object:1.55 - The Transference of Evil
book class:The Golden Bough
author class:James George Frazer
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter
LV. The Transference of Evil
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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."
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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