Among the Matabeles of South Africa the witch-doctors are supposed to be on speaking terms with spirits, and their influence is described as tremendous; in the time of King Lo Bengula some years ago “their power was as great as, if not greater than, the king’s.”​[1244] Similarly speaking of the South African tribes in general, Dr. Moffat says that “the rain-maker is in the estimation of the people no mean personage, possessing an influence over the minds of the people superior even to that of the king, who is likewise compelled to yield to the dictates of this arch-official.”​[1245] In Matabeleland the rainy season falls in November, December, January, and February. For several weeks before the rain sets in, the clouds gather in heavy banks, dark and lowering. Then the king is busy with his magicians compounding potions of wondrous strength to make the labouring clouds discharge their pent-up burden on the thirsty earth. He may be seen gazing at every black cloud, for his people flock from all parts to beg rain from him, “their rain-maker,” for their parched fields; and they thank and praise him when a heavy rain has fallen.​[1246] A letter dated from Bulawayo, the twentieth of November 1880, records that Lo Bengula, king of the Matabeles, “arrived yesterday evening at his kraal of ‘the White Rocks.’ He brought with him the rain to his people. For according to the ideas of the Matabeles, it is the king who ought to ‘make the rain {p352} and the good season’ in all senses of the word. Now Lo Bengula had chosen well the day and the hour, for it was in the midst of a tremendous storm that the king made his solemn entrance into his capital.” “You must know that the arrival of the king and of the rain gives rise every year to a little festival. For the rain is the great benefit conferred by the king, the pledge of future harvests and of plenty, after eight months of desolating drought.” To bring down the needed showers the king of the Matabeles boils a magic hell-broth in a cauldron, which sends up volumes of steam to the blue sky. But to make assurance doubly sure, he has recourse to religion as well as to magic; for he sacrifices twelve black oxen to the spirits of his fathers, and prays to them: “O great spirits of my father and grandfather, I thank you for having granted last year to my people more wheat than to our enemies the Mashonas. This year also, in gratitude for the twelve black oxen which I am about to dedicate to you, make us to be the best-fed and the strongest people in the world!”​[1247] Thus the king of the Matabeles acts not only as a magician but as a priest, for he prays and sacrifices to the spirits of his forefathers.

The foregoing evidence renders it probable that in Africa the king has often been developed out of the public magician, and especially out of the rain-maker. The unbounded fear which the magician inspires and the wealth which he amasses in the exercise of his profession may both be supposed to have contributed to his promotion. But if the career of a magician and especially of a rain-maker offers great rewards to the successful practitioner of the art, it is beset with many pitfalls into which the unskilful or unlucky artist may fall. The position of the public sorcerer is indeed a very precarious one; for where the people firmly believe that he has it in his power to make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, and the fruits of the earth to grow, they naturally impute drought and dearth to his culpable negligence or wilful obstinacy, and they punish him accordingly. We have seen that in Africa the chief who fails to procure rain is often exiled or killed.​[1248] Examples of such punishments could be multiplied. {p353} Thus, in some parts of West Africa, when prayers and offerings presented to the king have failed to procure rain, his subjects bind him with ropes and take him by force to the grave of his forefathers that he may obtain from them the needed rain.​[1249] The Banjars in West Africa ascribe to their king the power of causing rain or fine weather. So long as the weather is fine they load him with presents of grain and cattle. But if long drought or rain threatens to spoil the crops, they insult and beat him till the weather changes.​[1250] When the harvest fails or the surf on the coast is too heavy to allow of fishing, the people of Loango accuse their king of a “bad heart” and depose him.​[1251] On the Grain Coast the high priest or fetish king, who bears the title of Bodio, is responsible for the health of the community, the fertility of the earth, and the abundance of fish in the sea and rivers; and if the country suffers in any of these respects the Bodio is deposed from his office.​[1252] In Ussukuma, a great district on the southern bank of the Victoria Nyanza, “the rain and locust question is part and parcel of the Sultan’s government. He, too, must know how to make rain and drive away the locusts. If he and his medicine-men are unable to accomplish this, his whole existence is at stake in times of distress. On a certain occasion, when the rain so greatly desired by the people did not come, the Sultan was simply driven out (in Ututwa, near Nassa). The people, in fact, hold that rulers must have power over Nature and her phenomena.”​[1253] Again, we are told of the natives of the Nyanza region generally that “they are persuaded that rain only falls as a result of magic, and the important duty of causing it to descend devolves on the chief of the tribe. If rain does not come at the proper time, everybody complains. More than one petty king has been banished his country because of drought.”​[1254] Similarly {p354} among the Antimores of Madagascar the chiefs are held responsible for the operation of the laws of nature. Hence if the land is smitten with a blight or devastated by clouds of locusts, if the cows yield little milk, or fatal epidemics rage among the people, the chief is not only deposed but stripped of his property and banished, because they say that under a good chief such things ought not to happen.​[1255] So, too, of the Antaimorona we read that “although the chiefs of this tribe are chosen by the people, during their tenure of power they enjoy a respect which borders on adoration; but if a crop of rice fails or any other calamity happens, they are immediately deposed, sometimes even killed; and yet their successor is always chosen from the family.”​[1256] Among the Latukas of the Upper Nile, when the crops are withering in the fields and all the efforts of the chief to bring down rain have proved fruitless, the people commonly attack him by night, rob him of all he possesses, and drive him away. But often they kill him.​[1257]

In many other parts of the world kings have been expected to regulate the course of nature for the good of their people and have been punished if they failed to do so. It appears that the Scythians, when food was scarce, used to put their king in bonds.​[1258] In ancient Egypt the sacred kings were blamed for the failure of the crops,​[1259] but the sacred beasts were also held responsible for the course of nature. When pestilence and other calamities had fallen on the land, in consequence of a long and severe drought, the priests took the animals by night and threatened them, but if the evil did not abate they slew the beasts.​[1260] On the coral island of Niuē or Savage Island, in the South Pacific, there formerly reigned a line of kings. But as the kings were also high priests, and {p355} were supposed to make the food grow, the people became angry with them in times of scarcity and killed them; till at last, as one after another was killed, no one would be king, and the monarchy came to an end.​[1261] Ancient Chinese writers inform us that in Corea the blame was laid on the king whenever too much or too little rain fell and the crops did not ripen. Some said that he must be deposed, others that he must be slain.​[1262] The Chinese emperor himself is deemed responsible if the drought is at all severe, and many are the self-condemnatory edicts on this subject published in the pages of the venerable Peking Gazette. In extreme cases the emperor, clad in humble vestments, sacrifices to heaven and implores its protection.​[1263] So, too, the kings of Tonquin used to take blame to themselves when the country was visited by such calamities as scanty harvests, dearth, floods, destructive hurricanes and cholera. On these occasions the monarch would sometimes publicly confess his guilt and impose on himself a penance as a means of appeasing the wrath of Heaven.​[1264] In former days it sometimes happened that when the country suffered from drought and dearth the king of Tonquin was obliged to change his name in the hope that this would turn the weather to rain. But if the drought continued even after the change of name the people would sometimes resort to stronger measures and transfer the title of king from the legitimate monarch to his brother, son, or other near relation.​[1265]

Among the American Indians the furthest advance towards civilisation was made under the monarchical and {p356} theocratic governments of Mexico and Peru; but we know too little of the early history of these countries to say whether the predecessors of their deified kings were medicine-men or not. Perhaps a trace of such a succession may be detected in the oath which the Mexican kings took when they mounted the throne: they swore that they would make the sun to shine, the clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to bring forth fruits in abundance.​[1266] Certainly, in aboriginal America the sorcerer or medicine-man, surrounded by a halo of mystery and an atmosphere of awe, was a personage of great influence and importance, and he may well have developed into a chief or king in many tribes, though positive evidence of such a development appears to be lacking. Thus Catlin tells us that in North America the medicine-men “are valued as dignitaries in the tribe, and the greatest respect is paid to them by the whole community; not only for their skill in their materia medica, but more especially for their tact in magic and mysteries, in which they all deal to a very great extent. . . . In all tribes their doctors are conjurors—are magicians—are sooth-sayers, and I had like to have said high-priests, inasmuch as they superintend and conduct all their religious ceremonies; they are looked upon by all as oracles of the nation. In all councils of war and peace, they have a seat with the chiefs, are regularly consulted before any public step is taken, and the greatest deference and respect is paid to their opinions.”​[1267] Among the Loucheux of North-West America each band is “headed by a chief and one or more medicine-men. The latter, however, do not possess any secular power as chiefs, but they acquire an authority by shamanism to which even the chiefs themselves are subject.” “The Loucheux are very superstitious, and place implicit faith in the pretended incantations of their medicine-men, for whom they entertain great fear. . . . The power of the medicine-men is very great, and they use every means they can to increase it by working on the fears and credulity of the people. Their influence exceeds even that of the chiefs. The power of the {p357} latter consists in the quantity of beads they possess, their wealth and the means it affords them to work ill to those to whom they may be evil-disposed; while the power of the medicine-man consists in the harm they believe he is able to do by shamanism, should they happen to displease him in any way. It is when sickness prevails that the conjuror rules supreme; it is then that he fills his bead bags and increases his riches.”​[1268] Amongst the Tinneh Indians of the same region “the social standing of a medicine-man is, on the whole, a desirable one; but it has also its drawbacks and its dark side. The medicine-man is decidedly influential among his fellow savages. He is consulted and listened to, on account of the superior knowledge imparted to him by the spirits. He is feared, on account of his power to do evil, viz. to cause the death of a person, to ruin his undertakings, to render him unsuccessful in the hunt by driving away the game from his path, to cause the loss of his property, of his strength, of his health, of his faculties, etc. The medicine-man is rich, because his services, when summoned, or even when accepted though uncalled for, are generously remunerated. He is respected on account of his continual intercourse with the supernatural world. His words, when said in a peculiar low tone, with a momentary glow in the eyes, which [he] seems able to control at will, or when uttered during his sleep (real or feigned) are taken as oracles, as the very words of the spirit. In short, for these tribes who have no chiefs, no religion, no medical knowledge, he is the nearest approach to a chief, a priest, and a physician.”​[1269] Similarly in California “the shaman was, and still is, perhaps the most important individual among the Maidu. In the absence of any definite system of government, the word of a shaman has great weight: as a class they are regarded with much awe, and as a rule are obeyed much more than the chief.”​[1270] As leader of the local branch {p358} of a secret society the most noted Maidu shaman of each district was supposed to make rain when it was needed, to ensure a good crop of edible acorns and a plentiful supply of salmon, and to drive away evil spirits, disease, and epidemics from the village. Further, it was his business to inflict disease and death on hostile villages, which he did by burning certain roots and blowing the smoke towards the doomed village, while he said, “Over there, over there, not here! To the other place! Do not come back this way. We are good. Make those people sick. Kill them, they are bad people.”​[1271] Among the Yokuts, another tribe of Californian Indians, the rain-makers exercised great influence. One of them by his insinuating address, eloquence, and jugglery spread his fame to a distance of two hundred miles, and cunningly availed himself of two years of drought to levy contributions far and wide from the trembling Indians, who attributed to his magic the fall of the rain.​[1272] In the same tribe the wizards drew large profits from the rattlesnake dance which they danced every spring, capering about with rattlesnakes twined round their arms; for after this exhibition many simpletons paid them for complete immunity from snake-bites, which the wizards were believed able to grant for a year.​[1273]

In South America also the magicians or medicine-men seem to have been on the highroad to chieftainship or kingship. One of the earliest settlers on the coast of Brazil, the Frenchman Thevet, reports that the Indians “hold these pages (or medicine-men) in such honour and reverence that they adore, or rather idolise them. You may see the common folk go to meet them, prostrate themselves, and pray to them, saying, ‘Grant that I be not ill, that I do not die, neither I nor my children,’ or some such request. And he answers, ‘You shall not die, you shall not be ill,’ and such like replies. But sometimes if it happens that these pages do not tell the truth, and things turn out otherwise than they predicted, the people make no scruple of killing them as unworthy of the title and dignity {p359} of pages.”​[1274] The Indians of Brazil, says a modern writer who knew them well, “have no priests but only magicians, who at the same time use medical help and exorcism in order to exert influence over the superstition and the dread of spirits felt by the rude multitude. We may perfectly compare them with the shamans of the north-eastern Asiatic peoples. But like the shamans they are not mere magicians, fetish-men, soothsayers, interpreters of dreams, visionaries, and casters-out of devils; their activity has also a political character in so far as they influence the decisions of the leaders and of the community in public business, and exert a certain authority, more than anybody else, as judges, sureties, and witnesses in private affairs.”​[1275] Among the Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco every clan has its cazique or chief, but he possesses little authority. In virtue of his office he has to make many presents, so he seldom grows rich and is generally more shabbily clad than any of his subjects. “As a matter of fact the magician is the man who has most power in his hands, and he is accustomed to receive presents instead of to give them.” It is the magician’s duty to bring down misfortune and plagues on the enemies of his tribe, and to guard his own people against hostile magic. For these services he is well paid and by them he acquires a position of great influence and authority.​[1276] Among the Indians of Guiana also the magician or medicine-man (piai, peaiman) is a personage of great importance. By his magic art he alone, it is believed, can counteract the machinations of the great host of evil spirits, to which these savages attribute all the ills of life. It is almost impossible, we are told, to overestimate the dreadful sense of constant and unavoidable danger in which the Indian would live were it not for his trust in the protecting power of the magician. Every village has one such spiritual guardian, who is physician, priest, and magician in one. His influence is immense. No Indian dare refuse him anything he takes a fancy to, {p360} from a trifle of food up to a man’s wife. Hence these cunning fellows live in idleness on the fat of the land and acquire a large harem; their houses are commonly full of women who serve them in the capacity of beasts of burden as well as of wives, plodding wearily along under the weight of the baggage on long journeys, while their lord and master, fantastically tricked out in feathers and paint, strolls ahead, burdened only with his magic rattle and perhaps his bow and arrows.​[1277]

Among the wild pagan tribes of the Malay peninsula the connexion between the offices of magician and chief is very close; indeed the two offices are often united in the same person. Among these savages, “as among the Malays, the accredited intermediary between gods and men is in all cases the medicine-man or sorcerer. In the Semang tribes the office of chief medicine-man appears to be generally combined with that of chief, but amongst the Sakai and Jakun these offices are sometimes separated, and although the chief is almost invariably a medicine-man of some repute, he is not necessarily the chief medicine-man, any more than the chief medicine-man is necessarily the administrative head of the tribe. In both cases there is an unfailing supply of aspirants to the office, though it may be taken for granted that, all else being equal, a successful medicine-man would have much the best prospect of being elected chief, and that in the vast majority of cases his priestly duties form an important part of a chief’s work. The medicine-man is, as might be expected, duly credited with supernatural powers. His tasks are to preside as chief medium at all the ceremonies, to instruct the youth of the tribe, to ward off as well as to heal all forms of sickness and trouble, to foretell the future (as affecting the results of any given act), to avert when necessary the wrath of heaven, and even when re-embodied after death in the shape of a wild beast, to extend a benign protection to his devoted descendants. Among the Sakai and the Jakun he is provided with a distinctive form of dress and {p361} body-painting, and carries an emblematic wand or staff by virtue of his office.”​[1278]

Throughout the Malay region the rajah or king is commonly regarded with superstitious veneration as the possessor of supernatural powers, and there are grounds for thinking that he too, like apparently so many African chiefs, has been developed out of a simple magician. At the present day the Malays firmly believe that the king possesses a personal influence over the works of nature, such as the growth of the crops and the bearing of fruit-trees. The same prolific virtue is supposed to reside, though in a lesser degree, in his delegates, and even in the persons of Europeans who chance to have charge of districts. Thus in Selangor, one of the native states of the Malay Peninsula, the success or failure of the rice crops is often attributed to a change of district officers.​[1279] The Toorateyas of southern Celebes hold that the prosperity of the rice depends on the behaviour of their princes, and that bad government, by which they mean a government which does not conform to ancient custom, will result in a failure of the crops.​[1280]

The Dyaks of Sarawak believed that their famous English ruler, Rajah Brooke, was endowed with a certain magical virtue which, if properly applied, could render the rice-crops abundant. Hence when he visited a tribe, they used to bring him the seed which they intended to sow next year, and he fertilised it by shaking over it the women’s necklaces, which had been previously dipped in a special mixture. And when he entered a village, the women would wash and bathe his feet, first with water, and then with the milk of a young coco-nut, and lastly with water again, and all this water which had touched his person they preserved for the purpose of distributing it on their farms, believing that it ensured an abundant harvest. Tribes which were too far {p362} off for him to visit used to send him a small piece of white cloth and a little gold or silver, and when these things had been impregnated by his generative virtue they buried them in their fields, and confidently expected a heavy crop. Once when a European remarked that the rice-crops of the Samban tribe were thin, the chief immediately replied that they could not be otherwise, since Rajah Brooke had never visited them, and he begged that Mr. Brooke might be induced to visit his tribe and remove the sterility of their land.​[1281]

Among the Malays the links which unite the king or rajah with the magician happen to be unusually plain and conspicuous. Thus the magician shares with the king the privilege of using cloth dyed yellow, the royal colour; he has considerable political influence, and he can compel people to address him in ceremonial language, of which indeed the phraseology is even more copious in its application to a magician than to a king. Moreover, and this is a fact of great significance, the Malay magician owns certain insignia which are said to be exactly analogous to the regalia of the king, and even bear the very same name (kabĕsaran).​[1282] Now the regalia of a Malay king are not mere jewelled baubles designed to impress the multitude with the pomp and splendour of royalty; they are regarded as wonder-working talismans,​[1283] the possession of which carries with it the right to the throne; if the king loses them, he thereby forfeits the allegiance of his subjects. It seems, therefore, to be a probable inference that in the Malay region the regalia of the kings are only the conjuring apparatus of their predecessors the magicians, and that in this part of the world accordingly the magician is the humble grub or chrysalis which in due time bursts and discloses that gorgeous butterfly the rajah or king.

Nowhere apparently in the Indian Archipelago is this view of the regalia as the true fount of regal dignity carried to such lengths as in southern Celebes. Here the royal {p363} authority is supposed to be in some mysterious fashion embodied in the regalia, while the princes owe all the power they exercise, and all the respect they enjoy, to their possession of these precious objects. In short, the regalia reign, and the princes are merely their representatives. Hence whoever happens to possess the regalia is regarded by the people as their lawful king. For example, if a deposed monarch contrives to keep the regalia, his former subjects remain loyal to him in their hearts, and look upon his successor as a usurper who is to be obeyed only in so far as he can exact obedience by force. And on the other hand, in an insurrection the first aim of the rebels is to seize the regalia, for if they can only make themselves masters of them, the authority of the sovereign is gone. In short, the regalia are here fetishes, which confer a title to the throne and control the fate of the kingdom. Houses are built for them to dwell in, as if they were living creatures; furniture, weapons, and even lands are assigned to them. Like the ark of God, they are carried with the army to battle, and on various occasions the people propitiate them, as if they were gods, by prayer and sacrifice and by smearing them with blood. Some of them serve as instruments of divination, or are brought forth in times of public disaster for the purpose of staying the evil, whatever it may be. For example, when plague is rife among men or beasts, or when there is a prospect of dearth, the Boogineese bring out the regalia, smear them with buffalo’s blood, and carry them about. For the most part these fetishes are heirlooms of which the origin is forgotten; some of them are said to have fallen from heaven. Popular tradition traces the foundation of the oldest states to the discovery or acquisition of one of these miraculous objects—it may be a stone, a piece of wood, a fruit, a weapon, or what not, of a peculiar shape or colour. Often the original regalia have disappeared in course of time, but their place is taken by the various articles of property which were bestowed on them, and to which the people have transferred their pious allegiance. The oldest dynasties have the most regalia, and the holiest regalia consist of relics of the bodies of former princes, which are kept in golden caskets wrapt in silk. At Paloppo, the {p364} capital of Loowoo, a kingdom on the coast of Celebes, two toy cannons, with barrels like thin gas-pipes, are regalia; their possession is supposed to render the town impregnable. Other regalia of this kingdom are veiled from vulgar eyes in bark-cloth. When a missionary requested to see them, the official replied that it was strictly forbidden to open the bundle; were he to do so, the earth would yawn and swallow them up. In Bima the principal part of the regalia or public talismans consists of a sacred brown horse, which no man may ride. It is always stabled in the royal palace. When the animal passes the government fort on high days and holidays, it is saluted with the fire of five guns; when it is led to the river to bathe, the royal spear is carried before it, and any man who does not give way to the beast, or crosses the road in front of it, has to pay a fine. But the horse is mortal, and when it goes the way of all horse-flesh, another steed chosen from the same stud reigns in its place.​[1284]

But if in the Malay region the regalia are essentially wonder-working talismans or fetishes which the kings appear to have derived from their predecessors the magicians, we may conjecture that in other parts of the world the emblems of royalty may at some time have been viewed in a similar light and have had a similar origin. In ancient Egypt the two royal crowns, the white and the red, were supposed to be endowed with magical virtues, indeed to be themselves divinities, embodiments of the sun god. One text declares: “The white crown is the eye of Horus; the red crown is the eye of Horus.” Another text speaks of a crown as a “great magician.” And applied to the image of a god, the crown was supposed to confirm the deity in the possession of his soul and of his form.​[1285] Among the Yorubas of West Africa {p365} at the present time the king’s crown is sacred and is supposed to be the shrine of a spirit which has to be propitiated. When the king (Oni) of Ife visited Lagos some years ago, he had to sacrifice five sheep to his crown between Ibadan and Ife, a two days’ journey on foot.​[1286] Among the Ashantees “the throne or chair of the king or chief is believed to be inhabited by a spirit to which it is consecrated, and to which human sacrifices were formerly offered: at present the victims are sheep. It is the personification of power; hence a king is not a king and a chief is not a chief until he has been solemnly installed on the throne.”​[1287] Among the Hos, a Ewe tribe of Togoland in German West Africa, the king’s proper throne is small and the king does not sit on it. Usually it is bound round with magic cords and wrapt up in a sheep’s skin; but from time to time it is taken out of the wrappings, washed in a stream, and smeared all over with the blood of a sheep which has been sacrificed for the purpose. The flesh of the sheep is boiled and a portion of it eaten by every man who has been present at the ceremony.​[1288] In Cambodia the regalia are regarded as a palladium on which the existence of the kingdom depends; they are committed to Brahmans for safe keeping.​[1289] In antiquity the Scythian kings treasured as sacred a plough, a yoke, a battle-axe, and a cup, all of gold, which were said to have fallen from heaven; they offered great sacrifices to these sacred things at an annual festival; and if the man in charge of them fell asleep under the open sky, it was believed that he would die within the year.​[1290] The sceptre of king Agamemnon, or what passed for such, was worshipped as a god at Chaeronea; a man acted as priest of the sceptre for a year at a time, and sacrifices were offered to it daily.​[1291] The golden lamb of Mycenae, on the possession of which, according to legend, the two rivals Atreus and Thyestes based their claim to the throne,​[1292] may have been a royal talisman of this sort. {p366}

The belief that kings possess magical or supernatural powers by virtue of which they can fertilise the earth and confer other benefits on their subjects would seem to have been shared by the ancestors of all the Aryan races from India to Ireland, and it has left clear traces of itself in our own country down to modern times. Thus the ancient Hindoo law-book called The Laws of Manu describes as follows the effects of a good king’s reign: “In that country where the king avoids taking the property of mortal sinners, men are born in due time and are long-lived. And the crops of the husbandmen spring up, each as it was sown, and the children die not, and no misshaped offspring is born.”​[1293] In Homeric Greece kings and chiefs were spoken of as sacred or divine; their houses, too, were divine and their chariots sacred;​[1294] and it was thought that the reign of a good king caused the black earth to bring forth wheat and barley, the trees to be loaded with fruit, the flocks to multiply, and the sea to yield fish.​[1295] A Greek historian of a much later age tells us that in the reign of a very bad king of Lydia the country suffered from drought, for which he would seem to have held the king responsible.​[1296] There is a tradition that once when the land of the Edonians in Thrace bore no fruit, the god Dionysus intimated to the people that its fertility could be restored by putting their king Lycurgus to death. So they took him to Mount Pangaeum and there caused him to be torn in pieces by horses.​[1297] When the crops failed, the Burgundians used to blame their kings and depose them.​[1298] In the time of the Swedish king Domalde a mighty famine broke out, which lasted several years, and could be stayed by the blood neither of beasts nor of men. Therefore, in a great popular {p367} assembly held at Upsala, the chiefs decided that King Domalde himself was the cause of the scarcity and must be sacrificed for good seasons. So they slew him and smeared with his blood the altars of the gods. Again, we are told that the Swedes always attributed good or bad crops to their kings as the cause. Now, in the reign of King Olaf, there came dear times and famine, and the people thought that the fault was the king’s, because he was sparing in his sacrifices. So, mustering an army, they marched against him, surrounded his dwelling, and burned him in it, “giving him to Odin as a sacrifice for good crops.”​[1299] In the Middle Ages, when Waldemar I., King of Denmark, travelled in Germany, mothers brought their infants and husbandmen their seed for him to lay his hands on, thinking that children would both thrive the better for the royal touch, and for a like reason farmers asked him to throw the seed for them.​[1300] It was the belief of the ancient Irish that when their kings observed the customs of their ancestors, the seasons were mild, the crops plentiful, the cattle fruitful, the waters abounded with fish, and the fruit trees had to be propped up on account of the weight of their produce. A canon attributed to St. Patrick enumerates among the blessings that attend the reign of a just king “fine weather, calm seas, crops abundant, and trees laden with fruit.” On the other hand, dearth, dryness of cows, blight of fruit, and scarcity of corn were regarded as infallible proofs that the reigning king was bad. For example, in the reign of the usurper king Carbery Kinncat, “evil was the state of Ireland: fruitless her corn, for there used to be only one grain on the stalk; fruitless her rivers; milkless her cattle; plentiless her fruit, for there used to be {p368} but one acorn on the stalk.”​[1301] Superstitions of the same sort seem to have lingered in the Highlands of Scotland down to the eighteenth century; for when Dr. Johnson travelled in Skye it was still held that the return of the laird to Dunvegan, after any considerable absence, produced a plentiful capture of herring.​[1302] The laird of Dunvegan is chief of the clan of the Macleods, and his family still owns a banner which is called “Macleods Fairy Banner,” on account of the supernatural powers ascribed to it. When it is unfurled, victory in war attends it, and it relieves its followers from imminent danger. But these virtues it can exert only thrice, and already it has been twice unfurled. When the potato crop failed, many of the common people desired that the magical banner should be displayed, apparently in the belief that the mere sight of it would produce a fine crop of potatoes. Every woman with child who sees it is taken with premature labour, and every cow casts her calf.​[1303]

Perhaps the last relic of such superstitions which lingered about our English kings was the notion that they could heal scrofula by their touch. The disease was accordingly known as the King’s Evil. Queen Elizabeth often exercised this miraculous gift of healing. On Midsummer Day 1633, Charles the First cured a hundred patients at one swoop in the chapel royal at Holyrood.​[1304] But it was under his son Charles the Second that the practice seems to have attained its highest vogue. In this respect the Merry Monarch did not let the grass grow under his feet. It was the twenty-ninth of May 1660 when he was brought home in triumph from exile amid a shouting multitude and a forest of brandished swords, over roads strewed with flowers and through streets hung with tapestry, while the fountains ran wine and all the bells of London rang for joy. And it was on the sixth of July that he began to touch for the King’s {p369} Evil. The ceremony is thus described by Evelyn, who may have witnessed it. “His Majestie began first to touch for y^e evil, according to costome, thus: His Ma^tie sitting under his state in the Banquetting House, the chirurgeons cause the sick to be brought or led up to the throne, where they kneeling, y^e King strokes their faces or cheekes with both his hands at once, at which instant a chaplaine in his formalities says, ‘He put his hands upon them and he healed them.’ This is sayd to everyone in particular. When they have been all touch’d they come up again in the same order, and the other chaplaine kneeling, and having angel gold strung on white ribbon on his arme, delivers them one by one to his Ma^tie, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they pass, whilst the first chaplaine repeats, ‘That is y^e true light who came into y^e world.’ Then follows an Epistle (as at first a Gospell) with the liturgy, prayers for the sick, with some alteration, lastly y^e blessing; and then the Lo. Chamberlaine and the Comptroller of the Household bring a basin, ewer and towell, for his Majesty to wash.”​[1305] Pepys witnessed the same ceremony at the same place on the thirteenth of April in the following year and he has recorded his opinion that it was “an ugly office and a simple.”​[1306] It is said that in the course of his reign Charles the Second touched near a hundred thousand persons for scrofula. The press to get near him was sometimes terrific. On one occasion six or seven of those who came to be healed were trampled to death. While the hope of a miraculous cure attracted the pious and sanguine, the certainty of receiving angel gold attracted the needy and avaricious, and it was not always easy for the royal surgeons to distinguish between the motives of the applicants. This solemn mummery cost the state little less than ten thousand pounds a year. The cool-headed William the Third contemptuously refused to lend himself to the hocus-pocus; and when his palace was besieged by the usual unsavoury crowd, he ordered them to be turned away {p370} with a dole. On the only occasion when he was importuned into laying his hand on a patient, he said to him, “God give you better health and more sense.” However, the practice was continued, as might have been expected, by the dull bigot James the Second​[1307] and his dull daughter Queen Anne. In his childhood Dr. Johnson was touched for scrofula by the queen, and he always retained a faint but solemn recollection of her as of a lady in diamonds with a long black hood.​[1308] To judge by the too faithful picture which his biographer has drawn of the doctor’s appearance in later life we may conclude that the touch of the queen’s hand was not a perfect remedy for the disorder; perhaps the stream of divine grace which had flowed so copiously in the veins of Charles the Second had been dried up by the interposition of the sceptical William.

The kings of France also claimed to possess the same gift of healing by touch, which they are said to have derived from Clovis or from St. Louis, while our English kings inherited it from Edward the Confessor.​[1309] We may suspect that these estimates of the antiquity of the gift were far too modest, and that the barbarous, nay savage, predecessors both of the Saxon and of the Merovingian kings had with the same justice claimed the same powers many ages before. Down to the nineteenth century the West African tribe of the Walos, in Senegal, ascribed to their royal family a like power of healing by touch. Mothers have been seen to bring their sick children to the queen, who touched them solemnly with her foot on the back, the stomach, the head, and the legs, after which the women departed in peace, convinced that {p371} their children had been made whole.​[1310] Similarly the savage chiefs of Tonga were believed to heal scrofula and cases of indurated liver by the touch of their feet; and the cure was strictly homoeopathic, for the disease as well as the cure was thought to be caused by contact with the royal person or with anything that belonged to it.​[1311] In fact royal personages in the Pacific and elsewhere have been supposed to live in a sort of atmosphere highly charged with what we may call spiritual electricity, which, if it blasts all who intrude into its charmed circle, has happily also the gift of making them whole again by a touch.​[1312] We may conjecture that similar views prevailed in ancient times as to the predecessors of our English monarchs, and that accordingly scrofula received its name of the King’s Evil from the belief that it was caused as well as cured by contact with a king.​[1313] In Loango palsy is called the king’s disease, because the negroes imagine it to be heaven’s punishment for treason meditated against the king.​[1314]