CHAPTER XII

.

TOTEMISM--THE BLOOD COVENANT--CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH SALIVA.

{232}

Thus far, in pursuing our investigations into the significance of the Life-token, we have arrived at the conclusion that the reason of the mysterious sympathy between the hero and an object external to himself is not merely that, actually or by imputation, the Life-token has been part of his substance, but further that, notwithstanding severance, it is still in unapparent but real connection with him, and consequently any mischance he may suffer will be felt by the Life-token and reflected in its condition. The converse is also true. Any portion, actual or imputed, of the hero’s substance, detached from him in appearance, continues in effect so united to him that injury to it will redound to his injury and perhaps to his death. The Life-token and the External Soul are thus equivalent; and they are equivalent not merely in story, but also, and first of all, in human customs and belief.

Moreover, the possibility of evil implies the contrary possibility of good being received by a man through severed pieces of himself. This belief has led to the practices we have considered in our last two chapters. Whether for the healing of a specific disease, or for the more general {233} purpose of promoting his wellbeing, anything which has once been his, as a scrap of his body, his excrements or his clothing, or which has simply been in contact, though only for a moment, with him, is subjected to influences held to be beneficial, with the expectation that they will in this way act upon him. The belief and the practices it has engendered have thus to our eyes a double aspect, physical and spiritual. But we must not forget that everywhere in the earliest times, and among the lowest races even yet--nay, the limitation need not be by any means so strict--among peoples in all but the highest state of civilisation, no substantive distinction is drawn between the physical and the spiritual. The abstract entity we call a soul has no existence for them: it is a philosophical speculation, whereof they have no conception. The soul, to them, is but another body which quits at times in life this visible frame, as a man quits his dwelling, on errands of business or pleasure, and forsakes it finally at death, as a corpse is carried out of doors. It is but a fragment of the man. It may take a fresh form, become a new whole, new but the same; for it will differ only in form, if indeed it will differ so much as in form. And the conception of divinity current in the lower culture corresponds with that of the soul. The god is precisely “a magnified, non-natural man,” though not always in human shape, corporeal and subject to all corporeal wants and infirmities, but endowed with potencies and privileges far beyond those of ordinary men: potencies and privileges, however, the like of which are attained sometimes with much fasting and striving and patience by the greatest shamans. This corporeal nature of the god enables man to enter into communion with him, to put and keep himself in touch with him, to become {234} united with him. In the last chapter we considered some methods whereby this may be done. Some other methods remain to be mentioned; but it will be needless to discuss them at length, because they have not long ago been made the subject of a brilliant exposition by the late Professor Robertson Smith, to which little or nothing can be added.

What seems, however, desirable for the purpose of completing our view of the Life-token and the ideas connected with it, is to turn our attention to some points in the social organisation of savage races, and their survivals in societies, like our own, which have long been organised on principles of a wholly different character. To these points the next four chapters will be devoted. But the organisation of archaic communities is bound up with their tribal worship. It is accordingly necessary to have distinctly before our minds the relation of the tribe to its god, and some at least of the usages expressive of that relation. I shall therefore begin by summarising the results of Professor Robertson Smith’s examination of Semitic institutions, as far as they are relevant to our present inquiry, contributing only a few further illustrations drawn from the usages of nations outside the Semitic sphere.

At a certain period in the evolution of human institutions men are organised in kindreds, called clans or _gentes_, deriving descent and reckoning kinship exclusively through the mother. As a matter of fact, hardly anywhere throughout the world is this organisation found in an absolutely unadulterated condition; for it seems to have constantly tended to pass over into an organisation where the kinship was reckoned exclusively through the father. But in almost all parts of the world many existing institutions, and institutions described, or incidentally mentioned, by {235} writers ancient and modern, can only be accounted for by postulating the former existence of a system of kinship reckoned exclusively through females. The kindred or clan thus formed believes itself to be descended from a _totem_, or ancestor to whom honours are paid of a kind for which we have no other word than _divine_--a word, however, implying a more exalted conception than any to which the clan has yet attained. The totem is not in human shape. Very generally it is an animal, sometimes a tree or other vegetable, occasionally an inanimate object, such as the sun, the earth, wind, salt, or even the rain or thunder. For the savage believes in metamorphosis. We have already investigated at some length this belief, in so far as it relates to changes effected by death and birth. But it is by no means confined to these. Broadly speaking, every object in the universe is regarded as alive; and every object is capable of changing its shape without losing its identity. Death is merely one way of doing so. To the savage, therefore, there is no difficulty in believing that his ancestor is a turtle or a pine-tree, for he knows no distinction between animal and vegetable, between genus and genus. Nay, he will even hold with as little difficulty that the same ancestor is both a turtle and a pine-tree, and will worship him now under the one, and now under the other, form.

The clan bears a representation of the totem as its symbol or crest; is usually called after its name; and the individual members dress and adorn themselves to resemble it in their persons. It is forbidden to kill, injure or treat with disrespect any animal or vegetable of the species to which the totem belongs, for they are all akin. But, at least when an animal, it is customary at stated times to {236} slay and eat it in solemn festival wherein all the kin join.

The home of the clan is the home of its god; and wherever a society has passed beyond the nomadic stage it will be found to have a definite place consecrated to social reunion and worship. There the totem-god is represented by an idol of some kind--ordinarily, in an archaic stage of civilisation, by a post or a rough stone. This is his dwelling-place, or the embodiment he chooses for the convenience of his worshippers,--the god himself. Later, it becomes by degrees a simulacrum, a piece of sculpture, until, in the most elevated form to which paganism has attained, we arrive at masterpieces like those of Phidias.

The stone god is also at first the altar. There the totem-beast is slain, some of its blood is dashed upon the stone, and around it the rest of the blood is drunk and the flesh is eaten by the clansmen. This is probably the primitive form of sacrifice. It is not a gift to the god, but a sacrament in which the whole kin--the god with his clansmen--unites. In partaking of it each member of the kin testifies and renews his union with the rest. The god himself is eaten, and yet he is at the same time embodied in the sacred stone. Archaic thought sees no contradiction in this. Our inquiries into the Life-token have already shown that a man is separable into portions. The savage conception of life permits of its division without destroying its existence or its essential unity. Not only, therefore, is the totem himself divisible: the kin, including the totem-god in every one of his forms, is regarded as one entire life, one body, whereof each unit is literally a member, a limb. The same blood runs through them all; and elsewhere, as among the Hebrews, “the blood is the life.” Literally {237} they may not be all descended from a common ancestry. Descent is the normal, the typical, cause of kinship and a common blood. It is the legal presupposition, a presumption not to be rebutted. But kinship may also be acquired; and when it is once acquired by a stranger he ranks thenceforth for all purposes as one descended from the common ancestor. In a state of society organised on the lines of kinship this is an important matter. A man who is not of the kin is a stranger; and a stranger is a foe. The kinless man has no rights, no protection: he is an outlaw. His hand is against every man’s, and every man’s hand against him. To acquire kinship, the blood of the candidate for admission into the kin must be mingled with that of the kin. In this way he enters into the brotherhood, is reckoned as of the same stock, obtains the full privileges of a kinsman.

The mingling of blood--the Blood-covenant as it is called--is a simple though repulsive ceremony. It is sufficient that an incision be made in the neophyte’s arm and the flowing blood sucked from it by one of the clansmen, upon whom the operation is repeated in turn by the neophyte. Originally, perhaps, the clansmen all assembled and partook of the rite; but if so, the necessity has ceased to be recognised almost everywhere. The form, indeed, has undergone numberless variations. Sometimes the blood is dropped into a cup and diluted with water or wine. Sometimes food eaten together is impregnated with the blood. Sometimes it is enough to rub the bleeding wounds together, so that the blood of both parties is mixed and smeared upon them both. Among the Kayans of Borneo the drops are allowed to fall upon a cigarette, which is then lighted and smoked alternately by both

## parties. But, {238} whatever may be the exact form adopted, the

essence of the rite is the same, and its range is world-wide. It is mentioned by classical writers as practised by the Arabs, the Scythians, the Lydians and Iberians of Asia Minor, and apparently the Medes. Many passages of the Bible, many of the Egyptian _Book of the Dead_, are inexplicable apart from it. Ancient Arab historians are full of allusions to it. Odin and Loki entered into the bond, which means for us that it was customary among the Norsemen--as we know, in fact, from other sources. It is recorded by Giraldus of the Irish of his day. It is described in the _Gesta Romanorum_. It is related of the Huns or Magyars, and of the mediæval Roumanians. Joinville ascribes it to one of the tribes of the Caucasus; and the Rabbi Petachia of Ratisbon, who travelled in Ukrainia in the twelfth century, found it there. In modern times every African traveller mentions it; and most of them have had to undergo the ceremony. In the neighbouring island of Madagascar, it is well known. All over the Eastern Archipelago, in Australia, in the Malay peninsula, among the Karens, the Siamese, the Dards on the northern border of our Indian empire, and many of the aboriginal tribes of Bengal, the wild tribes of China, the Syrians of Lebanon and the Bedouins, and among the autochthonous peoples of North and South America, the rite is, or has been quite recently, in use. Nor has it ceased to be practised in Europe by the Gipsies, the Southern Slavs and the Italians of the Abruzzi. The band of the Mala Vita in Southern Italy, only broken up a year or two ago, was a blood-brotherhood formed in this way. Most savage peoples require their youths at the age of puberty to submit to a ceremony which admits them into the brotherhood of the grown men, and into all the rights {239} and privileges of the tribe. Of this ceremony the blood-covenant is usually an essential part, as it is also, either actually, or by symbol which represents an act once literally performed, in the initiation-rite not only of the Mala Vita, but of almost all secret societies, both civilised and uncivilised. In the French department of Aube, when a child bleeds, he puts a little of his blood on the face or hands of one of his playfellows, and says to him: “Thou shalt be my cousin.” In like manner in New England, when a school-girl, not many years since, pricked her finger so that the blood came, one of her companions would say: “Oh, let me suck the blood; then we shall be friends.”[239.1]

That the blood-covenant, whereby blood-brotherhood is assumed, is not a primæval rite, is obvious from its artificial character. It has its basis in ideas which must have been pre-existent, and which I have endeavoured to make clear in this and the foregoing chapters. At the same time its barbarism, and the wide area over which it is spread, point with equal certainty to its early evolution, and to the fact that it is in unison with conceptions essentially and universally human. Even among races like the Polynesians and the Turanian inhabitants of Northern Europe and Asia, where the rite itself may not be recorded, there {240} are, as we shall hereafter see, unmistakable traces of its influence on their customs.

As Society evolved, the clan-system gradually broke up over large tracts of the earth’s surface. In the same measure as the clan relaxed its hold upon the individual members, blood-brotherhood assumed a personal aspect, until, having no longer any social force, it came to be regarded as merely the most solemn and binding form of covenant between man and man. For that purpose the gods of one or both were frequently made party to the contract, and the blood of the covenanters was smeared upon the idols as well as upon one another. The deities thus continued to watch over a rite in which they had originally taken part as members of a clan. For as the bonds of kinship were loosened the totem developed into a god; and even so the totem’s interest in the rite as a member of a clan developed into that of a god as witness and avenger of the covenant. But though the significance of the rite changed, its evolution was continuous. Religion, like other forms of human thought and other human institutions, has been a slow and constant growth. If the whole field be surveyed, it will be found that there are no yawning chasms dividing period from period, and cult from cult. Everything evolves by processes analogous to those with which we are familiar in the physical world. The totem, released from the bonds of kinship, and soaring upward to the heaven of Godhead, ceases not to be worshipped with rites appropriate only to the social reunions of the clan. True, these rites are gradually modified; but alike by their symbolism and by their barbarity they bear unfailing testimony to their real birth. Such was the Hebrew practice of sprinkling the blood of the sacrifice before the Lord, or {241} upon the mercy-seat, daubing it upon the horns of the altar, or pouring it out at the base, and the converse practice of sprinkling it upon the congregation, or putting it upon the priest at his consecration. Among other nations the practice was grosser still.

“Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood Of human sacrifice,”

by no means stood alone. The priest in Guatemala drew blood from his tongue and other members, and anointed with it the feet and hands of the image. And a similar custom is described by Spanish writers as followed in both North and South America.[241.1] When Rome was at the height of her civilisation Tibullus described the high priestess of Bellona as lacerating her own arm with the sacrificial axe and bespattering the goddess with her blood, and then as she stood there inspired by the goddess with her oracle.[241.2] This doubtless is the meaning of the passage relating the antics of the priests of Baal in the contest with Elijah, when they leaped about the altar, crying aloud, and cut themselves with knives and lances until the blood gushed out upon them. Their object was not to maim or torture themselves, but to renew their union with the god, {242} by shedding their blood upon him. In course of time the rite would cease to be understood, its practice would change, and then the mere torture, or the outpouring of the blood without any care to bring it into contact with the god, would be regarded as its object. This was perhaps the stage at which Baal-worship had arrived in the time of Ahab. In the Hebrew ritual it was the blood of the sacrifice and not of the worshipper which was sprinkled, and so also in many other instances. But then the victim was identified with the worshipper, or the latter also partook of it by being himself sprinkled with the blood or eating its flesh. The Scandinavian custom, for example, as delineated in the _Heimskringla_ required that the blood should be drained into bowls, and then with a rod or sprinkler “should the stall of the gods be reddened, and the walls of the temple within and without, and the men-folk also besprinkled; but the flesh was to be sodden for the feasting of men.”[242.1] In either case the worshipper was brought into union with the god. Elsewhere the same object is effected by the substitution of some other substance for blood. Among the ceremonies of purification imposed by certain of the non-Aryan tribes of Bengal upon women after childbirth, is that of smearing with vermilion the edge of the village well.[242.2] Vermilion is a very obvious symbol of blood; and we shall hereafter see that, by these tribes and others, it is its recognised substitute. Originally the well must have been smeared with blood, and that {243} blood drawn from the offerer’s veins. By the ceremonial union thus effected with the deity who dwells in, or is identified with, the well, the woman would be purified.

The modes of thought portrayed in the ritual of sacrifice are entirely analogous to those disclosed by the practices we discussed in the last chapter. Their great aim is union with the deity. It is attained by placing in contact with him something already part of ourselves, as our blood, hair, clothing, or other property; or else the blood of a victim of which we are about to consume the remainder, just as among medical practices we found that of giving part of the patient’s food to an animal before partaking of the rest, with the object of being united with a healthy body. It may, indeed, be, if we were to trace back the superstition in these medical cases, that the animal made use of was at first a totem-beast. To investigate this, however, would require much greater space than I have at command.

I have on an earlier page alluded to the compacts alleged to be made with the Devil by a writing signed with the blood of the person who enters into the contract. With this may be compared a practice said to be sometimes followed on the Riviera, where two lovers write to one another in their own blood in sign of fidelity.[243.1] A Breton folktale represents the Devil as aiding the hero on condition of his giving him a drop of his blood or a lock of his hair.[243.2] According to an Icelandic saga, witches enter into a still closer relation with the Father of Evil by {244} giving him of their blood to drink,[244.1] thus constituting him their blood-brother; and the same belief seems to be current among the Gipsies of the Danube valley, the Poles and Esthonians.[244.2] To drink a witch’s blood was also a means of destroying her witchcraft, and doubtless for the same reason: it united her with her victim. Mannhardt quotes a case in Germany where, no longer since than the year 1868, two ignorant men were sent to prison for three months for assaulting a young woman whom they believed to have bewitched a friend, drawing blood and compelling her to drop it into his mouth.[244.3] But in general it is considered quite sufficient simply to draw blood from her. According to the Scottish prescription she should be “scored aboon her breath”--that is, in the upper part of her face.[244.4] The superstition, of course, has long been in decay. Merely to draw blood does not of itself constitute blood-relationship; but the barbarous rite of the blood-covenant having practically died out of north-western Europe, the real reason of drawing blood has been forgotten. A similar protection is invoked by Gipsy thieves in Servia. They make a certain powder with which they mix drops of their own blood and put it into the food of any one they suspect knows of their crime. In this way the thief believes that he not merely prevents the person {245} who consumes the mixture from betraying him, but on the other hand causes him henceforth to cherish a friendly feeling towards him.[245.1]

More difficult of interpretation is a horrible usage of the Hurons of North America. Unless they are belied, while torturing a prisoner to death, they would sometimes open the aorta and mingle the blood that gushed from it with some of their own, in the hope of being at all times apprised of an enemy’s approach, and so assuring safety against a sudden attack.[245.2] Let us compare it, however, with a few cases of cannibalism. The Botocudos devoured their fallen enemies, in the belief that they would thus be protected from the revenge of the dead and would be rendered invulnerable by the arrows of the hostile tribe.[245.3] The inhabitants of New Britain, notorious cannibals, eat their enemies, and fix the arm- and leg-bones of the men at the butt-end of their spears, thinking thus not only to acquire the strength of the deceased owner of the bone, but also to become invulnerable by his relatives.[245.4] When the Tchuktchis murder a man they eat a piece of his heart or liver, in order to make his kindred sick.[245.5] The Eskimo of Greenland do the like, because then the relations of the murdered man will lack the courage to revenge his death.[245.6] Even in the south of Italy it is still believed that a murderer will not be able to escape unless he taste, or beslubber himself with, his victim’s blood:[245.7] a superstition {246} which, in these days, has sometimes the contrary effect of leading to his discovery. By means of these examples we may perhaps conjecture the origin of the widely prevalent custom of eating the dead body of an enemy. Little doubt can at all events remain that the savage Hurons intended so to unite themselves with their captive that they would be secured from the blood-revenge of his kindred, and that it was against the kindred and them only that the precaution was adopted. And if this result could be attained by commingling the blood in a manner similar to that of the blood-covenant, it could also be achieved by eating a portion of the foe. Closely connected with cannibalism of the kind I am referring to is the custom of _alumbi_ practised by several tribes in Equatorial West Africa. It consists in serving in food to a guest powder scraped from the skull of a deceased ancestor. “The idea is, that by consuming the scrapings of the skull, the blood of their ancestors enters into your body, and thus, becoming of one blood, you are naturally led to love them and grant them what they wish.”[246.1] In other words, a blood-covenant is entered into unwittingly by the guest with his host; and it need hardly be said that the trick is only played on those guests whose hearts a greedy host considers it is worth his while to soften.

Naturally superstition extended the blood-covenant by analogy to the lower animals, both in their relations with one another and with man, and utilised it for human profit. Servian Gipsy thieves draw blood from the left shoulder of a stolen beast, dry it to powder and mix the powder with the fodder of other beasts which they intend to steal, so as to be able to capture them without hindrance.[246.2] An {247} Icelandic story is told of a fairy who used to send her kine to graze with those of a peasant-farmer. One day the farmer found a fairy cow in his stable. He cut its ear until it bled, and so appropriated the animal, to the fairy’s great annoyance.[247.1] The story is incomplete in not telling us what was done with the blood. It is clear, however, that a bond of blood was created which, in the stage of civilisation wherein the story arose, meant, as between man and one of the lower animals, ownership. From the Arctic circle to the southern Sporades may seem a far cry; yet it is from the island of Calymnos that we are able to supply the missing detail. One day in the spring of last year (1894) Mr. W. R. Paton saw a little girl, the daughter of a shepherd, with her face besmeared with blood. Her mother told him, by way of explanation, that the father had been marking the kids in his daughter’s name. Further inquiry showed that it was the custom to mark these animals by cutting their ears, every shepherd having his own distinctive mark, that they were marked in the name of one or other child of the family, and that some of the blood was smeared on the face of the child in whose name they were marked.[247.2] A better illustration could hardly be found of the manner in which the customs of one country will throw light upon the customs and traditions of another. Distance in space counts for naught where we are dealing with similar conditions of culture.

This sketch of totemism, including the means of union and communion between the clan and its totem on the one hand, and between the individual members of the clan on the other hand, is hasty and imperfect. Yet I hope it may {248} prove sufficient for our purpose, the more so as the writings of Professor Robertson Smith and Mr. Frazer, who have studied the subject with great detail, are happily easy of access. Without, therefore, dwelling longer upon it we may turn to glance at some of the modifications undergone by the ceremony of the blood-covenant. A rite so barbarous would not maintain itself unimpaired as culture advanced. Other rites are softened in course of time; a part is taken for the whole, or a sham for the real thing; and this is no exception. I have referred to some of the forms it has assumed, but only to such as bear to the most casual observer the mark and witness of the original whence they are derived. There remain to be briefly considered some of the remoter variations.

The sacramental essence of the rite has escaped many modern travellers. Yet it might have been thought obvious enough. It is, perhaps, most clearly brought out where the blood is mingled with the food of the participants. It has been well insisted on, and its connection with the totem-sacrifice exhibited at length, by Professor Robertson Smith. Nor, after what has been said about it in the foregoing pages, and after the analogous superstitions discussed in preceding chapters, is it necessary to dwell on the point here. But it can excite no surprise that the rite should have degenerated into a solemn meal eaten together by the persons entering into the new bond. In early times no one would have a right to eat together save the brethren of a clan; and on the other hand, all who ate together would, presumably at least, be members of the same clan. Hospitality--the relation of host and guest--would form the only exception; and hospitality, as practised in savage and barbarous communities, may be described as a temporary reception into the kin or family. {249} But none save brethren habitually shared the common meal. To eat together, therefore, would of itself be a sign, though not an infallible sign, of kinship. Eating together is--not merely on solemn occasions, as the sacrifice of the totem-beast, but in a lesser degree at other times--an act of communion. The sharing of a common substance as food unites those who partake of it in a common life: it makes them parts of one another: they incorporate one another’s substance. This is the significance of eating “things sacrificed to idols,” and of “sitting at meat in an idol’s temple.” The idol is supposed to have partaken of the meat; and those who afterwards eat of it share by that act the idol’s life; they partake of his substance. This is the significance of the offering of first-fruits; the bulk is holy and fit for the worshippers’ food, because a portion, and through that portion the whole, is first united with the god. What is true of special feasts, and of communion with the god, holds good of everyday meals, and of communion by the clansmen with one another. To admit a stranger into the clan, then, it will be enough that he be allowed to partake of the common meal. If the admission be simply for a temporary purpose as a guest, it will take place without any extraordinary formalities. If a permanent union be contemplated, then ceremonies must be performed indicative of the intention, and uniting the parties in the unmistakable bond of a common life.

One or two examples will suffice. The aboriginal tribes of Bengal have now in many instances undergone a transformation, under the influence of the dominant Aryan religion and organisation, from tribal organisation and status into that of castes. The Mahilis, “a Dravidian caste of labourers, palanquin-bearers and workers in bamboo, {250} found in Chota Nagpur and Western Bengal,” readily admit “men of any caste ranking higher than their own.” The person seeking admission “has merely to pay a small sum to the headman of the caste and to give a feast to the Mahilis of the neighbourhood. This feast he must attend himself and signify his entrance into the brotherhood by tasting a portion of the food left by each of the guests on the leaf which on these occasions serves as a plate.”[250.1] The Máls of Western and Central Bengal, another tribe which has become converted into a caste, while still retaining many distinctly tribal practices, also admit outsiders. The fashion among them is for the neophyte to give a feast to the Máls of the neighbourhood, and to drink water wherein the headman of the village has dipped his toes.[250.2] The Mysteries of Greece and Western Asia were celebrated with the sacrifice and consumption of the divine animal; and the persons who joined in the ceremony entered into a brotherhood which, though in the latter times of classic heathendom regarded as spiritual rather than literal, must have derived its significance from a more archaic state of society, when to partake of the totem-animal was to consummate the most sacred rite of kinship. Among the Battas of Sumatra alliances are concluded by the slaughter of a hog or cow. As soon as its throat is cut the heart is torn out and divided into as many pieces as there are chiefs present. The share of each is put on a pointed stick and roasted by holding it over the fire. In turn the chiefs then hold up their respective morsels, saying: “If I should ever violate my oath, I am willing to be slaughtered like the bleeding animal which lies before me, and to be {251} devoured like the piece of heart I am about to eat.”[251.1] This oath, which is reported to be more than a mere form, points back to an earlier period before the cow or the hog was substituted for a man. In classical antiquity a blood-rite of this kind is many times mentioned which not improbably may represent an early form of the blood-covenant. In the oath said to have been administered by Catiline to his fellow-conspirators, a slave was put to death, and every one drank out of the same cup his blood mingled with wine. The oath they swore was deemed irrevocable: it united them like the brethren of one blood to support one another in life and avenge one another’s death. The same is doubtless the meaning of the act recorded by Herodotus of the Greek and Carian allies of Psammenitus, when one of their number, Phanes of Halicarnassus, deserted to Cambyses, the Persian invader of Egypt. They put to death his sons in Phanes’ sight, drained their blood into a vase, which they filled up with wine and water, and, having drunk it together, they rushed madly but vainly on the foe.[251.2] And Diodorus Siculus relates of Apollodorus, who aspired in the third century before Christ to the government of the city of Cassandrea in Macedonia, that he slew a youth to the gods, gave his fellow-conspirators the entrails to eat and the blood mingled with wine to drink.[251.3] A relic of some such ceremony is found in India. Among the Saráogi Baniyás, who are reckoned of the Súdra caste, on the occasion of a marriage the relatives only of the parties meet in a private apartment around the figure of a Brahman, made in dough and filled with honey. The bridegroom’s father, “armed with a miniature bow and arrows, topples over the effigy, {252} which is then disembowelled, so to speak, of its honey, into which all present dip a finger and suck it.”[252.1] In the New World the bloodthirsty Aztecs ate their human sacrifices. The Yncas, a little more human, offered and ate animals, called by De Molina sheep. Their sacrament consisted of a pudding of coarsely-ground maize, of which a portion had been smeared on the idol. The priest sprinkled it with the blood of the victim, before distributing it to the people.[252.2] A curious rite is reported as taking place among the Isubus, in the west of Africa, when entering into a covenant to do some murderous or warlike deed. A pot is placed upon the fire, and in the pot a stone, supposed to become by cooking as soft as a plantain. It is then cut with a knife, and each of the covenanting parties must swallow a piece, binding himself thereby to do or abet the deed proposed.[252.3] A Danubian Gipsy saga relates the mode of admission into a tribe. The chief eats with the candidate a piece of salted bread, and gives him brandy in a glass. When the brandy is drunk the glass is smashed.[252.4] Drinking, indeed, often becomes the substitute for eating. Among the aborigines of Formosa the manner of taking an oath of friendship is by putting their arms round one another’s necks and drinking simultaneously from the same cup of wine.[252.5] Among the Slavs the blood-covenant is still practised; and the Church has taken it under her own protection. In her hands it has become transformed into the ritual drinking of wine together. Thus in Crnagora the comrades who are {253} about to enter into the bond of brotherhood attend the church, where the priest awaits them. He hands them the chalice, out of which they thrice drink wine together. They kiss the cross, the gospels and the sacred images, and finally kiss one another thrice upon the cheek. Afterwards the one on whose suggestion the league is formed, gives a dinner to the brother of his choice and adds to it some more valuable gift.[253.1]

But we have seen that an entirely different modification of the rite early took place. The actual drinking of the blood was dropped in favour of mixing it by inoculation,[253.2] or outwardly upon the bleeding flesh. Among the Norsemen in later times the blood was drawn from each party and simply allowed to flow together in their footprints.[253.3] Herodotus describes the covenant among the Arabs on the borders of Egypt. Blood was drawn with a sharp stone from the thumb of either party. With a shred of each person’s robe it was then smeared upon seven sacred stones, with an invocation to the divinities Orotal and Alilat, whom the historian identifies with Dionysos and Urania.[253.4] Professor Robertson Smith commenting on the passage observes that the smearing on the stones “makes the gods parties to the covenant, but evidently the {254} symbolical act is not complete unless at the same time the human parties taste each other’s blood.” And he surmises that “this was actually done, though Herodotus does not say so. But,” he admits, “it is also possible that in the course of time the ritual had been so far modified that it was deemed sufficient that the two bloods should meet on the sacred stone.”[254.1] I cannot help thinking that what we have learnt in the course of our previous inquiries may help us to the solution of the difficulty. When Abruzzian girls hide their hairs in some secret place of the sanctuary on vowing eternal friendship, they seem at first sight to be performing an act parallel to that recorded of the Arabs; and if so we need not suspect that Herodotus has omitted any feature of the rite. Probably, however, the true explanation does not lie here. We may suppose that the shreds torn by the master of the ceremonies from either garment were roughly tied or twisted together into a wisp, which was then dipped into the flowing blood of both persons, and the blood thus mingled after the fashion of many tribes before it was painted on the stones; or, in the alternative, that the shred from the garment of the one person was dipped in the blood of the other. We have had abundant evidence that a man’s clothes are deemed a part of himself, and that what is done to them is done to him. To dip a portion of my clothes in my friend’s blood, therefore, is to unite me to him, to make him my blood-brother, without the necessity of tasting his blood, or even of literally mixing our blood together. In either way the act would be complete, and the historian’s accuracy justified. Even less than this is necessary among other {255} nations. A man is deemed a blood-brother if the blood of another touch him only by accident and without any outpouring of his own blood. So Dr. Livingstone involuntarily contracted blood-relationship with a Balonda woman in opening a tumour in her arm, by the spurting of some of her blood in his eye.[255.1] Similarly in the Irish saga of _The Wooing of Emer_ we find Cuchulainn becoming the blood-brother of Devorgoil by sucking from her wound the stone that had struck her from his sling.[255.2] An Abruzzian prescription for epilepsy is for some one on the first attack of the disease to strike the patient on the ear with something of iron, so that the blood flows. The operator becomes the “gossip” (_compare o comare_) of the person thus cured. Here it seems to suffice if the blood simply touch the instrument used: a much degraded form of the rite, comparable with that in the Icelandic story of the fairy cow, and with the practice of scoring a witch. In a variant remedy, however, a person unacquainted with the patient bites the ear until the blood flows.[255.3]

A further modification of the rite appears in ancient Arabic literature, whereby the blood shed is not that of one of the contracting parties but of another human victim slain at the sanctuary, and the hands of all who shared in the compact were simply dipped into the gore. At first it would seem likely that the victim was already a member of one of the clans entering into the alliance. This was the case in the province of Zacatecas in Central America. The victim chosen was first mercifully intoxicated to deaden his pain. It does not appear that he was put to death; {256} but his ears were pierced in turn by each member of the contracting clans, who rubbed the spurting blood over his own body.[256.1] After a while, however, the human victim would be dispensed with, or perhaps among many nations the victim may always have been a sacred animal, originally of course a totem-animal. So, among the Dyaks for the purpose of reconciling two foes, or of welcoming a stranger, a fowl is killed and its blood sprinkled over the parties and the dwelling.[256.2] In the Chittagong Hills the Kumi and the Shendoos kill a goat or a heifer and smear with its blood the feet and foreheads of the contracting

## parties. Before doing so, however, the presiding chief takes a

mouthful of liquor from a cup and blows it over one party, blows another mouthful over the other party and a third over the victim. Some other ceremonies follow, including the imprecation frequently occurring on any one who violates the compact.[256.3]

The ritual of other peoples deviates yet more from the type. The cannibal Bondjos of Africa merely put red ochre on the arms and rub them together.[256.4] Two men of the Limbu, a Bengali tribe of Mongolian descent, contract brotherhood by a ceremony at which a Brahman, or, when the parties are Buddhists, a Lama, presides and reads mantras or mystic formulæ, while the two friends thrice exchange rupees, handkerchiefs or scarves, and daub each other between the eyebrows with a paste made of rice and curds. And the description of the performance holds good of the Muriari and other tribes of the same province.[256.5] {257} In other parts of the world the rite further degenerates into the mere rubbing of noses, or the striking of one another’s breasts with an exchange of names.[257.1] Our hand-shaking is a pledge of goodwill and fidelity which, we can hardly doubt, points to the same course of ceremonial decay. The exchange of names, practised so frequently among savage peoples by intimate friends, has no different effect. For the name being part of the person, to confer it upon another and to take that other’s name in exchange is to effect union as close as the mixture of one another’s blood. Among the Abruzzians in Italy, as I mentioned just now, the blood-rite is not yet extinct. It is practised in a milder form by two girls who wish to swear eternal friendship after the manner of maidens. Taking each other by the hand and repeating certain prescribed rhymes, in which they pray with emphasis that the one who breaks the bond may go straight to hell, each of them pulls a hair from her own head and puts it on the other’s. Thenceforth they salute one another as “Gossip,” and may safely make one another the recipient of the most sacred confidences.[257.2]

It will readily be understood that the ceremony of the blood-covenant cannot be thus truncated and altered in a variety of ways without a corresponding change in the rights and liabilities, the privileges and disabilities, entailed where the clan system is in the plenitude of its sway. When a Dyak welcomes a stranger by sprinkling the blood of a domesticated bird, or when two Italian girls exchange hairs, one party to the performance is not admitted to the {258} kin of the other. No legal tie of blood results from the ceremony. For all that, a tie is formed. The tie of hospitality, or the tie of gossipry, is, in the contemplation of the Italian peasant, or the Dyak, a tie involving rights and duties similar within its limits to those of blood. So when two Slavs enter into adoptive brotherhood, the evolution of society, which has mollified the rude rite, has also shorn it of many of the resulting consequences; and kinsmen of this kind often betroth their children together while yet in the cradle, in order, we are expressly told, to strengthen the bond between them[258.1]--a betrothal usually impossible in archaic society, because as a rule marriage within the kin is forbidden. But it does not come within my design to do more than point out that these differences arise in the consequences, as well as in the forms, of the rite, and in both cases from the same cause--the growth of civilisation.

There is an analogous group of practices the material of which is not the blood but the saliva. In an able and interesting paper, published in the _Transactions_ of the International Folklore Congress of 1891, Mr. J. E. Crombie has investigated the superstitions connected with the use of saliva. His contention is that it is sometimes believed to contain the element of life, that to spit upon another person is to add to the latter’s store of life some of one’s own, and that for two persons to spit upon one another is to effect an interchange of life. And he refers in support of his argument to various customs, among which may be mentioned the following. At the reception held by an Osmanli mother after childbirth, every visitor who looks at the babe is expected to spit on it and to {259} conceal her admiration under such disparaging remarks as “Nasty, ugly little thing!” to show that she does not envy or ill-wish it. Among the Masai spitting on another expresses the greatest goodwill and best wishes. Pliny records the classical habit of spitting on a lame man or an epileptic, the reason given being to avoid fascination or repel contagion. For diseases of different kinds fasting spittle is a remedy. To cite Pliny again, he speaks of ophthalmia and crick in the neck being thus cured. Growing pains in children are treated in the same manner. Among the Samoans, when a man was ill his relatives used to assemble, and, after confessing whether he had wished the sick man any evil, each of them was required to take some water in his mouth and spurt it out towards him. In making a bargain or contract of any kind the saliva is employed. In Masailand the sale of a bullock is concluded by the seller spitting on the animal’s head and the purchaser on the article he is going to give in exchange. At Newcastle in old days when the colliers combined for the purpose of raising their wages they were said to spit together on a stone by way of cementing their confederacy. So the Anses and the Wanes in making a covenant of peace let fall into a vase each of them some of his saliva, out of which a being was made endowed with the wisdom of them all. And Mr. Henderson relates that in his school-days the highest pledge of faith two boys could give to one another was to spit.[259.1]

{260}

The exigencies of a Congress-paper no doubt compelled Mr. Crombie to shorten his list of examples. His conclusion is in harmony with the opinions advocated in the present volume. But if those opinions be correct we may go further than Mr. Crombie has ventured. The transfer of saliva is more than a gift of a portion of the spitter’s life. It is a gift of a portion of himself, which is thus put into the power of the recipient as a pledge of goodwill. Nay, it is a bodily union with the recipient, such as can be effected by a blood-covenant. Possibly as Mr. Crombie suggests, it is, where an interchange of saliva occurs, a form of blood-covenant consequent upon milder manners, like some of the modifications we have already glanced at. Rather it seems to be a more evanescent and less solemn, though still emphatic, form, intended only for temporary purposes. I hope the examples I propose to adduce will bear out this contention.

Let us first recall the uses to which we have, in previous chapters, found saliva put. Equally with the other issues of the body, it is a means of witchcraft whereby the spitter may be injured and perhaps done to death. In the same way it is available as a means of compelling the love of one of the opposite sex. It is dangerous to spit into the fire. To spit the half of a piece of bread which the patient has been chewing, and has therefore {261} mixed with his saliva, into a tree is in Transylvania a specific against toothache. And to spit in certain prescribed places is a remedy for various diseases. The natives of South America spit their coca-quids upon the cairns in the Cordilleras; and every Basuto traveller spits upon the pebble he is about to add to the heap outside the village he is approaching. It is hard to put any meaning into these superstitions, unless it be one that ignores the separation of the saliva from the body of which it once formed a part. The _märchen_ cited in