Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume I Part 11

(1) Savage Life, p. 208.

In addition to these forms of symbolical magic (which might be multiplied to any extent), we find among savages the belief in the power of songs of INCANTATION. This is a feature of magic which specially deserves our attention. In myths, and still more in marchen or household tales, we shall constantly find that the most miraculous effects are caused when the hero p.r.o.nounces a few lines of rhyme. In Rome, as we have all read in the Latin Delectus, it was thought that incantations could draw down the moon. In the Odyssey the kinsfolk of Odysseus sing "a song of healing" over the wound which was dealt him by the boar's tusk. Jeanne d'Arc, wounded at Orleans, refused a similar remedy.

Sophocles speaks of the folly of muttering incantations over wounds that need the surgeon's knife. The song that salved wounds occurs in the Kalewala, the epic poem of the Finns. In many of Grimm's marchen, miracles are wrought by the repet.i.tion of s.n.a.t.c.hes of rhyme. This belief is derived from the savage state of fancy. According to Kohl,(1) "Every sorrowful or joyful emotion that opens the Indian's mouth is at once wrapped up in the garb of a wabanonagamowin (chanson magicale). If you ask one of them to sing you a simple innocent hymn in praise of Nature, a spring or jovial hunting stave, he never gives you anything but a form of incantation, with which he says you will be able to call to you all the birds from the sky, and all the foxes and wolves from their caves and burrows."(2) The giant's daughter in the Scotch marchen, Nicht, Nought, Nothing, is thus enabled to call to her aid "all the birds of the sky". In the same way, if you ask an Indian for a love-song, he will say that a philtre is really much more efficacious. The savage, in short, is extremely practical. His arts, music and drawing, exist not pour l'art, but for a definite purpose, as methods of getting something that the artist wants. The young lover whom Kohl knew, like the lover of Bombyca in Theocritus, believed in having an image of himself and an image of the beloved. Into the heart of the female image he thrust magic powders, and he said that this was common, lovers adding songs, "partly elegiac, partly malicious, and almost criminal forms of incantation".(3)

(1) Page 395.

(2) Cf. Comparetti's Traditional Poetry of the Finns.

(3) Kitchi gami, pp. 395, 397.

Among the Indo-Aryans the masaminik or incantations of the Red Man are known as mantras.(1) These are usually texts from the Veda, and are chanted over the sick and in other circ.u.mstances where magic is believed to be efficacious. Among the New Zealanders the incantations are called karakias, and are employed in actual life. There is a special karakia to raise the wind. In Maori myths the hero is very handy with his karakia.

Rocks split before him, as before girls who use incantations in Kaffir and Bushman tales. He a.s.sumes the shape of any animal at will, or flies in the air, all by virtue of the karakia or incantation.(2)

(1) Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 441, "Incantations from the Atharva Veda".

(2) Taylor's New Zealand; Theal's Kaffir Folk-Lore, South-African Folk-Lore Journal, pa.s.sim; Shortland's Traditions of the New Zealanders, pp. 130-135.

Without multiplying examples in the savage belief that miracles can be wrought by virtue of physical CORRESPONDANCES, by like acting on like, by the part affecting the whole, and so forth, we may go on to the magical results produced by the aid of spirits. These may be either spirits of the dead or spiritual essences that never animated mortal men. Savage magic or science rests partly on the belief that the world is peopled by a "choir invisible," or rather by a choir only occasionally visible to certain gifted people, sorcerers and diviners.

An enormous amount of evidence to prove the existence of these tenets has been collected by Mr. Tylor, and is accessible to all in the chapters on "Animism" in his Primitive Culture. It is not our business here to account for the universality of the belief in spirits. Mr.

Tylor, following Lucretius and Homer, derives the belief from the reasonings of early men on the phenomena of dreams, fainting, shadows, visions caused by narcotics, hallucinations, and other facts which suggest the hypothesis of a separable life apart from the bodily organism. It would scarcely be fair not to add that the kind of "facts"

investigated by the Psychical Society--such "facts" as the appearance of men at the moment of death in places remote from the scene of their decease, with such real or delusive experiences as the noises and visions in haunted houses--are familiar to savages. Without discussing these obscure matters, it may be said that they influence the thoughts even of some scientifically trained and civilised men. It is natural, therefore, that they should strongly sway the credulous imagination of backward races, in which they originate or confirm the belief that life can exist and manifest itself after the death of the body.(1)

(1) See the author's Making of Religion, 1898.

Some examples of savage "ghost-stories," precisely a.n.a.logous to the "facts" of the Psychical Society's investigations, may be adduced. The first is curious because it offers among the Kanekas an example of a belief current in Breton folk-lore. The story is vouched for by Mr. J.

J. Atkinson, late of Noumea, New Caledonia. Mr. Atkinson, we have reason to believe, was unacquainted with the Breton parallel. To him one day a Kaneka of his acquaintance paid a visit, and seemed loth to go away. He took leave, returned, and took leave again, till Mr. Atkinson asked him the reason of his behaviour. He then explained that he was about to die, and would never see his English friend again. As he seemed in perfect health, Mr. Atkinson rallied him on his hypochondria; but the poor fellow replied that his fate was sealed. He had lately met in the wood one whom he took for the Kaneka girl of his heart; but he became aware too late that she was no mortal woman, but a wood-spirit in the guise of the beloved. The result would be his death within three days, and, as a matter of fact, he died. This is the groundwork of the old Breton ballad of Le Sieur Nan, who dies after his intrigue with the forest spectre.(1) A tale more like a common modern ghost-story is vouched for by Mr. C.

J. Du Ve, in Australia. In the year 1860, a Maneroo black fellow died in the service of Mr. Du Ve. "The day before he died, having been ill some time, he said that in the night his father, his father's friend, and a female spirit he could not recognise, had come to him and said that he would die next day, and that they would wait for him. Mr. Du Ye adds that, though previously the Christian belief had been explained to this man, it had entirely faded, and that he had gone back to the belief of his childhood." Mr. Fison, who prints this tale in his Kamilaroi and Kurnai,(2) adds, "I could give many similar instances which have come within my own knowledge among the Fijians, and, strange to say, the dying man in all these cases kept his appointment with the ghosts to the very day".

(1) It may, of course, be conjectured that the French introduced this belief into New Caledonia.

(2) Page 247.

In the Cruise of the Beagle is a parallel anecdote of a Fuegian, Jimmy b.u.t.ton, and his father's ghost.

Without entering into a discussion of ghosts, it is plain that the kind of evidence, whatever its value may be, which convinces many educated Europeans of the existence of "veridical" apparitions has also played its part in the philosophy of uncivilised races. On this belief in apparitions, then, is based the power of the savage sorcerers and necromants, of the men who converse with the dead and are aided by disembodied spirits. These men have greatly influenced the beginnings of mythology. Among certain Australian tribes the necromants are called Birraark.(1) "The Kurnai tell me," says Mr. Howitt, "that a Birraark was supposed to be initiated by the 'Mrarts (ghosts) when they met him wandering in the bush.... It was from the ghosts that he obtained replies to questions concerning events pa.s.sing at a distance or yet to happen, which might be of interest or moment to his tribe." Mr. Howitt prints an account of a spiritual seance in the bush.(2) "The fires were let go down. The Birraark uttered a cry 'coo-ee' at intervals. At length a distant reply was heard, and shortly afterwards the sound as of persons jumping on the ground in succession. A voice was then heard in the gloom asking in a strange intonation, 'What is wanted?' Questions were put by the Birraark and replies given. At the termination of the seance, the spirit-voice said, 'We are going'. Finally, the Birraark was found in the top of an almost inaccessible tree, apparently asleep."(3) There was one Birraark at least to every clan. The Kurnai gave the name of "Brewin" (a powerful evil spirit) to a Birraark who was once carried away for several days by the Mrarts or spirits.(4) It is a belief with the Australians, as, according to Bosman, it was with the people of the Gold Coast, that a very powerful wizard lives far inland, and the Negroes held that to this warlock the spirits of the dead went to be judged according to the merit of their actions in life. Here we have a doctrine answering to the Greek belief in "the wizard Minos," Aeacus, and Rhadamanthus, and to the Egyptian idea of Osiris as judge of the departed.(5) The pretensions of the sorcerer to converse with the dead are attested by Mr. Brough Smyth.(6) "A sorcerer lying on his stomach spoke to the deceased, and the other sitting by his side received the precious messages which the dead man told." As a natural result of these beliefs, the Australian necromant has great power in the tribe. Mr.

Howitt mentions a case in which a group of kindred, ceasing to use their old totemistic surname, called themselves the children of a famous dead Birraark, who thus became an eponymous hero, like Ion among the Ionians.(7) Among the Scotch Highlanders the position and practice of the seer were very like those of the Birraark. "A person," says Scott,(8) "was wrapped up in the skin of a newly slain bullock and deposited beside a waterfall or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some other strange, wild and unusual situation, where the scenery around him suggested nothing but objects of horror. In this situation he revolved in his mind the question proposed and whatever was impressed on him by his exalted imagination Pa.s.sED FOR THE INSPIRATION OF THE DISEMBODIED SPIRITS who haunt these desolate recesses." A number of examples are given in Martin's Description of the Western Islands.(9) In the Century magazine (July, 1882) is a very full report of Thlinkeet medicine-men and metamorphoses.

(1) Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 253.

(2) Page 254.

(3) In the Jesuit Relations (1637), p. 51, we read that the Red Indian sorcerer or Jossakeed was credited with power to vanish suddenly away out of sight of the men standing around him. Of him, as of Homeric G.o.ds, it might be said, "Who has power to see him come or go against his will?"

(4) Here, in the first edition, occurred the following pa.s.sage: "The conception of Brewin is about as near as the Kurnai get to the idea of a G.o.d; their conferring of his name on a powerful sorcerer is therefore a point of importance and interest". Mr. Howitt's later knowledge demonstrates an error here.

(5) Bosman in Pinkerton, xvi. p. 401.

(6) Aborigines of Australia, i. 197.

(7) In Victoria, after dark the wizard goes up to the clouds and brings down a good spirit. Dawkins, p. 57. For eponymous medicine-men see Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 231.

(8) Lady of the Lake, note 1 to Canto iv.

(9) P. 112.

The sorcerer among the Zulus is, apparently, of a naturally hysterical and nervous const.i.tution. "He hears the spirits who speak by whistlings speaking to him."(1) Whistling is also the language of the ghosts in New Caledonia, where Mr. Atkinson informs us that he has occasionally put an able-bodied Kaneka to ignominious flight by whistling softly in the dusk. The ghosts in Homer make a similar sound, "and even as bats flit gibbering in the secret place of a wondrous cavern,... even so the souls gibbered as they fared together" (Odyssey, xxiv. 5). "The familiar spirits make him" (that Zulu sorcerer) "acquainted with what is about to happen, and then he divines for the people." As the Birraarks learn songs and dance-music from the Mrarts, so the Zulu Inyanga or diviners learn magical couplets from the Itongo or spirits.(2)

(1) Callaway, Religious System of the Amazules, p. 265.

(2) On all this, see "Possession" in The Making of Religion.

The evidence of inst.i.tutions confirms the reports about savage belief in magic. The political power of the diviners is very great, as may be observed from the fact that a hereditary chief needs their consecration to make him a chief de jure.(1) In fact, the qualities of the diviner are those which give his sacred authority to the chief. When he has obtained from the diviners all their medicines and information as to the mode of using the isitundu (a magical vessel), it is said that he often orders them to be killed. Now, the chief is so far a medicine-man that he is lord of the air. "The heaven is the chief's," say the Zulus; and when he calls out his men, "though the heaven is clear, it becomes clouded by the great wind that arises". Other Zulus explain this as the mere hyperbole of adulation. "The word of the chief gives confidence to his troops; they say, 'We are going; the chief has already seen all that will happen in his vessel'. Such then are chiefs; they use a vessel for divination."(2) The makers of rain are known in Zululand as "heaven-herds" or "sky-herds," who herd the heaven that it may not break out and do its will on the property of the people. These men are, in fact, (Greek text omitted), "cloud-gatherers," like the Homeric Zeus, the lord of the heavens. Their name of "herds of the heavens" has a Vedic sound. "The herd that herds the lightning," say the Zulus, "does the same as the herder of the cattle; he does as he does by whistling; he says, 'Tshu-i-i-i. Depart and go yonder. Do not come here.'" Here let it be observed that the Zulus conceive of the thunder-clouds and lightning as actual creatures, capable of being herded like sheep. There is no metaphor or allegory about the matter,(3) and no forgetfulness of the original meaning of words. The cloud-herd is just like the cowherd, except that not every man, but only sorcerers, and they who have eaten the "lightning-bird" (a bird shot near the place where lightning has struck the earth), can herd the clouds of heaven. The same ideas prevail among the Bushmen, where the rainmaker is asked "to milk a nice gentle female rain"; the rain-clouds are her hair. Among the Bushmen Rain is a person. Among the Red Indians no metaphor seems to be intended when it is said that "it is always birds who make the wind, except that of the east". The Dacotahs once killed a thunder-bird(4) behind Little Crow's village on the Missouri. It had a face like a man with a nose like an eagle's bill.(5)

(1) Callaway, p. 340.

(2) Callaway, Religions System of the Amazules, p. 343.

(3) Ibid., p. 385.

(4) Schoolcraft, iii. 486.

(5) Compare Callaway, p. 119.

The political and social powers which come into the hands of the sorcerers are manifest, even in the case of the Australians. Tribes and individuals can attempt few enterprises without the aid of the man who listens to the ghosts. Only he can foretell the future, and, in the case of the natural death of a member of the tribe, can direct the vengeance of the survivors against the hostile magician who has committed a murder by "bar" or magic. Among the Zulus we have seen that sorcery gives the sanction to the power of the chief. "The winds and weather are at the command" of Bosman's "great fetisher". Inland from the Gold Coast,(1) the king of Loango, according to the Abbe Proyart, "has credit to make rain fall on earth". Similar beliefs, with like political results, will be found to follow from the superst.i.tion of magic among the Red Indians of North America. The difficulty of writing about sorcerers among the Red Indians is caused by the abundance of the evidence. Charlevoix and the other early Jesuit missionaries found that the jongleurs, as Charlevoix calls the Jossakeeds or medicine-men, were their chief opponents. As among the Scotch Highlanders, the Australians and the Zulus, the Red Indian jongleur is visited by the spirits. He covers a hut with the skin of the animal which he commonly wears, retires thither, and there converses with the bodiless beings.(2) The good missionary like Mr. Moffat in Africa, was convinced that the exercises of the Jossakeeds were verily supernatural. "Ces seducteurs ont un veritable commerce avec le pere du mensonge."(3) This was denied by earlier and wiser Jesuit missionaries. Their political power was naturally great. In time of war "ils avancent et r.e.t.a.r.dent les marches comme il leur plait". In our own century it was a medicine-man, Ten Squa Ta Way, who by his magical processes and superst.i.tious rites stirred up a formidable war against the United States.(4) According to Mr. Pond,(5) the native name of the Dacotah medicine-men, "Wakan," signifies "men supernaturally gifted". Medicine-men are believed to be "wakanised"

by mystic intercourse with supernatural beings. The business of the wakanised man is to discern future events, to lead and direct parties on the war-trail, "to raise the storm or calm the tempest, to converse with the lightning or thunder as with familiar friends".(6) The wakanised man, like the Australian Birraark and the Zulu diviner, "dictates chants and prayers". In battle "every Dacotah warrior looks to the Wakan man as almost his only resource". Belief in Wakan men is, Mr. Pond says, universal among the Dacotahs, except where Christianity has undermined it. "Their influence is deeply felt by every individual of the tribe, and controls all their affairs." The Wakan man's functions are absorbed by the general or war-chief of the tribe, and in Schoolcraft (iv. 495), Captain Eastman prints copies of native scrolls showing the war-chief at work as a wizard. "The war-chief who leads the party to war is always one of these medicine-men." In another pa.s.sage the medicine-men are described as "having a voice in the sale of land". It must be observed that the Jossakeed, or medicine-man, pure and simple, exercises a power which is not in itself hereditary. Chieftainship, when a.s.sociated with inheritance of property, is hereditary; and when the chief, as among the Zulus, absorbs supernatural power, then the same man becomes diviner and chief, and is a person of great and sacred influence. The liveliest account of the performances of the Maori "tohunga" or sorcerer is to be found in Old New Zealand,(7) by the Pakeha Maori, an English gentleman who had lived with the natives like one of themselves. The tohunga, says this author,(8) presided over "all those services and customs which had something approaching to a religious character. They also pretended to power by means of certain familiar spirits, to foretell future events, and even in some cases to control them.... The spirit 'entered into'

them, and, on being questioned, gave a response in a sort of half whistling, half-articulate voice, supposed to be the proper language of spirits." In New South Wales, Mrs. Langlot Parker has witnessed a similar exhibition. The "spirits" told the truth in this case. The Pakeha Maori was present in a darkened village-hall when the spirit of a young man, a great friend of his own, was called up by a tohunga.

"Suddenly, without the slightest warning, a voice came out of the darkness.... The voice all through, it is to be remembered, was not the voice of the tohunga, but a strange melancholy sound, like the sound of a wind blowing into a hollow vessel. 'It is well with me; my place is a good place.' The spirit gave an answer to a question which proved to be correct, and then 'Farewell,' cried the spirit FROM DEEP BENEATH THE GROUND. 'Farewell,' again, FROM HIGH IN AIR. 'Farewell,' once more came moaning through the distant darkness of the night." As chiefs in New Zealand no less than tohungas can exercise the mystical and magical power of tabu, that is, of imparting to any object or person an inviolable character, and can prevent or remit the mysterious punishment for infringement of tabu, it appears probable that in New Zealand, as well as among the Zulus and Red Indians, chiefs have a tendency to absorb the sacred character and powers of the tohungas. This is natural enough, for a tohunga, if he plays his cards well, is sure to acquire property and hereditary wealth, which, in combination with magical influence, are the necessary qualifications for the office of the chieftain.

(1) Pinkerton, xvi. 401.

(2) Charlevoix, i. 105. See "Savage Spiritualism" in c.o.c.k Lane and Common Sense.