XIV. THE KING’S FIRE
[Sidenote: Sacred Marriage of the Fire-god with a woman.] Thus far we have dealt mainly with those instances of the Sacred Marriage in which a human being is wedded to the divine powers of vegetation or water. Now we pass to the consideration of a different class of cases, in which the divine bridegroom is the fire and his bride a human virgin. And these cases are particularly important for our present enquiry into the early Latin kingship, since it appears that the old Latin kings were commonly supposed to be the offspring of the fire-god by mortal mothers. The evidence which points to this conclusion is as follows.
[Sidenote: Legend of the birth of King Servius Tullius from the fire.] First, let us take the legend of the birth of King Servius Tullius. It is said that one day the virgin Ocrisia, a slave-woman of Queen Tanaquil, the wife of King Tarquin the elder, was offering as usual cakes and libations of wine on the royal hearth, when a flame in the shape of the male member shot out from the fire. Taking this for a sign that her handmaiden was to be the mother of a more than mortal son, the wise Queen Tanaquil bade the girl array herself as a bride and lie down beside the hearth. Her orders were obeyed; Ocrisia conceived by the god or spirit of the fire, and in due time brought forth Servius Tullius, who was thus born a slave, being the reputed son of a slave mother and a divine father, the fire-god. His birth from the fire was attested in his childhood by a lambent flame which played about his head as he slept at noon in the king’s palace.[639] This story, as others have pointed out before,[640] seems clearly to imply that the mother of Servius was a Vestal Virgin charged with the care and worship of the sacred fire in the king’s house. Now, in Promathion’s History of Italy, cited by Plutarch, a similar tale was told of the birth of Romulus himself. It is [Sidenote: Legend of the birth of Romulus from the fire.] said that in the house of the King of Alba a flame like to the male organ of generation hung over the hearth for many days. Learning from an oracle that a virgin should conceive by this phantom and bear a son of great valour and renown, the king bade one of his daughters submit to its embraces, but she disdained to do so, and sent her handmaid instead. Angry at her disobedience, her father ordered both the maidens to be put to death. But Vesta appeared to him in a dream, forbade the execution, and commanded that both the girls should be imprisoned until they had woven a certain web, after which they were to be given in marriage. But the web was never finished, for as fast as they wove it by day, other maidens, in obedience to the king’s orders, unwove it at night. Meantime the handmaiden conceived by the flame of fire, and gave birth to Romulus and Remus.[641] In this legend, as in the story of the birth of Servius Tullius, it is plain that the mother of the future King of Rome was both a slave and a priestess of Vesta. Orthodox Roman tradition always admitted that she was a Vestal, but naturally enough represented her as the king’s daughter rather than his slave. The god Mars, it was said, got her with child as she drew water in his sacred grove.[642] However, when we compare this legend with the similar story of the birth of Servius, we may suspect that Promathion has preserved, though perhaps in a perverted form, an old feature of the Latin kingship, namely, that one of the king’s parents might be, and sometimes was, a slave. Whether that was so or not, such tales at least bear witness to an old belief that the early Roman kings were born of virgins and of the fire. Similarly Caeculus, the founder of Praeneste, passed for a [Sidenote: Legend of the birth of Caeculus from the fire.] son of Vulcan. It was said that his mother conceived him through a spark, which leapt from the fire and struck her as she sat by the hearth. She exposed the child near a temple of Jupiter, and he was found there beside a fire by some maidens who were going to draw water. In after-life he proved his divine birth by working an appropriate miracle. When an infidel crowd refused to believe that he was the son of a god, he prayed to his father, and immediately the unbelievers were surrounded with a flame of fire.[643] More than this, the whole of the Alban dynasty appear to have traced their descent from a Vestal, for the wife of King Latinus, their legendary ancestor, was named Amata[644] or Beloved, and this was the regular title bestowed on a Vestal after her election,[645] a title which cannot be fully understood except in the light of the foregoing traditions, which seem to shew that the Vestals were regularly supposed to be beloved by the fire-god. Moreover, fire is said to have played round the head of Amata’s daughter Lavinia,[646] just as it played round the head of the fire-born Servius Tullius. As the same prodigy was reported of Julus or Ascanius, the son of Aeneas,[647] we may suspect that a similar legend was told of his miraculous conception at the hearth.
[Sidenote: The Vestal Virgins seem to have been regarded as the wives of the fire-god.] Now we may take it as certain that the Romans and Latins would never have traced the descent of their kings from Vestal Virgins unless they had thought that such a descent, far from being a stain, was, under certain circumstances, highly honourable. What the circumstances were that permitted a Vestal to become a mother, not only with impunity but with honour and glory, appear plainly from the stories of the birth of Caeculus, Romulus, and Servius Tullius. If she might not know a mortal man, she was quite free, and indeed was encouraged, to conceive and bear a son to the fire-god. In fact the legends suggest that the Vestals were regularly regarded as the fire-god’s wives. This would explain why they were bound to chastity during their term of service: the bride must be true to her divine bridegroom. And the theory of chastity could be easily reconciled with the practice of maternity by allowing a man to masquerade as the fire-god at a sacred marriage, just as in Egypt the king disguised himself as the god Ammon when he wedded the queen,[648] or as among the Ewe tribes the priest poses as the python-god when he goes in to the human brides of the serpent.[649] Thus the doctrine of the divine birth of kings presents no serious difficulty to people who believe that a god may be made flesh in a man, and that a virgin may conceive and bear him a son. Of course the theory of the divine motherhood of the Vestals applies only to the early regal and therefore prehistoric period. Under the Republic the demand for kings had ceased, and with it, therefore, the supply. Yet a trace of the old view of the Vestals as virgin mothers lingered down to the latest times in the character of Vesta herself, their patroness and type; for Vesta always bore the official title of Mother, never that of Virgin.[650] We may surmise that a similar belief and practice once obtained in Attica. For Erichthonius, king of Athens, is said to have been a son of the fire-god Hephaestus by the virgin goddess Athena: the story told of his miraculous birth from the ground, which had been impregnated by the seed of the fire-god, is clearly a later version devised to save the virginity of his mother.[651] The perpetual lamp of Athena, which burned in the Erechtheum or house of Erechtheus (who was identical with Erichthonius) on the acropolis of Athens,[652] may have answered to the perpetual fire of Vesta at Rome; and it is possible that the maidens called Arrephoroi or Errephoroi, who dwelt close to the Erechtheum,[653] may at one time have personated Athena and passed, like the Vestals, for wives of the fire-god.
[Sidenote: Rationalistic theory of the duties of the Vestals rejected.] It has, indeed, been held that the Vestals were of old the king’s daughters, who were kept at home and forbidden to marry for no other reason than that they might devote themselves to the domestic duties of drawing water, mopping the house, tending the fire, and baking cakes.[654] But this rationalistic theory could hardly explain the superstitious horror which the infidelity of a Vestal always excited in the Roman mind. Customs which begin in reason seldom end in superstition. It is likely, therefore, that the rule of chastity imposed on the Vestals was based from the first on a superstition rather than on a mere consideration of practical convenience. The belief that the Vestals were the spouses of the fire-god would explain the rule.[655] We have seen that the practice of marrying women to gods has been by no means uncommon. If the spirit of the water has his human wife, why not the spirit of the fire? Indeed, primitive man has a special reason for thinking that the fire-god should always be married. What that reason is, I will now try to explain.
[Sidenote: The Vestal fire of later times was a continuation of the fire on the king’s hearth.] But first it is necessary to apprehend clearly that the Vestal fire of republican and imperial Rome was strictly the successor or continuation of the fire which in the regal period had burned on the king’s hearth. That it was so appears plainly from the stories of the birth of Romulus and Servius Tullius, which shew that Vesta was believed to be worshipped at the royal fireside by maidens who were either the king’s daughters or his slaves. This conclusion is amply confirmed by a study of the temple of Vesta and the adjoining edifices in the Roman Forum. For the so-called temple of the goddess never was, strictly speaking, a temple at all. This fact we have on the authority of Varro himself, the greatest of Roman antiquaries.[656] The little round building in which the sacred fire always burned was merely a copy of the round hut in which the king, like his [Sidenote: The round temple of Vesta a copy of the ancient Italian hut.] subjects, had dwelt in days of old. Tradition preserved a memory of the time when its walls were made of wattled osiers and the roof was of thatch;[657] indeed, with that peculiar clinging to the forms of the past which is characteristic of royalty and religion, the inmost shrine continued down even to late times to be fashioned of the same simple materials.[658] The hut of Romulus, or what passed for it, constructed of wood, reeds, and straw, was always preserved and carefully repaired in the original style. It stood on the side of the Palatine hill facing the Circus Maximus.[659] A similar hut, roofed with thatch, was in like manner maintained on the Capitoline hill, and traditionally associated with Romulus.[660] The so-called temple of Vesta in historical times stood not on any of the hills, but in the Forum, at the northern foot of the Palatine. Its situation in the flat ground is quite consistent with the view that the building represents the king’s house of early, though not of the very earliest, times; for, according to tradition, it was built by Numa in this position between the Palatine and the Capitol, at the time when he united the two separate towns on these hills and turned the low swampy ground between them into their common place of assembly. Here, too, beside the temple of Vesta, the king built himself a house, which was ever afterwards known as the Regia or palace; formerly he had dwelt on the Quirinal.[661] In after-times this old palace of the kings was perhaps the official residence of their successor, the King of the Sacred Rites.[662] Adjoining it was the house of the Vestals,[663] at first, no doubt, a simple and unpretentious edifice, but afterwards a stately pile gathered round a spacious open court which must have resembled the cloister of a mediaeval monastery. We may assume that the kernel of this group of buildings was the round temple of Vesta, and that the hearth in it, on which burned the sacred fire, was originally the hearth of the king’s house. That the so-called temple was built on the model of the round huts of the old Latins is proved by the discoveries made at an ancient necropolis near Albano. The ashes of the dead were here deposited in urns, which are shaped like [Sidenote: Hut-urns found at Albano and Rome.] little round huts with conical roofs, obviously in order that the souls of the dead might live in houses such as they had inhabited during life. The roofs of these miniature dwellings are raised on cross-beams, sometimes with one or more holes to let out the smoke. The door is fastened by a crossbar, which is passed through a ring on the outside and tied to the two side-posts. In some of these hut-urns the side-posts are duplicated, or even triplicated, for the sake of ornament; and it is probable that the ring of columns which encircled the little temple of Vesta in historical times was merely an extension of the door-posts of the prehistoric hut. The necropolis in which these urns were found must be very ancient, since it was buried under the streams of lava vomited by the Alban Mountain in eruption. But the mountain has not been an active volcano within historical times, unless, indeed, the showers of stones and the rain of blood often recorded as ominous prodigies by Roman writers may be explained as jets of pumice and red volcanic dust discharged by one of the craters.[664] The prehistoric burial-ground lately discovered in the Roman Forum has yielded several hut-urns of precisely the same shape as those of the Alban cemetery. Hence we may infer with tolerable certainty that the earliest Latin settlers both on the Alban hills and at Rome dwelt in round huts built of wattle and dab, with peaked roofs of thatch.[665]
[Sidenote: “Numa’s crockery,” the primitive earthenware vessels used by the Vestals.] If further evidence were needed to convince us that the round temple of Vesta merely reproduced a Roman house of the olden time, it might be supplied by the primitive vessels of coarse earthenware in which the Vestals always presented their offerings, and which, in memory of the artlessness of an earlier age, went by the name of “Numa’s crockery.”[666] A Greek historian, writing when Rome was at the height of her power and glory under Augustus, praises the Romans for the austere simplicity with which, in an age of vulgar wealth and ostentation, they continued to honour the gods of their fathers. “I have seen,” said he, “meals set before the gods on old-fashioned wooden tables, in mats and earthenware dishes, the food consisting of barley loaves and cakes and spelt and firstfruits and such-like things, all plain and inexpensive and free from any touch of vulgarity. And I have seen libations offered, not in vessels of silver and gold, but in little earthen cups and jugs; and I heartily admired a people which thus walked in the ways of their fathers, not deviating from the ancient rites into extravagance and display.”[667] Specimens of this antique pottery have come to light of late years at the house of the Vestals, the temple of Vesta, and other religious centres in the Forum;[668] others had been found previously on the Esquiline hill and in the necropolis of Alba Longa.[669] We may conjecture that if the Romans continued to serve the gods their meals in simple earthenware dishes long after they themselves quaffed their wine from goblets of crystal and gold or from murrhine cups with their cloudy iridescent hues of purple and white,[670] they did so, not from any principle of severe good taste, but rather from that superstitious fear of innovation which has embalmed in religious ritual, as in amber, so many curious relics of the past. The old forms and materials of the vessels were consecrated by immemorial usage and might not be changed with impunity. Indeed, in the ritual of the Arval Brothers the holy pots themselves appear to have been an object of worship.[671] Specimens of these pots have been found on the site of the sacred grove where the Brothers performed their quaint service, and they shed an interesting light on the conservatism of the Roman religion. Some of them are moulded in the most primitive fashion by [Sidenote: Rude pottery used by the Arval Brothers.] the hand without any mechanical appliance. But most of them belong to a stage of art, later indeed than this rude beginning, yet earlier than the invention of the potter’s wheel. In order to give the vessels their proper shape and prevent the sides from collapsing, wooden hoops were inserted in them, and the marks made by these hoops in the soft clay may still be seen on the inside of most of the pots found in the grove. We may suppose that when the potter’s wheel came into universal use, the old art of making pottery by the hand was lost; but as religion would have nothing to do with pots made in the new-fangled way, the pious workman had to imitate the ancient ware as well as he could, eking out his imperfect skill with the aid of wooden hoops.[672] Perhaps the fictores Vestalium and the fictores Pontificum, of whom we read in inscriptions,[673] were those potters who, combining a retrograde art with sound religious principles, provided the Vestals and Pontiffs with the coarse crockery so dear to gods and to antiquaries. If that was so, they may have had in the exercise of their craft to observe some such curious rules as are still [Sidenote: Savage superstitions as to the making of pottery.] observed in similar circumstances by the savage Yuracares, a tribe of Indians living dispersed in the depths of beautiful tropical forests, at the eastern foot of the Bolivian Andes. We are told by an explorer that “the manufacture of pottery is not an everyday affair with this superstitious people, and accordingly they surround it with singular precautions. The women, who alone are entrusted with the duty, go away very solemnly to look for the clay, but they do so only when there is no crop to be gathered. In the fear of thunder they betake themselves to the most sequestered spots of the forest in order not to be seen. There they build a hut. While they are at work they observe certain ceremonies and never open their mouth, speaking to each other by signs, being persuaded that one word spoken would infallibly cause all their pots to break in the firing; and they do not go near their husbands, for if they did, all the sick people would die.”[674] Among the Ba-Ronga of South Africa pottery is made by women only, and they prefer to employ a child under puberty to light the fire in which the pots are to be baked, because the child has pure hands and the pots are therefore less likely to crack in the furnace than if the woman lit the fire herself.[675] If the reader objects that Roman potters cannot have been trammelled by superstitions like those which hamper the savage potters of America and Africa, I would remind him of the rules laid down by grave Roman writers for the moral guidance of cooks, bakers, and butlers. After mentioning a number of these writers by name, Columella informs us that “all of them are of opinion that he who engages in any one of these occupations is bound to be [Sidenote: Chastity required in persons who handle dishes and food.] chaste and continent, since everything depends on taking care that neither the dishes nor the food should be handled by any one above the age of puberty, or at least by any one who is not exceedingly abstemious in sexual matters. Therefore a man or woman who is sexually unclean ought to wash in a river or running water before he touches the contents of the storeroom. That is why there should be a boy or a maid to fetch from the storeroom the things that are needed.”[676] When Roman cooks, bakers, and butlers were expected to be so strict in the service of their human masters, it might naturally be thought that the potters should be not less so whose business it was to fashion the rude yet precious vessels meet for the worship of the gods.
[Sidenote: Sanctity of the storeroom (penus) and of the Penates in a Roman house.] If the storeroom (penus) of a Roman house was deemed so holy that its contents could only be handled by persons ceremonially clean, the reason was that the Penates or gods of the storeroom dwelt in it.[677] The domestic hearth, where the household meals were cooked in the simple days of old, was the natural altar of the Penates;[678] their images, together with those of the Lares, stood by it and shone in the cheerful glow of the fire, when the family gathered round it in the evening.[679] Thus in every house Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, was intimately bound up with the Penates or gods of the storeroom; indeed, she was reckoned one of them.[680] Now the temple of Vesta, being nothing more than a type of the oldest form of Roman house, naturally had, like an ordinary house, its sacred storeroom, and its Penates or gods of the storeroom.[681] Hence if in every common house strict chastity was, theoretically at least, expected of all who entered the storeroom, we can well understand why such an obligation should have been laid on the Vestals, who had in their charge the holiest of all storerooms, the chamber in which were popularly supposed to be preserved the talismans on which the safety of the state depended.[682]
[Sidenote: Thus the temple of Vesta, with its perpetual fire and its sacred storeroom, was merely a copy of the Roman king’s house.] Thus on the whole we may regard it as highly probable that the round temple of Vesta in the Forum, with its sacred storeroom and perpetual fire, was merely a survival, under changed conditions, of the old house of the Roman kings, which again may have been a copy of the still older house of the kings of Alba. Both were modelled on the round huts of wattled osiers in which the early Latins dwelt among the woods and hills of Latium in the days when the Alban Mountain was still an active volcano. Hence it is legitimate to compare the old legends of the royal hearth with the later practice in regard to the hearth of Vesta, and from the comparison to explain, if we can, the meaning both of the legends and of the practice.
Footnote 639:
Plutarch, De fortuna Romanorum, 10; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. iv. 1 sq.; Ovid, Fasti, vi. 627-636; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 241, xxxvi. 204; Livy, i. 39; Servius on Virgil, Aen. ii. 683; Arnobius, Adversus nationes, v. 18. According to the Etruscan annals, Servius Tullius was an Etruscan by name Mastarna, who came to Rome with his friend Caeles Vibenna, and, changing his name, obtained the kingdom. This was stated by the Emperor Claudius in a speech of which fragments are engraved on a bronze tablet found at Lyons. See Tacitus, Annals, ed. Orelli, 2nd Ed., p. 342. As the emperor wrote a history of Etruria in twenty books (Suetonius, Divus Claudius, 42) he probably had some authority for the statement, and the historical, or at least legendary, character of Mastarna and Caeles Vibenna is vouched for by a painting inscribed with their names, which was found in 1857 in an Etruscan tomb at Vulci. See G. Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 3rd Ed., ii. 506 sq. But from this it by no means follows that the identification of Mastarna with Servius Tullius was correct. Schwegler preferred the Roman to the Etruscan tradition (Römische Geschichte, i. 720 sq.), and so, after long hesitation, did Niebuhr (History of Rome, 3rd Ed., i. 380 sqq.). It is fair to add that both these historians wrote before the discovery of the tomb at Vulci.
Footnote 640:
A. Schwegler, Römische Geschichte, i. 715; L. Preller, Römische Mythologie, 3rd Ed., ii. 344.
Footnote 641:
Plutarch, Romulus, 2.
Footnote 642:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Ant. Rom. i. 76 sq.; Livy, i. 3 sq.; Plutarch, Romulus, 3; Zonaras, Annal. vii. 1; Justin, xliii. 2. 1-3.
Footnote 643:
Servius on Virgil, Aen. vii. 678.
Footnote 644:
Virgil, Aen. vii. 343.
Footnote 645:
Aulus Gellius, i. 12, 14 and 19. Compare L. Preller, Römische Mythologie, 3rd Ed., ii, 161, 344. There was a very ancient worship of Vesta at Lavinium, the city named after Amata’s daughter Lavinia, the ancestress of the Alban kings. See above, vol. i. p. 14.
Footnote 646:
Virgil, Aen. vii. 71-77.
Footnote 647:
Virgil, Aen. ii. 680-686. We may compare the halo with which the vainglorious and rascally artist of genius, Benvenuto Cellini, declared his head to be encircled. “Ever since the time of my strange vision until now,” says he, “an aureole of glory (marvellous to relate) has rested on my head. This is visible to every sort of men to whom I have chosen to point it out; but those have been very few. This halo can be observed above my shadow in the morning from the rising of the sun for about two hours, and far better when the grass is drenched with dew. It is also visible at evening about sunset. I became aware of it in France at Paris; for the air in those parts is so much freer from mist, that one can see it there far better manifested than in Italy, mists being far more frequent among us.” See The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, translated by J. Addington Symonds 3rd Ed., (London, 1889), pp. 279 sq.
Footnote 648:
See above, pp. 131 sqq.
Footnote 649:
A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa, p. 60. See above, pp. 149 sq.
Footnote 650:
See below, p. 229.
Footnote 651:
Apollodorus iii. 14. 6; Schol. on Homer, Iliad, ii. 547; J. Tzetzes, Chiliades, v. 669 sq.; Augustine, De civitate Dei, xviii. 12.
Footnote 652:
Pausanias i. 26. 6 sq.; Strabo ix. 1. 16, p. 396; Plutarch, Numa, 9; id., Sulla, 13. As to the identity of Erechtheus and Erichthonius see my note on Pausanias, i. 18. 2 (vol. ii. p. 169).
Footnote 653:
Pausanias, i. 27. 3, with my note.
Footnote 654:
The theory was formerly advocated by me (Journal of Philology, xiv. (1885) pp. 154 sqq.) As to the duties of the Vestals see J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 2nd Ed., pp. 342 sqq.
Footnote 655:
This explanation was first, so far as I know, given by me in my Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship (London, 1905), p. 221. It has since been adopted by Mr. E. Fehrle (Die kultische Keuschheit im Altertum, Giessen, 1910, pp. 210 sqq.).
Footnote 656:
Aulus Gellius, xiv. 7. 7. Compare Servius on Virgil, Aen. vii. 153, ix. 4.
Footnote 657:
Ovid, Fasti, vi. 261 sq.
Footnote 658:
Festus, s.v. “penus,” p. 250, ed. C. O. Müller, where for saepius we must obviously read saeptus.
Footnote 659:
Ovid, Fasti, i. 199, iii. 183 sq.; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. i. 79. 11. For the situation of the hut see also Plutarch, Romulus, 20.
Footnote 660:
Conon, Narrationes, 48; Vitruvius, ii. 1. 5, p. 35, ed. Rose and Müller-Strübing; Macrobius, Saturn. i. 15. 10. Compare Virgil, Aen. viii. 653 sq. As to the two huts on the Palatine and the Capitol see A. Schwegler, Römische Geschichte, i. 394; L. Jahn on Macrobius, l.c.
Footnote 661:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Ant. Rom. ii. 66; Plutarch, Numa, 11 and 14; Solinus, i. 21; Ovid, Fasti, vi. 263 sqq.; id., Tristia, iii. 1. 29 sq.; Tacitus, Annals, xv. 41.
Footnote 662:
Servius on Virgil, Aen. viii. 363. Festus, however, distinguishes the old royal palace (Regia) from the house of the King of the Sacred Rites (s.v. “Sacram viam,” pp. 290, 293, ed. C. O. Müller). In classical times the Regia was the residence or office of the Pontifex Maximus; but we can hardly doubt that formerly it was the house of the Rex Sacrorum. See O. Gilbert, Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt Rom im Altertum, i. 225, 235 sq., 341, 344. As to the existing remains of the Regia, the temple of Vesta, and the house of the Vestals, see O. Richter, Topographie der Stadt Rom, 2nd Ed., pp. 88 sqq.; Ch. Huelsen, Die Ausgrabungen auf dem Forum Romanum 2nd Ed., (Rome, 1903), pp. 62 sqq., 88 sqq.; Mrs. E. Burton-Brown, Recent Excavations in the Roman Forum (London, 1904), pp. 26 sqq.
Footnote 663:
Dio Cassius, liv. 27, who tells us that Augustus annexed the house of the King of the Sacred Rites to the house of the Vestals, on which it abutted.
Footnote 664:
Many such phenomena are noted by Julius Obsequens in his book of prodigies, appended to W. Weissenborn’s edition of Livy, vol. x. 2, pp. 193 sqq. (Berlin, 1881).
Footnote 665:
W. Helbig, Die Italiker in der Poebene, pp. 50-55; E. Burton-Brown, Recent Excavations in the Roman Forum, pp. 30, 152, 154. For pictures of these hut-urns see G. Boni in Notizie degli Scavi, May 1900, p. 191, fig. 52; id., in Nuova Antologia, August 1900, p. 22.
Footnote 666:
Valerius Maximus, iv. 4. 11; Ovid, Fasti, vi. 310; Acron on Horace, Odes, i. 31, quoted by G. Boni in Notizie degli Scavi, May 1900, p. 179; Cicero, Paradoxa, i. 2; id., De natura deorum, iii. 17. 43; Persius, Sat. ii. 59 sq.; Juvenal, Sat. vi. 342 sqq.
Footnote 667:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Ant. Rom. ii. 23. On earthenware vessels used in religious rites see also Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxv. 108, “In sacris quidem etiam inter has opes hodie non murrinis crystallinisve, sed fictilibus prolibatur simpulis”; Apuleius, De magia, 18, “Eadem paupertas etiam populo Romano imperium a primordio fundavit, proque eo in hodiernum diis immortalibus simpuvio et catino fictili sacrificat.”
Footnote 668:
G. Boni in Notizie degli Scavi, May 1900, p. 179; E. Burton-Brown, Recent Excavations in the Roman Forum, pp. 23 sq., 41.
Footnote 669:
W. Helbig, Die Italiker in der Poebene, pp. 82 sqq.
Footnote 670:
Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvii. 21 sq.
Footnote 671:
G. Henzen, Acta Fratrum Arvalium (Berlin, 1874), pp. 26, 30; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae selectae, No. 5039; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 2nd Ed., 456.
Footnote 672:
W. Helbig, Die Italiker in der Poebene, p. 87.
Footnote 673:
G. Wilmanns, Exempla inscriptionum Latinarum, Nos. 311, 986, 1326, 1331; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae selectae, Nos. 456, 3314, 4926, 4933, 4936, 4942, 4943. Modern writers, following Varro (De lingua Latina, vii. 44, “fictores dicti a fingendis libis”), explain these fictores as bakers of sacred cakes. See Ch. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, pp. 1084 sq.; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 2nd Ed., 249. They may be right, but it is to be observed that Varro does not expressly refer to the fictores of the Vestals and Pontiffs, and further, that in Latin fictor commonly means a potter, not a baker, for which the regular word is pistor.
Footnote 674:
A. d’Orbigny, Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale, iii. (Paris and Strasburg, 1844) p. 194. Much of d’Orbigny’s valuable information as to this tribe was drawn from the manuscript of Father Lacueva, a Spanish Franciscan monk of wealthy family and saint-like character, who spent eighteen or twenty years among the Yuracares in a vain attempt to convert them. With regard to the crops mentioned in the text, these savages plant banana-trees, manioc, sugar-cane, and vegetables round about their huts, which they erect in clearings of the forest. See d’Orbigny, op. cit. iii. 196 sq.
Footnote 675:
H. A. Junod, “Les Conceptions physiologiques des Bantou Sud-Africains et leurs tabous,” Revue d’Ethnographie et de Sociologie, i. (1910), p. 147.
Footnote 676:
Columella, De re rustica, xii. 4. 2 sq.
Footnote 677:
Cicero, De natura deorum, ii. 27. 68.
Footnote 678:
Servius on Virgil, Aen. xi. 211.
Footnote 679:
Horace, Epodes, ii. 65 sq.; Martial, iii. 58. 3 sq.; L. Preller, Römische Mythologie, 3rd Ed., ii. 105 sqq., 155 sqq. See also A. De-Marchi, Il Culto privato di Roma antica, i. (Milan, 1896) p. 67, with plate iii.
Footnote 680:
Macrobius, Saturn. iii. 4. 11; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, pp. 145 sq.
Footnote 681:
Festus, s.v. “penus,” pp. 250, 251, ed. C. O. Müller; Tacitus, Annals, xv. 41; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 2nd Ed., 252 sq.
Footnote 682:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. ii. 66; Livy, xxvi. 27. 14; J. Marquardt, op. cit. iii. 2nd Ed., 250 sq.
XV. THE FIRE-DRILL
[Sidenote: Mode of rekindling the Vestal fire at Rome by means of the fire-drill.] In historical times, whenever the Vestal fire at Rome happened to be extinguished, the virgins were beaten by the pontiff; after which it was their custom, apparently with the aid of the pontiff, to rekindle the fire by drilling a hole in a board of lucky wood till a flame was elicited by friction. The new fire thus obtained was carried into the temple of Vesta by one of the virgins in a bronze sieve.[683] As this mode of producing fire is one of the most primitive known to man, and has been commonly employed by many savage [Sidenote: Use of the fire-drill by savages.] tribes down to modern times,[684] we need have no difficulty in believing that its use in the worship of Vesta was a survival from prehistoric ages, and that whenever the fire on the hearth of the Latin kings went out it was regularly relit in the same fashion. In its simplest form the fire-drill, as the apparatus has been appropriately named by Professor E. B. Tylor, consists of two sticks, the one furnished with a point and the other with a hole. The point of the one stick is inserted into the hole of the other, which is laid flat on the ground, while the operator holds the pointed stick upright in position and twirls it rapidly between his hands till the rubbing of the two sticks against each other produces sparks and at last a flame.
[Sidenote: Many savages regard the two sticks of the fire-drill as male and female, and the rubbing of the two together as a sexual union.] Many savages see in this operation a resemblance to the union of the sexes, and have accordingly named the pointed stick the man and the holed stick the woman. Thus we are told that among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia “fire was obtained by means of the fire-drill, which consisted of two dried sticks, each over a foot in length, and rounded off to less than an inch in diameter. One stick was sharpened at one end; while the other was marked with a couple of notches close to each other—one on the side, and the other on top. The sharpened end of the first stick was placed in the top notch of the other stick, and turned rapidly between the straightened palms of both hands. The heat thus produced by the friction of the sticks caused sparks to fall down the side notch upon tinder placed underneath, which, when it commenced to smoke, was taken in the hands, and blown upon until fanned into a flame. The tinder was dry grass, the shredded dry bark of the sagebrush, or cedar-bark. The sharpened stick was called the ‘man,’ and was made of black-pine root, tops of young yellow pine, heart of yellow-pine cones, service-berry wood, etc. The notched stick was called the ‘woman,’ and was generally made of poplar-root. However, many kinds of wood were used for this purpose. When hot ashes or a spark fell upon the tinder, they said, ‘The woman has given birth.’”[685] The Hopi Indians kindle fire ceremonially by the friction of two sticks, which are regarded respectively as male and female. The female stick has a notch in it and is laid flat on the floor; the point of the male stick is inserted in the notch of the female stick and is made to revolve rapidly by twirling the stick between the hands. Pollen is added as a male symbol, and the spark is caught in a tinder of shredded cedar bark.[686] The Urabunna tribe of Central Australia, who also make fire by means of the fire-drill, call the upright piece “the child-stick,” while they give to the horizontal or notched piece the name of “the mother-stick” or “the mother of the fire.”[687] So in the Murray Islands, Torres Straits, the upright stick is called the child (werem), and the horizontal stick the mother (apu). In Mabuiag, Torres Straits, on the other hand, the vertical stick is known as the male organ (ini), and the horizontal stick as the hole (sakai).[688]
[Sidenote: The fire-drill among the Arabs.] “The ancient Bedouins kindled fire by means of the fire-drill, which was composed of a horizontal stick, the zenda, and an upright stick, the zend. The science of language furnishes us with many parallels for this mode of regarding the two parts as male and female; the two parts of the lock are distinguished in like manner; the spark is then the child, tifl; compare also our German Schraubenmutter, Muttergewinde. The sticks for making fire by friction are not taken from the same tree; on the contrary, they choose one as hard and tough as possible, and the other soft, which allows the hard one to fit into it more easily and catches fire the quicker on account of its loose texture. The soft wood was naturally the horizontal stick, the zenda, which the Arabs made out of Calotropis procera (’oshar), while for the upright stick they used a hard branch of markh.”[689]
[Sidenote: The fire-drill in Africa.] The Ngumbu of South Cameroons, in West Africa, formerly made fire by rubbing two sticks against each other. Of the sticks the one, called the male nschio, was put into a hole of the other, which was called the female nschio.[690] In East Africa the Masai men make fire by drilling a hole in a flat piece of wood with a hard pointed stick. They say that the hard pointed stick is a man and that the flat piece of wood is his wife. The former is cut from Ficus sycomorus and Ekebergia sp., the latter from any fibrous tree, such as Kigelia africana, Cordia ovalis, or Acacia albida. The women get their fire from the one which has thus been kindled by the men.[691] The Nandi similarly produce fire by rapidly drilling a hard pointed stick into a small hole in a flat piece of soft wood. The hard stick is called the male (kirkit) and the piece of soft wood the female (kôket). Among the Nandi, as apparently among the Masai, fire-making is an exclusive privilege of the men of the tribe.[692] The Baganda of Central Africa also made fire by means of the fire-drill; they called the upright stick the male, and the horizontal stick the female.[693] Among the Bantu tribes of south-eastern Africa, “when the native Africans use special fire, either in connection with sacrifice or the festival of first-fruits, it is produced by a doctor, and in the following manner:—Two sticks, made of the Uzwati tree, and called the ‘husband and wife,’ are given to him by the chief. These sticks are prepared by the magicians, and are the exclusive property of the chief, the ‘wife’ being the shorter of the two. The doctor cuts a piece off each stick, and proceeds to kindle fire in the usual manner, by revolving the one rapidly between the palms of his hands, while its end rests in a small hollow dug in the side of the other. After he has obtained fire, he gives it to his attendant, who gets the pots in order, and everything ready for cooking the newly-reaped fruits. The sticks are handed back to the chief by the doctor—no other hand must touch them—and put away till they are required next season. They are regarded as in a measure sacred, and no one, except the chief’s personal servant, may go to the side of the hut where they are kept. After being repeatedly used for fire-making, the doctor disposes of what remains, and new ones are made and consecrated by the magician. A special pot is used for the preparation of the feast, and no other than it may be set on a fire produced from the ‘husband and wife.’ When the feast is over, the fire is carefully extinguished, and the pot placed along with the sticks, where it remains untouched for another year.”[694] But even for the purposes of daily life these tribes still kindle fire in this manner, if they happen to be without matches. “A native takes two special sticks, made of a light wood. One of these he points: this is called the male stick. He then makes a conical hole in the centre of the other stick, which is called the female. Placing the female stick on the ground, he holds it firmly by his feet—a native finds no difficulty in this, as he can easily pick things off the ground with his toes if his hands are full. He then places the pointed stick into the conical hole, and slowly twirls the male stick between his hands. He does this while using a good deal of pressure, and the wood becomes powdered, lying round the revolving point in a little heap of dust. When he thinks he has made sufficient of the wood dust, he twirls the stick very fast, and in a moment the powder bursts into flame, which he uses to set fire to some dried grass.”[695]
[Sidenote: Fire-customs of the Herero.] The Damaras or Herero of Damaraland, in south-western Africa, maintain sacred fires in their villages, and their customs and beliefs in this respect present a close resemblance to the Roman worship of Vesta. Fortunately the Herero fire-worship has been described by a number of independent witnesses, and as their accounts agree substantially with each other, we may assume that they are correct. The people are a tall, finely-built race of nomadic herdsmen belonging to the Bantu stock, who seem to have migrated into their present country from the north and east about a hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago. The desert character of the country and its seclusion from the outer world long combined to preserve the primitive manners of the inhabitants.[696] In their native state the Herero are a purely pastoral people, possessing [Sidenote: The Herero a pastoral people.] immense herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and goats, which are the pride and joy of their hearts, almost their idols. They subsist chiefly on the milk of their herds, which they commonly drink sour. Of the flesh they make but little use, for they seldom kill any of their cattle, and never a cow, a calf, or a lamb. Even oxen and weathers are only slaughtered on solemn and festal occasions, such as visits, burials, and the like. Such slaughter is a great event in a village, and young and old flock from far and near to partake of the meat.[697] Their huts are of a round [Sidenote: Huts and villages of the Herero.] beehive shape, about ten feet in diameter. The framework consists of stout branches, of which the lower ends are rammed into the ground, while the upper ends are bent together and tied with bark. A village is composed of a number of these round huts arranged in a circle about the calves’ pen as a centre and surrounded by an artificial hedge of thorn-bushes.[698] At night the cattle are driven in through the hedge and take up their quarters in the open space round the calves’ pen.[699]
[Sidenote: Sacred fire of the Herero village maintained in or before the hut of the chief’s principal wife.] The hut of the great or principal wife of the chief, built and furnished in a more elaborate style than the rest, regularly stands to the east of the calves’ pen, in the direction of sunrise, so that from its position we can always learn approximately the season of the year when the village was founded. The chief or headman of the village has no special hut of his own; he passes the day in the hut of the great wife, and the night commonly in one of the huts of his other wives in the northern semicircle. Between the house of the great wife and the calves’ pen, but somewhat nearer to the pen, is a large heap of ashes on which, in good weather, a small, faintly glimmering fire may be seen to burn at any time of the day. The heap of ashes is the sacred hearth (okuruo); the fire is the holy fire (omurangere or omurangerero) of the village. The open space between the sacred hearth and the house of the great wife is known as the holy ground or the holy house (otyizero).[700] Betwixt the hearth and the calves’ fold stands a great withered branch of the omumborombonga (Combretum primigenum), the sacred tree of the Herero, from which they believe that both they and their cattle are descended. When a branch of this tree cannot be obtained its place is taken by a bough of the omwapu tree (Grevia spec.)[701] At night and in rainy weather the fire is transferred to the hut of the great wife, where it is carefully kept alight.[702] According to another account, the fire is regularly preserved in the house, and a brand is only brought out into the open air when the cattle are being milked at morning and evening in order that in presence of the fire the cow may be healthy and give much milk.[703] The custom in this respect perhaps varies in different villages, and may be determined in some measure by the climate. The sacred fire is regarded as the centre of the village; from it at evening the people fetch a light to kindle the fire on their own hearths, for every householder has his own private hearth in front of his hut. At the holy hearth are kept the most sacred possessions of the tribe, to wit, the bundle of sticks which represent their ancestors; here sacrifices are offered and enchantments performed; here the flesh of the victims is cooked; here is the proper place of the chief; here the elders assemble in council, and judgment is given; here strangers are received and ambassadors entertained. At the banquets held on solemn occasions all may partake of the flesh, whether they be friends or foes; the stranger’s curse would rest on the churl who should refuse him his just share; and this curse the Herero dreads above everything because he believes its effect to be infallible. So great is the veneration felt by the natives for the sacred hearth, with its hallowed bough, that they dare not approach it without testifying the deepest respect. They take off their sandals, throw themselves on the ground, and pray their great ancestor (Tate Mukuru) to be gracious to them. The horns of the oxen slaughtered at festivals lie beside the hearth; the chief sits on the largest pair when he is engaged in performing his magical rites. Near the fire, too, is a stone on which none but the chief has the right to sit.[704]
[Sidenote: The sacred fire among the Herero is watched and fed by the chief’s eldest unmarried daughter, who performs other priestly duties.] The duty of maintaining the sacred fire and preserving it from extinction is entrusted to the eldest unmarried daughter of the chief by his great wife; if he has no daughter, the task devolves on the unmarried girl who is next of kin to him. She bears the title of ondangere, derived from the name of the sacred fire (omurangere).[705] Besides keeping up the fire she has other priestly functions to discharge. Before the men start on a dangerous expedition, she rubs the holy ashes on their foreheads.[706] When a woman brings her new-born infant to the sacred hearth to receive its name, the maiden priestess or Vestal, as we may call her, sprinkles water on both mother and child.[707] Every morning, when the cattle walk out of the fold, she besprinkles the fattest of them with a brush dipped in water.[708] When an ox dies by accident at the village, she lays a piece of wood on its back, praying at the same time for long life, plenty of cattle, and so forth. Moreover, she ties a double knot in her apron for the dead beast, for a curse would follow if she neglected to do so.[709] Lastly, when the site of the village is changed, the priestess walks at the head of the people and of the herds, carrying a firebrand from the old sacred hearth and taking the utmost care to keep it alight.[710]
The chief or headman of the village is also the priest; [Sidenote: The Herero chief acts as a priest.] he alone may perform religious ceremonies except such as fall within the province of the Vestal priestess, his daughter. In his capacity of priest he keeps the sacred bundle of sticks which represent the ancestors, and at sacrifices he offers meat to them that they may consecrate it. When the old village is abandoned, it is his duty to carry, like Aeneas quitting the ruins of Troy,[711] these rude penates to the new home. However, it is deemed enough if he merely places the holy bundle on his back, and then hands it to a servant, who carries it for him. As a priest he introduces the newborn children to the spirits of the ancestors at the sacred hearth, and gives the infants their names; and as a priest he has a cow to himself, whose milk no one else may drink. This milk is kept in vessels which differ from the ordinary milk vessels, not only in shape and size, but also in being marked with the badge of his paternal clan. When a man goes forth from the village with his family and servants to herd the cattle on a distant pasture, or to found another village, he takes with him a burning brand from the sacred hearth wherewith to kindle the holy fire in his new home. By [Sidenote: Fire taken from the chief’s hearth by the founder of a new village.] doing so he acknowledges himself the vassal of the chief from whose hearth he took the fire. In this way a single village may give out swarm after swarm, till it has become the metropolis or capital of a whole group of villages, the inhabitants of which recognise the supremacy of the parent community, and regard themselves as all sitting round its sacred fire. It is thus that a village may grow into a tribe and its headman into a powerful chief, who, by means of marriage alliances and the adhesion of weaker rivals, may extend his sway over alien communities, and so gradually acquire the rank and authority of a king.[712] The political evolution of the Herero has indeed stopped short of this final stage; but among the more advanced branches of the Bantu race, such as the Zulus and the Matabeles, it is possible that the kingship has developed along these lines.
[Sidenote: The combined office of chief and priest among the Herero descends in the male line.] The possession of the sacred fire and of the ancestral sticks, carrying with it both political authority and priestly dignity, descends in the male line, and hence generally passes from father to son. In any case, whether the deceased had a son or not, the double office of chief and priest must always remain in his paternal clan (oruzo). If it should happen that the clan becomes extinct by his death, the [Sidenote: A chief’s sacred hearth abandoned for some time after his death.] sacred fire is put out, the hearth destroyed, no brand is taken from it, and the sticks representing the ancestors are laid with the dead man in the grave. But should there be an heir, as usually happens, he takes a fire-brand from the sacred hearth and departs with all the people to seek a new home, abandoning the old village for years. In time, however, they return to the spot, rebuild the huts on the same sites, and inhabit them again. But in the interval none of the kinsmen of the deceased may approach the deserted village under pain of incurring the wrath of the ghost. When the return at last takes place, and the people have announced their arrival to the dead chief at his grave, which is generally in the cattle-pen, they make a new fire by the friction of the two sacred fire-sticks on the old hearth; for it is not lawful to bring with them a brand from their last settlement.[713]
[Sidenote: The sacred Herero fire rekindled by the fire-drill.] If the sacred fire should go out through the neglect of the priestess, a sudden shower of rain, or any other accident, the Herero deem it a very evil omen. The whole tribe is immediately summoned and large offerings of cattle are made as an expiation. Then the fire is relit by means of the friction of two sacred fire-sticks, which have been handed down from father to son. Every chief possesses such fire-sticks, and keeps them tied up with the bundle of holy sticks that represent the ancestors. One of the fire-sticks is pointed, the other has a hole in the middle, and sometimes also a notch cut round it. In the notch some fungus or rotten wood is placed as tinder. The holed stick is held fast on the ground by the knees of the operator, who inserts the point of the other stick in the hole and twirls it rapidly between the palms of his hands in the usual way. As soon as a spark is emitted it catches the tinder, which can then easily be blown up into a flame. Thus it is from the tinder, we are told, and not from the sticks, that the flame is elicited. In this fashion, if everything is very dry, as it generally is in Hereroland, the native gets fire in about a minute. The names applied to the two sticks indicate that the pointed stick (ondume) is regarded as male and the holed stick (otyiya) as female, and that the process of making fire by the friction of the two is compared to the intercourse of the sexes. As to the wood of which the fire-sticks are made accounts differ. According to Dr. H. Schinz the holed or female stick is of a soft wood, the pointed or male stick of a hard wood, generally of the [Sidenote: The male fire-stick made of the sacred omumborombonga tree.] sacred omumborombonga tree (Combretum primigenum). According to Mr. C. G. Büttner, neither of the sticks need be of a special tree, and any wood that happens to be at hand may be employed for the purpose; only the wood of the thorny acacias, which abound in the country, appears to be unsuitable.[714] Probably the rule mentioned by Dr. Schinz is the original one, and if in some places the wood of the sacred tree has ceased to be used to light the holy fire, the reason may be simply that the tree does not grow there, and that accordingly the people are obliged to use such wood as they can find. We have seen that a branch of the sacred omumborombonga tree is regularly planted beside the village hearth, but that in default of it the people have to put up with a bough of another kind of tree, the omuwapu (Grevia spec).[715] Such substitutions were especially apt to be forced on the Herero in the southern part of the country, where the omumborombonga tree is very rare and forests do not exist, the larger trees growing singly or in clumps. In the north, on the other hand, vegetation is much richer, and regular woods are to be found. Here, in particular, the omumborombonga tree is one of the ornaments of the landscape. It grows only beside water-courses, and generally stands solitary, surpassing a tall oak in height, and rivalling it in girth; indeed, so thick is the trunk that were it hollowed out a family could lodge in it. Unlike most trees in the country it is thornless. Whole forests of it grow to the eastward of Hereroland, in the direction of Lake Ngami. So close is the grain and so heavy the wood that some of the early explorers gave it the name of the “iron tree.”[716] Hence it is well adapted to form the upright stick of the fire-drill, for which a hard wood is required.
[Sidenote: Herero tradition of the origin of men and cattle from the sacred omumborombonga tree.] The Herero have a tradition that in the beginning they and their cattle and all four-footed beasts came forth from the omumborombonga tree in a single day, whereas birds, fish, and creeping things sprang from the rain. However, slightly different versions of the Herero genesis appear to be current. As to the origin of men and cattle from the tree, public opinion is unanimous; but some dissenters hold that sheep and perhaps goats, but certainly sheep, issued from a flat rock in the north of the country. For some time past, unfortunately, the tree has ceased to be prolific; it is of no use waiting beside it in the hope of capturing such oxen and sheep as it might bear. Yet still the Herero testify great respect for the tree which they regard as their ancestor (omukuru). To injure it is deemed a sacrilege which the ancestor will punish sooner or later. In passing it they bow reverently and stick a bunch of green twigs or grass into the trunk or throw it down at the foot. They address the tree, saying, “U-zera tate mukururume, Thou art holy, grandfather!” and they even enter into conversation with it, giving the answers themselves in a changed voice. They hardly dare to sit down in its shadow. All this reverence they display for every tree of the species.[717]
[Sidenote: Migration from one country to another sometimes involves a change of sacred tree.] On the whole, then, we may infer that so long as the Herero dwelt in a land where their ancestral tree abounded, they made the male fire-stick from its wood; but that as they gradually migrated from a region of tropical rains and luxuriant forests to the arid mountains, open grass lands, and dry torrid climate of their present country,[718] they had in some places to forgo its use and to take another tree in its stead. Similarly the Aryan invaders of Greece and Italy were obliged, under a southern sky, to seek substitutes for the sacred oak of their old northern home; and more and more, as time went on and the deciduous woods retreated up the mountain slopes, they found what they sought in the laurel, the olive, and the vine. Zeus himself had to put up with the white poplar at his great sanctuary of Olympia in the hot lowlands of Elis;[719] and on summer days, when the light leaves of the poplar hardly stirred in the languid air and the buzz of the flies was more than usually exasperating, he perhaps looked wistfully away to the Arcadian mountains, looming blue in the distance through a haze of heat, and sighed for the shadow and the coolness of their oak woods.
[Sidenote: The worship of the chief’s fire a form of ancestor-worship.] Thus it appears that the sanctity ascribed by the Herero to the chief’s fire springs from a custom of kindling it with the wood of their ancestral tree; in fact, the cult of the fire resolves itself into a form of ancestor-worship. For the religion of the Herero, like that of all Bantu peoples, is first and foremost a propitiation of the spirits of their forefathers conceived as powerful beings able and willing to harm them. From youth to death the Herero live in constant dread of their ancestors (ovakuru, plural of omukuru), who, sometimes seen and sometimes unseen, return to earth and play their descendants many a spiteful trick. They glide into the village, steal the milk, drive the cattle from the fold, and waylay women. More than that, they can inflict disease and death, decide the issue of war, and send or withhold rain at pleasure. They are the cause of every vexation and misfortune, and the whole aim of the living is by frequent sacrifices to mollify and appease the dead.[720]
[Sidenote: The sacred hearth a special seat of the ancestral spirits.] Now the sacred hearth seems to be in a special sense the seat of the worship paid to the ancestral spirits. Here the head of the family sits and communes with his forefather, giving himself the answers he thinks fit.[721] Hither the newborn child is brought with its mother to be introduced to the spirits and to receive its name, and the chief, addressing his ancestors, announces, “To you a child is born in your village; may this village never come to an end!”[722] Hither the bride is conducted at her marriage, and a sheep having been sacrificed, its flesh is placed on the holy bushes at the hearth.[723] Hither the sick are carried to be commended to the care of their ghostly kinsmen, and as the sufferer is borne round and round the fire his friends chant:—
“_See, Father, we have come here, With this sick man to you, That he may soon recover._”[724]
[Sidenote: Sacred sticks representing the deceased ancestors of the Herero.] But the most tangible link between the worship of the fire and the worship of the dead is furnished by the sacred sticks representing the ancestors, which are kept in a bundle together with the two sticks used for kindling the fire by friction. Each of these rude idols or Lares, as we may call them, “symbolises a definite ancestor of the paternal clan, and, taken together, they may be regarded as the most sacred possession of a family. They stand in the closest relation to the holy hearth, or rather to the priestly dignity, and must therefore always remain in the same paternal clan.”[725] These sticks “are cut from trees or bushes which are dedicated to the ancestors, and they represent the ancestors at the sacrificial meals, for the cooked flesh of the victims is always set before them first. Many people always keep these sticks, tied up in a bundle with straps and hung with amulets, in the branches of the sacrificial bushes which stand on the sacred hearth (okuruo). The sacrificial bush serves to support the severed pieces of the victim, and thus in a measure represents an altar or table of sacrifice.”[726] When after an absence of years the people return to a village where a chief died and was buried, a new fire is kindled by friction on the old hearth, the flesh of the first animal slaughtered here is cooked in a particular vessel, and the chief hands a portion of it to every person present. “An image, consisting of two pieces of wood, supposed to represent the household deity, or rather the deified parent, is then produced, and moistened in the platter of each individual. The chief then takes the image, and, after affixing a piece of meat to the upper end of it, he plants it in the ground, on the identical spot where his parent was accustomed to sacrifice. The first pail of milk produced from the cattle is also taken to the grave; a small quantity is poured on the ground, and a blessing asked on the remainder.” Each clan, the writer adds, has a particular tree or shrub consecrated to it, and of this tree or shrub the two sticks representing the deceased are made.[727]
[Sidenote: The sacred sticks representing the ancestors are probably the fire-sticks which were used to kindle fresh fire in the village after a death.] In these accounts the sacred sticks which stand for the ancestors, and to which the meat of sacrifices is first offered, are distinguished, expressly or implicitly, from the sacred sticks which are used to make the holy fire.[728] Other writers, however, identify the two sets of sticks. Thus we are told that the Herero “make images of their ancestors as follows. They take the two sticks with which they make fire and tie them together with a fresh wisp of corn. Then they worship this object as their ancestor. They may approach it only on their knees. For hours together they sit before it and talk with it. If you ask them where they imagine their ancestors to be, since they cannot surely be these sticks, they answer that they do not know. The sticks are kept in the house of the great wife.”[729] Again, another writer defines the ondume or male fire-stick as a “stick representing an omukuru, i.e. ancestor, deity, with which and the otyiza the holy fire is made.”[730] Again, the Rev. G. Viehe, in describing the ceremonies observed at the return to a deserted village where an ancestor (omukuru) is buried, tells us that they bring no fire with them, “but holy fire must now be obtained from the omukuru. This is done with the ondume and the otyiza. The meaning of these two words plainly shows that the first represents the omukuru, and the other his wife.”[731] The same excellent authority defines the ozondume as “sticks which represent the ovakuru, i.e. ancestors, deities”;[732] and ozondume is simply the plural of ondume, the male fire-stick.[733] Hence it appears highly probable that the sticks representing the ancestors are, in fact, nothing but the male fire-sticks, each of which was cut to make a new fire on the return to the old village after a chiefs death. The stick would be an appropriate emblem of the deceased, who had been in his lifetime the owner of the sacred fire, and who now after his death bestowed it on his descendants by means of the friction of his wooden image. And the symbolism will appear all the more natural when we remember that the male fire-stick is generally made from the ancestral tree, that the process of fire-making is regarded by the Herero as the begetting of a child, and that their name for the stick, according to the most probable etymology, signifies “the begetter.” Such sticks would be far too sacred to be thrown away when they had served their immediate purpose of kindling a new fire, and thus in time a whole bundle of them would accumulate, each of them recalling, and in a sense representing, one of the great forefathers of the tribe. When the old sticks had ceased to be used as fire-lighters, and were preserved merely as memorials of the dead, it is not surprising that their original function should be overlooked by some European observers, who have thus been led to distinguish them from the sticks by which the fire is actually produced at the present day.[734] Amongst the [Sidenote: Sacred fire-boards among the Koryaks and Chuckchees of north-eastern Asia.] Koryaks of north-eastern Asia, when the sacred fire-boards, roughly carved in human form, are so full of holes that they can no longer be used for the purpose of kindling fire, they are still kept as holy relics in a shrine near the door of the house; and a stranger who observed the respect with which they are treated, but who did not know their history, might well mistake them for figures of worshipful ancestors and never guess the practical purpose which they once served as fire-lighters. A Koryak family regards its sacred fire-board not only as the deity of the household fire, the guardian of the family hearth, but also as the guardian of the reindeer, and they call it the “master of the herd.” It is supposed to protect the reindeer from wolves and from sickness and to prevent the animals from straying away and being lost. When a reindeer is slaughtered, the sacred fire-board is taken out and smeared with the blood. The maritime Koryaks, who do not live by reindeer, regard the sacred fire-board as the master of the underground house and the helper in the hunt of sea-mammals. They call it “father” and feed it from time to time with fat, which they smear on its mouth.[735] Among the neighbouring Chuckchees in the north-eastern extremity of Asia similar ideas and customs obtain in respect of the fire-boards. These are roughly carved in human form and personified, almost deified, as the supernatural guardians of the reindeer. The holes made by drilling in the board are deemed the eyes of the figure and the squeaking noise produced by the friction of the fire-drill in the hole is thought to be its voice. At every sacrifice the mouth of the figure is greased with tallow or with the marrow of bones. When a new fire-board is made, it is consecrated by being smeared with the blood of a slaughtered reindeer, and the owner says, “Enough! Take up your abode here!” Then the other fire-boards are brought to the same place and set side by side on the ground. The owner says, “Ho! these are your companions. See that I always find easily every kind of game!” Next he slaughters another reindeer and says, “Hi! Since you are one of my young men, go and drive the herd hither!” Then after a pause he asks the fire-board, “Have you brought it?” to which in the name of the fire-board he answers, “I have.” Thereupon, speaking in his own person, he says, “Then catch some reindeer! It seems that you will keep a good watch over the herd. There, from the actual chief of the fire-boards, you may learn wisdom.” These sacred fire-boards are often handed down from generation to generation as family heir-looms. During the calving-season they are taken from their bag and placed behind the frame in the outer tent in order that they may protect the dams.[736]
[Sidenote: The evolution of a fire-god or fire-goddess.] These Koryak and Chuckchee customs illustrate the evolution of a fire-god into the patron deity of a family and his representation in human form by the board which is used in fire-making. As the fire-board is that part of the kindling apparatus which is commonly regarded as female in contradistinction to the drill, which is regarded as male, we can easily understand why the deity of the fire should sometimes, as at Rome, be conceived as a goddess rather than as a god; whereas if the drill itself were viewed as the essential part of the apparatus we should expect to find a fire-god and not a fire-goddess.
Footnote 683:
Festus, s.v. “Ignis,” p. 106, ed. C. O. Müller: “Ignis Vestae si quando interstinctus esset, virgines verberibus afficiebantur a pontifice, quibus mos erat tabulam felicis materiae tamdiu terebrare, quousque exceptum ignem cribro aeneo virgo in aedem ferret.” In this passage it is not clear whether quibus refers to the virgins alone or to the virgins and the pontiff together; but the strict grammatical construction is in favour of the latter interpretation. The point is not unimportant, as we shall see presently. From a passage of Plutarch (Numa, 9) it has sometimes been inferred that the Vestal fire was rekindled by sunlight reflected from a burning-glass. But in this passage Plutarch is describing a Greek, not a Roman, mode of making fire, as has been rightly pointed out by Professor M. H. Morgan (“De ignis eliciendi modis apud antiquos,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, i. (1890) pp. 56 sqq.). In this memoir Professor Morgan has collected and discussed the passages of Greek and Latin writers which refer to the kindling of fire.
Footnote 684:
See E. B. Tylor, Early History of Mankind, 3rd Ed., pp. 238 sqq. More evidence might easily be given. See, for example, J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, pp. 15 sq.; C. Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 191; A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 770-773; Maximilian Prinz zu Wied-Newied, Reise nach Brasilien, ii. 18 sq.; E. F. im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, pp. 257-259; K. von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, pp. 223 sqq.; H. Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, i. 375 sqq.; A. Maass, Bei liebenswürdigen Wilden, ein Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Mentawai-Insulaner (Berlin, 1902), pp. 114, 116; Mgr. Le Roy, “Les Pygmées,” Missions Catholiques, xxix. (1897), p. 137; E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (Madras, 1906), pp. 464-470; W. A. Reed, Negritos of Zambales (Manila, 1904), p. 40.
Footnote 685:
J. Teit, “The Thompson Indians of British Columbia,” pp. 203, 205 (Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. i. part 4).
Footnote 686:
J. Walter Fewkes, “The Lesser New-fire Ceremony at Walpi,” American Anthropologist, N.S. iii. (1901) p. 445.
Footnote 687:
Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 621.
Footnote 688:
For this information I am indebted to Mr. S. H. Ray.
Footnote 689:
G. Jacob, Altarabisches Beduineneben 2nd Ed., (Berlin, 1897), p. 91. In his Arabic-English Lexicon, book i. p. 1257, E. W. Lane gives the following account of the subject: “zand, a piece of stick or wood, for producing fire; the upper one of the two pieces of stick, or wood, with which fire is produced: ... and zanda is the appellation of the lower one thereof, in which is the notch or hollow, or in which is a hole.... One end of the zand is put into the fard (notch) of the zanda, and the zand is then rapidly twirled round in producing fire.... The best kind of zand is made of ’afār and the best kind of zanda of markh.” It will be observed that the two writers differ as to markh wood, Jacob saying that it is used to make the upright (male) stick, and Lane that it is used to make the horizontal (female) stick. My learned friend Professor A. A. Bevan, who directed my attention to both passages and transliterated for me the Arabic words in Lane, has kindly consulted the original authorities on this point and informs me that Lane is right.
Footnote 690:
L. Concradt, “Die Ngumbu in Südkamerun,” Globus, lxxxi, (1902) p. 354.
Footnote 691:
A. C. Hollis, The Masai (Oxford, 1905), p. 342.
Footnote 692:
A. C. Hollis, The Nandi (Oxford, 1909), p. 85.
Footnote 693:
Letter of the Rev. J. Roscoe, dated Mengo, Uganda, 3rd August 1904.
Footnote 694:
J. Macdonald, Light in Africa 2nd Ed., (London, 1890), pp. 216 sq.
Footnote 695:
Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir (London, 1904), pp. 51 sq.
Footnote 696:
J. Irle, Die Herero (Gütersloh, 1906), pp. 49 sqq., 53 sqq. Compare Josaphat Hahn, “Die Ovaherero,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, iv. (1869) pp. 227 sqq.; H. Schinz, Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika (Oldenburg and Leipsic, N.D.), pp. 142 sq.; E. Dannert, Zum Rechte der Herero (Berlin, 1906), pp. 1 sqq. The people call themselves Ovaherero (plural); the singular form is Omuherero. The name Damaras was given them by the English and Dutch. Under the influence of the missionaries most of the heathen customs described in the text seem now to have disappeared. See P. H. Brincker, “Character, Sitten, und Gebräuche, speciell der Bantu Deutsch-Südwest-afrikas,” Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p. 72.
Footnote 697:
C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami (London, 1856), p. 230; J. Chapman, Travels in the Interior of South Africa (London, 1868), i. 325; J. Hahn, “Die Ovaherero,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, iv. (1869) pp. 244-247, 250; C. J. Büttner, Das Hinterland von Walfischbai und Angra Pequena (Heidelberg, 1884), pp. 228 sq.; H. Schinz, Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika, pp. 158-161; J. Irle, Die Herero, pp. 32 sqq., 113.
Footnote 698:
Francis Galton, Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa 3rd Ed., (London, 1890), p. 116; J. Hahn, op. cit. iv. (1869), p. 247; H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 155; J. Irle, Die Herero, pp. 111 sq.
Footnote 699:
H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 159.
Footnote 700:
H. Schinz, op. cit. pp. 155-157; compare J. Hahn, op. cit. iv. (1869) p. 499; J. Irle, Die Herero, p. 78; E. Dannert, Zum Rechte der Herero, pp. 4 sq. At first sight Dr. Schinz’s account appears to differ slightly from that given by the Rev. G. Viehe, who says: “In the werfts of the Ovaherero, the houses of the chief are on the eastern side. Next to these, towards the west, follow, one after another, the holy house (otyizero), the place of the holy fire (okuruo), and the kraal [i.e. the calves’ pen] (otyunda); thus the otyizero is on the east, and the otyunda on the west side of the okuruo” (“Some Customs of the Ovaherero,” South African Folk-lore Journal, i. (1879) p. 62). But it seems clear that by the chief’s house Mr. Viehe means what Dr. Schinz calls the house of the great wife; and that what Mr. Viehe calls the holy house is the open space between the sacred hearth and the house of the great wife or chief. That space is described as the holy ground by Dr. Schinz, who uses that phrase (“der geweihte Boden”) as the equivalent of the native otyizero. Thus the two writers are in substantial agreement with each other. On the other hand Dr. C. H. Hahn gives the name of otyizero or sacred house to “the chief house of the chief, in front of which is the place of the holy fire.” He adds that “the chief has several houses, according to the number of wives, each wife having her own hut” (South African Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1880) p. 62, note 1.) The name otyizero seems to be derived from zera, “sacred,” “taboo.” See G. Viehe, op. cit. pp. 39, 41, 43; Rev. E. Dannert, in (South African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1880) pp. 63, 65, 105, and the editor’s note, ib. p. 93.
Footnote 701:
H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 155.
Footnote 702:
C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 223; J. Hahn, op. cit. iv. (1869) p. 500; H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 165.
Footnote 703:
H. Brincker, Wörterbuch und kurzgefasste Grammatik des Otjiherero (Leipsic, 1886), s.v. “okuruo”; id. “Pyrolatrie in Südafrika,” Globus, lxvii. (January 1895) p. 97; Meyer, quoted by J. Kohler, “Das Recht der Herero,” Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, xiv. (1900) p. 315.
Footnote 704:
J. Hahn, op. cit. iv. (1869) pp. 499 sq.; Rev. H. Beiderbecke, in (South African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1880) p. 84; C. G. Büttner, “Ueber Handwerke und technische Fertigkeiten der Eingeborenen in Damaraland,” Ausland, 7th July 1884, p. 522; P. H. Brincker, in Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p. 75; id., Wörterbuch des Otjiherero, s.v. “okuruo”; id., “Pyrolatrie in Südafrika,” Globus, lxvii. (January 1895) p. 97; H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 183; Meyer, l.c.
Footnote 705:
C. J. Andersson, op. cit. p. 223; J. Hahn, op. cit. iv. (1869) p. 500; Rev. E. Dannert, in (South African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1880) p. 66; Rev. H. Beiderbecke, ibid. p. 83, note 4; C. G. Büttner, l.c.; H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 165; J. Irle, Die Herero, pp. 78 sq.; E. Dannert, Zum Rechte der Herero, p. 5. According to Meyer (l.c.) and E. Dannert (Zum Rechte der Herero, p. 5), if the chief’s eldest daughter marries, the duty of tending the fire passes to his eldest wife. This statement is at variance with all the other testimony on the subject, and for reasons which will appear presently I regard it as improbable. At least it can hardly represent the original custom.
Footnote 706:
Rev. H. Beiderbecke, in (South African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1880) p. 84.
Footnote 707:
Rev. E. Dannert, in (South African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1880) p. 66; H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 168.
Footnote 708:
Francis Galton, op. cit. p. 115.
Footnote 709:
C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 223.
Footnote 710:
C. J. Andersson, l.c.; J. Hahn, op. cit. iv. (1869) p. 500; H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 167.
Footnote 711:
Virgil, Aen. ii. 717 sqq., 747.
Footnote 712:
C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 224; Rev. G. Viehe, in (South African) Folk-lore Journal, i. (1879) p. 43; Rev. E. Dannert, in (South African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1880) p. 67; C. G. Büttner, l.c.; H. Schinz, op. cit. pp. 166, 167, 186; Meyer, quoted by J. Kohler, op. cit. p. 315; P. H. Brincker, in Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, pp. 75 sq.; J. Irle, Die Herero, p. 80; E. Dannert, Zum Rechte der Herero (Berlin, 1906), p. 5.
Footnote 713:
C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, pp. 228 sq.; Rev. G. Viehe, op. cit. i. (1879) pp. 61 sq.; C. G. Büttner, l.c.; H. Schinz, op. cit. pp. 165, 180. The Herero have a curious twofold system of paternal clans (otuzo, plural; oruzo, singular) and maternal clans (omaanda, plural; eanda, singular). Every person inherits an oruzo from his father and an eanda from his mother. See my Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 357 sqq.
Footnote 714:
C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, pp. 223 sq.; J. Hahn, op. cit. iv. (1869) p. 500; Rev. G. Viehe, op. cit. i. (1879) pp. 39, 61; C. G. Büttner, l.c.; H. Brincker, Wörterbuch des Otji-herero, s.vv. ondume and otjija; id. “Character, Sitten, und Gebräuche, speciell der Bantu Deutsch-Südwest-afrikas,” Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p. 75; id. “Pyrolatrie in Südafrika,” Globus, lxvii. (January, 1895) p. 96; H. Schinz, op. cit. pp. 165 sq.; J. Kohler, op. cit. pp. 305, 315; J. Irle, Die Herero, pp. 79 sq. According to Dr. Schinz, the meaning of the names applied to the fire-sticks has been much disputed; he himself adopts the view given in the text, and supports it by weighty reason which, taken along with analogous designations in many other parts of the world, may be regarded as conclusive. He tells us that otyiza means pudendum muliebre, and this is actually the name of the holed stick according to Mr. Viehe (ll.cc.), though Dr. Schinz gives otyia as the name. I have followed Dr. Brincker in accepting otyiya (otjija) as the correct form of the word. Further, Dr. Schinz derives ondume, the name of the pointed stick, from a verb ruma, meaning “to have intercourse with a woman.” Moreover, he reports that the Ai San Bushmen, near Noihas, in the Kalahari desert, call the vertical fire-stick tau doro and the horizontal fire-stick gai doro, where tau is the masculine prefix and gai the feminine. Finally, a Herero explained to him the significance of the names by referring in an unmistakable manner to the corresponding relations in the animal kingdom. That the two sticks are regarded as male and female is positively affirmed by Mr. Viehe, Mr. Meyer (quoted by J. Kohler), and Dr. Brincker.
Footnote 715:
See above, pp. 213 sq. Mr. G. Viehe says that the omuwapu tree “acts a very important part in almost all the religious ceremonies” of the Herero (op. cit. i. 45). Probably it is only used where the omumborombonga cannot be had.
Footnote 716:
J. Hahn, “Das Land der Herero,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, iii. (1868) pp. 200, 213, 214 sq.; C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, pp. 218, 221; id., The Okavango River (London, 1861), pp. 21 sq.; H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 182.
Footnote 717:
C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 221; Francis Galton, op. cit. p. 115; J. Hahn, op. cit. iii. (1868) p. 215, iv. (1869) p. 498, note; Rev. H. Beiderbecke, in (South African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1880) pp. 92 sq.; H. Schinz, op. cit. pp. 182 sq.; Meyer, quoted by J. Kohler, op. cit. p. 297; P. H. Brincker, in Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin (1900), Dritte Abtheilung, p. 73; J. Irle, Die Herero, pp. 75 sq., 77; E. Dannert, Zum Rechte der Herero, pp. 3 sq.
Footnote 718:
On the evidence for this migration see J. Chapman, Travels in the Interior of South Africa, i. 325-327; J. Hahn, op. cit. iii. (1868) pp. 227 sqq. As to the physical features and climate of Hereroland, see J. Hahn, “Das Land der Ovaherero,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, iii. (1868) pp. 193 sqq.; J. Irle, Die Herero, pp. 9 sqq., 19 sqq.
Footnote 719:
Pausanias, v. 13. 3, v. 14. 2. On the substitution of the poplar for the oak, see Mr. A. B. Cook in Folk-lore, xv. (1904) pp. 297 sq.
Footnote 720:
Rev. G. Viehe, “Some Customs of the Ovaherero,” (South African) Folk-lore Journal, i. (1879) pp. 64-66; Rev. H. Beiderbecke, in (South African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1880) p. 91; H. Schinz, op. cit. pp. 183 sq.; P. H. Brincker, in Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, pp. 89 sq.; J. Irle, Die Herero, pp. 74, 75, 77. Apparently it is only a powerful or eminent man who becomes an omukuru after his death. Or rather, perhaps, though all dead men become ovakuru, only the strong and brave are feared and worshipped.
Footnote 721:
H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 183.
Footnote 722:
Rev. E. Dannert, “Customs of the Ovaherero at the Birth of a Child,” (South African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (1880) pp. 66 sq. Compare Rev. G. Viehe, op. cit. i. (1879) p. 41; H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 168.
Footnote 723:
Rev. G. Viehe, in (South African) Folk-lore Journal, i. (1879) pp. 49 sq.
Footnote 724:
Rev. G. Viehe, op. cit. i. 51.
Footnote 725:
H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 166. Compare J. Irle, Die Herero, p. 77.
Footnote 726:
J. Hahn, op. cit. iv. (1869) p. 500, note.
Footnote 727:
C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, pp. 228 sq. The ceremony is described more fully by the Rev. G. Viehe, “Some Customs of the Ovaherero,” (South African) Folk-lore Journal, i. (1879) pp. 61 sq., from whose account some of the details in the text are borrowed.
Footnote 728:
The distinction is made also by Mr. J. Irle. According to him, while the fire-sticks are called ozondume (plural of ondume), the sticks which represent the ancestors are called ozohongue and are made from the omuvapu bush. In every chief’s house there is a bundle of about twenty of these ancestral sticks. When a chief dies, the sticks are wrapped in a portion of the sacred bull (omusisi) which is slaughtered on this occasion, and a new stick is added to the bundle. At the same time Mr. Irle tells us that the fire-sticks (ozondume) also represent the ancestors and are made like them from the omuvapu bush. See J. Irle, Die Herero, pp. 77, 79.
Footnote 729:
Bensen, quoted by J. Kohler, “Das Recht der Herero,” Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, xiv. (1900) p. 305.
Footnote 730:
Rev. G. Viehe, or his editor, op. cit. i. (1879) p. 39. The otyiza (otyiya) is the female fire-stick. See above, p. 218 note 1.
Footnote 731:
Rev. G. Viehe, in (South African) Folk-lore Journal, i. (1879) p. 61.
Footnote 732:
Ibid. p. 43, compare p. 50.
Footnote 733:
J. Irle, Die Herero, p. 79.
Footnote 734:
I have assumed that the ancestral sticks, whatever their origin, represent only men. This is plainly implied by Dr. Brincker, who tells us that “each of these sticks represents the male member of generation and in the Bantu sense a personality, which stands for the presence of the deceased chief on all festive occasions and especially at religious ceremonies” (“Character, Sitten, und Gebräuche, speciell der Bantu Deutsch-Südwestafrikas,” Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p. 74). In savage society women are of too little account for their ghosts to be commonly worshipped. Speaking of the Bantu peoples, a writer who knows them well observes: “This lack of respect for old women is a part of the natives’ religious system, and is connected with their conception of a future life, in which women play a subordinate part, their spirits not being able to cause much trouble, and therefore not being of much account” (Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, p. 23).
Footnote 735:
W. Jochelson, “The Koryak,” pp. 32-36 (Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. vi., Leyden and New York, 1908).
Footnote 736:
W. Bogaras, “The Chukchee Religion,” pp. 349-353 (Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. vii. part ii., Leyden and New York, 1904).
XVI. FATHER JOVE AND MOTHER VESTA
[Sidenote: Similarity between the fire-customs of the Herero and the ancient Latins.] The reader may remember that the preceding account of the fire-customs of the Herero was introduced for the sake of comparison with the Latin worship of Vesta. The points of similarity between the two will now be indicated. In the first place we have seen reason to hold that the ever-burning Vestal fire at Rome was merely a survival of the fire on the king’s hearth. So among the Herero the sacred fire of the village is the chief’s fire, which is kept burning or smouldering in his house by day and by night. In Rome, as in Hereroland, the extinction of the fire was regarded as an evil omen, which had to be expiated by sacrifices,[737] and new fire was procured in primitive fashion by twirling the point of one stick in the hole of another. The Roman fire was fed with the wood of the sacred oak tree, just as the African fire is kindled with the wood of the sacred omumborombonga tree. Beside both were kept the images of the ancestors, the Lares at Rome, the ozondume in Hereroland. The king’s house which sheltered the fire and the images was originally in Italy what the chief’s hut still is in Hereroland, a circular hut of osiers, not as ancient dreamers thought, because the earth is round,[738] nor yet because a circle is the symbol of rest, but simply because it is both easier and cheaper to build a round hut than a square.[739]
[Sidenote: The Roman Vestals, or some of them, appear to have been originally the king’s daughters.] Further, in Rome the sacred fire was tended, as it still is in Hereroland, by unmarried women, and as the Herero priestesses are the chiefs daughters, so, we may conjecture, it was with some at least of the Vestals among the ancient Latins. The Roman Vestals appear to have been under the patria potestas of the king, and, in republican times, of the Pontifex Maximus, who succeeded to some of the king’s functions.[740] But if they were under the patria potestas of the king, they must have been either his wives or daughters; as virgins they cannot have been his wives; it remains, therefore, that they were his daughters. Various circumstances confirm this view. Their house at Rome, as we saw, always adjoined the Regia, the old palace of the kings; they were treated with marks of respect usually accorded to royalty;[741] and the most famous of all the Vestals, the mother of Romulus, was said to be a daughter of the King of Alba.[742] The custom of putting an unfaithful Vestal to death by immuring her in a subterranean chamber[743] may have been adopted in order to avoid the necessity of taking the life of a princess by violence;[744] for, as we shall learn later on, there is a very widespread reluctance to spill royal blood.
[Sidenote: Rites performed by the Vestals for the fertility of the earth and the fecundity of cattle.] Amongst the Herero the chief’s daughter who tends the holy fire has also to perform certain priestly rites, which have for their object the prosperity and multiplication of the cattle.[745] So, too, it was with the Roman Vestals. On the fifteenth of April every year pregnant cows were sacrificed to the Earth goddess; the unborn calves were torn from their mothers’ wombs, the chief Vestal burned them and kept their ashes for use at the shepherds’ festival of the Parilia. This sacrifice of pregnant cows was a fertility charm designed, by a curious application of homoeopathic magic, to quicken both the seed in the ground and the wombs of the cows and the ewes.[746] At the Parilia, held on the twenty-first of April, the Vestals mixed the ashes of the unborn calves with the blood of a horse which had been sacrificed in October, and this mixture they distributed to shepherds, who fumigated their flocks with it as a means of ensuring their fecundity and a plentiful supply of milk.[747]
[Sidenote: The Vestals were probably regarded as embodiments of Vesta, who was a mother-goddess, the bestower of offspring on cattle and women.] Strange as at first it may seem to find holy virgins assisting in operations intended to promote the fertility of the earth and of cattle, this reproductive function accords perfectly with the view that they were of old the wives of the fire-god and the mothers of kings. On that view, also, we can understand why down to imperial times the Vestals adored the male emblem of generation,[748] and why Vesta herself, the goddess of whom they were the priestesses and probably the embodiments, was worshipped by the Romans not as a virgin but as a mother.[749] She was sometimes identified with Venus.[750] Like Diana, with whom she was identified at Nemi, she appears to have been a goddess of fecundity, who bestowed offspring both on cattle and on women. That she was supposed to multiply cattle is indicated by the ceremonies which the Vestals performed in April; that she made women to be mothers is hinted at not obscurely by the legends of the birth of the old Latin kings.[751] The ancient Aryan practice of leading a bride thrice round the hearth of her new home[752] may have been intended not merely to introduce her to the ancestral spirits who had their seats there, but also to promote conception, perhaps by allowing one of these very spirits to enter into her and be born again. When the ancient Hindoo bridegroom led his bride round the fire, he addressed the fire-god [Sidenote: Custom of leading a bride round the fire perhaps a fertility charm.] Agni with the words, “Mayst thou give back, Agni, to the husband the wife together with offspring.”[753] When a Slavonian bride enters her husband’s house after marriage she is led thrice round the hearth; then she must stir the fire with the poker, saying, “As many sparks spring up, so many cattle, so many male children shall enliven the new home.”[754] At Mostar, in Herzegovina, the bride seats herself on a bag of fruit beside the hearth in her new home and pokes the fire thrice. While she does so, they bring her a small boy and set him on her lap. She turns the child thrice round in order that she may give birth to male children.[755] Still more clearly does belief in the impregnation of a woman by fire come out in another South Slavonian custom. When a wife wishes to have a child, she will hold a vessel full of water beside the fire on the hearth, while her husband knocks two burning brands together so that the sparks fly out. When some of them have fallen into the vessel, the woman drinks the water which has thus been fertilised by the fire.[756] The same belief seems still to linger in England; for there is a Lincolnshire saying that if a woman’s apron is burned above the knee by a spark or red-hot cinder flying out of a fire, she will become a mother.[757] Thus the superstition which gave rise to the stories of the birth of the old Roman kings holds its ground to this day in Europe, even in our own country. So indestructible are the crude fancies of our savage forefathers. Thus we may safely infer that the old practice of leading a bride formally to or round the hearth was designed to make her fruitful through the generative virtue ascribed to the fire. The custom is not confined to peoples of the Aryan stock, for it is observed also by the Esthonians and the Wotyaks of Russia[758] and, as we have seen, by the Herero of South Africa.[759] It expresses in daily life the same idea which is embodied in the myths of the birth of Servius Tullius and the other Latin kings, whose virgin mothers conceived through contact with a spark or tongue of fire.[760]
[Sidenote: New-born children brought to the hearth as a mode of introducing them to the ancestral spirits.] Accordingly, where beliefs and customs of this sort have prevailed, it is easy to understand why new-born children should be brought to the hearth, and why their birth should there be solemnly announced to the ancestors. This is done by the Herero,[761] and in like manner on the fifth or seventh day after a birth the ancient Greeks used to run naked round the hearth with the new-born babe in their arms.[762] This Greek ceremony may perhaps be regarded as merely a purification, in other words as a means of keeping at bay the demons who lie in wait for infants. Certainly in other parts of the world a custom has prevailed of passing a newly born child backwards and forwards through the smoke of the fire for the express purpose of warding off evil spirits or other baleful influences.[763] Yet on the analogy of the preceding customs we may conjecture that a practice of solemnly bringing infants to the domestic hearth has also been resorted to as a mode of introducing them to the spirits of their fathers.[764] In Russia the old belief that the souls of the ancestors were somehow in the fire on the hearth has left traces of itself down to the present time. Thus in the Nijegorod Government it is still forbidden to break up the smouldering faggots in a stove, because to do so might cause the ancestors to fall through into hell. And when a Russian family moves from one house to another, the fire is raked out of the old stove into a jar and solemnly conveyed to the new one, where it is received with the words, “Welcome, grandfather, to the new home!”[765]
[Sidenote: Reasons why a procreative virtue was ascribed to fire.] But why, it may be asked, should a procreative virtue be attributed to the fire, which at first sight appears to be a purely destructive agent? and why in particular should the ancestral spirits be conceived as present in it? Two different reasons perhaps led savage philosophers to these conclusions. In the first place the common mode of making fire by means of the fire-drill has suggested, as we have seen, to many savages the notion that fire is the child of the fire-sticks, in other words that the rubbing of the fire-sticks together is a sexual union which begets offspring in the shape of a flame. This of itself suffices to impress on the mind of a savage the idea that a capacity of reproduction is innate in the fire, and consequently that a woman may conceive by contact with it. Strictly speaking, he ought perhaps to refer this power of reproduction not to the fire but to the fire-sticks; but savage thought is in general too vague to distinguish clearly between cause and effect. If he thinks the matter out, as he may do if he is more than usually reflective, the savage will probably conclude that fire [Sidenote: The process of making fire by friction seems to the savage an act of generation.] exists unseen in all wood, and is only elicited from it by friction,[766] so that the spark or flame is the child, not so much of the fire-sticks, as of the parent fires in them. But this refinement of thought may well be above the reach even of a savage philosopher. The second reason which seems to have led early man to associate the fire with the souls of his ancestors was a superstitious veneration for the ancestral tree which furnished either the fuel for the sacred fire or the material out of which he carved one or both of the fire-sticks. Among the Herero, as we [Sidenote: Again, the fire was associated with the ancestors through the sacred ancestral tree which furnished either the fuel or the fire-sticks.] saw, the male fire-stick commonly is, or used to be, made out of the holy omumborombonga tree, from which they believe that they and their cattle sprang in days of old. Hence nothing could be more natural than that they should regard the fire produced by the friction of a piece of the ancestral tree, as akin to themselves, the offspring of the same mighty forefather, to wit, the sacred tree. Similarly, the Vestal fire at Rome was fed with the wood of the oak, the sacred tree of Jupiter, and the first Romans are described as “born of the tree trunks and the heart of oak.”[767] No wonder, then, that the Latin kings, who claimed to represent Jupiter, and in that capacity masqueraded in his costume and made mock thunder, should have prided themselves on being sprung from a fire which was fed with the wood of the god’s holy tree; such an origin was only another form of descent from the oak and from the god of the oak, Jupiter himself.
[Sidenote: Esthonian marriage custom.] The theory that impregnation by fire is really impregnation by the wood of the tree with which the fire is kindled, derives some confirmation from a custom which is observed at marriage by some of the Esthonians in the neighbourhood of Oberpahlen. The bride is escorted to a tree, which is thereupon cut down and burned. When the fire blazes up, she is led thrice round it and placed between three armed men, who clash their swords over her head, while the women sing a song. Then some coins are thrown into the fire, and when it has died out they are recovered and knocked into the stump of the tree, which was cut down to serve as fuel.[768] This is clearly a mode of rewarding, first the fire, and next the tree, for some benefit they have conferred on the bride. But in early society husband and wife desire nothing so much as offspring; this therefore may very well be the benefit for which the Esthonian bride repays the tree.
[Sidenote: The conception of the Fire-mother intimately bound up with that of the female fire-stick in the fire-drill.] Thus far we have regarded mainly the paternal aspect of the fire, which the Latins mythically embodied in Jupiter, that is literally Father Jove, the god of the oak. The maternal aspect of the fire was for them represented by Mother Vesta, as they called her; and as the Roman king stood for Father Jove, so his wife or daughter—the practice on this point appears to have varied—stood for Mother Vesta. Sometimes, as we have seen, the Vestal virgins, the priestesses or rather incarnations of Vesta, appear to have been the daughters, not the wives, of the king. But, on the other hand, there are grounds for thinking that the wife of King Latinus, the legendary ancestor of the Latins, was traditionally regarded as a Vestal,[769] and the analogy of the Flamen Dialis with his wife the Flaminica, as I shall shew presently, points also to a married pair of priestly functionaries concerned with the kindling and maintenance of the sacred fire. However that may have been, we may take it as probable that the notion of the fire-mother was intimately associated with, if it did not spring directly from, the female fire-stick of the fire-drill, just as the conception of the fire-father was similarly bound up with the male fire-stick.
[Sidenote: The Fire-father and the Fire-mother represented by a priest and priestess who together made the sacred fire by means of the fire-drill.] Further, it seems that these mythical beings, the fire-father and the fire-mother, were represented in real life by a priest and a priestess, who together made the sacred fire, the priest appropriately twirling the pointed male stick, while the priestess held fast on the ground the holed female stick, ready to blow up into a flame the spark which fell on the tinder. In the composite religion of Rome, formed like the Roman state by the fusion of several tribes, each with its own gods and priests, such pairs of fire-priests may at first have been duplicated. In one or more of the tribes which afterwards made up the Roman commonwealth the function of kindling the holy fire of oak was perhaps assigned to the Flamen Dialis and his wife the Flaminica, the living representatives of Jupiter and Juno; and if, as some scholars think, the name flamen comes from flare, “to blow up,”[770] the derivation would fit well with this theory. But in historical Rome the duty of making the sacred fire lay with the Vestal virgins and the chief pontiff.[771] The mode in which they shared the work between them is not described by ancient writers, but we may suppose that one of the virgins held the board of lucky wood on the ground while the pontiff inserted the point of a peg into the hole of the board and made the peg revolve rapidly between the palms of his hands. When the likeness of this mode of producing fire to the intercourse of the sexes had once struck people, they would deem it unnatural, and even indecent, for a woman to usurp the man’s function of twirling the pointed male stick. But the Vestals certainly helped to make fire by friction; it would seem, therefore, that the part they took in the process can only have been the one I have conjecturally assigned to them. At all events, the conjecture is supported by the following analogies.
[Sidenote: Among the Djakuns fire is made by the leader and his unmarried daughter.] The Djakuns, a wild tribe of the Malay Peninsula, are in the habit of making fire by friction. A traveller has described the custom as follows: “When a troop was on a journey and intended either to pitch a temporary camp, or to make a longer settlement, the first camp fire was kindled for good luck by an unmarried girl with the help of the fire-drill. Generally this girl was the daughter of the man who served the troop as leader. It was deemed of special importance that on the first night of a settlement the fire of every band should be lit by the unmarried daughter of a leader. But she might only discharge this duty if she had not her monthly sickness on her at the time. This custom is all the more remarkable inasmuch as the Djakuns in their migrations always carried a smouldering rope of bark with them.” “When the fire was to be kindled, the girl took the piece of soft wood and held it on the ground, while her father, or any other married man, twirled the vertical borer upon it. She waited for the spark to spring from the wood, and fanned it into a flame either by blowing on it or by waving the piece of wood quickly about in her hand. For this purpose she caught the spark in a bundle of teased bark and exposed it to a draught of air.” “Fire so produced was employed to kindle the other fires for that night. They ascribed to it good luck in cooking and a greater power of keeping off tigers and so forth, than if the first fire had been kindled by a spark from the smouldering bark rope.”[772] This account suggests a reason why a holy fire should be tended by a number of virgins: one or more of them might at any time be incapacitated by a natural infirmity for the discharge of the sacred duty.
[Sidenote: Among the Slavs of the Balkans fire is made by a young girl and boy.] Again, the Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula ascribe a healing or protective power to “living fire,” and when an epidemic is raging in a village they will sometimes extinguish all the fires on the hearths and procure a “living fire” by the friction of wood. At the present day this is done by various mechanical devices, but the oldest method, now almost obsolete, is said to be as follows:—A girl and a boy between the ages of eleven and fourteen, having been chosen to make the fire, are led into a dark room, where they must strip themselves of all their clothes without speaking a word. Then two perfectly dry cylindrical pieces of lime-wood are given them, which they must rub rapidly against each other, turn about, till they take fire. Tinder is then lit at the flame and used for the purpose of healing. This mode of kindling the “living fire” is still practised in the Schar Mountains of Old Servia. The writer who describes it witnessed some years ago the use of the sacred fire at the village of Setonje, at the foot of the Homolye Mountains, in the heart of the great Servian forest. But on that occasion the fire was made in the manner described, not by a boy and girl, but by an old woman and an old man. Every fire in the village had previously been extinguished, and was afterwards relit with the new fire.[773]
[Sidenote: Among the Kachins fire is made by a man and woman jointly.] Among the Kachins of Burma, when people take solemn possession of a new house, a new fire is made in front of it by a man and woman jointly. A dry piece of bamboo is pegged down on the ground; the two fire-makers sit down facing each other at either end of it, and together rub another piece of bamboo on the horizontal piece, one of them holding the wrists of the other and both pressing down firmly till fire is elicited.[774]
[Sidenote: Thus the conception of the fire-sticks as male and female is carried out by requiring the male stick to be worked by a man and the female stick to be worked by a woman.] In the first at least of these customs, it is plain, the conception of the fire-sticks as male and female has been logically carried out by requiring the male fire-stick to be worked by a man and the female fire-stick to be held by a woman. But opinions seem to differ on the question whether the fire-makers [Sidenote: But opinions differ as to whether the fire-makers should be married or single.] should be wedded or single. The Djakuns prefer that the man should be married and the woman unmarried; on the other hand, the Slavs of the Schar Mountains clearly think it better that both should be single, since they entrust the duty of making the fire to a boy and girl. In so far as the man’s part in the work is concerned, some of our Scottish Highlanders agree with the Djakuns at the other end of the world; for the natives of Lewis “did also make use of a fire called Tin-egin, i.e. a forced fire, or fire of necessity, which they used as an antidote against the plague or murrain in cattle; and it was performed thus: all the fires in the parish were extinguished, and then eighty-one married men, being thought the necessary number for effecting this design, took two great planks of wood, and nine of them were employed by turns, who by their repeated efforts rubbed one of the planks against the other until the heat thereof produced fire; and from this forced fire each family is supplied with new fire, which is no sooner kindled than a pot full of water is quickly set on it, and afterwards sprinkled upon the people infected with the plague, or upon the cattle that have the murrain. And this they all say they find successful by experiment: it was practised in the main land, opposite to the south of Skie, within these thirty years.”[775] On the other hand, the Germans of Halberstadt sided with the South Slavs on this point, for they caused the forced fire, or need fire, as it is commonly called, to be made by two chaste boys, who pulled at a rope which ran round a wooden cylinder.[776] The theory and practice of the Basutos in South Africa were similar. After a birth had taken place they used to kindle the fire of the hut afresh, and “for this purpose it was necessary that a young man of chaste habits should rub two pieces of wood quickly one against another, until a flame sprung up, pure as himself. It was firmly believed that a premature death awaited him who should dare to take upon himself this office, after having lost his innocence. As soon, therefore, as a birth was proclaimed in the village, the fathers took their sons to undergo the ordeal. Those who felt themselves guilty confessed their crime, and submitted to be scourged rather than expose themselves to the consequences of a fatal temerity.”[777]
[Sidenote: Reasons for entrusting the making of fire to unmarried boys and girls.] It is not hard to divine why the task of twirling the male fire-stick in the hole of the female fire-stick should by some people be assigned to married men. The analogy of the process to the intercourse of the sexes furnishes an obvious reason. It is less easy to understand why other people should prefer to entrust the duty to unmarried boys. But probably the preference is based on a belief that chastity leaves the boys with a stock of reproductive energy which they may expend on the operation of fire-making, whereas married men dissipate the same energy in other channels. A somewhat similar train of thought may explain a rule of virginity enjoined on women who assist in the production of fire by holding the female fire-stick on the ground. As a virgin’s womb is free to conceive, so, it might be thought, will be the womb of the female fire-stick which she holds; whereas had the female fire-maker been already with child, she could not be reimpregnated, and consequently the female fire-stick could not give birth to a spark. Thus, in the sympathetic connexion between the fire-sticks and the fire-makers we seem to reach the ultimate origin of the order of the Vestal Virgins: they had to be chaste, because otherwise they could not light the fire. Once when the sacred fire had gone out, the Vestal in charge of it was suspected of having brought about the calamity by her unchastity, but she triumphantly repelled the suspicion by eliciting a flame from the cold ashes.[778] Ideas of the same primitive kind still linger among the French peasantry, who think that if a girl can blow up a smouldering candle into a flame she is a virgin, but that if she fails to do so, she is not.[779] In ancient Greece none but persons of pure life were allowed to blow up the holy fire with their mouths; a vile man who had polluted his lips was deemed unworthy to discharge the duty.[780]
[Sidenote: The holy fire and virgins of St. Brigit in Ireland.] The French superstition, which I have just mentioned, may well date from Druidical times, for there are some grounds for thinking that among the old Celts, as among their near kinsmen the Latins, holy fires were tended by virgins. In our own country perpetual fires were maintained in the temple of a goddess whom the Romans identified with Minerva,[781] but whose native Celtic name seems to have been Brigit. Like Minerva, Brigit was a goddess of poetry and wisdom, and she had two sisters also called Brigit, who presided over leechcraft and smithcraft respectively. This appears to be only another way of saying that Brigit was the patroness of bards, physicians, and smiths.[782] Now, at Kildare in Ireland the nuns of St. Brigit tended a perpetual holy fire down to the suppression of the monasteries under Henry VIII.; and we can hardly doubt that in doing so they merely kept up, under a Christian name, an ancient pagan worship of Brigit in her character of a fire-goddess or patroness of smiths. The nuns were nineteen in number. Each of them had the care of the fire for a single night in turn; and on the twentieth evening the last nun, having heaped wood on the fire, used to say, “Brigit, take charge of your own fire; for this night belongs to you.” She then went away, and next morning they always found the fire still burning and the usual quantity of fuel consumed. Like the Vestal fire at Rome in the old days, the fire of St. Brigit burned within a circular enclosure made of stakes and brushwood, and no male might set foot inside the fence. The nuns were allowed to fan the fire or blow it up with bellows, but they might not blow on it with their breath.[783] [Sidenote: Not to breathe on a holy fire.] Similarly it is said that the Balkan Slavs will not blow with their mouths on the holy fire of the domestic hearth;[784] a Brahman is forbidden to blow a fire with his mouth;[785] and among the Parsees the priests have to wear a veil over their mouth lest they should defile the sacred fire by their breath.[786] The custom of maintaining a perpetual fire was not peculiar [Sidenote: Other perpetual fires in Ireland.] to Kildare, but seems to have been common in Ireland, for the native records shew that such fires were kept up in several monasteries, in each of which a small church or oratory was set apart for the purpose. This was done, for example, at the monasteries of Seirkieran, Kilmainham, and Inishmurray.[787] We may conjecture that these holy fires were merely survivals of the perpetual fires which in pagan [Sidenote: St. Brigit’s fire perhaps fed with oak-wood.] times had burned in honour of Brigit. The view that Brigit was a fire-goddess is confirmed by the observation that in the Christian calendar her festival falls the day before Candlemas, and the customs observed at that season by Celtic peasantry seem to prove that she was a goddess of the crops as well as of fire.[788] If that was so, it is another reason for comparing her to Vesta, whose priestesses performed ceremonies to fertilise both the earth and the cattle.[789] Further, there are some grounds for connecting Brigit, like Vesta, with the oak; for at Kildare her Christian namesake, St. Brigit, otherwise known as St. Bride or St. Bridget, built her church under an oak-tree, which existed till the tenth century, and gave its name to the spot, for Kildare is Cilldara, “the church of the oak-tree.”[790] The “church of the oak” may well have displaced a temple or sanctuary of the oak, where in Druidical days the holy fire was fed, like the Vestal fire at Rome, with the wood of the sacred tree.
[Sidenote: Early Irish monasteries built in oak groves.] We may suspect that a conversion of this sort was often effected in Ireland by the early Christian missionaries. The monasteries of Derry and Durrow, founded by St. Columba, were both named after the oak groves amidst which they were built; and at Derry the saint spared the beautiful trees and strictly enjoined his successors to do the same. In his old age, when he lived an exile on the shores of the bleak storm-swept isle of Iona, his heart yearned to the home of his youth among the oak groves of Ireland, and he gave expression to the yearning in passionate verse:—
“_That spot is the dearest on Erin’s ground, For the treasures that peace and purity lend, For the hosts of bright angels that circle it round, Protecting its borders from end to end._
“_The dearest of any on Erin’s ground, For its peace and its beauty I gave it my love; Each leaf of the oaks around Derry is found To be crowded with angels from heaven above._
“_My Derry! my Derry! my little oak grove, My dwelling, my home, and my own little cell, May God the Eternal in Heaven above Send death to thy foes, and defend thee well._”[791]
A feeling of the same sort came over a very different exile in a very different scene, when growing old amid the turmoil, the gaieties, the distractions of Paris, he remembered the German oak woods of his youth.
“_Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland. Der Eichenbaum Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft. Es war ein Traum._”
[Sidenote: Virgin priestesses of fire among the Incas of Peru.] Far from the oaks of Erin and the saint’s last home among the stormy Hebrides, a sacred fire has been tended by holy virgins, with statelier rites and in more solemn fanes, under the equinoctial line. The Incas of Peru, who deemed themselves the children of the Sun, procured a new fire from their great father at the solstice in June, our Midsummer Day. They kindled it by holding towards the sun a hollow mirror, which reflected his beams on a tinder of cotton wool. But if the sky happened to be overcast at the time, they made the new fire by rubbing two sticks against each other; and they looked upon it as a bad omen when they were obliged to do this, for they said the Sun must be angry with them, since he refused to kindle the flame with his own hand. The sacred fire, however obtained, was deposited at Cuzco, the capital of Peru, in the temple of the Sun, and also in a great convent of holy virgins, who guarded it carefully throughout the year, and it was an evil augury if they suffered it to go out. These [Sidenote: Wives of the Sun in Peru.] virgins were regarded as the wives of the Sun, and they were bound to perpetual chastity. If any of them proved unfaithful to her husband the Sun, she was buried alive, like a Roman Vestal, and her paramour was strangled. The reason for putting her to death in this manner was probably, as at Rome, a reluctance to shed royal blood; for all these virgins were of the royal family, being daughters of the Incas or of his kinsmen. Besides tending the holy fire, they had to weave and make all the clothes worn by the Inca and his legitimate wife, to bake the bread that was offered to the Sun at his great festivals, and to brew the wine which the Inca and his family drank on these occasions. All the furniture of the convent, down to the pots, pans, and jars, were of gold and silver, just as in the temple of the Sun, because the virgins were deemed to be his wives. And they had a golden garden, where the very clods were of fine gold; where golden maize reared its stalks, leaves and cobs, all of the precious metal; and where golden shepherds, with slings and crooks of gold, tended golden sheep and lambs.[792] The analogy of these virgin guardians of the sacred flame furnishes an argument in favour of the view set forth in the preceding pages; for if the Peruvian Vestals were the brides of the Sun, may not the Roman Vestals have been the brides of the Fire?
[Sidenote: Virgin priestesses of fire in Mexico and Yucatan.] On the summit of the great pyramidal temple at Mexico two fires burned continually on stone hearths in front of two chapels, and dreadful misfortunes were supposed to follow if the fires were allowed to go out. They were kept up by priests and maidens, some of whom had taken a vow of perpetual virginity. But most of these girls seem to have served only for a year or more until their marriage. They offered incense to the idols, wove cloths for the service of the temple, swept the sacred area, and baked the cakes which were presented to the gods but eaten by their priests. They were clad all in white, without any ornament. A broom and a censer were their emblems. Death was the penalty inflicted on the faithless virgin who polluted by her incontinence the temple of the god.[793] In Yucatan there was an order of Vestals instituted by a princess, who acted as lady-superior and was deified after her death under the title of the Virgin of the Fire. The members enrolled themselves voluntarily either for life or for a term of years, after which they might marry. Their duty was to tend the sacred fire, the emblem of the sun. If they broke their vow of chastity or allowed the fire to go out, they were shot to death with arrows.[794]
[Sidenote: Virgin priestesses of fire among the Baganda.] Amongst the Baganda of Central Africa there used to be an order of Vestal Virgins (bakaja) who were attached to the temples of the gods. Their duties were to keep the fire of the god burning all night, to see that there was a good supply of firewood, and to watch that the suppliants did not bring to the deity anything that was tabooed to him. These maidens are also said to have had charge of some of the vessels. All of them were young girls; no man might touch them; and when they reached the age of puberty, the god ordered them to be given in marriage. The place of a girl who thus vacated office had to be supplied by another girl taken from the same clan.[795]
[Sidenote: Resemblance between the Flamen Dialis of the Romans and the Agnihotri or fire-priest of the Brahmans.] We have seen that some people commit the task of making fire by friction to married men; and following the opinion of other scholars I have conjectured that in some of the Latin tribes the duty of kindling and feeding the sacred fire may have been assigned to the Flamen Dialis, who had always to be married; if his wife died, he vacated his office.[796] The sanctity of his fire is proved by the rule that no brand might be taken from his house except for the purpose of a sacrifice.[797] Further, the importance ascribed to the discharge of his duties is attested by another old rule which forbade him to be absent from his house in Rome for a single night.[798] The prohibition would be intelligible if one of his duties had formerly been to superintend the maintenance of a perpetual fire. However that may have been, the life of the priest was regulated by a whole code of curious restrictions or taboos, which rendered the office so burdensome and vexatious that, in spite of the high honours attached to the post, for a period of more than seventy years together no man was found willing to undertake it.[799] Some of these restrictions will be examined later on.[800] Their similarity to the rules of life still observed in India by the Brahmans who are fire-priests (Agnihotris) seems to confirm the view that the Flamen also was originally a fire-priest. The parallel between the two priesthoods would be all the more remarkable if, as some scholars hold, the very names Brahman and Flamen are philologically identical.[801] As to these Brahmanical fire-priests or Agnihotris we are told that the number of them nowadays is very limited, because the ceremonies involve heavy expenditure, and the rules which regulate them are very elaborate and difficult. The offering of food to the fire at meals is, indeed, one of the five daily duties of every Brahman; but the regular fire-service is the special duty of the Agnihotri. In order that he may be ceremonially pure he is bound by certain obligations not to travel or remain away from home for any long time; to sell nothing which is produced by himself or his family; to pay little attention to worldly affairs; to speak the truth; to bathe and worship the deities in the afternoon as well as in the morning; and to sacrifice to his deceased ancestors on the fifteenth of every month. He is not allowed to take food at night. He may not eat alkaline salt, meat, honey, and inferior grain, such as some varieties of pulse, millet, and the egg plant. He never wears shoes nor sleeps on a bed, but always on the ground. He is expected to keep awake most of the night and to study the Shâstras. He may have no connexion with, nor unholy thoughts regarding, any woman but his wife; and he must abstain from every other act that involves personal impurity.[802] With these rules we may compare some of the obligations laid on the Flamen Dialis. In the old days, as we saw, he was bound never to be absent from his house for a single night. He might not touch or even name raw meat, beans, ivy, and a she-goat; he might not eat leavened bread, nor touch a dead body; and the feet of his bed had always to be smeared with mud.[803] This last rule seems to be a mitigation of an older custom of sleeping on the ground, a custom which is still observed by the fire-priest in India, as it was in antiquity by the priests of Zeus at Dodona.[804] Similarly the priest of the old Prussian god Potrimpo was bound to sleep on the bare earth for three nights before he sacrificed to the deity.[805]
[Sidenote: Mode in which the Agnihotri procures fresh fire by the friction of fire-sticks.] Every Agnihotri has a separate room in his house where the sacred fire is kept burning in a small pit of a cubit square. Should the fire chance to go out, the priest must get fresh fire from another priest or procure it by the friction of fire-sticks (arani). These comprise, first, a block of sami wood (Prosopis spicigera) in which a small hole is made emblematical of the female principle (sakti yoni), and, second, an upright shaft which is made to revolve in the hole of the block by means of a rope. The point in the drill where the rope is applied to cause it to revolve is called deva yoni. Two priests take part in the operation. Before they begin they sing a hymn in honour of the fire-god Agni. When the fire has been kindled they place it in a copper vessel and sprinkle it with powdered cow-dung. When it is well alight, they cover it with another copper vessel, sprinkle it with drops of water, and sing another hymn in honour of Agni. Finally, the new fire is consigned to the fire-pit.[806] According to another description of the modern Indian fire-drill, the lower block is usually made of the hard wood of the khadira or khair tree (Acacia catechu), and it contains two shallow holes. In one of these holes the revolving drill works and produces sparks by friction; the other hole contains tinder which is ignited by means of the sparks. This latter hole is known as the yoni, the female organ of generation. The upper or revolving portion of the drill is called the pramantha. It consists of a round shaft of hard wood, with a spike of softer wood inserted in its lower end. One priest causes the shaft to revolve by pulling a cord, while another priest presses the spike down into the hole in the block by leaning hard upon a flat board placed on the top of the shaft. The spike is generally made of the peepul or sacred fig-tree. When it has become charred by friction, it is replaced by another.[807] According to one account, the fire is made in this fashion, not by two priests, but by the Brahman and his wife; she pulls the cord, while he holds the borer in the hole and recites the spells necessary for the production of the fire.[808]
[Sidenote: The Indian fire-sticks made from the sacred fig and sami wood.] This practice of the modern Agnihotri or fire-priest of India is in general accord with the precepts laid down in the ancient sacred books of his religion. For these direct that the upper or male stick of the fire-drill should be made of the sacred fig-tree (asvattha), and the lower or female stick of sami wood (Prosopis spicigera); and they draw out the analogy between the process of fire-making and the intercourse of the sexes in minute detail.[809] It deserves to be [Sidenote: The male fire-stick made by preference from a sacred fig-tree growing as a parasite on the female sami tree.] noted that the male fire-stick was cut by preference from a sacred fig-tree which grew as a parasite on a sami or female tree. The reason for this preference is obvious to the primitive mind. A parasite clasping a tree with its tendrils is conceived as a man embracing a woman, hence a pair of fire-sticks made from a pair of trees thus interlaced will naturally possess the power of procreating fire by friction in an unusually high degree.[810] So completely, in the Hindoo mind, does the process of making fire by friction blend with the union of the human sexes that it is actually employed as part of a charm to procure male offspring.[811] Such a confusion of thought helps us to understand the part played by the domestic fire in the ritual of marriage and birth as well as in the legends of the miraculous origin of the Latin kings.[812] In ancient India the male and the female fire-stick were identified with King Pururavas and the nymph Urvasi, whose loves and sorrows formed the theme of a beautiful tale.[813]
[Sidenote: The Greeks also preferred to make one of the fire-sticks from a parasitic plant.] Like the ancient Indians, the Greeks seem to have preferred that one of the two fire-sticks should be made from a parasitic or creeping plant. They recommended that the borer of the fire-drill should be made of laurel and the board of ivy or another creeper, apparently a kind of wild vine which grew like ivy upon trees; but in practice both the borer and the board were sometimes made of other woods, among which buckthorn, the evergreen oak, and the lime are particularly mentioned.[814] When we consider the analogy of the Indian preference for a borer made from a parasite, and remember how deeply rooted in the primitive mind is the comparison of the friction of the fire-sticks to the union [Sidenote: The reason for such a preference is the analogy of the union of the sexes.] of the sexes, we shall hardly doubt that the Greeks originally chose the ivy or wild vine for a fire-stick from motives of the sort which led the Hindoos to select the wood of a parasitic fig-tree for the same purpose. But while the Hindoos regarded the parasite as male and the tree to which it clung as female, the Greeks of Theophrastus’s time seem to have inverted this conception, since they recommended that the board, which plays the part of the female in the fire-drill, should be made of ivy or another creeper, whereas the borer, which necessarily represents the male, was to be fashioned out of laurel. This would imply that the ivy was a female and the laurel a male. Yet in Greek, on the contrary, the word for ivy is masculine, and the plant was identified mythologically with the male god Dionysus;[815] whereas the word for laurel is feminine and the tree was identified with a nymph. Hence we may conjecture that at first the Greeks, like the Hindoos, regarded the clinging creeper as the male and the tree which it embraced as the female, and that of old, therefore, they made the borer of the fire-drill out of ivy and the board out of laurel. If this was so, the reasons which led them to reverse the usage can only be guessed at. Perhaps practical convenience had a share in bringing about the change. For the laurel is, as the late Professor H. Marshall Ward kindly informed me, a harder wood than the ivy, and to judge by general, though not universal, practice most people find it easier to make fire by the friction of a hard borer on a soft board than by rubbing a hard board with a soft point. This, therefore, would be a reason for making the borer of laurel and the board of ivy. If such a change took place in the history of the Greek fire-drill, it would be an interesting example of superstition modified, if not vanquished, by utility in the struggle for existence.
Footnote 737:
Livy, xxviii. 11. 6 sq.; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. ii. 67. 5.
Footnote 738:
Ovid, Fasti, vi. 265 sqq.; Festus, p. 262, ed. C. O. Müller.
Footnote 739:
Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, pp. 11 sq. On the diffusion of the round hut in Africa Sir H. H. Johnston says: “The original form of house throughout all British Central Africa was what the majority of the houses still are—circular and somewhat like a beehive in shape, with round walls of wattle and daub and thatched roof. This style of house is characteristic of (a) all Africa south of the Zambezi; (b) all British Central Africa; as much of the Portuguese provinces of Zambezia and Moçambique as are not under direct Portuguese or Muhammedan influence which may have introduced the rectangular dwelling; (c) all East Africa up to and including the Egyptian Sudan, where Arab influence has not introduced the oblong rectangular building; (d) the Central Nigerian Sudan, much of Senegambia, and perhaps the West Coast of Africa as far east and south as the Gold Coast, subject, of course, to the same limitations as to foreign influence” (British Central Africa, London, 1897, P. 453).
Footnote 740:
J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 2nd Ed., pp. 250, 341 sq.
Footnote 741:
J. Marquardt, op. cit. iii. 2nd Ed., pp. 340 sq.; Journal of Philology, xiv. (1885) pp. 155 sq.
Footnote 742:
Livy, i. 3 sq.; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. i. 76 sq.; Plutarch, Romulus, 3.
Footnote 743:
Plutarch, Numa, 10; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Ant. Rom. ii. 67. 4, viii. 89. 5.
Footnote 744:
The suggestion is due to Mr. M. A. Bayfield (Classical Review, xv. 1901, p. 448). He compares the similar execution of the princess Antigone (Sophocles, Antigone, 773 sqq.). However, we must remember that a custom of burying people alive has been practised as a punishment or a sacrifice by Romans, Persians, and Germans, even when the victims were not of royal blood. See Livy, xxii. 57. 6; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxviii. 12; Plutarch, Marcellus, 3; id., Quaest. Rom. 83; Herodotus, vii. 114; J. Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, 3rd Ed., pp. 694 sq. As to the objection to spill royal blood, see The Golden Bough, Second Edition, i. 354 sq.
Footnote 745:
See above, p. 215.
Footnote 746:
Ovid, Fasti, iv. 629-672. Compare Varro, De lingua Latina, vi. 15; Joannes Lydus, De mensibus, iv. 49.
Footnote 747:
Ovid, Fasti, iv. 731-782. See below, p. 326.
Footnote 748:
Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxviii. 39; “Quamquam religione tutatur et fascinus, imperatorum quoque, non solum infantium custos, qui deus inter sacra Romana Vestalibus colitur.”
Footnote 749:
Virgil, Georg. i. 498; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 828; G. Henzen, Acta fratrum Arvalium, pp. 124, 147; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae selectae, Nos. 5047, 5048. Ennius represented Vesta as the mother of Saturn and Titan. See Lactantius, Divin. inst. i. 14.
Footnote 750:
Augustine, De civitate Dei, iv. 10.
Footnote 751:
See above, pp. 195 sqq.
Footnote 752:
Grihya Sûtras, translated by H. Oldenberg, vol. i. pp. 37, 168, 279, 283, 382, 384, vol. ii. pp. 46, 191, 260; M. Winternitz, “Das altindische Hochzeitsrituell,” pp. 4, 56-62 (Denkschriften der kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, xl., Vienna, 1892); H. Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 312; G. A. Grierson, Bihār Peasant Life (Calcutta, 1885), p. 368; F. S. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, pp. 386, 436, cp. 430; J. Lasicius, “De diis Samagitarum caeterorumque Sarmatarum,” in Magazin herausgegeben von der Lettisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft, xiv. 99; J. Maeletius (Maletius), “De sacrificiis et idolatria veterum Borussorum Livonum aliarumque vicinarum gentium,” in Mitteilungen der Litterarischen Gesellschaft Masovia, viii. (1902) pp. 191, 204 (this work is also reprinted under the name of J. Menecius in Scriptores rerum Livonicarum, ii. (Riga and Leipsic, 1848) pp. 389-392); F. Woeste, in Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde, ii. (1855) p. 91; A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, pp. 433, 522; A. Kuhn, Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus Westfalen, ii. 38; J. H. Schmitz, Sitten und Sagen, etc., des Eifler Volkes, i. 67; Montanus, Die deutsche Volksfeste, Volksbräuche und deutscher Volksglaube, p. 85; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Hochzeitsbuch (Leipsic, 1871), p. 222; L. v. Schroeder, Die Hochzeitsbräuche der Esten (Berlin, 1888), pp. 127 sqq.; E. Samter, Familienfeste der Griechen und Römer (Berlin, 1901), pp. 59-62; O. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, pp. 356 sq. This evidence proves that the custom has been practised by the Indian, Slavonian, Lithuanian, and Teutonic branches of the Aryan race, from which we may fairly infer that it was observed by the ancestors of the whole family before their dispersion.
Footnote 753:
Grihya-Sûtras, translated by H. Oldenberg, vol. i. p. 283 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxix.).
Footnote 754:
Prof. Vl. Titelbach, “Das heilige Feuer bei den Balkanslaven,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, xiii. (1900) p. 1.
Footnote 755:
F. S. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven (Vienna, 1885), p. 430.
Footnote 756:
F. S. Krauss, op. cit. p. 531.
Footnote 757:
This saying was communicated to me by Miss Mabel Peacock in a letter dated Kirton-in-Lindsey, Lincolnshire, 30th October 1905.
Footnote 758:
Max Buch, Die Wotjäken (Stuttgart, 1882), pp. 52, 59; L. v. Schroeder, op. cit. pp. 129, 132.
Footnote 759:
Above, pp. 221 sq.
Footnote 760:
As it is believed that fire may impregnate human beings, so conversely some people seem to imagine that it may be impregnated by them. Thus Mr. T. R. Glover, Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, writes to me (18th June 1906): “A curious and not very quotable instance of (I suppose) Sacred Marriage was brought to my notice by Mr. Brown of the Canadian Baptist Mission to the Telugus. He said that in Hindoo temples (in South India chiefly?) sometimes a scaffolding is erected over a fire. A man and a woman are got to copulate on it and allow the human seed to fall into the fire.” But perhaps this ceremony is only another way of conveying the fertilising virtue of the fire to the woman, in other words, of getting her with child.
Footnote 761:
Above, pp. 215, 221.
Footnote 762:
Suidas, Harpocration, and Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. Ἀμφιδρόμια; Hesychius, s.v. δρομάφιον ἧμαρ; Schol. on Plato, Theaetetus, p. 160 E. On this custom see S. Reinach, Cultes, mythes, et religions, i. (Paris, 1905) pp. 137-145. He suggests that the running of the naked men who carried the babies was intended, by means of sympathetic magic, to impart to the little ones in after-life the power of running fast. But this theory does not explain why the race took place round the hearth.
Footnote 763:
The custom has been practised with this intention in Scotland, China, New Britain, the Tenimber and Timorlaut Islands, and by the Ovambo of South Africa. See Pennant’s “Second Tour in Scotland,” Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, iii. 383; Miss C. F. Gordon Cumming, In the Hebrides, ed. 1883, p. 101; China Review, ix. (1880-1881) p. 303; R. Parkinson, Im Bismarck-Archipel, pp. 94 sq.; J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 303; H. Schinz, Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika, p. 307. A similar custom was observed, probably for the same reason, in ancient Mexico and in Madagascar. See Clavigero, History of Mexico, translated by Cullen, i. 31; W. Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 152. Compare my note, “The Youth of Achilles,” Classical Review, vii. (1893) pp. 293 sq.
Footnote 764:
Compare E. Samter, Familienfeste der Griechen und Römer (Berlin, 1901), pp. 59-62.
Footnote 765:
W. R. S. Ralston, The Songs of the Russian People, pp. 120 sq. Ralston held that the Russian house-spirit Domovoy, who is supposed to live behind the stove, is the modern representative of an ancestral spirit. Compare ibid. pp. 84, 86, 119.
Footnote 766:
Evidence of this view will be adduced later on. See The Golden Bough, Second Edition, iii. 456.
Footnote 767:
See above, pp. 185 sq.
Footnote 768:
L. v. Schroeder, Die Hochzeitsbräuche der Esten (Berlin, 1888), pp. 129 sq.
Footnote 769:
See above, p. 197.
Footnote 770:
Th. Mommsen, History of Rome, New Edition (London, 1894), i. 215 sq.; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 2nd Ed., p. 326; W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, p. 147. For another derivation of their name see below, p. 247.
Footnote 771:
See above, p. 207.
Footnote 772:
H. Vaughan Stevens, “Mitteilungen aus dem Frauenleben der Ôrang Belendas, der Ôrang Djâkun und der Ôrang Lâut,” bearbeitet von Dr. Max Bartels, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xxviii. (1896) pp. 168 sq. The writer adds that any person, boy, man, or woman (provided she was not menstruous) might light the fire, if it were more convenient that he or she should do so. Thus the co-operation of a married man and an unmarried girl, though apparently deemed the best, was not the only permissible way of igniting the wood. The good faith or at all events the accuracy of the late German traveller H. Vaughan Stevens is not, I understand, above suspicion; but Mr. Nelson Annandale, joint author of Fasciculi Malayenses, writes to me of him that “he certainly had a knowledge and experience of the wild tribes of the Malay region which few or none have excelled, for he lived literally as one of themselves.”
Footnote 773:
Prof. Vl. Titelbach, “Das heilige Feuer bei den Balkanslaven,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, xiii. (1900) pp. 2-4. The ceremony witnessed by Prof. Titelbach will be described later on in this work. Kinglake rode through the great Servian forest on his way from Belgrade to Constantinople, and from his description (Eothen, ch. ii.) we gather that it is chiefly composed of oak. He says: “Endless and endless now on either side the tall oaks closed in their ranks, and stood gloomily lowering over us.”
Footnote 774:
Ch. Gilhodes, “La Culture matérielle des Katchins (Birmanie),” Anthropos, v. (1910) p. 629.
Footnote 775:
M. Martin’s “Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,” in Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, iii. 611. The first edition of Martin’s work was published in 1703, and the second in 1716.
Footnote 776:
J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 4th ed., i. 504.
Footnote 777:
E. Casalis, The Basutos, pp. 267 sq.
Footnote 778:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. ii. 68; Valerius Maximus, i. 1. 7.
Footnote 779:
J. Lecœur, Esquisses du Bocage Normand, ii. (Condé-sur-Noireau, 1887) p. 27; B. Souché, Croyances, présages et traditions diverses (Niort, 1880), p. 12.
Footnote 780:
Polybius, xii. 13. In Darfur a curious power over fire is ascribed to women who have been faithful to their husbands. “It is a belief among the Forians, that if the city takes fire, the only means of arresting the progress of the flames is to bring near them a woman, no longer young, who has never been guilty of intrigue. If she be pure, by merely waving a mantle, she puts a stop to the destruction. Success has sometimes rewarded a virtuous woman” (Travels of an Arab Merchant [Mohammed Ibn-Omar El-Tounsy] in Soudan, abridged from the French by Bayle St. John (London, 1854), p. 112). Compare R. W. Felkin, “Notes on the For Tribe of Central Africa,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, xiii. (1884-1886) p. 230.
Footnote 781:
Solinus, xxii. 10. The Celtic Minerva, according to Caesar (De bello Gallico, vi. 17), was a goddess of the mechanical arts.
Footnote 782:
J. Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, pp. 73-77; P. W. Joyce, Social History of Ancient Ireland, i. 260 sq.
Footnote 783:
Giraldus Cambrensis, The Topography of Ireland, chaps. xxxiv.-xxxvi., translated by Thomas Wright; P. W. Joyce, Social History of Ancient Ireland, i. 334 sq. It is said that in the island of Sena (the modern Sein), off the coast of Brittany, there was an oracle of a Gallic deity whose worship was cared for by nine virgin priestesses. They could raise storms by their incantations, and turn themselves into any animals they pleased (Mela, iii. 48); but it is not said that they maintained a perpetual holy fire, though Ch. Elton affirms that they did (Origins of English History, p. 27). M. Salomon Reinach dismisses these virgins as a fable based on Homer’s description of the isle of Circe (Odyssey, x. 135 sqq.), and he denies that the Gauls employed virgin priestesses. See his article, “Les Vierges de Sena,” Revue Celtique, xviii. (1897) pp. 1-8; id., Cultes, mythes, et religions, i. (Paris, 1905) pp. 195 sqq. To me the nuns of St. Brigit seem to be most probably the successors of a Celtic order of Vestals. That there were female Druids is certain, but it does not appear whether they were virgins. See Lampridius, Alexander Severus, 60; Vopiscus, Aurelianus, 44; id., Numerianus, 14 sq.
Footnote 784:
Prof. Vl. Titelbach, “Das heilige Feuer bei den Balkanslaven,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, xiii. (1900) p. 1.
Footnote 785:
Laws of Manu, iv. 53, translated by G. Bühler (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv. p. 137).
Footnote 786:
Martin Haug, Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsees 3rd Ed., (London, 1884), p. 243, note 1. Strabo describes the mouth-veil worn by the Magian priests in Cappadocia (xiv. 3. 15, p. 733). At Arkon, in the island of Rügen, there was a shrine so holy that none but the priest might enter it, and even he might not breathe in it. As often as he needed to draw in or give out breath, he used to run out of the door lest he should taint the divine presence with his breath. See Saxo Grammaticus, Historia Danica, bk. xiv. p. 824, ed. P. E. Müller (p. 393 of Elton’s English translation).
Footnote 787:
P. W. Joyce, Social History of Ancient Ireland, i. 335 sq.; Standish H. O’Grady, Sylva Gadelica, translation (London, 1892), pp. 15, 16, 41.
Footnote 788:
See above, pp. 94 sq.
Footnote 789:
See above, p. 229.
Footnote 790:
Douglas Hyde, A Literary History of Ireland (London, 1899), p. 158. The tradition of the oak of Kildare survives in the lines,
“_That oak of Saint Bride, which nor Devil nor Dane Nor Saxon nor Dutchman could rend from her fane_,”
which are quoted by Mr. D. Fitzgerald in Revue Celtique, iv. (1879-1880) p. 193.
Footnote 791:
Douglas Hyde, op. cit. pp. 169-171. At Kells, also, St. Columba dwelt under a great oak-tree. The writer of his Irish life, quoted by Mr. Hyde, says that the oak-tree “remained till these latter times, when it fell through the crash of a mighty wind. And a certain man took somewhat of its bark to tan his shoes with. Now, when he did on the shoes, he was smitten with leprosy from his sole to his crown.”
Footnote 792:
Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, pt. i. bk. iv. chaps. 1-3, bk. vi. chaps. 20-22 (vol. i. pp. 292-299, vol. ii. pp. 155-164, Markham’s translation); P. de Cieza de Leon, Travels, p. 134 (Markham’s translation); id., Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru, pp. 85 sq. (Markham’s translation); Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, bk. v. chap. 15 (vol. ii. pp. 331-333, Hakluyt Society). Professor E. B. Tylor discredits Garcilasso’s description of these Peruvian priestesses on the ground that it resembles Plutarch’s account of the Roman Vestals (Numa, 9 sq.) too closely to be independent; he thinks that “the apparent traces of absorption from Plutarch invalidate whatever rests on Garcilasso de la Vega’s unsupported testimony.” See his Researches into the Early History of Mankind, 3rd Ed., pp. 249-253. In particular, he stumbles at the statement that an unfaithful Peruvian priestess was buried alive. But that statement was made by Cieza de Leon, who travelled in Peru when Garcilasso was a child, and whose book, or rather the first part of it, containing the statement, was published more than fifty years before that of Garcilasso. Moreover, when we understand that the punishment in question was based on a superstition which occurs independently in many parts of the world, the apparent improbability of the coincidence vanishes. As to the mode of kindling the sacred fire, Professor Tylor understands Plutarch to say that the sacred fire at Rome was kindled, as in Peru, by a burning-glass. To me it seems that Plutarch is here speaking of a Greek, not a Roman usage, and this is made still clearer when his text is read correctly. For the words ὑπὸ Μήδων, περὶ δὲ τὰ Μιθριδιατικά should be altered to ὑπὸ Μαίδων περὶ τὰ Μιθριδιατικά. See H. Pomtow in Rheinisches Museum, N. F. li. (1896) p. 365, and my note on Pausanias, x. 19. 4 (vol. v. p. 331). Thus Plutarch gives two instances when a sacred fire was extinguished and had to be relit with a burning-glass; but both instances are Greek, neither is Roman. The Greek mode of lighting a sacred fire by means of a crystal is described also in the Orphic poem on precious stones, verses 177 sqq. (Orphica, ed. E. Abel, p. 115). Nor were the Greeks and Peruvians peculiar in this respect. The Siamese and Chinese have also been in the habit of kindling a sacred fire by means of a metal mirror or burning-glass. See Pallegoix, Description du royaume Thai ou Siam, ii. 55; A. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iii. 516; J. H. Plath, “Die Religion und der Cultus der alten Chinesen,” Abhandlungen der k. bayer. Akademie der Wissen, i. Cl. ix. (1863) pp. 876 sq. Again, the full description of the golden garden of the Peruvian Vestals, which may sound to us fabulous, is given by Cieza de Leon in a work (the Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru) which it is unlikely that Garcilasso ever saw, since it was not printed till 1873, centuries after his death. Yet Garcilasso’s brief description of the garden agrees closely with that of Cieza de Leon, differing from it just as that of an independent witness naturally would—namely, in the selection of some other details in addition to those which the two have in common. He says that the virgins “had a garden of trees, plants, herbs, birds and beasts, made of gold and silver, like that in the temple” (vol. i. p. 298, Markham’s translation). Thus the two accounts are probably independent and therefore trustworthy, for a fiction of this kind could hardly have occurred to two romancers separately. A strong confirmation of Garcilasso’s fidelity is furnished by the close resemblance which the fire customs, both of Rome and Peru, present to the well-authenticated fire customs of the Herero at the present day. There seems to be every reason to think that all three sets of customs originated independently in the simple needs and superstitious fancies of the savage. On the whole, I see no reason to question the good faith and accuracy of Garcilasso.
Footnote 793:
B. de Sahagun, Histoire des choses de la Nouvelle Espagne, pp. 196 sq., 386; Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, bk. v. ch. 15 (vol. ii. pp. 333 sq., Hakluyt Society); A. de Herrera, General History of the vast Continent and Islands of America, iii. 209 sq., Stevens’s translation (London, 1725, 1726); Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. 264, 274 sq.; Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l’Amérique Centrale, i. 289, iii. 661; H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 204 sqq., 245, 583, iii. 435 sq. However, Sahagun (pp. 186, 194), Acosta (vol. ii. p. 336) and Herrera seem to imply that the duty of maintaining the sacred fire was discharged by men only.
Footnote 794:
Brasseur de Bourbourg, op. cit. ii. 6; H. H. Bancroft, op. cit. iii. 473. Fire-worship seems to have lingered among the Indians of Yucatan down to about the middle of the nineteenth century, and it may still survive among them. See D. G. Brinton, “The Folk-lore of Yucatan,” Folk-lore Journal, i. (1883) pp. 247 sq.
Footnote 795:
Letter of the Rev. J. Roscoe, dated Kampala, Uganda, 9th April 1909.
Footnote 796:
Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 22; Ateius Capito, cited by Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 50. On the other hand, Servius on Virgil, Aen. iv. 29, says that the Flamen might marry another wife after the death of the first. But the statement of Aulus Gellius and Ateius Capito is confirmed by other evidence. See J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. 2nd Ed., 329, note 8. As to the rule see my note, “The Widowed Flamen,” Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 407 sqq.
Footnote 797:
Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 7; Festus, p. 106, ed. C. O. Müller.
Footnote 798:
Livy, v. 52. 13 sq. In later times the rule was so far relaxed that he was allowed to be absent from Rome for two nights or even longer, provided he got leave from the chief pontiff on the score of ill-health. See Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 14; Tacitus, Annals, iii. 71.
Footnote 799:
Tacitus, Annals, iii. 58; Dio Cassius, liv. 36. As to the honours attached to the office, see Livy, xxvii. 8. 8; Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 113.
Footnote 800:
See The Golden Bough, Second Edition, i. 241 sqq.
Footnote 801:
P. Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache (Göttingen, 1896), pp. 127 sqq.; O. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, pp. 637 sq. For a different derivation of the name Flamen see above, p. 235. Being no philologer, I do not pretend to decide between the rival etymologies. My friend Prof. J. H. Moulton prefers the equation Flamen = Brahman, which he tells me is philologically correct, because if Flamen came from flare we should expect a form like flator rather than flamen. The form flator was used in Latin, though not in this sense.
Footnote 802:
W. Crooke, The Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, i. 30-32. Compare Monier Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India, pp. 364, 365, 392.
Footnote 803:
Aulus Gellius, x. 15.
Footnote 804:
Homer, Iliad, xvi. 233-235; Sophocles, Trachiniae, 1166 sq.; Callimachus, Hymn to Delos, 284-286.
Footnote 805:
Ch. Hartknoch, Selectae dissertationes historicae de variis rebus Prussicis, p. 163 (bound up with his edition of Düsburg’s Chronicon Prussiae, Frankfort and Leipsic, 1679); Simon Grunau, Preussischer Chronik, ed. M. Perlbach, i. (Leipsic, 1876) p. 95.
Footnote 806:
W. Crooke, op. cit. i. 31-33.
Footnote 807:
W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 194 sq.
Footnote 808:
J. C. Nesfield, in Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. p. 12, § 77.
Footnote 809:
Rigveda, iii. 29, translated by R. T. H. Griffith (Benares, 1889-1892), vol. ii. pp. 25-27; Satapatha Brâhmana, translated by J. Eggeling, part i. p. 389, note 3, part ii. pp. 90 sq., part v. pp. 68-74; Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, translated by M. Bloomfield, pp. 91, 97 sq., 334, 460; W. Caland, Altindisches Zauberritual, pp. 115 sq.; A. Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, 2nd Ed., pp. 40, 64-78, 183-185; H. Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, pp. 58, 59. The sami wood is sometimes identified with the Acacia Suma (Mimosa Suma); but the modern Bengalee name of Prosopis spicigera is shami or somi, which seems to be conclusive evidence of the identity of Prosopis spicigera with sami. The Prosopis spicigera is a deciduous thorny tree of moderate size, which grows in the arid zones of the Punjaub, Rajputana, Gujarat, Bundelcund, and the Deccan. The heart of the wood is of a purplish brown colour and extremely hard. It is especially valued for fuel, as it gives out much heat. See G. Watt, Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, s.v. “Prosopis spicigera.” For a reference to this work I am indebted to the kindness of the late Professor H. Marshall Ward.
Footnote 810:
A. Kuhn, op. cit. pp. 40, 66, 175.
Footnote 811:
Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, translated by M. Bloomfield, pp. 97 sq., 460; W. Caland, Altindisches Zauberritual, pp. 115 sq.
Footnote 812:
See above, pp. 195 sqq., 230 sqq.
Footnote 813:
Rigveda, x. 95, translated by R. T. H. Griffith, Satapatha Brâhmana, translated by J. Eggeling, part v. pp. 68-74. Compare H. Oldenberg, Die Literatur des alten Indien (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1903), pp. 53-55. On the story see A. Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, 2nd Ed., pp. 71 sqq.; F. Max Müller Selected Essays on Language, Religion, and Mythology (London, 1881), i. 408 sqq.; Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth (London, 1884), pp. 64 sqq.; K. F. Pischel and Geldner, Vedische Studien, i. (Stuttgart, 1889), pp. 243-295. It belongs to the group of tales which describe the marriage of a human with an animal mate, of a mortal with a fairy, and often, though not always, their unhappy parting. The story seems to have its roots in totemism. See my Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 566 sqq. It will be illustrated more at length in a later part of The Golden Bough.
Footnote 814:
Homer, Hymn to Mercury, 108-111 (where a line has been lost; see the note of Messrs. Allen and Sikes); Theophrastus, Histor. plant. v. 9. 6; id., De igne, ix. 64; Hesychius, s.v. στορεύς; Schol. on Apollonius Rhodius, Argon. i. 1184; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. 208; Seneca, Nat. Quaest. ii. 22; A. Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, 2nd Ed., pp. 35-41; H. Blumner, Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Künste, ii. 354-356. Theophrastus gives the name of athragene to the plant which, next to or equally with ivy, makes the best board; he compares it to a vine. Pliny (l.c.) seems to have identified it with a species of wild vine. According to Sprengel, the athragene is the Clematis cirrhosa of Linnaeus, the French clématite à vrilles. See Dioscorides, ed. C. Sprengel, vol. ii. p. 641. As to the kinds of wood employed by the Romans in kindling fire we have no certain evidence, as Pliny and Seneca may have merely copied from Theophrastus.
Footnote 815:
Pausanias, i. 31. 6, with my note.
XVII. THE ORIGIN OF PERPETUAL FIRES
[Sidenote: The custom of maintaining a perpetual fire probably originated in the difficulty of making fire by friction.] Whatever superstitions may have gathered about it in the course of ages, the custom of maintaining a perpetual fire probably sprang from a simple consideration of practical convenience. The primitive mode of making fire by the friction of wood is laborious at all times, and it is especially so in wet weather. Hence the savage finds it convenient to keep a fire constantly burning or smouldering in order to spare himself the troubling of kindling it. This convenience becomes a necessity with people who do not know how to make fire. That there have been such tribes down to our own time is affirmed by witnesses whose evidence we have no reason to doubt. Thus Mr. E. H. Man, who resided eleven years in the Andaman Islands and was intimately acquainted with the natives, tells us that, being ignorant of [Sidenote: Some races said to be ignorant of the means of making fire.] the art of making fire, they take the utmost pains to prevent its extinction. When they leave a camp intending to return in a few days, they not only take with them one or more smouldering logs, wrapped in leaves if the weather be wet, but they also place a large burning log or faggot of suitable wood in some sheltered spot, where it smoulders for several days and can be easily rekindled when it is needed. While it is the business of the women to gather the wood, the duty of keeping up the fires both at home and in travelling by land or sea is not confined to them, but is undertaken by persons of either sex who have most leisure or are least burdened.[816] The Russian traveller, Baron Miklucho-Maclay, who lived among the natives of the Maclay coast of northern New Guinea at a time when they had hardly come into contact with Europeans, writes: “It is remarkable that here almost all the inhabitants of the coast possess no means whatever of making fire, hence they always and everywhere carry burning or glowing brands about with them. If they go in the morning to the plantation they carry a half-burnt brand from their hearth in order to kindle a fire at the corner of the plantation. If they go on a longer journey into the mountains, they again take fire with them for the purpose of smoking, since their cigars, wrapped in green leaves, continually go out. On sea voyages they usually keep glowing coals in a half-broken pot partly filled with earth. The people who remain behind in the village never forget to keep up the fire.” They repeatedly told him that they had often to go to other villages to fetch fire when the fires in all the huts of their own village had chanced to go out. Yet the same traveller tells us that the mountain tribes of this part of New Guinea, such as the Englam-Mana and Tiengum-Mana, know how to make fire by friction. They partially cleave a log of dry wood with a stone axe and then draw a stout cord, formed of a split creeper, rapidly to and fro in the cleft, till sparks fly out and set fire to a tinder of dry coco-nut fibres.[817] It is odd that the people of the coast should not have learned this mode of producing fire from their neighbours in the mountains. The Russian explorer’s observations, however, have been confirmed by German writers. One of them, a Mr. Hoffmann, says of these people: “In every house care is taken that fire burns day and night on the hearth. For this purpose they choose a kind of wood which burns slowly, but glimmers for a long time and retains its glow. When a man sets out on a journey or goes to the field he has always a glimmering brand with him. If he wishes to make fire, he waves the smouldering wood to and fro till it bursts into a glow.” On frequented paths, crossways, and so forth, you may often see trunks of trees lying which have been felled for the purpose of being ignited and furnishing fire to passers-by. Such trees continue to smoulder for weeks.[818] Similarly the dwarf tribes of Central Africa “do not know how to kindle a fire quickly, and in order to get one readily at any moment they keep the burning trunks of fallen trees in suitable spots, and watch over their preservation like the Vestals of old.”[819] It seems to be at least doubtful whether these dwarfs of the vast and gloomy equatorial forests are acquainted with the art of making fire at all. A German traveller observes that the care which they take to preserve fire is extremely remarkable. “It appears,” he says, “that the pygmies, as other travellers have reported, do not know how to kindle fire by rubbing sticks against each other. Like the Wambuba of the forest, in leaving a camp, they take with them a thick glowing brand, and carry it, often for hours, in order to light a fire at their next halting place.”[820]
[Sidenote: Fire kindled by natural causes was probably used by men long before they learned to make it for themselves.] Whether or not tribes ignorant of the means of making fire have survived to modern times, it seems likely that mankind possessed and used fire long before they learned how to kindle it. In the violent thunderstorms which accompany the end of the dry season in Central and Eastern Africa, it is not uncommon for the lightning to strike and ignite a tree, from which the fire soon spreads to the withered herbage, till a great conflagration is started. From a source of this sort a savage tribe may have first obtained fire, and the same thing may have happened independently in many parts of the world.[821] Other people, perhaps, procured fire from volcanoes, the lava of which will, under favourable circumstances, remain hot enough to kindle shavings of wood years after an eruption has taken place.[822] Others again may have lit their first fire at the jets of inflammable gas which spring from the ground in various parts of the world, notably at Baku on the Caspian, where the flames burn day and night, summer and winter, to a height of fifteen or twenty feet.[823] It is harder to conjecture how man first learned the great secret of making fire by friction. The discovery was perhaps made by jungle or forest races, who saw dry bamboos or branches thus ignited by rubbing against each other in a high wind. Fires are sometimes started in this way in the forests of New Zealand.[824] It has also been suggested that savages may have accidentally elicited a flame for the first time in the process of chipping flints over dry moss, or boring holes with hard sticks in soft wood.[825]
[Sidenote: Many savages carry fire constantly with them as a matter of convenience.] But even when the art of fire-making has been acquired, the process itself is so laborious that many savages keep fire always burning rather than be at the trouble of extracting it by friction. This, for example, was true of the roving Australian aborigines before they obtained matches from the whites. On their wanderings they carried about with them pieces of smouldering bark or cones of the Banksia tree wherewith to kindle their camp fires.[826] The duty of thus transporting fire from one place to another seems commonly to have fallen to the women. “A stick, a piece of decayed wood, or more often the beautiful seed-stem of the Banksia, is lighted at the fire the woman is leaving; and from her bag, which, in damp weather, she would keep filled with dry cones, or from materials collected in the forest, she would easily, during her journey, preserve the fire got at the last encampment.”[827] Another writer tells us that the Australian native always had his fire-stick with him, and if his wife let it go out, so much the worse for her. The dark brown velvety-looking core of the Banksia is very retentive of fire and burns slowly, so that one of these little fire-sticks would last a considerable time, and a bag of them would suffice for a whole day.[828] The Tasmanians knew how to make fire by twirling the point of a stick in a piece of soft bark; “but as it was difficult at times to obtain fire by this means, especially in wet weather, they generally, in their peregrinations, carried with them a fire-stick lighted at their last encampment.”[829] With them, as with the Australians, it was the special task of the women to keep the fire-brand alight and to carry it from place to place.[830] When the natives of Materbert, off New Britain, are on a voyage they carry fire with them. For this purpose they press some of the soft fibrous husk of the ripe coco-nut into a coco-nut shell, and then place a red-hot ember in the middle of it. This will smoulder for three or four days, and from it they obtain a light for their fires wherever they may land.[831] The Polynesians made fire by the friction of wood, rubbing a score in a board with a sharp-pointed stick till the dust so produced kindled into sparks, which were caught in a tinder of dry leaves or grass. While they rubbed, they chanted a prayer or hymn till the fire appeared. But in wet weather the task of fire-making was laborious, so at such times the natives usually carried fire about with them in order to avoid the trouble of kindling it.[832] The Fuegians make fire by striking two lumps of iron pyrites together and letting the sparks fall on birds’ down or on dry moss, which serves as tinder. But rather than be at the pains of doing this they carry fire with them everywhere, both by sea and land, taking great care to prevent its extinction.[833] The Caingua Indians of Paraguay make fire in the usual way by the fire-drill, but to save themselves trouble they keep fire constantly burning in their huts by means of great blocks of wood.[834] The Indians of Guiana also produce fire by twirling the point of one stick in the hole of another, but they seldom need to resort to this laborious process, for they keep fire burning in every house, and on long journeys they usually carry a large piece of smouldering timber in their canoes. Even in walking across the savannah an Indian will sometimes take a fire-brand with him.[835] The Jaggas, a Bantu tribe in the Kilimanjaro district of East Africa, keep up fire day and night in their huts on account of their cattle. If it goes out, the women fetch glowing brands from a neighbour’s house; these they carry wrapped up in banana leaves. Thus they convey fire for great distances, sometimes the whole day long. Hence they seldom need to kindle fire, though the men can make it readily by means of the fire-drill.[836] The tribes of British Central Africa also know how to produce fire in this fashion, but they do not often put their knowledge in practice. For there is sure to be a burning brand on one or other of the hearths of the village from which a fire can be lit; and when men go on a journey they take smouldering sticks with them and nurse the glowing wood rather than be at the trouble of making fire by friction.[837] In the huts of the Ibos on the lower Niger burning embers are always kept and never allowed to go out.[838] And this is the regular practice among all the tribes of West Africa who have not yet obtained matches. If the fire in a house should go out, a woman will run to a neighbour’s hut and fetch a burning stick from the hearth. Hence in most of their villages fire has probably not needed to be made for years and years. Among domesticated tribes, like the Effiks or Agalwa, when the men are going out to the plantation they will enclose a burning stick in a hollow piece of a certain kind of wood, which has a lining of its pith left in it, and they will carry this “fire-box” with them.[839]
[Sidenote: The theft of fire by Prometheus.] Before the introduction of matches Greek peasants used to convey fire from place to place in a stalk of giant fennel. The stalks of the plant are about five feet long by three inches thick, and are encased in a hard bark. The core of the stalk consists of a white pith which, when it is dry, burns slowly like a wick without injury to the bark.[840] Thus when Prometheus, according to the legend, stole the first fire from heaven and brought it down to earth hidden in a stalk of giant fennel,[841] he carried his fire just as every Greek peasant and mariner did on a journey.
[Sidenote: When people settled in villages, it would be convenient to keep up a perpetual fire in the house of the head man.] When a tribe ceased to be nomadic and had settled in more or less permanent villages, it would be a convenient custom to keep a fire perpetually burning in every house. Such a custom, as we have seen, has been observed by various peoples, and it appears to have prevailed universally among all branches of the Aryans.[842] Arnobius implies that it was formerly practised by the Romans, though in his own time the usage had fallen into abeyance.[843] But it would be obviously desirable that there should be some one place in the village where every housewife could be sure of obtaining fire without having to kindle it by friction, if her own should chance to go out. The most natural spot to look for it would be the hearth of the head man of the village, who would come in time to be regarded as responsible for its maintenance. This is what seems to have happened not only among the Herero of South Africa and the Latin peoples of Italy, but also among the ancestors of the Greeks; for in ancient Greece the perpetual fire kept up in the Prytaneum, or town-hall, was at first apparently the fire on the king’s hearth.[844] From this simple origin may have sprung the custom which in various parts of the world associates the maintenance of a perpetual fire with chiefly or royal dignity. Thus it was a distinguishing mark of the [Sidenote: Hence the maintenance of a perpetual fire came to be associated with chiefly or royal dignity.] chieftainship of one of the Samoan nobility, that his fire never went out. His attendants had a particular name, from their special business of keeping his fire ablaze all night long while he slept.[845] Among the Gallas the maintenance of a perpetual fire, even when it serves no practical purpose, is a favourite mode of asserting high rank, and the chiefs often indulge in it.[846] The Chitomé, a grand pontiff in the kingdom of Congo, of whom we shall hear more hereafter, kept up in his hut, day and night, a sacred fire, of which he dispensed brands to such as came to ask for them and could pay for them. He is said to have done a good business in fire, for the infatuated people believed that it preserved them from many accidents.[847] In Uganda a perpetual sacred fire, supposed to have come down to earth with the first man Kintu, is maintained by a chief, who is put to death if he suffers it to be extinguished. From this sacred fire the king’s fire (gombolola) is lighted and kept constantly burning at the gate of the royal enclosure during the whole of his reign. By day it burns in a small hut, but at night it is brought out and set in a little hole in the ground, where it blazes brightly till daybreak, whatever the weather may be. When the king journeys the fire goes with him, and when he dies it is extinguished. The death of a king is indeed announced to the people by the words, “The fire has gone out.” A man who bears a special title is charged with the duty of maintaining the fire, and of looking after all the fuel and torches used in the royal enclosure. When the king dies the guardian of his fire is strangled near the hearth.[848] Similarly in Dageou, a country to the west of Darfur, it is said that a custom prevailed of kindling a fire on the inauguration of a king and keeping it alight till his death.[849] Among the Mucelis of Angola, when the king of Amboin or Sanga dies, all fires in the kingdom are extinguished. Afterwards the new king makes new fire by rubbing two sticks against each other.[850] Such a custom is probably nothing more than an extension of the practice of putting out a chief’s own fire at his death. Similarly, when a new Muata Jamwo, a great potentate in the interior of Angola, comes to the throne, one of his first duties is to make a new fire by the friction of wood, for the old fire may not be used.[851] Before the palace gate of the king of Siam there burns, or used to burn, a perpetual fire, which was said to have been lit from heaven with a fiery ball.[852]
[Sidenote: Perpetual fire maintained by the chief called the Great Sun among the Natchez Indians.] Among the Natchez Indians of the lower Mississippi a perpetual fire, supposed to have been brought down from the sun, was maintained in a square temple which stood beside the hut of the supreme chief of the nation. He bore the title of the Great Sun, and believed himself to be a descendant or brother of the luminary his namesake. Every morning when the sun rose he blew three whiffs of his pipe towards it, and raising his hands above his head, and turning from east to west, he marked out the course which the bright orb was to pursue in the sky. The sacred fire in the temple was fed with logs of walnut or oak, and the greatest care was taken to prevent its extinction; for such an event would have been thought to put the whole nation in jeopardy. Eight men were appointed to guard the fire, two of whom were bound to be always on watch; and the Great Sun himself looked to the maintenance of the fire with anxious attention. If any of the guardians of the fire failed to do his duty, the rule was that he should be put to death. When the great chief died his bones were deposited in the temple, along with the bones of many attendants who were strangled in order that their souls might wait upon him in the spirit land. On such an occasion the chief’s fire was extinguished, and this was the signal for putting out all the other fires in the country. Every village had also its own temple in which a perpetual fire was maintained under the guardianship of a subordinate chief. These lesser chiefs also bore the title of Suns, but acknowledged the supremacy of the head chief, the Great Sun. All of these Suns were supposed to be descended from a man and woman who had come down from the luminary from which they took their names. There were female Suns as well as male Suns, but they might not marry among themselves; they had always to mate with a woman or a man of lower rank. Their nobility was transmitted in the maternal line; that is, the children of a female Sun, both sons and daughters, were Suns, but the children of a male Sun were not. Hence a chief was never succeeded by his own son, but always by the son either of his sister or of his nearest female relation. The Natchez knew how to produce fire by means of the fire-drill; but if the sacred fire in the temple went out, they relit it, not by the friction of wood, but by a brand brought from another temple or from a tree which had been ignited by lightning.[853] In these customs of the Natchez we have clearly fire-worship and sun-worship of the same general type which meets us again at a higher state of evolution among the Incas of Peru. Both sets of customs probably sprang originally from the perpetual fire on the chief’s domestic hearth.
[Sidenote: Fire carried before chiefs and kings as a symbol of royalty.] When a perpetual fire has thus become a symbol of royalty, it is natural that it should be carried before the king or chief on the march. Among the Indians of the Mississippi a lighted torch used to be borne in front of a chief, and no commoner would dare to walk between a chief and his torch-bearer.[854] A sacred fire, supposed to have descended from heaven, was carried in a brazier before the Persian kings,[855] and the custom was adopted as a badge of imperial dignity by later Roman emperors.[856] The practice appears to have been especially observed in time of war. Amongst the Ovambo of South Africa the chief appoints a general to lead the army to battle, and next to the general the greatest officer is he who carries a fire-brand at the head of the warriors. If the fire goes out on the march, it is an evil omen and the army beats a retreat.[857] When the king of Monomotapa, or Benomotapa, was at war, a sacred fire was kept burning perpetually in a hut near his tent.[858] In old days it is said that the king of Mombasa in East Africa could put an army of eighty thousand men in the field. On the march his guards were preceded by men carrying fire.[859] High above the tent of Alexander the Great hung a fiery cresset on a pole, and “the flame of it was seen by night, and the smoke by day.”[860] When a Spartan king was about to lead an army abroad he first sacrificed at home to Zeus the Leader. Then a man called the fire-bearer took fire from the altar and marched with it at the head of the troops to the frontier. There the king again sacrificed to Zeus and Athena, and if the omens were favourable, he crossed the border, preceded by the fire from the sacrifices, which thenceforth led the way and might not be quenched. To perform such sacrifices the king always rose very early in the morning, while it was still dark, in order to get the ear of the god before the enemy could forestall him.[861]
[Sidenote: The custom of keeping up a perpetual fire during a king’s reign and extinguishing it at his death, might lead to a belief that his life was bound up with the fire.] A custom of maintaining a fire during a king’s reign and extinguishing it at his death, even if it did not originate in a superstition, would naturally lend itself to a superstitious interpretation. The distinction between the sign and the cause of an event is not readily grasped by a dull mind; hence the extinction of the king’s fire, from being merely a signal of his death, might come in time to be regarded as a cause of it. In other words, a vital connexion might be supposed to exist between the king and the fire, so that if the fire were put out the king would die. That a sympathetic bond of some sort united the king’s life with the fire on his hearth was apparently believed by the ancient Scythians. For their most solemn oath was by the king’s hearth, and if any man who had taken this oath forswore himself, they believed that the king would fall ill.[862] The story of Meleager,[863] whose life was said to be bound up with a brand plucked from the fire on the hearth, belongs to the same class of ideas, which will be examined at large in a later part of this work. Wherever a superstition of this sort gathered round the king’s hearth, it is obvious that he would be moved to watch over the fire with redoubled vigilance. On a certain day the Vestal Virgins at Rome used to go to the King of the Sacred Rites, the successor of the old Roman kings, and say to him, “Watchest thou, O King? Watch.”[864] The ceremony may have been a reminiscence or survival of a time when the king’s life as well as the general safety was supposed to hang on the maintenance of the fire, to the guardianship of which he would thus be impelled by the motive of self-preservation as well as of public duty. When natives of the Kei Islands in the East Indies are away on a long voyage, a sacred fire is kept up the whole time of their absence by their friends at home. Three or four young girls are appointed to feed it and watch over it day and night with a jealous care lest it should go out; its extinction would be deemed a most evil omen, for the fire is the symbol of the life of the absent ones.[865] This belief and this practice may help us to understand the corresponding beliefs and practices concerned with the maintenance of a perpetual fire at Rome.
Footnote 816:
E. H. Man, On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands (London, N.D.), p. 82. Mr. Man’s evidence is confirmed by a German traveller, Mr. Jagor, who says of the Andaman Islanders: “The fire must never go out. Here also I am again assured that the Andamanese have no means of making fire.” See Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, 1877, p. (54) (bound with Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, ix.). I regret that on this subject I did not question Mr. A. R. Brown, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who resided for about two years among the Andaman Islanders, studying their customs and beliefs. Mr. Brown is now (December 1910) in West Australia.
Footnote 817:
N. von Miklucho-Maclay, “Ethnologische Bemerkungen über die Papuas der Maclay-Küste in Neu-Guinea,” Natuurkundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indie, xxxv. (1875), pp. 82, 83. Compare C. Hager, Kaiser Wilhelms-Land und der Bismarck-Archipel, p. 69; M. Krieger, Neu-Guinea, p. 153. The natives of the Maclay Coast are said to have traditions of a time when they were ignorant even of the use of fire; they ate fruits raw, which set up a disease of the gums, filling their mouths with blood; they had a special name for the disease. See N. von Miklucho-Maclay, in Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, 1882, p. (577) (bound with Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xiv.). The reports of people living in ignorance of the use of fire have hitherto proved, on closer examination, to be fables. See E. B. Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind, 3rd Ed., pp. 229 sqq. The latest repetition of the story that I know of is by an American naturalist, Mr. Titian R. Peale, who confirms the exploded statement that down to 1841 the natives of Bowditch Island had not seen fire. See The American Naturalist, xviii. (1884) pp. 229-232.
Footnote 818:
B. Hagen, Unter den Papuas (Wiesbaden, 1899), pp. 203 sq. Mr. Hagen’s account applies chiefly to the natives of Astrolabe Bay. He tells us that for the most part they now use Swedish matches.
Footnote 819:
G. Casati, Ten Years in Equatoria (London and New York, 1891), i. 157. Another writer says that these dwarfs “keep fire alight perpetually, starting it in some large tree, which goes on smouldering for months at a time” (Captain Guy Burrows, The Land of the Pigmies (London, 1898), p. 199).
Footnote 820:
F. Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha ins Herz von Afrika (Berlin, 1894), pp. 451 sq.
Footnote 821:
Sir Harry H. Johnston, British Central Africa (London, 1897), p. 439; id., The Uganda Protectorate (London, 1902), ii. 540. If we may trust Diodorus Siculus (i. 13. 3), this was the origin of fire alleged by the Egyptian priests. Among the Winamwanga and Wiwa tribes of East Africa, to the south of Lake Tanganyika, “when lightning sets fire to a tree, all the fires in a village are put out, and fireplaces freshly plastered, while the head men take the fire to the chief, who prays over it. It is then sent to all his villages, the people of the villages rewarding his messengers.” See Dr. J. A. Chisholm, “Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Winamwanga and Wiwa,” Journal of the African Society, No. 36 (July 1910), p. 363. The Parsees ascribe peculiar sanctity to fire which has been obtained from a tree struck by lightning. See D. J. Karaka, History of the Modern Parsis (London, 1884), ii. 213. In Siam and Cambodia such fire is carefully preserved and used to light the funeral pyres of kings and others. See Pallegoix, Description du royaume Thai ou Siam, i. 248; J. Moura, Le Royaume du Cambodge, i. 360.
Footnote 822:
Oscar Peschel, Völkerkunde 6th Ed. (Leipsic, 1885), p. 138. Mr. Man thinks it likely that the Andaman Islanders got their fire from one of the two volcanoes which exist in their island (On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, p. 82). The Creek Indians of North America have a tradition that some of their ancestors procured fire from a volcano. See A. S. Gatschet, A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, ii. (St. Louis, 1888) p. 11 (43).
Footnote 823:
O. Peschel, loc. cit. As to the fires of Baku see further, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, p. 159.
Footnote 824:
R. Taylor, Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants, 2nd Ed., p. 367; W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 194; A. Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, 2nd Ed., pp. 92, 102. Lucretius thought that the first fire was procured either from lightning or from the mutual friction of trees in a high wind (De rerum natura, v. 1091-1101). The latter source was preferred by Vitruvius (De architectura, ii. 1. 1).
Footnote 825:
Sir Harry H. Johnston, ll.cc. Professor K. von den Steinen conjectures that savages, who already possessed fire, and were wont to use tinder to nurse a smouldering brand into a blaze, may have accidentally discovered the mode of kindling fire in an attempt to make tinder by rubbing two dry sticks or reeds against each other. See K. von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, pp. 219-228.
Footnote 826:
J. Dumont D’Urville, Voyage autour du monde et à la recherche de la Perouse, i. (Paris, 1832) pp. 95, 194; Scott Nind, “Description of the Natives of King George’s Sound,” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, i. (1832) p. 26; E. J. Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia, ii. 357; A. Oldfield, “The Aborigines of Australia,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, N.S., iii. (1865) pp. 283 sq.; J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 15; Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, xvii. (1845) pp. 76 sq.
Footnote 827:
R. Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, i. 396.
Footnote 828:
R. Taylor, Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants, 2nd Ed., p. 567. Other writers confirm the statement that the carrying of the fire-sticks is the special duty of the women. See W. Stanbridge, “On the Aborigines of Victoria,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, N.S., i. (1861) p. 291; J. F. Mann, “Notes on the Aborigines of Australia,” Proceedings of the Geographical Society of Australasia, i. (1885) p. 29.
Footnote 829:
Melville, quoted by H. Ling Roth, The Aborigines of Tasmania (London, 1890), p. 97. It has sometimes been affirmed that the Tasmanians did not know how to kindle fire; but the evidence collected by Mr. Ling Roth (op. cit., pp. xii. sq., 96 sq.), proves that they were accustomed to light it both by the friction of wood and by striking flints together.
Footnote 830:
Mr. Dove, quoted by James Bonwick, Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians, p. 20.
Footnote 831:
Wilfred Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country (London, 1883), p. 196.
Footnote 832:
Captain J. Wilson, Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean (London, 1799), p. 357.
Footnote 833:
J. G. Wood, Natural History of Man, ii. 522; J. G. Garson, “On the Inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xv. (1886). p. 145; Mission scientifique du Cap Horn, 1882-1883, vii. (Paris, 1891) p. 345.
Footnote 834:
J. B. Ambrosetti, “Los Indios Caingua del alto Paraná (misiones),” Boletino del Instituto Geografico Argentino, xv. (1895) pp. 703 sq.
Footnote 835:
E. F. im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, pp. 257 sq.
Footnote 836:
A. Widenmann, Die Kilimandscharo-Bevölkerung (Gotha, 1899), pp. 68 sq. (Petermann’s Mittheilungen: Ergänzungsheft, No. 129).
Footnote 837:
Sir Harry H. Johnston, British Central Africa (London, 1897), p. 438.
Footnote 838:
A. F. Mockler-Ferryman, Up the Niger (London, 1892), p. 37.
Footnote 839:
Miss Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, pp. 599 sq.
Footnote 840:
P. de Tournefort, Relation d’un voyage du Levant (Amsterdam, 1718), i. 93 (Lettre vi.); Sibthorp, in R. Walpole’s Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey (London, 1817), pp. 284 sq.; W. G. Clark, Peloponnesus (London, 1858), p. 111; J. T. Bent, The Cyclades (London, 1885), p. 365. The giant fennel (Ferula communis, L.) is still known in Greece by its ancient name, hardly modified (nartheka instead of narthex), though W. G. Clark says the modern name is kalami. Bent speaks of the plant as a reed, which is a mistake. The plant is described by Theophrastus (Histor. plant. vi. 2. 7 sq.).
Footnote 841:
Hesiod, Works and Days, 50-52; id., Theogony, 565-567; Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 107-111; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 7. 1; Hyginus, Fabulae, 144; id., Astronomica, ii. 15.
Footnote 842:
See my article, “The Prytaneum, the Temple of Vesta, the Vestals, Perpetual Fires,” Journal of Philology, xiv. (1885) pp. 169-171.
Footnote 843:
Arnobius, Adversus nationes, ii. 67.
Footnote 844:
See my article, “The Prytaneum, the Temple of Vesta, the Vestals, Perpetual Fires,” Journal of Philology, xiv. (1885) pp. 145 sqq.
Footnote 845:
G. Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia (London, 1861), p. 326.
Footnote 846:
Ph. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, die materielle Cultur der Danâkil, Galla und Somâl (Berlin, 1893), p. 145.
Footnote 847:
J. B. Labat, Relation historique de l’Éthiopie Occidentale, i. 256 sq.
Footnote 848:
J. Roscoe, “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) pp. 43, 51 sq.; id., in a letter to me dated Mengo, Uganda, 3rd August 1904.
Footnote 849:
W. G. Browne, Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria (London, 1799), p. 306.
Footnote 850:
J. J. Monteiro, Angola and the River Congo (London, 1875), ii. 167.
Footnote 851:
P. Pogge, Im Reiche des Muata Jamwo (Berlin, 1880), p. 234.
Footnote 852:
A. Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, iii. 515 sq.
Footnote 853:
Du Pratz, History of Louisiana (London, 1774), pp. 330-334, 346 sq., 351-358; Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, vi. 172 sqq.; Lafitau, Mœurs des sauvages Ameriquains, i. 167 sq.; Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, Nouvelle Édition, vii. (Paris, 1781) pp. 7-16 (reprinted in Recueil de voyages au nord, ix. Amsterdam, 1737, pp. 3-13); “Relation de la Louisianne,” Recueil de voyages au Nord, v. (Amsterdam, 1734) pp. 23 sq.; Bossu, Nouveaux Voyages aux Indes Occidentales (Paris, 1768), i. 42-44; Chateaubriand, Voyage en Amérique (Paris, 1870), pp. 227 sqq.; H. R. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, v. 68. The accounts differ from each other in some details. Thus Du Pratz speaks as if there were only two fire-temples in the country, whereas the writer in the Lettres édifiantes says that there were eleven villages each with its fire-temple, and that formerly there had been sixty villages and temples. The account in the text is based mainly on the authority of Du Pratz, who lived among the Natchez on terms of intimacy for eight years, from the end of 1718 to 1726.
Footnote 854:
Hennepin, Nouvelle Découverte d’un très grand pays situé dans l’Amérique (Utrecht, 1697), p. 306.
Footnote 855:
Xenophon, Cyropaedia, viii. 3. 12; Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 6. 34; Quintus Curtius, iii. 3. 7.
Footnote 856:
Dio Cassius, lxxi. 35. 5; Herodian, i. 8. 4, i. 16. 4, ii. 3. 2, ii. 8. 6, vii. 1. 9, vii. 6. 2.
Footnote 857:
H. Schinz, Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika, p. 320.
Footnote 858:
O. Dapper, Description de l’Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 392.
Footnote 859:
O. Dapper, op. cit. p. 400.
Footnote 860:
Quintus Curtius, v. 2. 7. Curtius represents this as a signal adopted by Alexander, because the sound of the bugle was lost in the trampling and hum of the great multitude. But this maybe merely the historian’s interpretation of an old custom.
Footnote 861:
Xenophon, Respublica Lacedaemoniorum, xiii. 2 sq.; Nicolaus Damascenus, quoted by Stobaeus, Florilegium, xliv. 41 (vol. ii. p. 188 ed. Meineke); Hesychius, s.v. πυρσοφόρος.
Footnote 862:
Herodotus, iv. 68.
Footnote 863:
Aeschylus, Choëph. 604 sqq.; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 8. 2 sq.; Diodorus Siculus, iv. 34. 6 sq.; Ovid, Metamorph. viii. 445 sqq.; Hyginus, Fab. 171 and 174.
Footnote 864:
Servius, on Virgil, Aen. x. 228.
Footnote 865:
Le P. H. Geurtjens, “Le Cérémonial des Voyages aux Îles Keij,” Anthropos, v. (1910) pp. 337 sq.