XXVII. URINE IN CEREMONIAL ABLUTIONS
Where urine is applied in bodily ablutions, the object sought is undoubtedly the procuring of ammonia by oxidation, and in no case of that kind is it sought to ascribe an association of religious ideas. But where the ablutions are attended with ceremonial observances, are incorporated in a ritual, or take place in chambers reserved for sacred purposes, it is not unfair to suggest that everything made use of, including the urine, has a sacred or a semi-sacred significance.
No difficulty is experienced in assigning to their proper categories the urinal ablutions of the Eskimo of Greenland (Hans Egede Saabye, p. 256); of the Alaskans (Sabytschew, in Phillips, vol. vi.); of the Indians of the northwest coast of America (Whymper’s “Alaska,” London, 1868, p. 142; H. H. Bancroft, “Nat. Races,” vol. i. p. 83); of the Indians of Cape Flattery (Swan, in “Smithsonian Contrib.”); of the people of Iceland (see below); of Siberia (see below); and of the savages of Lower California.
Pericuis of Lower California. “Mothers, to protect them against the weather, cover the entire bodies of their children with a varnish of coal and urine.”—(Bancroft, vol. i. p. 559.)
Clavigero not only tells all that Bancroft does, but he adds that the women of California washed their own faces in urine.—(“Hist. de Baja California,” Mexico, 1852, p. 28; see, also, Orozco y Berra and Baegert.)
“People of Iceland are reported to wash their faces and hands in pisse.” (Hakluyt, “Voyages,” vol. i. p. 664.) This report was, however, indignantly denied of all but the common people by Arugrianus Jonas, an Icelandic writer.
The inhabitants of Ounalashka “wash themselves first with their own urine, and afterwards with water.”—(“Russian Discoveries,” William Coxe, London, 1803, quoting Solovoof’s “Voyage,” 1764, p. 226.)
In the same volume is to be found the statement that in Alaska and the Fox Islands, the people “washed themselves, according to custom, first with urine, and then with water.”—(p. 225, quoting “Voyage of Captain Krenitzin,” 1768.)
When a child gets very dirty “with soot and grease,” a Vancouver squaw uses “stale urine” to cleanse it. “This species of alkali as a substitute for soap is the general accompaniment of the morning toilet of both sexes, male and female. During winter they periodically scrub themselves with sand and urine.”—(J. G. Swan, “Indians of Cape Flattery, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,” No. 220, p. 19.)
Among the Tchuktchees, urine “is a useful article in their household economy, being preserved in a special vessel, and employed as a soap or lye for cleansing bodies or clothing.”—(“In the Lena Delta,” Melville, p. 318.)
“But they also wash themselves, as well as their clothes, with it; and even in the hot bath, of which men and women are alike fond, because they love to perspire, it is with this fluid they sometimes make their ablutions.”—(Lisiansky, “Voyage round the World,” London, 1811, p. 214.)
Used as “a substitute for soap-lees, according to Langsdorff.”—(“Voyages,” London, 1814, vol. ii. p. 47.)
“By night, the Master of the house, with all his family, his wife and children, lye in one room.... All of them make water in one chamber-pot, with which, in the morning, they wash their face, mouth, teeth, and hands. They allege many reasons thereof, to wit, that it makes a faire face, maintaineth the strength, confirmeth the sinewes in the hands, and preserveth the teeth from putrefaction.”—(“Dittmar Bleekens,” in Purchas, vol. i. p. 647.)
After describing the double tent of skins used by the Tchuktchees, Mr. W. H. Gilder, author of “Schwatka’s Search,” says all food is served in the “yoronger,” or inner tent, in which men and women sit, in a state of nudity, wearing only a small loin-cloth of seal-skin.
After finishing the meal, “a small, shallow pail or pan of wood is passed to any one who feels so inclined, to furnish the warm urine with which the board and knife are washed by the housewife. It is a matter of indifference who furnishes the fluid, whether the men, women, or children; and I have myself frequently supplied the landlady with the dish-water. In nearly every tent there is kept from the summer season a small supply of dried grass. A little bunch of this is dipped in the warm urine and serves as a dish-rag and a napkin. These people are generally kind and hospitable, and were very attentive to my wants as a stranger, and regarded by them as more helpless than a native. The women would, therefore, often turn to me after washing the board and knife, and wash my fingers and wipe the grease from my mouth with the moistened grass. Any of the men or women in the tent who desired it would also ask for the wet grass, and use it in the same way.
“It was not done as a ceremony, but merely as a matter of course or of necessity.
“I do not think they would use urine for such purposes if they could get all the water, and especially the warm water, they needed. But all the water they have in winter is obtained by melting snow or ice over an oil lamp,—a very slow process; and the supply is therefore very limited, being scarcely more than is required for drinking purposes, or to boil such fresh meat as they may have.
“The urine, being warm and containing a small quantity of ammonia, is particularly well adapted for removing grease from the board and utensils, which would otherwise soon become foul, and to their taste much more disagreeable.
“The bottom of the ‘yoronger’ is generally carpeted with tanned seal-skins, and they too are frequently washed with the same fluid. The consequence is that there is ever a mingled odor of ammonia and rotten walrus-meat pervading a well-supplied and thrifty Tchouktchi dwelling.”—(Personal letter to Captain Bourke, dated New York, October 15, 1889.)
“Vice-Admiral of the Narrow Seas.” “A drunken man that pisses under the table into his companion’s shoes.”—(Grose, “Dictionary of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811, article as above.)
This use of urine as a tooth-wash has had a very extensive diffusion; it is still to be found in many parts of Europe and America, of boasted enlightenment. The Celtiberii of Spain, “although they boasted of cleanliness both in their nourishment and in their dress, it was not unusual for them to wash their teeth and bodies in urine,—a custom which they considered favorable to health.”—(Maltebrun, “Univ. Geog.,” vol. v. book 137, p. 357, article “Spain.”)
From Strabo we learn that the Iberians “do not attend to ease or luxury, unless any one considers it can add to the happiness of their lives to wash themselves and their wives in stale urine kept in tanks, and to rinse their teeth with it, which they say is the custom both with the Cantabrians and their neighbors.” (Strabo, “Geography,” Bohn, lib. iii. cap. 4, par. 16, London, 1854. In a footnote it is stated that “Apuleius, Catullus, and Diodorus Siculus all speak of this singular custom.”) The same practice is alluded to by Percy, and also by the “Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences,” Neufchatel, 1745, vol. xvii. p. 499; and the practice is said to obtain among the modern Spaniards as well. “Les Espagnols font grand usage de l’urine pour se nettoyer les dents. Les anciens Celtibériens faisoient la même chose.”—(Received from Prof. Frank Rede Fowke, London, June 18, 1888.)
“Bien que soigneux de leurs personnes et propres dans leur manière de vivre, les Celtibères se lavent tout le corps d’urine, s’en frottant même les dents, estimant cela un bon moyen pour entretenir la santé du corps.”—(Diodore, v. 33.)
“Nunc Celtiber, in Celtiberia terra Quod quisque minxit, hoc solet sibi mane Dentem atque russam defricare ginginam.”
(Catullus, “Epigrams,” 39.)
The manners of the Celtiberians, as described by Strabo and others, have come down through many generations to their descendants in all parts of the world; all that he related of the use of human urine as a mouth-wash, as a means of ablution, and as a dentifrice, was transplanted to the shores of America by the Spanish colonists; and even in the present generation, according to Gen. S. V. Bénèt, U. S. Army, traces of such customs were to be found among some of the settlers in Florida.
The same custom has been observed among the natives along the Upper Nile. “The Obbo natives wash out their mouths with their own urine. This habit may have originated in the total absence of salt in their country.”—(“The Albert Nyanza,” Sir Samuel Baker, p. 240.)
In England likewise there was a former employment of the same fluid as a dentifrice.
“‘Nettoyer ses dents avec de l’urine, mode espagnole,’ dit Erasme.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, quoting Erasmus, “De Civilitate.”)
Urine was employed as a tooth-wash, alone or mixed with orris powder. “Farina orobi (bitter vetch) permisceatur cum urina.”—(“Medicus Microcosmus,” Danielus Beckherius, pp. 62-64.)
A paragraph in Paullini’s “Dreck Apothek,” p. 74, would show that in Germany the same usages were not unknown. As a dentifrice he recommends urine as a wash; or a powder made of pulverized gravel stone, mixed with urine.
Ivan Petroff states that the peasants of Portugal still wash their clothes in urine.—(Ivan Petroff, in “Trans. American Anthropological Society,” 1882, vol. i.)
Urine is used on whaling vessels, when stale, for washing flannel shirts, which are then thrown overboard and towed after the ship.—(Dr. J. H. Porter.)
Dr. V. T. McGillicuddy, of Rapid City, Dakota, furnishes the information that Irish, German, and Scandinavian washerwomen who have immigrated to the United States persist in adding human urine to the water to be used for cleansing blankets.
“I have observed somewhere that the Basks and some Hindus clean their mouths with urine, but I do not remember the book.”—(Dr. Alfred Gatchett, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C.)
Dr. Carl Lumholtz, of Christiania, Norway, states that he had seen the savages of Herbert River, Australia, in 18° south latitude, with whom he lived for some months, use their own urine to clean their hands after they had been gathering wild honey.
The statement concerning the Celtiberians may also be found in Clavigero.—(“Hist. de Baja California,” p. 28, quoting Diodorus Siculus.)
Diderot and D’Alembert assert unequivocally that in the latter years of the last century the people of the Spanish Peninsula still used urine as a dentifrice.—(“Les Espagnols,” etc., reading as above given from “Dict. Raisonné.” See Encyclopédie, Geneva, 1789, article “Urine.”)
XXVIII. URINE IN CEREMONIAL OBSERVANCES
But in the examples adduced from Whymper concerning the people of the village of Unlacheet, on Norton Sound, “the dancers of the Malemutes of Norton Sound bathed themselves in urine.” (Whymper’s “Alaska,” London, 1868, pp. 142, 152.) Although, on another page, Whymper says that this was for want of soap, doubt may, with some reason, be entertained. Bathing is a frequent accompaniment, an integral part of the religious ceremonial among all the Indians of America, and no doubt among the Inuit or Eskimo as well; when this is performed by dancers, there is further reason to examine carefully for a religious complication, and especially if these dances be celebrated in sacred places, as Petroff relates they are.
“They never bathe or wash their bodies, but on certain occasions the men light a fire in the kashima, strip themselves, and dance and jump around until in a profuse perspiration. They then apply urine to their oily bodies and rub themselves until a lather appears, after which they plunge into the river.”—(Ivan Petroff in “Transactions American Anthropological Society,” vol. i. 1882.)
“In each village of the Kuskutchewak (of Alaska) there is a public building named the kashim, in which councils are held and festivals kept, and which must be large enough to contain all the grown men of the village. It has raised platforms around the walls, and a place in the centre for a fire, with an aperture in the roof for the admission of light.”—(Richardson, “Arctic Searching Expedition,” London, 1851, p. 365.)
Those kashima are identical with the estufas of Zuñis, Moquis, and Rio Grande Pueblos. Whymper himself describes them thus: “These buildings may be regarded as the natives’ town hall; orations are made, festivals and feasts are held in them.”
No room is left for doubt after reading the fuller description of these kashima, contained in Bancroft. He says the Eskimo dance in them, “often in puris naturalibus,” and make “burlesque imitations of birds and beasts.” Dog or wolf tails hang to the rear of their garments. A sacred feast of fish and berries accompanies these dances, wherein the actors “elevate the provisions successively to the four cardinal points, and once to the skies above, when all partake of the feast.”—(Bancroft, “Native Races,” vol. i. p. 78.)
There is a description of one of these dances by an American, Mr. W. H. Gilder, an eyewitness. “The kashine (sic) is a sort of town hall for the male members of the tribe.... It is built almost entirely under ground, and with a roof deeply covered with earth. It is lighted through a skylight in the roof, and entered by a passage-way and an opening which can only be passed by crawling on hands and knees.... In the centre of the room is a deep pit, where in winter a fire is built to heat the building, after which it is closed, and the heat retained for an entire day. In this building the men live almost all the time. Here they sleep and eat, and they seldom rest in the bosom of their families.” He further says that there was “a shelf which extends all round the room against the wall.... One young man prepared himself for the dance by stripping off all his clothing, except his trousers, and putting on a pair of reindeer mittens.... The dance had more of the character of Indian performances than any I had ever previously seen among the Esquimaux.”—(“Ice-Pack and Tundra,” pp. 56-58.)
The following information received from Victor Namoff, a Kadiak of mixed blood, relates to a ceremonial dance which he observed among the Aiga-lukamut Eskimo of the southern coast of Alaska. The informant, as his father had been before him, had for a number of years been employed by the Russians to visit the various tribes on the mainland to conduct trade for the collection of furs and peltries. Besides being perfectly familiar with the English and Russian languages, he had acquired considerable familiarity with quite a number of native dialects, and was thus enabled to mingle with the various peoples among whom much of his time was spent. The ceremony was conducted in a large partly underground chamber, of oblong shape, having a continuous platform or shelf, constructed so as to be used either as seats or for sleeping. The only light obtained was from native oil lamps. The participants, numbering about ten dozen, were entirely naked, and after being seated a short time several natives, detailed as musicians, began to sing. Then one of the natives arose, and performed the disgusting operation of urinating over the back and shoulders of the person seated next him, after which he jumped down upon the ground, and began to dance, keeping time with the music. The one who had been subjected to the operation just mentioned, then subjected his nearest neighbor to a similar douche, and he in turn the next in order, and so on until the last person on the bench had been similarly dealt with, he in turn being obliged to accommodate the initiator of the movement, who ceases dancing for that purpose. In the meantime all those who have relieved themselves step down and join in the dance, which is furious and violent, inducing great perspiration and an intolerable stench. No additional information was given further than that the structure may have been used in this instance as a sudatory, the urine and violent movements being deemed sufficient to supply the necessary amount of moisture and heat to supply the participants with a sweat-bath.—(Personal letter from Dr. W. J. Hoffman, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., June 16, 1890.)
Elliott describes the “Orgies” in the “Kashgas” as he styles them. “The fire is usually drawn from the hot stones on the hearth.... A kantog of chamber-lye poured over them, which, rising in dense clouds of vapor, gives notice by its presence and its horrible ammoniacal odor to the delighted inmates that the bath is on. The kashga is heated to suffocation; it is full of smoke; and the outside men run in from their huts with wisps of dry grass for towels and bunches of alder twigs to flog their naked bodies.
“They throw off their garments; they shout and dance and whip themselves into profuse perspiration as they caper in the hot vapor. More of their disgusting substitute for soap is rubbed on, and produces a lather, which they rub off with cold water.... This is the most enjoyable occasion of an Indian’s existence, as he solemnly affirms. Nothing else affords a tithe of the infinite pleasure which this orgy gives him. To us, however, there is nothing about him so offensive as that stench which such a performance arouses.”—(Henry W. Elliott, “Our Arctic Province,” New York, 1887, p. 387.)
“Quoique généralement malpropres, ces gens ont, comme les autres Inoits et la plupart des Indiens, la passion des bains de vapeur, pour lesquels le kachim a son installation toujours prête.
“Avec l’urine qu’ils recueillent précieusement pour leurs opérations de tannage, ils se frottent le corps; l’alcali, se mélangeant avec les transpirations et les huiles dont le corps est imprégné, nettoie la peau comme le ferait du savon; l’odeur âcre de cette liqueur putréfiée paraît leur être agréable, mais elle saisit à la gorge les étrangers qui reculent suffoqués, et ont grand’peine à s’y faire. Horreur! horreur! oui, pour ceux qui ont un pain de savon sur leur table à toilette; mais pour ceux qui ne possèdent pas ce détersif?”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 71, “Les Inoits Occidentaux.”)
“Nul s’étonnera que les Ouhabites et les Ougagos de l’Afrique orientale en fassent toujours autant. Mais on a ses préférences. Ainsi Arabes et Bedouines recherchent l’urine des chamelles. Les Banianes de Momba se lavent la figure avec de l’Urine de vache, parceque, disent-ils, la vache est leur mère. Cette dernière substance est aussi employée par les Silésiennes contre les taches de rousseur. Les Chowseures du Caucase la trouvent excellente pour entretenir la santé et développer la luxuriance de la chevelure. A cette fin, ils recueillent soigneusement le purin des étables, mais le liquide encore imprégné de chaleur vitale passe pour le plus énergique. Les trayeuses flattent la bête, lui sifflent un air, chatouillent certain organe et au moment précis, avancent le crâne pour recevoir le flot qui s’épanche; la mère industrieuse fait inonder la tête de son nourrisson en même temps que la sienne.”—(Idem, p. 73.)
The “Estufa” of the Pueblos was no doubt, in the earlier ages of the tribal life, a communal dwelling similar to the “yourts” of the Siberians, like which it had but one large opening in the roof, for the entrance of members of the family, or clan, and the egress of smoke. An examination of the myths and folk-lore of Siberia might reveal to us the birth and the meaning of the visits of our good old Christmas friend, Santa Claus, who certainly never sprang from European soil. A god, loaded with gifts for good little children, could descend the ladders placed in the chimneys of “yourts” and “estufas,” but such a feat would be an impossibility in the widest chimneys ever constructed in Germany or England for private houses.
The habitations of the natives of Ounalashka, according to Langsdorff, are made with the entrances through the roofs, precisely like those of the people of Kamtchatka.—(“Voyages,” vol. ii. p. 32.)
The “Estufa” model was perpetuated in the Temples of India, exactly as the Imperial market-places of Rome supplied the type of the “Basilica” of the Christian Church.
An article in “Frazer’s Magazine,” signed F. P. C., gives the dimensions of the great Snake Temple of Nakhon-Vat in Cambodia: “Six hundred feet square at the base, ... rises in the centre to the height of one hundred and eighty feet, ... probably the grandest temple in the world.... In the inner court of this temple are ‘tanks’ in which the living serpents dwelt and were adored.... The difference between these ‘tanks’ and the ‘Public Estufas’ is simply this: the latter are partially or almost completely roofed.”
Some time after reaching the conclusion just expressed and much loss of study in a fruitless examination of Encyclopædias, which did not contain so much as the name of the patron of childhood, the work of Mr. George Kennan was perused in which the same views are anticipated by a number of years; it is by no means the least important fact in an extremely interesting volume.
“The houses, if houses they could be called, were about twenty feet in height, rudely constructed of drift-wood which had been thrown up by the sea, and could be compared in shape to nothing but hour-glasses. They had no doors or windows of any kind, and could only be entered by climbing up a pole on the outside, and slipping down another pole through the chimney,—a mode of entrance whose practicability depended entirely upon the activity and intensity of the fire which burned underneath.
“The smoke and sparks, although sufficiently disagreeable, were trifles of comparative insignificance. I remember being told, in early infancy, that Santa Claus always came into a house through the chimney; and, although I accepted the statement with the unreasoning faith of childhood, I could never understand how that singular feat of climbing down a chimney could be safely accomplished.... My first entrance into a Korak ‘yourt,’ however, at Kamenoi, solved all my childish difficulties, and proved the possibility of entering a house in the eccentric way which Santa Claus is supposed to adopt.”—(George Kennan, “Tent Life in Siberia,” 12th edition, New York, 1887, p. 222.)
Steller describes a Festival of the Kamtchatkans occurring at the end of November, after the winter provisions are in; in this, one party, on the outside of the house, attempts to lower a birch branch down through the chimney; the party on the inside attempts to capture it.—(Steller, “Kamtchatka,” translated by Mr. Bunnemeyer.)
“Every time they make water, or other unclean exercise of nature, they wash those parts, little regarding who stands by. Before prayer, they wash both face and hands, sometimes the head and privities.”—(Blount, “Voy. into the Levant,” in Pinkerton, vol. x. p. 261.)
“Among the Negroes of Guinea, when a wife is pregnant for the first time, she must perform certain ‘ceremonies,’ among which is ‘going to the sea-shore to be washed.’ She is followed by a great number of boys and girls, who fling all manner of dung and filth at her in her way to the sea, where she is ducked and made clean.”—(Bosman, “Guinea,” in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 423.)
“In 1847, I was then twenty-six years old, once an old woman (in Cherbourg) came to me with a washing-pan, and asked me to piss into it, as the urine of a stout, healthy young man was required to wash the bosoms of a young woman who was just delivered of a child.”—(Personal letter from Captain Henri Jouan, French Navy, to Captain Bourke, dated Cherbourg, France, July 29, 1888.)
In Scotland, the breasts of a young mother were washed with salt and water to ensure a good flow of milk. The practice is alluded to in the following couplet from “The Fortunate Shepherdess,” by Alexander Ross, 1778.
“Jean’s paps wi’ sa’t and water washen clean, Reed that her milk get wrang, fen it was green.”
(Quoted in Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. ii. p. 80, art. “Christening Customs.”)
This practice seems closely allied to the one immediately preceding. We shall have occasion to show that salt and water, holy water, and other liquids superseded human urine in several localities, Scotland among others.
“Being to wean one of their children, the father and mother lay him on the ground, and whilst they do that which modesty will not permit me to name, the father lifts him by the arm, and so holds him for some time, hanging in the air, falsely believing that by these means he will become more strong and robust.”—(Father Merolla, “Voyage to the Congo,” in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 237, A.D. 1682.)
In the Bareshnun ceremony, the Parsee priest “has to undergo certain ablutions wherein he has to apply to his body cow’s urine, and sand and clay, which seem to have been the common and cheapest disinfectant known to the ancient Iranians.”—(Dr. J. W. Kingsley, Personal letter to Captain Bourke, apparently citing “The History of the Parsees,” by Dosabhai Framje Karaka.)
The Manicheans bathed in urine.—(Picart, “Coûtumes,” etc.; “Dissertation sur les Perses,” p. 18.)
“Le lecteur le plus dégoûté s’en occupe presque à son insu; quand il demande à son ami, Comment allez-vous? s’il vous plaît si ce n’est là—où se fait ce que nous disons? Dans un pays voisin on se salue en disant, La matière est-elle louable? Et en Angleterre, c’est la même pensée qu’on exprime lorsqu’on dit, en abordant quelqu’un, How do you do? Comment faites-vous?”—(Bib. Scat. p. 21.)
“There is a place where whenever the King spits the greatest ladies of his court put out their hands to receive it; and another nation where the most eminent persons about him stop to take up his ordure in a linen cloth.”—(Montaigne, Essays, “On Customs.”)
“A few days after birth, or according to the fancy of the parents, an ‘angekok,’ who by relationship or long acquaintance with the family, has attained terms of great friendship, makes use of some vessel and with the urine of the mother washes the infant, while all the gossips around pour forth their good wishes for the little one to prove an active man, if a boy, or, if a girl, the mother of plenty of children. The ceremony, I believe, is never omitted, and is called Gogsinariva.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Boas, p. 610, quoting G. F. Lyon, “Private Journal of H. M. S. Hecla, during the recent Voyage of Discovery under Captain Parry,” London, 1824.)
The same custom is practised by the Eskimo of Cumberland Sound (idem).
“Buffalo dung I have seen carefully arranged in (Crow) Indian dance tepees, having apparently some connection with the ceremonies.”—(Personal letter from Dr. A. B. Holder, Memphis, Tenn., to Captain Bourke, Feb. 6, 1890.)
“In one of the sacred dances of the Cheyennes, there is to be seen an altar surrounded by a semi-circle of buffalo chips. This dance or ceremony is celebrated for the purpose of getting an abundance of ponies.”—(See the description in Dodge’s “Wild Indians,” pp. 127, 128.)
The sacred pipes used in the Sun Dance of the Sioux are so placed that the bowl rests upon a “buffalo chip.”—(“The Sun Dance of the Ogallalla Sioux,” Alice Fletcher, in “Proceed. American Association for the Advancement of Science,” 1882.)
The drinking of the water in which a new-born babe had been bathed is intimated in the myths of the Samoans. When the first baby was born “Salevao provided water for washing the child, and made it Saor, sacred to Moa. The rocks and the earth said they wished to get some of that water to drink. Salevao replied that if they got a bamboo he would send them a streamlet through it, and hence the origin of springs.”—(“Samoa,” Turner, London, 1884, p. 10.)
Although it is not so stated in the text, yet from analogy with other cosmogonies we may entertain a suspicion as to how the god provided the water,—no doubt from his own person.
STERCORACEOUS CHAIR OF THE POPES.
“Stercoraire, Chaire (Hist. des Papes); c’est ainsi qu’on nommoit à Rome, au rapport de M. L’Enfant, une chaire qui étoit autrefois devant le portique de la basilique, sur laquelle on faisait asseoir le Pape le jour de sa consécration. Le chœur de musique lui chantoit alors ces paroles du Psaume 113, selon l’Hébreu, et le 112, selon la Vulgate, v. 6, et suiv. ‘Il tire de la poussière celui qui est dans l’indigence et il élève le pauvre de son avilissement pour le placer avec les princes de son peuple;’ c’étoit pour insinuer au Pape, dit cardinal Raspon, la vertu de l’humilité, qui doit être la compagne de sa grandeur. Cet usage fut aboli par Léon X, qui n’étoit pas né pour ces sortes de minuties.”—(“Encyc. ou Dict. Raison. des Sciences,” etc., Neufchatel, 1765, tome quinzième, article as above.)
Consult Ducange also, “Stercoraria Sedes,” wherein it is stated that the use of this chair could be traced back to the tenth century.
“Stercoraria sedes, in qua creati pontifices ad frangendos elatos spiritus considerent, unde dicta.”—(Baronius, “Annales,” Lucca, 1758.)
Read also the remarks upon the subject of Ducking Stools, from which this seems to have been derived, under “Ordeals and Punishments.”
Father Le Jeune relates, among the ceremonies observed by the Indians of Canada upon capturing a bear, that no women were allowed to remain in the lodge with the carcass, and that special care was taken to prevent dogs from licking the blood, gnawing the bones, or eating the excrement.—(See “Relations,” 1634, vol. i., Quebec, 1858.)
XXIX. ORDURE IN SMOKING
Among all the observances of the every-day life of the American aborigines, none is so distinctly complicated with the religious idea as smoking; therefore, should the use of excrement, human or animal, be detected in this connection, full play should be given to the suspicion that a hidden meaning attaches to the ceremony. This would appear to be the view entertained by the indefatigable missionary, De Smet, who records such a custom among the Flatheads and Crows in 1846: “To render the odor of the pacific incense agreeable to their gods it is necessary that the tobacco and the herb (skwiltz), the usual ingredients, should be mixed with a small quantity of buffalo dung.”[63]
The Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and others of the plains tribes, to whom the buffalo is a god, have the same or an almost similar custom.
The Hottentots, when in want of tobacco, “smoke the dung of the two-horned rhinoceros or of elephants.”—(Thurnberg’s Account of the Cape of Good Hope, quoted in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 141.)
The followers of the Grand Lama, as already noted, make use of his dried excrements as snuff, and an analogous employment of the dried dung of swine retained a place in the medical practice of Europe until the beginning of the present century, and may, perhaps, still survive in the Folk-medicine of isolated villages.
The people of Achaia say “that the smoke of dried cow dung, that of the animal when grazing I mean, is remarkably good for phthisis, inhaled through a reed.”—(Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. xxviii. cap. 67.)
Dung is also used in Central Africa. “A huge bowl is filled with tobacco and clay and sometimes with a questionable mixture, the fumes are inhaled until the smoker falls stupefied or deadly sick—this effect alone being sought for.”—(“Central Africa,” Chaillé Long, p. 266.)
“In Algeria, gazelle droppings are put in snuff and smoking tobacco; the Mongol Tartars mix the ashes of yak manure with their snuff.”—(Personal letter from W. W. Rockhill.)
Mr. Rudyard Kipling shows in his “Plain Tales from the Hills” (“Miss Youghal’s Sais”) that the native population of India is accustomed to use a mixture of one part of tobacco to three of cow-dung.
XXX. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE
“To multiply and replenish the earth,” was the first command given to man; to love, and to desire to be loved in return, is the strongest impulse of our nature, and therefore it need surprise no student who sets about investigating the occult properties attributed to the human and animal egestæ to find them in very general use in the composition of love-philters, as antidotes to such philters, as aphrodisiacs, as antiphrodisiacs, and as aids to delivery.
ORDURE IN LOVE-PHILTERS.
Love-sick maidens in France stand accused of making as a philter a cake into whose composition entered “nameless ingredients,” which confection, being eaten by the refractory lover, soon caused a revival of his waning affections.[64] This was considered to savor so strongly of witchcraft that it was interdicted by councils.
The witches and wizards of the Apache tribe make a confection or philter, one of the ingredients of which is generally human ordure, as the author learned from some of them a few years since. The Navajoes, of same blood and language as the Apaches, employ the dung of cows (as related in the “Snake Dance of the Moquis,” p. 27.)
Frommann gives an instance of a woman who made love-philters out of her own excrement. As late as Frommann’s day, the use of such philters was punishable with death. The remedies for love-philters were composed of human skull, coral, verbena flowers, secundines, or after-birth, and a copious flow of urine. He says that Paracelsus taught that when one person ate or drank anything given off by the skin of another, he would fall desperately in love with that other. “Quod illi, qui ederunt aut biberunt aliquid a scorte datum, in amorem alicujus conjiciantur et rapiantur.” (Frommann, “Tractatus de Fascinatione,” pp. 820, 826, 970, quoting Paracelsus, Tract. 1, de Morbis Amantium, cap. v.) He also cites Beckherius to the effect that some philters were made of perspiration, menses, or semen.—(Idem, quoting Beckherius, “Sapgyr. Microc.,” p. 89.)
John Leo, in Purchas (vol. ii. p. 850), speaks of “the roote Surnay growing also upon the Western part of Mount Atlas.... The inhabitants of Mount Atlas doe commonly report that many of those damosels which keepe Cattell upon the said Mountaines, lose their Virginitie by no other occasion than by making water upon said Roote.... This roote is said to be comfortable and preseruatiue unto the priuie partes of man, and being drunk in an Electuary to stirre up Venereal lust.”
Reginald Scot mentions a “Wolves yard” among the ingredients in a love-philter.—(“Discoverie of Witchecraft,” London, 1651, p. 62.)
Human ordure was in constant use in the manufacture of these philters, being administered both internally and externally. On this point it may be proper to give the exact words of Schurig, who explains that it was sometimes put in porridge, and in other cases in the shoes. In the last example, the man who made such use of the excrement of his lady love was completely cured of his infatuation, after wearing the defiled shoes one hour. “Contra Philtræ tam interne quam externe adhiberi solet amatæ puellæ stercus, ab exsiccato enim atque in pulmento personæ philtratæ exhibito amorem in maximam antipathiam mutatam annotavit Eberhardus Gockelius ... etiam Capitanei cujusdam meminit qui, postquam amasiæ stercus novis calceis imposuerat, posteaque iisdem per integram horam spatiatus fuerat ab illius amore liberabatur.”—(“Chylologia,” p. 774.)
Leopard-dung was in repute as an aphrodisiac.—(Idem, p. 820.)
“The urine that has been voided by a bull immediately after covering ... taken in drink,” as an aphrodisiac; and “the groin well rubbed with earth moistened with this urine.”—(Pliny, Bohn, lib. xxviii. cap. 80.)
“The wizard, witch, sorcerer, druggist, doctor, or medicine man ... played the part of an ochreous Cupid. Instead of smiles and bright eyes, his dealings were with some nasty stuff put into beer, or spread slyly upon bread.... In the Shroft book of Egbert, Archbishop of York, one of their methods is censured; and it is so filthy that I must leave it in the obscurity of the original old English.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 45.)
An ointment of the gall of goats, incense, goat-dung, and nettle-seeds was applied to the privy parts previous to copulation to increase the amorousness of women.—(See “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 351, quoting Sextus Placitus.)
“Love-charms are made of ingredients too disgusting to mention, and are given by the Mussulmans to women to persuade them to love them.”—(“Indo-Mahomedan Folk-Lore,” No. 3, H. C., p. 180, in “Notes and Queries,” 3d series, vol. xi., London, 1867.)
Vambéry has this obscure passage: “The good woman had the happy idea to prescribe to the sick Khan five hundred doses of that medicine said to have worked such beneficial effects upon the renowned poet-monarch of ancient history.... The Khan of Khiva took from fifty to sixty of these pills ‘for impuissance.’”—(“Travels in Central Asia,” New York, 1865, p. 166.)
Besides these elements there were employed others equally disgusting; for example, the catamenial fluid, which seems to have been in high repute for such purposes: “Quædam auditæ sunt jactantes se sua excrementa propinasse, præcipue menstrua, quibus cogant se amari.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 45, quoting Cæsalpinus, “Dæmonum Investigatio,” fol. 154 b. Cæsalpinus died in 1603.)
“He has taken the enchanted philter, and soiled my garment with it.”—(“Chaldean Magic,” Lenormant, London, 1877, p. 61, quoting an Incantation of the Chaldean sorcerers. It is, of course, a matter of impossibility to tell of what this philter was composed.)
“They say that if a man takes a frog, and transfixes it with a reed entering its body at the sexual parts, and coming out at the mouth, and then dips the reed in the menstrual discharge of his wife, she will be sure to conceive an aversion for all paramours.”—(Pliny, lib. xxxii. cap. 13.)
“Sanguis menstruus, qui, a Paracelso vocatur Zenith Juvencularum; hic primus virginis impollutæ multa in se habet arcana non semper revelanda. Ut autem pauca adducam, extreme linteum a primo sanguine menstruo madidum et exsiccatum, hanc denuo humectatum et applicatum pedi podagraci, mirum quantum lenit dolores podagræ. Idem linteum, si applicetur parti Erysipelate affectæ, incontinenti erysipelas curat. In affectibus ab incantationibus et veneficiis oriundis multa præstat sanguis menstruus; nam et ipse sanguis menstruus ad veneficia adhibetur, et sunt mulieres, quæ pro philtris utuntur sanguine suo menstruo.” He instances such a philter, made with menstrual and a hare’s blood, which drove the recipient to mania and suicide. It was further used to make people “impenetrable” to an enemy’s weapon, and to cure burning sores. (See Michael Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” vol. ii. p. 270, art. “Schrod. Dilucid. Zoölogia.”)
A medical student was frequently courted by his neighbor’s daughter, but he disregarded her advances. At one time, however, he slept with the brother of the girl in her father’s house, and after that was so infatuated that he would rise at midnight to kiss the jambs of the door of her house. Some time afterwards, he sent his clothes to a tailor to be mended, and, sewed up in his trousers, was found a little bundle of hair from an unmentionable part of the girl’s body, containing the initials S. T. I. A. M., which were by some interpreted to mean “Sathanas te trahat in amorem mei.” As soon as this little bunch of hair was burned, the poor fellow had rest.—(Paullini, pp. 258, 259.)
Human semen was equally used for the very same purpose. There is nothing to show whether male lovers used this ingredient, and maidens the menstrual liquid, or both indiscriminately; but it seems plausible to believe that each sex adhered to its own excretion.
“Semen, f. Sperma, non modo comperimus per se a nonnullis ad veneris scilicet ligaturam maleficam dissolvendam, sed et Momiam magneticam inde fieri quæ amoris concilietur fervor. Quin et homunculum suum inde meditatur Paracelsus.”—(Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” vol. ii. p. 266.)
Semen, Beckherius informs us, was used in breaking down “Ligatures” placed by witches or the devil, and in restoring impaired virility. But it was sometimes employed in a manner savoring so strongly of impiety that Beckherius preferred not to speak further.—(“Medicus Microcosmus,” p. 122.)
Flemming tells us that we should not pass over in silence the fact that human seed has been employed by some persons as medicine. They believed that its magnetic power could be used in philters, and that by it a lover could feed the flame of his mistress’s affections; hence from it was prepared what was known as “magnetic mummy,” which, being given to a woman, threw her into an inextinguishable frensy of love for the man or animal yielding it,—a suggestion of animal worship. Others credited it with a wonderful efficacy in relieving inveterate epilepsy, or restoring virility impaired by incantation or witchcraft; for which purpose it was used while still fresh, before exposure to the air, in pottage, mixed with the powder of mace. Flemming alludes to a horrible use of relics, good and bad, upon which human semen had been ejaculated; but this involved so much of the grossest impiety that he declined to enter into full details.—(“De Remediis ex Corpore Humano desumtis,” Samuel Augustus Flemming, Erfurt, 1738, p. 22.)
The love-philter described in the preceding paragraph recalls a somewhat analogous practice among the Manicheans, whose eucharistic bread was incorporated or sprinkled with human semen, possibly with the idea that the bread of life should be sprinkled with the life-giving excretion.[65]
The Albigenses, or Catharistes, their descendants, are alleged to have degenerated into or to have preserved the same vile superstition.[66]
Understanding that these allegations proceed from hostile sources, their insertion in this category has been permitted only upon the theory that as the Manichean ethics and ritual present resemblances to both the Parsee and Buddhist religions (from which they may to some extent have originated), there is reason for supposing that ritualistic ablutions, aspersions, and other practices analogous to those of the great sect farther to the east, may have been transmitted to the younger religion in Europe.
The following is taken from an episcopal letter of Burchard, Bishop of Worms:—
“N’avez vous pas fait ce que certaines femmes ont coutume de faire? Elles se dépouillent de leurs habits, oignent leur corps nu avec du miel, étendent à terre un drap, sur lequel elles répandent du bléd, se roulent dessus à plusieurs reprises; puis elles recueillent avec soin tous les grains qui se sont attachés à leur corps, les mettent sur la meule qu’elles font tourner à rebours. Quand ils sont réduits en farine, elles en font un pain qu’elles donnent à manger à leurs maris afin qu’ils s’affaiblissent et qu’ils meurent. Si vous l’avez fait, vous ferez pénitence pendant quarante jours au pain et à l’eau.... Fecisti quod quædam mulieres facere solent? Tollunt menstruum suum sanguinem et immiscent cibo vel potui, et dant viris suis ad manducandum vel ad bibendum, ut plus diligantur ab eis.... Fecisti quod quædam mulieres facere solent? Prosternunt se in faciem, et discoopertis natibus, jubent ut supra nudas nates, conficiatur panis, et eo decocto tradunt maritis suis ad comedendum. Hoc ideo faciunt ut plus exardescant in amorem illarum. Si fecisti duos annos per legitimas ferias pœnitias.”—(Dulaure, “Traité des Différens Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 262 et seq.)
The method of divination by which maidens strove to rekindle the expiring flames of affection in the hearts of husbands and lovers by making cake from dough kneaded on the woman’s posterior, as given in preceding paragraph, seems to have held on in England as a game among little girls, in which one lies down on the floor, on her back, rolling backwards and forwards, and repeating the following lines:—
“Cockledy bread, mistley cake, When you do that for our sake.”
While one of the party so lay down the rest of the party sat round; they lay down and rolled in this manner by turns.
Cockle Bread. This singular game is thus described by Aubray and Kennett: “Young wenches have a wanton sport which they call ‘moulding of cockle bread,’ viz.: they get upon a table-board, and then gather up their knees as high as they can, and then they wobble to and fro, as if they were kneading of dough, and say these words:
‘My dame is sick, and gone to bed, And I’ll go mould my cockle bread, Up with my heels, and down with my head!— And this is the way to mould cockle bread.’”
—(Quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 414, article “Cockle Bread.”)
These words “mistley” and “cockledy” were not to be found in any of the lexicons examined, or in the “Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English” of Thomas Wright, M. A., London, 1869, although in the last was the word “mizzly” meaning “mouldy.” It may possibly mean mistletoe.
“Cockle is the unhappy ‘lolium’ of Virgil, thought, if mixed with bread, to produce vertigo and headache; therefore, at Easter, parties are made to pick it out from the wheat. They take with them cake, cider, and toasted cheese. The first person who picks the cockle from the wheat has the first kiss of the maid and the first slice of the cake.”—(Fosbroke, “Encyclopædia of Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 1040.)
Vallencey describes a very curious ceremony among the Irish in the month of September. “On the eve of the full moon of September ... straw is burnt to embers, and in the embers each swain in turn hides a grain, crying out, ‘I’ll tear you to pieces if you find my grain.’ His maiden lover seeks, and great is her chagrin if she does not find it. On producing it, she is saluted by the company with shouts; her lover lays her first on her back, and draws her by the heels through the embers, then turning her on her face repeats the ceremony until her nudities are much scorched. This is called posadamin, or the meal-wedding.... When all the maidens have gone through this ceremony, they sit down and devour the roasted wheat, with which they are sometimes inebriated.”—(“De Rebus Hibernicis,” vol. ii. p. 559.)
He undoubtedly means ergot; he himself says that it is “a grain that is sometimes found growing amongst the wheat in Ireland.” He also calls these “weddings” a “Druidical custom.”—(Idem, p. 598.)
A similar phallic dance is alluded to in John Graham Dalyell’s “Superstitions of Scotland,” Edinburgh, 1834, p. 219.
In Sardinia “the village swains go about in a group ... to wait for the girls who assemble on the public square to celebrate the festival. Here a great bonfire is kindled, round which they dance and make merry. Those who wish to be ‘sweethearts of Saint John’ act as follows: The young man stands on one side of the bonfire, and the girl on the other; and they, in a manner, join hands by each grasping a long stick, which they pass three times backwards and forwards across the fire, thus thrusting their hands thrice rapidly into the flames.” At this dance, we read of “a Priapus-like figure, made of paste; but this custom, rigorously forbidden by the Church, has fallen into disuse.” (“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 291.) “In some parts of Germany young men and girls leap over midsummer bonfires for the express purpose of making the hemp or flax grow tall.”—(Idem, p. 293.)
“Amongst the Kara-Kirghis barren women roll themselves on the ground under a solitary apple-tree in order to obtain offspring.” (Idem, vol. i. p. 73.) That this is a manifestation of tree worship, the author leaves us no room to doubt; and a consultation of his text will be rewarded by several examples of a still more definite character,—such as marriage with trees, wearing the bark as a garment in the hope of progeny, etc.
Hoffman mentions a widow among the Pennsylvania Germans who “became impressed with a boatman with whom she casually became acquainted, and as he evinced no response to her numerous manifestations of regard, she adopted the following method to compel him to love her, even against his will. With the blade of a penknife she scraped her knee until she had secured a small quantity of the cuticle, baked it in a specially prepared cake, and sent it to him, though with what result is not known. The woman was known to have the utmost faith in the charm.”—(“Folk-Medicine of Pennsylvania Germans,” American Philosophical Society, 1889.)
“I was at Madrid in 1784.... A beggar, who generally took his stand at the door of a church, had employed his leisure in inventing and selling a species of powder to which he attributed miraculous effects. It was composed of ingredients the mention of which would make the reader blush. The beggar had drawn up some singular formularies to be repeated at the time of taking the powder, and required, to give it its effect, that those who took it should put themselves into certain postures more readily imagined than described. His composition was one of those amorous philtres in which our ignorant ancestors had so much faith; his, he pretended, had the power of restoring a disgusted lover and of softening the heart of a cruel fair one.”—(Bourgoanne’s “Travels in Spain,” in Pinkerton, vol. v. p. 413.)
“When a young man is trying to win the love of a reluctant girl he consults the medicine-man, who then tries to find some of the urine and saliva which the girl has voided, as well as the sand upon which it has fallen. He mixes these with a few twigs of certain woods, and places them in a gourd, and gives them to the young man, who takes them home, and adds a portion of tobacco. In about an hour he takes out the tobacco and gives it to the girl to smoke; this effects a complete transformation in her feelings.”—(“Conversation with Muhongo,” an African boy from Angola, translated by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)
Lovers who wished to increase the affections of their mistresses were recommended to try a transfusion of their own blood into the loved one’s veins.—(Flemming, “De Remediis,” etc., p. 15.)
See notes taken from Flemming, under “Perspiration;” also under “After-Birth and Woman’s Milk,” and under “Catamenial Fluid.”
Beaumont and Fletcher may have had such customs in mind when writing “Wit without Money.”
“Ralph. Pray, empty my right shoe, that you made your chamber-pot, and burn some rosemary in it.”—(v. i.)
Rosemary, like juniper (q. v.), was extensively used for disinfecting sleeping apartments.
ANTI-PHILTERS.
To protect the population from the baleful effects of the love-philter, there was, fortunately, the anti-philter, in which, strangely enough, we come upon the same ingredients. Thus mouse-dung, applied in “the form of a liniment, acts as an antiphrodisiac,” according to Pliny (lib. xxviii. cap. 80). “A lizard drowned in urine has the effect of an antiphrodisiac upon the man whose urine it is.” (Idem, lib. xxx. cap. 49.) “The same property is to be attributed to the excrement of snails and pigeon’s dung, taken with oil and wine.”—(Idem.)
A powerful antiphrodisiac was made of the urine of a bull and the ashes of a plant called “brya.” “The charcoal too of this wood is quenched in urine of a similar nature, and kept in a shady spot. When it is the intention of the party to rekindle the flames of desire, it is set on fire again. The magicians say that the urine of a eunuch will have a similar effect.”—(Idem, lib. xxiv. cap. 42.)
“According to Osthanes ... a woman will forget her former love by taking a he-goat’s urine in drink.”—(Idem, lib. xxviii. cap. 77.)
Hen-dung was an antidote against philters, especially those made of menstrual blood. “Contra Philtra magica, in specie ex sanguine menstruo femineo.” (“Chylologia,” p. 816, 817.) Dove-dung was also administered for the same purpose, but was not quite so efficacious.
A journeyman cabinet-maker had been given a love-potion by a young woman, so that he couldn’t keep away from her. His mother then bought a pair of new shoes for him, put into them certain herbs, and in them he had to run to a certain town. A can of urine was then put into his right shoe, out of which he drank, whereupon he perfectly despised the object of his former affection.
A prostitute gave a love-potion to a captain in the army. Some of her ordure was placed in a new shoe, and after he had walked therein an hour, and had his fill of the smell, the spell was broken. Paullini here quotes Ovid,—
“Ille tuas redolens Phineu medicamina mensas Non semel est stomacho nausea facta meo.”
A man was given in his food some of the dried ordure of a woman whom he formerly loved, and that created a terrible antipathy toward her.—(Paullini, p. 258.)
“The seeds of the tamarisk mixed in a drink or meat with the urine of a castrated ox will put an end to Venus.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 43, quoting Pliny, lib. 21, c. 92.)
“Galenos says that the priests eat rue and agnus castus, it seems, as a refrigerative.”—(Idem, p. 43.)
The herb rue was used by the Romans as an amulet against witchcraft, and was also employed in the exorcisms of the Roman Catholic Church.—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 315, article “Rural Charms.”)
An examination of the best available authorities upon the properties of this plant disclosed the following: “It was formerly called ‘herb of grace’ (see Hamlet, act iv. scene 5), because it was used for sprinkling the people with holy water. It was in great repute among the ancients, having been hung about the neck as an amulet against witchcraft, in the time of Aristotle.... It is a powerful stimulant.” (Chambers’s Encyclopædia, article “Rue.”) “Rue is stimulant and anti-spasmodic; ... occasionally increases the secretions.... It appears to have a tendency to act upon the uterus; ... in moderate doses proving emmenagogue, and in larger producing a degree of irritation in the organ which sometimes determines abortion; ... taken by pregnant women, ... miscarriage resulted; ... used in amenorrhœa and in uterine hemorrhages.” (“United States Dispensatory,” Philadelphia, 1886, article “Ruta.”) Here are presented almost the same conditions as were found in the mistletoe,—the plant had a direct, irritant action upon the genito-urinary organs, and in all probability was employed to induce the sacred urination and to asperse the congregation with the fluid for which holy water was afterwards substituted.
Rue and agnus castus are mentioned by Avicenna as medicines which “coitus desiderium sedant.” (Vol. i. pp. 266, b 45, 406, a 60.) The same author (vol. i. p. 906, a 63) mentions rue with the testicles of a fox as an Aphrodisiac, and the testicles of the goat are mentioned in the same connection.—(Idem, p. 907, b 67.)
Dulaure (“Des Différens Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 288) speaks of certain “fasciniers” or charlatans, who vended secretly love-philters to barren women. “Ils prononçaient pour opérer leurs charmes des mots latins et avaient l’intention de fixer dans les alimens des époux une poudre provenant des parties sexuelles d’un loup.”
Beckherius repeats the antidote for a love-philter of placing some of the woman’s ordure in the man’s shoe: “Si, in amantis calceum, stercus amatæ ponatur;” and he also cites the couplet from Ovid already quoted, p. 225.
“Secundines” were also employed to render abortive the effects of philters. (See Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” Schroderi dilucidati Zoölogia, vol. ii. p. 265.) “In philtris curandis spiritus secundinæ vel pulvis secundinæ mirabilis facit.” This was of great use in epilepsy, but should be, if possible, “secundinam mulieris sanæ, si potest esse primiparæ et quæ filium enixa fuit.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 271.)
Against philters, as well as to counteract the efforts of witches attacking people just entering the married state, by such maleficent means as “ligatures,” and other obstacles, ordure was facile princeps as a remedy. Likewise, to break up a love affair, nothing was superior to the simple charm of placing some of the ordure of the person seeking to break away from love’s thraldom in the shoe of the one still faithful. It is within the bounds of possibility that this remedy would be found potential even in our own times, if faithfully applied. “Contra philtra, item pro ligatis et maleficiatis a mulieribus sequens Johannes Jacobus Weckerus ... pone de egestione seu alvi excremento ipsius mulieris mane in fotulari dextro maleficiati et statim cum ipse sentiet fœtorum solvitur maleficium.... Quod si in amantis calceum stercus amatæ posueris, ubi odorem senserit, solvitur amor,” etc. (several examples are given).—(“Chylologia,” p. 791.)
Mr. Chrisfield, of the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., imparts a fact which dovetails in with the foregoing item in a very interesting manner. He says that, in his youth, which was passed on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, he learned that, among the more ignorant classes of that section it was a rule that when a father observed the growing affection of his son for some young girl, he should endeavor to obtain a little of her excrement, and make the youth wear it under the left arm-pit; if he remained constant in his devotion after being subjected to this test, the father felt that it would be useless to interpose objection to the nuptials.
There is a case mentioned in Scotland in which “aversion was inspired on the part of the female.” To remedy this “the man got a cake” (ingredients not mentioned) “to be put under his left arm, betwixt his shirt and his skin, observing silence, until the nuptial couch was sprinkled with water and the mystical cake withdrawn.”—(“Superstitions of Scotland,” Dalyell, p. 305.)
One might safely wager guineas to shillings that, in the above example the mystical cake was the legitimate descendant of one formerly compounded of very unsavory ingredients, and that the water with which the nuptial couch was to be sprinkled, had replaced a fluid closely related to the liquid employed by the Hottentots on such occasions.
“To procure the dissolving of bewitched and constrained love, the party bewitched must make a jakes (i. e. privy) of the lover’s shoe. And to enforce a man, how proper soever he be, to love an old hag, she gives unto him to eate (among other meates) her own dung.”—(Scot’s “Discoverie,” p. 62.)
This subject of “Nouer l’aiguillette” is referred to by Dulaure.—(“Traité des Dif. Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 288.)
“If a man makes water upon a dog’s urine, he will become disinclined to copulation, they say.”—(Pliny, lib. xxx. c. 49.)
“Beware thee that thou mie not where the hound mied; some men say that there a man’s body changeth so that he may not, when he cometh to bed with his wife, bed along with her.”—(De Med. de Quad. of Sextus Placitus, from “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 365.)
XXXI. SIBERIAN HOSPITALITY
A curious manifestation of hospitality has been noticed among the Tchuktchi of Siberia: “Les Tschuktschi offrent leurs femmes aux voyageurs; mais ceux-ci, pour s’en rendre dignes, doivent se soumettre à une épreuve dégoûtante. La fille ou la femme qui doit passer la nuit avec son nouvel hôte lui présente une tasse pleine de son urine; il faut qu’il s’en rince la bouche. S’il a ce courage, il est regardé comme un ami sincère; sinon, il est traité comme un ennemi de la famille.”—(Dulaure, “Des Divinités Génératrices,” Paris, 1825, p. 400.)
Among the Tchuktchees of Siberia, “it is a well known custom to use the urine of both parties as a libation in the ceremony; and likewise between confederates and allies, to pledge each other and swear eternal friendship.”—(“In the Lena Delta,” Melville, p. 318.)
The presentation of women to distinguished strangers is a mark of savage hospitality noted all over the world, but never in any other place with the above peculiar accompaniment; yet Mungo Park assures his readers that, during his travels in the interior of Africa, a wedding occurred among the Moors while he was asleep. He was awakened from his doze by an old woman bearing a wooden bowl, whose contents she discharged full in his face, saying it was a present from the bride.
Finding this to be the same sort of holy water with which a Hottentot priest is said to sprinkle a newly married couple, he supposed it to be a mischievous frolic, but was informed that it was a nuptial benediction from the bride’s own person, and which, on such occasions, is always received by the young unmarried Moors as a mark of distinguished favor.—(Quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1849, vol. ii. p. 152, article “Bride-Ales.” See also Mungo Park’s “Travels in Africa,” New York, 1813, p. 109.)
In Hottentot marriages “the priest, who lives at the bride’s kraal, enters the circle of the men, and coming up to the bridegroom, pisses a little upon him. The bridegroom receiving the stream with eagerness rubs it all over his body, and makes furrows with his long nails that the urine may penetrate the farther. The priest then goes to the outer circle and evacuates a little upon the bride, who rubs it in with the same eagerness as the bridegroom. To him the priest then returns, and having streamed a little more, goes again to the bride and again scatters his water upon her. Thus he proceeds from one to the other until he has exhausted his whole stock, uttering from time to time to each of them the following wishes, till he has pronounced the whole upon both: ‘May you live long and happily together. May you have a son before the end of the year. May this son live to be a comfort to you in your old age. May this son prove to be a man of courage and a good huntsman.’”—(Peter Kolbein, Voy. to the Cape of Good Hope, in Knox, “Voyages,” London, 1777, vol. ii. pp. 399, 400. This statement of Kolbein is cited by Maltebrun, Univ. Geog. vol. ii. article “Cape of Good Hope,” but he also mentions Thurnberg, Sparmann and Foster as authorities. Pinkerton, vol. xvi. pp. 89 and 141, likewise quotes from Thurnberg on this subject.)
“Have I not drunk to your health, swallowed flap-dragons, eat glasses, drank wine, stabbed arms, and done all the offices of protested gallantry for your sake?”—(Marston’s “Dutch Courtesan,” London, 1605; see also footnote on the same point in the “Honest Whore,” Thomas Dekkar, 1604, edition of London, 1825. “Dutch flap-dragons,” “Healths in urine.” See also “A New Way to Catch the Old One,” Thomas Middleton, 1608, ed. of Rev. Alex. Dyce, London, 1840; footnote to above: “Drinking healths in urine was another and more disgusting feat of gallantry.” Again, for flap-dragons, see in “Ram Alley,” by Ludovick Barry, 1611, ed. of London, 1825.)
In the “Histoire Secrète du Prince Croq’ Étron,” M’lle Laubert, Paris, 1790, Prince Constipati is entertained by the Princess Clysterine; “elle lui donna de la limonade, de la façon d’Urinette” (p. 17).
Brand has a very interesting chapter, entitled “Drinking Wine in the Church at Marriages,” in which it appears that the custom prevailed very generally among nations of the highest civilization, of having the bride, groom, and invited guests, share in a cup or chalice, filled with some intoxicant; in England, a country which has never raised the grape, this drink is wine; in Ireland, it was whiskey. Brand traces it back to a Gothic origin, but he himself calls attention to the breaking of wine-glasses at the marriage ceremony among Hebrews, from which circumstance a still greater antiquity may be inferred.
“Cobbler’s punch,” urine with a cinder in it.—(Grose, “Dictionary of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811.)
“A beautiful lady, bathing in a cold bath, one of her admirers, out of gallantry, drank some of the water.”—(Idem, article “Toast.”)
“We were told that the priest (of the Hottentots) certainly gives the nuptial benediction by sprinkling the bride and groom with his urine.”—(Lieut. Cook, R. N., in “Hawkesworth’s Voyages,” London, 1773, vol. iii. p. 387.)
Similar statements are to be found in the writings of Hahn and others of the Dutch missionaries to the natives of South Africa.
The malevolence of witchcraft seems to have taken the greatest pleasure in subtle assaults upon those just entering the married state. Fortunately, amulets, talismans, and counter-charms were within reach of all who needed them. The best of all these was thought to be urination through the wedding-ring.—(See Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 305.)
The variants of this practice are innumerable, and are referred to by nearly all the old writers.
Beckherius tells his readers that to counteract the effects of witchcraft, and especially of “Nouer l’Aiguillette” ... “Si per nuptialem annulum sponsius mingat, fascina et Veneris impotentia solvetur, qua a maleficiis ligatus fuit.”—(“Med. Microcos.” p. 66.)
“Pisse through a wedding-ring if you would know who is hurt in his privities by witchcraft.”—(Reg. Scot, “Discoverie,” p. 64.)
“Si quis aliquo veneficio impotens ad usum veneris factus fuerit at quam primum mingat per annulum conjugalem.”—(Frommann, “Tract. de Fascinat.” p. 997.)
Etmuller did not believe that witches could “nouer l’aiguillette;” he attributed that effect to excessive modesty; yet all the remedies mentioned by him, by which the testes of the bridegroom were to be anointed, contained “Zibethum” as an ingredient.—(See his “Opera Omnia,” vol. i. p. 461 b, and 462 a.)
For loss of virility, Paullini recommends drinking the urine of a bull, immediately after he has covered a cow, and smear the pubis with the bull’s excrements; also piss through the engagement ring (pp. 152, 153).
But when witches have been the occasion of such impotence, the victim should urinate through the wedding ring immediately after discovering his misfortune; he also advises urination upon a broom; human ordure was also efficacious. Or, take castor-oil plant, put it into a pot, add some of the patient’s urine, hermetically seal, boil slowly, and then bury in an unfrequented spot. By this method, the witches will either be made to piss blood, or have other tormenting pains until they relieve the bewitched one.—(Idem, pp. 264, 265.)
Etmuller describes another “sympathetic” cure for this infirmity: This prescribed that the bridegroom should catch a fish (the Latin word is “lucium,” meaning probably our pike), forcibly open its mouth, urinate therein, and throw the fish back in the water, upstream; then try to copulate, taking care to urinate through the wedding-ring, both before and after. “Si quis emat lucium piscem sexus masculini, huic per vim aperiatur os, et in os ejus immittatur urinam, maleficiati. Hic lucius ita vivus immittatur in fluvium, idque contra ejusdem cursum ... subito namque tollitur maleficium si non sit nimis inveteratum, etc.... probatum etiam fuit si sponsus ante copulationem et etiam post eam mittat suam urinam per annulum sponsalitium quem accepit a sponsa.” He gives another cure, of much the same kind, which, however, required that the micturation through the ring should be done in a cemetery while the patient was lying on his back on a tombstone. “A vetula suppeditato dum scil. in cementerio quodam missit urinam per annulum cujusdam lapidis sepulchro incumbentis.”—(Etmuller, vol. i. p. 462 a, 462 b.)
This remedy is believed in and practised by the peasantry in some parts of Germany to the present day. “A married man who has become impotent through evil influences can obtain relief by forming a ring with his thumb and forefinger, and urinating through it secretly.”—(“Sagen-märchen, Volkaberglauben, aus Schwaben,” Drs. Birlinger and Buck, Freiburg, 1861, p. 486.)
Grimm, in his “Teutonic Mythology” (vol. iii.) refers to “Nouer l’aiguillette,” but adds nothing to what has been presented above.
There are certain quaint usages connected with weddings among the peasantry of Russia, as well as among the rustic population of England, which might excite the curiosity of antiquarians. In the first case, there is a “sprinkling” with water once used by the bride for the purpose of bathing her person; in the other, there is a “sale” of a liquid by the bride, this liquid being an intoxicant.
Wedding ceremonies of the peasantry of Samogitia: “The bride was led on the wedding-day three times round the fireplace of her future husband; it was then customary to wash her feet, and with the same water that had been used for that purpose the bridal bed, the furniture, and all the guests were sprinkled.”—(Maltebrun, “Univ. Geog.,” vol. ii. p. 548, art. “Russia.”)
By a reference back to page 60 of this volume, it will be seen that the Queen of Madagascar favored her subjects in the same way. This sprinkling with the water used as above may be a survival of a former practice, in which the aspersion was with the urine of the bride.
“Bride-Ale, Bride-Bush, and Bride-Stake are nearly synonymous terms, and are all derived from the circumstance of the bride’s selling ale on the wedding-day, for which she received, by way of contribution, whatever handsome price the friends assembled on the occasion chose to pay her for it.” (Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. ii. p. 143, art. “Bride-Ales.”) In this article he introduces the story from Mungo Park already given in these pages, and seems to have a suspicion that the custom above described could be traced back to a rather unsavory origin.
The derivation of the English word “bridal” is very obscure; Fosbroke says that the word “bride-ale” comes from the bride’s selling ale on her wedding-day, and the friends contributing what they liked in payment of it.—(“Cyclop. of Antiq.,” vol. ii. p. 818, under “Marriage” and “Bride-Ales.”)
The Latin name for beer or ale was “cerevisia,” which would seem to be a derivative from the name of the goddess. It may, in earlier ages, have been a beverage dedicated to that goddess, employed in her libations, and held sacred as the means of producing the condition of inebriation, which in all nations has been looked upon as sacred. Réclus tells that there are still nations who regard their brewers as priests, and there are others who exalt their milkmen to that office: “Les Chewsoures du Caucase ont leurs prêtres brasseurs; les Todas des Neilgherries leurs divins fromagiers.”—(“Les Primitifs,” p. 116, article “Les Inoits Occidentaux.”)
Hazlitt mentions the case where the Fairies, having a mock baptism and no water at hand, made use of strong beer.—(“Fairy Tales,” London, 1875, p. 385.)
Beer would appear entitled to claim as old an origin as alcohol; it is mentioned in the sacred books of the Buddhists of Tibet: “La Bière d’hiver (dguntchang).”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill, Paris, 1885, Société Asiatique.)
XXXII. PARTURITION
For the cure of sterility, Pliny says that “authors of the very highest repute ... recommend the application of a pessary made of the fresh excrement voided by an infant at the moment of its birth.” The urine of eunuchs was considered to be “highly beneficial as a promoter of fruitfulness in females.”—(Lib. xxviii. cap. 18.)
“A hawk’s dung, taken in honeyed wine, would appear to render females fruitful.”—(Idem, lib. xxx. c. 44.)
“Ut mulier concipiat, infantis masculi stercus quod primum enatus emittet, suppositum locis mulieris conceptionem facit et præstat.”—(Sextus Placitus, “De Medicamentis ex Animalibus,” Lyons, 1537, pages not numbered, article “De Puello et Puella Virgine.”)
Schurig recommends an application of bull-dung to the genitalia of women to facilitate pregnancy. (“Chylologia,” vol. ii. p. 602.) The woman drank her own urine to ease the pains of pregnancy. (Idem, p. 535.) There is a method of inducing conception outlined in vol. ii. p. 712, by the use of a bath of urine poured over rusty old iron. Mouse-dung was applied as a pessary in pregnancy. (Idem, pp. 728, 729.) Hawk-dung drunk by a woman before coitus insured conception. (Idem, p. 748.) Goose or fox dung rubbed upon the pudenda of a woman aided in bringing about conception. (Idem, p. 748.) Leopard-dung was also supposed to facilitate conception; pastilles were made of it, and the sexual parts fumigated therewith; or a pessary was inserted and kept in place for three days and three nights: “Ea quamvis antea sterilis fuit, deinceps tamen concipiet.”—(Idem, p. 820.)
But Schurig warns his readers that care must be exercised in the use of such remedies. He gives an instance of a woman who applied the dung of a wolf to her private parts, and soon after bearing a child, found him possessed of a wolfish appetite.—(Idem, lib. i. cap. 1, article “De Bulimo Brutorum,” p. 24.)
“When ladies desire to know whether or not they are enceinte, Paullini recommends that they urinate in an earthen vessel wherein a needle has been thrown. Let it stand over night; should the needle become covered with small red spots, the woman is enceinte; but should it be black or rusty, she is not. To determine whether she is to have a son or daughter, dig two small pits; put barley in one, and wheat in the other; let the enceinte lady urinate into both; then cover up the vessels with earth; if the wheat sprout first, it is to be a son; if the barley sprout before the wheat, it is to be a daughter.”—(Paullini, p. 163.)
Or, throw a pea into each parcel of urine; then the pea which germinates first, etc., etc. “Aut injiciatur lens in unius cujusque urina et cujus efflorescit, ille culpa caret,” is the method suggested by Danielus Beckherius.—(“Med. Microcos. aut Spagyria Microcosmi,” pp. 60, 61, quoting from still older authorities.)
He gives still another plan: “If you wish to determine whether a woman is to bear children, pour some of her urine upon marsh-mallows; if they be found dry on the third day, she’ll not conceive.” “Si explorare volueris, utrum mulier ad concipiendam sit idonea, tunc super malvam sylvestram urinam ejus funde; si ille tertio die arida fuerit, omnino minus idoneam illam habeto.”—(Idem, p. 61.)
Paullini urges that the excrements of goats, hawks, horses, geese, and the urine of camels be taken to remedy sterility (p. 161).
And the very same remedies are given by Beckherius and still older writers.
English women, in some localities, drank the urine of their husbands to assist them in the hour of labor.
“In the collection entitled ‘Sylon, or the Wood’ (p. 130) we read that ‘a few years ago, in this same village, the women in labor used to drinke the urine of their husbands, who were all the while stationed, as I have seen the cows in St. James’s Park, straining themselves to give as much as they can.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1849, vol. iii. article, “Lady in the Straw.”)
“Mariti urina hausta partum difficilem facilitare dicitur.”—(Etmuller, vol. ii. p. 265, Schroderi, “Dilucidati Zoölogia.”)
An instance of the drinking of her own urine by a pregnant woman is to be read in Schurig (p. 45), art. “De Pica.”
The warm urine of the husband was drunk for the same purpose: “Scil. Hartmannus commendat ut difficiliter pariens libat haustum urinæ mariti sui et ita si hic fuerit genuinus fœtus parientam illam ex parti solvi putat; ast si urinæ aliquid subest erit illud sali volatili ad morem aliorum omnium volatilium, attribuendum.” (Etmuller, vol. ii. pp. 171, 172.) Here we have the husband’s urine employed not only as a medicine, but as a test of the wife’s fidelity.
John Moncrief directs that, to facilitate conception, a pessary should be inserted in the vagina, of which hare’s dung was to be a component. Horse’s dung, drunk in water, aided a woman in childbirth.—(“The Poor Man’s Physician,” Edinburgh, 1716, p. 149.)
“Ut mulier post partum in secundis non laboret, de lotio hominis subtiliter gustet et secundæ statim sequentur.”—(Sextus Placitus.)
Dioscorides prescribed both human ordure and the dung of the vulture to bring about the expulsion of the fœtus.—(Materia Medica, edition of Kuhn, vol. i. p. 232 et seq.)
Goose-dung, in internal doses, was prescribed by Pliny for the same purpose.—(Lib. 30, c. 4.)
But the dung of the elephant or menstrual blood prevented conception, according to Avicenna: “Impregnationem prohibent ... stercus elephantis,” vol. i. p. 390, b 11; “Impregnationem prohibent ... sanguis menstruus, si supponatus.”—(Vol. i. pp. 330, a 35, 388, b 50.)
For accidents to pregnant women, apply rabbit’s dung externally; for miscarriages, man’s urine, internally; the excreta of lionesses, hawks, and chickens, internally; of horses and geese, externally and also internally; and of pigeons and cows, externally. For after-birth pains, the patient’s own urine, externally; or the excrement of chickens, internally.—(Paullini.)
Schurig recommended the use of lion-dung, internally, in cases of difficult parturition.—(“Chylologia,” p. 819.)
Etmuller says of secundines: “In partu difficili nil est præstantius” (p. 270).
Both Pliny and Hippocrates recommend hawk-dung in the treatment of sterility, and to aid in the expulsion of the fœtus in childbirth; it was to be drunk in wine; their prescription is copied by Etmuller: “Hippocrates et Plinius ad sterilitatem emendandam propinant.”—(vol. ii. p. 285.)
For the expulsion of the dead fœtus, Pliny recommended a fumigation of horse-dung.—(Lib. xxviii. c. 77.)
And Sextus Placitus says: “Similiter, mortuum etiam partum ejicit. Idem facit ut mulier facile pariat si totum corpus suffumigaveris claudit et ventrem.”—(Cap. “De Equo.”)
Etmuller advises the use of these fumigations to aid in the expulsion of the fœtus and after-birth; a potion of the dung should also be administered in all such cases, being, in his opinion fully equal to the dung of dogs or swallows.—(Vol. ii. p. 263.)
A parturient woman in New Hampshire, drank the urine of her husband as a diuretic, forty or fifty years ago.—(Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen, Cambridge, Massachusetts.)
Flemming is another who recommends a draught of the husband’s urine to aid in delivery: “Porro, in partu difficili, urinam mariti calidam calido haustam esse” (p. 23).
“A urine tub was held above the head of a woman in labor to ward off all manner of evil influences.”—(Henry Rink, “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” Edinburgh, 1875, p. 55.)
“Gomez” (which is the “nirang” or urine of the ox) was prescribed to be drunk as a purifying libation by a woman who had miscarried. (See Fargard V. Avendidad, Zendavesta (Darmesteter’s translation), Max Müller’s edition. “Sacred Books of the East,” Oxford, 1880, p. 62.) “She shall drink gomez mixed with ashes, three cups of it, or six or nine, to wash over the grave within her womb.... When three nights have passed, she shall wash her body, she shall wash her clothes, with gomez and with water by the nine holes, and thus shall she be clean.”—(Idem, pp. 63, 90.)
“Avec une tendre sollicitude, les bonnes amies versent sur la tête de la femme en travail le contenu d’un pot de chambre pour fortifier, disent-elles.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, p. 43; “Les Inoits Orientaux.”)
“The Commentaires of Bernard the Provincial, informs us” says Daremberg, “that certain practices, not only superstitious but disgusting, were common among the doctrines of Salerno; one, for instance, was to eat themselves, and also to oblige their husbands to eat, the excrements of an ass fried in a stove in order to prevent sterility.”—(“The Physicians of the Middle Ages,” Minor, Cincinnati, Ohio, p. 6, translated from Dupouy’s “Le Moyen Age Médical.”)
Mr. Havelock Ellis calls attention to the use of cow’s urine after confinement by the women of the Cheosurs of the Caucasus. See also under “Witchcraft,” “Therapeutics,” “Divination,” “Amulets and Talismans,” “Cures by Transplantation,” “Ceremonial Observances.”
WEANING.
For an example of Urinal Aspersion, in connection with Weaning, see on page 211.
XXXIII. INITIATION OF WARRIORS.—CONFIRMATION
The attainment by young men of the age of manhood is an event which among all primitive peoples has been signalized by peculiar ceremonies; in a number of instances ordure and urine have been employed, as for example: The observances connected with this event in the lives of Australian warriors are kept a profound secret, but, among the few learned is the fact that the neophyte is “plastered with goat dung.”—(See “Aborigines of Australia,” A. Brough Smyth, London, 1878, vol. i. p. 59, footnote.)
In some parts of Australia, Smyth says that the youth of fourteen or fifteen had to submit himself to the rite of “Tid-but,” during which his head was shaved and plastered with mud (“the head is then daubed with clay”) “and his body is daubed with clay, mud, and charcoal-powder and filth of every kind.” (Smyth had previously specified goat-dung.) “He carries a basket under his arm, containing moist clay, charcoal, and filth.... He gathers filth as he goes, and places it in the basket.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 60.)
The young initiate throws this filth at all the men he meets, but not at the women or children, as these have been warned to keep out of his way. This is the account given by Smyth, but Featherman, from whom Smyth derived his information, makes no such restriction in his text, simply stating that the young man was considered to be “excommunicated de facto.” (See A. Featherman, “Social History of the Races of Mankind,” 2d Division, London, 1887, p. 152.) But, in either case, it is surely remarkable to stumble upon the counterpart of one of the proceedings of the Feast of Fools in such a remote corner of the globe.
“Among many of the tribes, the ceremony of introducing a native into manhood, is said to be accompanied with some horrible and disgusting practices.”—(“The Nat. Tribes of S. Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, Introduction, xxviii, received through the kindness of the Royal Soc. of Sydney, N. S. Wales, T. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)
“In order to infuse courage into boys, a warrior, Kerketegerkai, would take the eye and tongue of a dead man (probably of a slain enemy), and after mincing them and mixing with his urine, would administer the compound in the following manner. He would tell the boy to shut his eyes and not look, adding: ‘I give you proper kaikai’ (‘kaikai’ is an introduced word, being the jargon English for food). The warrior then stood up behind the sitting youth, and putting the latter’s hand between his (the man’s) legs, would feed him. After this dose, ‘heart along, boy no fright.’”—(A. C. Haddon, “The Ethnography of the Western Tribes of Torres Straits,” in Journal of the Anthrop. Institute, Great Britain and Ireland, xix. no. 3, 1890, p. 420. Received through the kindness of Professor H. C. Henshaw, U. S. Geol. Survey, Washington, D. C.)
“Some other customs are altogether so obscene and disgusting I must, even at the risk of leaving my subject incomplete, pass them over by only thus briefly referring to them.”—(“Nat. Tr. of S. Australia,” p. 280.)
Monier Williams repeats almost what Müller says about the Parsis. A young Parsi undergoes a sort of confirmation, during which “he is made to drink a small quantity of the urine of a bull.”—(“Modern India,” London, 1878, p. 178.)
FEARFUL RITE OF THE HOTTENTOTS.
A religious rite of still more fearful import occurs among the same people at the initiation of their young men into the rank of warriors—a ceremony which must be deferred until the postulant has attained his eighth or ninth year. It consists, principally, in depriving him of the left testicle, after which the medicine man voids his urine upon him.[67]
“At eight or nine years of age, the young Hottentot is, with great ceremony deprived of his left testicle.” (Kolbein, p. 402.) He says nothing about an aspersion with urine in this instance, but on the succeeding page he narrates that there is first a sermon from one of the old men, who afterwards “evacuates a smoking stream of urine all over him, having before reserved his water for that purpose. The youth receives the stream with eagerness and joy; and making furrows with the long nails in the fat upon his body, rubs in the briny fluid with the quickest action. The old man, having given him the last drop, utters aloud the following benediction: ‘Good fortune attend thee; live to old age. Increase and multiply. May thy beard grow soon.’”—(Idem, p. 403.)
“The young Hottentot, who has won the reputation of a hero by killing a lion, tiger, leopard, elephant, etc., is entitled to wear a bladder in his hair; he is formally congratulated by all his kraal. One of the medicine-men marches up to the hero and pours a plentiful stream over him from head to foot,—pronouncing over him certain terms which I could never get explained. The hero, as in other cases, rubs in the smoking stream upon his face and every other part with the greatest eagerness.”—(Idem, p. 404.)
Rev. Theophilus Hahn cites Kolbein in “Beiträge für Kunde der Hottentoten,” in Jahrbuch für Erdkunde, von Dresden, 1870, p. 9, as communicated by Dr. Gatchett of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C. For further references to the Hottentot ceremony of Initiation, by sprinkling the young warrior with urine, consult Pinkerton’s “Voyages,” vol. xvi. pp. 89 and 141, where there is a quotation from Thurnberg’s “Account of the Cape of Good Hope.” See also Maltebrun, “Univ. Geog.” vol. ii. article “The Cape of Good Hope.”
The Indians of California gave urine to newly-born children. “At time of childbirth, many singular observances obtained; for instance, the old women washed the child as soon as it was born, and drank of the water; the unhappy infant was forced to take a draught of urine medicinally.”—(Bancroft, H. H. “Native Races,” vol. i. p. 413.)
Forlong states that at the time of investiture of the Indian boy with the sacred thread, “the fire is kindled with the droppings of the sacred cow.”—(“Rivers of Life,” London, 1883, vol. i. p. 323.)
Valuable information was also received from Mr. Edward Palmer, of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, especially in regard to the Kalkadoon tribe near Cloncurry, who are among those who split the urethra.
In order to bring up an Eskimo child to be an “Angerd-lartug-sick,”—that is, “a man brought up in a peculiar manner, with a view to acquiring a certain faculty by means of which he might be called to life again and returned to land, in case he should be drowned,”—“for this purpose the mother had to keep a strict fast and the child to be accustomed to the smell of urine.”—(Rink, “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” p. 45.)
Réclus says of the Inuit child selected to be trained as an Angekok: “Sitôt née, la petite créature sera aspergée d’urine de manière à l’imprégner de son odeur caractéristique; c’est décidément leur eau bénite. Ailleurs, la barbe, la chevelure, l’entière personne des rois et sacrificateurs sont ointes d’huile prise dans de saintes ampoules; ailleurs, elles sont beurrées et barbouillées de bouse soigneusement étendue.”—(“Les Primitifs,” p. 84, “Les Inoits Occidentaux.”)
For initiation in witchcraft, “Dans la Hesse, le postulant se place sur du fumier en prononçant des formules magiques, et pique un crapaud avec un bâton blanc qu’il jette ensuite à l’eau.”—(“La Fascination,” J. Tuchmann, in “Mélusine,” Paris, July-August, 1890, p. 93.)
“I am strongly inclined to the belief that all these rites are survivals or debased vestiges of the blood-covenant practice, by which the partaking of each other’s selves (by whatever is a portion of one’s self) is a form of covenanting by which two persons become as one. Are you aware of the fact that the habit of giving the urine of a healthy child to a new-born babe has prevailed down to the present day among rustic nurses in New England, if not elsewhere, in America? I can bear personal testimony to this fact from absolute knowledge. It is a noteworthy fact that the Hebrew word chaneek, which is translated ‘trained’ or ‘initiated,’ and which is used in the proverb, ‘Train up a child,’ etc., has as its root-idea (as shown in the corresponding Arabic word) the ‘opening of the gullet’ in a new-born child, the starting the child in its new life. Among some primitive peoples fresh blood, as added life, is thus given to a babe; and in other cases it is urine.”—(Personal letter from Rev. H. K. Trumbull, editor of the “Sunday-School Times,” Philadelphia, April 19, 1888.)
“The priesthood of the false gods is hereditary in the family.... Others may be introduced into the corps of fetich priests, but they have to pay dearly for the honor.... Every morning before sunrise and every evening at sunset the aspirants were heard singing in choir, directed by an old fetich priestess.” These ceremonies of consecration “last several days.... The crinkled hair which is completely shaved off of some, and only from the crown of the head of others, the aspersion of lustral water, the imposition of the new name.”—(“Fetichism,” Rev. P. Baudin, New York, 1885, pp. 74, 75.)
“One observer of the customs of the blacks has stated in the journal of the Anthropological Society of London that in the Hunter River District of New South Wales, the catechumens at some parts of the Bora ceremonies are required to eat ordure; but I have made diligent inquiries in the same locality and elsewhere, but have found nothing to corroborate his statement. Similarly, in one district in Queensland, it is said that the blacks, whether at the Bora or not I cannot say, make cup-like holes in the clay soil, collect their urine in them, and drink it afterwards. This latter statement may be true, but I have never been able to substantiate it by information from those who know. Various considerations, however, lead me to think it possible that our blacks, in some places at least (for their observances are not everywhere the same), may use ordure and urine in that way, thinking that the evil spirit will be propitiated by their eating in his honor that which he himself delights to eat; just as in Northwestern India a devotee may be seen going about with his body plastered all over with human dung in honor of his god. And our blacks have good reason to try to propitiate this unclean spirit (Gunungdhukhya) in every possible way, for they believe that he can enter their bodies, and effecting a lodgment in their abdomen, feed there on the foulest of the contents, and thus cause cramps, fits, madness, and other serious disorders. The non-Aryan population of India have similar beliefs; for among the devil-worshippers of Western India there are certain malignant spirits called Bhutas; and these in their habits are similar to Gunungdhukhya. They too cause mischief by taking possession of the body, and they delight to devour human beings; they too live in desert places, especially among tall trees. They take the forms of men and animals, and prowl about in burial-grounds, and eat the carcasses.”—(Personal letter from John Frazer, LL.D., dated Sydney, New South Wales, December 24, 1889.)
This correspondent has struck the keynote of the curious behavior of the prophet Ezekiel and others. Believing, as was believed in their day, that deities ate excrement, why should not they, the representatives of the gods, eat it too? And if a god enter into a man’s body to eat excrement, why should not the victim feed him on that which is so acceptable, and by gorging him free himself from pain?
See, under “War Customs,” the use of the drink wysoccan by the Indians of Virginia, in their ceremonies of initiation.
See, under “Ordeals and Punishments,” page 254, in regard to the belief of the Australians.
WAR-CUSTOMS.—ARMS AND ARMOR.
It is remarkable that we should be able to adduce any example of the employment of excrementitious matter in war customs; not that we should not suspect their existence, but because on occasions of such importance the medicine-men, who arrogate to themselves so much consequence in all military affairs, would naturally be more careful to conceal their performances from profane eyes. There is very little reason to doubt that a fuller examination would be rewarded with new facts of additional interest and value.
When the Dutch were besieging Batavia, in the Island of Java, in 1623, the natives daubed themselves with human ordure, in all likelihood for some vague religious purpose,—“a 1629, in obsidione Batavos obsessos, in defectu aliorum ad defensionem necessariorum requisitorum hostes suos Indos stercore humano ex cloacis collecto, ollisque in ipsorum nuda corpora conjecto, fugasse.”—(“Chylologia,” p. 795.)
“Les Malais se servent de l’urine pour tremper leurs fameux criss. Ils enfoncent ces poignards dans la terre, et pendant un certain temps, ils viennent uriner de manière que cette terre soit toujours imbibée d’urine.”—(Personal letter from Dr. Bernard, Cannes, France, dated July 7, 1888.)
Against what was known in the Middle Ages as “magical impenetrability,” human ordure was in high repute. The sword or “machete” of the person exposed to attack from such an enemy should be rubbed in pig-dung. But let Schurig tell his own story: “Scilicet, priusquam cum adversario hujus rei suspecto congrediaris, cuspis machæræ vel gladii, stercori suillo infigatur; vel si eminus agendum, globuli bomberdis infarciendi per sphincterem ani ducantur; quod certissimum dicitur antidotum contra hanc non minus quam Diaboli Incantationes.”—(“Chylologia,” p. 791, par. 64.)
Frommann states that arms may be bewitched so that they can do harm; but he makes no mention of human or animal excreta in such connection.—(“Tract. de Fascinat.,” p. 654.)
“Dum gladio quo vulnus fuit inflictum sive cruento sive non cruento applicatur unguentum quod vocant magneticum armarium quo curatur vulnus.” (Etmuller, vol. i. p. 68.) This magnetic ointment was made of human ordure and human urine.
See also page 298 of this volume.
“The Scythians prefer mares for the purposes of war, because they can pass their urine without stopping in their career.”—(Pliny, lib. viii. cap. 66.)
The “black drink” of the Creeks and Seminoles was an emetic and cathartic of somewhat violent nature. It was used by the warriors of those tribes when about to start out on the war-path or engage in any important deliberations.—(See Cornwallis Clay’s dissertation upon the Seminoles of Florida, in “Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology,” Washington, D. C., 1888.)
The “black drink” of the Creeks was made from the Iris Versicolor (Natural order, Iridacæa), “an active emeto-cathartic, abundant in swampy grounds throughout the Southern States.”—(See Brinton, “Myths of the New World,” New York, 1868, p. 274.)
Beverly mentions “a mad potion,” “the Wysoccan,” used by the Indians of Virginia during “an initiatory ceremony called Huskansaw, which took place every sixteen or twenty years,” which he calls “the water of Lethe,” and by the use of which they “perfectly lose the remembrance of all former things, even of their parents, their treasure, and their language.”—(“Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 349, quoting Beverly’s “History of Virginia,” London, 1722, p. 177.)
See, under “Insults,” p. 256, for the war customs of the Samoans. See also “Catamenia;” “Witchcraft.”
XXXIV. HUNTING AND FISHING
The African hunter in pursuit of game, such as elephants, anoints himself “all over with their dung.”—(Father Merolla, in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 251, “Voyage to Congo.”) This, he says, is merely to deceive the animal with the smell.
Pliny relates that in Heraklea the country-people poisoned panthers with aconite. But the panthers had sense enough to know that human excrement was an antidote. (Lib. xxviii. c. 2.) Again in lib. viii. c. 41 he tells of the aconite-poisoned panther curing itself by eating human excrement. Knowing this fact, the peasants suspend human excrement in a pot so high in the air that the panther exhausts itself in jumping to reach it, and dies all the sooner.
Schurig (“Chylologia,” p. 774) has the above tale, but has taken it from Claudius Æmilianus, as well as Pliny.
The reindeer Tchuktchi feign to be passing urine in order to catch their animals which they want to use with their sleds. The reindeer, horses, and cattle of the Siberian tribes are very fond of urine, probably on account of the salt it contains, and when they see a man walking out from the hut, as if for the purpose of relieving his bladder, they follow him up, and so closely that he finds the operation anything but pleasant.
“The Esquimaux of King William’s Land and the adjacent peninsula often catch the wild reindeer by digging a pit in the deep snow, and covering it with thin blocks of snow, that would break with the weight of an animal. They then make a line of urine from several directions, leading to the centre of the cover of the pitfall, where an accumulation of snow, saturated with the urine of the dog, is deposited as bait. One or more animals are thereby led to their destruction.”—(Personal letter from the Arctic explorer, W. H. Gilder, dated New York, October 15, 1889.)
“The dogs of the Esquimaux are equally fond of excrement, especially in cold weather, and when a resident of the Arctic desires to relieve himself, he finds it necessary to take a whip or a stick to defend himself against the energy of the hungry dogs. Often, when a man wants to urge his dog-team to greater exertion, he sends his wife or one of the boys to run ahead, and when at a distance, to stoop down and make believe he is relieving himself. The dogs are thus spurred to furious exertion, and the boy runs on again, to repeat the delusion. This never fails of the desired effect, no matter how often repeated.”—(Idem.)
“I only know one superstitious use of excrement,—that wherein the hooks were placed round some before the fishing incantations began.” (“The Maoris of New Zealand,” E. Tregear, in “Journal of the Anthrop. Institute,” London, 1889.) This bears a very close resemblance to certain of the uses of cow-dung in India.
The people of Angola, west coast of Africa, when about to set out on a hunt, are careful to collect the dung of the elephant, antelope, and other kinds of wild animals, and hand them to the medicine-man, who makes a magical compound out of them, and places it in a horn. It then serves as an amulet, and will ensure success in the hunt.—(“Muhongo,” an African boy from Angola; interpretation made by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)
XXXV. DIVINATION.—OMENS.—DREAMS
Among the ancients there was a method of divination by excrementitious materials.—(See “Scatomancie,” in Bib. Scat. p. 28.)
“Gaule, in his ‘Mag-Astromancers Posed and Puzzled’ (p. 165), enumerates as follows the several species of divination.” (Here follows a list of fifty-three kinds.) One of the kinds enumerated is “Spatalomancy, by skin, bones, excrement.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” pp. 329, 330.)
In the “Rhudhiradhyaya, or Sanguinary Chapter,” translated from the Calica Puran, in the 4th vol. “Asiatic Researches,” 4th ed., London, 1807, the following is stated in regard to human victims: “If, at the time of presenting the blood, the victim discharges fæces or urine, or turns about, it indicates certain death to the sacrificer.”
The Peruvians had one class of wizards (i. e., medicine-men) who “told fortunes by maize and the dung of sheep.”—(“Fables and Rites of the Yncas,” Padre Cristoval de Molina, translated by Clement C. Markham, Hakluyt Society Transactions, London, 1873, vol. xlviii., p. 14. Molina resided in Cuzco, as a missionary, from 1570 to 1584.)
“Les Hachus (a division of the Peruvian priesthood) consultaient l’avenir au moyen de grains de maïs ou des excréments des animaux.”—(Balboa, “Histoire de Pérou,” p. 29, in Ternaux, vol. xv.)
See, also, D. G. Brinton’s “Myths of the New World,” New York, 1868, pp. 278, 279.
Ducange, enumerating the pagan superstitions which still survived in Europe in A.D. 743, mentions divination or augury by the dung of horses, cattle, or birds: “De auguriis vel avium, vel equorum, vel boum stercoracibus.”—(Ducange, Glossary, article “Stercoraces.”)
“What wise man would think that God would commit his counsel to a dog, an owle, a swine, or a toade; or that he would hide his secret purposes in the dung or bowels of beastes?” Reg. Scot (“Discoverie,” p. 150), speaking of the omens consulted by Spaniards, English, and others, says: “Among the rustics of France, to dream of ordure was regarded as a sign of good luck; in like manner, to have a ball, or anything that one carried in the hand, fall in ordure, was also a sign of good fortune.”
“To dream of ordure means that somebody is going to try to bewitch you.”—(“Muhongo,” a boy from Angola, Eastern Africa, in conversation with Captain Bourke; translation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)
This belief in the good or bad prognostications to be derived from dreams about ordure, was very widely disseminated. “Luck, or Good Luck. To tread in Sir Reverence; to be bewrayed; an allusion to the proverb, ‘Sh-tt-n luck is good luck.’”—(“Grose, Dict. of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811.)
“Inasmuch as the sun of morning, or spring, comes out of the dark-blue bird of night, we can understand the popular Italian and German superstition, that when the excrement of a bird falls upon a man it is an omen of good luck. The excrement of the mythical bird of night, or winter, is the sun.”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” Angelo de Gubernatis, vol. ii. p. 176, London, 1872.)
“When a Hindu child’s horoscope portends misfortune or crime, he is born again from a cow, thus: being dressed in scarlet, and tied on a new sieve, he is passed between the hind legs of a cow, forward through the fore legs to the mouth, and again in the reverse direction, to simulate birth; the ordinary birth ceremonies (aspersion, etc.) are then gone through, and the father smells his son as a cow smells her calf.”—(Frazer, “Totemism,” Edinburgh, 1887, p. 33.)
To put one’s foot in dung is supposed by the French peasantry to imply the acquirement of wealth.—(Mr. W. W. Rockhill.)
Among the Kamtchatkans, if a child has been born in stormy weather, they believe that to be a bad omen, and that the child will cause storm and rain wherever it goes. As soon as it is grown and can speak, they purify it, and appease heaven by the following method: During a most violent storm of wind and rain, the child is compelled to walk naked, holding a cup or shell of Mytues high above its head, around the ostrag and all balagans and dog huts, and to say the following prayer to Billukai and his Kamuli: “Gsaulga, set yourselves down and stop urinating or storming; this shell is used to salty but not to sweet water; you make me very wet, and I almost freeze to death; besides, I have no clothing; see how I tremble.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
Divination by urine seems to have been superseded by holy water in a “chrystall.” Scot, speaking of the latter mode, says: “They take a glass vial, full of holy water, ... on the mouth of the vial or urinall,” etc.—(“Discoverie,” p. 188.)
There is among children in the United States and England, and possibly on the continent of Europe as well, a superstition to the effect that the one who plucks the dandelion will become addicted to the habit of urinating in bed during sleep. The author has been unable to trace the origin of the curious notion or to obtain any explanation of it.
“Leontodon. Dandelion. Children that eat it in the evening experience its diuretic effects in the night, which is the reason that other European nations as well as the British vulgarly call it piss-a-bed.”—(Encyclopædia, Philadelphia, Penn., 1797, article “Leontodon.”)
“The following compendious new way of magical divination, which we find so humorously described in Butler’s ‘Hudibras’ as follows, is affirmed by M. Le Blanc, in his ‘Travels,’ to be used in the East Indies:—
“‘Your modern Indian magician Makes but a hole in th’ earth to pisse in, And straight resolves all questions by it, And seldom fails to be in th’ right.’”
(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 331, article “Divination.”)
Cicero makes no mention of a method of divination by excrement, although, as shown by the references from the “Bib. Scat.” and from Ducange, such methods must have been in vogue.
The Kamtchatkans believe that “if they ease nature during sleep, it signifies guests of their nation.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
Montfaucon says that the Roman Haruspices “observed in the beasts that were sacrificed not only the entrails in general, but also the gall and bladder in particular.”—(“L’Antiquité expliquée,” lib. i. part 1, cap. 6.)
See extract from Gilder’s “Schwatka’s Search,” under “Mortuary Ceremonies,” p. 262. See “Witchcraft,” “Amulets and Talismans,” “Urinoscopy,” “Virginity,” “Sterility,” “Courtship and Marriage,” “Childbirth.”
XXXVI. ORDEALS AND PUNISHMENTS, TERRESTRIAL AND SUPERNAL
In beginning this chapter it is fair to say that oaths will herein be regarded as a modified form of the ancient ordeal, in which the affiant invokes upon himself, if proved to have sworn falsely, the tortures of the ordeal, mundane or celestial, which in an older form of civilization he would have been obliged to undergo as a preliminary trial.
The author learned while campaigning against the Sioux and Cheyennes, in 1876-1877, that the Sioux and Assinaboines had a form of oath sworn to while the affiant held in each hand a piece of buffalo chip.
Among the Hindus, “sometimes the trial was confined to swallowing the water in which the priest had bathed the image of one of the divinities.... The negroes of Issyny dare not drink the water into which the fetiches have been dipped when they affirm what is not the truth.”—(“Phil. of Magic,” Eusèbe Salverte, New York, 1862, vol. ii. p. 123.)
They formerly may have drunk the urine of the god or priest.
In “the ‘Domesday Survey,’ in the account of the city of Chester, vol. i. p. 262, we read: ‘Vir sive mulier falsam mensuram in civitate faciens deprehensus, IIII solid. emendab. Similiter malam cervisiam faciens, aut in Cathedra ponebatur stercoris, aut IIII solid. de prepotis.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 103, article “Ducking Stool.”)
“The ducking stool was a legal punishment. Roguish brewers and bakers were also liable to it, and they were to be ducked in stercore in the town ditch.”—(Southey, “Commonplace Book,” 1st series, p. 401, London, 1849.)
In Loango, Africa, “When a man is suspected of an offence he is carried before the king,” and “is compelled to drink an infusion of a kind of root called ‘imbando.’ ... The virtue of this root is that, if they put too much into the water, the person that drinketh it cannot void urine.... The ordeal consists in drinking and then in urinating as a proof of innocence.”—(See “Adv. of Andrew Battell,” in Pinkerton’s “Voyages,” vol. xvi. p. 334.)
In Sierra Leone the natives have a curious custom to which they subject all of their tribe suspected of poisoning. They make the culprit drink a certain “red water; after which for twenty-four hours he is not allowed to ease nature by any evacuation; and should he not be able to restrain them, it would be considered as strong a proof of his guilt as if he had fallen a victim to the first draught.”—(Lieutenant John Matthews, R. N., “Voyage to Sierra Leone,” 1785, London, 1788, p. 126.)
In the Hindu mythology, “slanderers and calumniators, stretched upon beds of red-hot iron, shall be obliged to eat excrements.”—(Southey, “Commonplace Book,” 1st series, London, 1849, p. 249. He also refers to 2 Kings xviii. 27, and to Isaiah xxxvi. 12.)
“D’après le système religieux de Brahme, la punition des calomniateurs dans l’enfer, consiste à être nourris d’excréments.”—(Majer. Dict. Mythol. en Allemagne, t. 2, p. 46; Bib. Scat., p. 12.)
Herodotus relates that Pheron, the son of Sesostris, conqueror of Egypt, became blind, and remained so for ten years.
“But in the eleventh year an oracle reached him from the city of Buto, importing that the time of his punishment was expired, and he should recover his sight by washing his eyes with the urine of a woman who had intercourse with her own husband only, and had known no other man.” Herodotus goes on to relate that Pheron tried the urine of his own wife and that of many other women ineffectually; finally he was cured by the urine of a woman whom he took to wife; all the others he burnt to death.—(“Euterpe,” part ii. cap. 3.)
In the “Histoire Secrète du Prince Croq’ Étron,” par M’lle Laubert, Paris, 1790, King Petaud orders Prince Gadourd to be buried alive in ordure,—a punishment which would have suggested the author’s acquaintance with Brahminical literature even had she not confessed it in these terms: “Genre de supplice qui n’était pas nouveau puisque d’après le système religieux de Brahme, la punition des calomniateurs dans l’enfer, consiste à être nourri d’excréments.”
The Africans have an ordeal,—“a superstitious ordeal, by drinking the poisonous Muave,” which induces vomiting only, according to Livingston (“Zambesi,” London, 1865, p. 120). This may or may not be the “red drink” of Lieutenant Matthews cited above.
Under the head of “Latrines,” allusion has been made to the prohibition, in the laws of the Thibetan Buddhists, against throwing ordure upon growing plants, etc. There is another case mentioned by Rockhill, which may as well be inserted here: “Si une bhikshuni jette des excréments de l’autre côté d’un mur sans y avoir regardé, c’est un pacittiya.”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill, Soc. Asiatique, Paris, 1885.)
In the words just quoted we find the definition of the offence as a “pacittiya,” or sin. The punishment for each sin or class of sins was carefully regulated and well understood in Thibetan nunneries.
“Cock-stool.” “A seat of ignominy ... in which scolding or immoral women used to be placed formerly as a punishment; ... same as ‘sedes Stercoraria.’”—(“Folk-Etymology,” Rev. A. Smythe-Palmer, London, 1882. See also Chambers’s “Book of Days,” vol. i. p. 211.)
The Chinese have a very curious and very horrible mode of punishment; criminals of certain classes are enclosed in barrels or boxes filled with building lime, and exposed in a public street to the rays of the noon-day sun; food in plenty is within reach of the unfortunate wretches, but it is salt fish, or other salt provision, with all the water needed to satisfy the thirst this food is certain to excite, but in the very alleviation of which the poor criminals are only adding to the torments to overtake them when by a more copious discharge from the kidneys the lime shall “quicken” and burn them to death.
In the famous bull of Ernulphus, Bishop of Rochester, cited in “Tristram Shandy,” the delinquent was to be cursed, “mingendo, cacando.”—(See “Tristram Shandy,” Lawrence Sterne, ed. of London, 1873, vol. i. p. 188.)
“Fasting on bread and drinking water defiled by the excrement of a fowl” are among the disciplinary punishments cited in Fosbroke’s “Monachism,” London, 1817, p. 308, note.
This specimen of monastic discipline may be better understood when read between the lines. The veneration surrounding chicken-dung in the religious system of the Celts, prior to the introduction of the Christian religion, could be uprooted in no more complete manner than by making its use a matter of scorn and contempt; history is replete with examples wherein we are taught that the things which are held most sacred in one cult are the very ones upon which the fury and scorn of the superseding cultus are wreaked. On this point read the notes taken from the pamphlet of Mr. James Mooney, in regard to the superstitions attaching to the uses of chicken-dung among the Irish peasantry.
“I have mentioned the sacrifice of cocks by Kelts; it was, and still is, all over Asia, the cheap, common, and very venial substitute for man.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. ii. p. 274.)
We may reasonably infer that the dung of chickens as used by the Irish is a representative of, and a substitute for, human ordure.
The Easter season which has preserved and transmitted to our times so many pagan usages, has among its superstitions one to the effect that “every person must have some part of his dress new on Easter day, or he will have no good fortune that year. Another saying is that unless that condition be fulfilled, the birds are likely to spoil your clothes.”—(Brand, “Pop. Antiq.” vol. i. p. 165, art. “Easter Day.”)
The Kalmucks believe in many places of future punishment, one of them being “un de ces séjours est couvert d’une nuée d’ordures et de vidanges.” (Pallas, Paris, 1793, vol. i. p. 552.) This is the belief inculcated by their Lamas.
At the Lithuanian festival called “Sabarios,” fowls were killed and eaten. “The bones were then given to the dog to eat; if he did not eat them all up, the remains were buried under the dung in the cattle-stall.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 70.)
In cases of sickness “the inhabitants of a village are forbidden to wash themselves for a number of days, ... and to clean their chamber-pots before sun-rise.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Dr. Franz Boas, in Sixth An. Rep. Bur. of Ethnol. Wash. D. C. 1888, p. 593.)
“We have seen that in modern Europe, the person who cuts or binds or threshes the last sheaf is often exposed to rough treatment at the hands of his fellow-laborers. For example, he is bound up in the last sheaf and thus encased is carried or carted about, beaten, drenched with water, thrown on a dunghill, etc.”—(“The Golden Bough,” i. 367.)
In several parts of Germany, the Fool of the Carnival was buried under a dung-heap. (Idem, vol. i. p. 256.) Further on, is given this explanation: “The burying of the representative of the Carnival under a dung-heap is natural, if he is supposed to possess a quickening and fertilizing influence like that ascribed to the effigy of Death.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 270.)
“In Siam it was formerly the custom, on one day of the year, to single out a woman broken down by debauchery, and carry her on a litter through all the streets, to the music of drums and hautboys. The mob insulted her and pelted her with dirt; and, after having carried her through the whole city, they threw her on a dunghill.... They believed that the woman thus drew upon herself all the malign influences of the air and of evil spirits.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 196.)
In Suabia there is a rough harvest game in which one of the laborers takes the part of the sow; he is pursued by his comrades and if they catch him “they handle him roughly, beating him, blackening or dirtying his face, throwing him into filth.... At other times he is put in a wheelbarrow.... After being wheeled round the village, he is flung on a dunghill.”—(Idem, vol. ii. pp. 27, 28.)
The negroes of Guinea are firm believers in the theory of Obsession, and have a god “Abiku” who “takes up his abode in the human body.” He generally bothers little children, who sometimes die. “If the child dies, the body is thrown on the dirt-heap to be devoured by wild beasts.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 57.)
“The Iroquois inaugurated the new year in January” with “a festival of dreams.... It was a time of general license.... Many seized the opportunity of paying off old scores by belaboring obnoxious persons, ... covering them with filth and hot ashes.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 165, quoting Charlevoix, “La Nouvelle France.”)
“During the madder harvest in the Dutch province of Zealand, a stranger passing by a field where the people are digging the madder roots, ‘will sometimes call out to them, Koortspillers’ (a term of reproach). Upon this, two of the fleetest runners make after him, and if they catch him, they bring him back to the madder field and bury him in the earth up to his middle at least, jeering at him all the while; they then ease nature before his face.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 379.)
“Now, it is an old superstition that by easing nature on the spot where a robbery is committed, the robbers secure themselves for a certain time against interruption.... The fact, therefore, that the madder-diggers resort to this proceeding in presence of the stranger proves that they consider themselves robbers and him as the person robbed.”—(Idem, p. 380.)
In connection with the above, the following deserves consideration: “Reverence. An ancient custom which obliges any person easing himself near the highway or footpath, on the word ‘reverence’ being given him by a passenger, to take off his hat with his teeth, and, without moving from his station, to throw it over his head, by which it frequently falls into the excrement. This was considered as a punishment for the breach of delicacy. A person refusing to obey this law might be pushed backwards. Hence, perhaps, the term ‘sir-reverence.’”—(Grose, “Dict. of Buckish Slang.”)
It is more likely that the practice had some connection with the fear of witchcraft, or the evil eye of the stranger; we can hardly credit that peasantry living in an age when the highest classes received their guests at bedside receptions, “ruelles,” or in their “cabinets d’aisance,” would be squeamish in the trifling matter just alluded to.
In Japan “When any of these panders die ... their bodies are cast upon a dunghill.”—(John Saris, in Purchas, i. 368, A.D. 1611.)
“The tricks of the fayry called Pach.” “I smurch her face if it be cleane, but if it be durty, I wash it in the next pisse-pot I can finde.”—(“Life of Robin Goodfellow,” Black Letter, London, 1628, in Hazlitt’s “Fairy Tales,” London, 1875, p. 205.)
But the “women fayries,” under similar circumstances, “wash their faces and hands with a gilded child’s clout.”—(Idem, p. 206.)
“Their own spirits too will have nothing but excrement to eat, if during life the rites of the Bora (Initiation) have not been duly performed. With this compare the declaration of the Indian Manes (xii. 71) that a Kahatya who has not done his duty, will, after death, have to live on ordure and carrion. And in the Melanesian Hades the ghosts of the wicked have nothing to eat but vile refuse and excrement.”—(Personal Letter from John Frazer, LL.D., to Captain Bourke, dated Sydney, New South Wales, Dec. 24, 1889.)
The Australians believed that if a man did not allow the septum of the nose to be pierced, he would suffer in the next world. “As soon as ever the spirit Egowk left the body, it would be required, as a punishment, to eat Toorta-gwannang” (filth not proper for translation).—(“Aborigines of Victoria,” Smyth, vol. i. p. 274.)
Among some of the Australian tribes is found a potent deity named “Pund-jel,” whom Mr. Andrew Lang thinks may be the Eagle-Hawk. “As a punisher of wicked people, Pund-jel was once moved to drown the world, and this he did by a flood which he produced (as Dr. Brown says of another affair) by a familiar Gulliverian application of hydraulics.”—(“Myth, Rit., and Relig.,” Lang, London, 1887, ii. 5.)
Maurice cites five meritorious kinds of suicide, in the second of which the Hindu devotee is described as “covering himself with cow-dung, setting it on fire, and consuming himself therein.”—(Maurice, “Indian Antiquities,” London, 1800, vol. ii. p. 49.)
“Throw this slave upon the dunghill.”—(King Lear, act iii. sc. 6.)
When Squire Iden killed Jack Kade he exclaimed:—
“Hence will I drag thee, headlong by the heels, Unto a dunghill which shall be thy grave.”—(2 K. Henry, vi. 10.)
“Steward. Out, dunghill.”—(King Lear, act iv. sc. 6.)
“Forbearance from meat and work are also prescribed to a single woman in case the sun or moon (though we should rather call it a bird flying by) should let any uncleanness drop upon her; otherwise, she might be unfortunate, or even deprived of her life.”—(Crantz, “History of Greenland,” London, 1767, vol. i. p. 216.)
The “bitter water” of the Hebrew ordeals by which the woman accused of unfaithfulness was either proved innocent, or had her belly burst upon drinking, presents itself in this connection.—(See Numbers v.)
Dante, in his cap. xiii. speaks of those condemned for flattery: “a crowd immersed in ordure.”—(Cary’s translation.)
Ducange alludes to what may have been an ordeal or a punishment: “Aquam sordidam et stercoratem super sponsam jactare.”—(“In Lege Longobardi,” lib. i. tit. 16, c. 8.)
The Hebrew prophets sat on dungheaps while the recalcitrant people of Israel were warned: “Behold, I will spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts, and one shall take you away with it.”—(Malachi ii. 3.)
By reference to another portion of this volume, it will be seen that stercoraceous matter was deemed potent in frustrating witchcraft. Thus a mother was ordered to throw a “changeling” child upon a dunghill (p. 403.) The prostitutes of Amsterdam kept horse-dung in their houses for good luck, etc. Consequently, when we read of the corpses of criminals or witches having been thrown upon dunghills, we may let fancy indulge the idea that it was to render nugatory any schemes the ghost might cherish of wreaking revenge.
The historian Suetonius relates that the unfortunate Roman emperor Vitellius was pelted with excrement before being put to death.
Among the unlawful acts for Brahmans or Kshatriyas who are compelled to support themselves by following the occupations of Vaisyas, is selling sesamum, unless “they themselves have produced it by tillage.... If he applies sesamum to any other purpose but food, anointing, and charitable gifts, he will be born again as a worm, and together with his ancestors be plunged into his own ordure.”—(“Vasishtha,” cap. ii. 27-30. “Sacred Books of the East,” Oxford, 1882, vol. xiv., edition of Max Müller. This is one of the oldest of the Sacred Books. The same prohibition is to be found in “Prasna” 11, “Adhyaya” 1, “Kandika” 2.)
XXXVII. INSULTS
It is somewhat singular to find in the myths of the Zuñis—the very people among whom we have discovered the existence of this filthy rite of urine-drinking—an allusion to the fact that to throw urine upon persons or near their dwellings was to be looked upon as an insult of the gravest character. During the early winter of 1881 the author was at the Pueblo of Zuñi, New Mexico, while Mr. Frank H. Cushing was engaged in the researches which have since placed him at the head of American anthropologists, and then heard recited by the old men the long myth of the young boy who went to the Spirit Land to seek his father. One of the incidents upon which the story-tellers dwelt with much insistence was the degradation and ignominy in which the boy and his poor mother lived in their native village, as was shown by the fact that their neighbors were in the habit of emptying their urine vessels upon their roof and in front of their door.
The threat made against the Jews by Sennacherib (in Isaiah xxxvi. 12) deserves consideration in this connection; and also the threat in the Old Testament, “There shall not be left one that pisses against the wall.”
“Connected with the Samoan wars, several other things may be noted, such as consulting the gods, ... haranguing each other previous to a fight, the very counterpart of Abijah, King of Judah, and even word for word with the filthy-tongued Rabshakeh.”—(“Samoa,” Turner, p. 194.)
The people of Samoa have a myth relating a separation which occurred between the natives of several islands, due to the fact that the men and women living on Tutuaila “began to make a dunghill of their floating island.”—(Olosenga, idem, p. 225.)
“Nebuchadnezzar likewise gave Zedekiah (after he had made him dance and play before him a long while) a laxative drink, so that, like a beastly old fellow (as there are many such betwixt York and London), totus deturpatus fuit, he smelt as ill as your Ajax.” In a marginal reference, he adds: “According to an old ballad,—
‘And all to b⸺n was he, was he.’”
—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 35.)
This behavior, disgusting as it appears to us in all its features, had its parallel in the conduct of a prominent member of European aristocracy, who was wont to indulge his anger in a manner strikingly similar to the above at such moments as seemed to be proper for the punishment of his servants. His name is suppressed at the request of the correspondent furnishing the item.
Niebuhr says that the grossest insult that can be offered to a man, especially a Mahometan, in Arabia, is to spit upon his beard, or to say “De l’ordure sur ta barbe.”—(“Desc. de l’Arabie,” Amsterdam, 1774, p. 26.)
Niebuhr’s remarks in regard to the offence taken by the Bedouins at such an infraction of their etiquette as flatulence are repeated in a vague and guarded form by Maltebrun (“Univ. Geog.,” vol. ii. part “Arabia”).
In Angola, Africa, the greatest insult is, “Go and eat s—t.”—(Muhongo.)
“Dunghill. A coward. A cock-pit phrase, all but gamecocks being styled dunghills.”—(Grose, “Dictionary of Slang,” London, 1811.)
Tailors who accepted the wages prescribed by law were styled “Dung” by the “Flints,” who refused them.—(Idem.)
Among the rough games of English sailors was one, “The Galley,” in which a mopful of excrement was thrust in a landsman’s face.—(Idem.)
In Angola, Africa, flatulence is freely permitted among the natives; but any license of this kind taken while strangers are in the vicinity is regarded as a deadly insult.—(“Muhongo,” translated by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.)
In the report of one of the early American explorations to the Trans-Missouri region occurs the story that the Republican Pawnees, Nebraska, once (about 1780-90) violated the laws of hospitality by seizing a calumet-bearer of the Omahas who had entered their village, and, among other indignities, making him “drink urine mixed with bison gall.”—(“Long’s Expedition,” Philadelphia, 1823, vol. i. p. 300.)
Bison gall itself sprinkled upon raw liver, just warm from the carcass, was regarded as a delicacy. The expression “excrement eater” is applied by the Mandans and others on the Upper Missouri as a term of the vilest opprobrium, according to Surgeon Washington Matthews, U. S. Army (author of “Hidatsa,” and other ethnological works of authority), whose remarks are based upon an unusually extended and intelligent experience.
“They gave me the abuse of the Punjabi, ... pelting me with sticks and cow-dung till I fell down and cried for mercy.”—(“Gemini,” Rudyard Kipling, in “Soldiers Three,” New York, 1890.)
“May the garbage of the foundations of the city be thy food; may the drains of the city be thy drink.”—(“The Chaldean Account of Genesis,” George Smith, New York, 1880.)
Among the Cheyenne expressions of contempt is to be found one which recalls the objurgations of the Bedouins; namely, natsi-viz, or “s—t-mouth.”—(Personal notes of September 25, 1878, interview with the chiefs of the Northern Cheyennes, Ben Clark, interpreter.)
Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, who has made such prolonged and careful studies of the manners and myths of the tribes of the Siouan stock, is authority for the statement that the worst insult that one Ponca can give another is to say, “You are an eater of dog-dung;” and it is noticeable that the words of the expression are rarely used in the language of every-day life. He gives other examples from myths, etc., and supplies a variant of the story narrated by Captain Long; but as all this is to appear in one of the Doctor’s coming books, it is omitted from these pages.
The Kamtchatkans say, “May you have one hundred burning lamps in your podex,” “Eater of fæces with his fish-spawn,” etc.—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
“Stercus.” As a term of abuse.—“Nolo stercus curiæ dici Glauciam.”—(Cicero, “De Oratoribus,” 3, 41, 164; Andrew’s “Latin Dictionary,” New York, 1879, article “Stercus.”)
Caracalla put to death those who made water in front of his statues. “Damnati sunt eo tempore (that is, the end of his wars with the Germans) qui urinam in eo loco ferrant in quo statuæ aut imagines erant principis.”—(Ælius Lampridius, “Life of the Emperor Caracalla,” edition of Frankfort, 1588, p. 186, lines 43 and 44.)
There are some very singular laws of the ancient Burgundians in regard to abusive words. “Si quis alterum concagatum clamaverit, 120 denariis mulctetur.”—(Barrington, “Obs. on the Statutes,” London, 1775, p. 315.)
“I’ll pick thy head upon my sword, And piss in thy very visonomy.”
(“Ram Alley,” Ludowick Barry, 1611, edition of London, 1825.)
“The devil’s dung in thy teeth.”
(“The Honest Whore,” Thomas Dekkar, 1604, edition of London, 1825.)
“Again the coarsest word, khara. The allusion is to the vulgar saying, ‘Thou eatest skitel’ (that is, ‘Thou talkest nonsense’). Decent English writers modify this to ‘Thou eatest dirt;’ and Lord Beaconsfield made it ridiculous by turning it into ‘eating sand.’”—(“Arabian Nights,” Burton’s edition, vol. ii. pp. 222, 223.)
Readers of classical history will recall the incident of the outrage perpetrated by the mob of Tarentum upon the person of the Roman ambassador Posthumus, 282 B.C. A buffoon in the street threw filth upon his toga. The ambassador refused to be mollified, and tersely telling his assailants that many a drop of Tarentine blood would be required to wash out the stains, took out his departure. A cruel war followed, and the Tarentines were reduced to the rank of a conquered province.—(See “History of Rome,” Victor Duruy, English translation, Boston, 1887, vol. i. p. 462.)
“When the multitude had come to Jerusalem, to the feast of unleavened bread, and the Roman cohort stood over the temple, ... one of the soldiers pulled back his garment, and stooping down after an indecent manner, turned his posteriors to the Jews, and spake such words as might be expected upon such a posture.” The narration describes the riot which followed as a result, and ten thousand people were killed.—(See Josephus, “Wars of the Jews,” book ii. edition of New York, 1821.)
The dispute between Richard the Lion-Hearted and the Arch-Duke of Austria, which resulted afterwards in the incarceration of the English king in a dungeon, had its rise in the great insult of throwing the Austrian standard down into a privy. Matthew of Paris says distinctly that Richard himself did this. “Now he, being over well disposed to the cause of the Norman, waxed wroth with the Duke’s train, and gave a headstrong, unseemly order for the Duke’s banner to be cast into a cesspool.”—(See “The Third Crusade and Richard the First,” T. A. Archer, in “English History from Contemporary Writers,” New York, 1889.)
“Bigot. Out, dunghill! Darest thou brave a nobleman?”
(“King John,” iv. 3.)
“Gloster. Shall I be flouted thus by dunghill grooms?”
(“1 King Henry VI.,” i. 3.)
“York. Base dunghill villain and mechanical.”
(“2 King Henry VI.,” i. 3.)
“‘Khara,’ meaning dung, is the lowest possible insult. ‘Ta-kara’ is the commonest of insults, used also by modest women. I have heard a mother use it to her son.”—(Burton, “Arabian Nights,” vol. ii. p. 59, footnote.)
XXXVIII. MORTUARY CEREMONIES
A Parsi is defiled by touching a corpse. “And when he is in contact and does not move it, he is to be washed with bull’s urine and water.”—(“Shapast la Shayast,” cap. 2.; “Sacred Books of the East,” Max Müller, editor, Oxford, 1880, pp. 262, 269, 270, 272, 273, 279, 281, 282, 333, 349.)
In the cremation of a Hindu corpse at Bombay, the ashes of the pyre were sprinkled with water, a cake of cow-dung placed in the centre, and around it a small stream of cow-urine; upon this were placed plantain-leaves, rice-cakes, and flowers.—(“Modern India,” Monier Williams, p, 65.)
“They who return from the funeral must touch the stone of Priapus, a fire, the excrement of a cow, a grain of sesame, and water,—all symbols of that fecundity which the contact with a corpse might have destroyed.”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis, p. 49.)
The followers of Zoroaster were enjoined to pull a dead body out of the water. “No sin attaches to him for any bone, hair, grass, flesh, dung, or blood that may drop back into the water.”—(Fargard VI., Vendidad, Zendavesta, Darmesteter’s edition; Max Müller’s edition of the “Sacred Books of the East,” Oxford, 1880, p. 70.)
“There dies a man in the depths of the vale; a bird takes flight from the top of the mountain down into the depths of the vale, and it eats up the corpse of the dead man there; then up it flies from the depths of the vale to the top of the mountain; it flies to some one of the trees there,—of the hard-wooded or the soft-wooded, and upon that tree it vomits, it deposits dung, it drops pieces from the corpse.... If a man chop any of that wood for a fire, he is not regarded as defiled because ... Ahura-Mazda answered, ‘There is no sin upon any man for any dead matter that has been brought by dogs, by birds, by wolves, by winds, or by flies.’”—(Fargard V., of same work.)
If a dog had died on a piece of ground, the ground had to lie fallow for a year; at the end of that time, “they shall look on the ground for any bones, hair, flesh, dung, or blood that may be there.”—(Fargard VI.)
If the clothing of the dead “has not been defiled with seed or sweat or dirt or vomit, then the worshippers of Mazda shall wash it with gomez.”—(Fargard VII. Gomez (bull-urine) again alluded to as the great purifier on pp. 78-80, 104, 117, 118, 122, 123, 128, 182, 183, 212.)
The sacred vessels that had been defiled by the touch of a corpse were to be cleaned with gomez.—(Idem, pp. 91, 92.)
The most efficacious gomez was that of “an ungelded bull.”—(Idem, p. 212.)
“They shall cover the surface of the grave with ashes or cow-dung.”—(Fargard VIII.)
“Let the worshippers of Mazda here bring the urine wherewith the corpse-bearers shall wash their hair and their bodies.”—(Fargard VIII. See, also, p. 201 of this volume.)
In describing the funerals of the Eskimo, Gilder says: “The closing ceremony was a most touching one. After ‘Papa’ had returned from the grave, Armow went out of doors and brought in a piece of frozen something that it is not polite to specify, further than that the dogs had entirely done with it, and with it he touched every block of snow on a level with the beds of the igloo. The article was then taken out of doors and tossed up in the air, to fall at his feet; and by the manner in which it fell he could joyfully announce that there was no liability of further deaths in camp for some time to come.”—(“Schwatka’s Search,” Gilder, p. 234.)
“The Africans have an evil spirit called ‘Abiku,’ who takes up his abode in the human body.” This spirit is believed to cause the death of children. “If the child dies, the body is thrown on the dirt-heap.”—(“Fetichism,” Baudin, p. 57.)
There is also a purification of the soul of the dying by the same peculiar methods. In Coromandel,[68] the dying man is so placed that his face will come under the tail of a cow; the tail is lifted, and the cow excited to void her urine. If the urine fall on the face of the sick man, the people cry out with joy, considering him to be one of the blessed; but if the sacred animal be in no humor to gratify their wishes, they are greatly afflicted.
“The inhabitants of the coast of Coromandel carried those of their sick who were on the point of death, as a last resource, to the back of a fat cow, whose tail they twisted to make her urinate; if the cow’s urine spread over the whole face of the patient, it was a very good sign to the dirty rascals.”—(Paullini, pp. 80, 81.)
With equal solicitude does the Hottentot medicine-man follow the remains of his kinsmen to the grave, aspersing with the same sacred liquid the corpse of the dead and the persons of the mourners who bewail his fate.[69]
At Hottentot funerals, “two old men, the friends or relations of the deceased, enter each circle and sparingly dispense their streams upon each person, so that all may have some; all the company receive their water with eagerness and veneration. This being done, each steps into the hut, and taking up a handful of ashes from the hearth, comes out by the passage made by the corpse, and strews the ashes by little and little upon the whole company. This, they say, is done to humble their pride.”—(Kolbein, p. 401.)
“It is a pity that men in a savage state should take delight in doing that which is nasty, but such is the fact. It is a very common custom for the tribe, or that portion of it who are related to the one who has died, to rub themselves with the moisture that comes from the dead friend. They rub themselves with it until the whole of them have the same smell as the corpse.”—(“Aborigines of Victoria,” Smyth, vol. i. p. 131.) But in a footnote he adds that some of the Australians will not touch a dead body with the naked hand.
In the mortuary ceremonies of the Encounter Bay tribe (South Australians), “the old women put human excrement on their heads,—the sign of deepest mourning.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 113.)
The corpse of an Australian chief was surrounded “with wailing women, smeared with filth and ashes.”—(“Native Tribes of South Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, p. 75, received through the kindness of the Royal Society, New South Wales, Sydney, T. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)
“In the burial ceremonies, the women of many tribes besmear or plaster their heads with excrement and pipe-clay.”—(Personal letter from John F. Mann, Esq., dated Neutral Bay, Sydney, New South Wales.)
“When a child dies, women who carried it in their hands must throw their jackets away if the child has urinated on them. This is part of the custom that everything that has come in contact with a dead person must be destroyed.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Boas, p. 612.)
The Kootenays of Canada have a ceremonial aspersion after funerals. “When those who have buried the body return, they take a thorn bush, dip it into a kettle of water, and sprinkle the doors of all lodges.”—(“Report on the Northwest Tribes of Canada,” Dr. Franz Boas, to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Newcastle-upon-Tyne meeting, 1889, p. 46.)
Describing Italian funerals, Blunt says: “When the procession has reached the church, the bier is set down in the nave, and the officiating priest, in the course of the appointed service, sprinkles the body with holy water three times,—a rite in all probability ensuing from that practised by the Romans, of thrice sprinkling the bystanders with the same element.”—(“Vestiges,” p. 183.)
In the Tonga Islands, there are two principal personages,—Tooitonga and Veachi,—who are believed to be the living representatives of powerful gods. Upon the death of Tooitonga, certain ceremonies are practised, among which: “The men now approach the mount, i. e., the funeral mound, it being dark, and, if the phrase be allowable, perform the devotions to Cloacina, after which they retire. As soon as it is daylight the following morning, the women of the first rank, wives and daughters of the greatest chiefs, assemble with their female attendants, bringing baskets, one holding one side and one the other, advancing two and two, with large shells to clear up the depositions of the preceding night, and in this ceremonious act of humiliation, no female of the highest consequence refuses to take her part. Some of the mourners in the ‘fytoca’ generally come out to assist; so that, in a very little while, the place is made perfectly clean. This is repeated the fourteen following nights, and as punctually cleaned away by sunrise every morning. No persons but the agents are allowed to be witnesses of these extraordinary ceremonies; at least, it would be considered highly indecorous and irreligious to be so. On the sixteenth day, early in the morning, the same females again assemble; but now they are dressed up in the finest ‘gnatoo,’ and most beautiful Hamao mats, decorated with ribbons, and with wreaths of flowers round their necks; they also bring new baskets ornamented with flowers, and little brooms, very tastefully made. Thus equipped they approach, and act as if they had the same task to do as before, pretending to clear away the dirt, though no dirt is now there, and take it away in their blankets.... The natives themselves used to regret that the filthy part of these ceremonies was necessary to be performed, ... and that it was the duty of the most exalted nobles, even of the most delicate females of rank, to perform the meanest and most disgusting offices, rather than that the sacred grounds in which he was buried should remain polluted.” (Dillon’s “Expedition in Search of La Perouse,” London, 1829, vol. ii. pp. 57-59.) Dillon says that this “must be considered a religious rite, standing upon the foundation of very ancient customs.”—(Idem, p. 57.)
XXXIX. MYTHS
“All peoples have invented myths to explain why they observed certain customs.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 128.)
“Myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have long been forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason; to find a sound theory for an absurd practice.”—(Idem, p. 62.)
The Australians have a myth of the Creation of Man; it is given in Latin: “Ningorope lætitiæ plena in latrina lutum amœne erubescens cernebat; hoc in hominis figuram formabat, quæ tactu divæ motum vitalem sumebat et donc ridebat.”—(“Aborig. of Victoria,” Smyth, vol. i. p. 425.)
This myth is given in English from another authority, on next page of this volume.
The Creation Myth of the Australians relates that the god “Bund-jil oceanum creavit minctione per plures dies in terrarum orbem. Bullarto Bulgo magnam lotii copiam indicat.” (Idem, vol. i. p. 429.) (Bund-jil created the ocean by urinating for many days upon the orb of the earth.) The natives say that the god being angry “Bullarto Bulgo” upon the earth. Bullarto Bulgo indicates a great flow of urine.
The same myth has already been given from Andrew Lang, under “Ordeals and Punishments.”
In the cosmogonical myths of the islanders of Kadiack, it is related that the first woman, “by making water, produced seas.”—(Lisiansky, “Voy. round the World,” London, 1814, p. 197.)
“In the fourth story” (i. e., stories told by the Kalmucks and Mongols) “it is under the excrement of a cow that the enchanted gem, lost by the daughter of the king, is found.”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis, p. 129.)
In the mythic lore of the Hindus, the god Utanka sets out on a journey, protected by Indra. “On his way, he meets a gigantic bull, and a horseman who bids him, if he would succeed, eat the excrement of the bull; he does so, rinsing his mouth afterwards.”—(Idem, p. 80.)
Further on we learn that Utanka was told “the excrement of the bull was the ambrosia which made him immortal in the kingdom of the serpents.” (Idem, pp. 81, 95.) Here we have the analogue of the use of excrement and urine in Europe to baffle witches, and of the drinking of the Siberian girl’s urine, which in all probability was proffered to the guest as an assurance that no witchcraft was in contemplation, or else to baffle the witches, much as, in England, bridal couples urinated through the wedding ring.
The Chinese have a mythical animal which has been identified with the Tapir; it is called the Mih; to it they ascribe the power to eat iron and copper. “For this reason the urine of this animal is prescribed when a person has swallowed iron or copper; it will, in a short time, change them into water.”—(“Chinese Repository,” Canton, 1839, vol. vii. pp. 46, 47.)
“The story of Joa lo Praube is repeated almost word for word in the adventures of the Kamtchatkan god ‘Kutka;’ or, to be more exact, there is a myth in which it is narrated that that god had a great many tricks played upon him, in one of which he runs sticks into his gluteal region.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
This god Kutka was a great sodomite, and in some points, resembled the anti-natural god of the Sioux.
Speaking of the god “Aidowedo,” the serpent in the Rainbow as believed by the Negroes of Guinea, Father Baudin says: “He who finds the excrement of this serpent is rich forever, for with this talisman he can change grains of corn into shells which pass for money.” (“Fetichism,” Rev. F. Baudin, New York, 1885, p. 47.) He goes on to narrate a very amusing tale to the effect that the negroes got the idea that a prism in his possession gave him the power to bring the Rainbow down into his room at will, and that he could obtain unlimited quantities of the precious excrement.
Another myth of the foolish god “Kutka” represents him as falling in love with his own excrement and wooing it as his bride; he takes it home in his sleigh, puts it in his bed, and is only restored to a sense of his absurd position by the vile smell.—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
Possibly all this may be a myth to explain or to represent the state of mind into which those who indulged in the “muck-a-moor” were thrown, but even this interpretation seems far-fetched.
Sir John Moore, it is stated, fell in love with his own urine, and we have read from Montaigne the story of the French gentleman who preserved his egestæ to show to his visitors.
The tribes of the Narinyeri, Encounter Bay, South Australia, have a legend that difference in language was caused when certain of their ancestors “ate the contents of the intestines of the goddess ‘Wurruri.’”—(“Nat. tribes of South Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, p. 60, received through the kindness of the Roy. Soc., Sydney, N. S. Wales, T. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.)
In the same chapter we are told of the omission of one or two ceremonies “which were too indecent for general readers” (p. 61).
In the “Bachiller de Salamanca,” Le Sage has a hero whose misfortunes would lead us to suspect that Le Sage had been reading of some of the doings of the Kamtchatkan god “Kutka,” who, among the numerous pranks played upon him by his enemies, the mice, suffered the ignominy of having “a bag made of fish-skin attached to his orificium ani while he lay sound asleep. On his way home Kutka desired to relieve nature, but was much surprised, on leaving, at the insignificant deposit notwithstanding he had freed himself of so great a burden.
“Surprised at his cleanliness, he narrated the circumstances to Clachy (his wife), who soon discovered the true state of affairs, and pulling off Kutka’s pantaloons, detached the heavily laden bag with great laughters.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
In the 14th century farce of “Le Muynier,” the Miller has absorbed some of the popular ideas of his day, professed by certain philosophers of the time. He believes that, at the moment of death, the soul of a man escapes by the anus, and warns the priest to absolve him from his sins, saying: “Mon ventre trop se détermine. Helas! Je ne scay que je face; ostez-vous.”
The priest answers: “Ha! sauf vostre grace!”
Then the miller remarks: “Ostez-vous, car je me conchye.”
The wife and the priest pull the sick man to the edge of the bed and place him in such a position that if the doctrine of soul-departure by the anus be true, they may witness the miller’s final performance. The phenomenon of rectal flatulence is now observed, when suddenly, to the consternation of the wife and priest, a demon appears and placing a sack over the dying miller’s anus, catches the rectal gas and flies off in sulphurous vapor.—(“Med. in the Middle Ages,” Minor, p. 84, translated from “Le Moyen Age Médical,” by Dupouy.)
It was generally believed in Europe that the eggs of the Basilisk or Cockatrice could only be hatched by a toad or by the heat of a manure-pile.—(See “Mélusine,” Paris, January-February, 1890, p. 20.)
Ireland has been called the “Urinal of the Planets” from the constant and copious rains which visit it.—(See Grose, “Dict. of Buckish Slang,” London, 1811.)
The Apaches have a myth, or story, the analogue of the “Fee-fo-Fum” of our own childhood; but the giant, instead of smelling the blood of an Englishman, in the words given in Spanish, “huele la cagada.”
The Chinese myth concerning the wonderful digestive powers of the “Mih” has its counterpart in the ancient belief that the same power was possessed by the Ostrich.
“The Wangwana and Wanyumbo informed me ... that if the elephant observes the excrement of the rhinoceros unscattered, he waxes furious, and proceeds instantly in search of the criminal, when woe befall him if he is sulky, and disposed to battle for the proud privilege of leaving his droppings as they fall. The elephant, in that case, breaks off a heavy branch of a tree, or uproots a stout sapling like a boat’s mast, and belabors the unfortunate beast until he is glad to save himself by hurried flight. For this reason, the natives say, the rhinoceros always turns round and thoroughly scatters what he has dropped.”—(“Through the Dark Continent,” Henry M. Stanley, New York, 1878, vol. i. p. 477.)
“In other myths, in the Brahmanas, Prajapati creates man from his body, or rather the fluid of his body becomes a tortoise, the tortoise becomes a man, etc.”—(“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 248. See also under chapter on the Mistletoe, p. 99 of this volume.)
“Moffatt is astonished at the South African notion that the sea was accidentally created by a girl.” (“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Lang, vol. i. p. 91.) Perhaps this tale belongs to our series of myths.
“The Encounter Bay people have another myth, which might have been attributed by Dean Swift to the Yahoos, so foul an origin does it attribute to mankind.”—(Idem, Lang, vol. i. p. 170.)
“As the mythology and traditions of other heathen nations are more or less immoral and obscene, so it is with these people.” (“Nat. Trib. of S. Australia,” p. 200.) “Mingarope having retired upon a natural occasion was highly pleased with the red color of her excrement, which she began to mould into the form of a man, and tickling it, it showed signs of life and began to laugh.”—(Idem, p. 201.)
The myth relating that differences in language sprung up after certain of the tribes had eaten the excrement of the goddess “Wurruri” is given on p. 268; it has been recited in this volume on a previous page. There was another god, named Nurunduri, of whom the story is told that he once made water in a certain spot, “from which circumstance the place is called Kainjamin (to make water.)”—(Idem, p. 205.)
Among the Bilgula of British Columbia, there is a myth which relates that a certain stump of a tree was a cannibal and had captured a girl. Once, when he had gone out to fish for halibut, “he ordered his urinary vessel to call him if the girl should make an attempt to escape. When she did so, the vessel cried, ‘Rota-gota, Rota-gota, gota.’”—(Personal letter from Dr. Franz Boas, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.)
There is a riddle among the Kamtchatkans in regard to human feces: “My father has numerous forms and dresses; my mother is warm and thin and bears every day. Before I am born, I like cold and warmth, but after I am born, only cold. In the cold I am strong, and in the warmth, weak; if cold, I am seen far; if warm, I am smelled far.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
Among some of the Eskimo tribes the Raven is represented as talking to its own excrement and consulting it; excrement occurs frequently in their legends.—(Personal letter from Dr. Boas, as above.)
From the preceding paragraph we see that the Eskimo must have formerly, even if they do not now, consulted excrement in their Divination; the extract from Gilder, given under “Mortuary Ceremonies” confirms this hypothesis.
The people of Kamtchatka believed that rain was the urine of Billutschi, one of their gods, and of his genii; but, after this god has urinated enough, he puts on a new dress made in the form of a sack, and provided with fringes of red seal hair, and variously colored strips of leather. These represent the origin of the Rainbow.
The Kamtchatkan god Kutka was once pursued by enemies, but saved himself “by ejecting from his bowels all kinds of berries, which detained his pursuers.”
The myths of the Kamtchatkans offer a parallel to the stories that the presents of the devil always turned into dross. There is the story of the god Kutka, upon whom, as we have seen, many tricks were played. In one the food with which he supplied himself “turned into peat, rotten wood, and piss.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
“The Central Eskimo believe that rain is the urine of a deity.”—(See “The Central Eskimo,” Boas, p. 600.)
“Amber (as some thinke) is made of whale’s dung.”—(John Leo, “Observ. of Africa,” in Purchas, vol. ii. p. 772.)
Ambergris was anciently supposed to be the dung of the whale or other monster of the sea.—(Mr. W. W. Rockhill.)
This view about the origin of amber was not credited by Avicenna. “Ambram non esse stercus animalis maris.”—(Vol. i. p. 273, b10.)
In the liturgy of the hill tribes of the Nilgherris, it is related—
“Mada a uriné dans le feu.” “Mada a fienté à la face du soleil.”
—(Quoted in “Les Primitifs,” p. 245.)
Réclus, in the same work, gives a fragment of an Orphic song: “Glorieux Jupiter, le plus grand des Olympiens, toi qui te plais dans les crottins des brebis, qui aimes à t’enfoncer dans les fientes des chevaux et des mulets.”—(p. 246, quoting from “Fragmenta Orphei,” edited by Hermann.)
“The blessed Apostle Paul, being rapt in contemplation of divine blissfulness, compares all the chief felicities of the earth, esteeming them (to use his own words) as ‘stercora,’ most filthy dung in regard of the joys he hoped for.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 26.)
“He is truly wise that accounteth all earthly things as dung that he may win Christ.”—(Matt. xvii. 23, quoted in Thomas à Kempis, cap. iv., “Of the Doctrine of Truth.”)
“It was current among the small boys at school some thirty-five years since, that were a man to make water whilst in connection with a woman she would die.”—(Personal letter from Prof. Frank Rede Fowke, South Kensington Museum, London, England.)
The name of the city of Chicago has been traced by some philologist to the Indian word for skunk; and it is said to be “equal to bestiola fœda mingens.” The urine of this little animal was believed by some of the Indian tribes to be capable of blinding the man in whose eyes it entered; the animal itself was deified by the Aztecs under the name of Tezcatlipoca.
For the interpretation given for the word “Chicago,” see the work “Indian Names of Places near the Great Lakes,” by Captain Dwight Kelton, U. S. Army, Chicago, Illinois, 1888.
XL. URINOSCOPY, OR DIAGNOSIS BY URINE
The examination of the urine and feces of the sick seems to have obtained in all parts of the world, and among all sorts of people; but in the earlier stages of human progress it was complicated with ideas of divination and forecast, which would make it a religious observance.
The health of a patient was shown by the condition of his urine.—(Pliny, lib. xxviii. cap. 6.)
The Arabians used to bring to their doctors “the water of their sick in phials.”—(Burton, “Arabian Nights,” vol. iv. p. 11.)
In the index to the Works of Avicenna there are two hundred and seventy-five references to the appearance, etc., of the urine of the sick.—(Translation of Avicenna made by Gerard of Cremona, edition of Venice, 1595.)
“Apothecaries used to carry the water of their patients to the physician.”—(Fosbroke, “Encyclopædia of Antiquities,” vol. i. p. 526, article “Urine.”)
To determine whether a man had an affection of the lungs or liver, some of his urine was cast upon wheat bran, which was then put aside in a cool place; if worms appeared, he was afflicted, etc.—(Beckherius, “Med. Microcosmus,” p. 62.)
From an examination of the feces and urine of the patient to determine his present state of health, and if possible to make a prognosis of his future condition, was, in the minds of ignorant or half-educated men merely the first step in the direction of determining the future of the commonwealth by an inspection of the viscera and the excrement of the victims whose blood smoked upon its altars. The Romans were addicted to this mode of divination, which Schurig incorrectly styles “Anthropomancy.” He relates that Heliogabalus was especially fond of this, and, indeed, he credits that voluptuary with its introduction, and expresses his gratification that he met his deserts in being killed in a privy and left to die in ordure. The Saxons also were given to this method of consulting the future.—(See “Chylologia,” pp. 749, 750.)
“Uromantie. ff. (Med. et Divin.), mot formé de “ouron,” urine, et “manteia,” divination, qui signifie l’art de diviner par le moyen des urines l’état présent d’une maladie, et d’en prédire les évènements futurs.”—(“Encyc. ou Dict. Rais. des Sciences,” etc., fol. Neufchatel, 1745, vol. xvii. p. 499, given in personal letter to Captain Bourke from Professor Frank Rede Fowke, South Kensington Museum, London, England.)
“Falstaff. Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water?
“Page. He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water; but for the party that owed it, he might have more diseases than he knew for.”—(Shakspeare, “2 King Henry IV.,” i. 2.)
Sir Thomas More was possessed of great wit and a fine flow of spirits, which even the approach of death could not dispel. Upon receiving notification that he had been condemned to death by his master, King Henry VIII., “he called for his urinal, and having made water in it, he cast it and viewed it (as physicians do) a pretty while; at last he sware soberly that he saw nothing in that man’s water but that he might live if it pleased the king.”—(“Ajax,” p. 61.)
Thibetan doctors examine the urine of the patient; then churn it and listen to the noise made by the bubbles.—(Mr. W. W. Rockhill.)
“How to vex her, And make her cry so much that the physician, If she fall sick upon it, shall want urine To find the same by, and she, remediless, Die in her heresy.”
(“Scornful Lady,” v. 1, Beaumont and Fletcher.)
The people of Europe did not restrict their examinations to the egestæ of human beings; they were equally careful to scrutinize every day the droppings of the hounds, hawks, and other animals used in the chase.—(See “Ajax.”)
In the farce of “Master Pathelin” (A.D. 1480), the hero, “in his ravings abuses the doctors ... for not understanding his urine.... Charlatans especially exploited in this field of medicine, practising it illegally in the country under the name of ‘water-jugglers’ and ‘water-judges.’ Such men still practise in Normandy and in certain northern provinces of France.”—(“Med. in the Middle Ages,” Minor, p. 82.)
“It is a common practice in these days, by a colourable deriuation of supposed cunning from the vrine, to foretell casualties, and the ordinary euents of life, conceptions of a woman with child, and definite distinctions of the male and female in the womb.” (Cotta, “Short Discovery,” London, 1612, p. 104. He goes on to say that even as a mode of strict medical diagnosis, urinoscopy is not a certain test, the body, in every disease, being more or less disordered, and this disorder acting upon the urine.)
Montaigne tells the story of a gentleman who always kept for seven or eight days his excrements, in different basins, in order to talk about and show them. (Buckle, “Commonplace Book,” vol. ii. p. 357, quoting from Montaigne’s “Essais,” lib. iii. cap. 9, p. 600.)
Speaking of melancholy people, Burton says, “Their urine is most part pale and low-colored, ‘urina pauca, acris, biliosa’ (Arctæus), and not much in quantity.... Their melancholy excrements, in some very much, in others little.”—(“Anatomy of Melancholy,” vol. i. p. 268.)
ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE EMOTIONS UPON THE EGESTÆ.
Reciprocally, the influence exerted by the emotions over functional disturbances has been made the subject of investigation by learned commentators.
“Aristote, dans les Problèmes Physiques, s’occupe des rapports qui lient les impressions de l’âme aux fonctions intestinales. Il recherche pourquoi une frayeur subite et violente cause presque toujours et incontinent la diarrhée.” (Aule-Gelée, lib. xix. c. 4, “Bib. Scatalog.” p. 66.)
Schurig gives numbers of instances of the power of the mind over the act of alvine dejection; evacuation may be caused by perturbation of mind, by fear, by insomnia, by thunder, by anger, etc. See “Chylologia,” p. 701. In a preceding chapter Schurig narrates several examples of people, principally women, who were never able to excite nature to the act of evacuation except by artificial aids addressed to some faculty of the mind,—imagination, laughing, etc.
Harington, in “Ajax,” mentions the case of the Pope’s Legate, “who brought the last jubilee into France; who, fearing the pages who by custom bustle about him to divide his canopie, and suspecting treason among them, suddenly laid you wot of in his breeches” (p. 16).
Dr. Fletcher, United States Army, has devoted considerable attention to this subject. He has kindly placed the results of his wide range of reading at the disposal of the author of this volume.
“The more you cry, the less you piss,”—a vulgar saying of considerable antiquity. This saying is founded upon a correct physiological observation; an excess of one secretion results in a proportionate diminution of others.
The great Greek scholar, Porson, indulged his wit by transliterating into Hellenic characters the above homely saw, and thereby mystified the learned pundits who were called upon to read it.[70]
“If love demands weeping, oh, why should I spare Those floods which, of course, must be lavished elsewhere?”
“And midst their bawling and their hissing, They cried, to keep themselves from p⸺g. Finding their water would come out, They thought it best, without dispute, Rather than wet both breeks and thighs, To let it bubble through their eyes.”
(Homer Burlesqued, book xii.)
“I must call, from between thy thighs, The urine back into thine eyes, And make thee, when my tale thou hearest, Channel thy cheeks with launt reversed.”
(Musarum Deliciæ, i. p. 110.)
“Launt” is an obsolete word, meaning urine. See Cotgrave’s Dictionary.
“What if she whine, shed tears, and frown? Laugh at her folly, she’ll have done; Never dry up her tears with kisses, The more she cries, the less she p⸺s.”
(Reflections, Moral, Critical, and Cosmical, part iii. p. 23, A.D. 1707.)
This expression is to be found also in old French,—perhaps is derived from it: “Pleurez donc, et chiez bien des yeux, vous en pissez moins.”—(“Moyen de Parvenir,” A.D. 1610.)
“Juletta, how loath she was to talk, too, how she feared me! I could now piss mine eyes out for mere anger.”
(“The Pilgrim,” iii. 4, Beaumont and Fletcher.)
The converse of the adage is illustrated in the following epigram on a lady who shed her water at seeing the tragedy of “Cato:”
“Whilst maudlin chiefs deplore their Cato’s fate, Still, with dry eyes, the Tory Celia sate; But, though her pride forbade her eyes to flow, The gushing waters found a vent below. Tho ’n secret, yet with copious streams she mourns, Like twenty river-gods, with all their urns. Let others screw on hypocritic face, She shows her grief in a sincerer place; Here Nature reigns, and passion, void of art, For this road leads directly to the heart.”
(Nick Rowe.)
“But Sandwich, though with vast surprise, He saw the monarch’s weeping eyes, Told him it would not be amiss,— The more he cryed, the less he pissed.”
(From “The New Foundling Hospital of Wit,” vol. lv. p. 204.)
“‘Boh,’ said to be the name of a Danish general, who so terrified his opponent, Foh, that he caused him to bewray himself.”—(Grose, Dict. of Buckish Slang, art. “Boh.” See, also, in same volume, the account of the Puritan preacher who met with the same accident in his pulpit upon hearing that the royal troops were approaching,—art. “Sh—t Sack.”)