James Frazer - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)

County Folk-lore, Suffolk , edited by Lady E. C. Gurdon (London, 1893), p. 14. In the north-west Highlands of Scotland it used to be customary to bury a black cock alive on the spot where an epileptic patient fell down. Along with the cock were buried parings of the patient's nails and a lock of his hair. See (Sir) Arthur Mitchell, On various Superstitions in the North-West Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1862), p. 26; J. G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1902), p. 97. Probably the disease was supposed to be buried with the cock in the ground. The ancient Hindoos imagined that epilepsy was caused by a dog-demon. When a boy fell down in a fit, his father or other competent person used to wrap the sufferer in a net, and carry him into the hall, not through the door, but through an opening made for the purpose in the roof. Then taking up some earth in the middle of the hall, at the place where people gambled, he sprinkled the spot with water, cast dice on it, and laid the boy on his back on the dice. After that he prayed to the dog-demon, saying, “Doggy, let him loose! Reverence be to thee, barker, bender! Doggy, let him loose! Reverence be to thee, barker, bender!” See The Grihya Sutras , translated by H. Oldenberg, Part i. (Oxford, 1886) pp. 296 sq. ; id. Part ii. (Oxford, 1892) pp. 219 sq. , 286 sq. ( Sacred Books of the East , vols. xxix. and xxx.). Apparently the place where people gambled was for some reason supposed to be a spot where an epileptic could divest himself most readily of his malady. But the connexion of thought is obscure.

The analogy of the Roman custom to modern superstitious practices has been rightly pointed out by Mr. E. S. Hartland ( Folk-lore , iv. (1893) pp. 457, 464; Legend of Perseus , ii. 188), but I am unable to accept his general explanation of these and some other practices as modes of communion with a divinity.

A. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste (Jena, 1874-1875), ii. 176.

A. Bastian, op. cit. ii. 175-178. Compare Father Campana, “Congo, Mission Catholique de Landana,” Les Missions Catholiques , xxvii. (1895) p. 93; Notes Analytiques sur les Collections Ethnographiques du Musée du Congo , i. (Brussels, 1902-1906) pp. 153, 246; B. H. Mullen, “Fetishes from Landana, South-West Africa,” Man , v. (1905) pp. 102-104; R. E. Dennett, “Bavili Notes,” Folk-lore , xvi. (1905) pp. 382 sqq. ; id. , At the Back of the Black Man's Mind (London, 1906), pp. 85 sqq. , 91 sqq. The Ethnological Museum at Berlin possesses a number of rude images from Loango and Congo, which are thickly studded with nails hammered into their bodies. The intention of the custom, as explained to me by Professor von Luschan, is to pain the fetish and so to refresh his memory, lest he should forget to do his duty.

Sir John Rhys, “Celtae and Galli,” Proceedings of the British Academy , ii. (1905-1906) pp. 114 sq.

Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (London, 1894), ii. 598 sq. , note.

A. Oldfield, “The Aborigines of Australia,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London , N.S., iii. (1865) p. 228.

J. Büttikoffer, “Einiges über die Eingebornen von Liberia,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie , i. (1888) p. 85.

Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (London, 1897) pp. 442 sq.

G. Zündel, “Land und Volk der Eweer auf der Sclavenküste in Westafrika,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin , xii. (1877) pp. 412-414. Full details as to the religious creed of the Ewes, including their belief in a Supreme Being ( Mawu ), are given, to a great extent in the words of the natives themselves, by the German missionary Jakob Spieth in his elaborate and valuable works Die Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906) and Die Religion der Eweer in Süd-Togo (Leipsic, 1911). As to Mawu in particular, the meaning of whose name is somewhat uncertain, see J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stämme , pp. 421 sqq. ; Die Religion der Eweer in Süd-Togo , pp. 15 sqq.

Rev. J. H. Weeks, “Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the Upper Congo River,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , xl. (1910) p. 377.

Rev. John H. Weeks, Among Congo Cannibals (London, 1913), p. 261.

Rev. J. H. Weeks, “Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the Upper Congo River,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , xl. (1910) pp. 368, 370. The singular form of mingoli is mongoli , “a disembodied spirit.” Compare id. , Among Congo Cannibals (London, 1913), p. 252; and again ibid. p. 275. But great as is the fear of evil spirits among the natives of the Congo, their dread of witchcraft seems to be still more intense. See Rev. J. H. Weeks, “Notes on some Customs of the Lower Congo People,” Folk-lore , xx. (1909) pp. 51 sq. : “The belief in witchcraft affects their lives in a vast number of ways, and touches them socially at a hundred different points. It regulates their actions, modifies their mode of thought and speech, controls their conduct towards each other, causes cruelty and callousness in a people not naturally cruel, and sets the various members of a family against each other. A man may believe any theory he likes about creation, about God, and about the abode of departed spirits, but he must believe in witches and their influence for evil, and must in unmistakable terms give expression to that belief, or be accused of witchcraft himself… But for witchcraft no one would die, and the earnest longing of all right-minded men and women is to clear it out of the country by killing every discovered witch. It is an act of self-preservation… Belief in witches is interwoved into the very fibre of every Bantu-speaking man and woman, and the person who does not believe in them is a monster, a witch, to be killed as soon as possible.” Could we weigh against each other the two great terrors which beset the minds of savages all over the world, it seems probable that the dread of witches would be found far to outweigh the dread of evil spirits. However, it is the fear of evil spirits with which we are at present concerned.

G. McCall Theal, Records of South-Eastern Africa , vii. (1901) pp. 405 sq.

On this subject Mr. Dudley Kidd has made some judicious observations ( Savage Childhood , London, 1906, pp. 131 sq. ). He says: “The Kafirs certainly do not live in everlasting dread of spirits, for the chief part of their life is not spent in thinking at all. A merrier set of people it would be hard to find. They are so easy-going that it would seem to them too much burden to be for ever thinking of spirits.”

(Sir) E. F. im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana . (London, 1883), pp. 356 sq. As to the dread which the Brazilian Indians entertain of demons, see J. B. von Spix and C. F. Ph. von Martius, Reise in Brasilien (Munich, 1823-1831), iii. 1108-1111.