34 The Cheremises imagine that the spirits of persons who have died a violent death cause illness, especially fever and ague.35 The Saoras of India seem to have most fear of the spirits of those who have died violent deaths.36 The Burmese believe that persons who meet a violent death become “nats “and haunt the place where they were killed.37 The Hudson Bay Eskimo regard the island of Akpatok as tabooed since the murder of part of the crew of a wrecked vessel, who camped on that island; “not a soul visits that locality lest the ghosts of the victims should appear and supplicate relief from the natives, who have not the proper offerings to make to appease them.”38 The Omahas believe that the spirits of those who have been killed reappear after death, their errand being “to solicit vengeance on the perpetrators of the deed.”39 According to Genesis, the voice of blood shed cried for vengeance until the murderer was punished.40 A similar notion prevailed among the Bedouins, hence they thought they might escape the taking of revenge by covering up the blood with earth.41 One of the most popular ghost stories in folk-tales is that which treats of the ghost of a murdered person flitting about the haunts of the living with no gratification but to terrify them.42 According to Rohde, this belief was in full force at Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ.43 Aeschylus attributes an Erinys to the heinous crime of a man’s neglecting his duty as avenger of blood44—in other words, the soul of the slain turned its anger against the neglectful relative. Traces of the same belief still survive in various parts of Europe.45 In Wärend, in Sweden, the people maintain that the unsatisfied ghost of a murdered man visits his relatives at night, and disturbs their rest; and it was an ancient custom among them that, if the murderer was not known, the nearest relation of the dead, before the knell began, went forward to the corpse and asked the dead himself to avenge his murder.46

From one point of view, blood-revenge is thus a form of human sacrifice. Sometimes it even formally bears a strong resemblance to certain other human sacrifices which are offered to the dead. Among some Queensland tribes, when the assassin has been caught red-handed, the slayer and slain are buried together in the same grave;47 and among the ancient Teutons the avenger by preference slew the culprit at the feet of the murdered man, or at his tomb.48 Blood-revenge also resembles other kinds of human sacrifice so far that it serves as a safeguard for the sacrificer—in this case the avenger, who would otherwise expose himself to the persecutions of the revengeful spirit of the dead.

But the practice of blood-revenge is not exclusively based on a desire to avenge the injury done to a fellow-creature and to gratify the angry passion of his soul. The act which caused his death is at the same time an injury inflicted upon the survivors. Hence, in many cases, a murder committed within the family or kin is left unavenged.49 Among the Iroquois, says Loskiel, any one who has murdered his own relative escapes without much difficulty, since the family, who alone have a right to take revenge, do not choose to weaken their influence by depriving themselves of another member besides the one whom they have already lost.50 Again, when the murderer belongs to an extraneous family, the injury inflicted on the relatives of the murdered man suggests not only revenge, but reparation.