Section 1. The External Soul in Inanimate Things.
THUS the idea that the soul may be deposited for a longer or shorter time
in some place of security outside the body, or at all events in the hair, is
found in the popular tales of many races. It remains to show that the idea is
not a mere figment devised to adorn a tale, but is a real article of primitive
faith, which has given rise to a corresponding set of customs. 1
We have seen that in the tales the hero, as a preparation for battle,
sometimes removes his soul from his body, in order that his body may be
invulnerable and immortal in the combat. With a like intention the savage
removes his soul from his body on various occasions of real or imaginary
peril. Thus among the people of Minahassa in Celebes, when a family
moves into a new house, a priest collects the souls of the whole family in a
bag, and afterwards restores them to their owners, because the moment of
entering a new house is supposed to be fraught with supernatural danger.
In Southern Celebes, when a woman is brought to bed, the messenger
who fetches the doctor or the midwife always carries with him something
made of iron, such as a chopping-knife, which he delivers to the doctor.
The doctor must keep the thing in his house till the confinement is over,
when he gives it back, receiving a fixed sum of money for doing so. The
chopping-knife, or whatever it is, represents the woman's soul, which at
this critical time is believed to be safer out of her body than in it. Hence
the doctor must take great care of the object; for were it lost, the woman's
soul would assuredly, they think, be lost with it. 2
Among the Dyaks of Pinoeh, a district of South-eastern Borneo, when a
child is born, a medicine-man is sent for, who conjures the soul of the
infant into half a coco-nut, which he thereupon covers with a cloth and
places on a square platter or charger suspended by cords from the roof.
This ceremony he repeats at every new moon for a year. The intention of
the ceremony is not explained by the writer who describes it, but we may
conjecture that it is to place the soul of the child in a safer place than its
own frail little body. This conjecture is confirmed by the reason assigned
for a similar custom observed elsewhere in the Indian Archipelago. In the
Kei Islands, when there is a newly-born child in a house, an empty
coco-nut, split and spliced together again, may sometimes be seen
hanging beside a rough wooden image of an ancestor. The soul of the
infant is believed to be temporarily deposited in the coco-nut in order that
it may be safe from the attacks of evil spirits; but when the child grows
bigger and stronger, the soul will take up its permanent abode in its own
body. Similarly among the Esquimaux of Alaska, when a child is sick, the
medicine-man will sometimes extract its soul from its body and place it for
safe-keeping in an amulet, which for further security he deposits in his
own medicine-bag. It seems probable that many amulets have been
similarly regarded as soul-boxes, that is, as safes in which the souls of the
owners are kept for greater security. An old Mang'anje woman in the West
Shire district of British Central Africa used to wear round her neck an ivory
ornament, hollow, and about three inches long, which she called her life
or soul. Naturally, she would not part with it; a planter tried to buy it of her,
but in vain. When Mr. James Macdonald was one day sitting in the house
of a Hlubi chief, awaiting the appearance of that great man, who was busy
decorating his person, a native pointed to a pair of magnificent ox-horns,
and said, "Ntame has his soul in these horns." The horns were those of an
animal which had been sacrificed, and they were held sacred. A magician
had fastened them to the roof to protect the house and its inmates from the
thunder-bolt. "The idea," adds Mr. Macdonald, "is in no way foreign to
South African thought. A man's soul there may dwell in the roof of his
house, in a tree, by a spring of water, or on some mountain scaur." Among
the natives of the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain there is a secret
society which goes by the name of Ingniet or Ingiet. On his entrance into it
every man receives a stone in the shape either of a human being or of an
animal, and henceforth his soul is believed to be knit up in a manner with
the stone. If it breaks, it is an evil omen for him; they say that the thunder
has struck the stone and that he who owns it will soon die. If nevertheless
the man survives the breaking of his soul-stone, they say that it was not a
proper soul-stone and he gets a new one instead. The emperor Romanus
Lecapenus was once informed by an astronomer that the life of Simeon,
prince of Bulgaria, was bound up with a certain column in Constantinople,
so that if the capital of the column were removed, Simeon would
immediately die. The emperor took the hint and removed the capital, and at
the same hour, as the emperor learned by enquiry, Simeon died of heart
disease in Bulgaria. 3
Again, we have seen that in folk-tales a man's soul or strength is
sometimes represented as bound up with his hair, and that when his hair is
cut off he dies or grows weak. So the natives of Amboyna used to think
that their strength was in their hair and would desert them if it were shorn.
A criminal under torture in a Dutch Court of that island persisted in denying
his guilt till his hair was cut off, when he immediately confessed. One man,
who was tried for murder, endured without flinching the utmost ingenuity of
his torturers till he saw the surgeon standing with a pair of shears. On
asking what this was for, and being told that it was to cut his hair, he
begged they would not do it, and made a clean breast. In subsequent
cases, when torture failed to wring a confession from a prisoner, the Dutch
authorities made a practice of cutting off his hair. 4
Here in Europe it used to be thought that the maleficent powers of
witches and wizards resided in their hair, and that nothing could make any
impression on the miscreants so long as they kept their hair on. Hence in
France it was customary to shave the whole bodies of persons charged
with sorcery before handing them over to the torturer. Millaeus witnessed
the torture of some persons at Toulouse, from whom no confession could
be wrung until they were stripped and completely shaven, when they
readily acknowledged the truth of the charge. A woman also, who
apparently led a pious life, was put to the torture on suspicion of
witchcraft, and bore her agonies with incredible constancy, until complete
depilation drove her to admit her guilt. The noted inquisitor Sprenger
contented himself with shaving the head of the suspected witch or wizard;
but his more thoroughgoing colleague Cumanus shaved the whole bodies
of forty-seven women before committing them all to the flames. He had
high authority for this rigorous scrutiny, since Satan himself, in a sermon
preached from the pulpit of North Berwick church, comforted his many
servants by assuring them that no harm could befall them "sa lang as their
hair wes on, and sould newir latt ane teir fall fra thair ene." Similarly in
Bastar, a province of India, "if a man is adjudged guilty of witchcraft, he is
beaten by the crowd, his hair is shaved, the hair being supposed to
constitute his power of mischief, his front teeth are knocked out, in order, it
is said, to prevent him from muttering incantations... . Women suspected of
sorcery have to undergo the same ordeal; if found guilty, the same
punishment is awarded, and after being shaved, their hair is attached to a
tree in some public place." So among the Bhils of India, when a woman
was convicted of witchcraft and had been subjected to various forms of
persuasion, such as hanging head downwards from a tree and having
pepper put into her eyes, a lock of hair was cut from her head and buried
in the ground, "that the last link between her and her former powers of
mischief might be broken." In like manner among the Aztecs of Mexico,
when wizards and witches "had done their evil deeds, and the time came
to put an end to their detestable life, some one laid hold of them and
cropped the hair on the crown of their heads, which took from them all their
power of sorcery and enchantment, and then it was that by death they put
an end to their odious existence." 5