In Pasir, a district of eastern Borneo, the afterbirth is carefully treated and kept in an earthen pot or basket in the house until the remains of the navel-string have fallen off. All the time it is in the house candles are burned and a little food is placed beside the pot. When the navel-string has fallen off, it is placed with the placenta in the pot, and the two are buried in the ground near the house. The reason why the people take this care of the afterbirth is that they believe it able to cause the child all kinds of sickness and mishaps.​[706] The Malas, a low Telugu caste of Southern India, bury the placenta in a pot with leaves in some convenient place, generally in the back yard, lest dogs or other animals should carry it off; for if that were to happen they fancy that the child would be of a wandering disposition.​[707] The Khasis of Assam keep the placenta in a pot in the house until the child has been formally named. When that ceremony is over, the father waves the pot containing the placenta thrice over the child’s head, and then hangs it to a tree outside of the village.​[708] In some Malayo-Siamese families of the Patani States it is customary to bury the afterbirth under a banana-tree, the condition of which is thenceforth regarded as ominous of the child’s fate for good or ill.​[709] A Chinese medical work prescribes that “the placenta should be stored away in a felicitous spot under the salutary influences of the sky or the moon, deep in the ground, and with earth piled up over it carefully, in order that the child may be ensured a long life. If it is devoured by a swine or dog, the child loses its intellect; if insects or ants eat it, the child becomes scrofulous; if crows or magpies swallow it, {p195} the child will have an abrupt or violent death; if it is cast into the fire, the child incurs running sores.”​[710] The Japanese preserve the navel-string most carefully and bury it with the dead in the grave.​[711]

Among the Gallas of East Africa the navel-string is carefully kept, sewn up in leather, and serves as an amulet for female camels, which then become the child’s property, together with all the young they give birth to.​[712] The Baganda believe that every person is born with a double, and this double they identify with the afterbirth, which they regard as a second child. Further, they think that the afterbirth has a ghost, and that the ghost is in that portion of the navel-string which remains attached to the child after birth. This ghost must be preserved if the child is to be healthy. Hence when the navel-string drops off, it is rubbed with butter, swathed in bark-cloth, and kept through life under the name of “the twin” (mulongo). The afterbirth is wrapt up in plantain leaves and buried by the child’s mother at the root of a plantain tree, where it is protected against wild beasts. If the child be a boy, the tree chosen is of the kind whose fruit is made into beer; if the child be a girl, the tree is of the kind whose fruit is eaten. The plantain tree at whose root the afterbirth is buried becomes sacred until the fruit has ripened and been used. Only the father’s mother may come near it and dig about it; all other people are kept from it by a rope of plantain fibre which is tied from tree to tree in a circle round about the sacred plantain. All the child’s secretions are thrown by the mother at the root of the tree; when the fruit is ripe, the father’s mother cuts it and makes it into beer or cooks it, according to the sex of the child, and the relatives of the father’s clan then come and partake of the sacred feast. After the meal the father must go in to his own wife, for should he neglect to do so, and should some other member of the clan have sexual relations with his wife first, the child’s spirit would leave it and go into the other woman. Further, {p196} the navel-string plays a part at the ceremony of naming a child, the object of which among the Baganda is to determine whether the child is legitimate or not. For this purpose the navel-string (the so-called “twin”) is dropped into a bowl containing a mixture of beer, milk, and water; if it floats, the child is legitimate and the clan accepts it as a member; if it sinks, the child is disowned by the clan and the mother is punished for adultery. Afterwards the navel-string or “twin” (mulongo) is either kept by the clan or buried along with the afterbirth at the root of the plantain tree. Such are the customs observed with regard to the afterbirth and navel-string of Baganda commoners. The king’s navel-string or “twin,” wrapt in bark-cloths and decorated with beads, is treated like a person and confided to the care of the Kimbugwe, the second officer of the country, who has a special house built for it within his enclosure. Every month, when the new moon first appears in the sky, the Kimbugwe carries the bundle containing the “twin” in procession, with fife and drums playing, to the king, while the royal drum is beating in the royal enclosure. The king examines it and hands it back to him. After that, the minister returns the precious bundle to its own house in his enclosure and places it in the doorway, where it remains all night. Next morning it is taken from its wrappings, smeared with butter, and again set in the doorway until the evening, when it is swathed once more in its bark-cloths and restored to its proper resting-place. After the king’s death his “twin” is deposited, along with his jawbone, in the huge hut which forms his temple. The spirit of the dead king is supposed to dwell in these two relics; they are placed on the daïs when he wishes to hold his court and when he is oracularly consulted on special occasions.​[713]

The Incas of Peru preserved the navel-string with the greatest care, and gave it to the child to suck whenever it fell ill.​[714] In ancient Mexico they used to give a boy’s {p197} navel-string to soldiers, to be buried by them on a field of battle, in order that the boy might thus acquire a passion for war. But the navel-string of a girl was buried beside the domestic hearth, because this was believed to inspire her with a love of home and a taste for cooking and baking.​[715] Algonquin women hung the navel-string round the child’s neck; if he lost it, they thought the child would be stupid and spiritless.​[716] Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia the navel-string was sewed up by the mother in a piece of buckskin embroidered with hair, quills, or beads. It was then tied to the broad buckskin band which extended round the head of the cradle on the outside. Many thongs hung from it, each carrying fawn’s hoofs and beads that jingled when the cradle was moved. If the navel-string were lost, they looked on it as a calamity, for they believed that in after years the child would become foolish or would be lost in the chase or on a journey.​[717] Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia the afterbirth of girls is buried at high-water mark, in the belief that this will render them expert at digging for clam. The afterbirth of boys is sometimes exposed at places where ravens will eat it, because the boys will thus acquire the raven’s prophetic vision. The same Indians are persuaded that the navel-string may be the means of imparting a variety of accomplishments to its original owner. Thus, if it is fastened to a dancing mask, which is then worn by a skilful dancer, the child will dance well. If it is attached to a knife, which is thereafter used by a cunning carver, the child will carve well. Again, if the parents wish their son to sing beautifully, they tie his navel-string to the baton of a singing-master. Then the boy calls on the singing-master every morning while the artist is eating his breakfast. The votary of the Muses thereupon takes his baton and moves it twice down the right side and twice down the left side of the boy’s body, after which he gives the lad some of his food to eat. That {p198} is an infallible way of making the boy a beautiful singer.​[718] Among the Cherokees the navel-string of an infant girl is buried under the corn mortar, in order that the girl may grow up to be a good baker; but the navel-string of a boy is hung up on a tree in the woods, in order that he may be a hunter. Among the Kiowas the navel-string of a girl is sewn up in a small beaded pouch and worn by her at her belt as she grows to womanhood. If the girl’s mother ever sells the belt and pouch, she is careful to extract the navel-string from the pouch before the bargain is struck. Should the child die, the pouch containing her navel-string would be fastened to a stick and set up over her grave.​[719]

Even in Europe many people still believe that a person’s destiny is more or less bound up with that of his navel-string or afterbirth. Thus in Rhenish Bavaria the navel-string is kept for a while wrapt up in a piece of old linen, and then cut or pricked to pieces according as the child is a boy or a girl, in order that he or she may grow up to be a skilful workman or a good sempstress.​[720] In Berlin the midwife commonly delivers the dried navel-string to the father with a strict injunction to preserve it carefully, for so long as it is kept the child will live and thrive and be free from sickness.​[721] In Beauce and Perche the people are careful to throw the navel-string neither into water nor into fire, believing that if that were done the child would be drowned or burned.​[722] Among the Ruthenians of Bukowina and Galicia, the owner of a cow sometimes endeavours to increase its milk by throwing its afterbirth into a spring, “in order that, just as the water flows from the spring, so milk may flow in abundance from the udders of the cow.”​[723] Some German peasants think that the afterbirth of a cow must be hung up in an apple-tree, otherwise the cow would not have {p199} a calf next year.​[724] Similarly at Cleveland in Yorkshire, when a mare foals, it is the custom to hang up the placenta in a tree, particularly in a thorn-tree, in order to secure luck with the foal. “Should the birth take place in the fields, this suspension is most carefully attended to, while as for the requirements of such events at the homestead, in not a few instances there is a certain tree not far from the farm-buildings still specially marked out for the reception of these peculiar pendants. In one instance lately, I heard of a larch tree so devoted, but admittedly in default of the thorn; the old thorn-tree long employed for the purpose having died out.”​[725] Again, in Europe children born with a caul are considered lucky;​[726] in Holland, as in the East Indies, they can see ghosts.​[727] The Icelanders also hold that a child born with a caul will afterwards possess the gift of second sight, that he will never be harmed by sorcery, and will be victorious in every contest he undertakes, provided he has the caul dried and carries it with him.​[728] This latter belief explains why both in ancient and modern times advocates have bought cauls with the hope of winning their cases by means of them.​[729] Probably they thought that the spirit in the caul would prove an invincible ally to the person who had purchased its services. In like manner the aborigines of Central Australia believe that their sacred sticks or stones (churinga) are intimately associated with the spirits of the dead men to whom they belonged, and that in a fight a man who carries one of these sticks or stones will certainly vanquish an adversary who has no such talisman.​[730] Further, it is an ancient belief in Iceland that the child’s guardian spirit or a part of its soul has its seat in the chorion or foetal membrane, which usually forms part of the afterbirth, but is known as the caul when the child {p200} happens to be born with it. Hence the chorion was itself known as the fylgia or guardian spirit. It might not be thrown away under the open sky, lest demons should get hold of it and work the child harm thereby, or lest wild beasts should eat it up. It might not be burned, for if it were burned the child would have no fylgia, which would be as bad as to have no shadow. Formerly it was customary to bury the chorion under the threshold, where the mother stepped over it daily when she rose from bed. If the chorion was thus treated, the man had in after life a guardian spirit in the shape of a bear, an eagle, a wolf, an ox, or a boar. The guardian spirits of cunning men and wizards had the shape of a fox, while those of beautiful women appeared as swans. In all these forms the guardian spirits formerly announced their coming and presented themselves to the persons to whom they belonged; but nowadays both the belief and the custom have changed in many respects.​[731]

Thus in many parts of the world the navel-string, or more commonly the afterbirth, is regarded as a living being, the brother or sister of the infant, or as the material object in which the guardian spirit of the child or part of its soul resides. This latter belief we have found among the aborigines of Queensland, the Battas of Sumatra, and the Norsemen of Iceland. In accordance with such beliefs it has been customary to preserve these parts of the body, at least for a time, with the utmost care, lest the character, the fate, or even the life of the person to whom they belong should be endangered by their injury or loss. Further, the sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between a person and his afterbirth or navel-string comes out very clearly in the widespread custom of treating the afterbirth or navel-string in ways which are supposed to influence for life the character and career of the person, making him, if it is a man, a swift runner, a nimble climber, a strong swimmer, a skilful hunter, or a brave soldier, and making her, if it is a woman, an expert fisher, a cunning sempstress, a good cook or baker, and so forth. Thus the beliefs and usages {p201} concerned with the afterbirth or placenta, and to a less extent with the navel-string, present a remarkable parallel to the widespread doctrine of the transferable or external soul and the customs founded on it. Hence it is hardly rash to conjecture that the resemblance is no mere chance coincidence, but that in the afterbirth or placenta we have a physical basis (not necessarily the only one) for the theory and practice of the external soul. The consideration of that subject is reserved for a later part of this work.​[732]

A curious application of the doctrine of contagious magic is the relation commonly believed to exist between a wounded man and the agent of the wound, so that whatever is subsequently done by or to the agent must correspondingly affect the patient either for good or evil. Thus Pliny tells us that if you have wounded a man and are sorry for it, you have only to spit on the hand that gave the wound, and the pain of the sufferer will be instantly alleviated.​[733] In Melanesia, if a man’s friends get possession of the arrow which wounded him, they keep it in a damp place or in cool leaves, for then the inflammation will be trifling and will soon subside. Meantime the enemy who shot the arrow is hard at work to aggravate the wound by all the means in his power. For this purpose he and his friends drink hot and burning juices and chew irritating leaves, for this will clearly inflame and irritate the wound. Further, they keep the bow near the fire to make the wound which it has inflicted hot; and for the same reason they put the arrow-head, if it has been recovered, into the fire. Moreover, they are careful to keep the bow-string taut and to twang it occasionally, for this will cause the wounded man to suffer from tension of the nerves and spasms of tetanus.​[734] Similarly when a Kwakiutl Indian of British Columbia had bitten a piece out of an enemy’s arm, he used to drink hot water afterwards for the purpose of thereby inflaming the wound in his foe’s {p202} body.​[735] Among the Lkuñgen Indians of the same region it is a rule that an arrow, or any other weapon that has wounded a man, must be hidden by his friends, who have to be careful not to bring it near the fire till the wound is healed. If a knife or an arrow which is still covered with a man’s blood were thrown into the fire, the wounded man would suffer very much.​[736] In the Yerkla-mining tribe of south-eastern Australia it is thought that if any one but the medicine-man touches the flint knife with which a boy has been subincised, the boy will thereby be made very ill. So seriously is this belief held that if the lad chanced thereafter to fall sick and die, the man who had touched the knife would be killed.​[737] “It is constantly received and avouched,” says Bacon, “that the anointing of the weapon that maketh the wound will heal the wound itself. In this experiment, upon the relation of men of credit (though myself, as yet, am not fully inclined to believe it), you shall note the points following: first, the ointment wherewith this is done is made of divers ingredients, whereof the strangest and hardest to come by are the moss upon the skull of a dead man unburied, and the fats of a boar and a bear killed in the act of generation.” The precious ointment compounded out of these and other ingredients was applied, as the philosopher explains, not to the wound but to the weapon, and that even though the injured man was at a great distance and knew nothing about it. The experiment, he tells us, had been tried of wiping the ointment off the weapon without the knowledge of the person hurt, with the result that he was presently in a great rage of pain until the weapon was anointed again. Moreover, “it is affirmed that if you cannot get the weapon, yet if you put an instrument of iron or wood resembling the weapon into the wound, whereby it bleedeth, the anointing of that instrument will serve and work the effect.”​[738] Remedies of the {p203} sort which Bacon deemed worthy of his attention are still in vogue in the eastern counties of England. Thus in Suffolk if a man cuts himself with a bill-hook or a scythe he always takes care to keep the weapon bright, and oils it to prevent the wound from festering. If he runs a thorn or, as he calls it, a bush into his hand, he oils or greases the extracted thorn. A man came to a doctor with an inflamed hand, having run a thorn into it while he was hedging. On being told that the hand was festering, he remarked, “That didn’t ought to, for I greased the bush well arter I pulled it out.” If a horse wounds its foot by treading on a nail, a Suffolk groom will invariably preserve the nail, clean it, and grease it every day, to prevent the foot from festering. Arguing in the same way, a Suffolk woman, whose sister had burnt her face with a flat-iron, observed that “the face would never heal till the iron had been put out of the way; and even if it did heal, it would be sure to break out again every time the iron was heated.”​[739] At Norwich in June 1902 a woman named Matilda Henry accidentally ran a nail into her foot. Without examining the wound, or even removing her stocking, she caused her daughter to grease the nail, saying that if this were done no harm would come of the hurt. A few days afterwards she died of lockjaw.​[740] Similarly Cambridgeshire labourers think that if a horse has run a nail into its foot, it is necessary to grease the nail with lard or oil and put it away in some safe place, or the horse will not recover. A few years ago a veterinary surgeon was sent for to attend a horse which had ripped its side open on the hinge of a farm gatepost. On arriving at the farm he found that nothing had been done to the wounded horse, but that a man was busy trying to pry the hinge out of the gatepost in order that it might be greased and put away, which, in the opinion of the Cambridge wiseacres, would conduce to the recovery of the {p204} animal.​[741] Similarly Essex rustics opine that, if a man has been stabbed with a knife, it is essential to his recovery that the knife should be greased and laid across the bed on which the sufferer is lying.​[742] So in Bavaria you are directed to anoint a linen rag with grease and tie it on the edge of the axe that cut you, taking care to keep the sharp edge upwards. As the grease on the axe dries, your wound heals.​[743] Similarly in the Harz mountains they say that if you cut yourself, you ought to smear the knife or the scissors with fat and put the instrument away in a dry place in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. As the knife dries, the wound heals.​[744] Other people, however, in Germany say that you should stick the knife in some damp place in the ground, and that your hurt will heal as the knife rusts.​[745] Others again, in Bavaria, recommend you to smear the axe or whatever it is with blood and put it under the eaves.​[746]

The train of reasoning which thus commends itself to English and German rustics, in common with the savages of Melanesia and America, is carried a step further by the aborigines of Central Australia, who conceive that under certain circumstances the near relations of a wounded man must grease themselves, restrict their diet, and regulate their behaviour in other ways in order to ensure his recovery. Thus when a lad has been circumcised and the wound is not yet healed, his mother may not eat opossum, or a certain kind of lizard, or carpet snake, or any kind of fat, for otherwise she would retard the healing of the boy’s wound. Every day she greases her digging-sticks and never lets them out of her sight; at night she sleeps with them close to her head. No one is allowed to touch them. Every day also she rubs her body all over with grease, as in some way this is believed to help her son’s recovery.​[747] Another {p205} refinement of the same principle is due to the ingenuity of the German peasant. It is said that when one of his pigs or sheep breaks its leg, a farmer of Rhenish Bavaria or Hesse will bind up the leg of a chair with bandages and splints in due form. For some days thereafter no one may sit on that chair, move it, or knock up against it; for to do so would pain the injured pig or sheep and hinder the cure.​[748] In this last case it is clear that we have passed wholly out of the region of contagious magic and into the region of homoeopathic or imitative magic; the chair-leg, which is treated instead of the beast’s leg, in no sense belongs to the animal, and the application of bandages to it is a mere simulation of the treatment which a more rational surgery would bestow on the real patient.

The sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between a man and the weapon which has wounded him is probably founded on the notion that the blood on the weapon continues to feel with the blood in his body. For a like reason the Papuans of Tumleo, an island off German New Guinea, are careful to throw into the sea the bloody bandages with which their wounds have been dressed, for they fear that if these rags fell into the hands of an enemy he might injure them magically thereby. Once when a man with a wound in his mouth, which bled constantly, came to the missionaries to be treated, his faithful wife took great pains to collect all the blood and cast it into the sea.​[749] Strained and unnatural as this idea may seem to us, it is perhaps less so than the belief that magic sympathy is maintained between a person and his clothes, so that whatever is done to the clothes will be felt by the man himself, even though he may be far away at the time. That is why these same Papuans of Tumleo search most anxiously for the smallest scrap which they may have lost of their scanty garments,​[750] and why other Papuans, travelling through the thick forest, will stop and carefully scrape from a bough any clot of red pomade which {p206} may have adhered to it from their greasy heads.​[751] In the Wotjobaluk tribe of Victoria a wizard would sometimes get hold of a man’s opossum rug and tie it up with some small spindle-shaped pieces of casuarina wood, on which he had made certain marks, such as likenesses of his victim and of a poisonous snake. This bundle he would then roast slowly in the fire, and as he did so the man who had owned the opossum rug would fall sick. Should the patient suspect what was happening, he would send to the wizard and beg him to let him have the rug back. If the wizard consented, “he would give the thing back, telling the sick man’s friends to put it in water, so as to wash the fire out.” In such cases, we are told, the sick man would feel cooled and would most likely recover.​[752] In Tanna, one of the New Hebrides, a man who had a grudge at another and desired his death would try to get possession of a cloth which had touched the sweat of his enemy’s body. If he succeeded, he rubbed the cloth carefully over with the leaves and twigs of a certain tree, rolled and bound cloth, twigs, and leaves into a long sausage-shaped bundle, and burned it slowly in the fire. As the bundle was consumed, the victim fell ill, and when it was reduced to ashes, he died.​[753] In this last form of enchantment, however, the magical sympathy may be supposed to exist not so much between the man and the cloth as between the man and the sweat which issued from his body. But in other cases of the same sort it seems that the garment by itself is enough to give the sorcerer a hold upon his victim. The witch in Theocritus, while she melted an image or lump of wax in order that her faithless lover might melt with love of her, did not forget to throw into the fire a shred of his cloak which he had dropped in her house.​[754] In Prussia they say that if you cannot catch a thief, the next best thing you can do is to get hold of a garment which he may have shed in his flight; for it {p207} you beat it soundly, the thief will fall sick. This belief is firmly rooted in the popular mind. Some seventy or eighty years ago, in the neighbourhood of Berend, a man was detected trying to steal honey, and fled, leaving his coat behind him. When he heard that the enraged owner of the honey was mauling his lost coat, he was so alarmed that he took to his bed and died.​[755] But in Germany it is not every stick that is good enough to beat an absent man with. It should be a hazel rod cut before sunrise on Good Friday. Some say it should be a one-year-old hazel-sapling, and that you should cut it with three strokes, looking to the east, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Others think the best time for cutting the rod is at the new moon on a Tuesday morning before sunrise. Once you have got this valuable instrument, you have only to spread a garment on a mole-hill or on the threshold, and to lay on with hearty goodwill, mentioning the name of the person whom you desire to injure. Though he may be miles off, he will feel every whack as if it descended on his body.​[756]

Again, magic may be wrought on a man sympathetically, not only through his clothes and severed parts of himself, but also through the impressions left by his body in sand or earth. In particular, it is a world-wide superstition that by injuring footprints you injure the feet that made them. Thus the natives of south-eastern Australia think that they can lame a man by placing sharp pieces of quartz, glass, bone, or charcoal in his footprints. Rheumatic pains are often attributed by them to this cause. Seeing a Tatungolung man very lame, Mr. Howitt asked him what was the matter. He said, “Some fellow has put bottle in my foot.” He was suffering from rheumatism, but believed that an enemy had found his foot-track and had buried in it a piece of broken bottle, the magical influence of which {p208} had entered his foot. On another occasion Mr. Howitt’s party was followed by a number of strange natives who looked with great interest at the footprints of the horses and camels. A black fellow with Mr. Howitt was much alarmed, and declared that the strangers were putting poison in his footsteps.​[757] The Wyingurri, a tribe on the border of western Australia, have a magical instrument made of resin and rats’ teeth which they call a sun, because it is supposed to contain the solar heat. By placing it on a man’s tracks they think they can throw him into a violent fever, which will soon burn him up.​[758] In the Unmatjera tribe of Central Australia, when a boy has been circumcised he must hide in the bush, and if he should see a woman’s tracks he must be very careful to jump over them. For if his foot were to touch them, the spirit of the louse which lives in the woman’s hair would go to him, and his head would be full of lice.​[759] In New Britain it is thought that you can cause the sickness or death of a man by pricking his footprints with the sting of a sting-ray.​[760] The Maoris imagine that they can work grievous harm to an enemy by taking up earth from his footprints, depositing it in a sacred place, and performing a ceremony over it.​[761] In Savage Island a common form of witchcraft was to take up the soil on which an enemy had set his foot, and to carry it to a sacred place, where it was solemnly cursed, in order that the man might be afflicted with lameness.​[762] The Galelareese think that if anybody sticks something sharp into your footprints while you are walking, you will be wounded in your feet.​[763] In Japan, if a house has been robbed by night {p209} and the burglar’s footprints are visible in the morning, the householder will burn mugwort on them, hoping thereby to hurt the robber’s feet so that he cannot run far, and the police may easily overtake him.​[764] Among the Karens of Burma some people are said to keep poison fangs for the purpose of killing their enemies. These they thrust into the footprints of the person whom they wish to destroy, and soon he finds himself with a sore foot, as if a dog had bitten it. The sore rapidly grows worse till death follows.​[765] Peasants of northern India commonly attribute all sorts of pains and sores to the machinations of a witch or sorcerer who has meddled with their footprints.​[766] For example, with the Chero, a Dravidian race of labourers in the hill country of Mirzapur, a favourite mode of harming an enemy is to measure his footprints in the dust with a straw and then mutter a spell over them; that brings on wounds and sores in his feet.​[767] Such magical operations have been familiar to the Hindoos from of old. In the Kausika Sutra, a book of sorcery, it is directed that, while your foe is walking southward, you should make cuts in his footprint with the leaf of a certain tree or with the blade of an axe (it is not quite clear which is to be used); then you must tie dust from the footprint in the leaf of a certain tree (Butea frondosa) and throw it into a frying-pan; if it crackles in the pan, your enemy is undone.​[768] Another old Hindoo charm was to obtain earth from the footprint of a beleaguered king and scatter it in the wind.​[769] The Herero of South Africa take earth from the footprints of a lion and throw it on the track of an enemy, with the wish, “May the lion kill you.”​[770] The Ovambo of the same region believe that they can be bewitched by an enemy through the dust or sand {p210} of their footprints. Hence a man who has special reason to dread the spite of a foe will carefully efface his footprints with a branch as fast as he makes them.​[771] The Ewe-speaking people of West Africa fancy they can drive an enemy mad by throwing a magic powder on his footprints.​[772] Among the Shuswap and Carrier Indians of North-west America shamans used to bewitch a man by taking earth from the spot on which he had stood and placing it in their medicine-bags; then their victim fell sick or died.​[773] In North Africa the magic of the footprints is sometimes used for more amiable purposes. A woman who wishes to attach her husband or lover to herself will take earth from the print of his right foot, tie it up with some of his hairs in a packet, and wear the packet next her skin.​[774]

Similar practices prevail in various parts of Europe. Thus in Mecklenburg it is thought that if you drive a nail into a man’s footprint he will fall lame; sometimes it is required that the nail should be taken from a coffin.​[775] A like mode of injuring an enemy is resorted to in some parts of France.​[776] It is said that there was an old woman who used to frequent Stow in Suffolk, and she was a witch. If, while she walked, any one went after her and stuck a nail or a knife into her footprint in the dust, the dame could not stir a step till it was withdrawn.​[777] More commonly, it would seem, in Germany earth from the footprint is tied up in a cloth and hung in the chimney smoke; as it dries up, so the man withers away or his foot shrivels up.​[778] The same practice and the same belief are said to be common in Matogrosso, a province of Brazil.​[779] A Bohemian {p211} variation of the charm is to put the earth from the footprint in a pot with nails, needles, broken glass, and so forth, then set the pot on the fire and let it boil till it bursts. After that the man whose footprint has been boiled will have a lame leg for the rest of his life.​[780] Among the Lithuanians the proceeding is somewhat different. They dig up the earth from the person’s footprint and bury it, with various incantations, in a graveyard. That causes the person to sicken and die.​[781] A similar practice is reported from Mecklenburg.​[782] The Esthonians of the island of Oesel measure the footprint with a stick and bury the stick, thereby undermining the health of the man or woman whose foot made the mark.​[783] Among the South Slavs a girl will dig up the earth from the footprints of the man she loves and put it in a flower-pot. Then she plants in the pot a marigold, a flower that is thought to be fadeless. And as its golden blossom grows and blooms and never fades, so shall her sweetheart’s love grow and bloom, and never, never fade.​[784] Thus the love-spell acts on the man through the earth he trod on. An old Danish mode of concluding a treaty was based on the same idea of the sympathetic connexion between a man and his footprints: the covenanting parties sprinkled each other’s footprints with their own blood, thus giving a pledge of fidelity.​[785] In ancient Greece superstitions of the same sort seem to have been current, for it was thought that if a horse stepped on the track of a wolf he was seized with numbness;​[786] and a maxim ascribed to Pythagoras forbade people to pierce a man’s footprints with a nail or a knife.​[787]

The same superstition is turned to account by hunters in many parts of the world for the purpose of running down the game. Thus a German huntsman will stick a nail taken from a coffin into the fresh spoor of the quarry, {p212} believing that this will hinder the animal from escaping.​[788] The aborigines of Victoria put hot embers in the tracks of the animals they were pursuing.​[789] Hottentot hunters throw into the air a handful of sand taken from the footprints of the game, believing that this will bring the animal down.​[790] Thompson Indians used to lay charms on the tracks of wounded deer; after that they deemed it superfluous to pursue the animal any further that day, for being thus charmed it could not travel far and would soon die.​[791] Similarly, Ojebway Indians placed “medicine” on the track of the first deer or bear they met with, supposing that this would soon bring the animal into sight, even if it were two or three days’ journey off; for this charm had power to compress a journey of several days into a few hours.​[792] Ewe hunters of West Africa stab the footprints of game with a sharp-pointed stick in order to maim the quarry and allow them to come up with it.​[793] If Esthonian peasants find a wolf’s dung on a beast’s tracks, they burn it and scatter the ashes to the wind. This gives the wolf a pain in his stomach and makes him lose his way.​[794] The Aino think that hares bewitch people. Hence if one of them sees the track of a hare in the snow near his hut, he should carefully scoop it up with a water-ladle and then turn it upside down, saying as he does so that he buries the soul of the hare under the snow, and expressing a wish that the animal may sicken and die.​[795] In order to recover strayed cattle, the Zulus take the animals’ dung and earth from their footprints and place both in the chief’s vessel, round which a magic circle is drawn. Then the chief says: “I have now conquered them. Those cattle are now here; I am now sitting upon them. I do not know in what way they will escape.”​[796] {p213}