Ragnar Redbeard - Might Is Right

In the nascent Colony of New Zealand, missionaries, soldiers, whalers and pioneers were often cooked and eaten; but by a general consensus of epicurean opinion the ‘Pakeha’s’ flesh was voted bad form, principally because it was ‘too tough and too salty.’

During the War on Secession, Northern infantry-men accidentally imprisoned in a Virginian mine, devoured each other one at a time; the last man (John Ewing) dying of hunger, and leaving a written record of the facts, sealed up in a flask.

The story of Sawny Bean is well known, and the classical legends of the Cyclops, the Giants, the Phalaris Bull, the Moloch holocausts and Homer’s Polyphemus.

Anthropophagy has been practiced in Australia, both by whites and blackfellows. In New Guinea and portions of Africa, man-eating is quite an ordinary custom to this hour. Marcus Clarke describes how Gabbet, an English-born Botany Bay convict, induced his prison comrades to escape with him (into the bush), in order that he might have a holiday and a feast, picking their succulent bones and sucking out the marrow thereof.

All over continental Europe there is a popular superstition that Jew Rabbis steal and murder Christian infants and maidens, in order to use the blood on the door-lintels, at Passover and other ceremonials.

A similar charge was brought against the early Christians, and even proved in the Imperial Law Courts, if we are to judge by the verdicts.

Human fat is regularly retailed in modern drug stores and human heads are even now a marketable commodity in the South Seas. There are also mystic brotherhoods in our midst, whose initiates pledge fidelity, and obligate themselves to life-long secrecy, by drinking blood out of a skull, over emblems of violent death — with daggers pointed at their throats.

The foundation stones of many famous buildings, palaces, castles, temples, and monuments, have been emblematically laid upon the living body of a man — the Kremlin for example.

Is not the Communion Service allegorical anthropophagy? Is it not a pious periodical cannibal feast in more ways than one? Does not the wine symbolize human blood, and the wafers typify human flesh?

Metaphorically considered, every trading Christian State is a meat market, wherein the flesh, bones, and blood not only of men, but of women and little children are bought and sold daily — “offered up” nominally for the “Love of God” really for the Love of Dollars.

Atrocities of the most revolting description are of daily, hourly occurrence, not only in Turkey and Siam, but in New York and Chicago; not only in Cuba and Port Arthur, but in London, Madrid, and Paris; not only in Mashonaland, and on the Congo, but in St. Petersburg and Berlin. Men, women, and little children are being everywhere starved slowly to the grave, worked till they fall down, driven insane by legislation, and even tortured to death, inch by inch.

Great financial corporations (backed by the State) directed mostly by Hebrews, literally coin Great Empires into golden dividends: and upon the share lists of mortgage banks and man-devouring institutions generally, may be found the names of bishops, popes, preachers, generals, governors, statesmen — and other human Carnivores by the thousand. He who doubts should look up the official share registers, and behold the long rows of adorable names belonging to High Priests, Philanthropists and Rulers, appearing thereon.

Cannibalism was practiced in Ancient Greece at the period of highest culture. Herodotus describes Asian feasts where man’s flesh was the chief dish: and down to the Thirteenth Century the Tibetans were in the habit of making their parents into broth.

There are confraternaties still in existence, into which no one is ever admitted until he has killed a man. Among the Dyaks (as among our own ancestors) a youth is never considered a full-grown person capable of founding a home until he has slain at least one enemy in battle. The Thugs of India (a religious sect) brought the science of holy murder, by strategic violence, to such a pitch of perfection that they have never been surpassed — not even by Grant or Moltke.

The Kinderawas of India, make a regular practice of eating all their diseased, useless, senile, and decrepit relations: just as packs of wolves fall upon any of their number that is seriously wounded in foray.

In portions of Sumatra, law-breakers are neither imprisoned nor electrocuted, but actually carved up and eaten alive — piece by piece. The Capanagugas of South America make of their own stomachs the sepulchre of their dead relatives. A funeral with them is a banquet — the collation being a corpse. The Terra Del Fuegans throttle and eat all very old women.

The Monbuttas of Central Africa carry on aggressive wars to capture flesh food. They also dry human flitches in the sun and smoke them for export.

During the Tae Ping rebellion, Chinese soldiers (under General Gordon) were in the habit of cutting out and devouring the hearts of their dead enemies (on the battle-field) like the Maoris and Britons.

Mistresses were specially kept by opulent ancient Peruvians, to breed sucklings — for the table. When these women became too old for child-bearing, they were likewise cast into the pot, as useless encumbrances. In 1782 more than forty gypsies were executed in Austria, upon a proved charge of cannibalism. The case of the herdsman Goldsmidt, must not be forgotten; not the gruesome London legends, regarding sausages being manufactured out of dead cats, dead dogs, dead paupers, and murdered sailors.

The Ancient Scandinavians, Teutons, Celts, (vide St. Jerome), Sythians, Mongols, Sarmatians, Canaanites, Goths, and Huns were all anthropophagy.

Indeed the detailed facts of how men have tortured each other for pleasure, revenge, or profit, would fill 10, 000 volumes. No man in his lifetime could read or comprehend all the horrors that have been perpetrated say in the Tower of London, the Paris Bastille, the Spanish Inquisition, the Rhine Castle Dungeons, by the Bridge of Sighs, the Bosphorous, or in the prison-hells of Chicago, Newgate, Mazas, Siberia, Sing Sing, New Caledonia, Botany Bay or Van Dieman’s Land. The cold-blooded cruelty of man to man, surpasses anything that poet-cranks could conceive of, as happening in hell.

Cannibalism undoubtedly originated amid over-crowded populations in some pre-historic age. Among moderns (civilized and savage) it merely exists as a survival of social conditions which have long since passed away. At some former era of the world’s profoundly mysterious history, men-animals increased in swarming myriads as they are doing now; until at last on the surface of the soil there was scarcely standing room for all. Then the air became laden with the reeking effluvia of their strumous bodies, leprosy, poisoning the wells and rivers, and transforming Babylons into charnel houses and tombs. The rearing of tame cattle for food in such an environment, probably became too expensive and cumbersome. Perhaps even the cattle would also be swept away by some blight or rinderpest. Under such horrible circumstances, survivors might from necessity resort to anthropophagy. Gradually the new habit would grow upon them and become a settled custom.

The segmental fragments of pre-historic civilizations are — the Cannibal Savages of to-day — the savages that we are displacing, pushing aside in order that we may enslave them and repeat over again the same weary old round of growth, power and decay.

Shiploads of dead soldiers, dug out of old battle-fields, possess a regular commercial value. They are imported into England, to be chemically treated and manufactured into fertilizers for enriching exhausted wheat fields. Human hair commands a steady sale, and “cadavers” may be bought for dissection, in any great city for a dollar, C.O.D.