In beginning this chapter it is fair to say that oaths will herein be regarded as a modified form of the ancient ordeal, in which the affiant invokes upon himself, if proved to have sworn falsely, the tortures of the ordeal, mundane or celestial, which in an older form of civilization he would have been obliged to undergo as a preliminary trial.

The author learned while campaigning against the Sioux and Cheyennes, in 1876-1877, that the Sioux and Assinaboines had a form of oath sworn to while the affiant held in each hand a piece of buffalo chip.

Among the Hindus, “sometimes the trial was confined to swallowing the water in which the priest had bathed the image of one of the divinities.... The negroes of Issyny dare not drink the water into which the fetiches have been dipped when they affirm what is not the truth.”—(“Phil. of Magic,” Eusèbe Salverte, New York, 1862, vol. ii. p. 123.)

They formerly may have drunk the urine of the god or priest.

In “the ‘Domesday Survey,’ in the account of the city of Chester, vol. i. p. 262, we read: ‘Vir sive mulier falsam mensuram in civitate faciens deprehensus, IIII solid. emendab. Similiter malam cervisiam faciens, aut in Cathedra ponebatur stercoris, aut IIII solid. de prepotis.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 103, article “Ducking Stool.”)

“The ducking stool was a legal punishment. Roguish brewers and bakers were also liable to it, and they were to be ducked in stercore in the town ditch.”—(Southey, “Commonplace Book,” 1st series, p. 401, London, 1849.)

In Loango, Africa, “When a man is suspected of an offence he is carried before the king,” and “is compelled to drink an infusion of a kind of root called ‘imbando.’ ... The virtue of this root is that, if they put too much into the water, the person that drinketh it cannot void urine.... The ordeal consists in drinking and then in urinating as a proof of innocence.”—(See “Adv. of Andrew Battell,” in Pinkerton’s “Voyages,” vol. xvi. p. 334.)

In Sierra Leone the natives have a curious custom to which they subject all of their tribe suspected of poisoning. They make the culprit drink a certain “red water; after which for twenty-four hours he is not allowed to ease nature by any evacuation; and should he not be able to restrain them, it would be considered as strong a proof of his guilt as if he had fallen a victim to the first draught.”—(Lieutenant John Matthews, R. N., “Voyage to Sierra Leone,” 1785, London, 1788, p. 126.)

In the Hindu mythology, “slanderers and calumniators, stretched upon beds of red-hot iron, shall be obliged to eat excrements.”—(Southey, “Commonplace Book,” 1st series, London, 1849, p. 249. He also refers to 2 Kings xviii. 27, and to Isaiah xxxvi. 12.)

“D’après le système religieux de Brahme, la punition des calomniateurs dans l’enfer, consiste à être nourris d’excréments.”—(Majer. Dict. Mythol. en Allemagne, t. 2, p. 46; Bib. Scat., p. 12.)

Herodotus relates that Pheron, the son of Sesostris, conqueror of Egypt, became blind, and remained so for ten years.

“But in the eleventh year an oracle reached him from the city of Buto, importing that the time of his punishment was expired, and he should recover his sight by washing his eyes with the urine of a woman who had intercourse with her own husband only, and had known no other man.” Herodotus goes on to relate that Pheron tried the urine of his own wife and that of many other women ineffectually; finally he was cured by the urine of a woman whom he took to wife; all the others he burnt to death.—(“Euterpe,” part ii. cap. 3.)

In the “Histoire Secrète du Prince Croq’ Étron,” par M’lle Laubert, Paris, 1790, King Petaud orders Prince Gadourd to be buried alive in ordure,—a punishment which would have suggested the author’s acquaintance with Brahminical literature even had she not confessed it in these terms: “Genre de supplice qui n’était pas nouveau puisque d’après le système religieux de Brahme, la punition des calomniateurs dans l’enfer, consiste à être nourri d’excréments.”

The Africans have an ordeal,—“a superstitious ordeal, by drinking the poisonous Muave,” which induces vomiting only, according to Livingston (“Zambesi,” London, 1865, p. 120). This may or may not be the “red drink” of Lieutenant Matthews cited above.

Under the head of “Latrines,” allusion has been made to the prohibition, in the laws of the Thibetan Buddhists, against throwing ordure upon growing plants, etc. There is another case mentioned by Rockhill, which may as well be inserted here: “Si une bhikshuni jette des excréments de l’autre côté d’un mur sans y avoir regardé, c’est un pacittiya.”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill, Soc. Asiatique, Paris, 1885.)

In the words just quoted we find the definition of the offence as a “pacittiya,” or sin. The punishment for each sin or class of sins was carefully regulated and well understood in Thibetan nunneries.

“Cock-stool.” “A seat of ignominy ... in which scolding or immoral women used to be placed formerly as a punishment; ... same as ‘sedes Stercoraria.’”—(“Folk-Etymology,” Rev. A. Smythe-Palmer, London, 1882. See also Chambers’s “Book of Days,” vol. i. p. 211.)

The Chinese have a very curious and very horrible mode of punishment; criminals of certain classes are enclosed in barrels or boxes filled with building lime, and exposed in a public street to the rays of the noon-day sun; food in plenty is within reach of the unfortunate wretches, but it is salt fish, or other salt provision, with all the water needed to satisfy the thirst this food is certain to excite, but in the very alleviation of which the poor criminals are only adding to the torments to overtake them when by a more copious discharge from the kidneys the lime shall “quicken” and burn them to death.

In the famous bull of Ernulphus, Bishop of Rochester, cited in “Tristram Shandy,” the delinquent was to be cursed, “mingendo, cacando.”—(See “Tristram Shandy,” Lawrence Sterne, ed. of London, 1873, vol. i. p. 188.)

“Fasting on bread and drinking water defiled by the excrement of a fowl” are among the disciplinary punishments cited in Fosbroke’s “Monachism,” London, 1817, p. 308, note.

This specimen of monastic discipline may be better understood when read between the lines. The veneration surrounding chicken-dung in the religious system of the Celts, prior to the introduction of the Christian religion, could be uprooted in no more complete manner than by making its use a matter of scorn and contempt; history is replete with examples wherein we are taught that the things which are held most sacred in one cult are the very ones upon which the fury and scorn of the superseding cultus are wreaked. On this point read the notes taken from the pamphlet of Mr. James Mooney, in regard to the superstitions attaching to the uses of chicken-dung among the Irish peasantry.

“I have mentioned the sacrifice of cocks by Kelts; it was, and still is, all over Asia, the cheap, common, and very venial substitute for man.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. ii. p. 274.)

We may reasonably infer that the dung of chickens as used by the Irish is a representative of, and a substitute for, human ordure.

The Easter season which has preserved and transmitted to our times so many pagan usages, has among its superstitions one to the effect that “every person must have some part of his dress new on Easter day, or he will have no good fortune that year. Another saying is that unless that condition be fulfilled, the birds are likely to spoil your clothes.”—(Brand, “Pop. Antiq.” vol. i. p. 165, art. “Easter Day.”)

The Kalmucks believe in many places of future punishment, one of them being “un de ces séjours est couvert d’une nuée d’ordures et de vidanges.” (Pallas, Paris, 1793, vol. i. p. 552.) This is the belief inculcated by their Lamas.

At the Lithuanian festival called “Sabarios,” fowls were killed and eaten. “The bones were then given to the dog to eat; if he did not eat them all up, the remains were buried under the dung in the cattle-stall.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 70.)

In cases of sickness “the inhabitants of a village are forbidden to wash themselves for a number of days, ... and to clean their chamber-pots before sun-rise.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Dr. Franz Boas, in Sixth An. Rep. Bur. of Ethnol. Wash. D. C. 1888, p. 593.)

“We have seen that in modern Europe, the person who cuts or binds or threshes the last sheaf is often exposed to rough treatment at the hands of his fellow-laborers. For example, he is bound up in the last sheaf and thus encased is carried or carted about, beaten, drenched with water, thrown on a dunghill, etc.”—(“The Golden Bough,” i. 367.)

In several parts of Germany, the Fool of the Carnival was buried under a dung-heap. (Idem, vol. i. p. 256.) Further on, is given this explanation: “The burying of the representative of the Carnival under a dung-heap is natural, if he is supposed to possess a quickening and fertilizing influence like that ascribed to the effigy of Death.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 270.)

“In Siam it was formerly the custom, on one day of the year, to single out a woman broken down by debauchery, and carry her on a litter through all the streets, to the music of drums and hautboys. The mob insulted her and pelted her with dirt; and, after having carried her through the whole city, they threw her on a dunghill.... They believed that the woman thus drew upon herself all the malign influences of the air and of evil spirits.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 196.)

In Suabia there is a rough harvest game in which one of the laborers takes the part of the sow; he is pursued by his comrades and if they catch him “they handle him roughly, beating him, blackening or dirtying his face, throwing him into filth.... At other times he is put in a wheelbarrow.... After being wheeled round the village, he is flung on a dunghill.”—(Idem, vol. ii. pp. 27, 28.)

The negroes of Guinea are firm believers in the theory of Obsession, and have a god “Abiku” who “takes up his abode in the human body.” He generally bothers little children, who sometimes die. “If the child dies, the body is thrown on the dirt-heap to be devoured by wild beasts.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 57.)

“The Iroquois inaugurated the new year in January” with “a festival of dreams.... It was a time of general license.... Many seized the opportunity of paying off old scores by belaboring obnoxious persons, ... covering them with filth and hot ashes.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 165, quoting Charlevoix, “La Nouvelle France.”)

“During the madder harvest in the Dutch province of Zealand, a stranger passing by a field where the people are digging the madder roots, ‘will sometimes call out to them, Koortspillers’ (a term of reproach). Upon this, two of the fleetest runners make after him, and if they catch him, they bring him back to the madder field and bury him in the earth up to his middle at least, jeering at him all the while; they then ease nature before his face.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 379.)

“Now, it is an old superstition that by easing nature on the spot where a robbery is committed, the robbers secure themselves for a certain time against interruption.... The fact, therefore, that the madder-diggers resort to this proceeding in presence of the stranger proves that they consider themselves robbers and him as the person robbed.”—(Idem, p. 380.)

In connection with the above, the following deserves consideration: “Reverence. An ancient custom which obliges any person easing himself near the highway or footpath, on the word ‘reverence’ being given him by a passenger, to take off his hat with his teeth, and, without moving from his station, to throw it over his head, by which it frequently falls into the excrement. This was considered as a punishment for the breach of delicacy. A person refusing to obey this law might be pushed backwards. Hence, perhaps, the term ‘sir-reverence.’”—(Grose, “Dict. of Buckish Slang.”)

It is more likely that the practice had some connection with the fear of witchcraft, or the evil eye of the stranger; we can hardly credit that peasantry living in an age when the highest classes received their guests at bedside receptions, “ruelles,” or in their “cabinets d’aisance,” would be squeamish in the trifling matter just alluded to.

In Japan “When any of these panders die ... their bodies are cast upon a dunghill.”—(John Saris, in Purchas, i. 368, A.D. 1611.)

“The tricks of the fayry called Pach.” “I smurch her face if it be cleane, but if it be durty, I wash it in the next pisse-pot I can finde.”—(“Life of Robin Goodfellow,” Black Letter, London, 1628, in Hazlitt’s “Fairy Tales,” London, 1875, p. 205.)

But the “women fayries,” under similar circumstances, “wash their faces and hands with a gilded child’s clout.”—(Idem, p. 206.)

“Their own spirits too will have nothing but excrement to eat, if during life the rites of the Bora (Initiation) have not been duly performed. With this compare the declaration of the Indian Manes (xii. 71) that a Kahatya who has not done his duty, will, after death, have to live on ordure and carrion. And in the Melanesian Hades the ghosts of the wicked have nothing to eat but vile refuse and excrement.”—(Personal Letter from John Frazer, LL.D., to Captain Bourke, dated Sydney, New South Wales, Dec. 24, 1889.)

The Australians believed that if a man did not allow the septum of the nose to be pierced, he would suffer in the next world. “As soon as ever the spirit Egowk left the body, it would be required, as a punishment, to eat Toorta-gwannang” (filth not proper for translation).—(“Aborigines of Victoria,” Smyth, vol. i. p. 274.)

Among some of the Australian tribes is found a potent deity named “Pund-jel,” whom Mr. Andrew Lang thinks may be the Eagle-Hawk. “As a punisher of wicked people, Pund-jel was once moved to drown the world, and this he did by a flood which he produced (as Dr. Brown says of another affair) by a familiar Gulliverian application of hydraulics.”—(“Myth, Rit., and Relig.,” Lang, London, 1887, ii. 5.)

Maurice cites five meritorious kinds of suicide, in the second of which the Hindu devotee is described as “covering himself with cow-dung, setting it on fire, and consuming himself therein.”—(Maurice, “Indian Antiquities,” London, 1800, vol. ii. p. 49.)

When Squire Iden killed Jack Kade he exclaimed:—

“Forbearance from meat and work are also prescribed to a single woman in case the sun or moon (though we should rather call it a bird flying by) should let any uncleanness drop upon her; otherwise, she might be unfortunate, or even deprived of her life.”—(Crantz, “History of Greenland,” London, 1767, vol. i. p. 216.)

The “bitter water” of the Hebrew ordeals by which the woman accused of unfaithfulness was either proved innocent, or had her belly burst upon drinking, presents itself in this connection.—(See Numbers v.)

Dante, in his cap. xiii. speaks of those condemned for flattery: “a crowd immersed in ordure.”—(Cary’s translation.)

Ducange alludes to what may have been an ordeal or a punishment: “Aquam sordidam et stercoratem super sponsam jactare.”—(“In Lege Longobardi,” lib. i. tit. 16, c. 8.)

The Hebrew prophets sat on dungheaps while the recalcitrant people of Israel were warned: “Behold, I will spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts, and one shall take you away with it.”—(Malachi ii. 3.)

By reference to another portion of this volume, it will be seen that stercoraceous matter was deemed potent in frustrating witchcraft. Thus a mother was ordered to throw a “changeling” child upon a dunghill (p. 403.) The prostitutes of Amsterdam kept horse-dung in their houses for good luck, etc. Consequently, when we read of the corpses of criminals or witches having been thrown upon dunghills, we may let fancy indulge the idea that it was to render nugatory any schemes the ghost might cherish of wreaking revenge.

The historian Suetonius relates that the unfortunate Roman emperor Vitellius was pelted with excrement before being put to death.

Among the unlawful acts for Brahmans or Kshatriyas who are compelled to support themselves by following the occupations of Vaisyas, is selling sesamum, unless “they themselves have produced it by tillage.... If he applies sesamum to any other purpose but food, anointing, and charitable gifts, he will be born again as a worm, and together with his ancestors be plunged into his own ordure.”—(“Vasishtha,” cap. ii. 27-30. “Sacred Books of the East,” Oxford, 1882, vol. xiv., edition of Max Müller. This is one of the oldest of the Sacred Books. The same prohibition is to be found in “Prasna” 11, “Adhyaya” 1, “Kandika” 2.)