Myths and myth-makers Part 12

[Footnote 164: Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 394. "The Zulus hold that a dead body can cast no shadow, because that appurtenance departed from it at the close of life." Hardwick, Traditions, Superst.i.tions, and Folk-Lore, p. 123.]

[Footnote 165: Tylor, op. cit. I. 391.]

[Footnote 166: Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, 1867, p.

210.]

[Footnote 167: Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.]

[Footnote 168: In Russia the souls of the dead are supposed to be embodied in pigeons or crows. "Thus when the Deacon Theodore and his three schismatic brethren were burnt in 1681, the souls of the martyrs, as the 'Old Believers' affirm, appeared in the air as pigeons. In Volhynia dead children are supposed to come back in the spring to their native village under the semblance of swallows and other small birds, and to seek by soft twittering or song to console their sorrowing parents." Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 118.]

[Footnote 169: Tylor, op. cit. I. 404.]

[Footnote 171: Tylor, op. cit. I. 407.]

[Footnote 172: Tylor, op. cit. I. 410. In the next stage of survival this belief will take the shape that it is wrong to slam a door, no reason being a.s.signed; and in the succeeding stage, when the child asks why it is naughty to slam a door, he will be told, because it is an evidence of bad temper. Thus do old-world fancies disappear before the inroads of the practical sense.]

[Footnote 173: Aga.s.siz, Essay on Cla.s.sification, pp. 97-99.]

[Footnote 174: Figuier, The To-morrow of Death, p. 247.]

[Footnote 175: Here, as usually, the doctrine of metempsychosis comes in to complete the proof. "Mr. Darwin saw two Malay women in Keeling Island, who had a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll; this spoon had been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired at full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively like a table or a hat at a modern spirit-seance." Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.]

[Footnote 176: Tylor, op. cit. I. 414-422.]

[Footnote 177: Tylor, op. cit. I. 435, 446; II. 30, 36.]

[Footnote 178: According to the Karens, blindness occurs when the SOUL OF THE EYE is eaten by demons. Id., II. 353.]

[Footnote 179: The following citation is interesting as an ill.u.s.tration of the directness of descent from heathen manes-worship to Christian saint-worship: "It is well known that Romulus, mindful of his own adventurous infancy, became after death a Roman deity, propitious to the health and safety of young children, so that nurses and mothers would carry sickly infants to present them in his little round temple at the foot of the Palatine. In after ages the temple was replaced by the church of St. Theodorus, and there Dr. Conyers Middleton, who drew public attention to its curious history, used to look in and see ten or a dozen women, each with a sick child in her lap, sitting in silent reverence before the altar of the saint. The ceremony of blessing children, especially after vaccination, may still be seen there on Thursday mornings." Op. cit. II. 111.]

[Footnote 180: Want of s.p.a.ce prevents me from remarking at length upon Mr. Tylor's admirable treatment of the phenomena of oracular inspiration. Attention should be called, however, to the brilliant explanation of the importance accorded by all religions to the rite of fasting. Prolonged abstinence from food tends to bring on a mental state which is favourable to visions. The savage priest or medicine-man qualifies himself for the performance of his duties by fasting, and where this is not sufficient, often uses intoxicating drugs; whence the sacredness of the hasheesh, as also of the Vedic soma-juice. The practice of fasting among civilized peoples is an instance of survival.]