Chapter IX

., by causing the heroine’s spittle to answer for her, as if she were present, after she has in fact fled from the ogre’s thraldom, exaggerate the identification of the saliva with its owner to the height of endowing it with a large measure of her consciousness and personality. The same exaggeration is to be observed in a practice among children in New England, doubtless derived from the old country, of divining by means of saliva where a bird’s nest, or something else for which they are searching, is. A boy will spit into the palm of his hand and striking the spittle with the forefinger of the other hand will say:

“Spit, spat, spot, Tell me where that bird’s nest is,”

(or as the case may be); and the direction in which the spittle flies will be that in which the search must be pursued.[261.1]

Turning now to some other practices, we may begin by glancing at the widely diffused lustration of a babe with saliva. The object of the custom is said to be protection against the Evil Eye. Persius, in the first century of the {262} Christian era, describes with great scorn a grandmother or superstitious aunt as taking the child from its cradle and rubbing its forehead with spittle applied with the middle finger.[262.1] Nor is the custom by any means extinct. To lick a cross on the infant’s brow is among the Transylvanian Saxons a preservative from spells.[262.2] And over the whole of Europe it is the most ordinary act of politeness to spit on a baby. Among the Dalmatians and Bosnians, when caressing and complimenting a pretty infant, it is necessary, in order to destroy the enchantment produced by the praise, to spit on its forehead; and if you chance to forget this, the parents with a pistol at your breast will constrain you to remember it. Everywhere in the Balkan peninsula the superstition prevails, as well as in Corsica, in the Land beyond the Forest and among the Huzules on the north-eastern slopes of the Carpathians.[262.3] A visitor to Ireland in the reign of Charles II. records the same among the peasantry of his day; and even yet it is far from disappearing. People in Wicklow spit on a child for good luck the first day it is brought out after birth. At Innisbofin, in the west of Ireland, when the old women meet a baby out with its nurse they either spit upon it or spit on the ground all round in a circle, to keep off the fairies.[262.4] The design to ward off the spells of witches or (what amounts to the same thing) of fairies appears, however, {263} to be only a specialisation of a more general intention. The evidence points to the meaning of the ceremony as a welcome into the world, an acknowledgment of kindred, a desire to express those friendly feelings which in archaic times none but a kinsman could entertain, whatever flattering words might be spoken. It is said that the ceremony referred to by Persius was performed on the day the babe received its name. In Connemara, immediately after birth, the father spits on his child.[263.1] Some such custom would seem to have been known in Iceland under the name of Spittle-baptism.[263.2] When Mohammed’s elder grandson was born, the prophet spat in his mouth and named him Hasan.[263.3] Among the Mandingos and among the Bambaras of Western Africa, in the ceremony of naming a child, the griot or priest spits thrice in its face.[263.4] In Ashanti the father varies the performance by squirting a mouthful of rum into his child’s face and calling it by a name.[263.5] And in the Roman Catholic rite of baptism--a rite, we are called on to believe, having nothing in common with these heathenish practices--the person operated on, whether babe or adult, is to this day bedaubed with the priest’s saliva.

Barbot, writing at the end of the seventeenth century, relates that the interpreter of the king of Zair, in the Congo basin, after rubbing his hands and face in the dust, “took one of the royal feet in his hands, spat on the sole thereof, and licked it with his tongue.”[263.6] This, if it stood alone, might be held, like the kissing of the pope’s toe, to express {264} mere subservience; but other African customs put a different interpretation upon it. In north-eastern Senegambia if a Massasi be condemned for any offence by the chief and succeed, after sentence pronounced but before punishment, in spitting upon one of the princes, he is considered inviolable, and must be provided with food and lodging at the expense of the personage who has had the imprudence to come within range of his saliva.[264.1] At Orango in the Bissagos Archipelago, off the Senegambian coast, the ceremony for sealing a friendship is to spit in one another’s hands.[264.2] On the other side of the continent, a stranger can only be received among the Somali and neighbouring tribes as a guest of some family. When so received he is regarded for the time as one of the stock. And the ceremony of reception amongst the southern Somali and the Oromó, consists in the host’s spitting in his right hand and rubbing it on the stranger’s forehead as a sign of naturalisation.[264.3] Contact with the saliva thus effects union for the moment as binding as the tie of kinship. We must surely give a similar meaning {265} to the Somali rule which requires chance passers-by to spit on the bier at a funeral.[265.1] If they thus unite themselves with the dead they will not, either upon him, or through him upon his surviving kindred, work any mischief by witchcraft. In the same way, too, a Kafir sorcerer offers from time to time his saliva to the spirits, that he may not lose his divining power. The king of the principal isle of the Bissagos Archipelago will not swallow a single drop of liquid without spitting the first mouthful over his fetishes or his amulets.[265.2] And the Basuto diviners believe that if they neglect to spit before eating they will lose their power and become like other mortals.[265.3] In these cases the spitting is manifestly intended to unite the sorcerer or king with the supernatural Power; and the Basuto form of the offering is perhaps a decayed one, which may be compared to the classical habit of spilling a drop or two of drink as a libation.

These African practices correspond with others elsewhere. When an Irish peasant wishes to welcome a friend with more than usual heartiness, he spits in his own hand ere he clasps his friend’s with it. In the East Riding of Yorkshire people stand by a brook to wish, and they spit into it: doubtless a relic of the archaic worship of water.[265.4] In Central America, whenever the native traveller came to one of the altars erected everywhere on the roads to the god of travellers, he plucked a tuft of grass, rubbed it on his leg, and, spitting on it, piously deposited it, together with a stone, upon the altar.[265.5] And in the last