Chapter 55. The Transference of Evil.
Section 1. The Transference to Inanimate Objects.
WE have now traced the practice of killing a god among peoples in the
hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages of society; and I have attempted
to explain the motives which led men to adopt so curious a custom. One
aspect of the custom still remains to be noticed. The accumulated
misfortunes and sins of the whole people are sometimes laid upon the dying
god, who is supposed to bear them away for ever, leaving the people
innocent and happy. The notion that we can transfer our guilt and sufferings
to some other being who will bear them for us is familiar to the savage mind.
It arises from a very obvious confusion between the physical and the
mental, between the material and the immaterial. Because it is possible to
shift a load of wood, stones, or what not, from our own back to the back of
another, the savage fancies that it is equally possible to shift the burden of
his pains and sorrows to another, who will suffer them in his stead. Upon
this idea he acts, and the result is an endless number of very unamiable
devices for palming off upon some one else the trouble which a man
shrinks from bearing himself. In short, the principle of vicarious suffering is
commonly understood and practised by races who stand on a low level of
social and intellectual culture. In the following pages I shall illustrate the
theory and the practice as they are found among savages in all their naked
simplicity, undisguised by the refinements of metaphysics and the subtleties
of theology. 1
The devices to which the cunning and selfish savage resorts for the sake
of easing himself at the expense of his neighbour are manifold; only a few
typical examples out of a multitude can be cited. At the outset it is to be
observed that the evil of which a man seeks to rid himself need not be
transferred to a person; it may equally well be transferred to an animal or a
thing, though in the last case the thing is often only a vehicle to convey the
trouble to the first person who touches it. In some of the East Indian islands
they think that epilepsy can be cured by striking the patient on the face
with the leaves of certain trees and then throwing them away. The disease
is believed to have passed into the leaves, and to have been thrown away
with them. To cure toothache some of the Australian blacks apply a heated
spear-thrower to the cheek. The spear-thrower is then cast away, and the
toothache goes with it in the shape of a black stone called karriitch. Stones
of this kind are found in old mounds and sandhills. They are carefully
collected and thrown in the direction of enemies in order to give them
toothache. The Bahima, a pastoral people of Uganda, often suffer from
deep-seated abscesses: "their cure for this is to transfer the disease to
some other person by obtaining herbs from the medicine-man, rubbing
them over the place where the swelling is, and burying them in the road
where people continually pass; the first person who steps over these buried
herbs contracts the disease, and the original patient recovers." 2
Sometimes in case of sickness the malady is transferred to an effigy as a
preliminary to passing it on to a human being. Thus among the Baganda the
medicine-man would sometimes make a model of his patient in clay; then a
relative of the sick man would rub the image over the sufferer's body and
either bury it in the road \??\ it in the grass by the wayside. The first person
who stepped over the image or passed by it would catch the disease.
Sometimes the effigy was made out of a plantain-flower tied up so as to
look like a person; it was used in the same way as the clay figure. But the
use of images for this maleficent purpose was a capital crime; any person
caught in the act of burying one of them in the public road would surely
have been put to death. 3
In the western district of the island of Timor, when men or women are
making long and tiring journeys, they fan themselves with leafy branches,
which they afterwards throw away on particular spots where their
forefathers did the same before them. The fatigue which they felt is thus
supposed to have passed into the leaves and to be left behind. Others use
stones instead of leaves. Similarly in the Babar Archipelago tired people
will strike themselves with stones, believing that they thus transfer to the
stones the weariness which they felt in their own bodies. They then throw
away the stones in places which are specially set apart for the purpose. A
like belief and practice in many distant parts of the world have given rise to
those cairns or heaps of sticks and leaves which travellers often observe
beside the path, and to which every passing native adds his contribution in
the shape of a stone, or stick, or leaf. Thus in the Solomon and Banks'
Islands the natives are wont to throw sticks, stones, or leaves upon a heap
at a place of steep descent, or where a difficult path begins, saying, "There
goes my fatigue." The act is not a religious rite, for the thing thrown on the
heap is not an offering to spiritual powers, and the words which accompany
the act are not a prayer. It is nothing but a magical ceremony for getting rid
of fatigue, which the simple savage fancies he can embody in a stick, leaf,
or stone, and so cast it from him. 4
Section 2. The Transference to Animals.
ANIMALS are often employed as a vehicle for carrying away or transferring
the evil. When a Moor has a headache he will sometimes take a lamb or a
goat and beat it till it falls down, believing that the headache will thus be
transferred to the animal. In Morocco most wealthy Moors keep a wild boar
in their stables, in order that the jinn and evil spirits may be diverted from
the horses and enter into the boar. Amongst the Caffres of South Africa,
when other remedies have failed, "natives sometimes adopt the custom of
taking a goat into the presence of a sick man, and confess the sins of the
kraal over the animal. Sometimes a few drops of blood from the sick man
are allowed to fall on the head of the goat, which is turned out into an
uninhabited part of the veldt. The sickness is supposed to be transferred to
the animal, and to become lost in the desert." In Arabia, when the plague is
raging, the people will sometimes lead a camel through all the quarters of
the town in order that the animal may take the pestilence on itself. Then
they strangle it in a sacred place and imagine that they have rid
themselves of the camel and of the plague at one blow. It is said that when
smallpox is raging the savages of Formosa will drive the demon of disease
into a sow, then cut off the animal's ears and burn them or it, believing that
in this way they rid themselves of the plague. 1
Amongst the Malagasy the vehicle for carrying away evils is called a
faditra. "The faditra is anything selected by the sikidy [divining board] for
the purpose of taking away any hurtful evils or diseases that might prove
injurious to an individual's happiness, peace, or prosperity. The faditra may
be either ashes, cut money, a sheep, a pumpkin, or anything else the
sikidy may choose to direct. After the particular article is appointed, the
priest counts upon it all the evils that may prove injurious to the person for
whom it is made, and which he then charges the faditra to take away for
ever. If the faditra be ashes, it is blown, to be carried away by the wind. If it
be cut money, it is thrown to the bottom of deep water, or where it can
never be found. If it be a sheep, it is carried away to a distance on the
shoulders of a man, who runs with all his might, mumbling as he goes, as if
in the greatest rage against the faditra, for the evils it is bearing away. If it
be a pumpkin, it is carried on the shoulders to a little distance, and there
dashed upon the ground with every appearance of fury and indignation." A
Malagasy was informed by a diviner that he was doomed to a bloody
death, but that possibly he might avert his fate by performing a certain rite.
Carrying a small vessel full of blood upon his head, he was to mount upon
the back of a bullock; while thus mounted, he was to spill the blood upon
the bullock's head, and then send the animal away into the wilderness,
whence it might never return. 2
The Bataks of Sumatra have a ceremony which they call "making the
curse to fly away." When a woman is childless, a sacrifice is offered to the
gods of three grasshoppers, representing a head of cattle, a buffalo, and a
horse. Then a swallow is set free, with a prayer that the curse may fall upon
the bird and fly away with it. "The entrance into a house of an animal which
does not generally seek to share the abode of man is regarded by the
Malays as ominous of misfortune. If a wild bird flies into a house, it must be
carefully caught and smeared with oil, and must then be released in the
open air, a formula being recited in which it is bidden to fly away with all
the ill-luck and misfortunes of the occupier." In antiquity Greek women
seem to have done the same with swallows which they caught in the
house: they poured oil on them and let them fly away, apparently for the
purpose of removing ill-luck from the household. The Huzuls of the
Carpathians imagine that they can transfer freckles to the first swallow they
see in spring by washing their face in flowing water and saying, "Swallow,
swallow, take my freckles, and give me rosy cheeks." 3
Among the Badagas of the Neilgherry Hills in Southern India, when a
death has taken place, the sins of the deceased are laid upon a buffalo
calf. For this purpose the people gather round the corpse and carry it
outside of the village. There an elder of the tribe, standing at the head of
the corpse, recites or chants a long list of sins such as any Badaga may
commit, and the people repeat the last word of each line after him. The
confession of sins is thrice repeated. "By a conventional mode of
expression, the sum total of sins a man may do is said to be thirteen
hundred. Admitting that the deceased has committed them all, the performer
cries aloud, `Stay not their flight to God's pure feet.' As he closes, the
whole assembly chants aloud `Stay not their flight.' Again the performer
enters into details, and cries, `He killed the crawling snake. It is a sin.' In a
moment the last word is caught up, and all the people cry `It is a sin.' As
they shout, the performer lays his hand upon the calf. The sin is transferred
to the calf. Thus the whole catalogue is gone through in this impressive
way. But this is not enough. As the last shout `Let all be well' dies away,
the performer gives place to another, and again confession is made, and all
the people shout `It is a sin.' A third time it is done. Then, still in solemn
silence, the calf is let loose. Like the Jewish scapegoat, it may never be
used for secular work." At a Badaga funeral witnessed by the Rev. A. C.
Clayton the buffalo calf was led thrice round the bier, and the dead man's
hand was laid on its head. "By this act, the calf was supposed to receive
all the sins of the deceased. It was then driven away to a great distance,
that it might contaminate no one, and it was said that it would never be
sold, but looked on as a dedicated sacred animal." The idea of this
ceremony is, that the sins of the deceased enter the calf, or that the task of
his absolution is laid on it. They say that the calf very soon disappears,
and that it is never heard of." 4
Section 3. The Transference to Men.
AGAIN, men sometimes play the part of scapegoat by diverting to
themselves the evils that threaten others. When a Cingalese is
dangerously ill, and the physicians can do nothing, a devil-dancer is
called in, who by making offerings to the devils, and dancing in the masks
appropriate to them, conjures these demons of disease, one after the other,
out of the sick man's body and into his own. Having thus successfully
extracted the cause of the malady, the artful dancer lies down on a bier,
and shamming death is carried to an open place outside the village. Here,
being left to himself, he soon comes to life again, and hastens back to
claim his reward. In 1590 a Scotch which of the name of Agnes Sampson
was convicted of curing a certain Robert Kers of a disease "laid upon him
by a westland warlock when he was at Dumfries, whilk sickness she took
upon herself, and kept the same with great groaning and torment till the
morn, at whilk time there was a great din heard in the house." The noise
was made by the witch in her efforts to shift the disease, by means of
clothes, from herself to a cat or dog. Unfortunately the attempt partly
miscarried. The disease missed the animal and hit Alexander Douglas of
Dalkeith, who dwined and died of it, while the original patient, Robert Kers,
was made whole. 1
"In one part of New Zealand an expiation for sin was felt to be
necessary; a service was performed over an individual, by which all the
sins of the tribe were supposed to be transferred to him, a fern stalk was
previously tied to his person, with which he jumped into the river, and
there unbinding, allowed it to float away to the sea, bearing their sins with
it." In great emergencies the sins of the Rajah of Manipur used to be
transferred to somebody else, usually to a criminal, who earned his pardon
by his vicarious sufferings. To effect the transference the Rajah and his
wife, clad in fine robes, bathed on a scaffold erected in the bazaar, while
the criminal crouched beneath it. With the water which dripped from them
on him their sins also were washed away and fell on the human
scapegoat. To complete the transference the Rajah and his wife made over
their fine robes to their substitute, while they themselves, clad in new
raiment, mixed with the people till evening. In Travancore, when a Rajah is
near his end, they seek out a holy Brahman, who consents to take upon
himself the sins of the dying man in consideration of the sum of ten
thousand rupees. Thus prepared to immolate himself on the altar of duty,
the saint is introduced into the chamber of death, and closely embraces
the dying Rajah, saying to him, "O King, I undertake to bear all your sins
and diseases. May your Highness live long and reign happily." Having
thus taken to himself the sins of the sufferer, he is sent away from the
country and never more allowed to return. At Utch Kurgan in Turkestan Mr.
Schuyler saw an old man who was said to get his living by taking on
himself the sins of the dead, and thenceforth devoting his life to prayer for
their souls. 2
In Uganda, when an army had returned from war, and the gods warned
the king by their oracles that some evil had attached itself to the soldiers, it
was customary to pick out a woman slave from the captives, together with
a cow, a goat, a fowl, and a dog from the booty, and to send them back
under a strong guard to the borders of the country from which they had
come. There their limbs were broken and they were left to die; for they
were too crippled to crawl back to Uganda. In order to ensure the
transference of the evil to these substitutes, bunches of grass were rubbed
over the people and cattle and then tied to the victims. After that the army
was pronounced clean and was allowed to return to the capital. So on his
accession a new king of Uganda used to wound a man and send him
away as a scapegoat to Bunyoro to carry away any uncleanliness that
might attach to the king or queen. 3
Section 4. The Transference of Evil in Europe.
THE EXAMPLES of the transference of evil hitherto adduced have been
mostly drawn from the customs of savage or barbarous peoples. But similar
attempts to shift the burden of disease, misfortune, and sin from one's self
to another person, or to an animal or thing, have been common also
among the civilised nations of Europe, both in ancient and modern times. A
Roman cure for fever was to pare the patient's nails, and stick the parings
with wax on a neighbour's door before sunrise; the fever then passed from
the sick man to his neighbour. Similar devices must have been resorted to
by the Greeks; for in laying down laws for his ideal state, Plato thinks it too
much to expect that men should not be alarmed at finding certain wax
figures adhering to their doors or to the tombstones of their parents, or
lying at cross-roads. In the fourth century of our era Marcellus of
Bordeaux prescribed a cure for warts, which has still a great vogue among
the superstitious in various parts of Europe. You are to touch your warts
with as many little stones as you have warts; then wrap the stones in an
ivy leaf, and throw them away in a thoroughfare. Whoever picks them up
will get the warts, and you will be rid of them. People in the Orkney Islands
will sometimes wash a sick man, and then throw the water down at a
gateway, in the belief that the sickness will leave the patient and be
transferred to the first person who passes through the gate. A Bavarian
cure for fever is to write upon a piece of paper, "Fever, stay away, I am
not at home," and to put the paper in somebody's pocket. The latter then
catches the fever, and the patient is rid of it. A Bohemian prescription for
the same malady is this. Take an empty pot, go with it to a cross-road,
throw it down, and run away. The first person who kicks against the pot will
catch your fever, and you will be cured. 1
Often in Europe, as among savages, an attempt is made to transfer a pain
or malady from a man to an animal. Grave writers of antiquity
recommended that, if a man be stung by a scorpion, he should sit upon an
ass with his face to the tail, or whisper in the animal's ear, "A scorpion has
stung me"; in either case, they thought, the pain would be transferred from
the man to the ass. Many cures of this sort are recorded by Marcellus. For
example, he tells us that the following is a remedy for toothache. Standing
booted under the open sky on the ground, you catch a frog by the head,
spit into its mouth, ask it to carry away the ache, and then let it go. But the
ceremony must be performed on a lucky day and at a lucky hour. In
Cheshire the ailment known as aphtha or thrush, which affects the mouth
or throat of infants, is not uncommonly treated in much the same manner. A
young frog is held for a few moments with its head inside the mouth of the
sufferer, whom it is supposed to relieve by taking the malady to itself. "I
assure you," said an old woman who had often superintended such a
cure, "we used to hear the poor frog whooping and coughing, mortal bad,
for days after; it would have made your heart ache to hear the poor
creature coughing as it did about the garden." A Northamptonshire,
Devonshire, and Welsh cure for a cough is to put a hair of the patient's
head between two slices of buttered bread and give the sandwich to a
dog. The animal will thereupon catch the cough and the patient will lose it.
Sometimes an ailment is transferred to an animal by sharing food with it.
Thus in Oldenburg, if you are sick of a fever you set a bowl of sweet milk
before a dog and say, "Good luck, you hound! may you be sick and I be
sound!" Then when the dog has lapped some of the milk, you take a swig
at the bowl; and then the dog must lap again, and then you must swig
again; and when you and the dog have done it the third time, he will have
the fever and you will be quit of it. 2
A Bohemian cure for fever is to go out into the forest before the sun is up
and look for a snipe's nest. When you have found it, take out one of the
young birds and keep it beside you for three days. Then go back into the
wood and set the snipe free. The fever will leave you at once. The snipe
has taken it away. So in Vedic times the Hindoos of old sent consumption
away with a blue jay. They said, "O consumption, fly away, fly away with
the blue jay! With the wild rush of the storm and the whirlwind, oh, vanish
away!" In the village of Llandegla in Wales there is a church dedicated to
the virgin martyr St. Tecla, where the falling sickness is, or used to be,
cured by being transferred to a fowl. The patient first washed his limbs in a
sacred well hard by, dropped fourpence into it as an offering, walked
thrice round the well, and thrice repeated the Lord's prayer. Then the fowl,
which was a cock or a hen according as the patient was a man or a
woman, was put into a basket and carried round first the well and
afterwards the church. Next the sufferer entered the church and lay down
under the communion table till break of day. After that he offered sixpence
and departed, leaving the fowl in the church. If the bird died, the sickness
was supposed to have been transferred to it from the man or woman, who
was now rid of the disorder. As late as 1855 the old parish clerk of the
village remembered quite well to have seen the birds staggering about from
the effects of the fits which had been transferred to them. 3
Often the sufferer seeks to shift his burden of sickness or ill-luck to some
inanimate object. In Athens there is a little chapel of St. John the Baptist
built against an ancient column. Fever patients resort thither, and by
attaching a waxed thread to the inner side of the column believe that they
transfer the fever from themselves to the pillar. In the Mark of Brandenburg
they say that if you suffer from giddiness you should strip yourself naked
and run thrice round a flax-field after sunset; in that way the flax will get
the giddiness and you will be rid of it. 4
But perhaps the thing most commonly employed in Europe as a
receptacle for sickness and trouble of all sorts is a tree or bush. A
Bulgarian cure for fever is to run thrice around a willow-tree at sunrise,
crying, "The fever shall shake thee, and the sun shall warm me." In the
Greek island of Karpathos the priest ties a red thread round the neck of a
sick person. Next morning the friends of the patient remove the thread and
go out to the hillside, where they tie the thread to a tree, thinking that they
thus transfer the sickness to the tree. Italians attempt to cure fever in like
manner by tethering it to a tree The sufferer ties a thread round his left wrist
at night, and hangs the thread on a tree next morning. The fever is thus
believed to be tied up to the tree, and the patient to be rid of it; but he must
be careful not to pass by that tree again, otherwise the fever would break
loose from its bonds and attack him afresh. A Flemish cure for the ague is
to go early in the morning to an old willow, tie three knots in one of its
branches, say, "Good-morrow, Old One, I give thee the cold;
good-morrow, Old One," then turn and run away without looking round. In
Sonnenberg, if you would rid yourself of gout you should go to a young
fir-tree and tie a knot in one of its twigs, saying, "God greet thee, noble fir.
I bring thee my gout. Here will I tie a knot and bind my gout into it. In the
name," etc. 5
Another way of transferring gout from a man to a tree is this. Pare the
nails of the sufferer's fingers and clip some hairs from his legs. Bore a hole
in an oak, stuff the nails and hair in the hole, stop up the hole again, and
smear it with cow's dung. If, for three months thereafter, the patient is free
of gout, you may be sure the oak has it in his stead. In Cheshire if you
would be rid of warts, you have only to rub them with a piece of bacon,
cut a slit in the bark of an ash-tree, and slip the bacon under the bark.
Soon the warts will disappear from your hand, only however to reappear in
the shape of rough excrescences or knobs on the bark of the tree. At
Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, there used to be certain oak-trees which
were long celebrated for the cure of ague. The transference of the malady
to the tree was simple but painful. A lock of the sufferer's hair was pegged
into an oak; then by a sudden wrench he left his hair and his ague behind
him in the tree. 6