The strengthening virtue of iron is highly appreciated by the Toradjas of Central Celebes, only they apply it externally, not internally, as we do in Europe. For this purpose the people of a village assemble once a year in the smithy. The master of the ceremonies opens the proceedings by carrying a little pig and a white fowl round the smithy, after which he kills them and smears a little of their blood on the forehead of every person present. Next he takes a doit, a chopping-knife, and a bunch of leaves in his hand, and strikes with them the palm of the right hand of every man, woman, and child, and ties a leaf of the Dracaena terminalis to every wrist. Then a little fire is made in the furnace and blown up with the bellows. Every one who feels sick or unwell now steps up to the anvil, and the master of the ceremonies sprinkles a mixture of pigs’ blood, water, and herbs on the joints of his body, and finally on his head, wishing him a long life. Lastly, the patient takes the chopping-knife, heats it in the furnace, lays it on the anvil, and strikes it seven times with the hammer. After that he has only to cool the knife in water and the iron cure is complete. Again, on the seventh day after a birth the Toradjas hold a little feast, at which the child is carried down the house ladder and its feet set on a piece of iron, in order to strengthen its feeble soul with the strong soul of the iron.​[577] At critical times the Mahakam Dyaks of Central Borneo seek to strengthen their souls {p160} by biting on an old sword or setting their feet upon it.​[578] At initiation a Brahman boy is made to tread with his right foot on a stone, while the words are repeated, “Tread on this stone; like a stone be firm”;​[579] and the same ceremony is performed, with the same words, by a Brahman bride at her marriage.​[580] In Madagascar a mode of counteracting the levity of fortune is to bury a stone at the foot of the heavy house-post.​[581] The common custom of swearing upon a stone may be based partly on a belief that the strength and stability of the stone lend confirmation to an oath. Thus the old Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus tells us that “the ancients, when they were to choose a king, were wont to stand on stones planted in the ground, and to proclaim their votes, in order to foreshadow from the steadfastness of the stones that the deed would be lasting.”​[582] There was a stone at Athens on which the nine archons stood when they swore to rule justly and according to the laws.​[583] A little to the west of St. Columba’s tomb in Iona “lie the black stones, which are so called, not from their colour, for that is grey, but from the effects that tradition says ensued upon perjury, if any one became guilty of it after swearing on these stones in the usual manner; for an oath made on them was decisive in all controversies. Mac-Donald, king of the isles, delivered the rights of their lands to his vassals in the isles and {p161} continent, with uplifted hands and bended knees, on the black stones; and in this posture, before many witnesses, he solemnly swore that he would never recall those rights which he then granted: and this was instead of his great seal. Hence it is that when one was certain of what he affirmed, he said positively, I have freedom to swear this matter upon the black stones.”​[584] Again, in the island of Arran there was a green globular stone, about the size of a goose’s egg, on which oaths were taken. It was also endowed with healing virtue, for it cured stitches in the sides of sick people if only it was laid on the affected part. They say that Macdonald, the Lord of the Isles, carried this stone about with him, and that victory was always on his side when he threw it among the enemy.​[585] Once more, in the island of Fladda there was a round blue stone, on which people swore decisive oaths, and it too healed stitches in the side like the green stone of Arran.​[586] When two Bogos of eastern Africa have a dispute, they will sometimes settle it at a certain stone, which one of them mounts. His adversary calls down the most dreadful curses on him if he forswears himself, and to every curse the man on the stone answers “Amen!”​[587] In Laconia an unwrought stone was shewn which, according to the legend, relieved the matricide Orestes of his madness as soon as he had sat down on it;​[588] and Zeus is said to have often cured himself of his love for Hera by sitting down on a certain rock in the island of Leucadia.​[589] In these cases it may have been thought that the wayward and flighty impulses of love and madness were counteracted by the steadying influence of a heavy stone.

But while a general magical efficacy may be supposed {p162} to reside in all stones by reason of their common properties of weight and solidity, special magical virtues are attributed to particular stones, or kinds of stone, in accordance with their individual or specific qualities of shape and colour. For example, a pot-hole in a rocky gorge of Central Australia contains many rounded boulders which, in the opinion of the Warramunga tribe, represent the kidneys, heart, tail, intestines, and so forth of an old euro, a species of kangaroo. Hence the natives jump into the pool, and after splashing the water all over their bodies rub one another with the stones, believing that this will enable them to catch euros.​[590] Again, not very far from Alice Springs, in Central Australia, there is a heap of stones supposed to be the vomit of two men of the eagle-hawk totem who had dined too copiously on eagle-hawk men, women, and children. The natives think that if any person caught sight of these stones he would be taken very sick on the spot; hence the heap is covered with sticks, to which every passer-by adds one in order to prevent the evil magic from coming out and turning his stomach.​[591] The Indians of Peru employed certain stones for the increase of maize, others for the increase of potatoes, and others again for the increase of cattle. The stones used to make maize grow were fashioned in the likeness of cobs of maize, and the stones destined to multiply cattle had the shape of sheep.​[592]

No people perhaps employ stones more freely for the purposes of homoeopathic magic than the natives of New Caledonia. They have stones of the most diverse shapes and colours to serve the most diverse ends—stones for sunshine, rain, famine, war, madness, death, fishing, sailing, and so forth. Thus in order to make a plantation of taro thrive they bury in the field certain stones resembling taros, praying to their ancestors at the same time. A stone marked with black lines like the leaves of the coco-nut palm helps to produce a good crop of coco-nuts. To make bread-fruit grow they use two stones of different sizes representing the unripe and the ripe fruit respectively. {p163} As soon as the fruit begins to form, they bury the small stone at the foot of the tree; and later on, when the fruit approaches maturity, they replace the small stone by the large one. The yam is the chief crop of the New Caledonians; hence the number of stones used to foster its growth is correspondingly great. Different families have different kinds of stones which, according to their diverse shapes and colours, are supposed to promote the cultivation of the various species of yams. Before the stones are buried in the yam field they are deposited beside the ancestral skulls, wetted with water, and wiped with the leaves of certain trees. Sacrifices, too, of yams and fish are offered to the dead, with the words, “Here are your offerings, in order that the crop of yams may be good.” Again, a stone carved in the shape of a canoe can make a voyage prosperous or the reverse according as it is placed before the ancestral skulls with the opening upwards or downwards, the ceremony being accompanied with prayers and offerings to the dead. Again, fish is a very important article of diet with the New Caledonians, and every kind of fish has its sacred stone, which is enclosed in a large shell and kept in the graveyard. In performing the rite to secure a good catch, the wizard swathes the stone in bandages of various colours, spits some chewed leaves on it, and, setting it up before the skulls, says, “Help us to be lucky at the fishing.”​[593] In these and many similar practices of the New Caledonians the magical efficacy of the stones appears to be deemed insufficient of itself to accomplish the end in view; it has to be reinforced by the spirits of the dead, whose help is sought by prayer and sacrifice. Moreover, the stones are regularly kept in the burial-grounds, as if to saturate them with the powerful influence of the ancestors; they are brought from the cemetery to be buried in the fields or at the foot of trees for the sake of quickening the fruits of the earth, and they are restored to the cemetery when they {p164} have discharged this duty. Thus in New Caledonia magic is blent with the worship of the dead.

In other parts of Melanesia a like belief prevails that certain sacred stones are endowed with miraculous powers which correspond in their nature to the shape of the stone. Thus a piece of water-worn coral on the beach often bears a surprising likeness to a bread-fruit. Hence in the Banks Islands a man who finds such a coral will lay it at the root of one of his bread-fruit trees in the expectation that it will make the tree bear well. If the result answers his expectation, he will then, for a proper remuneration, take stones of less-marked character from other men and let them lie near his, in order to imbue them with the magic virtue which resides in it. Similarly, a stone with little discs upon it is good to bring in money; and if a man found a large stone with a number of small ones under it, like a sow among her litter, he was sure that to offer money upon it would bring him pigs. In these and similar cases the Melanesians ascribe the marvellous power, not to the stone itself, but to its indwelling spirit; and sometimes, as we have just seen, a man endeavours to propitiate the spirit by laying down offerings on the stone.​[594] But the conception of spirits that must be propitiated lies outside the sphere of magic, and within that of religion. Where such a conception is found, as here, in conjunction with purely magical ideas and practices, the latter may generally be assumed to be the original stock on which the religious conception has been at some later time engrafted. For there are strong grounds for thinking that, in the evolution of thought, magic has preceded religion. But to this point we shall return presently.

The ancients set great store on the magical qualities of precious stones; indeed it has been maintained, with great show of reason, that such stones were used as amulets long before they were worn as mere ornaments.​[595] Thus the Greeks gave the name of tree-agate to a stone which exhibits tree-like markings, and they thought that if two {p165} of these gems were tied to the horns or neck of oxen at the plough, the crop would be sure to be plentiful.​[596] Again, they recognised a milk-stone which produced an abundant supply of milk in women if only they drank it dissolved in honey-mead.​[597] Milk-stones are used for the same purpose by Greek women in Crete and Melos at the present day;​[598] in Albania nursing mothers wear the stones in order to ensure an abundant flow of milk.​[599] In Lechrain down to modern times German women have attempted to increase their milk by stroking their breasts with a kind of alum which they call a milk-stone.​[600] Again, the Greeks believed in a stone which cured snake-bites, and hence was named the snake-stone; to test its efficacy you had only to grind the stone to powder and sprinkle the powder on the wound.​[601] The wine-coloured amethyst received its name, which means “not drunken,” because it was supposed to keep the wearer of it sober;​[602] and two brothers who desired to live at unity were advised to carry magnets about with them, which, by drawing the twain together, would clearly prevent them from falling out.​[603] In Albania people think that if the blood-stone is laid on a wound it will stop the flow of blood.​[604]

Amongst the things which homoeopathic magic seeks to turn to account are the great powers of nature, such as the waxing and the waning moon, the rising and the setting sun, the stars, and the sea. Elsewhere I have illustrated the homoeopathic virtues ascribed to the waxing and the waning moon:​[605] here I will give an Arab charm of the {p166} setting sun. When a husband is far away and his wife would bring him home to her, she procures pepper and coriander seed from a shop that faces the east, and throws them on a lighted brasier at sunset. Then turning to the east she waves a napkin with which she has wiped herself and says: “Let the setting sun return having found such and such an one, son of such and such a woman, in grief and pain. May the grief that my absence causes him make him weep, may the grief that my absence causes him make him lament, may the grief that my absence causes him make him break the obstacles that part us and bring him back to me.” If the charm is unsuccessful, she repeats it one day at sunrise, burning the same perfumes. Clearly she imagines that as the sun goes away in the west and comes back in the east, it should at its return bring the absent one home.​[606] The ancient books of the Hindoos lay down a rule that after sunset on his marriage night a man should sit silent with his wife till the stars begin to twinkle in the sky. When the pole-star appears, he should point it out to her, and, addressing the star, say, “Firm art thou; I see thee, the firm one. Firm be thou with me, O thriving one!” Then, turning to his wife, he should say, “To me Brihaspati has given thee; obtaining offspring through me, thy husband, live with me a hundred autumns.”​[607] The intention of the ceremony is plainly to guard against the fickleness of fortune and the instability of earthly bliss by the steadfast influence of the constant star. It is the wish expressed in Keats’s last sonnet:—

Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the {p167} principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance which here engages our attention, to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man, of animals, and of plants. In the flowing tide they see not merely a symbol, but a cause of exuberance, of prosperity, and of life, while in the ebbing tide they discern a real agent as well as a melancholy emblem of failure, of weakness, and of death. The Breton peasant fancies that clover sown when the tide is coming in will grow well, but that if the plant be sown at low water or when the tide is going out, it will never reach maturity, and that the cows which feed on it will burst.​[608] His wife believes that the best butter is made when the tide has just turned and is beginning to flow, that milk which foams in the churn will go on foaming till the hour of high water is past, and that water drawn from the well or milk extracted from the cow while the tide is rising will boil up in the pot or saucepan and overflow into the fire.​[609] The Galelareese say that if you wish to make oil, you should do it when the tide is high, for then you will get plenty of oil.​[610] According to some of the ancients, the skins of seals, even after they had been parted from their bodies, remained in secret sympathy with the sea, and were observed to ruffle when the tide was on the ebb.​[611] Another ancient belief, attributed to Aristotle, was that no creature can die except at ebb tide. The belief, if we can trust Pliny, was confirmed by experience, so far as regards human beings, on the coast of France.​[612] Philostratus also assures us that at Cadiz dying people never yielded up the ghost while the water was high.​[613] A like fancy still lingers in some parts of Europe. On the Cantabrian coast of Spain they think that persons who die of chronic or acute disease expire at the moment when the tide begins to recede.​[614] In Portugal, all along the coast of Wales, and on some parts of the coast of Brittany, {p168} a belief is said to prevail that people are born when the tide comes in, and die when it goes out.​[615] Dickens attests the existence of the same superstition in England. “People can’t die, along the coast,” said Mr. Peggotty, “except when the tide’s pretty nigh out. They can’t be born, unless it’s pretty nigh in—not properly born till flood.”​[616] The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent.​[617] Shakespeare must have been familiar with it, for he makes Falstaff die “even just between twelve and one, e’en at the turning o’ the tide.”​[618] We meet the belief again on the Pacific coast of North America among the Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands. Whenever a good Haida is about to die he sees a canoe manned by some of his dead friends, who come with the tide to bid him welcome to the spirit land. “Come with us now,” they say, “for the tide is about to ebb and we must depart.”​[619] At the other extremity of America the same fancy has been noted among the Indians of Southern Chili. A Chilote Indian in the last stage of consumption, after preparing to die like a good Catholic, was heard to ask how the tide was running. When his sister told him that it was still coming in, he smiled and said that he had yet a little while to live. It was his firm conviction that with the ebbing tide his soul would pass to the ocean of eternity.​[620] At Port Stephens, in New South Wales, the natives always buried their dead at flood tide, never at ebb, lest the retiring water should bear the soul of the departed to some distant country.​[621]

To ensure a long life the Chinese have recourse to certain complicated charms, which concentrate in themselves the magical essence emanating, on homoeopathic principles, from times and seasons, from persons and from things. The vehicles employed to transmit these happy influences {p169} are no other than grave-clothes. These are provided by many Chinese in their lifetime, and most people have them cut out and sewn by an unmarried girl or a very young woman, wisely calculating that, since such a person is likely to live a great many years to come, a part of her capacity to live long must surely pass into the clothes, and thus stave off for many years the time when they shall be put to their proper use. Further, the garments are made by preference in a year which has an intercalary month; for to the Chinese mind it seems plain that grave-clothes made in a year which is unusually long will possess the capacity of prolonging life in an unusually high degree. Amongst the clothes there is one robe in particular on which special pains have been lavished to imbue it with this priceless quality. It is a long silken gown of the deepest blue colour, with the word “longevity” embroidered all over it in thread of gold. To present an aged parent with one of these costly and splendid mantles, known as “longevity garments,” is esteemed by the Chinese an act of filial piety and a delicate mark of attention. As the garment purports to prolong the life of its owner, he often wears it, especially on festive occasions, in order to allow the influence of longevity, created by the many golden letters with which it is bespangled, to work their full effect upon his person. On his birthday, above all, he hardly ever fails to don it, for in China common sense bids a man lay in a large stock of vital energy on his birthday, to be expended in the form of health and vigour during the rest of the year. Attired in the gorgeous pall, and absorbing its blessed influence at every pore, the happy owner receives complacently the congratulations of friends and relations, who warmly express their admiration of these magnificent cerements, and of the filial piety which prompted the children to bestow so beautiful and useful a present on the author of their being.​[622]

Another application of the maxim that like produces {p170} like is seen in the Chinese belief that the fortunes of a town are deeply affected by its shape, and that they must vary according to the character of the thing which that shape most nearly resembles. Thus it is related that long ago the town of Tsuen-cheu-fu, the outlines of which are like those of a carp, frequently fell a prey to the depredations of the neighbouring city of Yung-chun, which is shaped like a fishing-net, until the inhabitants of the former town conceived the plan of erecting two tall pagodas in their midst. These pagodas, which still tower above the city of Tsuen-cheu-fu, have ever since exercised the happiest influence over its destiny by intercepting the imaginary net before it could descend and entangle in its meshes the imaginary carp.​[623] Some thirty years ago the wise men of Shanghai were much exercised to discover the cause of a local rebellion. On careful enquiry they ascertained that the rebellion was due to the shape of a large new temple which had most unfortunately been built in the shape of a tortoise, an animal of the very worst character. The difficulty was serious, the danger was pressing; for to pull down the temple would have been impious, and to let it stand as it was would be to court a succession of similar or worse disasters. However, the genius of the local professors of geomancy, rising to the occasion, triumphantly surmounted the difficulty and obviated the danger. By filling up two wells, which represented the eyes of the tortoise, they at once blinded that disreputable animal and rendered him incapable of doing further mischief.​[624]

Sometimes homoeopathic or imitative magic is called in to annul an evil omen by accomplishing it in mimicry. The effect is to circumvent destiny by substituting a mock calamity for a real one. At Kampot, a small seaport of Cambodia, a French official saw one morning a troop of armed guards escorting a man who was loaded with chains. They passed his house and went away towards the country, preceded by a man who drew lugubrious sounds from a gong, and followed by a score of idlers. The official thought it must be an execution and was surprised to have heard nothing {p171} about it. Afterwards he received from his interpreter the following lucid explanation of the affair. “In our country it sometimes happens that a man walking in the fields has nothing but the upper part of his body visible to people at a distance. Such an appearance is a sign that he will certainly die soon, and that is what happened last evening to the man you saw. Going homewards across the plain he carried over his shoulder a bundle of palms with long slender stems ending in fan-like tufts of leaves. His family, returning from their work, followed him at a distance, and soon they saw his head, shoulders, and arms moving along the road and carrying the branches, while his body and legs were invisible. Struck with consternation at the sight, his mother and wife repaired in all haste to the magistrate and implored him to proceed against the man after the fashion customary in such cases. The magistrate replied that the custom was ridiculous, and that he would be still more ridiculous if he complied with it. However, the two women insisted on it so vehemently, saying it was the only way to avert the omen, that he decided to do as they wished, and gave them his word that he would have the man arrested next morning at sunrise. So this morning the guards came to seize the poor man, telling him that he was accused of rebellion against the king, and without listening to his protestations of innocence they dragged him off to court. His family pretended to be surprised and followed him weeping. The judges had him clapped into irons and ordered him to instant execution. His own entreaties and the prayers of his family being all in vain, he begged that the priests of the pagoda might come and bear witness to his innocence and join their supplications to those of his friends. They came in haste, but receiving a hint how the wind lay they advised the condemned man to submit to his fate and departed to pray for his soul at the temple. Then the man was led away to a rice-field, in the middle of which a banana-tree, stripped of its leaves, had been set up as a stake. To this he was tied, and while his friends took their last leave of him, the sword of the executioner flashed through the air and at a single stroke swept off the top of the banana-tree above the head of the {p172} pretended victim. The man had given himself up for dead. His friends, while they knocked off his irons, explained to him the meaning of it all and led him away to thank the magistrates and priests for what they had done to save him from the threatened catastrophe.” The writer who reports the case adds that if the magistrates had not good-naturedly lent themselves to the pious fraud, the man’s family would have contrived in some other way to impress him with the terror of death in order to save his life.​[625]

Again, two missionaries were journeying not long ago through Central Celebes, accompanied by some Toradjas. Unfortunately the note of a certain bird called teka-teka was heard to the left. This boded ill, and the natives insisted that they must either turn back or pass the night on the spot. When the missionaries refused to do either, an expedient was hit upon which allowed them to continue the journey in safety. A miniature hut was made out of a leafy branch, and in it were deposited a leaf moistened with spittle and a hair from the head of one of the party. Then one of the Toradjas said, “We shall pass the night here,” and addressing the hair he spoke thus: “If any misfortune should happen through the cry of that bird, may it fall on you.” In this way the evil omen was diverted from the real men and directed against their substitute the hair, and perhaps also the spittle, in the tiny hut.​[626] When a Cherokee has dreamed of being stung by a snake, he is treated just in the same way as if he had really been stung; otherwise the place would swell and ulcerate in the usual manner, though perhaps years might pass before it did so. It is the ghost of a snake that has bitten him in sleep.​[627] One night a Huron Indian dreamed that he had been taken and burned alive by his hereditary foes the Iroquois. Next morning a council was held on the affair, and the following measures {p173} were adopted to save the man’s life. Twelve or thirteen fires were kindled in the large hut where they usually burned their prisoners to death. Every man seized a flaming brand and applied it to the naked body of the dreamer, who shrieked with pain. Thrice he ran round the hut, escaping from one fire only to fall into another. As each man thrust his blazing torch at the sufferer he said, “Courage, my brother, it is thus that we have pity on you.” At last he was allowed to escape. Passing out of the hut he caught up a dog which was held ready for the purpose, and throwing it over his shoulder carried it through the wigwams as a sacred offering to the war-god, praying him to accept the animal instead of himself. Afterwards the dog was killed, roasted, and eaten, exactly as the Indians were wont to roast and eat their captives.​[628]

In Madagascar this mode of cheating the fates is reduced to a regular system. Here every man’s fortune is determined by the day or hour of his birth, and if that happens to be an unlucky one his fate is sealed, unless the mischief can be extracted, as the phrase goes, by means of a substitute. The ways of extracting the mischief are various. For example, if a man is born on the first day of the second month (February), his house will be burnt down when he comes of age. To take time by the forelock and avoid this catastrophe, the friends of the infant will set up a shed in a field or in the cattle-fold and burn it. If the ceremony is to be really effective, the child and his mother should be placed in the shed and only plucked, like brands, from the burning hut before it is too late. Again, dripping November is the month of tears, and he who is born in it is born to sorrow. But in order to disperse the clouds that thus gather over his future, he has nothing to do but to take the lid off a boiling pot and wave it about. The drops that fall from it will accomplish his destiny and so prevent the tears from trickling from his eyes. Again, if fate has decreed that a young girl, still unwed, should see her children, still unborn, descend before her with sorrow to the grave, she can avert the calamity as follows. She kills a grasshopper, wraps it in a rag to represent a shroud, and mourns over it like {p174} Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted. Moreover, she takes a dozen or more other grasshoppers, and having removed some of their superfluous legs and wings she lays them about their dead and shrouded fellow. The buzz of the tortured insects and the agitated motions of their mutilated limbs represent the shrieks and contortions of the mourners at a funeral. After burying the deceased grasshopper she leaves the rest to continue their mourning till death releases them from their pain; and having bound up her dishevelled hair she retires from the grave with the step and carriage of a person plunged in grief. Thenceforth she looks cheerfully forward to seeing her children survive her; for it cannot be that she should mourn and bury them twice over. Once more, if fortune has frowned on a man at his birth and penury has marked him for her own, he can easily eraze the mark in question by purchasing a couple of cheap pearls, price three halfpence, and burying them. For who but the rich of this world can thus afford to fling pearls away?​[629]