There is but one method of arriving at a correct understanding of what witchcraft was, as known to civilized communities, and that is by placing it under the lens of investigation as a mutilated and distorted survival of a displaced religion.

The very earliest records of man’s thought, the alabaster and earthen tablets of Chaldea and Assyria, allude to the evil eye, to incantations, and to the fear of evil spirits, witches, and sorcerers.

“Nevertheless, the Chaldean tablets do not leave us without any insight into witchcraft, as their formulæ were destined to counteract the effects of the sorceries of this impious art, as well as the spontaneous action of demons.”—(“Chaldean Magic,” François Lenormant, London, 1877, p. 59; for the Chaldean’s dread of the Evil Eye, see the same work, p. 61.)

“One fine series (i. e. of Chaldean tablets) deals with remedies against witchcraft.”—(“The Chaldean Account of Genesis,” George Smith, New York, 1880, p. 28.)

“There is finally a third species of magic, thoroughly diabolical in character, and openly acknowledging itself as such. This kind helps to perpetuate ... by still believing in their power and transforming them into dark practices, the rites of adoration of the ancient gods, considered as demons after the triumph of the new religion, the exclusive spirit of which repudiates all association with the remains of the old worship. The enchanter in this case, far from considering himself an inspired and divine personage, consents, provided he reaps all the benefit of his magic practices, to be nothing more than the tool of the bad and infernal powers. He himself sees devils in the ancient gods evoked by his spells, but he nevertheless remains confident of their protection; he engages himself in their service by compacts, and fancies himself going to a witch-dance in their company. The greater part of the magic of the Middle Ages bears this character and perpetuates the popular and superstitious rites of paganism in the mysterious and diabolical operations of sorcery. It is the same with the magic of most Mussulman countries. In Ceylon, since the complete conversion of the island to Buddhism, the ancient gods of Sivaism have become demons, and their worship a guilty sorcery practised only by enchanters.”—(“Chaldean Magic,” Lenormant, p. 77.)

Human and animal filth are mentioned in nearly every treatise upon witchcraft, under three different heads:—

Firstly, as the means by which the sorcery is accomplished.

Secondly, as the antidote by which such machinations are frustrated.

Thirdly, as the means of detecting the witch’s personality.

Much that might have been included within this chapter has been arranged under the caption of “Love-Philters” and “Child-Birth,” and should be examined under those heads.

The subject of amulets and talismans is another that is so closely connected with the matter of which we are now treating, that it must be included in any investigation made in reference to it.

Exactly where the science of medicine ended, and the science of witchcraft began, there is no means of knowing; like Astrology and Astronomy, they were twin sisters, issuing from the same womb, and travelling amicably hand in hand for many years down the trail of civilization’s development; long after medicine had won for herself a proud position in the world of thought and felt compelled through shame to repudiate her less-favored comrade in public, the strictest and closest relations were maintained in the seclusion of private life.

“Among the counter-charms too are reckoned the practice of spitting into the urine the moment it is voided.”—(Pliny, lib, xxviii. cap. 7.)

“Goat’s dung attached to infants, in a piece of cloth, prevents them from being restless, female infants in particular.” (Idem, cap. 78.) This was probably a survival from times still more ancient, when infants were sometimes suckled by goats, and it was a good plan to have them thoroughly familiarized with the smell,—the hircine or caprine odor.

“In cases of fire, if some of the dung can be brought away from the stalls, both sheep and oxen may be got out all the more easily, and will make no attempt to return.”—(Idem, cap. 81.)

The adepts in magic expressly forbid a person, when about to make water, to uncover the body in the face of the sun or moon, or to sprinkle with his urine the shadow of any object whatsoever. Hesiod gives a precept recommending persons to make water against an object standing full before them, that no divinity may be offended by their nakedness being uncovered. Osthanes maintains that every one who drops some urine upon his foot in the morning will be proof against all noxious medicaments.—(Idem, lib. xxviii. cap. 19.)

The adepts in the magical art also believed that “it is improper to spit into the sea, or to profane that element by any other of the evacuations that are inseparable from the infirmities of human nature.”—(Idem, lib. xxx. cap. 6, speaking of the disinclination of the Armenian magician, Tiridates, to visit the Emperor Nero by sea.)

The Thibetans share these scruples. Among the things prohibited to their “Bhikshuni,” or monks and nuns, are: “Ne pas se soulager dans de l’eau quand on n’est pas malade, n’y cracher, n’y moucher, y vomir, ni y jeter quoi que soit de sale.”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill, Paris, 1884, Soc. Asiatique.)

It was believed that a dog would not bark at a man who carried hare’s dung about his person.—(See Pliny, lib. xxx. cap. 53.)

“The therionaca ... has the effect of striking wild beasts of all kinds with a torpor which can only be dispelled by sprinkling them with the urine of the hyena.” (Idem, lib. xxiv. cap. 102.) The hyena was regarded as an especially “magical” animal.—(Idem, lib. xxviii.)

“The magicians tell us that, after taking the ashes of a wild-boar’s genitals in urine, the patient must make water in a dog-kennel, and repeat the following formula: ‘This I do that I may not wet my bed, as a dog does.’”—(Idem, lib. xxviii. cap. 60.)

Some of these ideas would appear to have crossed the Atlantic. In the United States, a generation or less ago, boys were wont to urinate “criss-cross” for good luck, and were careful not to let any of their urine fall on their own shadows.—(Col. F. A. Seelye, Anthropological Society, and others, Washington, D. C.)

In Minden, Westphalia, Germany, boys will urinate criss-cross, and say, “Kreuspissen, morgenstirbstein-Jude” (“Let us piss criss-cross, a Jew will die to-morrow”).—(Personal letter from Dr. Franz Boas, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.)

“Nor ever defile the currents of rivers flowing seaward, nor fountains, but specially avoid it.”—(“Opera et Dies,” Rev. J. Banks, London, 1856, p. 115.)

“Sorcerers try to procure some of a man’s excrement, and put it in his food in order to kill him.”—(“Muhongo,” a boy from Angola, Africa, personal interview, interpretation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)

“Muhongo” also said that to “add one’s urine, even unintentionally, to the food of another bewitches that other, and does him grievous harm.”

Democritus says of the stone “aspisatis:” “Patients should wear it attached to the body with camel’s dung.” (Quoted in Pliny, lib. xxvii. cap. 54.) The same book tells us that stones of this kind were worn generally by gladiators, Milo of Crotona being mentioned as one. What “aspisatis” was cannot be learned.

“Another thing universally acknowledged, and one which I am ready to believe with the greatest pleasure, is the fact that if the door-posts are only touched with the menstruous fluid, all spells of the magicians will be neutralized.”—(Pliny, lib. xxviii. cap. 24.)

“Osthanes, who accompanied Xerxes, the Persian king, in his expedition against Greece, ... the first person, so far as I can ascertain, who wrote upon magic.” (Idem, lib. xxx. cap. 3.) He adds, speaking of magic: “Britannia still cultivates this art, and that with ceremonials so august that she might almost seem to have been the first to communicate them to Persia.”—(Idem, lib. xxx. cap. 4.)

For the relief of infants from phantasm, wrap some goat-dung in a cloth and hang it about the child’s neck. “Ad infantes qui fantasmatibus vexantur, capræ stercus in panno involutum, et collo suspensum remedium est infantibus qui fantasmata patiuntur.”—(Sextus Placitus, “De Capro.”)

“With Plinius was contemporary Joseph or Josephus. The tales about the mandrake, much later on, and found in the Saxon herbarium, are traceable to what he says of the Baaras,—an herb that runs away from the man that wants to gather it, and won’t stop until one throws on it οὖρον γυναικὸς ἢ τὸ ἔμμηνον αἷμα, for nastiness is often an element of mysteries; and even then it kills the dog that draws it out. It is not certain that mandrake berries are meant in Genesis, xxx. 14.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 16.)

Dulaure says that the repute in which mandrake was held was due to its resemblance to the human form, and to the lies told to the superstitious about it, one being that “ils disent qu’il est engendré dessous un gibet de l’urine d’un larron pendu.”—(“Des Différens Cultes,” Paris, 1825, vol. ii. p. 255, footnote.)

“For a man haunted by apparitions work a drink of a white hound’s thost or dung in bitter ley; wonderfully it healeth.” (“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 365.) This same “thost,” or dung, was recommended in the treatment of nits and other insects on children, for dropsy (internally), and to drive away the “Dwarves,” who were believed to have seized upon the patient afflicted with convulsions.

“Doors of houses are smeared with cow-dung and nimba-leaves, as a preservative from poisonous reptiles.”—(Moor’s “Hindu Pantheon,” London, 1810, p. 23.)

“In some parts of Western Africa, when a man returns home after a long absence, before he is allowed to visit his wife he must wash his person with a particular fluid, and receive from the sorcerer a certain mark on his forehead, in order to counteract any magic spell which a stranger woman may have cast upon him in his absence, and which might be communicated through him to the women of his village.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 157.)

We are not informed what this “particular fluid” was, but enough has been adduced concerning the African’s belief in the potency of human urine in cases similar to the above to warrant the insertion at this point.

“On returning from an attempted ascent of the great African mountain, Kilimanjaro, which is believed by the neighboring tribes to be tenanted by dangerous demons, Mr. New and his party, as soon as they reached the borders of the inhabited country, were disenchanted by the inhabitants, being sprinkled with ‘a professionally prepared liquor, supposed to possess the potency of neutralizing evil influences, and removing the spell of wicked spirits.’”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 151, quoting Charles New, “Life, Wanderings, and Labors in Eastern Africa.”)

That the Eskimo believed in the power of human ordure to baffle witchcraft would seem to be intimated in the following from Boas: “Though the Angekok understood the schemes of the old hag, he followed the boy, and sat down with her. She feigned to be very glad to see him and gave him a dishful of soup, which he began to eat. But by the help of his tornaq [that is, the magical influence which aided him] the food fell right through him into a vessel which he had put between his feet on the floor of the hut. This he gave to the old witch, and compelled her to eat it. She died as soon as she had brought the first spoonful to her mouth.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Franz Boas, in “Sixth Annual Report” Bureau of Ethnology, Washington.)

“Osthanes, the magician, prescribed the dipping of our feet, in the morning, in human urine, as a preventative against charms.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 286.)

Frommann writes that human ordure, menses, and semen were mixed in the food of the person to be bewitched.—(“Tractatus de Fascinatione,” p. 683.)

On another page this list is increased to read that human ordure, urine, blood, hair, nails, bones, skulls, and the moss growing on the last-named, as well as animal excrement, were among the materials employed in witchcraft.—(Idem, p. 684.)

If fried beans be thrown into excrement, for each bean thus wasted a pustule will appear on the fundament of the thrower. “Pisa frixa injecta excrementis tot pustulas in podice excitant quot pisa.” (Idem, p. 1023.) The following passage is not fully understood: “Vesicatorio excrementis adhuc calentibus imposito intestina corrosione afficiuntur.” It seems to mean that the entrails will be affected with corrosion when hot excrement is placed in a bladder, probably after the manner of some of the sausages of which we have elsewhere taken notes. Hot ashes or cinders thrown upon recently voided excrement will cause inflammation and pustules in ano. For the same reason we can cause those who are absent to purge without using medicine upon them. “Cineres calidi, vel prunæ candentes scybalis recentibus injecta inflammationem et pustulas in ano excitant.... Eadem ratione absentes sine medicamentis purgari posse, scribit Tilemannus de Mater. Medic. p. 251. (Idem, p. 1623.) Frommann also adds that this fact was well known to the English and French, as well as to the Germans.”—(Idem, p. 1037.)

Human ordure and urine were burned with live coals as a potent charm. The person whose excreta had been burned would suffer terrible pains in the rectum. But this could be used in two ways, for love as well as hatred could be induced by this means, between married people and between old friends.—(Paullini, pp. 264, 265.)

For the use of urine by the Eskimo to ward off the maleficence of witches, turn back to citations taken from Rink’s “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” where it is shown that they still use it with this object in cases of childbirth. See, also, the notes taken from the writings of Dr. Franz Boas.

A bone from the leg or thigh of a man who had died a violent death, emptied of its marrow, and then filled with human ordure, closed up with wax, and placed in boiling water, compelled the unfortunate ejector of the excrement to evacuate just as long as the bone was kept in the water, and it could even be so used that he would be compelled to defile his bed every night. “Os ex pede, vel brachio, vel femore hominis violenta morte interempti, et hoc exempta medulla impletur cum stercore alicujus hominis, foramina obturantur cum cera et sic in aquam calidam immittitur, hoc quamdiu jacet in aqua calida, tamdiu expurgatur iste, cujus stercus fuit inclusum, adeo ut sic aliquem usque ad mortem purgare possimus, potest etiam fieri alio modo ut quis omni nocte lectum suum maculet, sed est ludicrum.”—(Etmuller, vol. ii. pp. 272, 273.)

The small bones of the human leg are used in the sorcery of the Australians. (See “Native Tribes of South Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, p. 276; received through the kindness of the Royal Society, Sydney, New South Wales, F. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)

“In order to produce a flux in the belly, it was only necessary to put a patient’s excrement into a human bone, and throw it into a stream of water.” The above is quoted from the medical writings of “Peter of Spain, who was archbishop, and afterwards pope, under the name of John XXI.”—(“Physicians of the Middle Ages,” T. C. Minor, p. 6.)

Schurig names many authors to show that in cases of “incivility,” such as the placing of excrement at the door of one’s neighbor, the person offended had a sure remedy in his own hands. He was to take some of the excrement of the offending party, mix it with live coals or hot ashes, and throw it out in the street; or he could burn pepper and wine together, with such fecal matter; or he could heat an iron to white heat, insert it in the excrement, and as fast as it cooled repeat the operation; as often as this was done, so often would the guilty one suffer pains in the anus. Other remedies were, to mix spirits of wine and salt together, sprinkle upon the offensive matter, then place a red-hot iron above it, and confer the same pains, which would not leave the offending person’s anus during the whole of that day, unless he cured himself with new milk. Or small peas could be heated in a frying-pan, and then thrown out with fresh excrement; as many as there were peas, so many would be the pains endured by the delinquent. The following are some of the paragraphs in the original from Schurig: “Contra incivilitatem quorundam qui loca consueta et fores aliorum stercoribus suis commaculant, pro correctione inservire potest, si fimus eorundem simpliciter prunis aut cineribus calidis injectus vel etiam vino adusto et pipere simul insperso uratur vel cremetur; aut si vero vel aliud ferrum in ignem ut ignescat, immittatur, ac dein ferrum illud candens in excrementa illa infigatur; frigefactum denuom calefiat eademque opera sæpe repetatur; tunc tantis cruciatibus nates depositoris illius incivilito vexabit, quantas vix prunæ ipsæ partibus iisdem admotæ inussissent.... Excrementis hominis recentibus prunas candentes vel cineres calidos injectos inflammationem, tenesimum, et pustulas excitare, non Anglis et Gallis tantum sed et Germanis atque ex his nostratibus etiam est notissimum,” etc. The names of the authorities cited by Schurig are not repeated.—(“Chylologia,” pp. 790, 791.)

“The Australians believe that their magicians ‘possess the power’ to create disease and death by burning what is called ‘nahak.’ Nahak means rubbish, but principally, refuse of food. Everything of the kind they bury or throw into the sea, lest the disease-makers should get hold of it.” (“Native Tribes of South Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, p. 23.) Reference to “Nahak” is to be found in “Samoa,” Turner, p. 320.

The old home of the Cheyennes of Dakota was in the Black Hills; and there the Sioux believed that the Cheyennes were invincible, because their medicine-men could make everything out of buffalo manure.—(Personal Notes of Captain Bourke.)

Although Livingston’s “Zambesi” is filled with allusions to witchcraft, there is no instance given of the employment of any of the remedies herein described.

“The belief in witchcraft, and in the efficacy of charms and incantations, was strong among the middle and lower classes of Germany about forty years ago.... In the winter of 1845-46, I attended a night-school in my native town, Schorndorf, in the little kingdom of Wurtemburg. There was a blacksmith-shop in the near neighborhood of the school, where work was kept up until a late hour of the night. The miniature fireworks created by the sparks flying from the blows of the immense hammers wielded by the dusky and weird-like forms of the sons of Vulcan, were one of the principal amusements of the schoolboys, and we used to stand at a distance in the dark, before school opened, gazing with awe and wonderment at the brilliant and noisy scene before us. The master blacksmith, on account of his irascible disposition, was not much in favor with us, and it was agreed upon to play him a trick. So one evening while the smiths were at their supper and the smithy unattended, two of the boys smeared the hammer-handles with excrement. The indignation of the smiths was of course great, and with curses and imprecations on the guilty parties they commenced to clean their implements, when suddenly stopped by the master, who, with a fiendish smile on his face, declared that he had concluded to make an example of the offenders. He bade the apprentice to work at the bellows, and then, one after the other, he held the smeared hammer-handles over the forge fire, turning and twisting them the while, and uttering some unintelligible incantations in a low and solemn voice, the workmen standing round him with awe and terror on their sooty countenances. When the ceremony was over, the master declared that it was rather hard on the culprits, whose rectums must be in a frightful condition, but that, unless an example were made, such dirty tricks might be repeated, and this would serve as a warning to the boys in general. We boys had been tremblingly watching the whole proceedings, expecting that some fearful catastrophe would befall us, and I need not state that we were somewhat disappointed when we found ourselves unscathed, although it upset our belief in humbugs of this kind.”—(Personal letter from Mr. Charles Smith, Washington, D. C.)

“Amongst some of the Brazilian Indians, when a girl attains puberty, ... if she have a call of nature, a female relative takes the girl on her back and carries her out, taking with her a live coal, to prevent evil influences from entering the girl’s body.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. ii. p. 231.)

“To unbewitch the bewitched, you must spit into the pisse-pot where you have made water.”—(Reg. Scot, “Disc. of Witchcraft,” p. 62.)

“The Shamans of the Thlinkeets of Alaska keep their urine until its smell is so strong that the spirits cannot endure it.”—(Franz Boas, in “Journal of American Folk-Lore,” vol. i. p. 218.)

In the third volume of the “History of the Inquisition,” by Henry C. Lea, New York, 1888, there is a chapter on “Sorcery and Occult Arts,” but there is no allusion to the use of excrement in any form. Neither is there anything to be found in Dalyell’s “Superstitions of Scotland,” Edinburgh, 1834.

The sacred drink, “hum,” of the Parsis, has “the urine of a young, pure cow” as one of the ingredients. (See Max Müller’s “Biographies of Words,” London, 1888, p. 237.) This sacred drink is also used “as an offering during incantations.”—(Idem.)

Schurig (“Chylologia,” p. 815) states that horse-dung was sometimes used in “sympathetic magic:” “Interdum etiam ad Sympathiam magicam adhibetur;” and he recites an instance wherein a certain farmer, whose meadows were overrun by the horses of his neighbors, was enabled by taking a portion of the dung they had dropped and hanging it up in his chimney, to drive them all into a consumption. The following seems to have been in the nature of an incantation closely allied to the above. “Two Yakut chiefs contended for supremacy; one, named Onagai, defeated and banished his rival, who escaped with only his wife and two mares. This second chief, Aley, collected carefully the dung of his mares, and when the wind blew towards Onagai’s dwelling, made fires of the dung, the smell of which allured the strayed cattle to his dwelling.”—(Sauer, “Exped. to the N. parts of Russia,” London, 1802, p. 133. This “Aley,” according to Tartar tradition, was skilled in magic art. See idem, p. 135.)

“He who wishes to revenge himself by witchcraft endeavors to procure either the saliva, urine, or excrements of his enemy, and after mixing them with a powder, and putting them into a bag woven in a particular form, he buries them.”—(Krusenstern’s “Voy. round the World,” Eng. trans., London, 1813, vol. i. p. 174, speaking of the island of Nukahiva.)

Langsdorff says that in the Washington islands, when a man desires to bewitch an enemy, he endeavors to procure “some of his hair, the remains of something he has been eating, and some earth on which he has spit or made water.”—(“Voyages,” London, 1813, p. 156.)

The Rev. W. Ellis, speaking of the Tahitians, says: “The parings of nails, a lock of the hair, the saliva from the mouth, or other secretions from the body, or else a portion of the food which the person was to eat, this was considered as the vehicle by which the demon entered the person who afterwards became possessed.... The sorcerer took the hair, saliva, or other substance, which had belonged to his victim, to his house, or marae, performed his incantations over it, and offered his prayers; the demon was then supposed to enter the substance (called tubu), and through it to the individual who had suffered from the enchantment.”—(“Polynesian Researches,” vol. ii. p. 228, quoted in “The Nat. Trib. of S. Australia,” p. 25.)

“If the death of any obnoxious person is desired to be procured by sorcery, the malevolent native secures a portion of his enemy’s hair, refuse of food, or excrement; these substances are carried in a bag specially reserved for the artillery of witchcraft, a little wallet which is slung over the shoulders. The refuse of food is subjected to special treatment, part of which is scorching and melting before a fire; but, in the case of excrement, my information is to the effect that it is just allowed to moulder away, and as it decays the health and strength of the enemy is supposed to decline contemporaneously. Excrement is thus employed in the south of Queensland.”—(Personal letter from John Matthew, Esq., M. A., dated “The Manse,” Coburg, Victoria, Nov. 29, 1889. This correspondent has had a great deal of experience with the savages of Australia.)

The Patagonians have the belief that their witches can do harm to those from whom they obtain any exuviæ or excrement,—“if they can possess themselves of some part of their intended victim’s body, or that which has proceeded from it, such as hair, pieces of nails, etc.; and this superstition is the more curious from its exact accordance with that so prevalent in Polynesia.”—(“Voyage of the Adventure and Beagle,” quoting the Jesuit Falkner, vol. ii. p. 163.)

There was some ill-defined relation between the power of urination and virginity. Burton speaks of “such strange, absurd trials in Albertus Magnus ... by stones, perfumes, to make them piss and confess I know not what in their sleep.”—(“Anat. of Melancholy,” vol. ii. p. 451.)

Speaking of the Australians, Smith says: “The only remarkable custom (differing from other savages) in their fighting expeditions, is the adoption of the custom commanded to the Israelites on going out to war. (Deut. c. 23, ver. 12-14,—about hiding excrement.) The natives believe that if the enemy discovered it, they would burn it in the fire, and thus ensure their collective destruction, or that, individually, they would pine away and die.”—(“Aborigines of Victoria,” vol. i. p. 165.)

“In the middle of the hall ... was a vase, of which the contents were at least as varied as those of the caldron of Macbeth; a mixture, in part, composed of nameless ingredients.”—(“Dictionnaire Universel du XIXme Siècle,” by P. Larousse, quoted in “Reports of Voudoo Worship in Hayti and Louisiana,” by W. W. Newell, in “Jour. of Amer. Folk-Lore,” Jan.-March, 1889, p. 43.)

There is on record the confession of a young French witch, Jeanne Bosdean, at Bordeaux, 1594, wherein is described a witches’ mass, at which the devil appeared in the disguise of a black buck, with a candle between his horns. When holy water was needed, the buck urinated in a hole in the ground and the officiating witch aspersed it upon the congregation with a black sprinkler. Jeanne Bosdean adhered to her story even when in the flames.[80]

One of the ceremonies of the initiation of the neophytes into witchcraft was “kissing the devil’s bare buttocks.” (Reg. Scot. “Discoverie,” pp. 36, 37.) Pope Gregory IX., in a letter addressed to several German bishops in 1234, describes the initiation of sorcerers as follows: The novices, on being introduced into the assembly, “see a toad of enormous size.... Some kiss its mouth, others its rear.” Next, “a black cat is presented.... The novice kisses the rear anatomy of the cat, after which he salutes in a similar manner those who preside at the feast, and others worthy of the honor.” (“Med. in Middle Ages,” Minor, p. 41.) Again, “At witches’ reunions, the possessed kissed the devil’s rear, kissing it goat fashion, in a butting attitude.” (Idem, p. 50.) “Le baiser d’hommage est donné au derrière du Diable parce qu’il n’a été permis à Moïse, selon l’Exode, de voir que le derrière de Dieu.”—(Mélusine, Paris, July-August, 1890, p. 90, art. “La Fascination,” by J. Tuchmann.)

The devil hates nothing more than human ordure. (On this point, see Luther’s Table Talk.) The devil cannot be more completely frustrated than by placing upon some of his works human ordure, or hanging it in the smoke of the chimney. The Laplanders were reputed to be able to detain a ship in full sail; yet when such a vessel had been besmeared along its seams in the interior with the ordure of virgins, then the efforts of the witches were of no avail. (Paullini, p. 260.) “A certain man bewitched a boy, nine years old, by placing the boy’s ordure in a hog’s bladder and hanging the ‘sausage’ in the chimney. (Idem, p. 261.) But some believed that by this smoking of ordure the evil often became worse; that the diseased person gradually dried up until at last he died, as he experienced in the case of his own father-in-law.... Farmers’ wives, to make the butter come in spite of the witches, poured fresh cow’s milk upon human ordure, or down into the privy, and the witches were thereupon rendered powerless.”—(Idem, p. 263. See also citation from Schurig, “Chylologia.”)

The Magi also taught to drink the ashes of a pig’s pizzle in sweet wine, and so to make water into a dog’s kennel, adding the words, “Lest he, like a hound, should make urine in his own bed.” If a man, in the morning, made water a little on his own foot, it would be a preservative against mala medicamenta, doses meant to do him harm.—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” lib. i. p. 12, quoting Pliny. See citations already made from that author.)

Beckherius (Med. Microcosmus, p. 114) tells the story of the Lapland witches being able to hold a ship in its course, except when the inner seams of the vessel had been calked with the ordure of a virgin; see extract already entered.

Again, Beckherius quotes Josephus as narrating that a certain lake, near Jericho, ejected asphalt which adhered so tenaciously to a ship that it was in danger of wreck, had not the asphalt been loosened by an application of menstrual blood and human urine.—(Idem, p. 43, quoting Josephus, “De Bello Judaico,” lib. iv. c. 47.)

Beckherius, “Med. Microcosmus,” p. 43, cites Josephus in regard to a certain plant to which magical properties were ascribed, but only to be brought out by watering it with menstrual blood and the urine of a woman.—(Josephus, “De Bell. Jud.” lib. vii. c. 23, p. 146.)

Dittmar Bleekens, speaking of the “Islanders” (Icelanders), says: “And truly, it is a wonder that Satan so sporteth with them, for hee hath shewed them a remedie in staying of their ships, to wit, the excrements of a maide being a Virgin; if they anoynt the Prow and certaine plancks of the ship hee hath taught them that the spirit is put to flight and driven away with this stinke.”—(In Purchas, vol. i. p. 646.)

Josephus says (his remarks have already been given in quotation, but are repeated to show exactly what he did say): The bitumen of Lake Asphaltites “is so tenacious as to make the ship hang upon the clods till they set it loose with blood and with urine, to which alone it yields.”—(“Wars of the Jews,” Eng. trans., New York, 1821, book 4, c. 7.)

The people of the Island of Mota, or Banks Island, “have a kind of individual totem, called tamaniu. It is some object, generally an animal, as a lizard or snake, but sometimes a stone, with which the person imagines that his life is bound up; if it dies or is broken or lost, he will die. Fancy dictates the choice of a tamaniu; or it may be found by drinking an infusion of certain kinds of herbs and heaping together the dregs. Whatever living thing is first seen in or upon the heap is the tamaniu. It is watched, but not fed or worshipped.”—(Frazer, “Totemism,” Edinburgh, 1887, p. 56.)

Compare the preceding paragraph with the practice, elsewhere noted, of determining whether or not a woman is pregnant by pouring some of her urine upon bran and allowing it to ferment and then watching the appearance of animal life. Also, the method of determining whether or not a man was stricken with leprosy.

To determine whether a woman be pregnant of a boy or a girl, make two small holes in the ground; in one, put wheat; in the other, barley; let her urinate on both; if the wheat sprout first, she will have a boy; if the barley, a girl. To determine whether a man had been attacked by leprosy (elephantiasis), the ashes of burnt lead (plumbi usti cineres) were thrown into his urine; if they fell to the bottom, he was well; if they floated on top, he was in danger.

To tell whether a man had been bewitched, “Coque in olla nova, ad ignem, urinam hominis quæ si ebullierit, liber erit a veneficio.”—(Beckherius, “Med. Microcosmus,” pp. 61, 62.)

To determine whether a sick man was to die during the current month, some of his urine was shaken up in a glass vessel until it foamed; then the observer took some of his own earwax (cerumen) and placed it in this foam; if it separated, the man was to recover; if not, not.—(Idem, p. 62.)

“It is said that King Louis Philippe before mounting on horseback never failed to urinate against the left hind leg of his horse, according to an old tradition in cavalry that such a proceeding had the effect of strengthening the leg of the beast and rendering the animal more apt to sustain the effort made by the rider when jumping upon the saddle. I tell you the fact as I heard it reported by one of the king’s sons, Prince of Joinville, forty-five years ago when I was sailing in a frigate—‘La Belle Poule’—under his command.”—(Personal letter from Captain Henri Jouan, French Navy.)

The people of Lake Ubidjwi, near Lake Tanganyika, are thus described: “Both sexes of all classes carry little carved images round their necks or tied to the upper part of their arms as a charm against evil spirits. They are usually hollow, and filled with filth by the medicine-men.”—(“Across Africa,” Cameron, London, 1877, vol. i. p. 336.)

In the incantations made by the medicine-men to avert disaster from fire and preserve his expedition, Cameron notes, among other features, “a ball made of shreds of bark, mud, and filth.” (Idem, vol. ii. p. 118.) The term “filth,” as here employed, can have but one meaning.

“Poor Robin, in his Almanac for 1695 ... ridicules the following indelicate fooleries then in use, which must surely have been either of Dutch or Flemish extraction. They who when they make water go streaking the walls with their urine, as if they were planning some antic figures or making some curious delineations, or shall piss in the dust, making I know not what scattering angles and circles, or some chink in a wall, or a little hole in the ground, to be brought in, after two or three admonitions, as incurable fools.” (Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 175, article “Nose and Mouth Omens.”) This was possibly a survival from some old method of divining.

Cameron, describing the dance of a medicine-man in the village of Kwinhata, near the head of the Congo, and the humble deference shown to these Mganga by the women, says of one of the women: “She soon went away quite happy, the chief Mganga having honored her by spitting in her face and giving her a ball of beastliness as a charm. This she hastened to place in safety in her hut.”—(“Across Africa,” vol. ii. p. 82.)

An article in “Table Talk,” copied in the “Evening Star,” Washington, D. C., of Dec. 17, 1888, entitled “Christmas under the Polar Star,” says that “in Southern Lapland, should the householder neglect to provide an ample store of fuel for the season’s needs, in popular belief, the disgusted Yule-swains or Christmas goblins would so befoul the wood-pile that there would be no getting at its contents.”

Frommann devotes a long article to a refutation of the popular idea of his day that from the urine or seed of a man innocently hanged for theft, could be generated “homunculi.” “Anile istud placitum, ex urina vel semine hominis innocenter ad suspendium furti crimine damnati homunculum generari.”—(“Tract. de Fascinat.,” p. 672.)

“Butler’s description in his ‘Hudibras’ of ‘a cunning man or fortune-teller,’ is fraught with a great deal of his usual pleasantry,—

—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 62, article “Sorcerer.”)

“There were Etruscan wizards who made rain or discovered springs of water, it is not certain which. They were thought to bring the rain or water out of their bellies.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 22.)

The bed-chamber of Munza, King of the Mombottoes, was “painted with many geometrical designs ... the white from dog’s dung (album Græcum).”—(“Heart of Africa,” Schweinfurth, London, 1878, vol. ii. p. 36.)

It is quite safe to assert that these “geometrical designs” were “magical.”

“Witches are supposed to acquire influence over any one by becoming possessed of anything belonging to the intended victim,—such as a hair, a piece of wearing apparel, or a pin. The influence acquired by the witch is greater if such an article be voluntarily or unconsciously handed to her by the person asked for it.... A witch can be disabled by securing a hair of her head, wrapping it in a piece of paper, and placing it against a tree as a target into which a silver bullet is to be fired from a gun.... When the patient reaches the age of adolescence, the alleged relief (from incontinence of urine) is obtained by urinating into a newly-made grave; the corpse must be of the opposite sex to that of the experimenter.”—(“Folk-Lore of the Pennsylvania Germans,” Hoffman, in “Journal of American Folk-Lore,” January-March, 1889, pp. 28-32.)

Black alludes to the same ideas. See his “Folk-Medicine,” p. 16.

To frustrate the effects of witchcraft, Dr. Rosinus Lentilius recommended that the patient take a quantity of his own ordure, the size of a filbert, and drink it in oil. (See “Ephem. Medic.,” Leipsig, 1694, p. 170.) According to Paullini, the antidotes were to take human ordure both internally and externally, and human urine externally. Schurig, for the same purpose, recommended the human urine and ordure, but both to be taken internally, mixed with hyoscyamus.—(“Chylologia,” pp. 765, 766.)

In France witches were transformed into animals, and vice versa, “by washing their hands in a certain water which they kept in a pot.” Reference is also made to “a basin of anything but holy water with which the initiated were sprinkled.”—(“Sorcery and Magic,” Thomas Wright, London, 1851, vol. i. pp. 310, 311, 328, 329.)

Reginald Scot tells the story of “a mass-priest” who was tormented by an incubus; after all other remedies had failed, he was advised by “a cunning witch ... that the next morning, about the dawning of the day, I should pisse, and immediately should cover the pisse-pot, or stop it with my right nether-stock.”—(“Discoverie,” p. 65.)

The Thlinkeet of the northwest coast of America believe that a drowned man can be restored to life by cutting his skin and applying a medicine made of certain roots infused in the urine of a child, which has been kept for three moons. Drowned men, according to their medicine-men, are turned into otters.—(See Franz Boas, in “Journal of American Folk-Lore,” vol. i. p. 218.)

“It was a supposed remedy against witchcraft to put some of the bewitched person’s water, with a quantity of pins, needles, and nails, into a bottle, cork them up, and set them before the fire, in order to confine the spirit; but this sometimes did not prove sufficient, as it would often force the cork out with a loud noise, like that of a pistol, and cast the contents to a considerable height.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 13, article “Sorcerers.”)

Where the limbs of a man had been bewitched, he should bathe them with his own urine; some recommended an addition of garlic or assafœtida.—(Frommann, “Tract. de Fascinat.,” pp. 961, 962.)

“Jorden, in his curious treatise, ‘Of the Suffocation of the Mother,’ 1603, p. 24, says: ‘Another policie Marcellus Donatus tells us of, which a physitian used toward the Countesse of Mantua, who, being in that disease which we call melancholia hypochondriaca, did verily believe that she was bewitched, and was cured by conveying of nayles, needles, feathers, and such like things, into her close-stool when she took physicke, making her believe that they came out of her bodie.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 13, article “Sorcerers.”)

Schurig prescribed hen and dove dung for the cure of the bewitched.—(“Chylologia,” p. 817.)

Beckherius highly extolled human ordure for the same purpose.—(“Med. Microcosmus,” p. 113.)

“The catamenial blood of women was looked upon as efficacious in chasing away demons.”—(Black, “Folk-Medicine,” p. 154, quoting Sinistrari.)

In Scotland, “they put a small quantity of salt into the first milk of a cow, after calving, that is given to any person to drink. This is done with a view to prevent skaith (harm), if it should happen that the person is not canny.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 165, art. “Salt-Falling.” Compare the foregoing with what Sir Samuel Baker tells us about African superstitions on the same subject.)

“On line 160, Reinerstein’s and Retz’s edition of Lucian’s ‘Dea Syra,’ 4vo, vol. iii. p. 654, you will find human dung mentioned as a medicine or charm, and urine some lines lower.”—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith, dated Christ College, Cambridge, England, August 11, 1888.)

One of the most curious features about Grimm’s “Teutonic Mythology” (Stallybrass’ translation, London, 1882), is the absence of any mention of the use of human or animal ordure or urine in any manner, either medicinally or religiously, or to baffle witchcraft. He may have issued a supplement, in which all this may have been corrected; but if he did not, then his work is most singularly defective.

Mr. Sylvester Baxter states that in a recent conversation with Mr. Frank H. Cushing, near Tempe, Arizona, he learned that in Mr. Cushing’s youth, people in Central and Western New York were still using charms against witchcraft, and that Mr. Cushing was personally acquainted with a family which had prepared a decoction, one of whose ingredients was human urine; this as a preventive of witchcraft. The locality referred to was about eighteen miles from Rochester, N. Y.

“Spitting into recently voided urine prevents one from getting ‘warrle’ on his eyes.” (Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen, Cambridge, Mass.) This remedy goes back to Pliny.

“To unbewitch the bewitched, you must spit in the pot where you have made water.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 263, art. “Saliva,” quoting from Reginald Scot’s “Discoverie.”)

“Several fetid and stinking matters, such as old urine, are excellent means for keeping away all kinds of evil-intentioned spirits and ghosts.”—(Rink, “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” Edinburgh, 1875, pp. 50, 452.)

“The Manxmen still place a vessel full of water outside their doors at night, to enable the fairies (who, they say, were the first inhabitants of their island,) to wash themselves, and prevent them from doing harm.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. ii. p. 494, art. “Fairy Mythology.”)

It is certainly singular to find here a trace of the custom noted as existing among the Laplanders and the people of Siberia, who placed tubs of urine for the same purpose, urine being used in ordinary ablutions.

In England, there was a superstition that the woman who made water upon nettles would be “peevish for a whole day.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 359, art. “Divination by Flowers.”)

Fosbroke (“Encyclopædia of Antiquities,” vol. ii.) says that this proverb is ancient. “Nettles were in ancient times regarded as an aphrodisiac.”

Schurig (“Chylologia,” p. 795) repeats the story to the effect that the Laplanders calked the inner seams of their ships with the ordure of virgins to increase their speed. The Laplanders, when any of their reindeer die of disease, abandon their camp, being careful “to burn all the excrement of the animal before they depart.”—(Leem’s “Account of Danish Lapland,” in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 484. See previous citations from Sauer in regard to the Yakuts of Siberia.)

The story was current in California, about twenty years since, that the immigrants to that state from Missouri and Arkansas, in the gold-mining days, had the custom of depositing their evacuations, before starting on the march of the day, in the camp-fires of the preceding night. Nothing was learned of the meaning, if any, of the custom. Nursing women sprinkled a few drops of their milk on the burning coals in the fireplace, to ensure an abundant flow.—(Etmuller, vol. i. p. 68.)

The author has been fortunate in obtaining a copy of the address of Mr. James Mooney, of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., upon the “Medical Mythology of Ireland.”

This interesting and extremely valuable contribution, which can be found in the “Transactions of the American Philosophical Society for 1887,” leaves no uncertainty in regard to the mystic powers ascribed by the Celtic peasantry to both urine and ordure. Urine and chicken-dung are shown to be potent in frustrating the mischief of fairies; “fire, iron, and dung” are spoken of as the “three great safeguards against the influence of fairies and the infernal spirits.” Dung is carried about the person, as part of the contents of amulets; and children suffering from convulsions are, as a last resort, bathed from head to foot in urine, to rescue them from the clutches of their fairy persecutors. See also p. 377, in regard to the “dwarves,” who, in England, seem to be the same as fairies.

Du Chaillu, in his “Land of the Midnight Sun,” makes no reference to the use, in any manner, by the inhabitants of that region, of excrementitious materials for any purposes. His stay was of such an extremely short duration, that his observations cannot be compared with those made by Leems and others, from whom information has already been extracted.

A curious survival, in France, of the Parsi custom of the “Nirang” is demonstrated in the May number of “Mélusine,” Paris, 1888, entitled “Le Nirang des Parsis, en Basse Bretagne.”

“J’ai passé mon enfance, jusqu’à l’âge de quatorze ans, dans un vieux manoir breton, du nom de Keramborgne, dans la commune de Plouarte, arrondissement de Lannion. Le manoir paternel était bien connu des malheureux et des mendiants errants ... qui venaient demander le vivre et le couvert pour la nuit.... Parmi les pauvres errants qui étaient les hôtes les plus assidus de Keramborgne ... se trouvait une vieille femme nommée Gillette Kerlohiou, qui connaissait toutes les nouvelles du pays ... et, de plus, avait la réputation d’être quelque peu sorcière, et de guérir certaines maladies par des oraisons et des herbes dont elle seule avait le secret.... Un matin que Gillette avait passé la nuit à l’étable ... elle marmottait des prières.... Une vache s’étant mise à uriner, la vieille mendiante se précipita vers elle, reçut de l’urine dans le creux de sa main et s’en frotta la figure à plusieurs reprises.... Ce que voyant le vacher, il la traita de salope et de vieille folle. Mais Gillette lui dit, sans s’émouvoir: ‘Rien n’est meilleur, mon fils, que de se laver la figure, le matin, en se levant, avec de l’urine de la vache, et même avec sa propre urine si l’on ne peut se procurer de celle de vache. Quand vous avez fait cette ablution, le matin, vous êtes, pour toute la journée, à l’abri des embûches et des méchancetés du diable, car vous devenez invisible pour lui.’”

The writer of the above, M. F.-M. Luzel, learned from the other peasants and beggars standing about that the belief expressed by the old woman was fully concurred in by her comrades.

“Nos paysannes de France se lavaient les mains dans leur urine ou dans celle de leurs maris, ou de leurs enfants, pour détourner les maléfices ou en empêcher l’effet.”—(Réclus, “Les Primitifs,” p. 98.)

Father Le Jeune must have been on the track of something corresponding to an ur-orgy among the Hurons when he learned that the devil imposed upon the sick, in dreams, the duty of wallowing in ordure if they hoped for restoration to health.[81]

This penitential wallowing was retained by nations of a high order of advancement, the ordure of primitive times being generally superseded by clay and other less filthy matter.

“Let it suffice to display the points where Greek found itself in harmony with Australian and American and African practice.... 3. The habit of daubing persons about to be initiated with clay, ... or anything else that is sordid, and of washing this off, apparently by way of showing that old guilt is removed, and a new life entered upon.”—(“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 282.)

“Plutarch, in his essay on superstition, represents the guilty man who would be purified actually rolling in clay.”—(Idem, p. 286.)

The following is described as the Abyssinian method of exorcising a woman: The exorcist “lays an amulet on the patient’s heaving bosom, makes her smell of some vile compound, and the moment her madness is somewhat abated begins a dialogue with the Bouda (demon), who answers in a woman’s voice. The devil is invited to come out in the name of all the saints; but a threat to treat him with some red-hot coals is usually more potent, and after he has promised to obey, he seeks to delay his exit by asking for something to eat. Filth and dirt are mixed and hidden under a bush, when the woman crawls to the sickening repast and gulps it down with avidity.”—(From an article entitled “Abyssinian Women,” in the “Evening Star,” Washington, D. C., October 17, 1885.)

“A Pretty Charme or Conclusion for one Possessed.... The possessed body must go upon his or her knees to church, ... and so must creep without going out of the way, being the common highway, in that sort how foul and dirty soever the same may be, or whatsoever lie in the way, not shunning anything whatsoever, untill he come to the church, where he must heare masse devoutly.”—(Scot, “Discoverie,” p. 178.)

By the Irish peasantry urine was sprinkled upon sick children.[82]

American boys urinate upon their legs to prevent cramp while swimming.

In Stirling, Scotland, “a certain quantity of cow-dung is forced into the mouth of a calf immediately after it is calved, or at least before it has received any meat; owing to this, the vulgar believe that witches and fairies can have no power ever after to injure the calf.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 257, article “Rural Charms.”)

Frommann gives a preparation of twenty-five ingredients for freeing infants from witchcraft (fascinatio); but neither human nor animal egestæ are mentioned.—(“Tract. de Fascinat.,” p. 449, 450.)

Cox, in his history of Ireland, gives a description of the trial of Lady Alice Kettle, of Ossory, charged with being a witch, and with sacrificing to a familiar spirit at night, at cross-roads, nine red cocks and nine peacock’s eyes, and with sweeping the streets of Kilkenny, “raking all the filth towards the doors of her son, William Outlaw, murmuring and muttering secretly with herself these words:—