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Preface

The subject of SCATALOGIC or STERCORACEOUS RITES AND PRACTICES, however repellent it may be under some of its aspects, is none the less deserving of the profoundest consideration,—if for no other reason than that from the former universal dissemination of such aberrations of the intellect, as well as of the religious impulses of the human race, and their present curtailment or restriction, the progress of humanity upward and onward may best be measured.

Philosophical and erudite thinkers of past ages have published tomes of greater or less magnitude upon this subject; among these authors, it may be sufficient, at this moment, to mention Schurig, Etmuller, Flemming, Paullini, Beckherius, Rosinus Lentilius, and Levinus Lemnius. The historian Buckle regarded the subject as one well worthy of examination and study, as will appear in the text from the memoranda found in his scrap-books after his death.

The philosopher Boyle is credited with the paternity of a work which appeared over the signature “B,” bearing upon the same topic.

The anonymous author or authors of the very learned pamphlet “Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” for the perusal of which I am indebted to the courtesy of Surgeon John S. Billings, collected a mass of most valuable bibliographical references.

Quite recently there have appeared in the “Mitterlungen Gesselsch.,” Wien, 1888, two pages of the work of Dr. M. Hofler, “Volksmedicin und Aberglaube in Oberbayern Gegenwart und Vergangenheit,” describing some of the excrementitious remedies still existing in the folk-medicine of Bavaria.

But while treatises upon this subject are by no means rare, they are not accessible, except to those scholars who are within reach of the largest libraries; and while all, or nearly all, indicate the association of these practices with sorcery and witchcraft, as well as with folk-medicine, no writer has hitherto ventured to suggest the distinctively religious derivation to be ascribed to them.

From the moment when the disgusting “Urine Dance of the Zuñis” was performed in the author’s presence down to the hour of concluding this work, a careful examination has been made of more than one thousand treatises of various kinds and all sizes, from the musty pig-skin covered black letter of the fifteenth century to the more modest but not less valuable pamphlet of later years. These treatises have covered the field of primitive religion, medicine, and magic, and have likewise included a most liberal portion of the best books of travel and observation among primitive peoples in every part of the world; not only English authorities, but also the writings of the best French, Spanish, German, Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Celtic authors are here presented, together with an examination of what has come down to us from leaders of Eastern religious thought and from the monastic “leeches” of the Anglo-Saxons.

A great number of examples of the use of stercoraceous remedies has been inserted under the head of “Therapeutics,” for two excellent reasons: first, to show that the use of such remedies was most widely disseminated; and secondly, to demonstrate that this use had been handed down from century to century.

Had any other course been followed, objection might have been raised that unusual remedies, or those of eccentric practitioners only, had been sought for and quoted for the purpose of proving that Filth Pharmacy was a thoroughly consistent and fully developed school in the science of therapeutics, from the most primitive times down to and even overlapping our own days.

A perusal of this volume cannot fail to convince the most critical that it has been written in a spirit of fairness as much as is possible to human nature, and without prepossession or prejudice in any direction.

The fact that so many citations have been incorporated in this compilation without comment, may be claimed as an additional proof of the unbiassed character of the work.

No collection of facts constitutes a science. All that can properly be done with facts not positively known to be related, is to place them, as here placed, in juxtaposition, leaving the reader to frame his own conclusions; by no other method can an author escape the imputation of distorting or perverting evidence.

The great number of letters received from distinguished scholars in all parts of the world, from Edinburgh to New South Wales, attests the interest felt in this treatise, and at the same time places the author under obligations which words cannot express. Special acknowledgments are due to:—

Professor W. ROBERTSON SMITH, Editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Major-General J. G. FORLONG, author of “The Rivers of Life,” Edinburgh.

HAVELOCK ELLIS, Esq., Editor of the Contemporary Science Series.

Prof. TYRRELL S. LEITH, of Bombay (since dead).

FRANK REDE FOWKE, Esq., South Kensington Museum, London.

JAMES G. FRAZER, Esq., M. A., author of “The Golden Bough,” Trinity College, Cambridge.

Dr. GUSTAV JAEGER, of Stuttgart.

Dr. J. W. KINGSLEY, of Cambridge.

Prof. E. B. TYLOR, Oxford.

Prof. E. N. HORSFORD, Harvard University.

Prof. F. W. PUTNAM, Peabody Archæological Museum, Cambridge, Mass.

Surgeon WASHINGTON MATTHEWS, U. S. Army.

Surgeon B. J. D. IRWIN, U. S. Army.

F. B. KYNGDON, Esq., Secretary Royal Society, Sydney, New South Wales.

J. F. MANN, Esq., Sydney, New South Wales.

JOHN FRAZER, Esq., LL.D., Sydney, New South Wales.

Capt. HENRI JOUAN, French Navy.

Dr. BERNARD, Cannes, France.

Dr. ROBERT FLETCHER.

Dr. FRANZ BOAS, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.

Dr. HENRY STRICKER, Frankfort, Germany.

Chief Engineer MELVILLE, U. S. Navy.

Prof. OTIS T. MASON, National Museum, Washington, D. C.

WILLIAM H. GILDER, the Arctic explorer and writer.

Dr. ALBERT S. GATSCHET, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C.

Rev. HENRY CLAY TRUMBULL, Editor of “The Sunday School Times,” of Philadelphia, Penn.

Hon. LAMBERT TREE, ex-minister to Russia.

ANDREW LANG.

J. S. HITTEL, San Francisco, Cal.

M. M. H. GAIDOZ, editor of “Mélusine,” Paris.

Dr. S. B. EVANS, Ottumwa, Ia.

Rev. J. OWEN DORSEY, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C.

Mr. W. W. ROCKHILL, the distinguished Oriental scholar and explorer.

Hon. H. T. ALLEN, Secretary Corean Legation.

Mrs. F. D. BERGEN, and many other correspondents.

Last, but not least, to Dr. J. HAMPDEN PORTER, of the city of Washington, whose friendly offices amounted practically to a collaboration.

All papers of this series which relate to the manners and usages of the Indians of the southwestern portion of our territory, especially those concerning the urine dances, phallic dances, snake dances of the Zuñis, Mokis, and other Pueblos; the Navajoes of New Mexico; the sun dance of the Sioux, etc., have been compiled from memoranda gathered under the direction of Lieutenant-General P. H. SHERIDAN, in 1881 and 1882. Those referring to Apaches, etc., of Arizona; to Northern Mexico; to pueblo ruins and cliff and cave dwellings; to Sioux, Cheyennes, Crows, Arapahoes, Pawnees, Shoshones, Utes, and other tribes, extending back to 1869, were mainly obtained while the author was serving as aide-de-camp upon the staff of Brigadier-General GEORGE CROOK, during the campaigns conducted by that officer against hostile tribes west of the Missouri, from the British line down into Mexico, and to a considerable extent under General CROOK’S direction, and with his encouragement and assistance.

The translations from German texts were made by Messrs. Smith, Pratz, and Bunnemeyer, while for the analysis of the pills made out of the ordure of the Grand Lama of Thibet, the author desires to express his acknowledgments to Dr. W. M. Mew.

J. G. B.

III. THE FEAST OF FOOLS IN EUROPE 11

Comparison between the Feast of Fools and the Urine Dance.—The Feast of Fools traced back to most ancient times.—Disappearance of the Feast of Fools.—The “Szombatiaks” of Transylvania.

IV. THE COMMEMORATIVE CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS 24

The generally sacred character of dancing.—Fray Diego Duran’s account of the Mexican festivals.—The Urine Dance of the Zuñis may conserve a tradition of the time when vile aliment was in use.

V. HUMAN EXCREMENT USED IN FOOD BY THE INSANE AND OTHERS 29

VI. THE EMPLOYMENT OF EXCREMENT IN FOOD BY SAVAGE TRIBES 33

VII. URINE IN HUMAN FOOD 38

Chinook olives.—Urine in bread-making.—Human ordure eaten by East Indian fanatics.

VIII. THE ORDURE OF THE GRAND LAMA OF THIBET 42

Huc and Dubois compared.

IX. THE STERCORANISTES 54

Un Dalai-Lamas Irlandais.

X. THE BACCHIC ORGIES OF THE GREEKS 62

Bacchic orgies in North America.—The sacrifice of the dog a substitution for human sacrifice.

XI. POISONOUS MUSHROOMS USED IN UR-ORGIES 65

The mushroom drink of the Borgie well.

XII. THE MUSHROOM IN CONNECTION WITH THE FAIRIES 85

XIII. A USE OF POISONOUS FUNGI QUITE PROBABLY EXISTED AMONG THE MEXICANS 89

Mushrooms and toadstools worshipped by American Indians.—A former use of fungus indicated in the myths of Ceylon, and in the laws of the Brahmins.

XIV. THE ONION ADORED BY THE EGYPTIANS 94

XV. SACRED INTOXICATION AND PHALLISM 97

XVI. AN INQUIRY INTO THE DRUIDICAL USE OF THE MISTLETOE 99

Former employment of an infusion or decoction of mistletoe.—The mistletoe alleged to have been held sacred by the Mound-builders.—The mistletoe festival of the Mexicans.—Vestiges of Druidical rites at the present day.—The Linguistics of the mistletoe.

XVII. COW DUNG AND COW URINE IN RELIGION 112

Cow dung also used by the Israelites.

XVIII. ORDURE ALLEGED TO HAVE BEEN USED IN FOOD BY THE ISRAELITES 119

The sacred cow’s excreta a substitute for human sacrifice.—Human ordure and urine still used in India.

XIX. EXCREMENT GODS OF ROMANS AND EGYPTIANS 127

The Assyrian Venus had offerings of dung placed upon her altars.—The Mexican goddess Suchiquecal eats ordure.—Israelitish dung-gods.

XX. LATRINES 134

Posture in urination.

XXI. AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE OF THE RITES CONNECTED WITH THE WORSHIP OF BEL-PHEGOR 154

XXII. OBSCENE TENURES 165

XXIII. TOLLS OF FLATULENCE EXACTED OF PROSTITUTES IN FRANCE 168

The sacred character of bridge-building.

XXIV. OBSCENE SURVIVALS IN THE GAMES OF ENGLISH RUSTICS 173

XXV. URINE AND ORDURE AS SIGNS OF MOURNING 176

XXVI. URINE AND ORDURE IN INDUSTRIES 177

Tanning.—Bleaching.—Dyeing.—Plaster.—As a cure for tobacco.—To restore the odor of musk and the color of coral.—Cheese manufacture.—Opium adulteration.—Egg-hatching.—Taxes on urine.—Chrysocollon.—For removing ink stains.—As an article of jewelry.—Tattooing.—Agriculture.—Urine used in the manufacture of salt.—Preparation of sal ammoniac, phosphorus, solution of indigo.—Manure employed as fuel.—Smudges.—Human and animal excreta to promote the growth of the hair and eradicate dandruff.—As a means of washing vessels.—Filthy habits in cooking.

XXVII. URINE IN CEREMONIAL ABLUTIONS 201

XXVIII. URINE IN CEREMONIAL OBSERVANCES 206

Stercoraceous chair of the Popes.

XXIX. ORDURE IN SMOKING 214

XXX. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 216

Ordure in love-philters.—Anti-philters.

XXXI. SIBERIAN HOSPITALITY 228

XXXII. PARTURITION 233

Weaning.

XXXIII. INITIATION OF WARRIORS.—CONFIRMATION 237

Fearful rite of the Hottentots.—War-customs.—Arms and armor.

XXXIV. HUNTING AND FISHING 244

XXXV. DIVINATION.—OMENS.—DREAMS 246

XXXVI. ORDEALS AND PUNISHMENTS, TERRESTRIAL AND SUPERNAL 249

XXXVII. INSULTS 256

XXXVIII. MORTUARY CEREMONIES 261

XXXIX. MYTHS 266

XL. URINOSCOPY, OR DIAGNOSIS BY URINE 272

On the influence of the emotions upon the egestæ.

XLI. ORDURE AND URINE IN MEDICINE 277

Extracts from the writings of Dioscorides.—The views of Galen.—Sextus Placitus.—“Saxon Leechdoms.”—Avicenna.—Miscellaneous.—Human Ordure.—Schurig’s ideas regarding the use in medicine of the egestæ of animals.—Ordure and urine in folk-medicine.—Occult influences ascribed to ordure and urine.—Other excrementitious remedies.—Hair.—Superstitions connected with the human saliva.—Cerumen or ear-wax.—Woman’s milk.—Human sweat.—Superstitions connected with the catamenial fluid.—After-birth and lochiæ.—Human semen.—Human blood.—Human skin, flesh, and tallow.—Human skull.—Brain.—Moss growing on human skull.—Moss growing on statue.—Lice.—Wool.—Bones and teeth.—Marrow.—Human teeth.—Tartar impurities from the teeth.—Renal and biliary calculi.—Human bile.—Bezoar stones.—Lyncurius.—Cosmetics.

XLII. AMULETS AND TALISMANS 370

XLIII. WITCHCRAFT.—SORCERY.—CHARMS.—SPELLS.—INCANTATIONS.—MAGIC 373

XLIV. A FEW REMARKS UPON TEMPLE OR SACRED PROSTITUTION, AND UPON THE HORNS OF CUCKOLDS 405

XLV. CURES BY TRANSPLANTATION 411

XLVI. THE USE OF THE LINGAM IN INDIA 428

XLVII. PHALLIC SUPERSTITIONS IN FRANCE AND ELSEWHERE 431

XLVIII. BURLESQUE SURVIVALS 432

The use of bladders in religious ceremonies.

XLIX. THE WORSHIP OF COCKS AND HENS 440

The Spanish-American sport of “Correr el Gallo,” and the English pastime of “Throwing at ‘Shrove Cocks.’”—The scarabæus of Egypt.

L. THE PERSISTENCE OF FILTH REMEDIES 456

Epilepsy.

LI. AN EXPLANATION OF THE REASON WHY HUMAN ORDURE AND HUMAN URINE WERE EMPLOYED IN MEDICINE AND RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES 459

LII. EASTER EGGS 461

LIII. THE USE OF BLADDERS IN MAKING EXCREMENT SAUSAGES 464

LIV. CONCLUSION 467

BIBLIOGRAPHY 469

INDEX 485

SCATALOGIC RITES OF ALL NATIONS.

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I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS

“The proper study of mankind is man.”

“The study of man is the study of man’s religion.”—MAX MÜLLER.

“Few who will give their minds to master the general principles of savage religion will ever again think it ridiculous.... Far from its beliefs and practices being a rubbish heap of miscellaneous folly, they are consistent and logical in so high a degree as to begin, as soon as even roughly classified, to display the principles of their formation and development; and these principles prove to be essentially rational, though working in a mental condition of intense and inveterate ignorance.”—Primitive Culture, E. B. Tylor, New York, 1874, vol. i. p. 21.

The object of the present monograph is to arrange in a form for easy reference such allusions as have come under the author’s notice bearing upon the use of human or animal ordure or urine or articles apparently intended as substitutes for them, whether in rites of a clearly religious or “medicine” type, or in those which, while not pronouncedly such, have about them suggestions that they may be survivals of former urine dances or ur-orgies among tribes and peoples from whose later mode of life and thought they have been eliminated.

The difficulties surrounding the elucidation of this topic will no doubt occur to every student of anthropology or ethnology. The rites and practices herein spoken of are to be found only in communities isolated from the world, and are such as even savages would shrink from revealing unnecessarily to strangers; while, too frequently, observers of intelligence have failed to improve opportunities for noting the existence of rites of this nature, or else, restrained by a false modesty, have clothed their remarks in vague and indefinite phraseology, forgetting that as a physician, to be skilful, must study his patients both in sickness and in health, so the anthropologist must study man, not alone wherein he reflects the grandeur of his Maker, but likewise in his grosser and more animal propensities.

When the first edition of “Notes and Memoranda,” etc., upon this subject, was distributed by the Smithsonian Institution, the author was prepared to believe that, to a large and constantly increasing circle of scholars, the subject would prove of unusual interest, and that, to repeat the words of a great emperor, as quoted by a greater philosopher, all belonging to primitive man was worthy of scrutiny and examination by those who would become familiar with his history and evolution.

“We ought to be able to say, like the Emperor Maximilian, ‘homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto,’ or translating his words literally, ‘I am a man; nothing pertaining to man I deem foreign to myself.’”—(Max Müller, “Chips from a German Workshop.” Maximilian was using a citation from Terence.)

The author also felt that to such a circle it would not be necessary for him to make an apology analogous to that with which Pellegrini sought to defend the noble profession of medicine in the early days of printing.[1] But it was with no inconsiderable amount of pride that he saw his pamphlet honored by the earnest attention of men eminent in the world of thought, who by suggestion and criticism, given in kindness and received with gratitude, have contributed to the amplification of the original “Notes and Memoranda” into the present treatise.

That these disgusting rites are distinctively religious in origin, no one, after a careful perusal of all that is to be presented upon that head, will care to deny; and that their examination will be productive of important results will be equally incontrovertible when that examination shall be conducted on the broad principle that the benefit or detriment mankind may have received from religion in general or from any particular form of religion, can be ascertained only by a comparison between man’s actions and principles of conduct in the earliest stages of culture, and those observable while actuated by the religious sentiment of the present day.

Hebrews and Christians will discover a common ground of congratulation in the fact that believers in their systems are now absolutely free from any suggestion of this filth taint, every example to the contrary being in direct opposition to the spirit and practice of those two great bodies to which the world’s civilization is so deeply indebted.

But under another point of view, the study of primitive man is an impossibility and an absurdity unless prosecuted as an investigation into his mode of religious thought, since religion guided every thought and deed of his daily life. Rink, after saying that the “whole study of prehistoric man ... which has hitherto almost exclusively been founded upon the study of the ornaments, weapons, and other remains of primitive peoples,” must in future be based upon an inquiry into their spiritual thought, remarks that “The time will surely come when any relic of spiritual life brought down to us from prehistoric mankind, which may still be found in the folk-lore of the more isolated and primitive nations, will be valued as highly as those primitive remains.”—(“Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” Rink, Edinburgh, 1875, page 6 of Preface.)

Repugnant, therefore, as the subject is under most points of view, the author has felt constrained to reproduce all that he has seen and read, hoping that, in the fuller consideration that all forms of primitive religion are now receiving, this, the most brutal, possibly, of all, may claim some share of examination and discussion. To serve as a nucleus for notes and memoranda since gleaned, the author has reproduced his original monograph, first published in the Transactions of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1885, and read by title at the Ann Arbor, Michigan, meeting, in the same year.

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II. THE URINE DANCE OF THE ZUÑIS

On the evening of November 17, 1881, during my stay in the village of Zuñi, New Mexico, the Nehue-Cue, one of the secret orders of the Zuñis, sent word to Mr. Frank H. Cushing,[2] whose guest I was, that they would do us the unusual honor of coming to our house to give us one of their characteristic dances, which, Cushing said, was unprecedented.

The squaws of the governor’s family put the long living-room to rights, sweeping the floor and sprinkling it with water to lay the dust. Soon after dark the dancers entered; they were twelve in number, two being boys. The centre men were naked, with the exception of black breech-clouts of archaic style. The hair was worn naturally, with a bunch of wild-turkey feathers tied in front, and one of corn husks over each ear. White bands were painted across the face at eyes and mouth. Each wore a collar or neckcloth of black woollen stuff. Broad white bands, one inch wide, were painted around the body at the navel, around the arms, the legs at mid-thighs, and knees. Tortoise-shell rattles hung from the right knee. Blue woollen footless leggings were worn with low-cut moccasins, and in the right hand each waved a wand made of an ear of corn, trimmed with the plumage of the wild turkey and macaw. The others were arrayed in old, cast-off American Army clothing, and all wore white cotton night-caps, with corn-husks twisted into the hair at top of head and ears. Several wore, in addition to the tortoise-shell rattles, strings of brass sleigh-bells at knees. One was more grotesquely attired than the rest, in a long India-rubber gossamer “overall,” and with a pair of goggles, painted white, over his eyes. His general “get-up” was a spirited take-off upon a Mexican priest. Another was a very good counterfeit of a young woman.

To the accompaniment of an oblong drum and of the rattles and bells spoken of they shuffled into the long room, crammed with spectators of both sexes and of all sizes and ages. Their song was apparently a ludicrous reference to everything and everybody in sight, Cushing, Mindeleff, and myself receiving special attention, to the uncontrolled merriment of the red-skinned listeners. I had taken my station at one side of the room, seated upon the banquette, and having in front of me a rude bench or table, upon which was a small coal-oil lamp. I suppose that in the halo diffused by the feeble light, and in my “stained-glass attitude,” I must have borne some resemblance to the pictures of saints hanging upon the walls of old Mexican churches; to such a fancied resemblance I at least attribute the performance which followed.

The dancers suddenly wheeled into line, threw themselves on their knees before my table, and with extravagant beatings of breast began an outlandish but faithful mockery of a Mexican Catholic congregation at vespers. One bawled out a parody upon the pater-noster, another mumbled along in the manner of an old man reciting the rosary, while the fellow with the India-rubber coat jumped up and began a passionate exhortation or sermon, which for mimetic fidelity was incomparable. This kept the audience laughing with sore sides for some moments, until, at a signal from the leader, the dancers suddenly countermarched out of the room in single file as they had entered.

An interlude followed of ten minutes, during which the dusty floor was sprinkled by men who spat water forcibly from their mouths. The Nehue-Cue re-entered; this time two of their number were stark naked. Their singing was very peculiar, and sounded like a chorus of chimney-sweeps, and their dance became a stiff-legged jump, with heels kept twelve inches apart. After they had ambled around the room two or three times, Cushing announced in the Zuñi language that a “feast” was ready for them, at which they loudly roared their approbation, and advanced to strike hands with the munificent “Americanos,” addressing us in a funny gibberish of broken Spanish, English, and Zuñi. They then squatted upon the ground and consumed with zest large “ollas” full of tea, and dishes of hard tack and sugar. As they were about finishing this a squaw entered, carrying an “olla” of urine, of which the filthy brutes drank heartily.

I refused to believe the evidence of my senses, and asked Cushing if that were really human urine. “Why, certainly,” replied he, “and here comes more of it.” This time it was a large tin pailful, not less than two gallons. I was standing by the squaw as she offered this strange and abominable refreshment. She made a motion with her hand to indicate to me that it was urine, and one of the old men repeated the Spanish word mear (to urinate), while my sense of smell demonstrated the truth of their statements.

The dancers swallowed great draughts, smacked their lips, and, amid the roaring merriment of the spectators, remarked that it was very, very good. The clowns were now upon their mettle, each trying to surpass his neighbors in feats of nastiness. One swallowed a fragment of corn-husk, saying he thought it very good and better than bread; his vis-à-vis attempted to chew and gulp down a piece of filthy rag. Another expressed regret that the dance had not been held out of doors, in one of the plazas; there they could show what they could do. There they always made it a point of honor to eat the excrement of men and dogs.

For my own part, I felt satisfied with the omission, particularly as the room, stuffed with one hundred Zuñis, had become so foul and filthy as to be almost unbearable. The dance, as good luck would have it, did not last many minutes, and we soon had a chance to run into the refreshing night air.

To this outline description of a disgusting rite, I have little to add. The Zuñis, in explanation, stated that the Nehue-Cue were a Medicine Order, which held these dances from time to time to inure the stomachs of members to any kind of food, no matter how revolting. This statement may seem plausible enough when we understand that religion and medicine, among primitive races, are almost always one and the same thing, or at least so closely intertwined, that it is a matter of difficulty to decide where one begins and the other ends.[3]

Religion, in its dramatic ceremonial, preserves, to some extent, the history of the particular race in which it dwells. Among nations of high development, miracles, moralities, and passion plays have taught, down to our own day, in object lessons, the sacred history in which the spectators believed. Some analogous purpose may have been held in view by the first organizers of the urine dance. In their early history, the Zuñis and other Pueblos suffered from constant warfare with savage antagonists and with each other. From the position of their villages, long sieges must of necessity have been sustained, in which sieges famine and disease, no doubt, were the allies counted upon by the investing forces. We may have in this abominable dance a tradition of the extremity to which the Zuñis of the long ago were reduced at some unknown period. A similar catastrophe in the history of the Jews is intimated in 2 Kings xviii. 27; and again in Isaiah xxxvi. 12: “But Rab-shakeh said unto them: hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung and drink their own piss with you?” In the course of my studies I came across a reference to a very similar dance, occurring among one of the fanatical sects of the Arabian Bedouins, but the journal in which it was recorded, the “London Lancet,” I think, was unfortunately mislaid.[4]

As illustrative of the tenacity with which such vile ceremonial, once adopted by a sect, will adhere to it and become ingrafted upon its life, long after the motives which have suggested or commended it have vanished in oblivion, let me quote a few lines from Max Müller’s “Chips from a German Workshop,” “Essay upon the Parsees,” pp. 163, 164, Scribner’s edition, 1869: “The nirang is the urine of a cow, ox, or she-goat, and the rubbing of it over the face and hands is the second thing a Parsee does after getting out of bed. Either before applying the nirang to the face and hands, or while it remains on the hands after being applied, he should not touch anything directly with his hands; but, in order to wash out the nirang, he either asks somebody else to pour water on his hands, or resorts to the device of taking hold of the pot through the intervention of a piece of cloth, such as a handkerchief or his sudra,—that is, his blouse. He first pours water on his hand, then takes the pot in that hand and washes his other hand, face, and feet.”—(Quoting from Dadabhai-Nadrosi’s “Description of the Parsees.”)

Continuing, Max Müller says: “Strange as this process of purification may appear, it becomes perfectly disgusting when we are told that women, after childbirth, have not only to undergo this sacred ablution, but actually to drink a little of the nirang, and that the same rite is imposed on children at the time of their investiture with the Sudra and Koshti,—the badges of the Zoroastrian faith.”

Before proceeding further it may be advisable to clinch the fact that the Urine Dance of the Zuñis was not a sporadic instance, peculiar to that pueblo, or to a particular portion of that pueblo; it was a tribal rite, recognized and commended by the whole community, and entering into the ritual of all the pueblos of the Southwest.

Upon this point a few words from the author’s personal journal of Nov. 24, 1881, may well be introduced to prove its existence among the Moquis,—the informant, Nana-je, being a young Moqui of the strictest integrity and veracity: “In the circle I noticed Nana-je and the young Nehue-cue boy who was with us a few nights since. During a pause in the conversation I asked the young Nehue if he had been drinking any urine lately. This occasioned some laughter among the Indians; but to my surprise Nana-je spoke up and said: ‘I am a Nehue also. The Nehue of Zuñi are nothing to the same order among the Moquis. There the Nehue not only drink urine, as you saw done the other night, but also eat human and animal excrement. They eat it here too; but we eat all that is set before us. We have a medicine which makes us drunk like whiskey; we drink a lot of that before we commence; it makes us drunk. We don’t care what happens; and nothing of that kind that we eat or drink can ever do us any harm.’ The Nehue-cue are to be found in all the pueblos on the Rio Grande and close to it; only there they don’t do things openly.”

In addition to the above, we have the testimony of Mr. Thomas V. Keam, who has lived for many years among the Moquis, and who confirms from personal observation all that has been here said.

The extracts from personal correspondence with Professor Bandelier are of special value, that gentleman having devoted years of painstaking investigation to the history of the Pueblos, and acquired a most intimate knowledge of them, based upon constant personal observation and scholarship of the highest order.

In a personal letter, dated Santa Fé, N. M., June 7, 1888, he tells, among much other most interesting information, that he saw at the Pueblo of Cochiti, on Nov. 10, 1880, “the Koshare eating their own excrement.”

The following description of the “Club-house” of the Nehue-cue may be of interest: “It was twenty-one paces long, nine paces wide, with a banquette running round on three sides; in front of the altar were sacred bowls of earthenware, with paintings of tadpoles to typify water of summer, frogs for perennial water, and the sea-serpent for ocean water. (They describe the sea-serpent (vibora del mar) as very large, with feathers (spray?) on its head, eating people who went into the water, and when cut up with big knives yielding a great deal of oil.) In the first of the sacred dishes was a conch-shell from the sea, wands made of ears of corn, with hearts of chalchihuitl, and exterior ornamentation of the plumage of the parrot and turkey. Bowls of sacred meal (kunque) were on the floor; this sacred meal, to be found in niches in the house of every Zuñi, or for that matter of almost every pueblo throughout New Mexico and Arizona, is generally made of a mixture of blue corn-meal, shells, and chalchihuitl; but for more solemn occasions, as the old Indian Pedro Pino assured me, sea-sand is added. Around the room at intervals were pictographs of birds,—ducks and others,—nine in number on one side, and nine of clown-gods on the other. These pictures were fairly well delineated in black and in red and yellow ochre. The god of “The Winged Knife” was represented back of the altar. In this room were also kept several of the painted oblong wooden drums seen in every sacred dance.”—(Extract from personal notes of Captain Bourke, Nov. 17, 1881.)

“Have you ever, while in New Mexico, witnessed the dance of that cluster or order called the “Ko-sha-re” among the Queres, “Ko-sa-re” among the Tehuas, and “Shu-re” among the Tiguas? I have witnessed it several times; and these gentlemen, many of whom belong to the circle of my warm personal friends, display a peculiar appetite for what the human body commonly not only rejects, but also ejects. I am sorry that I did not know of your work any sooner, as else I could have given you very full descriptions of these dances. The cluster in question have a very peculiar task, inasmuch as the ripening of all kinds of fruits is at their charge, even the fruit in the mother’s womb, and their rites are therefore of sickening obscenity. The swallowing of excrements is but a mild performance in comparison with what I have been obliged to see and witness.”—(Letter from Professor Bandelier, dated at Santa Fé, N. M., April 25, 1888.)

Major Ferry, whom the author met in the office of General Robert McFeely, Acting Secretary of War, Oct. 5, 1888, stated that he was the son of the first Protestant missionary to build a church at Mackinaw, and that the Indians of the Ojibway tribe who lived in the neighborhood of that post indulged from time to time in orgies in which the drinking of urine was a feature.

Mr. Daniel W. Lord, a gentleman who was for a time associated with Mr. Frank H. Cushing in his investigations among the Zuñis of New Mexico, makes the following statement:—

“In June, 1888, I was a spectator of an orgy at the Zuñi pueblo in New Mexico. The ceremonial dance of that afternoon had been finished in the small plaza generally used for dances in the northwestern part of the pueblo when this supplementary rite took place. One of the Indians brought into the plaza the excrement to be employed, and it was passed from hand to hand and eaten. Those taking part in the ceremony were few in number, certainly not more than eight or ten. They drank urine from a large shallow bowl, and meanwhile kept up a running fire of comments and exclamations among themselves, as if urging one another to drink heartily, which indeed they did. At last one of those taking part was made sick, and vomited after the ceremony was over. The inhabitants of the pueblo upon the housetops overlooking the plaza were interested spectators of the scene. Some of the sallies of the actors were received with laughter, and others with signs of disgust and repugnance, but not of disapprobation. The ceremony was not repeated, to my knowledge, during my stay at the pueblo, which continued till July, 1889.”—(Personal letter to Captain Bourke, dated Washington, D. C., May 26, 1890.)

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

III. THE FEAST OF FOOLS IN EUROPE

Closely corresponding to this urine dance of the Zuñis was the Feast of Fools in Continental Europe, the description of which here given is quoted from Dulaure:—

“La grand’messe commençait alors; tous les ecclésiastiques y assistaient, le visage barbouillé de noir, ou couvert d’un masque hideux ou ridicule. Pendant la célébration, les uns, vêtus en baladins ou en femmes, dansaient au milieu du chœur et y chantaient des chansons bouffones ou obscènes. Les autres venaient manger sur l’autel des saucisses et des boudins, jouer aux cartes ou aux dez, devant le prêtre célébrant, l’encensaient avec un encensoir, ou brûlaient de vieilles savates, et lui en faisaient respirer la fumée.

“Après la messe, nouveaux actes d’extravagance et d’impiété. Les prêtres, confondus avec les habitants des deux sexes, couraient, dansaient dans l’église, s’excitaient à toutes les folies, à toutes les actions licencieuses que leur inspirait une imagination effrénée. Plus de honte, plus de pudeur; aucune digue n’arrêtait le débordement de la folie et des passions....

“Au milieu du tumulte, des blasphêmes et des chants dissolus, on voyait les uns se dépouiller entièrement de leurs habits, d’autres se livrer aux actes du plus honteux libertinage.

“ ... Les acteurs, montés sur des tombereaux pleins d’ordures, s’amusaient à en jeter à la populace qui les entouraient.... Ces scènes étaient toujours accompagnées de chansons ordurières et impies.”—(Dulaure, “Des Divinités Génératrices,” chap. xv. p. 315 et seq., Paris, 1825.)

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE FEAST OF FOOLS AND THE URINE DANCE.

In the above description may be seen that the principal actors (taking possession of the church during high mass) had their faces daubed and painted, or masked in a harlequin manner; that they were dressed as clowns or as women; that they ate upon the altar itself sausages and blood-puddings. Now the word “blood-pudding” in French is boudin; but boudin also meant “excrement.”[5] Add to this the feature that these clowns, after leaving the church, took their stand in dung-carts (tombereaux), and threw ordure upon the by-standers; and finally that some of these actors appeared perfectly naked (“on voyait les uns se dépouiller entièrement de leurs habits”), and it must be admitted that there is certainly a wonderful concatenation of resemblances between these filthy and inexplicable rites on different sides of a great ocean.

THE FEAST OF FOOLS TRACED BACK TO MOST ANCIENT TIMES.

Dulaure makes no attempt to trace the origin of these ceremonies in France; he contents himself with saying, “Ces cérémonies ... ont subsisté pendant douze ou quinze siècles,” or, in other words, that they were of Pagan origin. In twelve or fifteen hundred years the rite might have been well sublimed from the eating of pure excrement, as among the Zuñis, to the consumption of the boudin, the excrement symbol.[6] Conceding for the moment that this suspicion is correct, we have a proof of the antiquity of the urine dance among the Zuñis. So great is the resemblance between the Zuñi rite and that just described by Dulaure that we should have reason for believing that the new country borrowed from the old some of the features transmitted to the present day; and were there not evidence of a wider distribution of this observance, it might be assumed that the Catholic missionaries (who worked among the Zuñis from 1580, or thereabout, and excepting during intervals of revolt remained on duty in Zuñi down to the period of American occupation) found the obscene and disgusting orgy in full vigor, and realizing the danger, by unwise precipitancy, of destroying all hopes of winning over this people, shrewdly concluded to tacitly accept the religious abnormality and to engraft upon it the plant flourishing so bravely in the vicinity of their European homes.

DISAPPEARANCE OF THE FEAST OF FOOLS.

In France the Feast of Fools disappeared only with the French Revolution; in other parts of Continental Europe it began to wane about the time of the Reformation. In England, “the abbot of unreason,” whose pranks are outlined by Sir Walter Scott in his novel “The Abbot,” the miracle plays which had once served a good purpose in teaching Scriptural lessons to an illiterate peasantry, and the “moralities” of the same general purport, faded away under the stern antagonism of the Puritan iconoclast. The Feast of Fools, as such, was abolished by Henry VIII. A.D. 1541.—(See “The English Reformation,” Francis Charles Massingberd, London, 1857, p. 125.)[7]

Picart’s account of the Feast of Fools is similar to that given by Dulaure. He says that it took place in the church, at Christmas tide, and was borrowed from the Roman Saturnalia; was never approved of by the Christian church as a body, but fought against from the earliest times:—

“Les uns étoient masqués ou avec des visages barbouillés qui faisoìent peur ou qui faisoìent rire; les autres en habits de femmes ou de pantomimes, tels que sont les ministres du théatre.

“Ils dansoient dans le chœur, en entrant, et chantoient des chansons obscènes. Les Diacres et les sou-diacres prenoient plaisir à manger des boudins et des saucisses sur l’autel, au nez du prêtre célébrant; ils jouoient à des jeux aux cartes et aux dés; ils mettoient dans l’encensoir quelques morceaux de vieilles savates pour lui faire respirer une mauvaise odeur.

“Après la messe, chacun couroit, sautoit et dansoit par l’église avec tant d’impudence, que quelques uns n’àvoient pas honte de se porter à toutes sortes d’indécences et de se dépouillier entièremênt; ensuite, ils se faisoìent trainer par les rues dans des tombereaux pleins d’ordures, d’ou ils prenoient plaisir d’en jeter à la populace qui s’assembloit autour d’eux.

“Ils s’arrétoient et faisoient de leurs corps des mouvements et des postures lascives qu’ils accompagnoient de paroles impudiques.

“Les plus impudiques d’entre les séculiers se mêloient parmi le clergé, pour faire aussi quelques personnages de Foux en habits ecclésiastiques de Moines et de Religieuses.”—(Picart, “Coûtumes et Cérémonies réligieuses de toutes les Nations du Monde,” Amsterdam, Holland, 1729, vol. ix. pp. 5, 6).

Diderot and d’Alembert use almost the same terms; the officiating clergy were clad “les uns comme des bouffons, les autres en habits de femmes ou masqués d’une façon monstrueuse ... ils mangeaient et jouaient aux dés sur l’autel à côté du prêtre qui célébroit la messe. Ils mettoient des ordures dans les encensoirs.” They say that the details would not bear repetition. This feast prevailed generally in Continental Europe from Christmas to Epiphany, and in England, especially in York.—(Diderot and D’Alembert, Encyclopædia, “Fête des Fous,” Geneva, Switzerland, 1779.)

Markham discovers a resemblance between the “Monk of Misrule” of Christendom in the Middle Ages, and “Gylongs dressed in parti-colored habits ... singing and dancing before the Teshu Lama in Thibet.”—(See Markham’s “Thibet,” London, 1879, page 95, footnote. See also Bogle’s description of the ceremonies in connection with the New Year, in presence of the Teshu Lama, in Markham’s “Thibet,” p. 106.)

The Mandans had an annual festival one of the features of which was “the expulsion of the devil.... He was chased from the village ... the women pelting him with dirt.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, London, 1890, vol. ii. p. 184, quoting Catlin’s “North American Indians,” page 166.)

The authors who have referred at greater or less length, and with more or less preciseness, to the Feast of Fools, Feast of Asses, and others of that kind, are legion; unfortunately, without an exception, they have contented themselves with a description of the obscene absurdities connected with these popular religious gatherings, without attempting an analysis of the underlying motives which prompted them, or even making an intelligent effort to trace their origin. Where the last has been alluded to at all, it has almost invariably been with the assertion that the Feast of Fools was a survival from the Roman Saturnalia.

This can scarcely have been the case; in the progress of this work it is purposed to make evident that the use of human and animal egestæ in religious ceremonial was common all over the world, antedating the Roman Saturnalia, or at least totally unconnected with it. The correct interpretation of the Feast of Fools would, therefore, seem to be that which recognized it as a reversion to a pre-Christian type of thought dating back to the earliest appearance of the Aryan race in Europe.

The introduction of the Christian religion was accompanied by many compromises; wherever it was opposed by too great odds, in point of numbers, it permitted the retention of practices repugnant to its own teachings; or, if the term “permitted” be an objectionable one to some ears, we may substitute the expression “acquiesced in” for “permitted,” and then follow down the course of persistent antagonism, which, after a while, modified permanent retention into a periodical, perhaps an irregular, resumption, and this last into burlesque survival.

Ducange, in his “Glossarium,” introduces the Ritual of the Mass at the Feast of the Ass, familiar to most readers,—but he adds nothing to what has already been quoted in regard to the Feast of Fools itself.

This reference from Ducange will also be found in Schaff-Herzog, “Religious Encyclopædia,” New York, 1882, article “Festival.” This Ritual was written out in 1369 at Viviers in France.

Fosbroke gives no information on the subject of the Feast of Fools not already incorporated in this volume. He simply says: “In the Feast of Fools they put on masks, took the dress, etc., of women, danced and sung in the choir, ate fat cakes upon the horn of the altar, where the celebrating priest played at dice, put stinking stuff from the leather of old shoes in the censer, jumped about the church, with the addition of obscene jests, songs, and unseemly attitudes. Another part of this indecorous buffoonery was shaving the precentor of fools upon a stage, erected before the church, in the presence of the people; and during the operation he amused them with lewd and vulgar discourses and gestures. They also had carts full of ordure which they threw occasionally upon the populace. This exhibition was always in Christmas time or near it, but was not confined to a particular day.”—(Rev. Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, “Cyclopædia of Antiquities,” London, 1843, vol. 2, article “Festivals.” Most of his information seems to be derived from Ducange.)

“The Feast of Fools was celebrated as before in various masquerades of Women, Lions, Players, etc. They danced and sung in the choir, ate fat cakes upon the horn of the altar, where the celebrating priest played at dice, put stinking stuff from the leather of old shoes into the censer, ran, jumped, etc., through the church.”[8]

In Brand’s “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1873, vol. 3, pp. 497-505, will be found a pretty full description of the Lords of Misrule, but the only reference of value for our purposes is one from Polydorus Virgil, who recognized the derivation of these Feasts from the Roman Saturnalia. “There is nothing,” says the author of the essay to retrieve the Ancient Celtic, “that will bear a clearer demonstration than that the primitive Christians, by way of conciliating the Pagans to a better worship, humored their prejudices by yielding to a conformity of names and even of customs, where they did not interfere with the fundamentals of the Christian doctrine.... Among these, in imitation of the Roman Saturnalia, was the Festum Fatuorum, when part of the jollity of the season was a burlesque election of a mock-pope, mock-cardinals, mock-bishops, attended with a thousand ridiculous and indecent ceremonies, gambols, and antics, such as singing and dancing in the churches, in lewd attitudes, to ludicrous anthems, all allusively to the exploded pretensions of the Druids whom these sports were calculated to expose to scorn and derision. This Feast of Fools,” continues he, “had its designed effect, and contributed perhaps more to the extermination of these heathens than all the collateral aids of fire and sword, neither of which were spared in the persecution of them.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 36.)

Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes,” edition of London, 1855, article “Festival of Fools,” in lib. iv. cap. 3, contains nothing not already learned.

Jacob Grimm, “Teutonic Mythology” (Stallybrass), London, 1882, vol. i. p. 92, has the following:—

“The collection of the Letters of Boniface has a passage lamenting the confusion of Christian and heathen rites into which foolish or reckless priests had suffered themselves to fall.”

Banier shows that on the First of January the people of France ran about the streets of their towns, disguised as animals, masked and playing all sorts of pranks. This custom was derived from the Druids and lasted in full vigor “to the twelfth century of the Christian era.”—(“Mythology,” Banier, vol. iii. p. 247.)

“The heathen gods even, though represented as feeble in comparison with the true God, were not always pictured as powerless in themselves; they were perverted into hostile, malignant powers, into demons, sorcerers, and giants, who had to be put down, but were nevertheless credited with a certain mischievous activity and influence. Here and there a heathen tradition or a superstitious custom lived on by merely changing the names and applying to Christ, Mary, and the saints what had formerly been related and believed of idols.”—(“Teutonic Mythology,” Jacob Grimm (Stallybrass), London, 1882, vol. i. Introduction, page 5.) ... “At the time when Christianity began to press forward, many of the heathen seem to have entertained the notion, which the missionaries did all in their power to resist, of combining the new doctrine with the ancient faith and even of fusing them into one.—(Idem, p. 7.) ... Of Norsemen, as well as of Anglo-Saxons, we are told that some believed at the same time in Christ and in heathen gods, or at least continued to invoke the latter in particular cases in which they had formerly proved helpful to them. So even by Christians much later the old deities seem to have been named and their aid invoked in enchantments and spells.—(Idem, pp. 7 and 8.) ... The Teutonic races forsook the faith of their fathers very gradually and slowly from the fourth to the eleventh century.”—(Idem, p. 8.)

On the following pages, 9, 10, and 11, Grimm shows us how little is really known of the religions of ancient Europe, whether of the Latin or of the Teutonic or Celtic races; he alludes to “the gradual transformation of the gods into devils, of the wise women into witches, of the worship into superstitious customs.—(Idem, p. 11.) Heathen festivals and customs were transformed into Christian.—(Idem, p. 12.) ... Private sacrifices, intended for gods or spirits, could not be eradicated among the people for a long time, because they were bound up with customs and festivals, and might at last become an unmeaning practice.”—(Idem, vol. iii. p. 1009.)

“It is a natural and well-known fact that the gods of one nation become the devils of their conquerors or successors.”—(Folk-Medicine, William George Black, London, 1883, p. 12.)

“Few things are so indestructible as a superstitious belief once implanted in human credulity.... The sacred rites of the superseded faith become the forbidden magic of its successors.”—(“History of the Inquisition,” Henry Charles Lea, New York, 1888, vol. iii. p. 379.) “Its gods become evil spirits.”—(Idem, p. 379.) ... The same views are advanced in Madame Blavatsky’s “Isis Unveiled.”

THE “SZOMBATIAKS” OF TRANSYLVANIA.

In further explanation of the tenacity with which older cults survive long after the newer religions seem to have gained predominance in countries and nations, it is extremely appropriate to introduce a passage from an article in the “St. James’ Gazette,” entitled “Crypto-Jews,” reprinted in the Sunday edition of the “Sun,” New York, sometime in October, 1888.

The writer, in speaking of the Szombatiaks of Transylvania, remarks: “The crypto-Judaism of the Szombatiaks was suspected for centuries, but not until twenty years ago was it positively known. Then, on the occasion of a Jewish emancipation act for Hungary, the sturdy old peasants, indistinguishable in dress, manners, and language from the native Szeklers, sent a deputation to Pesth to ask that their names might be erased from the church rolls. They explained that they were Jews whose forefathers had settled in Hungary at the time of the expedition of Titus to Dacia. Though baptized, married, and buried as Christians, maintaining Christian pastors, and attending Christian churches, they had always in secret observed their ancient religion.”

It is a matter of surprise to find so little on the subject of the Feast of Fools in Forlong’s comprehensive work on Religion. All that he says is that “the Yule-tide fêtes were noted for men disguising themselves as women, and vice versa, showing their connection with the old Sigillaria of the Saturnalia, which, formerly observed on the 14th of January, were afterwards continued to three, four, five, and some say seven days, and by the common people even until Candlemas Day. Both were prohibited when their gross immoralities became apparent to better educated communities. ‘In Paris,’ says Trusler in his ‘Chronology,’ ‘the First of January was observed as Mask Day for two hundred and forty years, when all sorts of indecencies and obscene rites occurred.’”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. i. p. 434.)

In addition to the above, there is evidence of its survival among the rustic population of Germany. Brand enumerates many curious practices of the carnival just before Ash Wednesday, and even on that day, after the distribution of the ashes. Young maidens in Germany were carried “in a cart or tumbrel” by the youths of the village to the nearest brook or pond, and there thoroughly ducked, the drawers of the cart throwing dust and ashes on all near them. In Oxfordshire it was the custom for bands of boys to stroll from house to house singing and demanding largess of eggs and bacon, not receiving which, “they commonly cut the latch of the door or stop the key-hole with dirt” (“Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. pp. 94 et seq., article “Ash Wednesday”), “or leave some more nasty token of displeasure” (idem). This may have been a survival from the Feast of Fools. Brand refers to Hospinian, “De Origine Festorum Christianorum,” “for several curious customs and ceremonies observed abroad during the three first days of the Quinquagesima week” (p. 99).

Turning from the Teutonic race to the Slav, we find that the Feast of Fools seems still to linger among the Russian peasantry. “At one time a custom prevailed of going about from one friend’s house to another masked, and committing every conceivable prank. Then the people feasted on blinnies,—a pancake similar to the English crumpet” (“A Hoosier in Russia,” Perry S. Heath, New York, 1888, p. 109); all this at Christmas-tide.

Something very much like it, without any obscene features, was noted by Blunt in the early years of the present century. See his “Vestiges,” p. 119.

Hone (“Ancient Mysteries Described,” London, 1823, pp. 148 et seq.) thinks that a Jewish imitation of the Greek drama of the close of the second century, whose plot, characters, etc., were taken from the Exodus, was the first miracle play. The author was one Ezekiel, who was believed to have written it with a patriotic purpose after the destruction of Jerusalem. The early Fathers—Cyril, Tertullian, Cyprian, Basil, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Augustine—inveighed against sacred dramas; but the outside pressure was too great, and the Church was forced to yield to popular demand.

As late as the fifteenth century Pius II. said that the Italian priests had probably never read the New Testament; and Robert Stephens made the same charge against the doctors of the Sorbonne in the same age.

The necessity of dramatic representation would therefore soon outweigh objections made on the score of historical anachronism or doctrinal inaccuracy in these miracle plays.

Theophylact, Patriarch of Constantinople in the tenth century, is credited by the Byzantine historian Cedranus with the introduction of the Feast of Fools and Feast of the Ass, “thereby scandalizing God and the memory of his saints, by admitting into the sacred service diabolical dances, exclamations of ribaldry, and ballads borrowed from the streets and brothels.”—(Hone, quoting Wharton, “Miscellaneous Writings upon the Drama and Fiction,” vol. ii. p. 369.)

In 1590, at Paris, the mendicant orders, led by the Bishop of Senlis, paraded the streets with tucked up robes, representing the Church Militant. These processions were believed to be the legitimate offspring of heathen pageants,—that is, that of Saint Peter in Vinculis was believed to be the transformed spectacle in honor of Augustus’s victory at Actium, etc.

Beletus describes the Feast of Fools as he saw it in the twelfth century. His account, given by Hone (p. 159), agrees word for word with that of Dulaure, excepting that, through an error of translation perhaps, he is made to say that the participants “ate rich puddings on the corners of the altar;” but as the word “pudding” meant even in the English language a meat pudding or sausage, the error is an immaterial one.

Victor Hugo describes in brief the Feast of Fools as seen at Paris in 1482, on the 6th of January. He says that the “Fête des Rois and the Fête des Fous were united in a double holiday since time immemorial.” His description is very meagre, but from it may be extracted the information that in these feasts of fools female actresses appeared masked; that the noblest and greatest personages in the kingdom of France were among the prominent spectators; but there is not much else. (See the opening chapters of “Notre Dame.”)

The Festival of Moharren in Persia is a kind of miracle play, or Passion play, commemorating the rise and progress of Islamism. “Among these occurrences are the deaths of Hassein and Hossein, the birth of the prophet, the martyrdom of the Imam Rezah, and the death of Fatimeh, daughter of Mahomet.”—(Benjamin, “Persia,” London, 1887.)

This reference to the use of pudding or sausage on the altar itself is the most persistent feature in the descriptions of the whole ceremony. But little difficulty will be experienced in showing that it was originally an excrement sausage, prepared and offered up, perhaps eaten, for a definite purpose. This phase of the subject will be considered further on; for the present only one citation need be introduced to show that in carnival time human excrement itself, and not the symbol, made its appearance:—

“The following extract from Barnaby Googe’s translation of ‘Naogeorgus’ will show the extent of these festivities (that is, those of the carnival at Shrove Tuesday). After describing the wanton behavior of men dressed as women and of women arrayed in the garb of men, of clowns dressed as devils, as animals, or running about perfectly naked, the account goes on to say:—

“‘But others bear a torde, that on a cushion soft they lay; And one there is that with a flap doth keep the flies away: I would there might another be, an officer of those, Whose room might serve to take away the scent from every nose.’”—

(Quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 66, article “Shrove Tuesday.”)

The Puritan’s horror of heathenish rites and superstitious vestiges had for its basis something far above unreasoning fanaticism; he realized, if not through learned study, by an intuition which had all the force of genius, that every unmeaning practice, every rustic observance, which could not prove its title clear to a noble genealogy was a pagan survival, which conscience required him to tear up and destroy, root and branch.

The Puritan may have made himself very much of a burden and a nuisance to his neighbors before his self-imposed task was completed, yet it is worthy of remark and of praise that his mission was a most effectual one in wiping from the face of the earth innumerable vestiges of pre-Christian idolatry.

This being understood, some importance attaches to the following otherwise vague couplet from “Hudibras.”

“Butler mentions the black pudding in his ‘Hudibras,’ speaking of the religious scruples of some of the fanatics of his time:—

“‘Some for abolishing black pudding, And eating nothing with the blood in.’”—

(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 400, article “Martinmas.”)

These sausages, made in links, certainly suggest the boudins of the Feast of Fools. They were made from the flesh, blood, and entrails of pork killed by several families in common on the 17th day of December, known as “Sow Day.”

In the early days of the Reformation in Germany, in the May games, the Pope was “portrayed in his pontificalibus riding on a great sow, and holding before her taster a dirty pudding.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 35.)

The most sensible explanation of the Feast of Fools that has as yet appeared is to be found in Frazer’s “Golden Bough” (London, 1890, vol. i. pp. 218 et seq., article “Temporary Kings”). He shows that the regal power was not in ancient times a life tenure, but was either revoked under the direction of the priestly body when the incumbent began to show signs of increasing age and diminishing mental powers, or at the expiration of a fixed period,—generally about twelve years. In the lapse of time the king’s abdication became an empty form, and his renunciation of powers purely farcical, his temporary successor a clown who amused the fickle populace during his ephemeral assumption of honors. Examples are drawn from Babylonia, Cambodia, Siam, Egypt, India, etc., the odd feature being that these festivals occur at dates ranging from our February to April. During the festival in Siam, in the month of April, “the dancing Brahmans carry buffalo horns with which they draw water from a large copper caldron and sprinkle it on the people; this is supposed to bring good luck.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Fraser, M.A., London, 1890, vol. i. p. 230.)

In the preceding paragraph we have a distinct survival. The buffalo horns may represent phalli, and the water may be a substitute for a liquid which to the present generation might be more objectionable.

But upon another matter stress should be laid; in both the Feast of Fools and in the Urine Dance of the Zuñis, it has been shown that some of the actors were naked or disguised as women.

No attempt is made to prove anything in regard to the European orgy, because research has thrown no light upon the reasons for which the participants assumed the raiment of the opposite sex.

In the case of the Zuñis, the author has had, from the first, a suspicion, which he took occasion to communicate to Professor F. W. Putnam three years since, that these individuals were of the class called by Father Lafitau “hommes habillés en femme,” and referred to with such frequency by the earliest French and Spanish authorities. This suspicion has been strengthened by correspondence lately received from Professor Bandelier which is, however, suppressed at the request of the latter.

In this connection, the student should not fail to read the remarkable contribution of A. B. Holder, M. D., of Memphis, Tennessee, in the New York Medical Journal of Dec. 7, 1889, entitled “The Boté: description of a peculiar sexual perversion found among the North American Indians.”

An explanation of the “hommes habillés en femme,” may be suggested in the following from Boas, descriptive of certain religious dances of the Eskimo: “Those who were born in abnormal presentations, wear women’s dresses at this feast, and must make their round in a direction opposite to the movement of the sun.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Franz Boas, in Sixth Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., 1888, p. 611.)

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IV. THE COMMEMORATIVE CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS

The opinion expressed above concerning the commemorative character of religious festivals echoes that which Godfrey Higgins enunciated several generations ago. The learned author of “Anacalypsis” says that festivals “accompanied with dancing and music” ... “were established to keep in recollection victories or other important events.” (Higgins’ “Anacalypsis,” London, 1810, vol. ii. p. 424.) He argues the subject at some length on pages 424-426, but the above is sufficient for the present purpose.

“In the religious rites of a people I should expect to find the earliest of their habits and customs.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 15.)

Applying the above remark to the Zuñi dance, it may be interpreted as a dramatic pictograph of some half-forgotten episode in tribal history. To strengthen this view by example, let us recall the fact that the army of Crusaders under Peter the Hermit was so closely beleaguered by the Moslems in Nicomedia in Bithynia that they were compelled to drink their own urine. We read the narrative set out in cold type. The Zuñis would have transmitted a record of the event by a dramatic representation which time would incrust with all the veneration that religion could impart.

The authority for the above statement in regard to the Crusaders is to be found in Purchas, “Pilgrims,” lib. 8, cap. 1, p. 1191. Neither Gibbon nor Michaud expresses this fact so clearly, but each speaks of the terrible sufferings which decimated the undisciplined hordes of Walter the Penniless and Peter, and reduced the survivors to cannibalism.

The urine of horses was drunk by the people of Crotta while besieged by Metellus.—(See, in Montaigne’s Essays, “On Horses,” cap. xlviii.; see also, in Harington, “Ajax”—“Ulysses upon Ajax,” p. 42.)

Shipwrecked English seamen drank human urine for want of water. (See in Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1188.) In the year 1877 Captain Nicholas Nolan, Tenth Cavalry, while scouting with his troop after hostile Indians on the Staked Plains of Texas, was lost; and as supplies became exhausted, the command was reduced to living for several days on the blood of their horses and their own urine, water not being discovered in that vicinity.—(See Hammersley’s Record of Living Officers of the United States Army.)

History is replete with examples of the same general character; witness the sieges of Jerusalem, Numantia, Ghent, the famine in France under Louis XIV., and many others.

THE GENERALLY SACRED CHARACTER OF DANCING.

“Dancing was originally merely religious, intended to assist the memory in retaining the sacred learning which originated previous to the invention of letters. Indeed, I believe that there were no parts of the rites and ceremonies of antiquity which were not adopted with a view to keep in recollection the ancient learning before letters were known.”—(Higgins’ “Anacalypsis,” vol. ii. p. 179.)

In one of the sieges of Samaria, it is recorded that “The fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung sold for five pieces of silver.”—(2 Kings, vi. 25.)

There is another interpretation of the meaning of this expression, not so literal, which it is well to insert at this point.

“When Samaria was besieged, the town was a prey to all the horrors of famine; hunger was so extreme that five pieces of silver was the price given for a small measure (fourth part of a cab) of dove’s dung. This seems, at first sight, ridiculous. But Bochart maintains very plausibly that this name was then and is now given by the Arabs to a species of vetch (pois chiches).”—(“Philosophy of Magic,” Eusebe Salverte, New York, 1862, vol. i. p. 70.)

“The pulse called garbansos is believed by certain authors to be the dove’s dung mentioned at the siege of Samaria; ... they have likewise been taken for the pigeons’ dung mentioned at the siege of Samaria. And, indeed, as the cicer is pointed at one end and acquires an ash color in parching, the first of which circumstances answers to the figure, the other to the usual color of pigeons’ dung, the supposition is by no means to be disregarded.”—(“Shaw’s Travels in Barbary,” in “Pinkerton’s Voyages,” London, 1814, vol. xv. p. 600.)

FRAY DIEGO DURAN’S ACCOUNT OF THE MEXICAN FESTIVALS.

All that Higgins believed was believed and asserted by the Dominican missionary Diego Duran. Duran complains bitterly that the unwise destruction of the ancient Mexican pictographs and all that explained the religion of the natives left the missionaries in ignorance as to what was religion and what was not. The Indians, taking advantage of this, mocked and ridiculed the dogmas and ceremonies of the new creed in the very face of its expounders, who still lacked a complete mastery of the language of the conquered. The Indians never could be induced to admit that they still adhered to their old superstitions, or that they were boldly indulging in their religious observances; many times, says the shrewd old chronicler, it would appear that they were merely indulging in some pleasant pastime, while they were really engaged in idolatry; or that they were playing games, when truly they were casting lots for future events before the priest’s eyes; or that they were subjecting themselves to penitential discipline, when they were sacrificing to their gods. This remark applied to all that they did. In dances, in baths, in markets, in singing their songs, in their dramas (the word is “comedia,” a comedy, but a note in the margin of the manuscript says that probably this ought to be “comida,” food, or dinner, or feast), in sowing, in reaping, in putting away the harvest in their granaries, even in tilling the ground, in building their houses, in their funerals, in their burials, in marriages, in the birth of children, into everything they did entered idolatry and superstition.

“Parece muchas veces pensar que estan haciendo placer y estan idolatrando; y pensar que estan jugando y estan echando suertes de los sucesos delante de nuestros ojos y no los entendemos y pensamos que se disciplinan y estanse sacrificando.

“Y asi erraron mucho los que con bueno celo (pero no con mucha prudencia), quemaron y destruyeron al principio todas las pinturas de antiguallas que tenian; pues, nos dejaron tan sin luz que delante de nuestros ojos idolatran y no los entendemos.

“En los mitotes, en los baños, en los mercados, y en los cantares que cantan lamentando sus Dioses y sus Señores Antiguos, en las comedias, en los banquetes, y en el diferenciar en el de ellas, en todo se halla supersticion é idolátria; en el sembrar, en el coger, en el encerrar en los troges, hasta en el labrar la tierra y edificar las casas; pues en los mortuorios y entierros, y en los casamientos y en los nacimientos de los niños, especialmente si era hijo de algun Señor; eran estrañas las ceremonias que se le hacian; y donde todo se perfeccionaba era en la celebration de las fiestas; finalmente, en todo mezclaban supersticion é idolatria; hasta en irse á bañarse al rio los viejos, puesto escrúpulo á la republica sino fuese habiendo precedido tales y tales ceremonias; todo lo cual nos es encubierto por el gran secreto que tienen.”—(Diego Duran, lib. 2, concluding remarks.)

Fray Diego Duran, a Fray Predicador of the Dominican order, says, at the end of his second volume, that it was finished in 1581.

The very same views were held by Father Geronimo Boscána, a Franciscan, who ministered for seventeen years to the Indians of California. Every act of an Indian’s life was guided by religion.—(See “Chinigchinich,” included in A. A. Robinson’s “California,” New York, 1850.)

The Apaches have dances in which the prehistoric condition of the tribe is thus represented; so have the Mojaves and the Zuñis; while in the snake dance of the Moquis and the sun dance of the Sioux the same faithful adherence to traditional costume and manners is apparent.

THE URINE DANCE OF THE ZUÑIS MAY CONSERVE A TRADITION OF THE TIME WHEN VILE ALIMENT WAS IN USE.

The Zuñi dance may therefore not improperly be considered among other points of view, under that which suggests a commemoration of the earliest life of this people, when vile aliment of every kind may have been in use through necessity.

An examination of evidence will show that foods now justly regarded as noxious were once not unknown to nations of even greater development than any as yet attained by the Rio Grande Pueblos.

Necessity was not always the inciting motive; frequently religious frenzy was responsible for orgies of which only vague accounts and still vaguer explanations have come down to us.

The religious examples will be adduced at a later moment, as will those in which human or animal excreta have been employed in ordeals and punishments, terrestrial and supernal.

So long as the lines of investigation are included within civilized limits, the instances noticed very properly fall under the classification of mania and of abnormal appetite; and the latter, in turn, may be subdivided into the two classes of the innate and the acquired, the second of which has presented a constant decrease since physicians have rejected such disgusting remedial agents from the Materia Medica.

That both human ordure and urine have been, and that they may still to a limited extent be, added by the rustic population of portions of Europe to the contents of love-philters is a fact established beyond peradventure; and that the followers of the Grand Lama of Thibet stand accused, on what has the semblance of excellent authority, of obtaining from their priests the egestæ of that potent hierarch and adopting them as condiments, food, charms, amulets, and talismans, as well as internal medicines, will be fully stated in the chapters devoted to that purpose.

Schurig gives numerous examples of the eating of human and animal excrement by epileptics, by maniacs, by chlorotic young women, or by women in pregnancy, by children who had defiled their beds and dreading detection swallowed the evidences of their guilt, and finally by men and women with abnormal appetites.—(See Schurig, “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, pp. 45, 81, 84, 780-782.)

Burton relates the story of a young German girl, Catherine Gualter, in 1571, as told by Cornelius Gemma, who vomited, “among other things, pigeons’ dung and goose-dung.” She was apparently a victim of hysteria, and in her paroxysms had previously swallowed all manner of objectionable matter.—(See “Anatomy of Melancholy,” edition of London, 1806, vol. i. p. 76.)

“On a vu, surtout dans les hôpitaux, des femmes se faire un jeu d’avaler clandestinement leurs urines à mesure qu’elles les rendaient, et essayer faire croire qu’elles n’en rendaient point du tout.”—(Personal letter to Captain Bourke from Mr. Frank Rede Fowke, dated Department of Science and Art, South Kensington Museum, London, S. W., June 18, 1888.)

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V. HUMAN EXCREMENT USED IN FOOD BY THE INSANE AND OTHERS

The subject of excrement-eating among insane persons has engaged the attention of medical experts. H. B. Obersteiner, in a communication to the “Psychiatrisches Centralblatt,” Wien, 1871, vol. iii. p. 95, informs that periodical that Dr. A. Erlenmeyer, Jr., induced by a lecture delivered by Professor Lang in 1872, had prepared a tabulated series of data embodying the results of his observations upon the existence of coprophagy among insane persons. He found that one in a hundred of persons suffering from mental diseases indulged in this abnormal appetite; the majority of these were men. No particular relation could be established between excrement-eating and Onanism; and no deleterious effect upon the alimentary organs was detected.

“In pathological reversion of type, due to cerebral disease, there are certain stages in some forms of mental disease in which some of the actions to which you refer are not uncommon.”—(Personal letter to Captain Bourke from Surgeon John S. Billings, U. S. Army, in charge of the Army Medical Museum, dated Washington, D. C., April 23, 1888.)

“A boy of four years old had fouled in bed; but being much afraid of whipping, he ate his own dung, yet he could not blot the sign out of the sheets; wherefore, being asked by threatenings, he at length tells the chance. But being asked of its savor, he said it was of a stinking and somewhat sweet one.... A noble little virgin, being very desirous of her salvation, eats her own dung, and was weak and sick. She was asked of what savor it was, and she answered it was of a stinking and a waterishly sweet one.” These examples Von Helmont says were personally known to him, as was that of the painter of Brussels who, going mad, subsisted for twenty-three days on his own excrements.—(See Von Helmont’s “Oritrika” (English translation), London, 1662, pp. 211, 212. Von Helmont’s work is a folio of 1161 pages.)

A French lady was in the habit of carrying about her pulverized human excrements, which she ate, and would afterwards lick her fingers. (Christian Franz Paullini, “Dreck Apothek,” Frankfort, 1696, p. 9.) Paullini also gives the instance of the painter of Brussels already cited on preceding page.

“Bouillon Lagrange, pharmacien à Paris, que ses confrères appellaient Bouillon à Pointu, a publié un ouvrage, intitulé la Chimie du Goût, sur la fabrication des liqueurs de table, et il donne la recette d’une préparation qu’il appelle Eau de Mille Fleurs qui se compose de bouse de vache, infusée dans l’eau de vie.”—(“Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” pp. 93-96.)

“As to the excrements of the cow, they are still used to form the so-called ‘eau de mille fleurs,’ recommended by several pharmacopœias as a remedy for cachexy.”—(“Zoological Mythology,” Angelo de Gubernatis, London, 1874, vol. i. p. 275-277.)

“Scatophagi. Ces gourmets d’un genre particulier, ces ruminants de nouvelle espèce, ces épicuriens blasés ou raffinés, s’appellaient scatophages, ou scybalophages. (De scybales, scybala, σκύβαλα. Voyez dans Dioscoride, lib. 5, c. 77, et Gorreus, Def. med. p. 579, les diverses acceptions de ce mot.) L’empereur Commode était de ceux-là; ‘Dicitur sæpe prætiosissimis cibis humana stercora miscuisse, nec abstinuisse gustu,’ dit Lampride (Vie de l’empereur Commode, p. 160). Riedlinus (Linear. Medic., an. 1697, mens. nov. obs. 23, p. 800) rapporte le cas d’une femme qui affirmait ‘nullum cibum in tota vita sua palato magis satisfecisse.’ Sauvage (Nosologie méthodique) dit qu’une fille lui a avoué qu’elle avait mangé jadis avec un plaisir infini la croûte qui s’attache aux murailles des latrines. Zacutus Lusitanus a connu une demoiselle qui, ayant par hasard goûté ses excréments, en fit dans la suite sa nourriture favorite, au point qu’elle ne pouvait en passer sans être malade.

“J. J. Wypffer, Dec. III? an. 2, obs. 135, schol., p. 199, rapporte un fait du même genre. De même: Ehrenfreid; Pagendornius (Obs. et hist. phys. med. cent. 3, hist. 95); Daniel Eremita (Descript. Helvet. oper. p. 402); P. Tollius (Epist. itinerar. 62, p. 247); Tob. Pfanner (Diatrib. de Charismati, seu miracul. et antiq. eccles., c. 2); [Citations are also made from Von Helmont, Frommann, Posinus Lentilius, and Paullini, which have been quoted elsewhere direct from those authors.] P. Borellus (Obs. phys. med. cent. 4, obs. 2); J. Johnstonus (Thaumagograph, admirand. homin. c. 2, art. 2); George Hanneous (Dec. II., an. 8, obs. 115); P. Romelius (Dec. III., an. 7 and 8, obs. 40); Mich. Bern. Valentin. (Novell. med. log. as. II). Nous croyons nous rappeler qu’il existe des exemples du même genre dans l’ouvrage de J. B. Cardan, intitulé: ‘De Abstinentis ab usu ciborum fetidorum,’ libellus imprimé à la suite du traité ‘De Utilitate ex adversis capienda’ de son père. On a connu à Paris un riche bourgeois, nommé Paperal, qui, par une étrange dépravation de goût, avalait des excréments de petits enfants. (Virey, Nouv. Dict. d’hist. nat. Deterville, tom. X.) La traduction même rapporte qu’ils les mangeait avec une cuiller d’or. Ce n’est pas le seul exemple d’un goût aussi bizarre. Bouillon portait toujours une boîte d’or remplie non de tabac, mais des excréments humains. (Voy. Dulaure, Hist. de Paris, edit. de 1825, t. VII. p. 262.)”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pages 93 to 96.)

“La fiente de bécasse, dont les fines gourmets, véritablement scatophages, sont, comme on sait, très friands.”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, p. 133.)

In this curious book, full of learning and research, there are citations from more than three hundred authorities, some of them, of course, merely obscene and not coming within the purview of these notes, but others, as may be readily understood from reading the extracts taken from them, of the highest value in a scientific sense. Schurig gives an instance of voracity in which a certain glutton, after consuming all other food in sight, was wont to satisfy himself with urine and excrement: “Et si panes deerant, sua ipse excrementa comedebat et lotium bibebat.” (Schurig, “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, p. 52.) A case is given of a patient who having once experienced the beneficial effects of mouse-dung in some complaint, became a confirmed mouse-dung eater, and was in the habit of picking it up from the floor of his house before the servants could sweep it away.—(See Schurig, “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, p. 823 et seq.)

The enceinte wife of a farmer in the town of Hassfort, on the Main, ate the excrements of her husband, warm and smoking.—(See Christian Franz Paullini, “Dreck Apothek,” edition of Frankfort, 1696, page 8. See also quotation from “Ephemeridum Physico-Medicorum,” Leipsig. 1694, on page 212 of this volume.)

“Chacun en fait, en voit, en sent, en touche, en parle, souvent en écrit, quelquefois en lit, et si chacun n’en mange pas, c’est que nous ne sommes pas encore au temps où les bécasses tomberont toutes rôties; mais de celui-là en voudrait manger.”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, p. 21, “Oratio pro Guano Humano.”)

An extract is here given from a letter sent to Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria, Princess-Palatine, daughter of Charles Louis, Elector-Palatine of the Rhine, born at Heidelberg, in 1652; she married the brother of Louis XIV., the widower of Henrietta Maria of England.

The letter in question was sent her by her aunt, the wife of the Elector of Hanover, and may serve to give an idea of the boldness of the opinions entertained by the ladies of high rank in that era, and the coarseness with which they expressed them:—

“HANOVRE, 31 Octobre, 1694.

“Si la viande fait la merde, il est vrai de dire que la merde fait la viande.... Est-ce que dans les tables les plus délicates, la merde n’y est pas servie en ragoûts?... Les boudins, les andouilles, les saucisses, ne sont-ce pas des ragoûts dans des sacs à merde?”

The letters here spoken of are to be found almost complete in the Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pages 17-21.

The following appeared in an article headed “The Last Cholera Epidemic in Paris,” in the “General Homœopathic Journal,” vol. cxiii., page 15, 1886: “The neighbors of an establishment famous for its excellent bread, pastry, and similar products of luxury, complained again and again of the disgusting smells which prevailed therein and which penetrated into their dwellings. The appearance of cholera finally lent force to these complaints, and the sanitary inspectors who were sent to investigate the matter found that there was a connection between the water-closets of these dwellings and the reservoir containing the water used in the preparation of the bread. This connection was cut off at once, but the immediate result thereof was a perceptible deterioration of the quality of the bread. Chemists have evidently no difficulty in demonstrating that water impregnated with ‘extract of water-closet,’ has the peculiar property of causing dough to rise particularly fine, thereby imparting to bread the nice appearance and pleasant flavor which is the principal quality of luxurious bread.”—(Personal letter from Dr. Gustav Jaeger, Stuttgart, Germany. See page 39.)

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VI. THE EMPLOYMENT OF EXCREMENT IN FOOD BY SAVAGE TRIBES

The very earliest accounts of the Indians of Florida and Texas refer to the use of such aliment. Cabeza de Vaca, one of the survivors of the ill-fated expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez, was a prisoner among various tribes for many years, and finally, accompanied by three comrades as wretched as himself, succeeded in traversing the continent, coming out at Culiacan, on the Pacific Coast, in 1536. His narrative says that the “Floridians,” “for food, dug roots, and that they ate spiders, ants’ eggs, worms, lizards, salamanders, snakes, earth, wood, the dung of deer, and many other things.”[9] The same account, given in Purchas’s “Pilgrims” (vol. iv. lib. 8, cap. 1, sec. 2, p. 1512) expresses it that “they also eat earth, wood, and whatever they can get; the dung of wild beasts.” These remarks may be understood as applying to all tribes seen by this early explorer east of the Rocky mountains.

Gómara identifies this loathsome diet with a particular tribe, the “Yaguaces” of Florida. “They eat spiders, ants, worms, lizards of two kinds, snakes, earth, wood, and ordure of all kinds of wild animals.”[10]

The California Indians were still viler. The German Jesuit, Father Jacob Baegert, speaking of the Lower Californians (among whom he resided continuously from 1748 to 1765), says:—

“They eat the seeds of the pitahaya (giant cactus) which have passed off undigested from their own stomachs; they gather their own excrement, separate the seeds from it, roast, grind, and eat them, making merry over the loathsome meal.” And again: “In the mission of Saint Ignatius, ... there are persons who will attach a piece of meat to a string and swallow it and pull it out again a dozen times in succession, for the sake of protracting the enjoyment of its taste.”—(Translation of Dr. Charles F. Rau, in Annual Report, Smithsonian Institution, 1866, p. 363.)

A similar use of meat tied to a string is understood to have once been practised by European sailors for the purpose of teasing green comrades suffering from the agonies of sea-sickness.

(Fuegians.) “One of them immediately coughed up a piece of blubber which he had been eating and gave it to another, who swallowed it with much ceremony and with a peculiar guttural noise.”—(“Voyage of the Adventure and Beagle,” London, 1839, vol. i. p. 315.)

The same information is to be found in Clavigero (“Historia de la Baja California,” Mexico, 1852, p. 24), and in H. H. Bancroft’s “Native Races of the Pacific Slope,” vol. i. p. 561; both of whom derive from Father Baegert. Orozco y Berra also has the story; but he adds that oftentimes numbers of the Californians would meet and pass the delicious tid-bit from mouth to mouth.[11]

Castañeda alludes to the Californians as a race of naked savages, who ate their own excrement.[12]

The Indians of North America, according to Harmon, “boil the buffalo paunch with much of its dung adhering to it,”—a filthy mode of cooking which in itself would mean little, since it can be paralleled in almost all tribes. But in another paragraph the same author says: “Many consider a broth made by means of the dung of the cariboo and the hare to be a dainty dish” (Harmon’s “Journal,” etc., Andover, 1820, p. 324).[13]

The Abbé Domenech asserts the same of the bands near Lake Superior: “In boiling their wild rice to eat, they mix it with the excrement of rabbits,—a delicacy appreciated by the epicures among them” (Domenech, “Deserts,” vol. ii. p. 311).

Of the negroes of Guinea an old authority relates that they “ate filthy, stinking elephant’s and buffalo’s flesh, wherein there is a thousand maggots, and many times stinks like carrion. They eat raw dogge guts, and never seethe nor roast them” (De Bry, Ind. Orient. in Purchas’s “Pilgrims,” vol. ii. p. 905). And another says that the Mosagueys make themselves a “pottage with milk and fresh dung of kine, which, mixed together and heat at the fire, they drinke, saying it makes them strong” (Purchas, lib. 9, cap. 12, sec. 4, p. 1555).

The Peruvians ate their meat and fish raw; but nothing further is said by Gómara. “Comen crudo la carne y el pescado” (Gómara, “Hist. de las Indias,” p. 234.)

The savages of Australia “make a sweet and luscious beverage by mixing taarp with water. Taarp is the excrement of a small green beetle, wherein the larvæ thereof are deposited.”—(“The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina,” P. Beveridge, Melbourne, 1889, p. 126; received through the kindness of the Royal Society of Sydney, New South Wales, T. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)

“One of them (Snakes), who had seized about nine feet of the entrails, was chewing it at one end, while with his hand he was diligently clearing his way by discharging the contents of the other. It was indeed impossible to see these wretches ravenously feeding on the filth of animals, and the blood streaming from their mouths, without deploring how nearly the condition of savages approaches that of the brute creation.”—(Lewis and Clark, quoted by Spencer, “Descriptive Sociology: ‘Snakes.’”)

“Some authors have said that all the Hottentots devour the entrails of beasts, uncleansed of their filth and excrements, and that, whether sound or rotten, they consider them as the greatest delicacies in the world; but this is not true. I have always found that when they had entrails to eat they turned and stripped them of their filth and washed them in clear water.”—(“Peter Kolben’s Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope,” in Knox’s “Voyages and Travels,” London, 1777, vol. ii. p. 385.)

Atkinson declined to dine with a party of Kirghis who had killed a sheep, “having seen the entrails put into the pan after undergoing but a very slight purification.”—(“Siberia,” T. W. Atkinson, New York, 1865, p. 219, and again p. 433.)

“The entrails of animals and other refuse matter thrown overboard from the English ships is eagerly collected and eaten by the Cochi-Chinese, whom Mr. White even accuses of having a predilection for filth.”—(“Encyc. of Geography,” Philadelphia, 1845, vol. ii. p. 397, article “Farther India.”)

(Arabs of the Red Sea.) “The water of Dobelew and Irwee tasted strongly of musk, from the dung of the goats and antelopes, and the smell before you drink it is more nauseous than the taste.”—(“Travels to discover the Source of the Nile,” James Bruce, Dublin, 1790, vol. i. p. 367.)

From thus enduring water polluted with the excrements of animals to drinking beverages to which urine has been purposely added, as Sir Samuel Baker and Colonel Chaille Long show to have been the custom of the negroes near Gondokoro with their milk, is but a very small step.

Chaille Long relates that in Central Africa he and his men were obliged to drink water which was a mixture of the excrements of the rhinoceros and the elephant (see “Central Africa,” New York, 1877, p. 86). Livingston tells us that the Africans living along the banks of the Zambesi are careful not to drink except from springs or wells which they dig in the sand. “During nearly nine months in the year ordure is deposited around countless villages along the thousands of miles drained by the Zambesi. When the heavy rains come down and sweep the vast fetid accumulation into the torrents the water is polluted with filth” (“Zambesi,” London, 1865, p. 181).

Rev. J. Owen Dorsey reports that he has seen, while among the Ponkas, “a woman and a child devour the entrails of a beef, with the contents” (personal letter to Captain Bourke).

Réclus says that the Eastern Inuit eat excrement. “Ils ne reculent pas devant les intestins de l’ours, pas même devant ses excréments, et se jettent avec avidité sur la nourriture mal digérée qu’ils retirent du ventre des rennes” (“Les Primitifs,” Paris, 1885, pp. 31, 32). “Les Ygarrotes des Philippines, qui versent comme sauce à leur viande crue le jus des fientes d’un buffle fraîchement abattu” (idem, p. 31).

The tribes of Angola, West Africa, cook the entrails of deer without removing the contents; this is for the purpose of getting a flavor, as the excrement itself is not eaten (“Muhongo,” interpretation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain).

The Thibetan monk was not to eat entrails. “Ne pas manger des tripes” (“Pratimoksha Sutra,” W. W. Rockhill, Soc. Asiatique, Paris, 1885.)

(Tunguses of Siberia.) “They eat up every part of the animal which they kill, not throwing away even the impurities of the bowels, with which they make a sort of black pudding by a mixture of blood and fat.”—(Gavrila Sarytschew, in Phillips’s “Voyages,” London, 1807, vol. v.)

Natives of Eastern Siberia “ate with avidity the entrails of the seal without cleaning in the least the partly digested food from the intestines, the ordure of the seal being as offensive to civilized man as the fæces of men or dogs.”—(Personal letter from Chief Engineer Melville, U. S. Navy, to Captain Bourke.)

The Aleuts and Indians from the extreme northern coast of America with Melville’s party displayed the same appetite for the half-digested contents of the paunches of the seals killed by them. This appetite was not due to lack of food, as Melville takes care to explain. At another time he detected his “natives” in the act of eating “plentifully, though covertly, of the droppings of the reindeer” (idem).

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VII. URINE IN HUMAN FOOD

CHINOOK OLIVES.

The addition of urine to human food is mentioned by various writers. Speaking of the Chinooks, Paul Kane describes a delicacy manufactured by some of the Indians among whom he travelled, and called by him “Chinook Olives.” They were nothing more nor less than acorns soaked for five months in human urine (see Kane, “Artist’s Wanderings in North America,” London, 1859, p. 187). Spencer copies Kane’s story in his “Descriptive Sociology,” article “Chinooks.”

“In Queensland, near Darlington, there is a tract of country covered with a peculiar species of pine, yielding an edible nut of which the natives are extremely fond.... The men would form large clay pans in the soil, into which they would urinate; they would then collect an abundance of these seeds and steep them in the urine. A fermentation took place, and all the seeds were devoured greedily, the effect being to cause a temporary madness among the men,—in fact a perfect delirium tremens. On these occasions it was dangerous for any one to approach them. The liquid was not used in any way.”—(Personal letter from John F. Mann, Esq., Neutral Bay, Sydney, New South Wales.)

This account not only recalls the story told by the artist Kane in the preceding paragraph, but establishes the fact that in Australia there is something with a marvellous resemblance to the Ur-Orgie of the people of Siberia.

Chief Engineer George W. Melville, U. S. Navy, author of “In the Lena Delta,” has had much experience with the natives of Northern Siberia, among whom it was his misfortune to be cast away. In a personal letter to Captain Bourke he states that he observed several instances of Siberian women drinking their own or their neighbor’s freshly voided urine. Once, in Sutke Harbor, Saint Lawrence Bay, near East Cape, when he “frowned at their unclean and unseemly act, they seemed very much amused, and after a moment’s talk, one of them voided her urine and another drank it, both being very much diverted by my disgust.” He further relates that when his “natives” could not obtain from his limited supplies all the alcohol they wanted, they made a mixture of alcohol and their own urine in equal parts and drank it down.

“On the morning of the 8th of May, while struggling with an attack of fever, I received a visit from Gilmoro, who brought me a gourd of milk as an expression of gratitude for saving him at an opportune moment his position. Burning with fever, I drained at one draught a goblet full of the foaming liquid ere the sense of taste could detect the nauseous mixture; my stomach, however, quickly rebelled, and rejected in violent retching the unsavory potion, seven eighths of which were simply the urine of the cow!—a practice, by the by, common to all Central Africans, who never drink milk unless thus mixed.”

“This fetish and superstition thereby insures protection for the cow here, as on the Bahr-el Abiad, mysteriously connected with the unknown,—a shadow possibly of the old Egyptian worship.”—(“Central Africa,” Chaille Long, New York, 1877, p. 70.)

URINE IN BREAD-MAKING.

A comparatively late writer says of the Moquis of Arizona: “They are not as clean in their housekeeping as the Navajoes, and it is hinted that they sometimes mix their meal with chamber-lye for these festive occasions; but I did not know that until I talked with Mormons who visited them” (J. H. Beadle, “Western Wilds,” Cincinnati, Ohio, 1878, p. 279).

Beadle lived and ate with the Moquis for a number of days. This story, coming from the Mormons, may refer to some imperfectly understood ceremonial.

There is some ground for suspecting that urine may have been employed by bakers in Europe prior to the introduction of the “barm” or ale yeast as a ferment. Ammonia is at the present time made use of by the Germans in this industry (see page 32).

It is possible that the following account of the manner of eating blubber among the Patagonians may mean that urine was poured over it: “He put the same piece on the fire again, and after an addition to it too offensive to mention, again sucked it” (“Voyage of the Adventure and Beagle,” London, 1839, vol. i. p. 343).

As bearing upon the ingestion of human excreta, which would seem to excite a natural feeling of revulsion, the following statement may have some significance: Spencer Saint John, in his “Life in the Far East,” London, 1842, after describing a head feast among the Dyaks, says that, after certain preliminary rites and amusements, “they commence eating and drinking ... an extraordinary accumulation,—fowls roasted with their feathers on, eggs black with age, decayed fruit, rice of all colors and kinds, strong-smelling fish almost approaching a state of rottenness, and their drink having the appearance and thickness of curds, in which they mix pepper and other ingredients. It has a sickening effect upon them, and they swallow it more as a duty than because they relish it.”

Evidently nastiness is an object, since “before they have added any extraneous matter” this drink “is not unpleasant, having something the taste of spruce-beer” (p. 66).

If the ceremony in question partakes of the nature of a sacrifice,—which is not at all certain from the text, in which it is described as an “entertainment,” but which appears probable from its being connected with the organization and representation of the tribe and from its relation to head-hunting,—then it may be assumed that the spoiled food and nauseous drink are perfectly natural features, which have their counterparts in many places.

As a rule, the more painful, costly, unnatural, and disgusting a rite is, the more essentially sacrificial is its character,—for obvious reasons.

Von Stralenburg says of the Koraks that they use the same tubs as urinals and for the purpose of holding drinking water (see citation on page 152 of this volume).

HUMAN ORDURE EATEN BY EAST INDIAN FANATICS.

Speaking of the remnants of the Hindu sect of the Aghozis, an English writer observes:—

“In proof of their indifference to worldly objects they eat and drink whatever is given to them, even ordure and carrion. They smear their bodies also with excrement, and carry it about with them in a wooden cup, or skull, either to swallow it, if by so doing they can get a few pice, or to throw it upon the persons or into the houses of those who refuse to comply with their demands.”—(“Religious Sects of the Hindus,” in “Asiatic Researches,” vol. xvii. p. 205, Calcutta, India, 1832.)

Another writer confirms the above. The Abbé Dubois says that the Gurus, or Indian priests, sometimes, as a mark of favor, present to their disciples “the water in which they had washed their feet, which is preserved and sometimes drunk by those who receive it” (Dubois, “People of India,” London, 1817, p. 64). This practice, he tells us, is general among the sectaries of Siva, and is not uncommon with many of the Vishnuites in regard to their vashtuma. “Neither is it the most disgusting of the practices that prevail in that sect of fanatics, as they are under the reproach of eating as a hallowed morsel the very ordure that proceeds from their Gurus, and swallowing the water with which they have rinsed their mouths or washed their faces, with many other practices equally revolting to nature” (idem, p. 71).

Again, on page 331, Dubois alludes to the Gymnosophists “or naked Samyasis of India ... eating human excrement, without showing the slightest symptom of disgust.”

As bearing not unremotely upon this point, the author wishes to say that in his personal notes and memoranda can be found references to one of the medicine-men of the Sioux who assured his admirers that everything about him was “medicine,” even his excrement, which could be transmuted into copper cartridges.

“I was informed that vast numbers of Shordrus drank the water in which a Brahmin has dipped his foot, and abstain from food in the morning till this ceremony be over. Some persons do this every day.... Persons may be seen carrying a small quantity of water in a cup and entreating the first Brahmin they see to put his toe in it.... Some persons keep water thus sanctified in their houses.”—(Ward, quoted by Southey in his “Commonplace Book,” London, 1849, 2d series, p. 521.)

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VIII. THE ORDURE OF THE GRAND LAMA OF THIBET

That the same disgusting veneration was accorded the person of the Grand Lama of Thibet, was once generally believed. Maltebrun asserts it in positive terms: “It is a certain fact that the refuse excreted from his body is collected with sacred solicitude, to be employed as amulets and infallible antidotes to disease.”

And, quoting from Pallas, book 1, p. 212, he adds: “Il est hors de doute que le contenu de sa chaise percée est dévotement recueilli; les parties solides sont distribuées comme des amulettes qu’on porte au cou; le liquide est pris intérieurement comme une médécine infaillible.”—(Maltebrun, Universal Geography, article “Thibet,” vol. ii. lib. 45, American edition, Philadelphia, 1832.)

The Abbé Huc denies this assertion: “The Talé Lama is venerated by the Thibetans and the Mongols like a divinity. The influence he exercises over the Buddhist population is truly astonishing; but still it is going too far to say that his excrements are carefully collected and made into amulets, which devotees inclose in pouches and carry around their necks.”—(Huc, “Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China,” London, 1849, vol. ii. p. 198.)

HUC AND DUBOIS COMPARED.

Huc was a keen and observing traveller; he was well acquainted with the languages and customs of the Mongolians; his tour into Thibet was replete with incident, and his narrative never flags in interest. Still, in Thibet he was only a traveller; the upper classes of the Buddhist priesthood looked upon him with suspicion. The lower orders of priesthood and people did seem to consider him as a Lama from the far East, but he did not succeed in gaining the confidence of the Thibetans to the extent possessed by Dubois among the Brahminical sects. The history of the latter author is a peculiar one: A French priest, driven from his native land by the excesses of the revolution, he took refuge in India, devoting himself for nearly twenty years to missionary labor among the people, with whom he became so thoroughly identified that when his notes appeared they were published at the expense of the British East India Company, and distributed among its officials as a text-book.

While it is possible to consult earlier authorities, the determination of this matter should not be allowed to remain in controversy. The first Europeans known to have penetrated to Thibet (or Barantola, as they called it) were the Jesuits Grueber and Dorville, who, returning from China to Europe, walked through Thibet, and down through India to the sea-coast. This was in 1661; another member of the same order, Father Andrade, claimed to have succeeded in the same perilous undertaking at an earlier date (1621), but the names of the cities he visited proves that he did not get beyond what is now known as Afghanistan, at the foot of the mountains bordering on Thibet. While Grueber and Dorville were making their journey, or not many years after, Father Gerbillon, also a Jesuit, had taken up his abode among the nomadic Tartars, acquiring an influence with them of which the Emperor of China was glad to avail himself in emergencies. None of these travellers claimed to have seen the Grand Lama in person.

“Grueber assures us that the grandees of the kingdom are very anxious to procure the excrements of this divinity (i. e., the Grand Lama), which they usually wear about their necks as relics. In another place he says that the Lamas make a great advantage by the large presents they receive for helping the grandees to some of his excrements, or urine; for, by wearing the first about their necks, and mixing the latter with their victuals, they imagine themselves to be secure against all bodily infirmities. In confirmation of this, Gerbillon informs us that the Mongols wear his excrements, pulverized, in little bags about their necks, as precious relics, capable of preserving them from all misfortunes, and curing them of all sorts of distempers. When this Jesuit was on his second journey into Western Tartary, a deputy from one of the principal lamas offered the emperor’s uncle a certain powder, contained in a little packet of very white paper, neatly wrapped up in a scarf of very white taffety; but that prince told him that as it was not the custom of the Manchews to make use of such things, he durst not receive it. The author took this powder to be either some of the Great Lama’s excrements, or the ashes of something that had been used by him.”—(“A Description of Thibet,” in Pinkerton’s “Voyages and Travels,” London, 1814, vol. vii. p. 559).

“Grueber, in his late account of his return from China, A.D. 1661, by way of Lassa, or Barantola, as Kircher calls it (see Kircher, China Illustrata, part ii. c. 1), but Grueber himself Barantaka (where, he saith, no Christian hath never been) ... above all, he wondered at their pope (the Grand Lama of Thibet), to whom they give divine honors, and worship his very excrements, and put them up in golden boxes, as a most excellent remedy against all mischiefs.”—(Stillingfleet, “Defence of Discourse concerning Idolatry in Church of Rome,” London, 1676, pp. 116-120, quoted by H. T. Buckle, in his “Commonplace Book,” p. 79, vol. ii. of his Works, London, 1872).

Turner, “Embassy to Thibet,” London, 1806, makes no reference to the use of the excrements of the Grand Lama.

Friar Odoric, of Pordenone, visited L’hassa, Thibet, between A.D. 1316 and 1330 (see Markham’s edition of Bogle’s “Thibet,” London, 1879, p. 46). Markham believes that the Jesuit Antonio Andrada, “in 1624,” whom he styles “an undaunted missionary,” “found his way over the lofty passes to Rudok,” “climbed the terrific passes to the source of the Ganges, and eventually, after fearful sufferings, reached the shores of the sacred lake of Mansorewar, the source of the Sutlej.”—(Introduction to Bogle’s “Thibet,” London, 1879).

Warren Hastings speaks of the Thibetan priests of high degree, the “Ku-tchuck-tus,” who, he says, “admit a superiority in the Dalai Lama, so that his excrements are sold as charms, at great price, among all the Tartar tribes of this religion.”—(“Memorandum on Thibet,” accompanying the instructions to Mr. Bogle, the first English embassador to that country. See in Markham’s “Thibet,” London, 1879, p. 11.)

It is truly remarkable that neither in the report nor letters of Bogle, nor in the notes of Manning, nor in the fragments of Grueber, Desideri, nor Horace Della Penna, preserved in Markham’s “Thibet,” can any allusion be found to the use of the excrements of the Grand Lama in religion or medicine.

“Les grands du royaume” (i. e., of Barantola), “recherchent fort les excréments de cette divinité” (i. e., Lamacongiu). “Ils les portent ordinairement à leur col comme des reliques.”—(“Voyage de P. Grueber à Chine,” taken from Conversations with P. Grueber. See, in Thévenot, vol. ii., “Relations de Divers Voyages curieux,” Melchisédec Thevenot, Paris, 1696, vol. ii.)

Several authorities from whom much was expected are absolutely silent.

No mention is to be found in Rubruquis of any use of human ordure or urine among the Tartars among whom he travelled; all that he says is that they baked their bread on cow-dung. This monk, a Franciscan, was sent by King Louis IX. (Saint Louis), of France, on a mission to the Grand Khan of Tartary in 1253, in the execution of which office he travelled for thousands of miles through their territory. In Pinkerton it is said: “The travels of Rubruquis are equally astonishing in whatever light they are considered. Take them with respect to length, and they extend upwards of five thousand miles one way and nearly six thousand another.”—(Vol. vii. p. 96.)

During such a long journey he should have been able to notice much, but we are to bear in mind that the manners of the Tartars of the Grand Khan were at that time somewhat modified by contact with European civilization, having among them many prisoners, as Rubruquis points out, who officiated as artificers, while, on the other hand, we know that the monk was thoroughly ignorant of all their dialects. Marco Polo, who lived among the Tartars about the same time, says: “But now the Tartars are mixed and confounded, and so are their fashions.”—(Marco Polo, “Travels,” in Pinkerton’s “Voyages,” London, 1814, vol. vii. p. 124.)

Du Halde, although he gives an account of Thibet in his fourth volume, and seems to be familiar with all the works on that country, mentioning Fathers Grueber and Dorville, yet makes no allusion to the use of the excrements of the Grand Lama as amulets or internally. (See Du Halde’s “History of China,” London, 1736.) The fault may lie with his translator in his zeal to “expurgate.”

Du Halde, a Jesuit missionary, had the assistance of all the members of his order on duty in China; no less than a score or more aided him; one of the number, Father Constancin, had a tour of service in the Flowery Kingdom, as a missionary, of over thirty-two consecutive years. During the generation preceding the appearance of Du Halde’s work, the Jesuits had traversed China, Tartary, and Thibet. Tavernier, whose opportunities for observation were excellent, asserted the fact without ambiguity. The excrement of the Grand Lama was carefully collected, dried, and in various ways used as a condiment, as a snuff, and as a medicine.

“The Butan merchants assured Tavernier that they strew his ordure, powdered, over their victuals.”—(Tavernier, “Travels,” vol. ii. p. 185. Footnote to page 559, vol. vii. Pinkerton’s “Voyages and Travels,” London, 1814.)

“Unde tantis venerationis indiciis ab omnibus colitur, ut beatum ille se reputet, cui Lamarum (quod summis et pretiosis muneribus eum in finem, non sine magno eorum lucro corrumpere solent) benignitate aliquid ex naturalis secessus sordibus aut urina Magnæ Lamæ obtigerit. Ex ejusmodi enim collo portatis, urina quoque cibis commixta.”—(Letter of Father Adam Schall, S. J., “Aulæ Sino-Tartaricæ Supremi Concilii Mandarinus,” in Thevenot, vol. ii.; Thevenot’s second volume contains three short letters in Latin from Grueber to members of his order, but in none is there any mention made of the ordure of the Grand Lama.)

“There is no king in the world more feared and respected by his subjects than the king of Butan; being in a manner adored by them.... The merchants assured Tavernier that those about the king preserve his ordure, dry it, and reduce it to powder like snuff; that then putting it into boxes, they go every market-day and present it to the chief traders and farmers, who, recompensing them for their great kindness, carry it home as a great rarity, and when they feast their friends, strew it upon their meat. The author adds that two of them showed him their boxes with the powder in them.”—(“A Description of Thibet,” in Pinkerton, London, 1814, vol. vii. 567.)

The expression “king of Butan,” as used by Tavernier, means the Grand Lama of Thibet. Tavernier’s statement has been accepted by the most careful writers. “Indorum nonnullos, incolas scilicet regni Boutan Homerda seu excrementis alvinis Regis sui siccatis et pulverisatis cibos amicis et convivis suis appositos condire, refert Johannes Baptista Tavernier, Itinerar. Indic. lib. 3, cap. 15, fol. m.” (Schurig, “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, p. 775.) The same paragraph quoted in the Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pages 29, 93, and 96, to which the anonymous author adds, “et les Tartares et les Japonais tenaient en pareille vénération la merde du grand lama et du Dairi.”

Rosinus Lentilius, in the Ephemeridum Physico-Medicorum, Leipsig, 1694, speaks of the Grand Lama of Thibet as held in such high veneration by the devotees of his faith that his excrements, carefully collected, dried, powdered, and sold at high prices by the priests, were used as a sternutatory powder, to induce sneezing, and as a condiment for their food, and as a remedy for all the graver forms of disease. He quotes all this from Tavernier, and from Erasmus Franciscus, p. 1662. There is also another citation from Tavernier, lib. 4, cap. 7.

“Nec de rege in Bantam, et summo Tangathani Regni Pontifice, magno Lama, quos tanto in honore subditi habent ut merda eorum magno studio collectam, et in pulverem comminutam (quam Brachmines ære multo simplicibus divendunt) illi quidem scil. Boutamenses, loco pulvere nasalis utantur, eoque lautius, victuri cibos condiant hi vero scil. Tangat hani pro remedio longe presentissimo ad varios desperatissimosque morbos habeant, aliisque medicamentis admisceant, per sæpe memoratum” Tavernier, Itin. lib. 3, cap. 15, et Franciscus, loc. cit. p. 1662.

References to “amulets” among the peoples of Tartary and Thibet are made by nearly all travellers; but few seem to have considered it worth while to determine of what these amulets were composed.

Fathers Grueber and Dorville say of the Kalmuck Tartar women, “each with a charm about their necks to preserve them from dangers.” These may have been ordure amulets of the Grand Lama.

In his condensation of the travels into Thibet of Fathers Grueber and Dorville, Pinkerton omits what they had to say about these amulets, although in another place, already cited, he refers to it.

(Burats of Siberia.) “I could observe no images among them except some relics given them by their priests which they had from the Delay-Lama; these are commonly hung up in a corner of their tents, and sometimes about their necks, by way of an amulet to preserve them from misfortunes.” (Bell, “Travels in Asia,” with the Russian Embassy to China, in 1714, in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 347). Undoubtedly, these were amulets of human ordure, etc., received from the Grand Lama.

(Kalmucks of Siberia.) “Des pilules bénites qui viennent du Tibet méritent attention; on les appelle Schalir. Les prêtres ne les donnent qu’aux Kalmouks riches ou de distinction; ils les portent toujours sur eux, et ils n’en font usage que dans les maladies graves où la mort leur paraît presqu’inévitable. Ils prétendent que ces pilules servent à distraire l’ame des choses temporelles, et à la sanctifier: elles sont noires et de la grosseur d’un pois. Je presumai qu’elles renfermaient de l’opium ou autre narcotique; mais on m’assure au contraire que leur vertu était purgatif.”—(Voyages de Pallas, Paris, 1793, vol. i. pp. 567, 568.)

(Mongolia.) “When famous lamas die and their bodies are burnt, little white pills are reported as found among the ashes, and sold for large sums to the devout, as being the concentrated virtue of the man and possessing the power of insuring a happy future for him who swallows one near death. This is quite common. I heard of one man who improved on this by giving out that these little pills were in the habit of coming out through the skin of various parts of the body. These pills, called Sharil, met with a ready sale, and then the man himself reaped the reward of his virtue and did not allow all the profit to go to his heir.”—(“Among the Mongols,” Rev. James Gilmour, London, 1883, p. 231.)

This writer says that these sacred pills are white; another one, already noted, describes them as black, while those obtained by the author from Mr. W. W. Rockhill are red.

Vambéry instances one of the holy men of the Turkomans who, after reciting a number of sacred verses, “used to place before him a cup of water into which he spat at the end of each poem, and this composition ... was sold to the best bidder as a wonder-working medicine.”—(“Travels in Central Asia,” New York, 1865, p. 272.)

Such use of the excrement of ecclesiastical dignitaries was indicated in Oriental literature. In the “Arabian Nights” King Afrida says to the Emirs, among other things, “‘And I purpose this night to sacre you all with the Holy Incense.’ When the Emirs heard these words, they kissed the ground before him. Now the incense which he designated was the excrement of the Chief Patriarch, the denier, the defiler of the truth, and they sought for it with such instance, and they so highly valued it, that the high-priests of the Greeks used to send it to all the countries of the Christians in silken wraps, after mixing it with musk and ambergris; hearing of it, kings would pay a thousand gold pieces for every dram, and they sent for and sought it to fumigate brides withal; and the Chief Priests and the Great Kings were wont to use a little of it as a Collyrium for the eyes, and as a remedy in sickness and colic; and the Patriarchs used to mix their own skite (excrement) with it, for that the skite of the Chief Patriarch would not suffice for ten countries.”—(Burton’s edition, vol. ii. pp. 222, 223). In Burton’s Index this is called “Holy Merde.” Burton also says, “The idea of the Holy Merde might have been suggested by the Hindus; see Mandeville, of the archiprotopapaton (prelate) carrying ox-dung and cow-urine to the king, who therewith anoints his face and breast, etc. And, incredible to relate, this is still practised by the Parsis, one of the most progressive and sharpest-witted of the Asiatic races.”—(Idem.)

Rochefoucauld tells us that we ascribe to others the faults of which we ourselves would be guilty, had we the opportunity. The Arabians no doubt were fully acquainted with just such customs; possibly, the Greeks also.

The Kalmucks believe in spirits or genii called “Bourkans,” and in a maleficent one known as “Erlik-khan.” They tell a story of three of these “Bourkans,” one of them being Sakya-Muni: “Étant un jour assis ensemble, firent leurs prières dans la plus grande ferveur, ayant les yeux fermés, ainsi que cela se pratique chez les Kalmouks, le génie infernal s’approche d’eux, et fit ses ordures dans la coupe sacrée que les prêtres ont devant eux lorsqu’ils font la prière. Dès que les dieux s’en aperçurent, ils tinrent conseil. Ils conclurent que s’ils répandoient cette matière venimeuse dans les airs, ils féroient périr tous les habitants de cet élément; et que s’ils la jétoient sur la terre, ils féroient mourir tous les êtres vivans qui l’occupent. Ils résolurent donc, pour le bien de l’humanité, de l’avaler. Sakya-Muni eut pour sa part le fond de la coupe; le levain étoit si fort que son visage devint tout bleu. C’est la raison pour laquelle on lui peint la figure en bleu dans les images; ses idoles ont seulement le bonnet vernissé en bleu.”—(Voyages de Pallas, Paris, 1793, vol. i. p. 548).

This is a lame explanation, invented by the Lamas after men had become somewhat refined, and had begun to evince a repugnance to these diabolical usages. Compare with the notes presented by Mr. W. W. Rockhill, the Oriental scholar and Thibetan explorer, on p. 37.

The following is from a manuscript by Mr. W. W. Rockhill, entitled “The Lamaist Ceremony called the Making of the Mani Pills:”—

“Certain indestructible particles of the bodies of the Buddhas and saints, as well as certain other bodily remains, have ever been considered by Buddhists to enjoy certain properties, such as that of emitting light, and of having great curative properties. The travels of Huein-Tsang and of Fa-hsien are filled with accounts of the discovery of such treasures, and of the supernatural properties which they possessed. Among Thibetans, the first class of these relics is known as ‘pedung’ (upel-gedung), the second as ‘dung-rus’ (gdung-rus). They say the pedung are minute globules found in the bones of Buddhas and saints, that they possess wonderful brilliancy, and that sometimes they may be seen on the exterior of some saintly person, when they have the appearance of brilliant drops of sweat. While these pedung have most potent curative properties, they become also the palladium of the locality fortunate enough to have them. By a natural extension of the idea of the power of pedung, Thibetans have come to think that if one preserves and carries about on one’s person even a little of the excretions, or of the hair or nail-trimmings of a saint who is known to have pedung, such, for instance, as the Tale-Lama, or the Panchan-Rimpoche, they will shield him from gun or sword wounds, sickness, etc.; hence the extraordinary objects one so often finds in Thibetan charm-boxes (Ka-Wo).

“The properties of pedung have also given rise to another belief, with which this paper is more properly concerned,—that of manufacturing pills, to which the god Shourizog, at the supplication of the officiating lamas, imparts the properties of his own divine body, and then imparts to them the curative and protective properties of real pedung. These pills are known as mani-rilbu, or ‘precious pills,’ and are in constant use as medicine among the people of Thibet and Mongolia. Large quantities of them are also sent by each tribute-bearing minion to the Emperor of China. In Chinese, they are called ‘Tsu-mu-yas,’ or ‘thih-ma-yao,’ and must not be confounded with a liliaceous plant of same name (Hanbury’s Anemarhena asphodeloides), the rhizome of which is used in medicine, and which is also a product of Thibet.

“Perhaps the better name for ‘mani-rilbu’ is ‘tzu-sheng-wan,’ ‘dilated pills,’ which I have heard used for them in Pekin, as will be better seen after reading the following account of the manner in which they are manufactured.

“The greater part of the account here given of the process of making the pills is taken from a Thibetan work containing a minute account of the ceremony, together with the prayers to be recited, etc., the title of which is ‘Ceremony of Making Mani Pills’ (Mani Rilbu grub gi choga), in seven leaves.

“Verbal explanations from the lamas who explained the text to me are incorporated wherever necessary.

“Seven days prior to the commencement of the ceremony the lama who is to conduct it and the priests who are to take part in it commence to abstain from the use of meat, spirits, garlic, tobacco, and other articles of food held impure, or which are bad-smelling, and during the progress of the ceremony, which is twenty-one, forty-nine, or one hundred days in length, none of the above articles are allowed in the temple, nor are unclean persons or those who are partaking of the above prohibited substances.

“The ceremony begins by making the pills, and the process is described, in the work mentioned above, as follows: “The Lama, his head clean-shaved, and his vestments being as they should be, grinds into fine flour some roasted grain, then mixing it with pure and sweet-scented water, he makes the necessary amount of paste; the pills are then made and coated over with red. When all this has been done, a vase is taken which is dry and without any flaw or blemish, and which is also perfectly clean, and in it the pills are poured until it is two-thirds full. The vase is then wrapped in a silk cover, which is tied on with a silk thread, and sealed. The vase, after this, is put on a stand, in a perfectly upright position, and around the latter are arranged bowls of water and other offerings, two by two. The most revered image of Tug-je-chon-po (i. e., Shouresig) which the lamasery possesses is then clothed in its robes, and placed on top of the vase; then, without shaking the vase, a dorje (a marginal note explains that this is the Thunder-bolt or Sadjra of Indra: it is in constant use in all the Lamaist ceremonies, and is generally held in the right hand, between the thumb and index, while prayers are being read. In the left hand the lama usually holds a bell), wrapped in a clean piece of cotton or woollen stuff, is tied to the string around the neck of the vase. After an interval of meditation and prayer, offerings are made of ‘water, flowers, incense, lamps, perfumes, food, etc., ... while music plays.’ Then the help of the god is invoked ‘to impart the necessary virtues to the pills, ... for this world is sunk in sin and iniquity, and Shouresig alone can help it, and drag it out of the mire.’ As a means thereto he is now besought, in his great mercifulness, to bless these pills, so that they may free from the orb of transmigration those who shall have attained maturity of mind, to impart to them by absorption the peculiar flavor of his resplendent person, so that they may become indistinguishable from it, like water poured into water, etc., etc.

“This ceremony, which is a most expensive one, and most trying on the Lamas, is not at all common in the Lamaseries of China or Mongolia, and is confined to the larger one in Thibet; the only one at Pekin, where it is sometimes performed, is the Shih-fang-tang, to the west of the Hsi-huang-tsu, outside of the north side of the city.”

The above ceremony describes a symbolical alvine dejection, and the most plausible explanation is, that the lamas, finding trade good and the Buddhist laity willing to accept more “amulets” than the Grand Lama was able, unaided, to supply, hit upon this truly miraculous mode of replenishing their stock.

Mr. Rockhill explains that the word “pedung,” used in the above description, means “remains.” Taking into consideration the fact that these people, although remotely, are related to the Aryan stock, which is the ancestor of the English, German, Irish, Latin, and others, from which we spring, the meaning, as here given, is certainly not without significance. “Dung,” in our own tongue, means nothing more nor less than remains, reliquiæ of a certain kind.

Webster traces the word “dung” to the Anglo-Saxon dung, dyncg, dincg,—excrement; Dyngan, to dung; N. H. German, dung, dunger; O. H. German, Tunga; Sw. Dynga; Danish, Dynge and Dyngd; Icelandic, Dyngia and Dy. This shows it to be essentially Indo-Germanic in type, and fairly to be compared with the words “pedung” and “dung-rus” of Mr. Rockhill’s manuscript.

In the country of Ur of the Chaldees, which was the home of Abraham (Gen. xi. 2), there reigned a king, “the father of Dungi.” The exact meaning of the name “Dungi” has not been made known. The name of the king himself, strangely enough, was “Urea,” or “Uri,”—it is read both ways. His date has been fixed at 3,000 years B.C.

The information in preceding paragraph was furnished by Prof. Otis T. Mason, of the National Museum, Washington, D.C.

Lenormant makes him out as of high antiquity,—“the most ancient of the Babylonian kings,” “kings who can vie in antiquity with the builders of the Egyptian pyramids,—Dungi, for instance.”—(“Chaldean Magic,” p. 333.)

Smith ascribes him to the date of at least 2,000 B.C.—(“Assyrian Discoveries,” New York, 1876, p. 232.)

Mr. W. W. Rockhill, for six years secretary of the Legation of the United States, in Pekin, is a member of the Oriental Society, and a scholar of the highest attainments, more particularly in all that relates to the languages, customs, and religions of China and Thibet, in which countries he has travelled extensively.

The sacred pills presented by him to the author were enclosed in a silver reliquary, elaborately chased and ornamented; in size they were about as large as quail-shot; their color was almost orange, or between that and an ochreous red.

Through the kindness of Surgeon-General John Moore, U. S. Army, they were analyzed by Dr. Mew, U. S. Army, with the following results:—

“April 18, 1889.

“I have at length found time to examine the Grand Lama’s ordure, and write to say that I find nothing at all remarkable in it. He had been feeding on a farinaceous diet, for I found by the microscope a large amount of undigested starch in the field, the presence of which I verified by the usual iodine test, which gave an abundant reaction.

“There was also present much cellulose, or what appeared to be cellulose, from which I infer that the flour used (which was that of wheat) was of a coarse quality, and probably not made in Minnesota.

“A slight reaction for biliary matter seemed to show that there was no obstruction of the bile ducts. These tests about used up the four very small pills of the Lama’s ordure.

“Very respectfully and sincerely yours,

(Signed) “W. M. MEW.”

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IX. THE STERCORANISTES

That Christian polemics have not been entirely free from such ideas may be shown satisfactorily to any one having the leisure to examine the various phases of the discussion upon the doctrine of the Eucharist.

The word “stercoranistes,” or “stercorarians,” is not to be found in the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica; but in the edition of 1841 the definition of the word is as follows: “Stercorarians, or Stercoranistes, formed from stercus, ‘dung,’ a name which those of the Romish church originally gave to such as held that the host was liable to digestion and all its consequences, like other food.” This definition was copied verbatim in Rees’s Cyclopædia of Arts, Sciences, and Literature, Philadelphia.

The dispute upon “Stercoranisme” began in 831, upon the appearance of a theological treatise by a monk named Paschasius Radbert.—(See the “Institutes of Ecclesiastical History,” John Lawrence von Mosheim, translated by John Murdock, D.D., New Haven, 1832, vol. ii. p. 104 et seq.)

The grossly sensual conception of the presence of the Lord’s body in the sacrament, according to which that body is eaten, digested, and evacuated like ordinary food, is of ancient standing, though not found in Origen, nor perhaps in Rhabanus Maurus. It certainly originated with a class of false teachers contemporary with or earlier than Rhabanus Maurus, whom Paschasius Radbert condemns,—“Frivolum est ergo in hoc mysterio cogitare in stercore ne commisceatur in digestione alterius cibi” (De Corp. et Sanguin. Domin. cap. 20). He does not, however, apply the term “Stercoranistes” to his opponents. Cardinal Humbert is the first to so employ the word. This use was in a polemic against Nicetas Pectoratus, written in support of Azymitism, etc. From this source the word was adopted into common usage.—(Schrockli Kirchengesch. XXIII.? 429, 499; Herzog, Real Encyclop., s. v.; McClintock and Strong, Cyclop. of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, New York, 1880; see also Schaff-Herzog, “Cyclopædia of Religious Knowledge,” New York, 1881, article “Stercoranistes.”)

(Stercoranistes.) (Hist. Eccles.) “Nom que quelques écrivains ont donné a ceux qui pensoient que les symboles eucharistiques êtoient sujets à la digestion et à toutes ses suites de même que les autres nourritures corporelles.... Ce mot est dérivé du Latin, ‘stercus,’ excrement. On ne convient pas généralement de l’existence de cette erreur. Le président Manguin l’attribue à Amalaire, auteur du neuvième siècle.... Et le cardinal Humbert dans sa réponse a Nicetas Pectoratus, l’appelle nettement stercoraniste, parceque celui-ci prétendoit que la perception de l’hostie rompoit le jeûne. Enfin, Alger attribue la même erreur aux Grecs. Mais ces accusations ne paroissent pas fondées, car; ... Amalaire propose à la vérité la question si les espèces eucharistiques se consument comme les aliments ordinaires; mais, il ne la décide pas. Nicetas prétend aussi que l’Eucharistique rompt le jeûne, soit qu’il reste dans les espèces quelque vertu nutritive, soit parce qu’après avoir récu l’Eucharistique, ou peut prendre autres aliments; mais, il ne paroit pas avoir admis la consequence que lui impute le Cardinal Humbert. Il ne paroit pas non plus que les autres Grecs soient tombés dans cette erreur. S. Jean Damascene les en disculpe. Mais, soit que le Stercoranisme ait existé ou non, les protestans n’en peuvent tirer aucun avantage contre la présence réele, que cette erreur suppose plutôt qu’elle ne l’ébranle.”—(Voyez M. Wuitass, traité de l’Eucharistie, première partie, quest. 2, art. 1; p. 416 et suiv. Encyclop. ou Diction. Raisson. des Sciences, des Arts, et des Metiers, tome quinzième, Neufchatel, 1765, art. “Stercoranistes.”)

“Si qui fuerunt, fuere nonnulli nono sæculo, qui Corpus Christi quod in Eucharistia continetur secessui, ac defectioni obnoxium esse putabat ita ut corruptis speciebus et ipsum Corpus Christi corrumperatur.”—(“Dict. of Sects and Heresies,” etc., T. H. Blunt, Oxford, 1874, where a number of references are given.)

“Stercorantistarum, nomen non sectæ, sed convitii fuit.”—(Baronius, “Annales,” Lucca, 1758.)

Stercoranisme. Stercoranistes. Stercus. “Membre d’une secte qui souténait que les espèces de l’Eucharistie étaient digérées et transformées en excrément comme les autres aliments” (Encyclop.).

“On a désigné dans le XIX. siècle sous le nom de Stercoranistes, les théologiens qui niaient que la substance du pain et du vin fut changée dans l’Eucharistie au corps et au sang de Jesus Christ.”

“Tout ce qui entre dans la bouche, descend le ventre et va au rétrait.”

“Prétendirent que si le corps et le sang de Jésus Christ, avaient pris la place de la substance du pain et du vin, ils devraient subir les mêmes accidents qui seraient arrivés à cette substance si elle avait été reçue par le communiant.”—(P. Larousse, “Grand Dictionnaire Universel,” Paris, 1875.)

Brand, in his “Encyclopædia of Science, Literature, and Art,” article “Stercoranism,” says: “A nickname which seems to have been applied in the Western churches in the fifth and sixth centuries to those who held the opinion that a change took place in the consecrated elements, so as to render the divine body subject to the act of digestion.” He refers to Mosheim’s “Ecclesiastical History” for a fuller account.

The same ideas obtained among the illiterate as a matter of course.

The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ seems to have been received by the Gnostics of the second century as canonical, and accepted in the same sense by Eusebius, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and others of the Fathers and writers of the Church. Sozomen was told by travellers in Egypt that they had heard in that country of the miracles performed by the water in which the infant Jesus had been washed. According to Ahmed ben Idris, this gospel was used in parts of the East in common with the other gospels; while Ocobius de Castro asserts that in many churches of Asia and Africa it was recited exclusively. (See Introduction to the “Apocryphal New Testament,” William Hone, London, 1820.) But, on the other hand, all the apocrypha were condemned by Pope Gelasius in the fifth century; and this interdict was not repealed until the time of Paul IV. in the sixteenth century.—(See Bunsen, “Analecta,” Hamburg, 1703.)

In the following extracts it will be noted that the miracles recorded were wrought either by the swaddling-clothes themselves or by the water in which they had been cleansed; and the inference is that the excreta of Christ were believed, as in many other instances, to have the character of a panacea, as well as generally miraculous properties.

The Madonna gave one of the swaddling clothes of Christ to the Wise Men of the East who visited him; they took it home, “and having, according to the custom of their country, made a fire, they worshipped it.... And casting the swaddling cloth into the fire, the fire took it and kept it” (1 Inf. iii. 6, 7).

We read of the Finnish deity Wainemoinen that “the sweat which dropped from his body was a balm for all diseases.” The very same virtues were possessed by the sweat of the Egyptian god Ra (“Chaldean Magic,” Lenormant, p. 247, quoting the Kalewala, part 2, r. 14).

On arrival in Egypt after the Flight—“When the Lady Saint Mary had washed the swaddling clothes of the Lord Christ and hanged them out to dry upon a post ... a certain boy ... possessed with the devil, took down one of them and put it upon his head. And presently the devils began to come out of his mouth and fly away in the shape of crows and serpents. And from this time the boy was healed by the power of the Lord Christ.”—(1 Inf. iv. 15, 16, 17.)

“On the return journey from Egypt, Christ had healed by a kiss a lady whom cursed Satan ... had leaped upon ... in the form of a serpent. On the morrow, the same woman brought perfumed water to wash the Lord Jesus; when she had washed him, she preserved the water. And there was a girl whose body was white with leprosy, who being sprinkled with this water was instantly cleansed from her leprosy.”—(1 Inf. vi. 16, 17).

There is another example of exactly the same kind in 1 Inf. vi. 34. See, again, 1 Inf. ix. 1, 4, 5, 9; x. 2, 3; xii. 4, 5, 6. “And in Matarea the Lord Jesus caused a well to spring forth, in which Saint Mary washed his coat. And a balsam is produced or grown in that country from the sweat which ran down there from the Lord Jesus.”—(Gospel of the Infancy, viii.: “The Apocryphal New Testament,” William Hone, London, 1820, p. 47.)

“In Ireland, weakly children are taken to drink the ablution, that is, the water and wine with which the chalice is rinsed after the priest has taken the communion,—the efficacy arising from the cup having just before contained the body of our Lord.” (See “Folk-Medicine,” Black, London, 1883, p. 88.) The same cure was also in vogue in England, and in each case for the whooping-cough.

This has all the appearance of a commingling of two separate streams of thought; compare with it the notes on the expression from Juvenal, “Priapo ille bibit vitreo,” page 428, as well as those in regard to the canons of Beauvais on page 429.

“An offshoot of the Khlysti, known as the “Shakouni,” or Jumpers, openly professed debauchery and libertinism to excess.... Others of their rites are abject and disgusting; their chief is the living Christ, and their communion consists in embracing his body,—ordinary disciples may kiss his hand or his foot; to those of a more fervent piety, he offers his tongue.”—(“The Russian Church and Russian Dissent,” Albert F. Heard, New York and London, 1887, pp. 261-262.)

The subjoined extract is from “Mélusine” (Gaidoz), Paris, May 5, 1888.

UN DALAI-LAMA IRLANDAIS.

“A l’occasion des reliques journalières du Dalai-Lama dont on fait des pilules pour les dévots, histoire que les imprimeurs de cette Revue n’avaient pas voulu ‘avaler’ (voir plus haut, col. 24) Mr. Wh. Stokes nous a signalé un curieux passage des annales irlandaises. Nous croyons intéressant de le traduire ici. Cet ‘acte de foi’ se passait en l’an 605, et le héros en est le roi Aedh, surnommé Uairidhnach.[14]

“Un jour il passa, n’étant encore que prince royal, par le territoire d’Othain-Muira; il lava ses mains à la rivière qui traversa le territoire de la ville. Othain est le nom de la rivière, et c’est de là que la ville a son nom. Il prit de l’eau pour s’en laver la figure. Un de ses gens l’arrêta. ‘Roi, dit-il, ne mets pas cette eau sur ton visage.’ ‘Quoi donc?’ dit le roi. ‘J’ai honte de le dire,’ dit-il. ‘Quelle honte as-tu à dire la vérité? dit le roi. ‘Voici ce que c’est,’ dit-il; ‘c’est sur cette eau que se trouve le water-closet des clercs.’ ‘Est-ce ici, que vient le clerc lui-même’ (c’est à dire le chef des clercs) ‘pour se soulager?’

“‘C’est ici même,’ dit le page. ‘Non seulement,’ dit le roi, ‘je mettrai cette eau sur ma figure, mais j’en mettrai dans ma bouche, et j’en boirai’ (et il en but trois gorgées); ‘car l’eau où il se soulage vaut pour moi l’eucharistie.’

“Cela fut raconté à Muira (le chef des clercs), et il rendit grâces à Dieu de ce que Aedh avait une semblable foi; et il appela auprès de lui Aedh et il lui dit: ‘Cher fils, en récompense de ce respect que tu as montré à l’Église, je te promets, en présence de Dieu, que tu obtiendras bientôt la royauté d’Irlande, que tu auras victoire et triomphe sur tes ennemis, que tu ne mourras pas de mort subite,[15] que tu recevras le corps de Christ de ma main, et je prierai le Seigneur pour toi, pour que ce soit la vieillesse qui t’enlève de cette vie.’

“Ce fut peu de temps après cela qu’Aedh obtint la royauté d’Irlande et il donna des terres fertiles à Muira d’Othain.[16]

“Comme le lecteur ne manquera pas de le remarquer, c’est par édification que l’annaliste, clerc lui-même, raconte cette histoire. En effet, elle fait honneur à la piété du roi et elle prouve que ‘le respect montré à l’Église ... a obtenu sa récompense.’ Ce qui vient des hommes de Dieu participe en effet au caractère sacré de Dieu qu’ils représentent.

“Si l’on cherchait à étendre cette enquête de scatologie hiératique on trouverait sans doute bien des croyances et des pratiques répugnantes à notre goût de civilisés, mais raisonnables en un sens quand on accepte le point de départ, quand on ne condamne pas la logique, et surtout quand on se rappelle que le dégoût pour les résidus de la digestion n’est devenu instinctif que pour la vie civilisée et les habitudes sociales. Les peuples qui ne se lavent pas doivent certainement sentir autrement que nous, et même ne pas sentir du tout; et nos ancêtres de l’âge des cavernes n’avaient certainement l’odorat plus difficile. On assure que chez les Namas, tribu hottentote, le shaman qui célèbre un mariage asperge les conjoints de son urine. Cela remplace notre eau bénite. Le shaman est en effet ’un homme de Dieu,’ par excellence; car, lorsqu’il se livre à ces danses désordonnées qui sont une partie du culte, on croit que le dieu descend en lui, non en esprit, mais en réalité.

“C’est aussi le cas de rappeler un usage linguistique des habitants de Samoa dans la Polynésie. Lorsqu’une femme est sur le point d’accoucher, on adresse des prières au dieu ou génie de la famille du père et à celui de la famille de la mère. Quand l’enfant est né, la mère demande quel dieu on était en train de prier à ce moment. On en prend soigneusement note et ce dieu sera en quelque sorte le “patron” de l’enfant pendant le reste de sa vie.

“Par respect pour ce dieu, l’enfant est appelé son excrément et pendant son enfance on l’appelle réellement, comme ‘petit-nom,’ ‘m⸺ de Tongo,’ ou de Satia, ou de tout autre dieu, suivant le cas. La formule est grossière, mais l’intention, sous une apparence tout matérielle, part d’un sentiment de respect et de piété à l’égard de la divinité.”

The last two paragraphs of the above are taken from the work of the missionary Turner, who lived for seventeen years in the islands of Polynesia; they appear in his “Samoa,” London, 1884, p. 79. But in the same book, issued under the title “Polynesia,” London, 1861, it has been expunged.

The mother of the King of Uganda invited Speke to visit her and drink pombé, the native plantain wine; when she happened to spill some of this the servants “instantly fought over it, dabbing their noses on the ground, or grabbing it with their hands, that not one atom of the queen’s favor might be lost; for everything must be adored that comes from royalty, whether by design or accident.” (Speke, “Nile,” London, 1863, vol. ii. p. 313.) This is the Grand Lama business over again and nothing else.

The people of Madagascar have an annual feast of the greatest solemnity, during which no cattle are allowed to be slaughtered; “which means that none can be eaten, as meat will not keep twenty-four hours in Madagascar.” This festival is called “The Queen’s Bath,” and is arranged with much parade. “When the water was warm the queen stepped down and entered the curtained space. In a few moments salvos of artillery announced to the people that the queen was taking her bath. In a few minutes more she reappeared, sumptuously clothed with jewels. She carried a horn filled with the bath-water, with which she sprinkled the company.”—(“Evening Star,” Washington, D. C., quoting from “Transcript,” Boston, Massachusetts.)

That the ruler of a tribe or nation is in some manner connected with and representative of the deities adored by the tribe or nation, is a form of man-worship presenting its most perfect manifestation in the reverence accorded the Grand Lama; but no part of the world has been free from it, and among our own forefathers it obstinately held its ground in the opinion so long prevalent all over Europe that the touch of the king’s hand would cure the scrofula. This remedial potency was also ascribed to women in a certain condition.

“Scrofulous sores were believed by some to be cured by the touch of a menstruating woman.”—(Pliny, Bohn’s edition, lib. 28, cap. 24.)

“The Hindu wife is in Paradise compared to the Hindu widow. The condition of the wife is bad enough. As the slave of her husband, she eats after he is through, and she eats what is left. She has no education to speak of, and her only hope of salvation is in him. She stands while he sits in the household; and she cannot, if she lives in the interior, go to the Ganges and bathe herself in the sacred water. I am told that in many cases she considers it a privilege to bathe her husband’s feet after he returns, and thinks that she gets some absolution from sin by drinking the water.”—(Frank G. Carpenter, in “World,” New York, June 30, 1889.)

“Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, possessed the power of curing individuals attacked by enlarged spleen by simply pressing his right foot upon that viscera.”—(“The Physicians of the Middle Ages,” T. C. Minor, M.D., Cincinnati, Ohio, 1889, p. 5. A translation of “Le Moyen Age Médical,” of Dr. Edmond Dupouy.)

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X. THE BACCHIC ORGIES OF THE GREEKS

The Bacchic orgies of the Greeks, while not strictly assimilated to the ur-orgies, can scarcely be overlooked in this connection.

Montfaucon describes the Omophagi of the Greeks: “Les Omophagies étoient une fête des Grecs qui passoient la fureur Bacchique; ils s’entortilloient, dit Arnobe, de serpens et mangeoient des entrailles de Cabri crues, dont ils avaient la bouche toute ensanglantée; cela est exprimée par le nom Omophage. Nous avons vu quelquefois des hommes tous entortillez de serpens et particulièrement dans Mithras.”—(Montfaucon, “L’Antiquité expliquée,” tome 2, book 4, p. 22.)

The references to serpent-worship are curious, in view of the fact that such ophic rites still are celebrated among the Mokis, the next-door neighbors of the Zuñis, and once existed among the Zuñis themselves. The allusion to Mithras would seem to imply that these orgies must have been known to the Persians as well as the Greeks.

Bryant, speaking of the Greek orgies, uses this language: “Both in the orgies of Bacchus and in the rites of Ceres, as well as of other deities, one part of the mysteries consisted in a ceremony (omophagia), at which time they ate the flesh quite crude with the blood. In Crete, at the Dionisiaca, they used to tear the flesh with their teeth from the animal when alive.”—(Bryant, “Mythology,” London, 1775, vol. ii. p. 12.)

And again, on p. 13: “The Mænules and Bacchæ used to devour the raw limbs of animals which they had cut or torn asunder.... In the island of Chios it was a religious custom to tear a man limb from limb, by way of sacrifice to Dionysius. From all which we may learn one sad truth, that there is scarce anything so impious and unnatural as not, at times, to have prevailed.”—(Idem.)

Faber tells us that: “The Cretans had an annual festival ... in their frenzy they tore a living bull with their teeth, and brandished serpents in their hands.”—(Faber, “Pagan Idolatry,” London, 1816, vol ii. p. 265.)

BACCHIC ORGIES IN NORTH AMERICA.

These orgies were duplicated among many of the tribes of North America. Paul Kane describes the inauguration of Clea-clach, a Clallum chief (northwest coast of British America): “He seized a small dog and began devouring it alive.” He also bit pieces from the shoulders of the male by-standers.—(See “Artist’s Wanderings in North America,” London, 1859, p. 212; also, the same thing quoted by Herbert Spencer in “Descriptive Sociology.”)

Speaking of these ceremonies, Dr. Franz Boas says: “Members of tribes practising the Hamatsa ceremonies show remarkable scars produced by biting. At certain festivals it is the duty of the Hamatsa to bite a piece of flesh out of the arms, leg, or breast of a man.” (“Report on the North-Western Indians of Canada,” in “Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,” Newcastle-upon-Tyne Meeting, 1889, p. 12.) Doctor Boas demonstrates that the actions of the Hamatsa are an example of Ritualistic Cannibalism. (See idem, p. 55.) And, speaking of the secret societies observed among the Indians of the British northwest coast, he remarks that each has its own ceremonies. “The Nutlematl must be as filthy as possible.”—(Idem, p. 54.)

“Bernardin de Saint Pierre, in his ‘Études de la Nature’ gives it as his opinion that to eat dog’s-flesh is the first step towards cannibalism, and certainly, when I enumerate to myself the peoples whom I visited who actually, more or less, devoured human flesh, and find that among them dogs were invariably considered a delicacy, I cannot but believe that there is some truth in the hypothesis.” (Schweinfurth, “Heart of Africa,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 191.) The Clallums, no doubt, in their frenzies, tore dogs to pieces as a substitute for the human victim of an earlier period in their culture.

Bancroft describes like orgies among the Chimsyans, of British North America. (See in “Native Races of the Pacific Slope,” vol. i. p. 171.) While the Nootkas medicine men are said to have an orgy in which “live dogs and dead human bodies are seized and torn by their teeth; but, at least in later times, they seem not to attack the living, and their performances are somewhat less horrible and bloody than the wild orgies of the Northern tribes.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 202.)

The Haidahs, of the same coast, indulge in an orgy in which the performer “snatches up the first dog he can find, kills him, and tearing pieces of his flesh, eats them.”—(Dall, quoting Dawson, in “Masks and Labrets,” Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., 1886.)

In describing the six secret soldier societies or bands of the Mandans, Maximilian, of Wied, calls attention to the three leaders of one band, who were called dogs, who are “obliged, if any one throws a piece of meat into the ashes or on the ground, saying, ‘There, dog, eat,’ to fall upon it and devour it raw, like dogs or beasts of prey.”—(Maximilian, Prince of Wied, “Travels,” &c., London, 1843, pp. 356, 446.)

A further multiplication of references is unnecessary. The above would appear to be enough to establish the existence of almost identical orgies in Europe, America, and Asia—orgies in which were perpetuated the ritualistic use of foods no longer employed by the populace, and possibly commemorating a former condition of cannibalism.

THE SACRIFICE OF THE DOG A SUBSTITUTION FOR HUMAN SACRIFICE.

It would add much to the bulk of this chapter to show that the dog has almost invariably been employed as a substitute for man in sacrifice. Other animals have performed the same vicarious office, but none to the same extent, especially among the more savage races. To the American Indians and other peoples of a corresponding stage of development, the substitution presents no logical incongruity. Their religious conceptions are so strongly tinged with zoolatry that the assignment of animals to the rôle of deities or of victims is the most natural thing in the world; but their belief is not limited to the idea that the animal is sacred; it comprehends, additionally, a settled appreciation of the fact that lycanthropy is possible, and that the medicine-men possess the power of transforming men into animals or animals into men. Such a belief was expressed to the writer in the most forcible way, in the village of Zuñi, in 1881. The Indians were engaged in some one of their countless dances and ceremonies (and possibly not very far from the time of the urine dance), when the dancers seized a small dog and tore it limb from limb, venting upon it every torture that savage spite and malignity could devise. The explanation given was that the hapless cur was a “Navajo,” a tribe to which the Zuñis have been spasmodically hostile for generations, and from whose ranks the fortunes of war must have enabled them to drag an occasional captive to be put to the torture and sacrificed.

Mrs. Eastman describes the “Dog Dance” of the Sioux, in which the dogs represented Chippewas, and had their hearts eaten raw by the Sioux.

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XI. POISONOUS MUSHROOMS USED IN UR-ORGIES

The Indians in and around Cape Flattery, on the Pacific coast of British North America, retain the urine dance in an unusually repulsive form. As was learned from Mr. Kennard, U.S. Coast Survey, whom the writer had the pleasure of meeting in Washington, D.C., in 1886, the medicine men distil, from potatoes and other ingredients, a vile liquor, which has an irritating and exciting effect upon the kidneys and bladder. Each one who has partaken of this dish immediately urinates and passes the result to his next neighbor, who drinks. The effect is as above, and likewise a temporary insanity or delirium, during which all sorts of mad capers are carried on. The last man who quaffs the poison, distilled through the persons of five or six comrades, is so completely overcome that he falls in a dead stupor.

Precisely the same use of a poisonous fungus has been described among the natives of the Pacific coast of Siberia, according to the learned Dr. J. W. Kingsley (of Brome Hall, Scole, England). Such a rite is outlined by Schultze. “The Shamans of Siberia drink a decoction of toad-stools or the urine of those who have become narcotized by that plant.”—(Schultze, “Fetichism,” New York, 1885, p. 52.)

The Ur-Orgy of the natives of Siberia should be found fully described by explorers in the employ of the Russian Government. Application was accordingly made by the author to the Hon. Lambert Tree, the American Minister at the Court of St. Petersburgh, who evinced a warm interest in the work of unearthing from the Imperial archives all that bore upon the use of the mushroom as a urino-intoxicant. Unfortunately, the official term of Mr. Tree having expired, no information was obtained from him in time for incorporation in these pages.

Acknowledgment is due in this connection to Mr. Wurtz, the American Chargé d’Affaires at St. Petersburgh, as well as to his Excellency the Russian Minister of Public Instruction, for courteous interest manifested in the investigations made necessary by the amplification of the original pamphlet.

Conferences were also had with his Excellency the Chinese Minister and with Dr. H. T. Allen, Secretary of the Corean Legation, in Washington, but beyond developing the fact that in the minor medicine of those countries resort was still had to excrementitious curatives, the information deduced was meagre and unimportant.

Dependence was therefore necessarily placed upon the accounts of American or English explorers of undisputed authority.

George Kennan describes a wedding which he saw in one of the villages of Kamtchatka: “After the conclusion of the ceremony we removed to an adjacent tent, and were surprised as we came out into the open air to see three or four Koraks shouting and reeling in an advanced stage of intoxication,—celebrating, I suppose, the happy wedding which had just transpired. I knew that there was not a drop of alcoholic liquor in all Northern Kamtchatka, nor, so far as I knew, anything from which it could be made, and it was a mystery to me how they had succeeded in becoming so suddenly, thoroughly, hopelessly, undeniably drunk. Even Ross Browne’s beloved Washoe, with its ‘howling wilderness’ saloons, could not have turned out more creditable specimens of intoxicated humanity than those before us.

“The exciting agent, whatever it might be, was certainly as quick in its operation and as effective in its results as any ‘tanglefoot’ or ‘bottled lightning’ known to modern civilization.

“Upon inquiry, we learned to our astonishment that they had been eating a species of the plant vulgarly known as ‘toadstool.’ There is a peculiar fungus of this class in Siberia, known to the natives as ‘muk-a-moor,’ and as it possesses active intoxicating properties, it is used as a stimulant by nearly all the Siberian tribes.

“Taken in large doses, it is a violent narcotic poison, but in small doses it produces all the effects of alcoholic liquor.

“Its habitual use, however, completely shatters the nervous system, and its sale by Russian traders to the natives has consequently been made a penal offence by the Russian law. In spite of all prohibitions the trade is still secretly carried on, and I have seen twenty dollars’ worth of furs bought with a single fungus.

“The Koraks would gather it for themselves, but it requires the shelter of timber for its growth, and is not to be found on the barren steppes over which they wander; so that they are obliged for the most part to buy it at enormous prices from the Russian traders. It may sound strangely to American ears, but the invitation which a convivial Korak extends to his passing friend is not ‘Come in and have a drink,’ but ‘Won’t you come in and take a toadstool?’—not a very alluring proposal perhaps to a civilized toper, but one which has a magical effect upon a dissipated Korak. As the supply of these toadstools is by no means equal to the demand, Korak ingenuity has been greatly exercised in the endeavor to economize the precious stimulant and make it go as far as possible.

“Sometimes in the course of human events it becomes imperatively necessary that a whole band should get drunk together, and they have only one toadstool to do it with. For a description of the manner in which this band gets drunk collectively and individually upon one fungus, and keeps drunk for a week, the curious reader is referred to Goldsmith’s ‘A Citizen of the World,’ Letter 32.

“It is but just to say, however, that this horrible practice is almost entirely confined to the settled Koraks of Penzshink Gulf,—the lowest, most degraded portion of the whole tribe. It may prevail to a limited extent among the wandering natives, but I never heard of more than one such instance outside the Penzshink Gulf settlements.”—(“Tent Life in Siberia,” George Kennan, New York and London, 1887, pp. 202-204.)

Oliver Goldsmith speaks of “a curious custom” among “the Tartars of Koraki.... The Russians who trade with them carry thither a kind of mushroom.... These mushrooms the rich Tartars lay up in large quantities for the winter; and when a nobleman makes a mushroom feast all the neighbors around are invited. The mushrooms are prepared by boiling, by which the water acquires an intoxicating quality, and is a sort of drink which the Tartars prize beyond all other. When the nobility and ladies are assembled, and the ceremonies usual between people of distinction over, the mushroom broth goes freely round, and they laugh, talk double-entendres, grow fuddled, and become excellent company. The poorer sort, who love mushroom broth to distraction as well as the rich, but cannot afford it at first hand, post themselves on these occasions round the huts of the rich, and watch the opportunity of the ladies and gentlemen as they come down to pass their liquor, and holding a wooden bowl, catch the delicious fluid, very little altered by filtration, being still strongly tinctured with the intoxicating quality. Of this they drink with the utmost satisfaction, and thus they get as drunk and as jovial as their betters.

“‘Happy nobility!’ cried my companion, ‘who can fear no diminution of respect unless seized with strangury, and who when drunk are most useful! Though we have not this custom among us, I foresee that if it were introduced, we might have many a toad-eater in England ready to drink from the wooden bowl on these occasions, and to praise the flavor of his lordship’s liquor. As we have different classes of gentry, who knows but we may see a lord holding the bowl to the minister, a knight holding it to his lordship, and a simple squire drinking it double-distilled from the loins of knighthood?’”—(Oliver Goldsmith, “Letters from a Citizen of the World,” No. 32. This is based upon Philip Van Stralenburgh’s “Histori-Geographical Description of the North and Eastern Part of Europe and Asia,” London, 1736, p. 397.)

“The Amanita muscaria possesses an intoxicating property, and is employed by Northern nations as an inebriant. The following is the account of Langsdorf, as given by Greville:—

“This variety of Amanita muscaria is used by the inhabitants of the northeastern parts of Asia in the same manner as wine, brandy, arrack, opium, etc., is by other nations. Such fungi are found most plentifully about Wischna, Kamtchatka, and Willowa Derecona, and are very abundant in some seasons, and scarce in others. They are collected in the hottest months, and hung up by a string to dry in the air; some dry themselves on the ground, and are said to be far more narcotic than those artificially preserved. Small, deep-colored specimens, deeply covered with warts, are also said to be more powerful than those of a larger size and paler color.

“The usual mode of taking the fungus is to roll it up like a bolus and swallow it without chewing, which the Kamtchkadales say would disorder the stomach.

“It is sometimes eaten fresh in soups and sauces, and then loses much of its intoxicating property. When steeped in the juice of the berries of the Vaccinum uliginosum, its effects are those of a strong wine. One large and two small fungi are a common dose to produce a pleasant intoxication for a whole day, particularly if water be drunk after it, which augments the narcotic principle.

“The desired effect comes in from one to two hours after taking the fungus. Giddiness and drunkenness result in the same manner as from wine or spirits; cheerful emotions of the mind are first produced, the countenance becomes flushed, involuntary words and actions follow, and sometimes at last an entire loss of consciousness. It renders some remarkably active, and proves highly stimulating to muscular exertion. By too large a dose violent spasmodic effects are produced. So very exciting to the nervous system in some individuals is this fungus that the effects are often very ludicrous. If a person under its influence wishes to step over a straw or a small stick, he takes a stride or a jump sufficient to clear the trunk of a tree. A talkative person cannot keep silence or secrets, and one fond of music is perpetually singing.

“The most singular effect of the Amanita is the influence it possesses over the urine. It is said that from time immemorial the inhabitants have known that the fungus imparts an intoxicating quality to that secretion, which continues for a considerable time after taking it. For instance, a man moderately intoxicated to-day will by the next morning have slept himself sober; but (as is the custom) by taking a cup of his urine he will be more powerfully intoxicated than he was the preceding day. It is therefore not uncommon for confirmed drunkards to preserve their urine as a precious liquor against a scarcity of the fungus.

“The intoxicating property of the urine is capable of being propagated, for every one who partakes of it has his urine similarly affected. Thus with a very few Amanitæ a party of drunkards may keep up their debauch for a week. Dr. Langsdorf mentions that by means of the second person taking the urine of the first, the third of the second, and so on, the intoxication may be propagated through five individuals.”—(English Cyclop., London, 1854, vol ii., “Natural History,” article “Fungi.” London: Bradbury and Evans.)

“They make feasts when one village entertains another, either upon account of a wedding, or having had a plentiful fishing or hunting. The landlords entertain their guests with great bowls of oponga, till they are all set a-vomiting; sometimes they use a liquor made of a large mushroom, with which the Russians kill flies. This they prepare with the juice of epilobium or French willow. The first symptom of a man being affected with this liquor is a trembling in all his joints, and in half an hour he begins to rave as if in a fever; and is either merry or melancholy mad according to his peculiar constitution. Some jump, dance, and sing; others weep and are in terrible agonies, a small hole appearing to them as a great pit, and a spoonful of water as a lake; but this is to be understood of those who take it to excess; for, taken in small quantity, it raises their spirits, and makes them brisk, courageous, and cheerful.

“It is observed whenever they have eaten of this plant, they maintain that whatever foolish things they did, they only obeyed the commands of the mushroom; however, the use of it is so dangerous that unless they were well looked after, it would be the destruction of numbers of them. The Kamtchadales do not much care to relate these drunken frolics, and perhaps the continual use of it renders it less dangerous to them. One of our Cossacks resolved to eat of this mushroom in order to surprise his comrades, and this he actually did; but it was with great difficulty they preserved his life. Another of the inhabitants of Kamtchatka, by the use of this mushroom, imagined that he was upon the brink of hell ready to be thrown in, and that the mushroom ordered him to fall on his knees and make a full confession of all the sins he could remember, which he did before a great number of his comrades, to their no small diversion. It is related that a soldier of the garrison, having eaten a little of this mushroom, walked a great way without any fatigue; but at last, having taken too great a quantity, he died.

“My interpreter drank some of this juice without knowing of it, and became so mad that it was with difficulty we kept him from ripping open his belly, being, as he said, ordered to do so by the mushroom.

“The Kamtchadales and the Koreki eat of it when they resolve to murder anybody; and it is in such esteem among the Koreki that they do not allow any one that is drunk with it to make water upon the ground, but they give him a vessel to save his urine in, which they drink; and it has the same effect as the mushroom itself.

“None of this mushroom grows in their country, so that they are obliged to purchase it of the Kamtchadales. Three or four of them are a moderate dose, but when they want to get drunk they take ten. The women never use it, so that all their merriment consists in jesting, dancing, and singing.”—(“The History of Kamtchatka and the Kurile Islands,” by James Grieve, M.D., Gloucester, England, 1764, pp. 207-209.)

“I do not think that the urine would keep very long, and decomposition would destroy the Amanitine, which I believe to be the intoxicating principle. If I remember aright, it has been obtained as an alkaloid.”—(Personal letter from Dr. J. W. Kingsley, Cambridge, England, dated Aug. 18, 1888.)

“If the Yakut was a good and loving spouse, he would go directly home and eject the contents of his stomach into a vessel of water, which then he placed out of doors to cool and collect; and from the rich, floating vomit his wife and children would afterwards enjoy a hearty meal. The lucky possessor of a stomach full of Vodki may, in a benevolent mood, similarly dispose of a part of his repletion, minus the water, and away to the Eastward, among the Tchuchees, families are often regaled even to inebriation with the natural fluid discharge from the bodies of fortunate tipplers.... Saving the natives themselves it is their most disgusting institution, and if any Christian missionary be earnestly seeking a fresh field to labor in, I can assure him that no soil is more desperately in need of cultivation than the Tchuchee Country.”—(“In the Lena Delta,” George W. Melville, Chief Engineer, U. S. Navy, Boston, Massachusetts, 1885, page 318.)

“Amanita muscaria has been employed as fly-poison, whence its vulgar name. M. Poquet states that climate does not modify its poisonous qualities. The Czar Alexis died from eating it, yet the Kamtchatkans eat it, or are said to do so, as also the Russians. In Siberia, it is used as an intoxicating agent. Cook says it is taken as a bolus, and that its effects combine those produced by alcohol and haschish. The property is imparted to the fluid secretion (urine) of rendering it intoxicating, which property it retains for a considerable time. A man, having been intoxicated on one day and slept himself sober the next, will, by drinking this liquor to the extent of about a cupful, become as much intoxicated as he was before.... Urine is preserved in Siberia to this end.... The intoxicating property may be communicated to any person who partakes ... to the third, fourth, and even fifth distillation.”—(M. C. Cook, “British Fungi,” London, 1882, pp. 21, 22.)

Henry Lamsdell (“Through Siberia,” London, 1882, vol. ii. p. 645) describes the “fly agaric.” He says that it is used by the Koraks to produce intoxication. “So powerful is the fungus that the native who eats it remains drunk for several days; and by a process too disgusting to be described, half a dozen individuals may be successively intoxicated by the effects of a single mushroom, each in a less degree than his predecessor.”

“The Koraks prepare the ‘muk-a-moor’ by steeping it. In a few minutes the fortunate ones get thoroughly intoxicated, and imbibe to such an extent that they are forced to relieve themselves of the superfluity, on which occasions the poorer people stand prepared with bowls to catch the liquid, which they quaff, and, in turn, become intoxicated. In this manner, a whole settlement will sometimes get drunk from liquor consumed by one individual.”—(Richard J. Bush, “Reindeer, Dogs and Snow-Shoes,” London, no date, p. 357.)

Salverte gives two pages to a description of the effects of the “fly agaric” or “mucha-more” of the Russians; he shows how it leads men to the commission of murder, suicide, and other excesses, but makes no allusion to the drinking of urine, although he quotes from Gmelin, Krachenninikof and Beniowski, all of whom must have had some acquaintance with its peculiar properties. According to Salverte the use of this fungus might well be referred to the category of Sacred Intoxicants.—(See “Philosophy of Magic,” Eusèbe Salverte, New York, 1862, vol. ii. pp. 19, 20.)

“Before the conquest, they seldom used anything for drink but water, but when they made merry they drank water which had stood for some time upon mushrooms; but of this more hereafter.”—(“History of Kamtchatka and the Kurile Islands,” James Grieve, M. D., Gloucester, England, 1764, p. 195.)

See previous citation from the same author.

A mere reference to the trade carried on by the Russians and Kamtchadales with the Koraks in Agaricus muscarius is to be found in “Langsdorf’s Voyages,” London, 1814, vol. ii. p. 318. “It is said that the sort of mushroom which they procure from Kamtchadales is preferred by them as a means of exhilaration or intoxication to brandy.” (Idem, p. 320.) He adds: “Some remarks of mine upon this subject will be found in the Annals of the Society for promoting the Knowledge of Natural History.”—(Idem, p. 321.)

“The use of the intoxicating fungus in Siberia, and that of the urine flavored by it, is mentioned in Steller’s ‘History of Kamtchatka,’ which is, I believe, the earliest and best authority in reference to it.”—(Personal letter from Hon. John S. Hittell, San Francisco, April 24, 1888.)

Although Grieve’s account is, in the main, derived from Steller, every effort was made to find the latter author and examine his own language. The copy belonging to the Library of Congress had been mislaid, and it was not possible to find it; but the extensive Arctic Library of General A. W. Greely, U. S. Army, the polar explorer, was most kindly placed at the author’s disposal, and there the long-coveted volume was, translated by Mr. Bunnemeyer, to whom the warmest acknowledgments are due.

George William Steller was born March 10, 1709, at Winsheim. In 1734, he went to Russia, where he became an adjunct and member of The Imperial Academy of Sciences. In 1758, he was delegated to explore Kamtchatka, especially its natural history. After completing the task and making voyages to various other regions, he attempted twice to return to St. Petersburgh, but each time received orders to return to Irkutsk to answer charges there brought against him. He did not reach Irkutsk the second time, but was frozen to death while his guard entered a way-side inn, and was buried at Tumen, in November, 1746. The following are his remarks about poisonous mushrooms: “Among the Champignons, the poisonous toadstool, called mucha-moor in Russian, is held in greatest esteem. At the Russian ostrag it has long ago fallen into disfavor, but is used so much the more in the vicinity of the Tzil and towards the Korakian boundary. This mushroom is dried and swallowed in large pieces without mastication, followed by large draughts of cold water. In the course of half an hour, raging drunkenness and strange hallucinations result. The Korakians and Jukagiri are still more addicted to this vice, and buy the fungus from the Russians whenever they can. Those too poor to do so collect the urine of those under the influence of the drug and drink it, which makes them equally as drunk and raging.

“The urine is equally effective to the fourth and fifth man. Reindeer frequently devour these mushrooms with great avidity, becoming drunk and wild, and finally fall into a deep sleep. When found in this state, it is not killed until the effects of the drug have passed away, as otherwise its meat when eaten will cause the same frenzied intoxication as the mushroom itself.”

“The dance and custom you describe as existing among the Siberians I know nothing of. I neither saw nor heard of it. I do not think there is any of the mushroom species in the Tchuktchi country. The land is absolutely barren. I lived in the tents of that people for seven or eight months, and they never paid any attention to me as a stranger, in the way of hiding their customs from me. They would have their drumming and medicine performances before me, just as though I was one of them. The custom you allude to may prevail among the Yakouts and Tchuktchi, nevertheless, but I think it more probable that it exists with the Northwest tribes, such as the Samoyeds or Osjaks.”—(Personal letter from the Arctic explorer, W. H. Gilder, author of “Schwatka’s Search,” etc., dated New York, Oct. 15, 1889.)

“Captain Healey, of the revenue cutter ‘Bear,’ brought to this place, last autumn, a shipwrecked seaman, who had been rescued by the Siberian Tchuktchis, with whom he remained some two years. He described their mode of making an intoxicating liquor thus: in the summer, mushrooms or fungi were collected in large quantity, and eaten by a man who, like our Indians, prepared himself by fasting for the feast. After eating enormous quantities of the fungi, he vomited into a receptacle, and again loaded up, time and again, and disgorged the stuff in a semi-fermented or half-digested condition. It was swallowed by those who were waiting for the drink; and his urine was also imbibed, to aid in producing a debauch, resulting in frenzied intoxication.”—(Personal letter from Surgeon B. J. D. Irwin, U. S. army, dated San Francisco, Cal., April 28, 1888.)

“The seaman, J. B. Vincent, whom I found with the Tchuktchi last summer, says that they collect in their tents a species of fungi, and during their carnival season, corresponding to about our Christmas holidays, one man is selected, who masticates a quantity of it, and drinks an enormous supply of water; he then gets into his deer’s team, and is driven from camp to camp, repeating the mastication and drinking at each camp, where his urine is drunk by the people with an effect of intoxication. The arrival of this man is hailed with much pomp and ceremony by the people. The seaman, Vincent, witnessed several of these ceremonies, and was pressed to join in the orgies, being called ‘a boy,’ when he declined to sustain his part.”—(Personal letter from Capt. M. A. Healey, U. S. R. M. Steamer “Bear,” dated San Francisco, Cal., May 19, 1888.)

Kamtchadales.—“These people formerly had no other drink than water, and to make themselves a little lively they used to drink an infusion of mushrooms.”—(“From Paris to Pekin,” Meignan, London, 1885, p. 281.)

D’Auteroche, who made a journey from St. Petersburgh to Tobolsk in Siberia, in compliance with an invitation from the Empress Catherine, in the middle of the last century, to observe the transit of Venus, makes no mention of the mushroom-orgies of the natives. His work was not of much value, in an ethnological sense, being largely restricted to descriptions of the mineral resources of the regions traversed, and only to a slight degree attending to the ethnology of the country.

It is strange that Maltebrun, although familiar with Steller, does not refer to the mushroom orgy. He does say of the Kamtchadales: “In summer, the women go into the woods to gather vegetables, and during this occupation they give way to a libertine frenzy like that of the ancient Bacchantes.”—(“Universal Geography,” American edition, Boston, Mass., 1847, vol. i. p. 347, article “Siberia.”)

Stanley’s “Congo,” New York, 1885, was examined carefully, but no reference to any use of urine or ordure was found in it.

An identical experience was had with the “Voyages” of John Struys, translated out of the Dutch, by John Morrison, London, 1683, and with Nordjenskold’s Voyages, translated by Horgaard, London, 1882.

As the two latter travellers had entered Siberia, it seemed probable that they might have come upon traces of the Ur-orgies of some of the wild tribes like the Koraks, Tchuktchi, and others.

Salverte’s opinion that this use of the mushroom may be included in the category of Sacred Intoxicants, is shown to be accurate by a comparison with the statement made by the shipwrecked sailor, Vincent, who undoubtedly may be accepted as the most competent witness who has ever presented himself.

According to him, there was a man “selected,” who “prepared himself by fasting;” the “feast” took place “during their carnival season,” “corresponding to about our Christmas holidays” (i. e., the winter solstice), and there was much attendant “pomp and ceremony.” Add to this the statement made by Grieve, “they maintain that whatever foolish things they did, they only obeyed the commands of the mushroom,” and we have the needed Personification to prove that the fungus was reverenced as a deity, much as on another page will be shown that certain African tribes apotheosized a member of the same vegetable family.

If not for Sacred Intoxication, then the question may be asked, For what reason did the Siberians and others use the poisonous fungus? The only answer possible is, that, in the absence of the cereals and under the pressure of a desire for stimulants, the aborigines resorted to all kinds of vegetable substances, as can be shown to have been the case from the history of many nations. Mythology is replete with examples of the occult virtues of plants, such as the mandrake and many others.

Certainly, the religious veneration with which they were regarded was not more fully deserved than by this wonderful toxic,—the Amanita muscaria. The thirst for stimulants has been very generally diffused all over the world; there is no reason to believe that any tribe has existed without an occasional use of something of the kind.

According to the Chinese, an alcoholic liquor called “Tsew” was invented by Etoih, in the reign of To-ke, 2197 before the Christian era. See “Chinese Repository,” Canton, 1841, vol. x. p. 126.

Mr. John McElhone, the stenographer of the House of Representatives and a scholar of no mean attainments, stated to the author that he remembered having read in an old volume, the name of which he could not recall, of a feast given some centuries ago at the coronation of one of the kings of Hungary, at which the nobles were regaled with the rarest wines, but the plebeians were content to drink the resulting urine. There may be in Hungary, whether we regard it as peopled by the Hun-oi, or, later, by the Turkish element, an infusion of the same race-traits as are to be found at this day in Kamtchatka and other portions of Siberia.

Salverte speaks of the intoxicating effects of the “muk-a-moor,” but enters into no particulars. (See “Philosophy of Magic,” Eusebe Salverte, New York, 1882, vol. ii. p. 19.)

The people of Kamtchatka make intoxicants out of certain herbs. (Steller, “Kamtchatka,” translated by Mr. Bunnemeyer.) And we are further told that, while the people are gathering these herbs, much prostitution prevails, and everywhere there are willing girls in the grass.

“The settled Koraks” of Kamtchatka, “eat the intoxicating Siberian toadstool in inordinate quantities; and this habit alone will in time debase and brutalize any body of men to the last degree.”—(“Tent Life in Siberia,” George Kennan, twelfth edition, New York, 1887, p. 233.)

No allusion to the use of mushrooms as an intoxicant can be found in Sauer, “Expedition to the North Parts of Russia,” London, 1862. Henry Seebohm (“Siberia in Asia,” London, 1882) makes no mention of the urine-orgies of the inhabitants.

THE MUSHROOM DRINK OF THE BORGIE WELL.

The following paragraph deserves more than a passing mention:—

“The Borgie well, at Cambuslang, near Glasgow, is credited with making mad those who drink from it; according to the local rhyme,

‘A drink of the Borgie, a bite of the weed, Sets a’ the Cam’slang folk wrang in the head.’

The weed is the weedy fungi.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, London, 1883, p. 104.)

Camden says that the Irish “delight in herbs, ... especially cresses, mushrooms, and roots.”—(“Britannia,” edition of London, 1753, vol. ii. p. 1422.)

Other references to the Siberian fungus are inserted to afford students the fullest possible opportunity to understand all that was available to the author himself on this point.

“Agaricus muscarius is one of the most injurious, yet it is used as a means of intoxication by the Kamtchadales. One or two of them are sufficient to produce a slight intoxication, which is peculiar in its character. It stimulates the muscular powers and greatly excites the nervous system, leading the partakers into the most ridiculous extravagances.”—(American Cyclopædia, New York, 1881, article “Fungi.”)

Agaricus muscarius. “This is the ‘mouche-more’ of the Russians, Kamtchadales, and Koriars, who use it for intoxication. They sometimes eat it dry, and sometimes immerse it in a liquor made with the epilobium, and when they drink this liquor they are seized with convulsions in all their limbs, followed by that kind of raving which attends a burning fever. They personify this mushroom, and if they are urged by its effects to suicide or any dreadful crime, they pretend to obey its commands. To fit themselves for premeditated assassination they recur to the use of the ‘mouche-more.’ A powder of the root, or of that part of the stem which is covered by the earth, is recommended in epileptic cases, and externally applied for dissipating hard, globular swellings and for healing ulcers.”—(Cyclopædia, Philadelphia, no date, Samuel Bradford, vol. i. article “Agaric.”)

“One of the most poisonous species of the genus is the ‘fly agaric,’ so named because the fungus is often steeped and the solution used for the destruction of the house-fly.... It is as attractive and as poisonous as it is beautiful. In Kamtchatka, it is highly prized for its poisonous properties, producing, as it does, in the eater a peculiar intoxication. The fungus is gathered and dried; and when a native wishes to engage in a debauch, he has but to swallow a piece, when in a few hours he will be in his glory.”—(Johnson’s New Universal Cyclopædia, New York, 1878, article “Mushroom.”)

Poisonous fungi. “Several of this natural order are poisonous, especially those belonging to the genera Amanita and Agaricus.... The sufferers are often relieved by vomiting.”—(Encyclopædia Britannica, edition of 1841, article “Medical Jurisprudence,” vol. xiv. pp. 506, 507.) Speaking of the poisonous fungi, the same authority says: “The effects are singularly various, ... among them being giddiness, confusion, delirium, stupor, coma, and convulsions.”—(Idem, vol. xviii. p. 178, article “Poison.”)

“The boletus mentioned by Juvenal on account of the death of the Emperor Claudius.”—(Cyclopædia, Philadelphia, no date, vol. xxv. article “Mushroom.”)

There are several allusions to the custom of poisoning with mushrooms to be found in Juvenal,—for example, in the first and fifth satires.

Tacitus says that when Claudius was poisoned the poison “was poured into a dish of mushrooms.”—(“Annals,” Oxford translation, Bohn, London, 1871, lib. 12.)

After the Emperor Claudius had been poisoned by mushrooms given by his wife Messalina, the Emperor Nero, his successor, was wont to call the boletus “the food of the gods.” (See footnote to Rev. Lewis Evans’s translation of the sixth satire of Juvenal, p. 64, edition of New York, 1860, citing Suetonius’s “Nero,” Tacitus’s “Annals,” and Martial’s “Epigrams,” I. epistle XXI.)

Plutarch says that it was a common opinion that “thunder engenders mushrooms.”—(“Morals,” Goodwin’s English edition, Boston, 1870, vol. iii. p. 298.)

Gilder, who crossed over Siberia from Behring’s Straits to St. Petersburgh, stopping en route with many of the wild tribes, makes no allusion to the use of the “muck-a-moor” or to any Ur-orgy. (See “Ice-pack and Tundra,” New York, 1883.)

“The Agaricus muscarius is used by the natives of Kamtchatka and Korea to produce intoxication.”—(Ure’s “Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines,” London, 1878, vol. ii. article “Fungi.”)

“Their reputation as aphrodisiacs is thought to be unfounded, having its origin in the old doctrine of resemblances.” (American Cyclopædia, New York, 1881, article “Fungi.”) Probably from the appearance of the “phallus” fungus.

There seems to have been some superstition attaching to the elder dating from very remote times. It is said in Gerrard’s “Herbal,” Johnson’s edition, page 1428, “that the arbor Judæ is thought to be that whereon Judas hanged himself, and not upon the elder-tree, as is vulgarly said.” I am clear that the mushrooms or excrescences of the elder-tree, called auriculæ Judæ in Latin, and commonly rendered “Jew’s-ears,” ought to be translated “Judas’s-ears,” from the popular superstition above mentioned. Coles, in his “Adam in Eden,” speaking of “Jew’s-ears,” says: “It is called in Latin Fungus Sambucinum and Auriculæ Judæ, some having supposed the elder-tree to be that whereon Judas hanged himself, and that ever since these mushrooms like unto ears have grown thereon, which I will not persuade you to believe.” In “Paradoxical Assertions,” is a silly question,—“why Jews are said to stink naturally. Is it because the ‘Jew’s ears’ grow on stinking elder, which tree the fox-headed Judas was supposed to have hanged himself on, so that natural stink hath been entailed on them and their posterity as it were ex traduce? The elder seems to have been given in the time of Queen Elizabeth as a token of disgrace. It was credited with the power to cure epilepsy, to strengthen the loins of men, especially in riding, as it prevented all gall and chafing, etc., and had additionally the property of making horses stale.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. iii. p. 283, article “Physical Charms.”)

Sambucus (elder) is mentioned by Frommann as a remedy for epilepsy.—(“Tractatus de Fascinatione,” Nuremberg, 1675, p. 270.)

Have we not a right to inquire why in primitive pharmacy certain remedies were employed? The principle of similia similibus is very old and deeply rooted. Perhaps the fungus of the elder may have once been employed in inducing intoxication and frenzy.

“The Ostiaks, the Kamtchadales, and other inhabitants of Asiatic Russia, find in one of the gild-bearing family—the Amanita muscaria—the exhilaration and madness that more civilized nations demand and receive of alcohol, and enjoy a narcotism from its extracts as seductive as that of opium. The Fiji Islanders are indebted to toadstools strung on a string for girdles which alone prevent them from being classed among the ‘poor and naked,’ and their sole æsthetic occupation lies in ornamenting their limited wardrobe. The Fiji fishermen especially value them highly because they are water-proof. Cerdier tells us that the negroes on the west coast of Africa exalt a certain kind of boletus to the sacredness of a god, and bow down in worship before it; for this reason Afzeltus has named this variety boletus sacer. A French chemist has extracted wax from the milk-giving kind, but has not stated the price of candles made from it. Others of the delving fraternity have shown that toadstools may be used in the manufacture of Prussian blue instead of blood, for, like certain animal matter, they furnish prussic acid. As fungi, after the manner of all animal life, breathe oxygen and throw off carbonic acid gas, their flesh partakes of animal rather than of vegetable nature.

“In their decomposition they are capital fertilizers of surrounding plants, and in seasons when they are plentiful it will repay the agriculturist to make use of them as manure.

“According to Linnæus, the Lapps delighted in the perfume of some species, and carried them upon their persons so that they might be the more attractive. Linnæus exclaims, ‘O Venus! thou that scarcely sufficest thyself in other countries with jewels, diamonds, precious stones, gold, purple, music, and spectacle, art here satisfied with a simple toadstool!’

“A variety of boletus—a tube-bearing species—is powdered, and used as a protector of clothing against insects. The Agaricus muscarius constitutes a well-known poison to the common house-fly. It intoxicates them to such a degree that they can be swept up and destroyed.

“Certain polypori—those large, dry, corky growths found upon logs and trees—when properly seasoned, sliced, and beaten, engage large manufactories in producing from them the punk of commerce, used by the surgeon for the arrest of hemorrhage, the artist for his shading stump, and the Fourth of July urchin for his pyrotechnic purposes. A species of polyporus is used in Italy as scrubbing brushes. In countries where fire-producing is unknown or laborious, and the luxury of lucifers denied, the dried fungus enables the transportation of fire from one place to another over great distances.

“The inhabitants of Franconia use the hammered slices instead of chamois-skin for underclothing.

“Another polyporus takes its place among manufacturers as the highly necessary razor-strop. Northern nations make bottle-stoppers of them, as their corky nature suggests. The polyporus of the birch-tree (Polyporus betulinus) increases the delight of smokers by its delicious flavor when mixed with tobacco.”—(Lippincott’s Magazine, Philadelphia, Penn., 1888.)

Before going further we are confronted with the statement that the African negroes bow down in worship before a certain kind of boletus. It is much to be regretted that Cerdier did not discover for what toxic or other property it was thus apotheosized.

Similarly, scholars cannot remain satisfied with the assurance that the Fiji Islanders use toadstools for girdles only, or that the Lapps carried other varieties upon their persons to enhance their personal attractions. Some aphrodisiac potency is more likely to have been ascribed to them in each case, which would account for the care displayed in their preservation, and justify the suspicion that they were kept ready to hand as provocatives to lust.

Dr. J. H. Porter is authority for the statement that in one of the Sagas mention is made of a man bewitched by a Lapland witch, who gave him an infusion of poisonous mushroom, which set him crazy.

“Lichens,” says De Candolle, “present two classes of properties, which are developed by different agents, and especially by maceration in urine.”—(Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. v. edition of 1841.)

There is an example of the employment of mushrooms in medicine for the stoppage of hemorrhages of various kinds, which can be traced back to the writings of Hippocrates.—(See “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. iii. p. 143.)

“Some species of mushrooms, notably the Agaricus volvaceus contain sugar, which can be extracted in crystals, and is capable of undergoing the vinous fermentation.”—(Encyclopædia Britannica, edition of 1841, vol. vi. pp. 473, 474, article “Chemistry.”)

No instance of anything resembling the Ur-Orgy of the Siberians has been described among the Australians, but there is no knowing what further investigation may discover of the life and mode of thought of the wild tribes inhabiting that great continent, or island, as the reader pleases.

“The Australians will not eat ‘the common mushroom,’ although they eat almost all other kinds of fungus.”—(“The Native Tribes of South Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, received through the kindness of the Royal Society, Sydney, New South Wales, T. B. Kyngdon, Esq., Secretary.)

“Fungi, however, were used for food. The native truffle,—‘Mylitta Australis,’—a subterranean fungus,—was much sought after by the natives. When cut, it is in appearance somewhat like unbaked brown bread. I have seen large pieces, weighing several pounds, and, in some localities, occasionally a fungus weighing fifty pounds is found.”—(“Aborigines of Victoria,” A. Brough Smyth, London, 1878, vol. i. p. 209.)

“Mushrooms, called by the Chinese ‘stones’ ears,’ are gathered by some for the table, and form a part of the vegetable diet of the priests.”—(Chinese Repository, Canton, 1835, vol. iii. p. 462.)

But why the diet of priests particularly? May there not be some mythical precept involved?

(Monbottoes of Africa.) “Mushrooms are also in common use for the preparation of their sauces.”—(Schweinfurth’s “Heart of Africa,” London, 1878, vol. ii. p. 42.)

“There is a great variety of mushrooms, most of which are eat. Some, indeed, are poisonous, and unlucky accidents happen frequently.”—(Kemper, “History of Japan,” in “Pinkerton’s Voyages,” London, 1814, vol. vii. p. 698.)

A. Brough Smyth, “Aborigines of Australia,” p. 132, speaks of the use by the Australians of “a dry, white species of fungus, to kindle fire with rapidly.”

Agaric. “It groweth in Fraunce, principally upon trees that bear mast, in manner of a white mushroom; of a sweet savour; very effectual in Physicke and used in many Antidotes and sovereigne confections. It groweth upon the head and top of trees, it shineth in the night, and by the light that it giveth in the dark men know when and how to gather it.”—(Pliny, lib. xvi. cap. 8, Holland’s translation.)

“On mange généralement en Russie toutes les espèces de champignons;” but the “champignon de mouche,” and two other kinds, are excepted.—(See “Voyages,”—Pallas, Paris, 1793, vol. i. p. 65.)

“The Ostiaks of Siberia make a ‘moxa’ of ’un morceau d’agaric du bouleau.’”—(Idem, vol. iv. p. 68.)

Bogle enumerates mushrooms among the articles of diet of the Lamas.—(See Markham’s “Thibet,” London, 1879, p. 105.)

“Mushrooms and fungi of all kinds are eaten by the Bongo of the Upper Nile region.”—(See “Heart of Africa,” Schweinfurth, London, 1878, vol. i. pp. 117-122.)

“The Niam-Niams of Central Africa use fungi for foods.”—(Idem, p. 281.)

In a synopsis of the lecture delivered by the explorer Stanley before the Royal Geographical Society in London, he is represented as referring to the skill of the Niam-Niam in woodcraft, and the ability with which they detected the edible fungi from the poisonous.—(See “Tribune,” Chicago, Ill., June 28, 1890.)

Agaric. Avicenna believed that the white, or “feminine,” was good, the black, or “masculine,” noxious; it was prescribed for epilepsy, fevers, sciatica, asthma, pulmonary troubles, etc. (Avicenna, vol. i. p. 278, improperly numbered in the book as p. 287, a 10, et seq.) It also entered into a number of panaceas, such as “Theriaca,” “Theodoricon Magnum,” “Mithradatum,” and others.

It was a provocative of the menses, according to Avicenna, vol. i. p. 287, a 54.

Thurnberg mentions a plant—“Bupleorum giganteum”—found in Cape Colony, of which clothing was made, and which was also used for tinder.—(See Pinkerton’s Voyages, London, 1814, vol. xvi. pp. 21, 22, quoting Thurnberg’s “Account of the Cape of Good Hope.”)

“Toadstool, or rotten fish and willow bark, which are delicacies among the Kamtchadals,”—(“Russian Discoveries between Asia and America,” William Coxe, London, 1803, p. 60, quoting Steller’s account of the Behring Voyage.)

There are some varieties of agaric, notably that of the olive-tree, which at times emit by night a phosphorescent light. This peculiarity may well have caused them to be regarded with reverential awe by the ancients. On the subject of this effulgence, see “Philosophy of Magic,” Eusèbe Salverte, New York, 1862, vol. i. p. 63.

Pope Clement VII. died of eating too many mushrooms. See Schurig’s “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, vol. i. p. 60.

(Tierra del Fuego.) “There is one vegetable production in this country which is worthy of mention, as it affords a staple article of food to the natives. It is a globular fungus, of a bright yellow color, and of about the size of a small apple, which adheres in vast numbers to the bark of the beech-trees.... It is eaten by the Fuegians in large quantities, uncooked, and when well chewed has a mucilaginous and slightly sweet taste, together with a faint odor like that of a mushroom. Excepting a few berries of a dwarf arbutus, which need hardly be taken into account, these poor savages never eat any other vegetable food besides this fungus.”—(Darwin, in “Voyage of Adventure and Beagle,” London, 1839, vol. iii. pp. 298, 299.)

“These Fuegians appeared to think the excrescences which grow on the birch-trees, like the gall-nuts on an oak, an estimable dainty.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 440; again, vol. ii. p. 185.)

Agaric, or toadstool, employed in medicine “to provoke to vomit” (see “Most Excellent and Approved Medicines,” London, 1654, pp. 3 and 10); also given “for provoking the courses” (idem, p. 23); also “to loosen the body” (idem, p. 36).

To insure conception, the belief was that both man and woman should take a potion of hare’s rennet in wine,—“then quickly she will be pregnant, and for meat she shall for some while eat mushrooms.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 347.)

The Bannocks and Shoshonees of the Rocky Mountains eat mushrooms,—“the kind that grows on a cottonwood stump; they know that some kinds are bad.”—(Interview with the Bannocks and Shoshonees, through the interpreters, Joe and Charlie Rainey, at Fort Hall, Idaho, 1881.)

The Indians above mentioned had no knowledge of any dance in connection with the mushroom or fungus.

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XII. THE MUSHROOM IN CONNECTION WITH THE FAIRIES

In the opinion of the folk of Great Britain and Ireland, possibly of the Continent as well, the mushroom was intimately connected with the dwellers in the realm of sprites and fairies, as can be shown in a moment, and by simple reference.

The lore of the peasantry of those countries is replete with the uncanniness of the “Fairy Circles,” which modern investigation has shown to be due to a species of fungus.

“Various theories were current among the peasantry to account for their existence. Some of them ascribed them to lightning; others to moles or other animals; and others again to the growth of a species of fungus. This is the more educated class. But the lower orders implicitly believed that they were the work of the fairies, and used by them for their nocturnal dancing. Woe to the poor mortal who ventured near at such moments. He was seized, forced to dance, soon lost all consciousness, and was truly in luck if he ever again succeeded in rejoining his mortal relatives.” A very exhaustive account of these Circles, and the superstitions in reference to them, is to be found in the third volume of Brand’s Popular Antiquities, London, 1854, article “Fairy Mythology,” p. 476 et seq.

“The most clear and satisfactory remarks on the origin of fairy rings are probably those of Dr. Wollaston, Sec. R. S., printed in the second part of the “Philosophical Transactions” for 1807.... The cause of their appearance he ascribes to the growth of certain species of agaric, which so entirely absorbs all nutriment from the soil beneath that the herbage is for a while destroyed.”—(Idem, p. 483.)

“In Northumberland, the common people call a certain fungous excrescence, sometimes found about the roots of old trees, Fairy Butter. After great rains, and in a certain degree of putrefaction, it is reduced to a consistency which, together with its color, makes it not unlike butter, and hence the name.”—(Idem, p. 493.)

Lady Wilde’s work, already quoted, makes no reference to the employment of either mushrooms or mistletoe by the Irish peasantry.

The mixing, in the popular imagination, of Fairies and Druids, of Fairy Circles and the Druid Circles, is noticed on p. 505, Brand, art. “Fairy Mythology.”

Perhaps in all this there may be a vague reminiscence of a former use of the agaric in potions not very dissimilar to those still to be found among the Koraks and Tchuktchi. We read that this Witches’ Butter was associated with sorcery. It was believed in Sweden to have been “spewed up” by the cat which went with the witch.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. iii. p. 7, article “Sorcery.”)

“No subject could be more interesting than an inquiry into the origin of the superstitions of uncivilized tribes.” (“Philosophy of Magic,” Salverte, vol. i. p. 138.) Salverte remarks that the Fairies “were supposed to be diminutive, aerial beings, beautiful, lively, and beneficent in their intercourse with mortals, inhabiting a region called Fairy Land,—Alf-Heiner,—commonly appearing on earth at intervals, when they left traces of their visits in beautiful green rings, where the dewy sward had been trodden in their moon-light dances.... The investigations of science have traced these rings to a species of fungus,—Agaricus oreades,—but imagination still leads us willingly back to the traditional appearance of these diminutive beings in the train of their queen; ... and we also behold her tiny followers dancing away the midnight hours to the sound of the most enchanting music.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 138, footnote.)

There is the following memorandum in Hazlitt’s “Fairy Tales” (London, 1875, p. 35): “Mem., that pigeon’s-dung and nitre steeped in water will make the fayry circles; it draws to it the nitre of the air, and it will never weare out.”

“The mushroom has always been associated with fairy-lore. It is mentioned as the fairy dining-table (p. 502); while in the list of foods partaken of by Oberon, we read:—

“ ... with a wine, Ne’er ravished with a clustered vine, But gently strained from the side Of a sweet and dainty bride; Brought in a daizy chalice, which He fully quaffed up to bewitch His blood to height.”

While Robin Goodfellow is represented as singing,—

“When lads and lasses merry be, With possets and with juncates fine, Unseene of all the company, I eat their cakes and sip their wine; And to make sport, I fart and snort, And out the candles I do blow.”

—(Brand, Pop. Ant., London, 1872, pp. 476 et seq., articles “Fairy Mythology,” and “Robin Goodfellow.”)

Herrick describes the food of fairies:—

“ ... with a wine Ne’er ravished from the flattering vine, But gentle prest from the soft side Of the most sweet and dainty bride.”

—(Herrick, “Hesperides;” also quoted in Hazlitt’s “Fairy Tales,” London, 1875, p. 300.)

The “wine” just described would seem to belong, in all fairness, to the classification of Ur-Orgies.

A careful search of Shakspeare shows that while perhaps he knew little directly to our purpose, he still had a knowledge that we may utilize; for example, he speaks of the “midnight mushroom,” showing that it was an element of midnight revels of the fairies; he alludes to customs which certainly suggest that slaves and criminals were in early days buried beneath dung-heaps as a punishment; and he can be adduced to prove that the epithet “dunghill” applied to a man, was a most deadly insult; but let the bard speak for himself,—

“Prospero. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves; And ye that on the sands with printless feet, Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him, When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green, sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe bites not; and you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms.”—(Tempest, act v. scene 1.)

“Ajax. Thou stool for a witch.”—(Troilus and Cressida, act ii. scene 1.)

The concordance consulted was that of the Clarkes.

The association of “toadstools” with witchcraft may have been due to the belief that toads were the constant companions and servants of the witches and fairies.

Gesner says that witches made use of toads as a charm, “ut vim coeundi, ni fallor, in viris tollerunt.”—(Brand, Pop. Ant. London, 1872, vol. ii. page 170, art. “Divination at Weddings.”)

“Un crapaud noir de venin” was to be employed by those seeking favor of the witches of “Les Bourbonnais,” “La Fascination.”—(J. Tuchmann, in “Mélusine,” Paris, July, August, 1890.)

May dew was considered a most beneficial application for the skin, but young maidens while gathering it were careful not “to put foot within the rings, lest they should be liable to the fairies’ power.”—(“Illustrations of Shakspeare,” Francis Douce, London, 1807, vol. i. p. 180.)

It would seem that the Saxons in England, at the time of the Norman Conquest, were fully aware of the deadly effects producible by the mushroom: “The old woman came back to her, ere she went to bed. ‘I have found it all out and more. I know where to get scarlet toadstools and I put the juice in his men’s ale. They are laughing and roaring now, merry-mad every one of them.’”

The effects of the potion are thus described: “His men were grouped outside of the gate, chattering like monkeys; the porter and the monks from the inside entreating them, vainly, to come in and go to bed quietly.

“But they would not. They vowed and swore that a great gulf had opened all down the road, and that one step more would tumble them in headlong.... In vain Hereward stormed; assured them that the supposed abyss was nothing but the gutter; proved the fact by kicking Martin over it. The men determined to believe their own eyes, and after a while fell asleep in heaps in the roadside, and lay there till morning, when they woke, declaring, as did the monks, that they had been bewitched. They knew not—and happily, the lower orders, both in England and on the Continent, do not yet know—the potent virtues of that strange fungus with which Lapps and Samoieds have, it is said, practised wonders for centuries past.”—(“Hereward, the last of the English,” Charles Kingsley, New York, 1866, p. 111.)

See also under “Ordeals and Punishments,” and “Insults.”

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XIII

A USE OF POISONOUS FUNGI QUITE PROBABLY EXISTED AMONG THE MEXICANS.

That some such use of poisonous fungi as has been shown exists among the tribes of Siberia was made by other nations, would be difficult to prove in the absence of direct testimony, but many incidental references are encountered which the reflective mind must consider with care before rejecting them as absolutely irrelevant in this connection. The Mexicans, as we learn from Sahagun, were not ignorant of the mushroom, which is described as the basis of one of their festivals. He says that they ate the nanacatl, a poisonous fungus which intoxicated as much as wine; after eating it, they assembled in a plain, where they danced and sang by night and by day to their fullest desire. This was on the first day, because on the following day they all wept bitterly, and they said that they were cleaning themselves and washing their eyes and faces with their tears.[17]

It is true that Sahagun does not describe any specially revolting feature in this orgy, but it is equally patent that he is describing from hearsay, and, probably, he was not allowed to know too much. In a second reference to this fungus, which he now calls teo-nanacatl, he alludes to the toxic properties, which coincide closely with those of the mushrooms noted in Siberia and on the northwest coast of America.

“There are some mushrooms in this country which are called teo-nanacatl. They grow under the grass in the fields and plains; ... they are hurtful to the throat and intoxicate; ... those who eat them see visions and feel flutterings in the heart; those who eat many of them are excited to lust, and even so if they eat but few.”[18]

The proof is not at all conclusive that this intoxication was produced as among the Siberian and Cape Flattery tribes; but it is very odd that the Aztecs should eat mushrooms for the same purpose; that they should hold their dance out in a plain and by night (that is, in a place as remote as possible from Father Sahagun’s inspection). On the second day, to trust Sahagun’s explanation, they would appear to have bewailed their behavior on the first; although it should be remarked here that ceremonial weeping has not been unknown to the American aborigines, and may, in this case, have been induced by causes not revealed to the stranger. Lastly, it is important to note that this poisonous fungus was a violent excitant, a nervous irritant, and an aphrodisiac.

Another early Spanish observer, also cited by Kingsborough, describes them in these terms:—

“They had another kind of drunkenness, ... which was with small fungi or mushrooms, ... which are eaten raw, and, on account of being bitter, they drink after them or eat with them a little honey of bees, and shortly after that they see a thousand visions, especially snakes.

“They went raving mad, running about the streets in a wild state (‘bestial embriaguez’). They called these fungi ‘teo-na-m-catl,’ a word meaning ‘bread of the gods.’”

This author does not allude to any effect upon the kidneys.[19]

This account can be compared, word for word, with those previously quoted from the Moqui Indian and from the descriptions of the Ur-Orgies of the Siberians.

The list of quotations is not yet complete. Tezozomoc, also an author of repute, relates that at the coronation of Montezuma the Mexicans gave wild mushrooms to the strangers to eat; that the strangers became drunk, and thereupon began to dance.[20] All of which is a terse description of a drunken orgy induced by poisonous mushrooms, but not represented with the disgusting sequences which would have served to establish a connection with urine dances.

Diego Duran also gives the particulars of the coronation of this Montezuma (the second of the name and the one on the throne at the date of the arrival of Cortés). He says that, after the usual human sacrifices had been offered up in the temples, all went to eat raw mushrooms, which caused them to lose their senses and affected them more than if they had drunk much wine. So utterly beside themselves were they that many of them killed themselves with their own hands, and by the potency of those mushrooms they saw visions and had revelations of the future, the devil speaking to them in their drunkenness.[21] Duran, of course, is not describing what he saw. Doubtless, in that case, his narrative would have been more animated and, possibly, more to our purpose.

MUSHROOMS AND TOADSTOOLS WORSHIPPED BY AMERICAN INDIANS.

Dorman is authority for the statement that mushrooms were worshipped by the Indians of the Antilles, and toadstools by those in Virginia,[22] but for what toxic or therapeutic qualities, real or supposed, he does not say. The toxic properties of fungi would seem to have been known to the Algonkins:—

“Paused to rest beneath a pine tree, From whose branches trail the mosses, And whose trunk was coated over With the Dead Man’s Moccasin Leather, With the fungus white and yellow.”

“Hiawatha,” Henry W. Longfellow, canto ix.

A FORMER USE OF FUNGUS INDICATED IN THE MYTHS OF CEYLON, AND IN THE LAWS OF THE BRAHMINS.

On the west shore of the Pacific Ocean, aside from the orgies of the Siberian Shamans, no instance is on record of the use of the mushroom, or other fungus in religious rites in the present day.

A former use of it is indicated in the Cingalese myths, which teach that “Chance produced a species of mushroom called mattika[23] or jessathon, on which they lived for sixty-five thousand years; but being determined to make an equal division of this, also, they lost it. Luckily for them, another creeping plant [mistletoe?] called badrilata grew up, on which they (the Brahmins) fed for thirty-five thousand years, but which they lost for the same reason as the former ones.”—(“Asiatic Researches,” Calcutta, 1807, vol. vii. p. 441.)

Among the Brahmins of the main land no such myth is related; but an English writer says:

“The ancient Hindus held the fungus in such detestation that Yama, a legislator, supposed now to be the judge of departed spirits, declares: ‘Those who eat mushrooms, whether springing from the ground or growing on a tree, fully equal in guilt to the slayers of Brahmins and the most despicable of all deadly sinners.’”—(“Asiatic Researches,” Calcutta, 1795, vol. iv. p. 311.)

Dubois refers to the same subject. “The Brahmins,” he says, “have also retrenched from their vegetable food, which is the great fund of their subsistence, all roots which form a head or bulb in the ground, such as onions,[24] and those also which assume the same shape above ground, like mushrooms and some others.... Are we to suppose that they had discovered something unwholesome in the one species and proscribed the other on account of its fetid smell? This I cannot decide; all the information I have ever obtained from those among those whom I have consulted on the reasons of their abstinence from them being that it is customary to avoid such articles.”—(Abbé Dubois, “People of India,” London, 1817, p. 117.)

This inhibition, under such dire penalties, can have but one meaning. In primitive times the people of India must have been so addicted to the debauchery induced by potions into the composition of which entered poisonous fungi and mistletoe (the mushroom “growing on a tree”), and the effects of such debauchery must have been found so debasing and pernicious, that the priest-rulers were compelled to employ the same maledictions which Moses proved of efficacy in withdrawing the children of Israel from the worship of idols.[25]

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XIV. THE ONION ADORED BY THE EGYPTIANS

There are examples of the ideas surrounding onions, leeks, garlic, and bulbous vegetables of different kinds, in many countries.

“The Egyptians likened the whole firmament to an onion with its varied shells and radiations; and this, together with the aphrodisiacal and fertilizing properties which this vegetable is almost universally held to possess, rendered it sacred.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. i. p. 474.)

“The species of onion which the Egyptians abhorred was the squill or red squill, because consecrated to Typhon; the other kinds they ate indiscriminately.”—(Fosbroke, “Cyclopædia of Antiquities,” London, 1843, vol. ii. p. 109, article “Onion.”)

“At Babylon, beside Memphis, they made an onion their god.”—(Reginald Scot, “Discovery of Witchcraft,” London, 1651, p. 376.)

“Beans the Egyptians do not sow at all in their country; neither do they eat those that happen to grow there, nor taste them when dressed. The priests indeed abhor the sight of that pulse, accounting it impure.”—(Herodotus, “Euterpe,” p. 36.)

Among the Romans, “the Flamen Dialis might not ride, or even touch, beans or ivy.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Frazer, M.A., London, 1890, vol. i. p. 117.)

Pliny mentions the medicinal use of certain bulbs, difficult of identification in our day. “The bulb of Mægara acts as a strong aphrodisiac;” others “aid delivery;” others were used “for the cure of the sting of serpents.” The ancients used to give bulb-seeds “to persons afflicted with madness, in drink.”—(Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. 20, cap. 40.)

Martial has the following: “XXXIV. Bulbs. If your wife is old and your members languid, bulbs can do no more for you than fill your belly” (edition of London, 1871). A footnote to the above says: “To what particular bulb provocative effects were attributed is unknown.”

Acosta says of the Peruvians that before any of their great ceremonies, “to prepare themselves, all the people fasted two days, during which they did neyther company with their wives nor eate any meate with salt or garlicke, nor drink any chica.”—(Acosta, “Historie of the Indies,” edition of London, 1604, quoted by Lang, “Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 283.)

According to Avicenna, garlic was a provocative of the menses (vol. i. p. 276 a 52).

When a priest of the state religion of China is about to offer a sacrifice he must abstain from cohabitation with his wives and “from eating onions, leeks, or garlic.”—(“Chinese Repository,” Canton, 1835, vol. iii. p. 52.)

Juvenal says of the Egyptians: “It is an impious act to break with the teeth a leek or an onion.”—(Satire XV., Rev. Lewis Evans’s translation.)

By the Irish peasantry “garlic is planted in the thatch” to drive away fairies and witches.—(“Medical Mythology of Ireland,” James Mooney, American Philosophical Society, 1887.)

The Danes placed garlic in the cradle of the new-born child to avert the maleficence of witches.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 73, article “Groaning Cakes and Cheese.”)

In rustic England many good folk still believe that the house upon which grows the leek will never be struck by lightning.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 317, article “Rural Charms.”)

Speaking of the Russian dissenters, known as the Raskol, Heard says: “They carried their resistance into all the details of daily life; as matters of conscience, they eschewed the use of tobacco, for ‘the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man’ (Mark vii. 15); of the potato, as being the fruit with which the serpent tempted Eve.”—(“The Russian Church and Russian Dissent,” Albert F. Heard, New York and London, 1887, p. 194.)

The quotation from the New Testament seems applicable to the subject of urine dances, and the interdiction of the use of the potato may mean more than appears on the surface.

Possibly, the intention in Russia was to wean the sectaries away from the use of bulbs or fungi not to the liking of the more thoughtful leaders of the new movement.

“From the earliest times garlic has been an article of diet.”—(Encyclopædia Britannica, mentioning Israelites, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.)

In the time of Shakspeare, “to smell of garlic was accounted a sign of vulgarity.”—(Idem, referring to “Coriolanus,” iv. 6, and “Measure for Measure,” iii. 2.)

“Garlic was placed by the ancient Greeks on the piles of stones at cross-roads as a supper for Hecate.”—(Idem.)

“According to Pliny, garlic and onions were invoked as deities by the Egyptians at the taking of oaths. The inhabitants of Pelusium, in Lower Egypt, who worshipped the onion, are said to have held both it and garlic in aversion as food.”—(Encyc. Brit., article “Garlic.”)

Garlic is “fastened to the caps of children, suspended from the sterns of vessels and from new houses, in the Levant, as, centuries ago, it was hung over the door in the more civilized parts of Europe.”—(“Superstitions of Scotland,” John Graham Dalyell, Edinburgh, 1834, p. 219.)

“The onion was among the earliest cultivated vegetables, and in Egypt was a sort of divinity.”—(American Encyclopædia, New York, 1881, article “Onion.”)

“A phallic importance seems to have attached to the onion. Burton, in his ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ edition of 1660, p. 538, speaks of ‘cromnysmantia,’—a kind of divination with onions laid on the altar at Christmas Eve, practised by girls to know when they shall be married and how many husbands they shall have. This appears also to have been a German custom.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. pp. 356, 357.)

Sir Thomas More wrote the following (the original is in Latin; the translation is by Harington):—

“If leeks you leek, but do their smell disleek, Eat onions, and you shall not smell the leek; If you of onions would the scent expel, Eat garlic, that shall drown the onion’s smell; But against garlic’s savour, at one word, I know but one receipt. What’s that? Go look.”

The last line is left untranslated; in the original it reads,—

“Aut nihil, aut tantum, tollere merda potest.”

(Harington, “Ajax,” quoting Sir Thomas More.)

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