A new task now presents itself, the examination into burlesque survivals of rites and usages no longer countenanced as matters of religious importance.
Religion is not content with being tenacious of its ceremonial; it often goes so far as to sanctify reversions to usages and modes of thought which have passed out of the recollection of the people; in doing this, it is frequently necessary that some explanation be invented, as the hierophants themselves are generally ignorant of the true reasons for their conduct; but more ordinarily mankind accepts and complies with ritualistic precepts without inquiry, and even with a vague belief that the more archaic a practice may be, the more efficacy it must necessarily have in securing protection and good fortune.
The Hindu festival of Holi, Huli, or Hulica, familiar to most readers, has thus been outlined by a recent witness as celebrated in the provinces near Oudeypore.[87] The proceedings are characterized as saturnalia, attended with much freedom and excessive drunkenness:
“The importance of the study of popular traditions, though recognized by men of science, is not yet understood by the general public. It is evident, however, that the mental tokens which belong to one intellectual stock, which bear the stamp of successive ages, which connect the intelligence of our day with all periods of human activity, are worthy of serious consideration. Much of this time-honored currency is rude and shapeless, it may be ore scarcely marked by the die; but among the treasures silver and gold are not wanting. An American superstition may require for its explanation reference to Teutonic mythology, or may be directly associated with the philosophy, monuments, and arts of Hellas.... It is, however, now a recognized principle that higher forms can only be comprehended by the help of the lower forms out of which they grew.... The only truly scientific habit of mind is that wide and generous spirit of modern research which, without disdain and without indifference, embraces all aspects of human thought, and endeavors in all to find a whole.”—(Prof. W. W. Newell, in “Journal of American Folk-Lore,” Jan.-March, 1889.)
“It is not too much to assert, once for all, that meaningless customs must be survivals; that they had a practical, or at least ceremonial intention when and where they first arose; but are now fallen into absurdity from having been carried on in a new state of society, where their original sense has been discarded.”—(“Primitive Culture,” E. B. Tylor, New York, 1874, vol. i. p. 85.)
“I believe that no custom which we find among early races was initiated without some very good reason why, though those who practise it may long have lost it, and even have been obliged to invent a new one, utterly different from the original, to explain the rite which they ignorantly practise.”—(Personal letter from J. W. Kingsley, Esq., M. D., Brome Hall, Scole, England.)
“The serious business of ancient society may be seen to sink into the sport of later generations, and its serious belief to linger on in nursery folk-lore, while superseded habits of old-world life may be modified into new-world forms, still powerful for good and evil.”—(“Primitive Culture,” E. B. Tylor, London, 1871, vol. i. p. 15.)
And again: “Religion holds on, with the tenacity of superstition, to all that has ever been practised.”—(“Custom and Myth,” Andrew Lang, New York, 1885, p. 241.)
A brighter light will be thrown upon future investigations by regarding folk-lore and folk-usage, especially folk-medicine, as the crystalization of primordial religious thought and practice.
“It can hardly be too often repeated, since it is not yet generally recognized, that, in spite of their fragmentary character, the popular superstitions and customs of the peasantry are by far the fullest and most trustworthy evidence we possess as to the primitive religion of the Aryans. Indeed, the primitive Aryan, in all that regards his mental fibre and texture, is not extinct. He is amongst us to this day. The great intellectual and moral forces which have revolutionized the educated world, have scarcely affected the peasant. In his inmost beliefs, he is what his forefathers were in the days when forest trees still grew, and squirrels played on the ground where Rome and London now stand.
“Hence every inquiry into the primitive religion of the Aryans should either start from the superstitious beliefs and observances of the peasantry, or should at least be constantly checked and controlled by reference to them. Compared with the evidence afforded by living tradition, the testimony of ancient books on the subject of ancient religion is worth very little. For literature accelerates the advance of thought at a rate which leaves the slow progress of opinion by word of mouth at an immeasurable distance behind. Two or three generations of literature may do more to change thought than two or three thousand years of traditional life. But the mass of the people, who do not read books, remain unaffected by the mental revolution wrought by literature; and so it has come about that in Europe, at the present day, the superstitious beliefs and practices which have been handed down by word of mouth are generally of a far more archaic type than the religion depicted in the most ancient literature of the Aryan race.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Frazer, M. A., London, 1890, Preface, viii, ix.)
The people of Rangoon, Siam, observe a peculiar usage at the time of their New Year. Every man, woman, boy, or girl is armed with a “squirt-gun,” with which all people on the street are drenched.[88]
Elliott, apparently quoting from Zagoskin (a Russian explorer, temp. 1843), says that the Alaskans have “entertainments” in the “kashga.” “It sometimes happens, on these occasions, that lovers of fun sprinkle the women with oil, or with that fluid which they use in place of soap, squirted from small bladders concealed about their persons, and such jokes are never resented.”—(“Our Arctic Province,” Henry W. Elliott, New York, 1887, p. 392.)
“From the very beginning effigies of the most revolting indecency are set up in the gates of the town and in the principal thoroughfares.
“Troops of men and women, wreathed with flowers and drunk with bang, crowd the streets, carrying sacks full of a bright red vegetable powder. With this they assail the passers-by, covering them with clouds of dust, which soon dyes their clothes a startling color. Groups of people standing at the windows retaliate with the same projectile, or squirt with wooden syringes red and yellow streams of water into the streets below.”
The Nautch dances reach the acme of voluptuousness, and the accompanying chants are filled with suggestiveness. The author here quoted says that Holica was the Indian Venus.
An eminent authority says that “this red powder (gulàl) is a sign of a bad design of an adulterous character. During the holi holidays the Maharaj throws gulàl on the breasts of female and male devotees, and directs the current of some water of a yellow color from a syringe upon the breasts of females.”—(Inman, “Ancient Faiths embodied in Ancient Names,” p. 393.)
This “yellow water” may be a survival of and a refinement upon urine. The Apaches and Navajoes, close neighbors of the Zuñis, have had until very recently (and may still celebrate) the dance of the Joshkân, in which clowns scatter upon the spectators, from bladders wound round their bodies, water, said to be representative of urine.
Among the Aztecs there was a festival allowing the fullest license to clowns, armed with bladders filled with red powder or fine pieces of maguey paper attached by strings to short poles. With these bladders all persons caught in the streets, especially women and girls, were mercilessly buffeted.—(Sahagun, vol. ii. in Kingsborough’s “Mexican Antiquities,” vol. vi. p. 33, and again vol. vii. p. 83.)
His account says that in the seventeenth month, which was called “Tititl,” and corresponded almost to our winter solstice, the Mexican year being divided into eighteen months of twenty days each, beginning with our February, the Aztec populace played a game called “nechichiquavilo.”
All the men and boys who wished to play this game made little bags or nets, filled with the pollen of the rush, called “espadaña,” or with paper cut in fine pieces. These were attached to cords or ribbons half a yard long, in such a manner that a blow could be struck with them. Others made these bags like gloves, which they stuffed as above stated, or with leaves of green maize. No one was allowed, under penalty, to put into these bags any stones, or anything else which could hurt.
The boys at once began to play this game, in the way of a sham-battle, hitting each other on the head, or wherever else they could. As the fun increased the more mischievous of the boys began to beat the young maidens passing along the street. At times three or four young boys would attack one girl, and beat her so hard as to weary her and make her cry. The more prudent of the young girls, in going from point to point, carried a club with which to defend themselves. Some of the boys concealed the bag, and when any old women carelessly approached they would suddenly begin to beat them, crying out, “Chichiquatzinte mantze!”—which means, “Our mother, this is the bag of the game!”[89]
The following is Torquemada’s description:—
“In the festival in honor of the goddess Yamatecuhtli, or “principal old woman,” in the seventeenth month of the Mexican calendar, all the people of the city made bags after the manner of purses, and stuffed them full of hay and straw and other things, which would have no weight and do no harm, and, attaching them to a cord, carried them hidden under their cloaks. With these bags they buffeted all the women they met on the street.”[90]—(Torquemada, “Monarchia Indiana,” lib. x. cap. 29.)
He recognizes the similarity between this and the blind-man’s-buff games of other countries.
A contributor to “Asiatic Researches” calls this powder of the Huli festival a “purple powder,” and claims that the idea is to represent the return of spring, which the Romans call “purple.”[91]
In some parts of North America the 1st of April is observed like Saint Valentine’s Day, with this difference, that the boys are allowed to chastise the girls, if they think fit, either with words or blows.—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. i. p. 141, article “April Fool’s Day.”)
Whether or not primitive man, excited by his insatiate, omnivorous appetite for gods, under the impulses of which he deified winds, waters, trees, and stones, and looked with a veneration not far removed from devotion itself, upon the holy graals, chalices, and other paraphernalia of his ritual, should have associated a mysterious power with the bladders he employed to hold his urine and ordure is a question which no one can to-day determine.
For our own cow-worshipping Aryan ancestry bladders were a natural means of transporting liquids, exactly as they remain among the Apaches and other Indian tribes of America.
Introduced of necessity into religious ceremonial, they would, with the advance of years, and in spite of the improvement which might be brought about in the domestic comfort of the people at large, gain a certain “medicine” value, strictly parallel to that which we know has been gained by the gourd-rattle, which, in not a few cases, has been consulted as an oracle, and adored as a god.[92]
The author has observed a number of instances of the use by Sioux, Apache, and other Indians, of bladders tied in the hair as an “ornament” long after traders had placed within reach glass beads, feathers, and other means of decoration. The Hottentots kept drinking-water in “the intestines of animals.”—(Thurnberg, in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. pp. 38, 73, 141.)
Of the Patagonians we are informed that “the only vessels they use for carrying water are bladders.”—(“Adventure and Beagle,” vol. i. p. 93.)
We are informed that the Shamans of Alaska throw into the sea inflated bladders and watch them sink, as a means of divination.—(“Our Arctic Province,” Elliott, p. 393.)
In some parts of rural England there were kept up even to our own day certain feasts or ceremonies, connected with the ploughing of the land. These “fool-plough” days varied in different sections from early in January to Shrove Tuesday. They partook of the nature of a frolic, the plough being driven by a clown armed with a bladder, with which he urged his team. There were certain peculiarities connected with this custom indicative of a Pagan origin. The clown was attired as a woman, there was music, the plough was drawn three times round a fire, the blacksmith received “sharping corn” for sharpening the plough-irons, and the whole ended with feasting, in which the cock figured as one of the articles of food. All this suggested to the writer in Brand a relationship with the “Compitalia” of the Romans and “the three sacred ploughings” of the Athenians; also the sacred ceremonial ploughing of the Chinese.—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. i. pp. 505 et seq., article “Fool-Ploughs.”)
Bruce describes the commander-in-chief of the Abyssinian army on an expedition against the Gallas while in the act of making his toilet. “A man was then finishing his head-dress by plaiting it with some of the long and small guts of an ox, which I did not perceive had ever been cleaned.”—(Bruce, “Nile,” vol. iv. p. 212.)
The Gallas of Abyssinia, upon slaughtering an ox, “hang the entrails round their necks, or interweave them with their hair.”—(Maltebrun, “Un. Geography,” Boston, 1847, vol. ii. p. 47, article “Abyssinia.”)
Bruce describes a chief of the Gallas as having “his long hair plaited and interwoven with the bowels of oxen, and so knotted and twisted together as to render it impossible to distinguish the hair from the bowels.... He had likewise a wreath of guts hung about his neck, and several rounds of the same about his middle.”—(“Nile,” vol. iv. p. 560.)
“Their favorite ornament is composed of the entrails of their oxen, which, without superfluous care in cleansing them, are plaited in the hair and tied as girdles round the waist.”—(“Encyc. of Geog.,” Philadelphia, 1855, vol. ii. p. 588, article “Abyssinia.”)
“A Norwegian witch has boasted of sinking a ship by opening a bag in which she had shut up a wind. Ulysses received the winds in a leather bag from Æolus, king of the winds.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 27.)
An examination of the examples just adduced, as well as of those introduced under “Cures by Transplantation,” would seem to show that bladders were used in preference to material just as available and convenient, and that when a substitution was made it was always by a horn or a glass, clear as the entrail which it no doubt was supposed to resemble. The god Crepitus, as we have shown, was symbolized as a swollen paunch. The clowns of the circuses of the present day are armed with bladders; but why no antiquarian has yet arisen to explain to us.
Brand (“Popular Antiquities,” vol. i. p. 261 et seq., article “Fools”) contains no information on this point.
The use of the bladder is to be noted in the festivals of the Inuits. “Après un superbe vacarme, ils suspendent à des cordes une centaine des vessies, prises à des animaux tous tués à coups de flèche.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 110, “Les Inoits Occidentaux.”)
The explanation given by Réclus is as follows: “Faut-il expliquer que les vessies, échauffées par la flamme, symbolisent les souffles du printemps?... Qu’elles symbolisent l’esprit de vie qui entre dans les narines?”—(Idem.)
It may be enough to point out the care with which these bladders must be selected; not every bladder will do,—only those from animals killed with arrows.