“All peoples have invented myths to explain why they observed certain customs.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 128.)

“Myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have long been forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason; to find a sound theory for an absurd practice.”—(Idem, p. 62.)

The Australians have a myth of the Creation of Man; it is given in Latin: “Ningorope lætitiæ plena in latrina lutum amœne erubescens cernebat; hoc in hominis figuram formabat, quæ tactu divæ motum vitalem sumebat et donc ridebat.”—(“Aborig. of Victoria,” Smyth, vol. i. p. 425.)

This myth is given in English from another authority, on next page of this volume.

The Creation Myth of the Australians relates that the god “Bund-jil oceanum creavit minctione per plures dies in terrarum orbem. Bullarto Bulgo magnam lotii copiam indicat.” (Idem, vol. i. p. 429.) (Bund-jil created the ocean by urinating for many days upon the orb of the earth.) The natives say that the god being angry “Bullarto Bulgo” upon the earth. Bullarto Bulgo indicates a great flow of urine.

The same myth has already been given from Andrew Lang, under “Ordeals and Punishments.”

In the cosmogonical myths of the islanders of Kadiack, it is related that the first woman, “by making water, produced seas.”—(Lisiansky, “Voy. round the World,” London, 1814, p. 197.)

“In the fourth story” (i. e., stories told by the Kalmucks and Mongols) “it is under the excrement of a cow that the enchanted gem, lost by the daughter of the king, is found.”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis, p. 129.)

In the mythic lore of the Hindus, the god Utanka sets out on a journey, protected by Indra. “On his way, he meets a gigantic bull, and a horseman who bids him, if he would succeed, eat the excrement of the bull; he does so, rinsing his mouth afterwards.”—(Idem, p. 80.)

Further on we learn that Utanka was told “the excrement of the bull was the ambrosia which made him immortal in the kingdom of the serpents.” (Idem, pp. 81, 95.) Here we have the analogue of the use of excrement and urine in Europe to baffle witches, and of the drinking of the Siberian girl’s urine, which in all probability was proffered to the guest as an assurance that no witchcraft was in contemplation, or else to baffle the witches, much as, in England, bridal couples urinated through the wedding ring.

The Chinese have a mythical animal which has been identified with the Tapir; it is called the Mih; to it they ascribe the power to eat iron and copper. “For this reason the urine of this animal is prescribed when a person has swallowed iron or copper; it will, in a short time, change them into water.”—(“Chinese Repository,” Canton, 1839, vol. vii. pp. 46, 47.)

“The story of Joa lo Praube is repeated almost word for word in the adventures of the Kamtchatkan god ‘Kutka;’ or, to be more exact, there is a myth in which it is narrated that that god had a great many tricks played upon him, in one of which he runs sticks into his gluteal region.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)

This god Kutka was a great sodomite, and in some points, resembled the anti-natural god of the Sioux.

Speaking of the god “Aidowedo,” the serpent in the Rainbow as believed by the Negroes of Guinea, Father Baudin says: “He who finds the excrement of this serpent is rich forever, for with this talisman he can change grains of corn into shells which pass for money.” (“Fetichism,” Rev. F. Baudin, New York, 1885, p. 47.) He goes on to narrate a very amusing tale to the effect that the negroes got the idea that a prism in his possession gave him the power to bring the Rainbow down into his room at will, and that he could obtain unlimited quantities of the precious excrement.

Another myth of the foolish god “Kutka” represents him as falling in love with his own excrement and wooing it as his bride; he takes it home in his sleigh, puts it in his bed, and is only restored to a sense of his absurd position by the vile smell.—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)

Possibly all this may be a myth to explain or to represent the state of mind into which those who indulged in the “muck-a-moor” were thrown, but even this interpretation seems far-fetched.

Sir John Moore, it is stated, fell in love with his own urine, and we have read from Montaigne the story of the French gentleman who preserved his egestæ to show to his visitors.

The tribes of the Narinyeri, Encounter Bay, South Australia, have a legend that difference in language was caused when certain of their ancestors “ate the contents of the intestines of the goddess ‘Wurruri.’”—(“Nat. tribes of South Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, p. 60, received through the kindness of the Roy. Soc., Sydney, N. S. Wales, T. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)

In the same chapter we are told of the omission of one or two ceremonies “which were too indecent for general readers” (p. 61).

In the “Bachiller de Salamanca,” Le Sage has a hero whose misfortunes would lead us to suspect that Le Sage had been reading of some of the doings of the Kamtchatkan god “Kutka,” who, among the numerous pranks played upon him by his enemies, the mice, suffered the ignominy of having “a bag made of fish-skin attached to his orificium ani while he lay sound asleep. On his way home Kutka desired to relieve nature, but was much surprised, on leaving, at the insignificant deposit notwithstanding he had freed himself of so great a burden.

“Surprised at his cleanliness, he narrated the circumstances to Clachy (his wife), who soon discovered the true state of affairs, and pulling off Kutka’s pantaloons, detached the heavily laden bag with great laughters.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)

In the 14th century farce of “Le Muynier,” the Miller has absorbed some of the popular ideas of his day, professed by certain philosophers of the time. He believes that, at the moment of death, the soul of a man escapes by the anus, and warns the priest to absolve him from his sins, saying: “Mon ventre trop se détermine. Helas! Je ne scay que je face; ostez-vous.”

The priest answers: “Ha! sauf vostre grace!”

Then the miller remarks: “Ostez-vous, car je me conchye.”

The wife and the priest pull the sick man to the edge of the bed and place him in such a position that if the doctrine of soul-departure by the anus be true, they may witness the miller’s final performance. The phenomenon of rectal flatulence is now observed, when suddenly, to the consternation of the wife and priest, a demon appears and placing a sack over the dying miller’s anus, catches the rectal gas and flies off in sulphurous vapor.—(“Med. in the Middle Ages,” Minor, p. 84, translated from “Le Moyen Age Médical,” by Dupouy.)

It was generally believed in Europe that the eggs of the Basilisk or Cockatrice could only be hatched by a toad or by the heat of a manure-pile.—(See “Mélusine,” Paris, January-February, 1890, p. 20.)

Ireland has been called the “Urinal of the Planets” from the constant and copious rains which visit it.—(See Grose, “Dict. of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811.)

The Apaches have a myth, or story, the analogue of the “Fee-fo-Fum” of our own childhood; but the giant, instead of smelling the blood of an Englishman, in the words given in Spanish, “huele la cagada.”

The Chinese myth concerning the wonderful digestive powers of the “Mih” has its counterpart in the ancient belief that the same power was possessed by the Ostrich.

“The Wangwana and Wanyumbo informed me ... that if the elephant observes the excrement of the rhinoceros unscattered, he waxes furious, and proceeds instantly in search of the criminal, when woe befall him if he is sulky, and disposed to battle for the proud privilege of leaving his droppings as they fall. The elephant, in that case, breaks off a heavy branch of a tree, or uproots a stout sapling like a boat’s mast, and belabors the unfortunate beast until he is glad to save himself by hurried flight. For this reason, the natives say, the rhinoceros always turns round and thoroughly scatters what he has dropped.”—(“Through the Dark Continent,” Henry M. Stanley, New York, 1878, vol. i. p. 477.)

“In other myths, in the Brahmanas, Prajapati creates man from his body, or rather the fluid of his body becomes a tortoise, the tortoise becomes a man, etc.”—(“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 248. See also under chapter on the Mistletoe, p. 99 of this volume.)

“Moffatt is astonished at the South African notion that the sea was accidentally created by a girl.” (“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Lang, vol. i. p. 91.) Perhaps this tale belongs to our series of myths.

“The Encounter Bay people have another myth, which might have been attributed by Dean Swift to the Yahoos, so foul an origin does it attribute to mankind.”—(Idem, Lang, vol. i. p. 170.)

“As the mythology and traditions of other heathen nations are more or less immoral and obscene, so it is with these people.” (“Nat. Trib. of S. Australia,” p. 200.) “Mingarope having retired upon a natural occasion was highly pleased with the red color of her excrement, which she began to mould into the form of a man, and tickling it, it showed signs of life and began to laugh.”—(Idem, p. 201.)

The myth relating that differences in language sprung up after certain of the tribes had eaten the excrement of the goddess “Wurruri” is given on p. 268; it has been recited in this volume on a previous page. There was another god, named Nurunduri, of whom the story is told that he once made water in a certain spot, “from which circumstance the place is called Kainjamin (to make water.)”—(Idem, p. 205.)

Among the Bilgula of British Columbia, there is a myth which relates that a certain stump of a tree was a cannibal and had captured a girl. Once, when he had gone out to fish for halibut, “he ordered his urinary vessel to call him if the girl should make an attempt to escape. When she did so, the vessel cried, ‘Rota-gota, Rota-gota, gota.’”—(Personal letter from Dr. Franz Boas, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.)

There is a riddle among the Kamtchatkans in regard to human feces: “My father has numerous forms and dresses; my mother is warm and thin and bears every day. Before I am born, I like cold and warmth, but after I am born, only cold. In the cold I am strong, and in the warmth, weak; if cold, I am seen far; if warm, I am smelled far.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)

Among some of the Eskimo tribes the Raven is represented as talking to its own excrement and consulting it; excrement occurs frequently in their legends.—(Personal letter from Dr. Boas, as above.)

From the preceding paragraph we see that the Eskimo must have formerly, even if they do not now, consulted excrement in their Divination; the extract from Gilder, given under “Mortuary Ceremonies” confirms this hypothesis.

The people of Kamtchatka believed that rain was the urine of Billutschi, one of their gods, and of his genii; but, after this god has urinated enough, he puts on a new dress made in the form of a sack, and provided with fringes of red seal hair, and variously colored strips of leather. These represent the origin of the Rainbow.

The Kamtchatkan god Kutka was once pursued by enemies, but saved himself “by ejecting from his bowels all kinds of berries, which detained his pursuers.”

The myths of the Kamtchatkans offer a parallel to the stories that the presents of the devil always turned into dross. There is the story of the god Kutka, upon whom, as we have seen, many tricks were played. In one the food with which he supplied himself “turned into peat, rotten wood, and piss.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)

“The Central Eskimo believe that rain is the urine of a deity.”—(See “The Central Eskimo,” Boas, p. 600.)

“Amber (as some thinke) is made of whale’s dung.”—(John Leo, “Observ. of Africa,” in Purchas, vol. ii. p. 772.)

Ambergris was anciently supposed to be the dung of the whale or other monster of the sea.—(Mr. W. W. Rockhill.)

This view about the origin of amber was not credited by Avicenna. “Ambram non esse stercus animalis maris.”—(Vol. i. p. 273, b10.)

In the liturgy of the hill tribes of the Nilgherris, it is related—

—(Quoted in “Les Primitifs,” p. 245.)

Réclus, in the same work, gives a fragment of an Orphic song: “Glorieux Jupiter, le plus grand des Olympiens, toi qui te plais dans les crottins des brebis, qui aimes à t’enfoncer dans les fientes des chevaux et des mulets.”—(p. 246, quoting from “Fragmenta Orphei,” edited by Hermann.)

“The blessed Apostle Paul, being rapt in contemplation of divine blissfulness, compares all the chief felicities of the earth, esteeming them (to use his own words) as ‘stercora,’ most filthy dung in regard of the joys he hoped for.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 26.)

“He is truly wise that accounteth all earthly things as dung that he may win Christ.”—(Matt. xvii. 23, quoted in Thomas à Kempis, cap. iv., “Of the Doctrine of Truth.”)

“It was current among the small boys at school some thirty-five years since, that were a man to make water whilst in connection with a woman she would die.”—(Personal letter from Prof. Frank Rede Fowke, South Kensington Museum, London, England.)

The name of the city of Chicago has been traced by some philologist to the Indian word for skunk; and it is said to be “equal to bestiola fœda mingens.” The urine of this little animal was believed by some of the Indian tribes to be capable of blinding the man in whose eyes it entered; the animal itself was deified by the Aztecs under the name of Tezcatlipoca.

For the interpretation given for the word “Chicago,” see the work “Indian Names of Places near the Great Lakes,” by Captain Dwight Kelton, U. S. Army, Chicago, Illinois, 1888.