Section 5. Taboos on Leaving Food over.
AGAIN, magic mischief may be wrought upon a man through the remains of
the food he has partaken of, or the dishes out of which he has eaten. On
the principles of sympathetic magic a real connexion continues to subsist
between the food which a man has in his stomach and the refuse of it
which he has left untouched, and hence by injuring the refuse you can
simultaneously injure the eater. Among the Narrinyeri of South Australia
every adult is constantly on the look-out for bones of beasts, birds, or fish,
of which the flesh has been eaten by somebody, in order to construct a
deadly charm out of them. Every one is therefore careful to burn the bones
of the animals which he has eaten, lest they should fall into the hands of a
sorcerer. Too often, however, the sorcerer succeeds in getting hold of such
a bone, and when he does so he believes that he has the power of life and
death over the man, woman, or child who ate the flesh of the animal. To put
the charm in operation he makes a paste of red ochre and fish oil, inserts in
it the eye of a cod and a small piece of the flesh of a corpse, and having
rolled the compound into a ball sticks it on the top of the bone. After being
left for some time in the bosom of a dead body, in order that it may derive a
deadly potency by contact with corruption, the magical implement is set up
in the ground near the fire, and as the ball melts, so the person against
whom the charm is directed wastes with disease; if the ball is melted quite
away, the victim will die. When the bewitched man learns of the spell that is
being cast upon him, he endeavours to buy the bone from the sorcerer,
and if he obtains it he breaks the charm by throwing the bone into a river or
lake. In Tana, one of the New Hebrides, people bury or throw into the sea
the leavings of their food, lest these should fall into the hands of the
disease-makers. For if a disease-maker finds the remnants of a meal, say
the skin of a banana, he picks it up and burns it slowly in the fire. As it
burns, the person who ate the banana falls ill and sends to the
disease-maker, offering him presents if he will stop burning the banana
skin. In New Guinea the natives take the utmost care to destroy or conceal
the husks and other remains of their food, lest these should be found by
their enemies and used by them for the injury or destruction of the eaters.
Hence they burn their leavings, throw them into the sea, or otherwise put
them out of harm's way. 1
From a like fear, no doubt, of sorcery, no one may touch the food which
the king of Loango leaves upon his plate; it is buried in a hole in the
ground. And no one may drink out of the king's vessel. In antiquity the
Romans used immediately to break the shells of eggs and of snails which
they had eaten, in order to prevent enemies from making magic with them.
The common practice, still observed among us, of breaking egg-shells after
the eggs have been eaten may very well have originated in the same
superstition. 2
The superstitious fear of the magic that may be wrought on a man through
the leavings of his food has had the beneficial effect of inducing many
savages to destroy refuse which, if left to rot, might through its corruption
have proved a real, not a merely imaginary, source of disease and death.
Nor is it only the sanitary condition of a tribe which has benefited by this
superstition; curiously enough the same baseless dread, the same false
notion of causation, has indirectly strengthened the moral bonds of
hospitality, honour, and good faith among men who entertain it. For it is
obvious that no one who intends to harm a man by working magic on the
refuse of his food will himself partake of that food, because if he did so he
would, on the principles of sympathetic magic, suffer equally with his
enemy from any injury done to the refuse. This is the idea which in primitive
society lends sanctity to the bond produced by eating together; by
participation in the same food two men give, as it were, hostages for their
good behaviour; each guarantees the other that he will devise no mischief
against him, since, being physically united with him by the common food in
their stomachs, any harm he might do to his fellow would recoil on his own
head with precisely the same force with which it fell on the head of his
victim. In strict logic, however, the sympathetic bond lasts only so long as
the food is in the stomach of each of the parties. Hence the covenant
formed by eating together is less solemn and durable than the covenant
formed by transfusing the blood of the covenanting parties into each other's
veins, for this transfusion seems to knit them together for life. 3
