The Blood Covenant: A Primitive Rite and its Bearings on Scripture
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Title: The Blood Covenant: A Primitive Rite and its Bearings on Scripture
Author: H. Clay Trumbull
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THE
BLOOD COVENANT
A PRIMITIVE RITE
AND ITS BEARINGS ON SCRIPTURE
BY
H. CLAY TRUMBULL D.D.
Author of “Kadesh Barnea.”
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1885
COPYRIGHT, 1885
BY H. CLAY TRUMBULL
GRANT & FAIRES
PHILADELPHIA
PREFACE.
It was while engaged in the preparation of a book--still unfinished--on
the Sway of Friendship in the World’s Forces, that I came upon facts
concerning the primitive rite of covenanting by the inter-transfusion
of blood, which induced me to turn aside from my other studies, in
order to pursue investigations in this direction.
Having an engagement to deliver a series of lectures before the Summer
School of Hebrew, under Professor W. R. Harper, of Chicago, at the
buildings of the Episcopal Divinity School, in Philadelphia, I decided
to make this rite and its linkings the theme of that series; and I
delivered three lectures, accordingly, June 16-18, 1885.
The interest manifested in the subject by those who heard the Lectures,
as well as the importance of the theme itself, has seemed sufficient
to warrant its presentation to a larger public. In this publishing,
the form of the original Lectures has, for convenience sake, been
adhered to; although some considerable additions to the text, in the
way of illustrative facts, have been made, since the delivery of the
Lectures; while other similar material is given in an Appendix.
From the very freshness of the subject itself, there was added
difficulty in gathering the material for its illustration and
exposition. So far as I could learn, no one had gone over the ground
before me, in this particular line of research; hence the various items
essential to a fair statement of the case must be searched for through
many diverse volumes of travel and of history and of archæological
compilation, with only here and there an incidental disclosure in
return. Yet, each new discovery opened the way for other discoveries
beyond; and even after the Lectures, in their present form, were
already in type, I gained many fresh facts, which I wish had been
earlier available to me. Indeed, I may say that no portion of the
volume is of more importance than the Appendix; where are added facts
and reasonings bearing directly on well-nigh every main point of the
original Lectures.
There is cause for just surprise that the chief facts of this entire
subject have been so generally overlooked, in all the theological
discussions, and in all the physio-sociological researches, of
the earlier and the later times. Yet this only furnishes another
illustration of the inevitably cramping influence of a pre-conceived
fixed theory,--to which all the ascertained facts must be
conformed,--in any attempt at thorough and impartial scientific
investigation. It would seem to be because of such cramping, that no
one of the modern students of myth and folk-lore, of primitive ideas
and customs, and of man’s origin and history, has brought into their
true prominence, if indeed he has even noticed them in passing, the
universally dominating primitive convictions: that the blood is the
life; that the heart, as the blood-fountain, is the very soul of every
personality; that blood-transfer is soul-transfer; that blood-sharing,
human, or divine-human, secures an inter-union of natures; and that
a union of the human nature with the divine is the highest ultimate
attainment reached out after by the most primitive, as well as by the
most enlightened, mind of humanity.
Certainly, the collation of facts comprised in this volume grew out
of no pre-conceived theory on the part of its author. Whatever theory
shows itself in their present arrangement, is simply that which the
facts themselves have seemed to enforce and establish, in their
consecutive disclosure.
I should have been glad to take much more time for the study of
this theme, and for the re-arranging of its material, before its
presentation to the public; but, with the pressure of other work upon
me, the choice was between hurrying it out in its present shape, and
postponing it indefinitely. All things considered, I chose the former
alternative.
In the prosecution of my investigations, I acknowledge kindly aid
from Professor Dr. Georg Ebers, Principal Sir William Muir, Dr. Yung
Wing, Dean E. T. Bartlett, Professors Doctors John P. Peters and J. G.
Lansing, the Rev. Dr. M. H. Bixby, Drs. D. G. Brinton and Charles W.
Dulles, the Rev. Messrs. R. M. Luther and Chester Holcombe, and Mr. E.
A. Barber; in addition to constant and valuable assistance from Mr.
John T. Napier, to whom I am particularly indebted for the philological
comparisons in the Oriental field, including the Egyptian, the Arabic,
and the Hebrew.
At the best, my work in this volume is only tentative and suggestive.
Its chief value is likely to be in its stimulating of others to fuller
and more satisfactory research in the field here brought to notice.
Sufficient, however, is certainly shown, to indicate that the realm of
true Biblical theology is as yet by no means thoroughly explored.
H. CLAY TRUMBULL.
PHILADELPHIA, _August 14, 1885_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE iii
LECTURE I.
THE PRIMITIVE RITE ITSELF.
(1.) SOURCES OF BIBLE STUDY, 3. (2.) AN ANCIENT SEMITIC RITE, 4.
(3.) THE PRIMITIVE RITE IN AFRICA, 12. (4.) TRACES OF THE RITE IN
EUROPE, 39. (5.) WORLD-WIDE SWEEP OF THE RITE, 43. (6.) LIGHT FROM THE
CLASSICS, 58. (7.) THE BOND OF THE COVENANT, 65. (8.) THE RITE AND ITS
TOKEN IN EGYPT, 77. (9.) OTHER GLEAMS OF THE RITE, 85.
LECTURE II.
SUGGESTIONS AND PERVERSIONS OF THE RITE.
(1.) SACREDNESS OF BLOOD AND OF THE HEART, 99. (2.) VIVIFYING POWER OF
BLOOD, 110. (3.) A NEW NATURE THROUGH NEW BLOOD, 126. (4.) LIFE FROM
ANY BLOOD, AND BY A TOUCH, 134. (5.) INSPIRATION THROUGH BLOOD, 139.
(6.) INTER-COMMUNION THROUGH BLOOD, 147. (7.) SYMBOLIC SUBSTITUTES FOR
BLOOD, 191. (8.) BLOOD COVENANT INVOLVINGS, 202.
LECTURE III.
INDICATIONS OF THE RITE IN THE BIBLE.
(1.) LIMITATIONS OF INQUIRY, 209. (2.) PRIMITIVE TEACHINGS OF BLOOD,
210. (3.) THE BLOOD COVENANT IN CIRCUMCISION, 215. (4.) THE BLOOD
COVENANT TESTED, 224. (5.) THE BLOOD COVENANT AND ITS TOKENS IN
THE PASSOVER, 230. (6.) THE BLOOD COVENANT AT SINAI, 238. (7.) THE
BLOOD COVENANT IN THE MOSAIC RITUAL, 240. (8.) THE PRIMITIVE RITE
ILLUSTRATED, 263. (9.) THE BLOOD COVENANT IN THE GOSPELS, 271. (10.)
THE BLOOD COVENANT APPLIED, 286.
APPENDIX.
IMPORTANCE OF THIS RITE STRANGELY UNDERVALUED, 297. LIFE IN THE
BLOOD, IN THE HEART, IN THE LIVER, 299. TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS, 310.
THE BLOOD-RITE IN BURMAH, 313. BLOOD-STAINED TREE OF THE COVENANT,
316. BLOOD-DRINKING, 320. COVENANT-CUTTING, 322. BLOOD-BATHING, 324.
BLOOD-RANSOMING, 324. THE COVENANT-REMINDER, 326. HINTS OF BLOOD
UNION, 332.
INDEXES.
TOPICAL INDEX, 345. SCRIPTURAL INDEX, 349.
LECTURE I.
THE PRIMITIVE RITE ITSELF.
I.
THE PRIMITIVE RITE ITSELF.
1. SOURCES OF BIBLE STUDY.
Those who are most familiar with the Bible, and who have already given
most time to its study, have largest desire and largest expectation of
more knowledge through its farther study. And, more and more, Bible
study has come to include very much that is outside of the Bible.
For a long time, the outside study of the Bible was directed chiefly
to the languages in which the Bible was written, and to the archæology
and the manners and customs of what are commonly known as the Lands
of the Bible. Nor are these well-worked fields, by any means, yet
exhausted. More still remains to be gleaned from them, each and all,
than has been gathered thence by all searchers in their varied lore.
But, latterly, it has been realized, that, while the Bible is an
Oriental book, written primarily for Orientals, and therefore to be
understood only through an understanding of Oriental modes of thought
and speech, it is also a record of God’s revelation to the whole human
race; hence, its inspired pages are to receive illumination from all
disclosures of the primitive characteristics and customs of that race,
everywhere. Not alone those who insist on the belief that there was
a gradual development of the race from a barbarous beginning, but
those also who believe that man started on a higher plane, and in his
degradation retained perverted vestiges of God’s original revelation
to him, are finding profit in the study of primitive myths, and of
aboriginal religious rites and ceremonies, all the world over. Here,
also, what has been already gained, is but an earnest of what will yet
be compassed in the realm of truest biblical research.
2. AN ANCIENT SEMITIC RITE.
One of these primitive rites, which is deserving of more attention
than it has yet received, as throwing light on many important phases
of Bible teaching, is the rite of blood-covenanting: a form of mutual
covenanting, by which two persons enter into the closest, the most
enduring, and the most sacred of compacts, as friends and brothers, or
as more than brothers, through the inter-commingling of their blood, by
means of its mutual tasting, or of its inter-transfusion. This rite is
still observed in the unchanging East; and there are historic traces
of it, from time immemorial, in every quarter of the globe; yet it has
been strangely overlooked by biblical critics and biblical commentators
generally, in these later centuries.
In bringing this rite of the covenant of blood into new prominence,
it may be well for me to tell of it as it was described to me by an
intelligent native Syrian, who saw it consummated in a village at the
base of the mountains of Lebanon; and then to add evidences of its
wide-spread existence in the East and elsewhere, in earlier and in
later times.
It was two young men, who were to enter into this covenant. They had
known each other, and had been intimate, for years; but now they were
to become brother-friends, in the covenant of blood. Their relatives
and neighbors were called together, in the open place before the
village fountain, to witness the sealing compact. The young men
publicly announced their purpose, and their reasons for it. Their
declarations were written down, in duplicate,--one paper for each
friend,--and signed by themselves and by several witnesses. One of the
friends took a sharp lancet, and opened a vein in the other’s arm. Into
the opening thus made, he inserted a quill, through which he sucked
the living blood. The lancet-blade was carefully wiped on one of the
duplicate covenant-papers, and then it was taken by the other friend,
who made a like incision in its first user’s arm, and drank his blood
through the quill, wiping the blade on the duplicate covenant-record.
The two friends declared together: “We are brothers in a covenant
made before God: who deceiveth the other, him will God deceive.” Each
blood-marked covenant-record, was then folded carefully, to be sewed
up in a small leathern case, or amulet, about an inch square; to be
worn thenceforward by one of the covenant-brothers, suspended about the
neck, or bound upon the arm, in token of the indissoluble relation.
The compact thus made, is called, _M’âhadat ed-Dam_ (الدم معاهدة),
the “Covenant of Blood.” The two persons thus conjoined, are, _Akhwat
el-M’âhadah_ (المعاهدة اخوة), “Brothers of the Covenant.” The rite
itself is recognized, in Syria, as one of the very old customs of
the land, as _’âdah qadeemeh_ (قديمة عادة) “a primitive rite.” There
are many forms of covenanting in Syria, but this is the extremest
and most sacred of them all. As it is the inter-commingling of very
lives, nothing can transcend it. It forms a tie, or a union, which
cannot be dissolved. In marriage, divorce is a possibility: not so in
the covenant of blood. Although now comparatively rare, in view of
its responsibilities and of its indissolubleness, this covenant is
sometimes entered into by confidential partners in business, or by
fellow-travelers; again, by robbers on the road--who would themselves
rest fearlessly on its obligations, and who could be rested on within
its limits, however untrustworthy they or their fellows might be to any
other compact. Yet, again, it is the chosen compact of loving friends;
of those who are drawn to it only by mutual love and trust.
This covenant is commonly between two persons of the same
religion--Muhammadans, Druzes, or Nazarenes; yet it has been known
between two persons of different religions;[1] and in such a case it
would be held as a closer tie than that of birth[2] or sect. He who has
entered into this compact with another, counts himself the possessor of
a double life; for his friend, whose blood he has shared, is ready to
lay down his life with him, or for him.[3] Hence the leathern case, or
_Bayt hejâb_ (حجاب بيت) “House of the amulet,”[4] containing the record
of the covenant (_’uhdah_, عهدة), is counted a proud badge of honor, by
one who possesses it; and he has an added sense of security, because he
will not be alone when he falleth.[5]
I have received personal testimony from native Syrians, concerning the
observance of this rite in Damascus, in Aleppo, in Hâsbayya, in Abayh,
along the road between Tyre and Sidon, and among the Koords resident
in Salehayyah. All the Syrians who have been my informants, are at one
concerning the traditional extreme antiquity of this rite, and its
exceptional force and sacredness.
In view of the Oriental method of evidencing the closest possible
affection and confidence, by the sucking of the loved one’s blood,
there would seem to be more than a coincidence in the fact, that the
Arabic words for friendship, for affection, for blood, and for leech,
or blood-sucker, are but variations from a common root.[6] _’Alaqa_
(علق) means “to love,” “to adhere,” “to feed.” _’Alaq_ (علق), in the
singular, means “love,” “friendship,” “attachment,” “blood.” As the
plural of _’alaqa_ (علقة), _’alaq_ means “leeches,” or “blood-suckers.”
The truest friend clings like a leech, and draws blood in order to the
sharing thereby of his friend’s life and nature.
A native Syrian, who had traveled extensively in the East, and who
was familiar with the covenant of blood in its more common form, as
already described, told me of a practice somewhat akin to it, whereby
a bandit-chieftain would pledge his men to implicit and unqualified,
life-surrendering fidelity to himself; or, whereby a conspirator
against the government would bind, in advance, to his plans, his fellow
conspirators,--by a ceremony known as _Sharb el-’ahd_ (العهد شرب)
“Drinking the covenant.” The methods of such covenanting are various;
but they are all of the nature of tests of obedience and of endurance.
They sometimes include licking a heated iron with the tongue, or
gashing the tongue, or swallowing pounded glass or other dangerous
potions; but, in all cases, the idea seems to be, that the life of
the one covenanting is, by this covenant, devoted--surrendered as it
were--to the one with whom he covenants; and the rite is uniformly
accompanied with a solemn and an imprecatory appeal to God, as
witnessing and guarding the compact.
Dr. J. G. Wetzstein, a German scholar, diplomat, and traveler, who has
given much study to the peoples east of the Jordan, makes reference
to the binding force and the profound obligation of the covenants
of brotherhood, in that portion of the East; although he gives no
description of the methods of the covenant-rite. Speaking of two
Bed´ween--Habbâs and Hosayn--who had been “brothered” (_verbrüdert_),
he explains by saying: “We must by this [term] understand the Covenant
of Brotherhood[7] (_Chuwwat el-Ahĕd_ [العهد خوة]), which is in use
to-day not only among the Hadari [the Villagers], but also among the
Bed´ween; and is indeed of pre-Muhammadan origin. The brother [in such
a covenant] must guard the [other] brother from treachery, and [must]
succor him in peril. So far as may be necessary, the one must provide
for the wants of the other; and the survivor has weighty obligations
in behalf of the family of the one deceased.” Then, as showing how
completely the idea of a common life in the lives of two friends
thus covenanted--if, indeed, they have become sharers of the same
blood--sways the Oriental mind, Wetzstein adds: “The marriage of a man
and woman between whom this covenant exists, is held to be _incest_.”[8]
There are, indeed, various evidences that the tie of blood-covenanting
is reckoned, in the East, even a closer tie than that of natural
descent; that a “friend” by this tie is nearer and is dearer,
“sticketh closer,” than a “brother” by birth. We, in the West, are
accustomed to say, that “blood is thicker than water”; but the Arabs
have the idea that blood is thicker than milk, than a mother’s milk.
With them, any two children nourished at the same breast are called
“milk-brothers,”[9] or “sucking brothers”;[10] and the tie between
such is very strong. A boy and a girl in this relation cannot marry,
even though by birth they had no family relationship. Among even the
more bigoted of the Druzes, a Druze girl who is a “sucking sister” of
a Nazarene boy is allowed a sister’s privileges with him. He can see
her uncovered face, even to the time of her marriage. But, the Arabs
hold that brothers in the covenant of blood are closer than brothers
at a common breast; that those who have tasted each other’s blood are
in a surer covenant than those who have tasted the same milk together;
that “blood-lickers,”[11] as the blood-brothers are sometimes called,
are more truly one, than “milk-brothers,” or “sucking brothers”; that,
indeed, blood is thicker than milk, as well as thicker than water.
This distinction it is which seems to be referred to in a citation from
the Arabic poet El-A’asha, by the Arabic lexicographer Qamus, which has
been a puzzle to Lane, and Freytag, and others.[12] Lane’s translation
of the passage is: “Two foster-brothers by the sucking of the breast of
one mother, swore together by dark blood, into which they dipped their
hands, that they should not ever become separated.” In other words, two
milk-brothers became blood-brothers, by interlocking their hands under
their own blood, in the covenant of blood-friendship. They had been
closely inter-linked before; now they were as one; for blood is thicker
than milk. The oneness of nature which comes of sharing the same blood,
by its inter-transfusion, is rightly deemed, by the Arabs, completer
than the oneness of nature which comes of sharing the same milk; or
even than that which comes through having blood from a common source,
by natural descent.
3. THE PRIMITIVE RITE IN AFRICA.
Travelers in the heart of Africa, also, report the covenant of
“blood-brotherhood,” or of “strong-friendship,” as in vogue among
various African tribes; although, naturally retaining less of primitive
sacredness there than among Semites. The rite is, in some cases,
observed after the manner of the Syrians, by the contracting parties
tasting each other’s blood; while, in other cases, it is performed by
the inter-transfusion of blood between the two.
The first mention which I find of it, in the writings of modern
travelers in Africa, is by the lamented hero-missionary, Dr.
Livingstone. He calls the rite _Kasendi_. It was in the region of
Lake Dilolo, at the watershed between the Indian Ocean and the
Atlantic, in July, 1854, that he made blood-friendship, vicariously,
with Queen Manenko, of the Balonda tribes.[13] She was represented,
in this ceremony, by her husband, the ebony “Prince Consort”; while
Livingstone’s representative was one of his Makololo attendants.
Woman’s right to rule--when she has the right--seems to be as clearly
recognized in Central Africa, to-day, as it was in Ethiopia in the days
of Candace, or in Sheba in the days of Balkees.
Describing the ceremony, Livingstone says:[14] “It is accomplished
thus: The hands of the parties are joined (in this case Pitsane and
Sambanza were the parties engaged). Small incisions are made on the
clasped hands, on the pits of the stomach of each, and on the right
cheeks and foreheads. A small quantity of blood is taken off from
these points, in both parties, by means of a stalk of grass. The blood
from one person is put into a pot of beer, and that of the second into
another; each then drinks the other’s blood, and they are supposed to
become perpetual friends, or relations. During the drinking of the
beer, some of the party continue beating the ground with short clubs,
and utter sentences by way of ratifying the treaty. The men belonging
to each [principal’s party], then finish the beer. The principals in
the performance of ‘Kasendi’ are henceforth considered blood-relations,
and are bound to disclose to each other any impending evil. If Sekeletu
[chief of Pitsane’s tribe--the Makololo--] should resolve to attack the
Balonda [Sambanza’s--or, more properly, Manenko’s--people], Pitsane
would be under obligation to give Sambanza warning to escape; and
so, on the other side. [The ceremony concluded in this case] they
now presented each other with the most valuable presents they had
to bestow. Sambanza walked off with Pitsane’s suit of green baize
faced with red, which had been made in Loanda; and Pitsane, besides
abundant supplies of food, obtained two shells [of as great value, in
regions far from the sea, ‘as the Lord Mayor’s badge is in London,’]
similar to that [one, which] I had received from Shinte [the uncle of
Manenko].”[15]
Of the binding force of this covenant, Livingstone says farther: “On
one occasion I became blood-relation to a young woman by accident. She
had a large cartilaginous tumor between the bones of the forearm, which
as it gradually enlarged, so distended the muscles as to render her
unable to work. She applied to me to excise it. I requested her to
bring her husband, if he were willing to have the operation performed;
and while removing the tumor, one of the small arteries squirted some
blood into my eye. She remarked, when I was wiping the blood out of it,
‘You were a friend before; now you are a blood-relation; and when you
pass this way always send me word, that I may cook food for you.’”[16]
Of the influence of these inter-tribal blood-friendships, in Central
Africa, Dr. Livingstone speaks most favorably. Their primitive
character is made the more probable, in view of the fact that he first
found them existing in a region where, in his opinion, the dress and
household utensils of the people are identical with those which are
represented on the monuments of ancient Egypt.[17] Although it is
within our own generation that this mode of covenanting in the region
referred to, has been made familiar to us, the rite itself is of old,
elsewhere if not, indeed, there; as other travelers following in the
track of Livingstone have noted and reported.
Commander Cameron, who, while in charge of the Livingstone Search
Expedition, was the first European traveler to cross the whole breadth
of the African continent in its central latitudes, gives several
illustrations of the observance of this rite. In June, 1874, at the
westward of Lake Tanganyika, Syde, a guide of Cameron, entered into
this covenant of blood with Pakwanya, a local chief.
“After a certain amount of palaver,” says Cameron, “Syde and Pakwanya
exchanged presents, much to the advantage of the former [for in
the East, the person of higher rank is supposed to give the more
costly gifts in any such exchange]; more especially [in this case]
as he [Syde] borrowed the beads of me and afterward forgot to repay
me. Pakwanya then performed a tune on his harmonium, or whatever
the instrument [which he had] might be called, and the business of
fraternizing was proceeded with. Pakwanya’s head man acted as his
sponsor, and one of my askari assumed the like office for Syde.
“The first operation consisted of making an incision on each of their
right wrists, just sufficient to draw blood; a little of which was
scraped off and smeared on the other’s cut; after which gunpowder
was rubbed in [thereby securing a permanent token on the arm]. The
concluding part of the ceremony was performed by Pakwanya’s sponsor
holding a sword resting on his shoulder, while he who acted [as
sponsor] for Syde went through the motions of sharpening a knife upon
it. Both sponsors meanwhile made a speech, calling down imprecations
on Pakwanya and all his relations, past, present, and future, and
prayed that their graves might be defiled by pigs if he broke the
brotherhood in word, thought, or deed. The same form having been gone
through with, [with] respect to Syde, the sponsors changing duties, the
brother-making was complete.”[18]
Concerning the origin of this rite, in this region, Cameron says: “This
custom of ‘making brothers,’ I believe to be really of Semitic origin,
and to have been introduced into Africa by the heathen Arabs before the
days of Mohammed; and this idea is strengthened by the fact that when
the first traders from Zanzibar crossed the Tanganyika, the ceremony
was unknown [so far as those traders knew] to the westward of that
lake.”[19] Cameron was, of course, unaware of the world-wide prevalence
of this rite; but his suggestion that its particular form just here
had a Semitic origin, receives support in a peculiar difference noted
between the Asiatic and the African ceremonies.
It will be remembered, that, among the Syrians, the blood of the
covenant is taken into the mouth, and the record of the covenant is
bound upon the arm. The Africans, not fully appreciating the force of
a written record, are in the habit of reversing this order, according
to Cameron’s account. Describing the rite as observed between his
men and the natives, on the Luama River, he says: “The brotherhood
business having been completed [by putting the blood from one party on
to the arm of the other], some pen and ink marks were made on a piece
of paper, which, together with a charge of powder, was put into a
kettleful of water. All hands then drank of the decoction, the natives
being told that it was a very great medicine.”[20] That was “drinking
the covenant”[21] with a vengeance; nor is it difficult to see how this
idea originated.
The gallant and adventurous Henry M. Stanley also reports this rite of
“blood-brotherhood,” or of “strong friendship,” in the story of his
romantic experiences in the wilds of Africa. On numerous occasions
the observance of this rite was a means of protection and relief to
Stanley. One of its more notable illustrations was in his compact with
“Mirambo, the warrior chief of Western Unyamwezi;”[22] whose leadership
in warfare Stanley compares to that of both Frederick the Great[23] and
Napoleon.[24]
It was during his first journey in pursuit of Livingstone, in 1871,
that Stanley first encountered the forces of Mirambo, and was worsted
in the conflict.[25] Writing of him, after his second expedition,
Stanley describes Mirambo, as “the ‘Mars of Africa,’ who since 1871 has
made his name feared by both native and foreigner from Usui to Urori,
and from Uvinza to Ugogo, a country embracing 90,000 square miles;
who, from the village chieftainship over Uyoweh, has made for himself
a name as well known as that of Mtesa throughout the eastern half of
Equatorial Africa; a household word from Nyangwé to Zanzibar, and the
theme of many a song of the bards of Unyamwezi, Ukimbu, Ukonongo,
Uzinja, and Uvinza.”[26] For a time, during his second exploring
expedition, Stanley was inclined to avoid Mirambo, but becoming
“impressed with his ubiquitous powers,”[27] he decided to meet him,
and if possible make “strong friendship” with him. They came together,
first, at Serombo, April 22, 1876. Mirambo “quite captivated” Stanley.
“He was a thorough African _gentleman_ in appearance.... A handsome,
regular-featured, mild-voiced, soft-spoken man, with what one might
call a ‘meek’ demeanor; very generous and open-handed;” his eyes having
“the steady, calm gaze of a master.”[28]
The African hero and the heroic American agreed to “make strong
friendship” with each other. Stanley thus describes the ceremony:
“Manwa Sera [Stanley’s ‘chief captain’] was requested to seal our
friendship by performing the ceremony of blood-brotherhood between
Mirambo and myself. Having caused us to sit fronting each other on
a straw-carpet, he made an incision in each of our right legs, from
which he extracted blood, and inter-changing it, he exclaimed aloud:
‘If either of you break this brotherhood now established between you,
may the lion devour him, the serpent poison him, bitterness be in his
food, his friends desert him, his gun burst in his hands and wound
him, and everything that is bad do wrong to him until death.’”[29] The
same blood now flowed in the veins of both Stanley and Mirambo. They
were friends and brothers in a sacred covenant; life for life. At the
conclusion of the covenant, they exchanged gifts; as the customary
ratification, or accompaniment, of the compact. They even vied with
each other in proofs of their unselfish fidelity, in this new covenant
of friendship.[30]
Again and again, before and after this incident, Stanley entered into
the covenant of blood-brotherhood with representative Africans; in some
instances by the opening of his own veins; at other times by allowing
one of his personal escort to bleed for him. In January, 1875, a “great
magic doctor of Vinyata” came to Stanley’s tent to pay a friendly
visit, “bringing with him a fine, fat ox as a peace offering.” After
an exchange of gifts, says Stanley, “he entreated me to go through
the process of blood-brotherhood, which I underwent with all the
ceremonious gravity of a pagan.”[31]
Three months later, in April, 1875, when Stanley found himself and his
party in the treacherous toils of Shekka, the King of Bumbireh, he made
several vain attempts to “induce Shekka, with gifts, to go through the
process of blood-brotherhood.” Stanley’s second captain, Safeni, was
the adroit, but unsuccessful, agent in the negotiations. “Go frankly
and smilingly, Safeni, up to Shekka, on the top of that hill,” said
Stanley, “and offer him these three fundo of beads, and ask him to
exchange blood with you.” But the wily king was not to be dissuaded
from his warlike purposes in that way. “Safeni returned. Shekka had
refused the pledge of peace.”[32] His desire was to take blood, if at
all, without any exchange.
After still another three months, in July, 1875, Stanley, at Refuge
Island, reports better success in securing peace and friendship through
blood-giving and blood-receiving. “Through the influence of young
Lukanjah--the cousin of the King of Ukerewé”--he says, “the natives of
the mainland had been induced to exchange their churlish disposition
for one of cordial welcome; and the process of blood-brotherhood had
been formally gone through [with], between Manwa Sera, on my part,
and Kijaju, King of Komeh, and the King of Itawagumba, on the other
part.”[33]
It was at “Kampunzu, in the district of Uvinza, where dwell the true
aborigines of the forest country,”--a people whom Stanley afterwards
found to be cannibals--that this rite was once more observed between
the explorers and the natives. “Blood-brotherhood being considered as
a pledge of good-will and peace,” says Stanley, “Frank Pocock [a young
Englishman who was an attendant of Stanley] and the chief [of Kampunzu]
went through the ordeal; and we interchanged presents”--as is the
custom in the observance of this rite.[34]
At the island of Mpika, on the Livingstone River, in December, 1876,
there was another bright episode in Stanley’s course of travel, through
this mode of sealing friendship. Disease had been making sad havoc in
Stanley’s party. He had been compelled to fight his way along through
a region of cannibals. While he was halting for a breakfast on the
river bank over against Mpika, an attack on him was preparing by the
excited inhabitants of the island. Just then his scouts captured a
native trading party of men and women who were returning to Mpika,
from inland; and to them his interpreters made clear his pacific
intentions. “By means of these people,” he says, “we succeeded in
checking the warlike demonstrations of the islanders, and in finally
persuading them to make blood-brotherhood; after which we invited
canoes to come and receive [these hostages] their friends. As they
hesitated to do so, we embarked them in our own boat, and conveyed
them across to the island. The news then spread quickly along the
whole length of the island that we were friends, and as we resumed our
journey, crowds from the shore cried out to us, ‘_Mwendé Ki-vuké-vuké_’
(‘Go in peace!’)”[35]
Once more it was at the conclusion of a bloody conflict, in the
district of Vinya-Njara, just below Mpika Island, that peace was sealed
by blood. When practical victory was on Stanley’s side, at the cost
of four of his men killed, and thirteen more of them wounded, then
he sought this means of amity. “With the aid of our interpreters,”
he says, “we communicated our terms, viz., that we would occupy
Vinya-Njara, and retain all the canoes unless they made peace. We also
informed them that we had one prisoner, who would be surrendered to
them if they availed themselves of our offer of peace: that we had
suffered heavily, and they had also suffered; that war was an evil
which wise men avoided; that if they came with two canoes with their
chiefs, two canoes with our chiefs should meet them in mid-stream,
and make blood-brotherhood; and that on that condition some of their
canoes should be restored, and we would purchase the rest.” The natives
took time for the considering of this proposition, and then accepted
it. “On the 22nd of December, the ceremony of blood-brotherhood
having been formally concluded, in mid-river, between Safeni and the
chief of Vinya-Njara,” continues Stanley, “our captive, and fifteen
canoes, were returned, and twenty-three canoes were retained by
us for a satisfactory equivalent; and thus our desperate struggle
terminated.”[36]
On the Livingstone, just below the Equator, in February, 1877,
Stanley’s party was facing starvation, having been for some time
“unable to purchase food, or indeed [to] approach a settlement for any
amicable purpose.” The explorers came to look at “each other as fated
victims of protracted famine, or [of] the rage of savages, like those
of Mangala.” “We continued our journey,” goes on the record, “though
grievously hungry, past Bwena and Inguba, doing our utmost to induce
the staring fishermen to communicate with us; without any success. They
became at once officiously busy with guns, and dangerously active. We
arrived at Ikengo, and as we were almost despairing, we proceeded to a
small island opposite this settlement, and prepared to encamp. Soon a
canoe with seven men came dashing across, and we prepared our moneys
for exhibition. They unhesitatingly advanced, and ran their canoe
alongside of us. We were rapturously joyful, and returned them a most
cordial welcome, as the act was a most auspicious sign of confidence.
We were liberal, and the natives fearlessly accepted our presents;
and from this giving of gifts we proceeded to seal this incipient
friendship with our blood, with all due ceremony.”[37] And by this
transfusion of blood, the starving were re-vivified, and the despairing
were given hope.
Twice, again, within a few weeks after this experience, there was
a call on Stanley of blood for blood, in friendship’s compact. The
people of Chumbiri welcomed the travelers. “They readily subscribed
to all the requirements of friendship, blood-brotherhood, and an
exchange of a few small gifts.”[38] Itsi, the king of Ntamo, with
several of his elders and a showy escort, came out to meet Stanley;
and there was a friendly greeting on both sides. “They then broached
the subject of blood-brotherhood. We were willing,” says Stanley, “but
they wished to defer the ceremony until they had first shown their
friendly feelings to us.” Thereupon gifts were exchanged, and the
king indicated his preference for a “big goat” of Stanley’s, as his
benefaction--which, after some parleying, was transferred to him. Then
came the covenant-rite. “The treaty with Itsi,” says Stanley, “was
exceedingly ceremonious, and involved the exchange of charms. Itsi
transferred to me for my protection through life, a small gourdful of a
curious powder, which had rather a saline taste; and I delivered over
to him, as the white man’s charm against all evil, a half-ounce vial
of magnesia; further, a small scratch in Frank’s arm, and another in
Itsi’s arm, supplied blood sufficient to unite us in one, and [by an]
indivisible bond of fraternity.”[39]
Four years after this experience of blood-covenanting, by proxy, with
young Itsi, Stanley found himself again at Ntamo, or across the river
from it; this time in the interest of the International Association of
the Congo. Being short of food, he had sent out a party of foragers,
and was waiting their return with interest. “During the absence of
the food-hunters,” he says, “we heard the drums of Ntamo, and [we]
followed with interested eyes the departure of two large canoes from
the landing-place, their ascent to the place opposite, and their final
crossing over towards us. Then we knew that Ngalyema of Ntamo had
condescended to come and visit us. As soon as he arrived I recognized
him as the Itsi with whom, in 1877, I had made blood-brotherhood [by
proxy]. During the four years that had elapsed, he had become a great
man.... He was now about thirty-four years old, of well-built form,
proud in his bearing, covetous and grasping in disposition, and,
like all other lawless barbarians, prone to be cruel and sanguinary
whenever he might safely vent his evil humor. Superstition had found
in him an apt and docile pupil, and fetishism held him as one of its
most abject slaves. This was the man in whose hands the destinies of
the Association Internationale du Congo were held, and upon whose
graciousness depended our only hope of being able to effect a peaceful
lodgment on the Upper Congo.” A pagan African was an African pagan,
even while the blood-brother of a European Christian. Yet, the tie of
blood-covenanting was the strongest tie known in Central Africa. Frank
Pocock, whose covenant-blood flowed in Itsi’s veins, was dead;[40] yet
for his sake his master, Stanley, was welcomed by Itsi as a brother;
and in true Eastern fashion he was invited to prove anew his continuing
faith by a fresh series of love-showing gifts. “My brother being the
supreme lord of Ntamo, as well as the deepest-voiced and most arrogant
rogue among the whole tribe,” says Stanley, “first demanded the two
asses [which Stanley had with him], then a large mirror, which was
succeeded by a splendid gold-embroidered coat, jewelry, glass clasps,
long brass chains, a figured table-cloth, fifteen other pieces of fine
cloth, and a japanned tin box with a ‘Chubb’ lock. Finally, gratified
by such liberality, Ngalyema surrendered to me his sceptre, which
consisted of a long staff, banded profusely with brass, and decorated
with coils of brass wire, which was to be carried by me and shown to
all men that I was the brother of Ngalyema [or, Itsi] of Ntamo!”[41]
Some time after this, when trouble arose between Stanley and Ngalyema,
the former suggested that perhaps it would be better to cancel their
brotherhood. “‘No, no, no,’ cried Ngalyema, anxiously; ‘our brotherhood
cannot be broken; our blood is now one.’” Yet at this time Stanley’s
brotherhood with Ngalyema was only by the blood of his deceased
retainer, Frank Pocock.
More commonly, the rite of blood-friendship among the African tribes
seems to be by the inter-transfusion of blood; but the ancient Syrian
method is by no means unknown on that continent. Stanley tells of
one crisis of hunger, among the cannibals of Rubunga, when the
hostility of the natives on the river bank was averted by a shrewd
display of proffered trinkets from the boats of the expedition. “We
raised our anchor,” he says, “and with two strokes of the oars had
run our boat ashore; and, snatching a string or two of cowries [or
shell-money], I sprang on land, followed by the coxswain Uledi, and
in a second I had seized the skinny hand of the old chief, and was
pressing it hard for joy. Warm-hearted Uledi, who the moment before
was breathing furious hate of all savages, and of the procrastinating
old chief in particular, embraced him with a filial warmth. Young
Saywa, and Murabo, and Shumari, prompt as tinder upon all occasions,
grasped the lesser chiefs’ hands, and devoted themselves with smiles
and jovial frank bearing to conquer the last remnants of savage
sullenness, and succeeded so well that, in an incredible short time,
the blood-brotherhood ceremony between the suddenly formed friends was
solemnly entered into, and the irrevocable pact of peace and good will
had been accomplished.”[42]
Apparently unaware of the method of the ancient Semitic rite, here
found in a degraded form, Stanley seems surprised at the mutual tasting
of blood between the contracting friends, in this instance. He says:
“Blood-brotherhood was a beastly cannibalistic ceremony with these
people, yet much sought after,--whether for the satisfaction of their
thirst for blood, or that it involved an interchange of gifts, of which
they must needs reap the most benefit. After an incision was made
in each arm, both brothers bent their heads, and the aborigine was
observed to suck with the greatest fervor; whether for love of blood or
excess of friendship, it would be difficult to say.”[43]
During his latest visit to Africa, in the Congo region, Stanley
had many another occasion to enter into the covenant of blood with
native chiefs, or to rest on that covenant as before consummated. His
every description of the rite itself has its value, as illustrating
the varying forms and the essential unity of the ceremony of
blood-covenanting, the world over.
A reference has already been made[44] to Stanley’s meeting, on this
expedition, with Ngalyema, who, under the name of Itsi, had entered
into blood-brotherhood with Frank Pocock, four years before. That
brotherhood by proxy had several severe strains, in the progress of
negotiations between Stanley and Ngalyema; and after some eight months
of these varying experiences, it was urgently pressed on Stanley by the
chiefs of Kintamo (which is another name for Ntamo), that he should
personally covenant by blood with Ngalyema, and so put an end to all
danger of conflict between them. To this Stanley assented, and the
record of the transaction is given accordingly, under date of April
9, 1882: “Brotherhood with Ngalyema was performed. We crossed arms;
an incision was made in each arm; some salt was placed on the wound,
and then a mutual rubbing took place, while the great fetish man of
Kintamo pronounced an inconceivable number of curses on my head if ever
I proved false. Susi [Livingstone’s head man, now with Stanley], not
to be outdone by him, solicited the gods to visit unheard-of atrocious
vengeances on Ngalyema if he dared to make the slightest breach in
the sacred brotherhood which made him and Bula Matari[45] one and
indivisible for ever.”[46]
In June, 1883, Stanley visited, by invitation, Mangombo, the chief of
Irebu, on the Upper Congo, and became his blood-brother. Describing
his landing at this “Venice of the Congo,” he says: “Mangombo, with
a curious long staff, a fathom and a half in length, having a small
spade of brass at one end, much resembling a baker’s cake-spade, stood
in front. He was a man probably sixty years old, but active and by no
means aged-looking, and he waited to greet me.... Generally the first
day of acquaintance with the Congo river tribes is devoted to chatting,
sounding one another’s principles, and getting at one another’s ideas.
The chief entertains his guest with gifts of food, goats, beer, fish,
&c.; then, on the next day, commences business and reciprocal exchange
of gifts. So it was at Irebu. Mangombo gave four hairy thin-tailed
sheep, ten glorious bunches of bananas, two great pots of beer,
and the usual accompaniments of small stores. The next day we made
blood-brotherhood. The fetish-man pricked each of our right arms,
pressed the blood out; then, with a pinch of scrapings from my gun
stock, a little salt, a few dusty scrapings from a long pod, dropped
over the wounded arms, ... the black and white arms were mutually
rubbed together [for the inter-transfusion of the flowing blood]. The
fetish-man took the long pod in his hand, and slightly touched our
necks, our heads, our arms, and our legs, muttering rapidly his litany
of incantations. What was left of the medicine Mangombo and I carefully
folded in a banana leaf [Was this the ‘house of the amulet?’[47]], and
we bore it reverently between us to a banana grove close by, and buried
the dust out of sight. Mangombo, now my brother, by solemn interchange
of blood,--consecrated to my service, as I was devoted in the sacred
fetish bond to his service,--revealed his trouble, and implored my
aid.”[48]
Yet again, Stanley “made friendship” with the Bakuti, at Wangata,
“after the customary forms of blood-brotherhood”;[49] similarly with
two chiefs, Iuka and Mungawa, at Lukolela;[50] with Miyongo of
Usindi;[51] and with the chiefs of Bolombo;[52] of Yambinga,[53] of
Mokulu,[54] of Irungu,[55] of Upoto,[56] of Uranga;[57] and so all
along his course of travel. One of the fullest and most picturesque of
his descriptions of this rite, is in connection with its observance
with a son of the great chief of the Bangala, at Iboko; and the main
details of that description are worthy of reproduction here.
The Bangala, or “the Ashantees of the Livingstone River,” as Stanley
characterizes them, are a strong and a superior people, and they
fought fiercely against Stanley, when he was passing their country
in 1877.[58] “The senior chief, Mata Bwyki (lord of many guns), was
[now, in October, 1883,] an old grey-haired man,” says Stanley,
“of Herculean stature and breadth of shoulder, with a large square
face, and an altogether massive head, out of which his solitary eye
seemed to glare with penetrative power. I should judge him to be
six feet, two inches, in height. He had a strong, sonorous voice,
which, when lifted to speak to his tribe, was heard clearly several
hundred yards off. He was now probably between seventy-five and eighty
years old.... He was not the tallest man, nor the best looking, nor
the sweetest-dispositioned man, I had met in all Africa; but if the
completeness and perfection of the human figure, combining size with
strength, and proportion of body, limbs, and head, with an expression
of power in the face, be considered, he must have been at one time the
grandest type of physical manhood to be found in Equatorial Africa. As
he stood before us on this day, we thought of him as an ancient Milo,
an aged Hercules, an old Samson--a really grand looking old man. At his
side were seven tall sons, by different mothers, and although they were
stalwart men and boys, the whitened crown of Mata Bwyki’s head rose by
a couple of inches above the highest head.”
Nearly two thousand persons assembled, at Iboko, to witness the
“palaver” that must precede a decision to enter into “strong
friendship.” At the place of meeting, “mats of split rattan were
spread in a large semicircle around a row of curved and box stools,
for the principal chiefs. In the centre of the line, opposite this,
was left a space for myself and people,” continues Stanley. “We had
first to undergo the process of steady and silent examination from
nearly two thousand pairs of eyes. Then, after Yumbila, the guide,
had detailed in his own manner, who we were, and what was our mission
up the great river; how we had built towns at many places, and made
blood-brotherhood with the chiefs of great districts, such as Irebu,
Ukuti, Usindi, Ngombé, Lukolela, Bolobo, Mswata, and Kintamo, he urged
upon them the pleasure it would be to me to make a like compact, sealed
with blood, with the great chiefs of populous Iboko. He pictured the
benefits likely to accrue to Iboko, and Mata Bwyki in particular, if
a bond of brotherhood was made between two chiefs like Mata Bwyki and
Tandelay, [Stanley,] or as he was known, Bula Matari.”
There was no prompt response to Stanley’s request for strong friendship
with the Bangala. There were prejudices to be removed, and old memories
to be overborne; and Yumbila’s eloquence and tact were put to their
severest test, in the endeavor to bring about a state of feeling that
would make the covenant of blood a possibility here. But the triumph
was won. “A forked palm branch was brought,” says Stanley. “Kokoro, the
heir [of Mata Bwyki], came forward, seized it, and kneeled before me;
as, drawing out his short falchion, he cried, ‘Hold the other branch,
Bula Matari!’ I obeyed him, and lifting his hand he cleaved the branch
in two. ‘Thus,’ he said, ‘I declare my wish to be your brother.’
“Then a fetish-man came forward with his lancets, long pod, pinch
of salt, and fresh green banana leaf. He held the staff of Kokoro’s
sword-bladed spear, while one of my rifles was brought from the
steamer. The shaft of the spear and the stock of the rifle were then
scraped on the leaf, a pinch of salt was dropped on the wood, and
finally a little dust from the long pod was scraped on the curious
mixture. Then, our arms were crossed,--the white arm over the brown
arm,--and an incision was made in each; and over the blood was dropped
a few grains of the dusty compound; and the white arm was rubbed over
the brown arm [in the intermingling of blood].”
“Now Mata Bwyki lifted his mighty form, and with his long giant’s staff
drove back the compressed crowd, clearing a wide circle, and then
roaring out in his most magnificent style, leonine in its lung-force,
kingly in its effect: ‘People of Iboko! You by the river side, and you
of inland. Men of the Bangala, listen to the words of Mata Bwyki. You
see Tandelay before you. His other name is Bula Matari. He is the man
with the many canoes, and has brought back strange smoke-boats. He has
come to see Mata Bwyki. He has asked Mata Bwyki to be his friend. Mata
Bwyki has taken him by the hand, and has become his blood-brother.
Tandelay belongs to Iboko now. He has become this day one of the
Bangala. O, Iboko! listen to the voice of Mata Bwyki.’ (I thought they
must have been incurably deaf, not to have heard that voice). ‘Bula
Matari and Mata Bwyki are one to-day. We have joined hands. Hurt not
Bula Matari’s people; steal not from them; offend them not. Bring food
and sell to him at a fair price, gently, kindly, and in peace; for he
is my brother. Hear you, ye people of Iboko--you by the river side, and
you of the interior?’
“‘We hear, Mata Bwyki!’ shouted the multitude.”[59] And the ceremony
was ended.
A little later than this, Stanley, or Tandelay, or Bula Matari, as the
natives called him, was at Bumba, and there again he exchanged blood
in friendship. “Myombi, the chief,” he says, “was easily persuaded
by Yumbila to make blood-brotherhood with me; and for the fiftieth
time my poor arm was scarified, and my blood shed for the cause of
civilization. Probably one thousand people of both sexes looked on the
scene, wonderingly and strangely. A young branch of a palm was cut,
twisted, and a knot tied at each end; the knots were dipped in wood
ashes, and then seized and held by each of us, while the medicine-man
practised his blood-letting art, and lanced us both, until Myombi
winced with pain; after which the knotted branch was severed; and,
in some incomprehensible manner, I had become united forever to my
fiftieth brother; to whom I was under the obligation of defending [him]
against all foes until death.”[60]
The blood of a fair proportion of all the first families of Equatorial
Africa now courses in Stanley’s veins; and if ever there was an
American citizen who could appropriate to himself preeminently the
national motto, “E pluribus unum,” Stanley is the man.
The root-idea of this rite of blood-friendship seems to include the
belief, that the blood is the life of a living being; not merely that
the blood is _essential_ to life, but that, in a peculiar sense, it
_is_ life; that it actually vivifies by its presence; and that by its
passing from one organism to another it carries and imparts life.
The inter-commingling of the blood of two organisms is, therefore,
according to this view, equivalent to the inter-commingling of the
lives, of the personalities, of the natures, thus brought together; so
that there is, thereby and thenceforward, one life in the two bodies,
a common life between the two friends: a thought which Aristotle
recognizes in his citation of the ancient “proverb”: “One soul [in two
bodies],”[61] a proverb which has not lost its currency in any of the
centuries.
That the blood can retain its vivifying power whether passing into
another by way of the lips or by way of the veins, is, on the face of
it, no less plausible, than that the administering of stimulants,
tonics, nutriments, nervines, or anæsthetics, hypodermically, may be
equally potent, in certain cases, with the more common and normal
method of seeking assimilation by the process of digestion. That
the blood of the living has a peculiar vivifying force, in its
transference from one organism to another, is one of the clearly proven
re-disclosures of modern medical science; and this transference of
blood has been made to advantage by way of the veins, of the stomach,
of the intestines, of the tissue, and even of the lungs--through
dry-spraying.[62]
4. TRACES OF THE RITE IN EUROPE.[63]
Different methods of observing this primitive rite of blood-covenanting
are indicated in the legendary lore of the Norseland peoples; and these
methods, in all their variety, give added proof of the ever underlying
idea of an inter-commingling of lives through an inter-commingling
of blood. Odin was the beneficent god of light and knowledge, the
promoter of heroism, and the protector of sacred covenants, in the
mythology of the North. Lôké, or Lok, on the other hand, was the
discordant and corrupting divinity; symbolizing, in his personality,
“sin, shrewdness, deceitfulness, treachery, malice,” and other phases
of evil.[64] In the poetic myths of the Norseland, it is claimed that
at the beginning Odin and Lôké were in close union instead of being
at variance;[65] just as the Egyptian cosmogony made Osiris and Set
in original accord, although in subsequent hostility;[66] and as the
Zoroastrians claimed that Ormuzd and Ahriman were at one, before
they were in conflict.[67] Odin and Lôké are, indeed, said to have
been, at one time, in the close and sacred union of blood-friendship;
having covenanted in that union by mingling their blood in a bowl, and
drinking therefrom together.
The Elder Edda,[68] or the earliest collection of Scandinavian songs,
makes reference to this confraternity of Odin and Lôké. At a banquet of
the gods, Lôké, who had not been invited, found an entrance, and there
reproached his fellow divinities for their hostility to him. Recalling
the indissoluble tie of blood-friendship, he said:
“Father of Slaughter,[69] Odin, say,
Rememberest not the former day,
When ruddy in the goblet stood,
For mutual drink, our blended blood?
Rememberest not, thou then didst swear,
The festive banquet ne’er to share,
Unless thy brother Lok was there?”
In citing this illustration of the ancient rite, a modern historian
of chivalry has said: “Among barbarous people [the barbarians of
Europe] the fraternity of arms [the sacred brotherhood of heroes] was
established by the horrid custom of the new brothers drinking each
other’s blood; but if this practice was barbarous, nothing was farther
from barbarism than the sentiment which inspired it.”[70]
Another of the methods by which the rite of blood-friendship was
observed in the Norseland, was by causing the blood of the two
covenanting persons to inter-flow from their pierced hands, while they
lay together underneath a lifted sod. The idea involved seems to have
been, the burial of the two individuals, in their separate personal
lives, and the intermingling of those lives--by the intermingling of
their blood--while in their temporary grave; in order to their rising
again with a common life[71]--one life, one soul, in two bodies. Thus
it is told, in one of the Icelandic Sagas, of Thorstein, the heroic son
of Viking, proffering “foster-brotherhood,” or blood-friendship, to the
valiant Angantyr, Jarl of the Orkneys. “Then this was resolved upon,
and secured by firm pledges on both sides. They opened a vein in the
hollow of their hands, crept beneath the sod, and there [with clasped
hands inter-blood-flowing] they solemnly swore that each of them should
avenge the other if any one of them should be slain by weapons.” This
was, in fact, a three-fold covenant of blood; for King Bele, who had
just been in combat with Angantyr, was already in blood-friendship with
Thorstein.[72]
The rite of blood-friendship, in one form and another finds frequent
mention in the Norseland Sagas. Thus, in the Saga of Fridthjof the
Bold, the son of Thorstein:
“Champions twelve, too, had he--gray-haired, and princes in
exploits,--
Comrades his father had loved, steel-breasted and scarred o’er the
forehead.
Last on the champions’ bench, equal-aged with Fridthjof, a stripling
Sat, like a rose among withered leaves; Bjorn called they the hero--
Glad as a child, but firm like a man, and yet wise as a graybeard;
Up with Fridthjof he’d grown; they had mingled blood with each
other,
Foster-brothers in Northman wise; and they swore to continue
Steadfast in weal and woe, each other revenging in battle.”[73]
A vestige of this primitive rite, coming down to us through European
channels, is found, as are so many other traces of primitive rites,
in the inherited folk-lore of English-speaking children on both sides
of the Atlantic. An American clergyman’s wife said recently, on this
point: “I remember, that while I was a school-girl, it was the custom,
when one of our companions pricked her finger, so that the blood came,
for one or another of us to say ‘Oh, let me suck the blood; then we
shall be friends.’” And that is but an illustration of the outreaching
after this indissoluble bond, on the part of thirty generations
of children of Norseland and Anglo-Saxon stock, since the days of
Fridthjof and Bjorn; as that same yearning had been felt by those of a
hundred generations before that time.
5. WORLD-WIDE SWEEP OF THE RITE.
Concerning traces of the rite of blood-covenanting in China, where
there are to be found fewest resemblances to the primitive customs of
the Asiatic Semites, Dr. Yung Wing, the eminent Chinese educationalist
and diplomat, gives me the following illustration: “In the year 1674,
when Kănhi was Emperor, of the present dynasty, we find that the
Buddhist priests of Shanlin Monastery in Fuhkin Province had rebelled
against the authorities on account of persecution. In their encounters
with the troops, they fought against great odds, and were finally
defeated and scattered in different provinces, where they organized
centres of the Triad Society, which claims an antiquity dated as far
back as the Freemasons of the West. Five of these priests fled to the
province of Hakwong, and there, Chin Kinnan, a member of the Hanlin
College, who was degraded from office by his enemies, joined them; and
it is said that they drank blood, and took the oath of brotherhood, to
stand by each other in life or death.”
Along the southwestern border of the Chinese Empire, in Burmah, this
rite of blood-friendship is still practiced; as may be seen from
illustrations of it, which are given in the Appendix of this work.
In his History of Madagascar, the Rev. William Ellis, tells of this
rite as he observed it in that island, and as he learned of it from
Borneo. He says:
“Another popular engagement in use among the Malagasy is that of
forming brotherhoods, which though not peculiar to them, is one of
the most remarkable usages of the country.... Its object is to cement
two individuals in the bonds of most sacred friendship.... More than
two may thus associate, if they please; but the practice is usually
limited to that number, and rarely embraces more than three or four
individuals. It is called _fatridá_, _i. e._, ‘dead blood,’ either
because the oath is taken over the blood of a fowl killed for the
occasion, or because a small portion of blood is drawn from each
individual, when thus pledging friendship, and drunk by those to
whom friendship is pledged, with execrations of vengeance on each
other in case of violating the sacred oath. To obtain the blood, a
slight incision is made in the skin covering the centre of the bosom,
significantly called _ambavafo_, ‘the mouth of the heart.’ Allusion is
made to this, in the formula of this tragi-comical ceremony.
“When two or more persons have agreed on forming this bond of
fraternity, a suitable place and hour are determined upon, and some
gunpowder and a ball are brought, together with a small quantity of
ginger, a spear, and two particular kinds of grass. A fowl also is
procured; its head is nearly cut off; and it is left in this state to
continue bleeding during the ceremony.[74]
“The parties then pronounce a long form of imprecation, and [a]
mutual vow, to this effect:--‘Should either of us prove disloyal to
the sovereign, or unfaithful to each other,[75] then perish the day,
and perish the night.[76] Awful is that, solemn is that, which we
are now both about to perform! O the mouth of the heart!--this is to
be cut, and we shall drink each other’s blood. O this ball! O this
powder! O this ginger! O this fowl weltering in its blood!--it shall be
killed, it shall be put to excruciating agonies,--it shall be killed
by us, it shall be speared at this corner of the hearth (Alakaforo
or Adimizam, S. W.) And whoever would seek to kill or injure us, to
injure our wives, or our children, to waste our money or our property;
or if either of us should seek to do what would not be approved of
by the king or by the people; should one of us deceive the other by
making that which is unjust appear just; should one accuse the other
falsely; should either of us with our wives and children be lost and
reduced to slavery, (forbid that such should be our lot!)--then, that
good may arise out of evil, we follow this custom of the people; and
we do it for the purpose of assisting one another with our families,
if lost in slavery, by whatever property either of us may possess; for
our wives are as one to us, and each other’s children as his own,[77]
and our riches as common property. O the mouth of the heart! O the
ball! O the powder! O the ginger! O this miserable fowl weltering in
its blood!--thy liver do we eat, thy liver do we eat. And should
either of us retract from the terms of this oath, let him instantly
become a fool, let him instantly become blind, let this covenant
prove a curse to him: let him not be a human being: let there be no
heir to inherit after him, but let him be reduced, and float with the
water never to see its source; let him never obtain; what is out of
doors, may it never enter; and what is within may it never go out;
the little obtained, may he be deprived of it;[78] and let him never
obtain justice from the sovereign nor from the people! But if we keep
and observe this covenant, let these things bear witness.[79] O mouth
of the heart! (repeating as before),--may this cause us to live long
and happy with our wives and our children; may we be approved by the
sovereign, and beloved by the people; may we get money, may we obtain
property, cattle, &c.; may we marry wives, (_vady kely_); may we have
good robes, and wear a good piece of cloth on our bodies;[80] since,
amidst our toils and labor, these are the things we seek after.[81] And
this we do that we may with all fidelity assist each other to the last.’
“The incision is then made, as already mentioned; a small quantity of
blood [is] extracted and drank by the covenanting parties respectively,
[they] saying as they take it, ‘These are our last words, We will
be like rice and water;[82] in town they do not separate, and in
the fields they do not forsake one another; we will be as the right
and left hand of the body; if one be injured, the other necessarily
sympathizes and suffers with it.’”[83]
Speaking of the terms and the influence of this covenant, in
Madagascar, Mr. Ellis says, that while absolute community of all
worldly possessions is not a literal fact on the part of these
blood-friends, “the engagement involves a sort of moral obligation
for one to assist the other in every extremity.” “However devoid of
meaning,” he adds, “some part of the ceremony of forming [this]
brotherhood may appear, and whatever indications of barbarity of
feeling may appear in others, it is less exceptionable than many [of
the rites] that prevail among the people.... So far as those who have
resided in the country have observed its effects, they appear almost
invariably to have been safe to the community, and beneficial to the
individuals by whom the compact was formed.”
Yet again, this covenant of blood-friendship is found in different
parts of Borneo. In the days of Mr. Ellis, the Rev. W. Medhurst,
a missionary of the London Missionary Society, in Java, described
it, in reporting a visit made to the Dayaks of Borneo, by one of
his assistants together with a missionary of the Rhenish Missionary
Society.[84]
Telling of the kindly greeting given to these visitors at a place
called Golong, he says that the natives wished “to establish a
fraternal agreement with the missionaries, on condition that the latter
should teach them the ways of God. The travelers replied, that if the
Dayaks became the disciples of Christ, they would be constituted the
brethren of Christ without any formal compact. The Dayaks, however,
insisted that the travelers should enter into a compact [with them],
according to the custom of the country, by means of blood. The
missionaries were startled at this, thinking that the Dayaks meant to
murder them, and committed themselves to their Heavenly Father, praying
that, whether living or dying, they might lie at the feet of their
Saviour. It appears, however, that it is the custom of the Dayaks, when
they enter into a covenant, to draw a little blood from the arms of the
covenanting parties, and, having mixed it with water, each to drink,
in this way, the blood of the other.
“Mr. Barenstein [one of the missionaries] having consented [for both]
to the ceremony, they all took off their coats, and two officers came
forward with small knives, to take a little blood out of the arm of
each of them [the two missionaries and two Dayak chiefs]. This being
mixed together in four glasses of water, they drank, severally, each
from the glass of the other; after which they joined hands and kissed.
The people then came forward, and made obeisance to the missionaries,
as the friends of the Dayak King, crying out with loud voices, ‘Let us
be friends and brethren forever; and may God help the Dayaks to obtain
the knowledge of God from the missionaries!’ The two chiefs then said,
‘Brethren, be not afraid to dwell with us; for we will do you no harm;
and if others wish to hurt you, we will defend you with our life’s
blood, and die ourselves ere you be slain. God be witness, and this
whole assembly be witness, that this is true.’ Whereupon the whole
company shouted, _Balaak!_ or ‘Good,’ ‘Be it so.’”
Yet another method of observing this rite, is reported from among
the Kayans of Borneo; quite a different people from the Dayaks. Its
description is from the narrative of Mr. Spenser St. John, as follows:
“Siñgauding [a Kayan chief] sent on board to request me to become his
brother, by going through the sacred custom of imbibing each other’s
blood. I say imbibing, because it is either mixed with water and drunk,
or else is placed within a native cigar, and drawn in with the smoke. I
agreed to do so, and the following day was fixed for the ceremony. It
is called _Berbiang_ by the Kayans; _Bersabibah_, by the Borneans [the
Dayaks]. I landed with our party of Malays, and after a preliminary
talk, to allow the population to assemble, the affair commenced....
Stripping my left arm, Kum Lia took a small piece of wood, shaped like
a knife-blade, and, slightly piercing the skin, brought blood to the
surface; this he carefully scraped off. Then one of my Malays drew
blood in the same way from Siñgauding; and, a small cigarette being
produced, the blood on the wooden blade was spread on the tobacco. A
chief then arose, and, walking to an open place, looked forth upon the
river, and invoked their god and all the spirits of good and evil to
be witness of this tie of brotherhood. The cigarette [blood-stained]
was then lighted, and each of us took several puffs [receiving each
other’s blood by inhalation], and the ceremony was over.”[85] This
is a new method of smoking the “pipe of peace”--or, the cigarette of
inter-union! Borneo, indeed, furnishes many illustrations of primitive
customs, both social and religious.
One of the latest and most venturesome explorers of North Borneo was
the gallant and lamented Frank Hatton, a son of the widely known
international journalist, Joseph Hatton. In a sketch of his son’s
life-work, the father says[86]: “His was the first white foot in
many of the hitherto unknown villages of Borneo; in him many of the
wild tribes saw the first white man.... Speaking the language of the
natives, and possessing that special faculty of kindly firmness so
necessary to the efficient control of uncivilized peoples, he journeyed
through the strange land not only unmolested, but frequently carrying
away tokens of native affection. Several powerful chiefs made him their
‘blood-brother’; and here and there the tribes prayed to him as if he
were a god.” It would seem from the description of Mr. Hatton, that, in
some instances, in Borneo, the blood-covenanting is by the substitute
blood of a fowl held by the two parties to the covenant, while its head
is cut off by a third person; without any drinking of each other’s
blood by those who enter into the covenant. Yet however this may be,
the other method still prevails there.
Another recent traveler in the Malay Archipelago, who, also, is a
trained and careful observer, tells of this rite, as he found it in
Timor, and other islands of that region, among a people who represent
the Malays, the Papuan, and the Polynesian races. His description is:
“The ceremony of blood-brotherhood, ... or the swearing of eternal
friendship, is of an interesting nature, and is celebrated often by
fearful orgies [excesses of the communion idea], especially when
friendship is being made between families, or tribes, or kingdoms. The
ceremony is the same in substance whether between two individuals, or
[between] large companies. The contracting parties slash their arms,
and collect the blood into a bamboo, into which _kanipa_ (coarse gin)
or _laru_ (palm wine) is poured. Having provided themselves with a
small fig-tree (_halik_) they adjourn to some retired spot, taking with
them the sword and spear from the _Luli_ chamber [the sacred room] of
their own houses if between private individuals, or from the _Uma-Luli_
of their _suku_ [the sacred building of their village] if between large
companies. Planting there the fig-tree, flanked by the sacred sword and
spear, they hang on it a bamboo-receptacle, into which--after pledging
each other in a portion of the mixed blood and gin--the remainder [of
that mixture] is poured. Then each swears, ‘If I be false, and be not a
true friend, may my blood issue from my mouth, ears, nose, as it does
from this bamboo!’--the bottom of the receptacle being pricked at the
same moment, to allow the blood and gin to escape. The [blood-stained]
tree remains and grows as a witness of their contract.”
Of the close and binding nature of this blood-compact, among the
Timorese, the observer goes on to say: “It is one of their most sacred
oaths, and [is] almost never, I am told, violated; at least between
individuals.” As to its limitless force and scope, he adds: “One
brother [one of these brother-friends in the covenant of blood] coming
to another brother’s house, is in every respect regarded as free [to
do as he pleases], and [is] as much at home as its owner. Nothing
is withheld from him; even his friend’s wife is not denied him, and
a child born of such a union would be recognized by the husband as
_his_; [for are not--as _they_ reason--these brother-friends of _one
blood_--of one and the same life?]”[87]
The covenant of blood-friendship has been noted also among the native
races of both North and South America. A writer of three centuries
ago, told of it as among the aborigines of Yucatan. “When the Indians
of Pontonchan,” he said, “receive new friends [covenant in a new
friendship] ... as a proof of [their] friendship, they [mutually,
each], in the sight of the friend, draw some blood ... from the tongue,
hand, or arm, or from some other part [of the body].”[88] And this
ceremony is said to have formed “a compact for life.”[89]
In Brazil, the Indians were said to have a rite of brotherhood so close
and sacred that, as in the case of the Bed´ween beyond the Jordan,[90]
its covenanting parties were counted as of one blood; so that marriage
between those thus linked would be deemed incestuous. “There was a word
in their language to express a friend who was loved like a brother; it
is written _Atourrassap_ [‘erroneously, beyond a doubt,’ adds Southey,
‘because their speech is without the _r_’]. They who called each other
by this name, had all things in common; the tie was held to be as
sacred as that of consanguinity, and one could not marry the daughter
or sister of the other.”[91]
A similar tie of adopted brotherhood, or of close and sacred
friendship, is recognized among the North American Indians. Writing
of the Dakotas, or the Sioux, Dr. Riggs, the veteran missionary and
scholar, says: “Where one Dakota takes another as his _koda_, i. e.,
god, or friend, [Think of that, for sacredness of union--‘god, or
friend’!] they become brothers in each other’s families, and are, as
such, of course unable to intermarry.”[92] And Burton, the famous
traveler, who made this same tribe a study, says of the Dakotas: “They
are fond of adoption, and of making brotherhoods like the Africans
[Burton is familiar with the customs of African tribes]; and so strong
is the tie that marriage with the sister of an adopted brother is
within the prohibited degree.”[93]
Among the people of the Society Islands, and perhaps also among those
of other South Sea Islands, the term _tayo_ is applied to an attached
personal friend, in a peculiar relation of intimacy. The formal
ceremony of brotherhood, whereby one becomes the tayo of another,
in these islands, I have not found described; but the closeness and
sacredness of the relation, as it is held by many of the natives, would
seem to indicate the inter-mingling of blood in the covenanting, now
or in former times. The early missionaries to those islands, speaking
of the prevalent unchastity there, make this exception: “If a person
is a tayo of the husband, he must indulge in no liberties with the
sisters or the daughters, because they are considered as _his own_
sisters or daughters; and incest is held in abhorrence by them; nor
will any temptations engage them to violate this bond of purity. The
wife, however, is excepted, and considered as common property for the
tayo.[94] Lieutenant Corner [a still earlier voyager] also added,
that a tayoship formed between different sexes put the most solemn
barrier against all personal liberties.”[95] Here is evidenced that
same view of the absolute oneness of nature through a oneness of blood,
which shows itself among the Semites of Syria,[96] among the Malays of
Timor,[97] and among the Indians of America.[98]
And so this close and sacred covenant relation, this rite of
blood-friendship, this inter-oneness of life by an inter-oneness
of blood, shows itself in the primitive East, and in the wild and
pre-historic West; in the frozen North, as in the torrid South. Its
traces are everywhere. It is of old, and it is of to-day; as universal
and as full of meaning as life itself.
It will be observed that we have already noted proofs of the
independent existence of this rite of blood-brotherhood, or
blood-friendship, among the three great primitive divisions of the
race--the Semitic, the Hamitic, and the Japhetic; and this in Asia,
Africa, Europe, America, and the Islands of the Sea; again, among the
five modern and more popular divisions of the human family: Caucasian,
Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malay, and American. This fact in itself would
seem to point to a common origin of its various manifestations, in the
early Oriental home of the now scattered peoples of the world. Many
references to this rite, in the pages of classic literature, seem to
have the same indicative bearing, as to its nature and primitive source.
6. LIGHT FROM THE CLASSICS.
Lucian, the bright Greek thinker, who was born and trained in the East,
writing in the middle of the second century of our era, is explicit
as to the nature and method of this covenant as then practised in the
East. In his “Toxaris or Friendship,”[99] Mnesippus the Greek, and
Toxaris the Scythian, are discussing friendship. Toxaris declares: “It
can easily be shown that Scythian friends are much more faithful than
Greek friends; and that friendship is esteemed more highly among us
than among you.” Then Toxaris goes on to say[100]: “But first I wish
to tell you in what manner we [in Scythia] make friends; not in our
drinking bouts as you do, nor simply because a man is of the same age
[as ourselves], or because he is our neighbor. But, on the contrary,
when we see a good man, and one capable of great deeds, to him we all
hasten, and (as you do in the case of marrying, so we think it right
to do in the case of our friends) we court him, and we [who would be
friends] do all things together, so that we may not offend against
friendship, or seem worthy to be rejected. And whenever one decides to
be a friend, we [who would join in the covenant] make the greatest of
all oaths, to live with one another, and to die, if need be, the one
for the other. And this is the manner of it: Thereupon, cutting our
fingers, all simultaneously, we let the blood drop into a vessel, and
having dipped the points of our swords into it, both [of us] holding
them together,[101] we drink it. There is nothing which can loose us
from one another after that.”
Yet a little earlier than Lucian, Tacitus, foremost among Latin
historians, gives record of this rite of blood-brotherhood as practised
in the East. He is telling, in his Annals, of Rhadamistus, leader of
the Iberians, who pretends to seek a covenant with Mithradates, King of
the Armenians (yet farther east than Scythia), which should make firm
the peace between the two nations, “_diis testibus_,” “the gods being
witnesses.” Here Tacitus makes an explanation:[102] “It is the custom
of [Oriental] kings, as often as they come together to make covenant,
to join right hands, to tie the thumbs together, and to tighten them
with a knot. Then, when the blood is [thus] pressed to the finger tips,
they draw blood by a light stroke, and lick[103] it in turn. This they
regard as a divine[104] covenant, made sacred as it were, by mutual
blood [or blended lives].”
There are several references, by classical writers, to this
blood-friendship, or to this blood-covenanting, in connection with
Catiline’s conspiracy against the Roman Republic. Sallust, the
historian of that conspiracy, says: “There were those at that time
who said that Catiline, at this conference [with his accomplices]
when he inducted them into the oath of partnership in crime, carried
round in goblets human blood, mixed with wine; and that after all
had tasted of it, with an imprecatory oath, as is men’s wont in
solemn rites [in “_Sharb el ’Ahd_,”[105] as the Arabs would say] he
opened to them his plans.”[106] Florus, a later Latin historian,
describing this conspiracy, says: “There was added the pledge of the
league,--human blood,--which they drank as it was borne round to them
in goblets.”[107] And yet later, Tertullian suggests that it was
their own blood, mingled with wine, of which the fellow-conspirators
drank together. “Concerning the eating of blood and other such tragic
dishes,” he says, “you read (I do not know where), that blood drawn
from the arms, and tasted by one another, was the method of making
covenant among certain nations. I know not but that under Catiline such
blood was tasted.”[108]
In the Pitti Palace, in Florence, there is a famous painting of the
conspiracy of Catiline, by Salvator Rosa; it is, indeed, Salvator
Rosa’s masterpiece, in the line of historical painting. This painting
represents the covenanting by blood. Two conspirators stand face
to face, their right hands clasped above a votive altar. The bared
right arm of each is incised, a little below the elbow. The blood is
streaming from the arm of one, into a cup which he holds, with his left
hand, to receive it; while the dripping arm of the other conspirator
shows that his blood has already flowed into the commingling cup.[109]
The uplifted hand of the daysman between the conspirators seems to
indicate the imprecatory vows which the two are assuming, in the
presence of the gods, and of the witnesses who stand about the altar.
This is a clear indication of the traditional form of covenanting
between Catiline and his fellow conspirators.
As far back, even, as the fifth century before Christ, we find an
explicit description of this Oriental rite of blood-covenanting,
in the writings of “the Father of History.” “Now the Scythians,”
says Herodotus,[110] “make covenants in the following manner, with
whomsoever they make them. Having poured out wine into a great earthen
drinking-bowl, they mingle with it the blood of those cutting covenant,
striking the body [of each person having a part in it] with a small
knife, or cutting it slightly with a sword. Thereafter, they dip into
the bowl, sword, arrows, axe, and javelin.[111] But while they are
doing this, they utter many invokings [of curse upon a breach of this
covenant];[112] and, afterwards, not only those who make the covenant,
but those of their followers who are of the highest rank, drink off
[the wine mingled with blood].”
Again Herodotus says of this custom, in his day[113]: “Now the Arabians
reverence in a very high degree pledges between man and man. They make
these pledges in the following way. When they wish to make pledges to
one another, a third man, standing in the midst of the two, cuts with a
sharp stone the inside of the hands along the thumbs of the two making
the pledges. After that, plucking some woolen floss from the garments
of each of the two, he anoints with the blood seven stones [as the
“heap of witness”[114]] which are set in the midst. While he is doing
this he invokes Dionysus and Urania. When this rite is completed, he
that has made the pledges [to one from without] introduces the [former]
stranger to his friends[115]--or the fellow citizen [to his fellows] if
the rite was performed with a fellow-citizen.”
Thus it is clear, that the rite of blood-brotherhood, or of
blood-friendship, which is to-day a revered form of sacred covenanting
in the unchangeable East, was recognized as an established custom
among Oriental peoples twenty-three centuries ago. Its beginning must
certainly have been prior to that time; if not indeed long prior.
An indication of the extreme antiquity of this rite would seem to be
shown in a term employed in its designation by the Romans, early in our
Christian era; when both the meaning and the origin of the term itself
were already lost in the dim past. Festus,[116] a writer, of fifteen
centuries or more ago, concerning Latin antiquities, is reported[117]
as saying, of this drink of the covenant of blood: “A certain kind
of drink, of mingled wine and blood, was called _assiratum_ by the
ancients; for the ancient Latins called blood, _assir_.” Our modern
lexicons give this isolated claim, made by Festus, of the existence
of any such word as “assir” signifying “blood,” in “the ancient Latin
language;”[118] and some of them try to show the possibilities of its
origin;[119] but no convincing proof of any such word and meaning in
the Latin can be found.
Turning, however, to the languages of the East, where the binding vow
of blood-friendship was pledged in the drink of wine and blood, or of
blood alone, from time immemorial, we have no difficulty in finding the
meaning of “assir.” _Asar_ (אָסַר) is a common Hebrew word, signifying
“to bind together”--as in a mutual covenant. _Issar_ (אִסָּר), again,
is a vow of self-renunciation. Thus we have _Asar issar ’al nephesh_
(נֶפֶשׁ עַל אִסָּר אָסַר) “To bind a self-devoting vow upon one’s
life”[120]--upon one’s blood; “for the blood is the life.”[121] In
the Arabic, also, _asara_ (اسر) means “to bind,” or “to tie”; while
_asar_ (اسر) is “a covenant,” or “a compact”; and _aswâr_ (اسوار) is “a
bracelet”; which in itself is “a band,” and may be “a fetter.”[122] So,
again, in the Assyrian, _esiru_ ([Illustration]) is in its root form “to
bind”; and as a substantive it is “a bracelet,” or “a fetter.”[123] The
Syriac gives _esar_ ([Illustration]), “a bond,” or “a belt.”[124] All
these, with the root idea, “to bind”--as a covenant binds. In the light
of these disclosures, it is easy to see how the “issar” or the “assar,”
when it was a covenant of blood, came to be counted by the Latins the
blood which was a covenant.
7. THE BOND OF THE COVENANT.
Just here it may be well to emphasize the fact, that, from time
immemorial, and the world over, the armlet, the bracelet, and the
ring, have been counted the symbols of a boundless bond between
giver and receiver; the tokens of a mutual, unending covenant.
Possibly,--probably, as I think,--this is in consequence of
the primitive custom of binding, as an amulet, the enclosed
record--enclosed in the “house of the amulet”[125]--of the covenant
of blood on the arm of either participant in that rite; possibly,
again, it is an outgrowth of the common root idea of a covenant and a
bracelet, as a binding agency.
Blood-covenanting and bracelet-binding seem--as already shown--to be
intertwined in the _languages_ of the Oriental progenitors of the race.
There are, likewise, indications of this intertwining in the _customs_
of peoples, East and West. For example, in India, where blood-shedding
is peculiarly objectionable, the gift and acceptance of a bracelet is
an ancient covenant-tie, seemingly akin to blood-brotherhood. Of this
custom, an Indian authority says: “Amongst the rajput races of India
the women adopt a brother by the gift of a bracelet. The intrinsic
value of such pledges is never looked to, nor is it necessary that
it should be costly, though it varies with the means and rank of the
donor, and may be of flock silk and spangles, or of gold chains and
gems. The acceptance of the pledge is by the ‘_katchli_’, or corset,
of simple silk or satin, or gold brocade and pearls. Colonel Tod was
the _Rakhi-bund Bhai_ [the Bracelet-bound Brother] of the three queens
of Oodipur, Bundi, and Kotch; as also of Chund-Bai, the maiden sister
of the Rana, and of many ladies of the chieftains of rank. Though the
bracelet may be sent by maidens, it is only on occasions of urgent
necessity and danger. The adopted brother may hazard his life in his
adopted sister’s cause, and yet never receive a mite in reward; for he
cannot even see the fair object; who, as brother of her adoption, has
constituted him her defender.”[126]
“The ... ‘Bracelet-bound Brother,’ feels himself called upon to
espouse the cause of the lady from whom he has received the gift, and
to defend her against all her enemies, whenever she shall demand his
assistance.” Thus, the Great Mogul, Hoomâyoon, father of the yet more
celebrated Akbar, was in his early life bound, and afterwards loyally
recognized his binding, as “the sworn knight of one of the princesses
of Rajasthan, who, according to the custom of her country, secured
the sword of the prince in her service by the gift of a bracelet.”
When he had a throne of his own to care for, this princess, Kurnivati,
being besieged at Cheetore, sent to Hoomâyoon, then prosecuting a
vigorous campaign in Bengal; and he, as in duty bound, “instantly
obeyed the summons”; and although he was not in season to rescue her,
he “evinced his fidelity by avenging the fall of the city.”[127] It
is noteworthy, just here, that the Oriental biographer of the Mogul
Akbar calls attention to the fact, that while the Persians describe
close friendship as chiefly subsisting between men, “in Hindostan it is
celebrated between man and woman”;[128] as indeed, it is among the Arab
tribes East of the Jordan.[129]
In the Norseland, an oath of fidelity was taken on a ring, or a
bracelet, kept in the temple of the gods; and the gift and acceptance
of a bracelet, or a ring, was a common symbol of a covenant of
fidelity. Thus, in “Hávamál,” the high song of Odin, we find:
“Odin, I believe,
A ring-oath gave.
Who, in his faith will trust?”
And in “Viga Glum’s Saga,” it is related: “In the midst of a wedding
party, Glum calls upon Thorarin, his accuser, to hear his oath, and
taking in his hand a silver ring which had been dipped in sacrificial
blood, he cites two witnesses to testify to his oath on the ring, and
to his having appealed to the gods in his denial of the charge made
against him.” In the “Saga of Fridthjof the Bold,” when Fridthjof is
bidding farewell to his beloved Ingeborg, he covenants fidelity to her
by the gift of
“An _arm-ring_, all over famous;
Forged by the halting Volund, ’twas,--the old North-story’s
Vulcan ...
Heaven was grav’d thereupon, with the twelve immortals’ strong
castles--
Signs of the changing months, but the skald had Sun-houses named
them.”
As Fridthjof gave this pledge to Ingeborg, he said:
“Forget me never; and,
In sweet remembrance of our youthful love,
This arm-ring take; a fair Volunder-work,
With all heaven’s wonders carved i’ th’ shining gold.
Ah! the best wonder is a faithful heart ...
How prettily becomes it thy white arm--
A glow-worm twining round a lily stem.”
And the subsequent story of that covenanting arm-ring, fills thrilling
pages in Norseland lore.[130]
Yet again, in the German cycle of the “Nibelungen Lied,” Gotelind, the
wife of Sir Rudeger, gives bracelets to the warrior-bard Folker, to
bind him as her knightly champion in the court of King Etzel, to which
he goes. Her jewel casket is brought to her.
“From this she took twelve bracelets, and drew them o’er his hand;
‘These you must take, and with you bear hence to Etzel’s land,
And for the sake of Gotelind the same at court must wear,
That I may learn, when hither again you all repair,
What service you have done me in yon assembly bright.’
The lady’s wish thereafter full well perform’d the knight.”
And when the fight waxed sore at the court of Etzel, the daring
and dying Folker called on Sir Rudeger, to bear witness to his
bracelet-bound fidelity:
“For me, most noble margrave! you must a message bear;
These bracelets red were given me late by your lady fair,
To wear at this high festal before the royal Hun.
View them thyself, and tell her that I’ve her bidding done.”[131]
It would, indeed, seem, that from this root-idea of the binding force
of an endless covenant, symbolized in the form, and in the primitive
name, of the bracelet, the armlet, the ring,--there has come down to
us the use of the wedding-ring, or the wedding-bracelet, and of the
signet-ring as the seal of the most sacred covenants. The signet-ring
appears in earliest history. When Pharaoh would exalt Joseph over all
the land of Egypt, “Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put
it upon Joseph’s hand.”[132] Similarly with Ahasuerus and Haman: “The
king took his ring from his hand, and gave it unto Haman;” and the
irrevocable decrees when written were “sealed with the king’s ring.”
When again Haman was deposed and Mordecai was exalted, “the king
took off his ring, which he had taken from Haman, and gave it unto
Mordecai.”[133] The re-instatement of the prodigal son, in the parable,
was by putting “a ring on his hand.”[134] And these illustrations out
of ancient Egypt, Persia, and Syria, indicate a world-wide custom, so
far. One’s signet-ring stood for his very self, and represented, thus,
his blood, as his life.
The use of rings, or bracelets, or armlets, in the covenant of
betrothal, or of marriage, is from of old, and it is of wide-spread
acceptance.[135] References to it are cited from Pliny, Tertullian,
Juvenal, Isidore; and traces of it are found, earlier or later, among
the peoples of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Islands of the Sea. In
Iceland, the covenanting-ring was large enough for the palm of the hand
to be passed through; so, in betrothal “the bridegroom passed four
fingers and his palm through one of these rings, and in this manner he
received the hand of the bride.” In Ireland, long ago, “a usual gift
from a woman to her betrothed husband was a pair of bracelets made of
her own hair”; as if a portion of her very self--as in the case of
one’s blood--entered into the covenant rite. Again in Ireland, as also
among the old Romans, the wedding-ring was in the form of two hands
clasped (called a “_fede_”) in token of union and fidelity.
Sometimes, in England, the wedding-ring was worn upon the thumb, as
extant portraits illustrate; and as suggested in Butler’s Hudibras:
“Others were for abolishing
That tool of matrimony, a ring,
With which the unsanctify’d bridegroom
Is marry’d only to a thumb.”
In Southern’s “Maid’s Last Prayer,” the heroine says: “Marry him
I must, and wear my wedding-ring upon my thumb too, that I’m
resolved.”[136] These thumb-weddings were said to be introduced from
the East[137]; and Chardin reports a form of marriage in Ceylon, by the
binding together of the thumbs of the contracting parties;[138] as,
according to the classics, the thumbs were bound together in the rite
of blood-covenanting.[139] Indeed, the selection of the ring-finger
for the wedding-covenant has commonly been attributed to the relation
of that finger to the heart as the blood-centre, and as the seat of
life. “Aulus Gellius tells us, that Appianus asserts, in his Egyptian
books, that a very delicate nerve runs from the fourth finger of the
left hand to the heart, on which account this finger is used for the
marriage-ring.” Macrobius says that in Roman espousals the woman put
the covenant ring “on the third finger of her left hand [not counting
the thumb], because it was believed that a nerve ran from that finger
to the heart.” And as to the significance of this point, it has been
said: “The _fact_ [of the nerve connection with the heart] has nothing
to do with the question: that the ancients _believed_ it, is all we
require to know.”[140]
Among the Copts of Egypt, both the blood and the ring have their part
in the covenant of marriage. Two rings are employed, one for the bride
and one for the bridegroom. At the door of the bridegroom’s house, as
the bride approaches it, a lamb or a sheep is slaughtered; and the
bride must have a care to step over the covenanting-blood as she enters
the door, to join the bridegroom. It is after this ceremony, that the
two contracting parties exchange the rings, which are as the tokens
of the covenant of blood.[141] In Borneo, among the Tring Dayaks,
the marriage ceremony includes the smearing with a bloody sword, the
clasped hands of the bride and groom, in conjunction with an invoking
of the protecting spirits.[142] In this case, the wedding-ring would
seem to be a bond of blood.
Again, in Little Russia, the bride gives to the bridegroom a
covenanting draught in “a cup of wine, in which a ring has been
put”;[143] as if in that case the wine and the blood-bond of the
covenant were commingled in a true _assiratum_.[144] That this latter
custom is an ancient one, would seem to be indicated by the indirect
reference to it in Sir Walter Scott’s ballad of “The Noble Moringer,” a
mediæval lay; where the long absent knight returns from the Holy Land,
just in time to be at the wedding-feast of his enticed wife. He appears
unrecognized at the feast, as a poor palmer. A cup of wine is sent to
him by the bride.
“It was the noble Moringer that dropped amid the wine
A bridal ring of burning gold so costly and so fine:
Now listen, gentles, to my song, it tells you but the sooth,
’Twas with that very ring of gold he pledged his bridal truth.”
Clearly this was not the ring he gave at his bridal, but the one which
he accepted, in the covenanting-cup, from his bride. The cup was
carried back from the palmer to the bride, for her drinking.
“The ring hath caught the Lady’s eye; she views it close and near;
Then might you hear her shriek aloud, ‘The Moringer is here!’
Then might you see her start from seat, while tears in torrents
fell;
But whether ’twas from joy or woe, the ladies best can tell.”
To the present day, an important ceremony at the coronation of a
sovereign of Great Britain, is the investiture of the sovereign _per
annulum_, or “by the ring.” The ring is placed on the fourth finger of
the sovereign’s right hand, by the Archbishop of Canterbury; and it is
called “The Wedding Ring of England,” as it symbolizes the covenant
union of the sovereign and his people. A similar practice prevails at
the coronation of European sovereigns generally. It also runs back to
the days of the early Roman emperors, and of Alexander the Great.[145]
That a ring, or a circlet, worn around a thumb, or a finger, or an
arm, in token of an endless covenant between its giver and receiver,
has been looked upon, in all ages, as the symbol of an inter-union
of the lives thereby brought together, is unmistakable; whether the
covenanting life-blood be drawn for such inter-commingling, directly
from the member so encircled, or not. The very covenant itself, or its
binding force, has been sometimes thought to depend on the circlet
representing it; as if the life which was pledged passed into the token
of its pledging. Thus Lord Bacon says: “It is supposed [to be] a help
to the continuance of love, to wear a ring or bracelet of the person
beloved;”[146] and he suggests that “a trial should be made by two
persons, of the effect of compact and agreement; that a ring should
be put on for each other’s sake, to try whether, if one should break
his promise the other would have any feeling of it in his absence.”
In other words, that the test should be made, to see whether the
inter-union of lives symbolized by the covenant-token be a reality.
On this idea it is, that many persons are unwilling to remove the
wedding-ring from the finger, while the compact holds.[147]
It is not improbable, indeed, that the armlets, or bracelets, which
were found on the arms of Oriental kings, and of Oriental divinities
as well, were intended to indicate, or to symbolize, the personal
inter-union claimed to exist between those kings and divinities. Thus
an armlet, worn by Thotmes III., is preserved in the museum at Leyden.
It bears the cartouche of the King, having on it his sacred name, with
its reference to his inter-union with his god. It was much the same in
Nineveh.[148] Lane says, that upon the seal ring commonly worn by the
modern Egyptian “is engraved the wearer’s name,” and that this name
“is usually accompanied by the words ‘His servant’ (signifying ‘the
servant, or worshiper of God’), and often by other words expressive of
the person’s trust in God.”[149]
As the token of the blood-covenant is sometimes fastened about the
_arm_, and sometimes about the _neck_; so the encircling necklace, as
well as the encircling armlet, is sometimes counted the symbol of a
covenant of very life. This is peculiarly the case in India; where the
bracelet-brotherhood has been shown to be an apparent equivalent of
the blood-brotherhood. Among the folk-lore stories of India, it is a
common thing to hear of a necklace which holds the soul of the wearer.
That necklace removed, the wearer dies. That necklace restored, the
wearer lives again. “Sodewa Bai was born with a golden necklace about
her neck, concerning which also her parents consulted astrologers, who
said, ‘This is no common child; the necklace of gold about her neck
contains your daughter’s soul; let it therefore be guarded with the
utmost care; for if it were taken off, and worn by another person, she
would die.’” On that necklace of life, the story hangs. The necklace
was stolen by a servant, and Sodewa Bai died. Being placed in a
canopied tomb, she revived, night by night, when the servant laid off
the stolen necklace which contained the soul of Sodewa Bai. The loss
was at last discovered by her husband; the necklace was restored to
her, and she lived again.[150] And this is but one story of many.
In the Brahman marriage ceremony the bridegroom receives his bride by
binding a covenanting necklace about her neck. “A small ornament of
gold, called _tahly_, which is the sign of their being actually in the
state of marriage, ... is fastened by a short string dyed yellow with
_saffron_.”[151] And a Sanskrit word for “saffron” is also a word for
“blood.”[152]
The importance of this symbolism of the token of the blood-covenant,
in its bearing on the root-idea of an inter-union of natures by an
inter-commingling of blood, will be more clearly shown, by and by.
8. THE RITE AND ITS TOKEN IN EGYPT.
Going back, now, to the world’s most ancient records, in the
monuments of Egypt, we find evidence of the existence of the covenant
of blood, in those early days. Even then, it seems to have been a
custom to covenant by tasting the blood from another’s arm; and this
inter-transference of blood was supposed to carry an inter-commingling,
or an inter-merging, of natures. So far was this symbolic thought
carried, that the ancient Egyptians spoke of the departed spirit, as
having entered into the nature, and, indeed, into the very being, of
the gods, by the rite of tasting blood from the divine arm.
“The Book of the Dead,” as it is commonly called, or “The Book of
the Going Forth into Day,”--(“The path of the just is as the shining
light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day,”[153])--is
a group, or series, of ancient Egyptian writings, representing the
state and the needs and the progress of the soul after death.[154]
A copy of this Funereal Ritual, as it is sometimes called, “more or
less complete, according to the fortune of the deceased, was deposited
in the case of every mummy.”[155] “As the Book of the Dead is the
most ancient, so it is undoubtedly the most important of the sacred
books of the Egyptians;”[156] it is, in fact, “according to Egyptian
notions, essentially an inspired work;”[157] hence its contents have an
exceptional dogmatic value. In this Book of the Dead, there are several
obvious references to the rite of blood-covenanting. Some of these are
in a chapter of the Ritual which was found transcribed in a coffin of
the Eleventh Dynasty; thus carrying it back to a period prior to the
days of Abraham.[158]
“Give me your arm; I am made as ye,” says the departed soul, speaking
to the gods.[159] Then, in explanation of this statement, the
pre-historic gloss of the Ritual goes on to say: “The blood is that
which proceeds from the member of the Sun, after he goes along cutting
himself;”[160] the covenant blood which unites the soul and the god is
drawn from the flesh of Rā, when he has cut himself in the rite of that
covenant. By this covenant-cutting, the deceased becomes one with the
covenanting gods. Again, the departed soul, speaking as Osiris,--or
as the Osirian, which every mummy represents,[161]--says: “I am the
soul in his two halves.” Once more there follows the explanation:
“The soul in his two halves is the soul of the Sun [of Rā], and the
soul of Osiris [of the deceased].” Here is substantially the proverb
of friendship cited by Aristotle, “One soul in two bodies,” at least
two thousand years before the days of the Greek philosopher. How much
earlier it was recognized, does not yet appear.
Again, when the deceased comes to the gateway of light, he speaks
of himself as linked with the great god Seb; as one “who loves his
arm,”[162] and who is, therefore, sure of admittance to him, within
the gates. By the covenant of the blood-giving arm, “the Osiris opens
the turning door; he has opened the turning door.” Through oneness of
blood, he has come into oneness of life, with the gods; there is no
longer the barrier of a door between them. The separating veil is rent.
An added indication that the covenant of blood-friendship furnished
the ancient Egyptians with their highest conception of a union with
the divine nature through an interflowing of the divine blood--as the
divine life--is found in the amulet of this covenant; corresponding
with the token of the covenant of blood-friendship, which, as fastened
to the arm, or about the neck, is deemed so sacred and so precious,
in the primitive East to-day. The hieroglyphic word, _tat_, _tet_, or
_tot_, ([Illustration]) translated “arm,” is also translated “bracelet,”
or “armlet,” ([Illustration])[163] as if in suggestion of the truth,
already referred to,[164] that the blood-furnishing arm was represented
by the token of the arm-encircling, or of the neck-encircling, bond,
in the covenant of blood. Moreover, a “red talisman,” or red amulet,
stained with “the blood of Isis,” and containing a record of the
covenant, was placed at the neck of the mummy as an assurance of safety
to his soul.[165] “When this book [this amulet-record] has been made,”
says the Ritual, “it causes Isis to protect him [the Osirian], and
Horus he rejoices to see him.” “If this book [this covenant-token] is
known,” says Horus, “he [the deceased] is in the service of Osiris....
His name is like that of the gods.”
There are various other references to this rite, or other indications
of its existence, than those already cited, in the Book of the Dead.
“I have welcomed Thoth (or the king) with blood; taking the gore from
the blessed of Seb,”[166] is one of these gleams. Again, there are
incidental mentions of the tasting of blood, by gods and by men;[167]
and of the proffering, or the uplifting, of the blood-filled arm, in
covenant with the gods.[168]
On a recently deciphered stéle of the days of Rameses IV., of the
Twentieth Dynasty, about twelve centuries before Christ, there is
an apparent reference to this blood-covenanting, and to its amulet
record. The inscription is a specimen of a funereal ritual, not unlike
some portions of the Book of the Dead. The deceased is represented
as saying, according to the translation of Piehl[169]: “I am become
familiar with Thoth, by his writings, on the day when he spat upon his
arm.” The Egyptian word, _khenmes_, here translated “familiar,” means
“united with,” or “joined with.” The word here rendered “writings,” is
_hetepoo_; which, in the singular, _hetep_, in the Book of Dead, stands
for the record of the covenant on the blood-stained amulet.[170] The
word _peqas_ ([Illustration]) rendered “spat,” by Piehl, is an obscure
term, variously rendered “moistened,” “washed,” “wiped,” “healed.”[171]
It is clear therefore that this passage may fairly be read: “I am
become united with Thoth, by the covenant-record, on the day when he
moistened, or healed his arm”; and if the arm were healed, it had
been cut, and so moistened. Indeed it is quite probable that this word
_peqas_ has a root connection with _peq_, _peqa_, _peqau_, “a gap,”
“an opening,” “to divide”; and even with _penqu_, ([Illustration]) “to
bleed.” Apparently, the unfamiliarity of Egyptologists with this rite
of blood-covenanting, by the cutting of the arm, has hindered the
recognition of the full force of many of the terms involved.
Ebers, in his “Uarda,” has incidentally given an illustration of the
custom of blood-covenanting in ancient Egypt. It is when the surgeon
Nebsecht has saved the life of Uarda, and her soldier-father, Kaschta,
would show his gratitude, and would pledge his life-long fidelity in
return.
“‘If at any time thou dost want help, call me, and I will protect thee
against twenty enemies. Thou hast saved my child--good! Life for life.
I sign myself thy blood-ally--there!’
“With these words he drew his poniard, out of his girdle. He scratched
his arm, and let a few drops of his blood run down on a stone at the
feet of Nebsecht.
“‘Look!’ he said. ‘There is my blood! Kaschta has signed himself thine;
and thou canst dispose of my life as of thine own. What I have said, I
have said.’”[172]
9. OTHER GLEAMS OF THE RITE.
In this last cited illustration, from Uarda, there would, at first
glance, seem to be the covenant proffered, rather than the covenant
entered into; the covenant all on one side, instead of the mutual
covenant. But this is, if it were possible, only a more unselfish
and a more trustful mode than the other, of covenanting by blood; of
pledging the life, by pledging the blood, to one who is already trusted
absolutely. And this mode of proffering the covenant of blood, or of
pledging one’s self in devotedness by the giving of one’s blood, is
still a custom in the East; as it has been in both the East and the
West, from time immemorial.
For example, in a series of illustrations of Oriental manners,
prepared under the direction of the French ambassador to Turkey, at
the beginning of the eighteenth century, there appears a Turkish lover
gashing his arm in the presence of his lady-love, as a proof of his
loving attachment to her; and the accompanying statement is made,
that the relative flow of blood thus devoted indicates the measure of
affection--or of affectionate devotedness.[173]
A custom akin to this was found in Otaheite, when the South Sea Islands
were first visited by English missionaries. The measure of love, in
time of joy or in time of grief, was indicated by the measure of blood
drawn from the person of the loving one. Particularly was this the case
with the women; perhaps because they, in Otaheite as elsewhere, are
more loving in their nature, and readier to give of their very life in
love.
“When a woman takes a husband,” says a historian of the first
missionary work in Otaheite, “she immediately provides herself with
a shark’s tooth, which is fixed, with the bread-fruit gum, on an
instrument that leaves about a quarter of an inch of the tooth bare,
for the purpose of wounding the head, like a lancet. Some of these have
two or three teeth, and struck forcibly they bring blood in copious
streams; _according to the love they bear the party_, and the violence
of their grief, _the strokes are repeated on the head_; and this has
been known to bring on fever, and terminate in madness. If any accident
happen to the husband, [to] his relations, or friends, or their child,
the shark’s tooth goes to work; and even if the child only fall down
and hurt itself, the blood and tears mingle together.... They have a
very similar way of expressing their joy as well as sorrow; for whether
a relation dies, or a dear friend returns from a journey, the shark’s
tooth instrument ... is again employed, and the blood streams down....
When a person of eminence dies ... the relatives and friends ...
repeat before it [the corpse] some of the tender scenes which happened
during their life time, and wiping the blood which the shark’s teeth
has drawn, deposit the cloth on the tupapow as the proof of their
affection.”[174]
In illustration of this custom, the same writer says, in the course of
his narrative: “When we had got within a short mile of the Isthmus,
in passing a few houses, an aged woman, mother to the young man who
carried my linen, met us, and to express her joy at seeing her son,
struck herself several times on the head with a shark’s tooth, till
the blood flowed plentifully down her breast and shoulders, whilst the
son beheld it with entire insensibility [He saw in it only the common
proof of his mother’s devoted love].... The son seeing that I was not
pleased with what was done, observed coolly, that it was the custom of
Otaheite.”[175]
This custom is again referred to by Mr. Ellis, as observed by him in
the Georgian and the Society Islands, a generation later than the
authority above cited. He speaks of the shark’s tooth blood-letter, as
employed by men, as well as by women; although more commonly by the
latter. He adds another illustration of the truth, that it is _the
blood itself_, and not any suffering caused by its flowing, that is
counted the proof of affection; by its representing the outpoured
life, in pledge of covenant fidelity.
Describing the scenes of blood-giving grief, over the dead bodies
of the mourned loved ones, he says: “The females on these occasions
sometimes put on a kind of short apron, of a particular sort of cloth;
which they held up with one hand, while they cut themselves with the
other. In this apron they caught the blood that flowed from these
grief-inflicted wounds, until it [the apron] was almost saturated.
It was then dried in the sun, and given to the nearest surviving
relatives, as a proof of the affection of the donor, and was preserved
by the bereaved family as a token of the estimation in which the
departed had been held.”[176] There is even more of vividness in this
memorial, than in that suggested by the Psalmist, when he says:
“Put thou my tears into thy bottle.”[177]
There would seem to be a suggestion of this same idea in one of Grimm’s
folk-lore fairy tales of the North. A queen’s daughter is going away
from her home, attended by a single servant. Her loving mother would
fain watch and guard her in her absence. Accordingly, “as soon as the
hour of departure had arrived, the mother took her daughter into a
chamber, and there, with a knife, she cut her [own] finger with it, so
that it bled. Then, she held her napkin beneath, and let three drops
of blood fall into it; which she gave to her daughter, saying: ‘Dear
child, preserve this well, and it will help you out of trouble.’”[178]
That blood represented the mother’s very life. It was accustomed to
speak out in words of counsel and warning to the daughter. But by and
by the napkin which held it was lost, and then the power of the young
princess over her mother’s servant was gone, and the poor princess was
alone in the wide world, at the mercy of strangers.
Acting on the symbolism of this covenanting with another by the loving
proffer of one’s blood, men have reached out toward God, or toward the
gods, in desire for a covenant of union, and in expression of fidelity
of devotedness, by the giving of their blood God-ward. This, also, has
been in the East and in the West, in ancient days and until to-day.
There was a gleam of this, in the Canaanitish worship of Baal, in the
contest between his priests and the prophet Elijah, before King Ahab,
at Mount Carmel. First, those priests shed the blood of the substitute
bullock, at the altar of their god, and “called on the name of Baal
from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal hear us! But there was no
voice, nor any that answered.” Then they grew more earnest in their
supplications, and more demonstrative in their proofs of devotedness.
“They leaped [or, limped] about the altar which was made.... And they
cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and
lances, till the blood gushed out upon them.”[179] Similar methods of
showing love for God are in vogue among the natives of Armenia, to-day.
Describing a scene of worship by religious devotees in that region,
Dr. Van Lennep says: “One of them cuts his forehead with a sword, so
that ‘the blood gushes out.’ He wears a sheet in front, to protect his
clothes, and his face is covered with clots of blood.”[180] Clearly,
in this case, as in many others elsewhere, it is not as a means of
self-torture, but as a proof of self-devotedness, that the blood is
poured out--the life is proffered--by the devotee, toward God.
Among the primitive peoples of North and of South America, it was the
custom of priests and people, to draw blood from their own bodies, from
their tongues, their ears, their noses, their limbs and members, when
they went into their temples to worship, and to anoint with that blood
the images of their gods.[181] The thorns of the maguey--a species of
aloe--were, in many regions, kept ready at places of sacrifice, for
convenient use in this covenant blood-letting.[182] A careful student
of these early American customs has said of the obvious purpose of this
yielding of one’s blood in worship, that it “might be regarded as an
act of individual devotion, a gift made to the gods by the worshiper
himself, out of his own very substance [of his very life, as in the
blood-covenant].... The priests in particular owed it to their special
character [in their covenant relation to the divinities], to draw their
blood for the benefit of the gods [in renewed pledge to the gods]; and
nothing could be stranger than the refined methods they adopted to
accomplish this end. For instance, they would pass strings or splinters
through their lips or ears, and so draw a little blood. But then a
fresh string, or a fresh splinter, must be added every day, and so it
might go on indefinitely; for the more there were, the more meritorious
was the act;”[183] precisely as is the standard of love-showing by
blood-letting among Turkish lovers and Otaheitan wives and mothers, in
modern times.
A similar giving of blood, in proof of devotedness, and in outreaching
for inter-communion with the gods through blood, is reported in
India, in recent times. Bishop Caldwell, of Madras, referred to it,
a generation ago, in his description of the “Devil Dance” among
the Tinnevelly Shawars.[184] The devotee, in this dance, “cuts and
lacerates himself till the blood flows, lashes himself with a huge
whip, presses a burning torch to his breast, drinks the blood which
flows from his own wounds, or drains the blood of the sacrifice;
putting the throat of a decapitated goat to his mouth.” Hereby he has
given of his own blood to the gods, or to the devils, and has drunk of
the substitute blood of the divinities--in the consecrated sacrifice;
as if in consummation of the blood-covenant with the supernal powers.
“Then as if he had acquired new life [through inter-union with the
object of his worship], he begins to brandish his staff of bells,
and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady step. Suddenly the
afflatus descends; there is no mistaking that glare or those frantic
leaps. He snorts, he swears, he gyrates. The demon has now taken
bodily possession of him. [The twain are one. The two natures are
intermingled].... The devil-dancer is now worshiped as a present deity,
and every bystander consults him respecting his diseases, his wants,
the welfare of his absent relations, the offerings to be made for
the accomplishments of his wishes, and in short everything for which
superhuman knowledge is supposed to be available.” In this instance,
the _mutual_ covenant is represented; the devotee both giving and
receiving blood, as a means of union.
On this idea of giving one’s self to another, by giving of one’s blood,
it is, that the popular tradition was based, that witches and sorcerers
covenanted with Satan by signing a compact in their own blood.
And again it was in recognition of the idea that two natures were
inter-united in such a covenant, that the compact was sometimes said to
be signed in Satan’s blood.
Among the many women charged with witchcraft in England, by the famous
Matthew Hopkins, the “witch-finder” in the middle of the Seventeenth
century, was one, at Yarmouth, of whom it is reported, that her first
temptation came to her when she went home from her place of employment,
discouraged and exasperated by her trials. “That night when she was in
bed, she heard a knock at the door, and going to her window, she saw
(it being moonlight) a tall black man there: and asked what he would
have? He told her that she was discontented, because she could not get
work; and that he would put her into a way that she should never want
anything. On this she let him in, and asked him what he had to say to
her. He told her he must first see her hand; and taking out something
like a penknife, he gave it a little scratch, so that a little blood
followed; a scar being still visible when she told the story. Then he
took some of the blood in a pen, and pulling a book out of his pocket,
bid her write her name; and when she said she could not, he said he
would guide her hand. When this was done, he bid her now ask what she
would have.”[185] In signing with her own blood, she had pledged her
very life to the “tall black man.”
Cotton Mather, in his “Wonders of the Invisible World,” cites a Swedish
trial for witchcraft, where the possessed children, who were witnesses,
said that the witches, at the trysting-place where they were observed,
were compelled “to give themselves unto the devil, and vow that they
would serve him. Hereupon they cut their fingers, and with blood writ
their names in his book.” In some cases “the mark of the cut finger was
[still] to be found.” Moreover the devil gave meat and drink both to
the witches and to the children they brought with them. Again, Mather
cites the testimony of a witness who had been invited to covenant with
the Devil, by signing the Devil’s book. “Once, with the book, there
was a pen offered him, and an inkhorn with liquor in it that looked
like blood.”[186] Another New England writer on witchcraft says that
“the witch as a slave binds herself by vow, to believe in the Devil,
and to give him either body or soul, or both, under his handwriting, or
some part of _his_ blood.”[187]
It is, evidently, on this popular tradition, that Goethe’s Faust
covenants in blood with Mephistopheles.
MEPHISTOPHELES.
“But one thing!--accidents may happen; hence
A line or two in writing grant, I pray.”
FAUST.
. . . . . . . . . .
“Spirit of evil! what dost thou require?
Brass, marble, parchment, paper, dost desire?
Shall I with chisel, pen, or graver, write?
Thy choice is free; to me ’tis all the same.”
MEPHISTOPHELES.
. . . . . . . . . .
“A scrap is for our compact good.
Thou under-signest merely with a drop of blood.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Blood is a juice of very special kind.”[188]
Even “within modern memory in Europe,” there have been traces of the
primitive rite of covenanting with God by the proffer of one’s blood.
In the Russian province of Esthonia, he who would observe this rite,
“had to draw drops of blood from his fore finger,” and at the same
time to pledge himself in solemn covenant with God. “I name thee [I
invoke thee] with my blood, and [I] betroth thee [I entrust myself to
thee] with my blood,”--was the form of his covenanting. Then he who had
given of his blood in self-surrendering devotedness, made his confident
supplications to God with whom he had thus covenanted; and his prayer
in behalf of all his possessions was: “Let them be blessed through my
blood and thy might.”[189]
Thus, in ancient Egypt, in ancient Canaan, in ancient Mexico, in modern
Turkey, in modern Russia, in modern India, and in modern Otaheite; in
Africa, in Asia, in America, in Europe, and in Oceanica: Blood-giving
was life-giving. Life-giving was love-showing. Love-showing was a
heart-yearning after union in love and in life and in blood and in very
being. That was the primitive thought in the primitive religions of all
the world.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Of the possibility of a covenant between those of different
religions, Lane says (_Arab.-Eng. Lexicon_, s. v. _’Ahd_): “Hence
عهد ذو (_dho ’ahd_) an appellation given to a Christian and a Jew (and a
Sabean, who is a subject of a Muslim government) meaning one between
whom and the Muslims a compact, or covenant exists, whereby the latter
are responsible for his security and freedom and toleration as long
as he lives agreeably to the compact.” And the Blood Covenant is more
sacred and more binding than any other compact.
[2] Prov. 18 : 24.
[3] John 15 : 13.
[4] See Lane’s _Lex._ s. v. “Hejâb.”
[5] Eccl. 4 : 9, 10.
[6] See Freytag, and Catafago, s. v.
[7] See “Brothers of the Covenant,” p. 6, _supra_.
[8] _Sprachliches aus den Zeltlagern der syrischen Wüste_, p. 37.
[9] See Redhouse’s Turkish and English Dictionary, s. vv. _sood_ and
_soot_.
[10] See Lane, and Freytag, s. vv. _rada’a_, and _thady_.
[11] See reference to Ibn Hishâm, 125, in Prof. W. Robertson Smith’s
_Old Test. in Jewish Church_, Notes to Lect. XII. See, also, p. 59,
_infra_.
[12] See Lane, and Freytag, s. v. _sahama_; also Smith’s _Old Test. in
Jewish Church_, Notes to Lect. XII.
[13] See Livingstone’s _Travels and Res. in So. Africa_, pp. 290-296.
[14] _Ibid._, p. 525.
[15] See Livingstone’s _Travels and Res. in So. Africa_, p. 324 f.
[16] See Livingstone’s _Travels and Res. in So. Africa_, p. 526.
[17] _Ibid._, p. 213.
[18] Cameron’s _Across Africa_, I., 333.
[19] _Ibid._, I., 333 f.
[20] _Across Africa_, I., 369.
[21] See page 9, _supra_.
[22] _Through the Dark Continent_, I., 107, 130 f.
[23] _Ibid._, I., 492.
[24] _Ibid._, I., 52, 492.
[25] _How I found Livingstone_, pp. 267-304.
[26] _Thro. Dark Cont._, I., 489 f.
[27] _Ibid._, I., 130.
[28] _Ibid._, I., 487-492.
[29] _Thro. Dark Cont._, I., 493.
[30] _Ibid._, I., 493 f.
[31] _Thro. Dark Cont._, I., 123.
[32] _Ibid._, I., 227-237.
[33] _Thro. Dark Cont._, I., 268.
[34] _Ibid._, II., 144-146.
[35] _Thro. Dark Cont._, II., 177 f.
[36] _Thro. Dark Cont._, II., 188.
[37] _Thro. Dark Cont._, II., 305 f.
[38] _Ibid._, II., 315.
[39] _Thro. Dark Cont._, II., 330-332.
[40] _Thro. Dark Cont._, II., 402-408.
[41] _The Congo_, I., 304-312.
[42] _Thro. Dark Cont._, II., 281-283.
[43] _Thro. Dark Cont._, II., 286.
[44] See pages 26-28, _supra_.
[45] “Bula Matari,” or “Rock Breaker,” or Road Maker, was a name given
to Stanley by the natives.
[46] _The Congo_, I., 383-385.
[47] See page 7 f., _supra_.
[48] _The Congo_, II., 21-24.
[49] _Ibid._, II., 38.
[50] _The Congo_, II., 48.
[51] _Ibid._, II., 68.
[52] _Ibid._, II., 79.
[53] _Ibid._, II., 109.
[54] _Ibid._, II., 118.
[55] _Ibid._, II., 132.
[56] _Ibid._, II., 171.
[57] _Ibid._, II., 177.
[58] _Thro. Dark Cont._, II., 297-302.
[59] _The Congo_, II., 79-90.
[60] _Ibid._, II., 104 f.
[61] Aristotle’s _Ethics_, IX., 8, 3. This is not made as an original
statement, by Aristotle, but as the citation of one of the well-known
“proverbs” of friendship.
[62] See _Nouveau Dictionnaire de Médecine et de Chirurgie Pratiques_,
(ed. 1884) s. v. “Transfusion.”
[63] See Appendix, _infra_.
[64] See Carlyle’s _Heroes and Hero-Worship_, Lect. I.; also Anderson’s
_Norse Mythology_, pp. 215-220, 371-374.
[65] See Anderson’s _Norse Mythol._, pp. 372, 408 f.
[66] See Wilkinson’s _Ancient Egyptians_, III., 142; Renouf’s _The
Religion of Ancient Egypt_, p. 118 f.; Ebers’s _Picturesque Egypt_, I.,
100 f.
[67] See De Wette’s _Biblische Dogmatik_, § 79.
[68] See Carlyle’s _Hero Worship_, Lect. I.
[69] Odin “is the author of war.” He is called “Valfather (Father of
the slain), because he chooses for his sons all who fall in combat.”
Anderson’s _Norse Mythol._, p. 215 f.
[70] Mills’s _History of Chivalry_, chap. IV.
[71] Rom. 6 : 4-6; Col. 2 : 12.
[72] Anderson’s _Viking Tales of the North_, p. 59.
[73] _Ibid._, p. 191 f.
[74] Apparently these articles form a “heap of witness,” or are
the aggregated symbolic witnesses of the transaction; as something
answering to this usage is found in connection with the rite in various
parts of the world.
[75] He who would be true in friendship must be true in all things. The
good friend is a good citizen. See 1 Peter 2 : 17.
[76] See Job 3 : 2-9.
[77] Here is the idea of an absolute inter-merging of natures, by this
rite.
[78] See Matt. 13 : 12; 25 : 29.
[79] Here is an indication of the witness-bearing nature of these
accessories of the rite.
[80] Compare these blessings and cursings with those under the Mosaic
laws: Deut. 27 : 9-26; 28 : 1-68.
[81] See Matt. 6 : 31, 32.
[82] “This is a natural, simple, and beautiful allusion in common use
among the Malagasy, to denote an inseparable association. The rice is
planted in water, grows in water, is boiled in water, and water is the
universal beverage taken with it when eaten.”
[83] Ellis’s _Hist. of Madagascar_, I., 187-190.
[84] Cited in Ellis’s _Hist. of Mad._, I., 191, note.
[85] St. John’s _Life in the Forests of the Far East_, I., 116 f.
[86] In “The Century Magazine” for July, 1885, p. 437.
[87] Forbes’s _A Naturalist’s Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago_,
p. 452.
[88] Peter Martyr’s _De Rebus Oceanicis et Novo Orbe_, p. 338; cited in
Spencer’s _Des. Soc._, II., 34.
[89] See Bancroft’s _Native Races of the Pacific Coast_, I., 741.
[90] See page 10, _supra_.
[91] Southey’s _Brazil_, I., 240.
[92] Lynd’s _History of the Dakotas_, p. 73, note.
[93] Burton’s _City of the Saints_, p. 117.
[94] See page 54, _supra_.
[95] _Miss. Voyage to So. Pacif. Ocean_, p. 360 f.
[96] See page 10, _supra_.
[97] See page 54, _supra_.
[98] See page 55 f., _supra_.
[99] _Opera_, p. 545.
[100] _Toxaris_, chap. 37.
[101] See references to arms as accessories to the rite, in Africa, and
in Madagascar, and in Timor, at pages 16, 32, 35 f., 45 f., 53, _supra_.
[102] _Annales_, XII., 47.
[103] See page 11, _supra_.
[104] _Arcanum_; literally “mysterious,”--not in the sense of secret,
or occult, but with reference to its sacred and supernatural origin and
sanction.
[105] See p. 9, _supra_.
[106] _Catilina_, cap. XXII.
[107] _Historiæ_, IV., 1, 4.
[108] _Apologet._, cap. IX.
[109] See stamp on outside cover.
[110] _Hist._, IV., 70.
[111] See note (footnote 101), at page 59, _supra_.
[112] See the references to imprecatory invokings, in connection with
the observance of the rite in Syria, in Central Africa, in Madagascar,
and in Timor, at pages 9, 20, 31, 46 f., 53, _supra_.
[113] _Hist._, III., 8.
[114] See page 45 _supra_, note (footnote 74).
[115] See references to the welcoming of new friends by the natives of
Africa and of Borneo, at the celebration of this rite, at pages 36 f.,
51, _supra_.
[116] Sextus Pompeius Festus, whose chief work, in the third or fourth
Christian century, was an epitome, with added notes and criticisms, of
an unpreserved work of M. Verrius Flaccus, on the Latin language and
antiquities.
[117] See Rosenmüller’s _Scholia in Vet. Test._, apud Psa. 16 : 4.
[118] See Scheller’s, and Harpers’, _Latin Dictionary_, s. v.
“Assiratum.”
[119] See Curtius’s _Griechische Etymologie_, s. v., ἔαρ (_ear_).
[120] See Gesenius, and Fuerst, _s. vv._
[121] Deut. 12 : 23.
[122] See Lane, and Freytag, _s. vv._
[123] See Delitzsch’s _Assyrische Lesestücke_, The Syllabary, p. 20;
and Sayce’s _Assyrian Grammar_, The Syllabary.
[124] See Castellus’s _Lexicon Syriacum_, s. v.
[125] See page 7, _supra_.
[126] Cited from “Tod’s Travels, Journal Indian Archipelago, Vol. V.,
No. 12,” in Balfour’s _Cycl. of India_, s. v., “Brother.”
[127] See Elliott and Roberts’s _Views in India_, II., 64.
[128] _Ayeen Akbery_, II., 453.
[129] See citation from Wetzstein, at page 9 f., _supra_.
[130] See Anderson’s _Norse Mythol._, p. 149; his _Viking Tales_,
pp. 184, 237, 272 f.; Wood’s _Wedding Day in all Ages and Countries_,
p. 139.
[131] Lettsom’s _Nibelungen Lied_, pp. 299, 388.
[132] Gen. 41 : 41, 42.
[133] Esther 3 : 10-12; 8 : 2.
[134] Luke 15 : 22.
[135] See Wood’s _Wedding Day_; also Jones’s _Finger Ring Lore_.
[136] Cited in Jones’s _Finger Ring Lore_, p. 289.
[137] See _Ibid._, pp. 87-90.
[138] _Persian- und Ost-Indische Reise_, II., 196.
[139] See pp. 59 f., 62, _supra_.
[140] See Godwyn’s _Romanæ Historiæ_, p. 69; Brewer’s _Dict. of Phrase
and Fable_, s. vv. “Ring,” “Ring Finger”; Jones’s _Finger Ring Lore_,
p. 275. See also Appendix, _infra_.
[141] Lane’s _Mod. Egypt._, II., 293.
[142] See Bock’s _Head Hunters of Borneo_, p. 221 f.
[143] _Finger Ring Lore_, p. 174.
[144] See page 63 f., _supra_.
[145] See _Finger Ring Lore_, pp. 177-197.
[146] Cited in Jones’s _Credulities Past and Present_, p. 204 f.
[147] See _Appendix_.
[148] See Wilkinson’s _Anc. Egypt._, II., 340-343; Layard’s _Nineveh
and its Remains_, II., 250, 358; also 2 Sam. 1 : 10.
[149] _Modern Egyptians_, I., 39.
[150] Frere’s _Old Deccan Days_, pp. 225-245.
[151] Dubois’s _Des. of Man. and Cust. of India_, Part II., chap. 7.
[152] See p. 194, _supra_.
[153] Prov. 4 : 18.
[154] See Lepsius’s _Todtenbuch_; Bunsen’s _Egypt’s Place in Universal
History_, V., 125-133; Renouf’s _The Religion of Ancient Egypt_, pp.
179-208.
[155] See Lenormant and Chevallier’s _Ancient History of the East_,
I., 308.
[156] Renouf’s _The Religion of Ancient Egypt_, p. 208.
[157] Bunsen’s _Egypt’s Place_, V., 133.
[158] See _Egypt’s Place_, V., 127.
[159] _Ibid._, V., 174 f.
[160] This is the rendering of Birch. Ebers has looked for an
explanation of this gloss, in the rite of circumcision (_Ægypten u.
d. Bücher Mose’s_, p. 284 f.); but the primary reference to the “arm”
of the god, and to the union secured through the interflowing blood,
point to the blood-covenant as the employed figure of speech; although
circumcision, as will be seen presently, was likewise a symbol of the
blood-covenant--for one’s self and for one’s seed. Brugsch also sees a
similar meaning, to that suggested by Ebers, in this reference to the
blood. His rendering of the original text is: “Reach me your hands. I
have become that which ye are” (_Religion u. Mythol. d. alt. Ægypt._,
I., 219). Le Page Renouf, looking for the symbolisms of _material_
nature in all these statements, would find here “the crimson of a
sunset” in the “blood which flows from the Sun-god Rā, as he hastens
to his suicide” (_Trans. of Soc. of Bib. Arch._, Vol. VIII., Part
2, p. 211). This, however, does not conflict with the _spiritual_
symbolism of oneness of nature through oneness of blood. And no one of
these last three suggested meanings accounts for the oneness with the
gods through blood, which the deceased claims, unless the symbolism
of blood-covenanting be recognized in the terminology. That symbolism
being recognized, the precise source of the flowing blood becomes a
minor matter.
[161] See Wilkinson’s _Anc. Egypt._, III., 473; Renouf’s _Relig. of
Anc. Egypt_, pp. 191-193; Lenormant’s _Chaldean Magic_, p. 88.
[162] See _Todtenbuch_, chap. LXVIII.; _Egypt’s Place_, V., 211.
[163] See Pierret’s _Vocabulaire Hiéroglyphique_, p. 721 f.; also,
Birch’s “Dict. of Hierog.” in _Egypt’s Place_, V., 519.
[164] See page 65 f., _supra_.
[165] See _Todtenbuch_, chap. CLVI.; _Egypt’s Place_, V., 315; _Trans.
of Soc. of Bib. Arch._, VIII., 2, 211.
This amulet is also called _tet_; a word of the same phonetic force as
_tet_, the “arm,” or the “bracelet,” but of different letters. This
word ([Illustration]) seems to have the root-idea of “word;” as if it
were applied to the text of the blood-covenant.
The amulet as constructed for the mummy, was stained with the water or
liquid of the tree called _ankh am_ ([Illustration]). The amulet itself,
according to Brugsch, was also called _ankh merer_ ([Illustration]).
But _ankh_ ([Illustration]) means either to _live_ (the ordinary
meaning), or to _swear_, to _make oath_ (more rarely), and _merer_
([Illustration]) is a reduplicated form of _mer_ ([Illustration]) _to
love_, _love_, _friendship_. The meaning of _ankh merer_, as applied
to the blood-amulet may be, oath, or covenant, or pledge of love or
friendship. The word _merer_, in the compound _ankh merer_, is followed
with the determinative of the flying scarabæus ([Illustration]) which
was commonly placed (_Anc. Egypt._, III., 346) upon the breast, in lieu
of the heart of the dead (_Ibid._, III., 486). See page 100, _infra_.
And here the inquiry is suggested, Was the _ankh am_ the same as the
modern _henneh_? Note the connection of _henneh_ with the marriage
festivities in the East to-day.
“Paint one hand with henna, mother;
Paint one hand and leave the other.
Bracelets on the right with henna;
On the left give drink to henna.”
(Jessup’s _Syrian Home Life_, p. 34.)
[166] See _Egypt’s Place_, V., 232.
[167] See _Egypt’s Place_, V., 174, 254, 282.
[168] _Ibid._, V., 323.
[169] See _Zeitschrift für Ægyptische Sprache_, erstes Heft, 1885,
p. 16.
[170] See page 81 f., _supra_.
[171] See Pierret, Brugsch, Birch, _s. v._
[172] _Uarda_, I., 192.
[173] Ferriol’s _Recueil de cent Estampes representant differentes
Nations du Levant_, Carte 43, and Explication, p. 16.
[174] _First Miss. Voyage to the So. Sea Islands_, pp. 352-363.
[175] _Ibid._, p. 196.
[176] Ellis’s _Polynesian Researches_, I., 529.
[177] Psa. 56 : 8.
[178] “The Goose Girl,” in Grimm’s _Household Tales_.
[179] 1 Kings 18 : 26-28.
[180] Van Lennep’s _Bible Lands_, pp. 767-769.
[181] See Herrera’s _Gen. Hist. of Cont. and Isl. of America_, III.,
209, 211, 216, 300 f.; Clavigero’s _Hist. of Mex._, Bk. VI., chaps. 22,
38; Motolinia’s _Hist. Ind. de Nueva España_, p. 22; Landa’s _Relat.
Yucatan_, XXXV.; Ximenez’s _Hist. Ind. Gautem._, pp. 171-181; Palacio’s
_San Salv. and Hond._ (in Squier’s _Coll._, I.) 65 ff., 106, 116;
Simon’s _Ter. Not. Conq. Tier. Firm. en Nue Gran._ (in Kingsborough’s
_Antiq. of Mex._, VIII.) 208, 248; all cited in Spencer’s _Des. Soc._,
II., 20-26, 28, 33. See, also, Bancroft’s _Native Races of Pacif.
Coast_, I., 665, 723; II., 259, 306, 708, 710.
[182] Serving the purpose of the Otaheitan shark’s-teeth. See page
86 f., _supra_.
[183] Réville’s _Native Religions of Mexico and Peru_, p. 84 f.
[184] Cited in Adam’s _Curiosities of Superstition_.
[185] Cited in Benson’s _Remarkable Trials and Notorious Characters_,
p. 11.
[186] Cited in Drake’s _The Witchcraft Delusion in New England_, I.,
187; II., 214.
[187] _Ibid._, I, xviii. See also, Appendix, _infra_.
[188] _Faust_, Swanwick’s translation, Part I., lines 1360-1386.
[189] See Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_, II., 402; citing Boecler’s
_Ehsten Aberglaübische Gebraüche_, 4.
LECTURE II.
SUGGESTIONS AND PERVERSIONS OF THE RITE.
II.
SUGGESTIONS AND PERVERSIONS OF THE RITE.
1. SACREDNESS OF BLOOD AND OF THE HEART.
Apart from, and yet linked with, the explicit proofs of the rite of
blood-covenanting throughout the primitive world, there are many
indications of the root-idea of this form of covenanting; in the
popular estimate of blood, and of all the marvelous possibilities
through blood-transference. These indications, also, are of old, and
from everywhere.
To go back again to the earlier written history of the world; it
is evident that the ancient Egyptians recognized blood as in a
peculiar sense life itself; and that they counted the heart,--as the
blood-source and the blood-centre,--the symbol and the substance of
life. In the Book of the Dead, the deceased speaks of his heart,--or
his blood-fountain,--as his life; and as giving him the right to appear
in the presence of the gods: “My heart was my mother; my heart was my
mother; my heart was my being on earth; placed within me; returned to
me by the chief gods, placing me before the gods”[190] [in the presence
of the gods]. In the process of embalming, the heart was always
preserved with jealous care;[191] and sometimes it was embalmed by
itself in a sepulchral vase.[192] It was the heart--as the life, which
is the blood--that seems to have been put into the scales of the divine
Judge for the settling of the soul’s destiny;[193] according to all the
Egyptian pictures of the judgment. Throughout the Book of the Dead, and
in all the sacred teachings and practices of the ancient Egyptians,
with reference to human life and human destiny, the heart is obviously
recognized as the analogon of blood, and blood as the analogon of life.
Moreover, the life, which is represented by the blood and by the heart,
appears to be counted peculiarly the gift and the guarded treasure of
Deity, and as being in itself a resemblance to, if not actually a part
of, the divine nature.[194]
Even of the lower animals, the heart and the heart’s blood were
counted sacred to the gods, and were not to be eaten by the Egyptians;
as if life belonged only to the Giver of life, and, when passing
out from a lower organism, must return, or be returned, only to its
original Source.
When the soul stands before the forty-two judges, in the Hall of the
Two Truths, to give answer concerning its sins, one of its protesting
avowals, as recorded in the Book of the Dead, is: “Oh Glowing Feet,
coming out of the darkness! I have not eaten the heart;”[195] In
my earthly life-course, I have not committed the sacrilege of
heart-eating. Yet, of the sacrificial offering of “a red cow,” as
prescribed in the Book of the Dead, “of the blood squeezed from the
heart, one hundred drops,”[196] make a portion for the gods. In one
of the tombs of Memphis, there is represented a scene of slaughtering
animals. As the heart of an animal is taken out, the butcher who holds
it says,--as shown by the accompanying hieroglyphics,--“Take care of
this heart;”[197] as if that were a portion to be guarded sacredly.
“Keep thy heart with all diligence [or, as the margin has it, “above
all thou guardest”]; for out of it are the issues of life.”[198] It
may, indeed, have been from the lore of Egypt that Solomon obtained
this proverb of the ages, to pass it onward to posterity with his stamp
of inspiration.
It would even seem that the blood of animals was not allowed to be
eaten by the Egyptians; although there has been a question at that
point, among Egyptologists. Wilkinson thinks that they _did_ employ
it in cooking;[199] but this is only his inference from a pictured
representation of the blood being caught in a vessel, when an animal
is slaughtered for the table. On the other hand, that same picture
shows the vessel of blood being borne away, afterwards, on uplifted
hands;[200] as it would have been if it were designed for a sacred
libation. Again, the other picture, reported by Birch, as showing the
butcher’s care of the heart, represents the blood as “collected in a
jar with a long spout”; such as was used for sacred libations.[201] It
is evident that blood was offered to the gods of Egypt in libation,
as was also wine.[202] Indeed the common Egyptian word for blood
([Illustration], _senf_) is regularly followed by the determinative of
outpouring ([Illustration]). The word _tesher_, “red,” is sometimes
used as a synonym for _senf_; in this case (and in this only) the
determinative of outpouring is added to the hieroglyphics for _tesher_.
Moreover, among the forty-two judges, before whom the dead appears,
he who is “Eater of Blood” comes next in order before the “Eater of
Hearts”;[203] as if blood-eating, like heart-eating, were a prerogative
of the gods.
If proof were still wanting that, in ancient Egypt, it was the heart
which was deemed the epitome of life, and that the _heart_ had this
pre-eminence because of its being the fountain of _blood_--which is
life--that proof would be found in “The Tale of the Two Brothers”; a
story that was prepared in its present form by a tutor of the Pharaoh
of the exodus, while the latter was yet heir presumptive to the throne.
This story has been the subject of special study by De Rougé, Chabas,
Maspero, Brugsch, Birch, Goodwin, and Le Page Renouf. It is from the
latter’s translation, that I draw my facts for this reference.[204]
Anpu and Bata were brothers. Bata’s experience with the wife of Anpu
was like that of Joseph in the house of Potiphar. He was true, like
Joseph. Like Joseph, he was falsely accused, his life was sought, and
his innocence was vindicated. Then, for his better protection, Bata
took his _heart_ out from his body, and put that in a safe place, while
he made his home near it. To his brother he had said:
“I shall take my heart, and place it in the top of the flower of the
cedar, and when the cedar is cut down it will fall to the ground. Thou
shalt come to seek it. If thou art seven years in search of it, let not
thy heart be depressed, and when thou hast found it thou shalt place it
in a cup of cold water. Oh, then I shall live (once more).”
After a time the cedar, through the treachery of Bata’s false wife,
was cut down. As it fell, with the heart of Bata, the latter dropped
dead. For more than three years Anpu sought his brother’s heart; then
he found it. “He brought a vessel of cold water, dropped the heart
into it, and sat down according to his daily wont. But when the night
was come, the heart absorbed the water. Bata [whose body seems to have
been preserved--like a mummy--all this time] trembled in all his limbs,
and continued looking at his elder brother, but his heart was faint.
Then Anpu took the vessel of cold water which his brother’s heart was
in. And when the latter [Bata] had drunk it up, his heart rose in its
place; and he became as he had been before. Each embraced the other,
and each one of them held conversation with his companion.”
The revivified Bata was transformed into a sacred bull, an Apis. That
bull, by the treachery, again, of Bata’s wife, was killed. “And as
they were killing him, and he was in the hands of his attendants, he
shook his neck, and two drops of blood fell upon the two door-posts of
His Majesty [in whose keeping was the sacred bull]; one was on the one
side of the great staircase of His Majesty, the other upon the other
side; and they grew up into two mighty persea trees, each of which
stood alone.” Thus the blood was both life and life-giving, and the
heart was as the very soul of its possessor, in the estimation of the
ancient Egyptians.
In primitive America also, as in ancient Egypt, the blood and the
heart, were held pre-eminently sacred. Among the Dakotas, in North
America, the heart of the deer and of other animals killed in
hunting, was offered to the spirits.[205] In Central America and in
South America, it was the blood and the heart of the human victims
offered in sacrifice, which were counted the peculiar portion of the
gods.[206] In description of a human sacrifice among the Nahuas of
Central America,[207] a Mexican historian says: “The high priest then
approached, and with a heavy knife of obsidian cut open the miserable
man’s breast. Then, with a dexterity acquired by long practice, the
sacrificer tore forth the yet palpitating heart, which he first offered
to the sun, and then threw at the feet of the idol. Taking it up, he
again offered it to the god, and afterwards burned it; preserving the
ashes with great care and veneration. Sometimes the heart was placed
in the mouth [of the idol] with a golden spoon. It was customary also
to anoint the lips of the image, and the cornices of the door with the
victim’s blood.”[208]
Of the method among the Maya nations,[209] south of the Gulf of Mexico,
a Spanish historian[210] says: “The bleeding and quivering heart was
held up to the sun, and then thrown into a bowl prepared for its
reception. An assistant priest sucked the blood from the gash in the
chest, through a hollow cane; the end of which he elevated towards
the sun, and then discharged its contents into a plume-bordered cup
held by the captor of the prisoner just slain. This cup was carried
around to all the idols in the temples and chapels, before whom another
blood-filled tube was held up, as if to give them a taste of the
contents. This ceremony performed, the cup was left at the palace.”
Yet another record stands: “The guardian of the temple ... opened
the left breast of the victim, tore out the heart, and handed it to
the high priest, who placed it in a small embroidered purse which he
carried. The four [assisting] priests received the blood of the victim
in four jicaras or bowls, made from the shell of a certain fruit; and
descending, one after the other, to the court yard, [they] sprinkled
the blood with their right hand in the direction of the cardinal points
[of the compass]. If any blood remained over, they returned it to the
high priest, who placed it, with the purse containing the heart, in the
body of the victim, through the wound that had been made; and the body
was interred in the temple.”[211]
Commenting on these customs in Central America, Réville--the
representative comparative-religionist of France--says: “Here you will
recognize that idea, so widely spread in the two Americas, and indeed
almost everywhere amongst uncivilized peoples [nor is it limited to
the uncivilized], that the heart is the epitome, so to speak, of the
individual--his soul in some sense--so that to appropriate his heart is
to appropriate his whole being.”[212] What else than this gave rise to
the thought of preserving the _heart_ of a hero, or of a loved one, as
a symbol of the living presence of the dead? It was by his heart, that
King Robert Bruce was to lead his army to the Holy Land; and how many
times, in history, have men bequeathed their hearts to those dear to
them, as the poet Shelley’s heart was preserved by his friends, and by
them given to Mrs. Shelley.
In the Greek and Roman sacrifices, it was the blood of the victim,
which, as the life of the victim, was poured out unto the gods, as
unto the Author of life.[213] Moreover, there is reason for supposing
that the _heart_ was always given the chief place, as representing
the very life itself, in the examination and in the _tasting_ of the
“entrails” (σπλάγχνα, _splangkhna_) in connection with the sacrifices
of those classic peoples.[214] An indication of this truth is found
in a statement by Cicero, concerning the sacrifices at the time of
the inauguration of Cæsar: “When he [Cæsar] was sacrificing on that
day in which he first sat in the golden chair, and made procession in
the purple garment, there was no _heart_ among the entrails of the
sacrificial ox. (Do you think, therefore, that any animal which has
blood can exist without a heart?) Yet he [Cæsar] was not terrified by
the phenomenal nature of the event, although Spurinna declared, that
it was to be feared that both mind [literally ‘counsel’] and life were
about to fail him [Cæsar]; for both of these [mind and life] do issue
from the heart.”[215]
Similarly it has been, and to the present day it is, with primitive
peoples everywhere. Blood libations were made a prominent feature in
the offerings in ancient Phoenicia,[216] as in Egypt. In India, the
Brahmans have a saying, in illustration of the claim that Vishnu and
Siva are of one and the same nature: “The heart of Vishnu is Sivâ,
and the heart of Sivâ is Vishnu; and those who think they differ,
err.”[217] The Hindoo legends represent the victim’s heart as being
torn out and given to the one whom in life he has wronged.[218] In
China, at the great Temple of Heaven, in Peking, where the emperors of
China are supposed to have conducted worship without material change in
its main features for now nearly three thousand years,[219] the blood
of the animal sacrifice is buried in the earth[220] while the body of
the sacrificial victim is offered as a whole burnt offering.[221]
The blood is the life; the heart as the fountain of blood is the
fountain of life; both blood and heart are sacred to the Author of
life. The possession, or the gift, of the heart or of the blood, is the
possession, or the gift, of the very nature of its primal owner. That
has been the world’s thought in all the ages.
2. VIVIFYING POWER OF BLOOD.
The belief seems to have been universal, not only that the blood is
the life of the organism in which it originally flows, but that in its
transfer from one organism to another the blood retains its life, and
so carries with it a vivifying power. There are traces of this belief
in the earliest legends of the Old World, and of the New; in classic
story; and in medical practices as well, all the world over, from time
immemorial until the present day.
For example, in an inscription from the Egyptian monuments, the
original of which dates back to the early days of Moses, there is a
reference to a then ancient legend of the rebellion of mankind against
the gods; of an edict of destruction against the human race; and of a
divine interposition for the rescue of the doomed peoples.[222] In that
legend, a prominent part is given to human blood, mingled with the
juice of mandrakes[223]--instead of wine--prepared as a drink of the
gods, and afterwards poured out again to overflow and to revivify all
the earth. And the ancient text which records this legend, affirms that
it was in conjunction with these events, that there was the beginning
of sacrifices in the world.
An early American legend has points of remarkable correspondence
with this one from ancient Egypt. It relates, as does that, to a
pre-historic destruction of the race, and to its re-creation, or its
re-vivifying, by means of transferred blood. Every Mexican province
told this story in its own way, says a historian; but the main
features of it are alike in all its versions.
When there were no more men remaining on the earth, some of the gods
desired the re-creation of mankind; and they asked help from the
supreme deities accordingly. They were then told, that if they were to
obtain the bones, or the ashes of the former race, they could revivify
those remains by their own blood. Thereupon Xolotl, one of the gods,
descended to the place of the dead, and obtained a bone (whether a
_rib_, or not, does not appear). Upon that vestige of humanity, the
gods dropped blood drawn from their own bodies; and the result was a
new vivifying of mankind.[224]
An ancient Chaldean legend, as recorded by Berosus, ascribes a new
creation of mankind to the mixture by the gods of the dust of the earth
with the blood that flowed from the severed head of the god Belus.
“On this account it is that men are rational, and partake of divine
knowledge,” says Berosus.[225] The blood of the god gives them the
life and the nature of a god. Yet, again, the early Phœnician, and
the early Greek, theogonies, as recorded by Sanchoniathon[226] and by
Hesiod,[227] ascribe the vivifying of mankind to the outpoured blood
of the gods. It was from the blood of Ouranos, or of Saturn, dripping
into the sea and mingling with its foam, that Venus was formed, to
become the mother of her heroic posterity. “The Orphics, which have
borrowed so largely from the East,” says Lenormant,[228] “said that the
immaterial part of man, his soul [his life], sprang from the blood of
Dionysus Zagreus, whom ... Titans had torn to pieces, partly devouring
his members.”
Homer explicitly recognizes this universal belief in the power of blood
to convey life, and to be a means of revivifying the dead. When Circé
sent Odysseus,
“To consult
The Theban seer, Tiresias, in the abode
Of Pluto and the dreaded Proserpine.”
she directed him, in preparation, to
“Pour to all the dead
Libations,--milk and honey first, and next
Rich wine, and lastly water;”
and after that to slay the sacrificial sheep. But Circé’s caution was:
“Draw then the sword upon thy thigh, and sit,
And suffer none of all those airy forms
To touch the blood, until thou first bespeak
Tiresias. He will come, and speedily,--
The leader of the people,--and will tell
What voyage thou must make.”
Odysseus did as he was directed. The bloodless shades flocked about
him, as he sat there guarding the life-renewing blood; but even those
dearest to him, he forbade to touch that consecrated draught.
“And then the soul of Anticleia came,--
My own dead mother, daughter of the king
Autolycus, large minded. Her I left
Alive, what time I sailed for Troy, and now
I wept to see her there, and pitied her,
And yet forbade her, though with grief, to come
Near to the blood till I should first accost
Tiresias. He too came, the Theban seer,
Tiresias, bearing in his hand a wand
Of gold; he knew me and bespake me thus:--
‘Why, O unhappy mortal, hast thou left
The light of day to come among the dead,
And to this joyless land? Go from the trench
And turn thy sword away, that I may drink
The blood, and speak the word of prophecy.’
He spake; withdrawing from the trench, I thrust
Into its sheath my silver-studded sword,
And, after drinking of the dark red blood,
The blameless prophet turned to me and said--”[229]
Then, came the prophecy, from the blood-revivified seer.
The wide-spread popular superstition of the vampire and of the ghoul,
seems to be an outgrowth of this universal belief, that transfused
blood is re-vivification. The bloodless shades, leaving their graves at
night, seek renewed life, by drawing out the blood of those who sleep;
taking of the life of the living, to supply temporary life to the dead.
This idea was prevalent in ancient Babylon and Assyria.[230] It has
shown itself in the Old World and in the New,[231] in all the ages; and
even within a little more than a century, it has caused an epidemic of
fear in Hungary, “resulting in a general disinterment, and the burning
or staking of the suspected bodies.”[232]
An added force is given to all these illustrations of the universal
belief that transferred blood has a vivifying power, by the conclusions
of modern medical science, concerning the possible benefits of
blood-transfusion.[233] On this point, one of the foremost living
authorities in this department of practice, Dr. Roussel, of Geneva,
says: “The great vitality of the blood of a vigorous and healthy man
has the power of improving the quality of the patient’s blood, and can
restore activity to the centres of nervous force, and the organs of
digestion. _It would seem that health itself can be transfused with the
blood of a healthy man_”;[234] death itself being purged out of the
veins by inflowing life. And in view of the possibilities of new life
to a dying one, through new blood from one full of life, this writer
insists, that “every adult and healthy man and woman should be ready to
offer an _arm_, as the natural and mysteriously inexhaustible source of
the wonder-working elixir.”[235] Blood-giving can be life-giving. The
measure of one’s love may, indeed, in _such_ a case, be tested by the
measure of his yielded blood.[236]
Roussel says, that blood transfusion was practised by the Egyptians,
the Hebrews, and the Syrians, in ancient times;[237] and he cites
the legend, that before Naaman came to Elisha to be healed of his
leprosy,[238] his physicians, in their effort at his cure, took the
blood from his veins, and replaced it with other blood. Whatever basis
of truth there may be in this legend, it clearly gained its currency
through the prevailing conviction that new blood is new life. There
certainly is ample evidence that baths of human blood were anciently
prescribed as a cure for the death-representing leprosy; as if in
recognition of this root idea of the re-vivifying power of transferred
blood.
Pliny, writing eighteen centuries ago, concerning leprosy, or
elephantiasis, says[239]: “This was the peculiar disease of Egypt;
and when it fell upon princes, woe to the people; for, in the bathing
chambers, tubs were prepared, with human blood, for the cure of it.”
Nor was this mode of life-seeking confined to the Egyptians. It is
said that the Emperor Constantine was restrained from it, only in
consequence of a vision from heaven.[240]
In the early English romance of Amys and Amylion, one of these knightly
brothers-in-arms consents, with his wife’s full approbation, to yield
the lives of his two infant children, in order to supply their blood
for a bath, for the curing of his brother friend’s leprosy.[241] In
this instance, the leprosy is cured, and the children’s lives are
miraculously restored to them; as if in proof of the divine approbation
of the loving sacrifice.
It is shown, indeed, that this belief in the life-bringing power of
baths of blood, to the death-smitten lepers, was continued into the
Middle Ages; and that it finally “received a check from an opinion
gradually gaining ground, that only the blood of those would be
efficacious, who offered themselves freely and voluntarily for a
beloved sufferer.”[242] There is something very suggestive in this
thought of the truest potency of transferred life through transferred
blood! It is this thought which finds expression and illustration in
Longfellow’s Golden Legend. In the castle of Vautsberg on the Rhine,
Prince Henry is sick with a strange and hopeless malady. Lucifer
appears to him in the garb of a traveling physician, and tells him of
the only possible cure for his disease, as prescribed in a venerable
tome:
“‘The only remedy that remains
Is the blood that flows from a maiden’s veins,
Who of her own free will shall die,
And give her life as the price of yours!’
That is the strangest of all cures,
And one, I think, you will never try;
The prescription you may well put by,
As something impossible to find
Before the world itself shall end!”
Elsie, the lovely daughter of a peasant in the Odenwald learns of the
Prince’s need, and declares she will give her blood for his cure. In
her chamber by night, her self-surrendering prayer goes up:
“‘If my feeble prayer can reach thee,
O my Saviour, I beseech thee,
Even as thou hast died for me,
More sincerely
Let me follow where thou leadest,
Let me, bleeding as thou bleedest,
Die, if dying I may give
Life to one who asks to live,
And more nearly,
Dying thus, resemble thee!’”
Her father, Gottlieb, consents to her life-surrender, saying to the
Prince:
“‘As Abraham offered, long ago,
His son unto the Lord, and even
The Everlasting Father in heaven
Gave his, as a lamb unto the slaughter,
So do I offer up my daughter.’”
And Elsie adds:
“‘My life is little,
Only a cup of water,
But pure and limpid.
Take it, O Prince!
Let it refresh you,
Let it restore you.
It is given willingly
It is given freely;
May God bless the gift!’”
The proffered sacrifice is interfered with before its consummation; but
its purposed method shows the estimate which was put, from of old, on
voluntarily yielded life for life.
There is said to be an Eastern legend somewhat like the story of Amys
and Amylion; with a touch of the ancient Egyptian and Mexican legends
already cited. “The Arabian chronicler speaks of a king, who, having
lost a faithful servant by his transformation into stone, is told that
he can call his friend back to life, if he is willing to behead his
two children, and to sprinkle the ossified figure with their blood. He
makes up his mind to the sacrifice; but as he approaches the children
with his drawn sword, the will is accepted by heaven for the deed, and
he suddenly sees the stone restored to animation.”[243] This story,
in substance, (only with the slaying and the resuscitating of the
children, as in the English romance,) appears in Grimm’s folk-lore
tales, under the title of “Faithful John”;[244] but whether its origin
was in the East or in the North, or in both quarters, is not apparent.
Its reappearance East, North, and West, is all the more noteworthy.
In the romances of King Arthur and his knights, there is a story of
a maiden daughter of King Pellinore, a sister of Sir Percivale, who
befriends the noble Sir Galahad, and then accompanies him and his
companions on their way to the castle of Carteloise, and beyond, in
their search for the Holy Grail.
“And again they went on to another castle, from which came a band of
knights, who told them of the custom of the place, that every maiden
who passed by must yield a dish full of her blood. ‘That shall she not
do,’ said Galahad, ‘while I live’; and fierce was the struggle that
followed; and the sword of Galahad, which was the sword of King David,
smote them down on every side, until those who remained alive craved
peace, and bade Galahad and his fellows come into the castle for the
night; ‘and on the morn,’ they said, ‘we dare say ye will be of one
accord with us, when ye know the reason for our custom?’ So awhile they
rested, and the knights told them that in the castle there lay a lady
sick to death, who might never gain back her life, until she should be
anointed with the blood of a pure maiden who was a king’s daughter.
Then said Percivale’s sister, ‘I will yield it, and so shall I get
health to my soul, and there shall be no battle on the morn.’ And even
so was it done; but the blood which she gave was so much that she might
not live; and as her strength passed away, she said to Percivale, ‘I
die, brother, for the healing of this lady.’ ... Thus was the lady of
the castle healed; and the gentle maiden, [Percivale’s sister,] ...
died.”[245]
In the old Scandinavian legends, there are indications of the
traditional belief in the power of transferred life through a bath
of blood. Siegfried, or Sigurd, a descendant of Odin, slew Fafner, a
dragon-shaped guardian of ill-gotten treasure. In the hot blood of
that dragon, he bathed himself, and so took on, as it were, an outer
covering of new life, rendering himself sword-proof, save at a single
point where a leaf of the linden-tree fell between his shoulders,
and shielded the flesh from the life-imparting blood.[246] On this
incident it is, that the main tragedy in the Nibelungen Lied pivots;
where Siegfried’s wife, Kriemhild, tells the treacherous Hagan of her
husband’s one vulnerable point:
“Said she, My husband’s daring, and thereto stout of limb;
Of old, when on the mountain he slew the dragon grim,
In its blood he bathed him, and thence no more can feel,
In his charmed person, the deadly dint of steel.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
“As from the dragon’s death-wounds gushed out the crimson gore,
With the smoking torrent, the warrior washed him o’er.
A leaf then ’twixt his shoulders fell from the linden bough;
There, only, steel can harm him; for that I tremble now.”[247]
Even among the blood-reverencing Brahmans of India, there are traces of
this idea, that life is to be guarded by the outpoured blood of others.
In the famous old work, “Kalila wa-Dimna,” there is the story of a
king, named Beladh, who had a vision in the night, which so troubled
him that he sought counsel of the Brahmans. Their advice was, that he
should sacrifice his favorite wife, his best loved son, his nephew,
and his dearest friend, in conjunction with other valued offerings to
the gods. “It will be necessary for you, O King,” they said, “when
you have put to death the persons we have named to you, to fill a
cauldron with their blood, and sit upon it; and when you get up from
the cauldron, we, the Brahmans, assembled from the four quarters of the
kingdom, will walk around you, and pronounce our incantations over you,
and we will spit upon you, and wipe off from you the blood, and will
wash you in water and sweet-oil, and then you may return to the palace,
trusting in the protection of heaven against the danger which threatens
you.”[248]
Here, the king’s offering to the gods, was to be of that which was
dearest to him; and the bath of blood was to prove to him a cover of
life. King Beladh wisely said, that if that were the price of his
safety he was ready to die. He would not prolong his life at such a
cost. But the story shows the primitive estimate of the life-giving
power of blood, among the Hindoos.
In China, also, blood has its place as a life-giving agency. A
Chinese woman, on the Kit-ie River, tells a missionary, of her
occasional seasons of frenzy, under the control of spirits, and of
her ministry of blood, at such seasons, for the cure of disease.
“Every year when there is to be a pestilence, or when cholera is to
prevail, she goes into this frenzy, and cuts her tongue with a knife,
letting some drops of her blood fall into a hogshead of water. This
[homœopathically-treated] water, the people drink as a specific against
contagion.” Its sacred blood is counted a shield of life. “With the
rest of the blood, she writes charms, which the people paste [as
words of life] upon their door-posts, or wear upon their persons, as
preventives of evil.”[249]
Receiving new blood as a means of receiving new life, seems to have
been sought interchangeably, in olden time, in various diseases, by
blood lavations, by blood drinking, and by blood transfusion. It is
recorded that, in 1483, King Louis XI., of France, struggled for life
by drinking the blood of young children, as a means of his revivifying.
“Every day he grew worse,” it is said; “and the medicines profited him
nothing, though of a strange character; for he vehemently hoped to
recover by the human blood which he took and swallowed from certain
children.”[250] Again there is a disputed claim, that, in 1492, a
Jewish physician endeavored to save the life of Pope Innocent VIII., by
giving him in transfusion the blood of three young men successively.
The Pope was not recovered, but the three young men lost their lives in
the experiment.[251] Yet blood transfusion as a means of new life to
the dying was not always a failure, even in former centuries; for the
record stands, that “at Frankfort, on the Oder, the surgeons Balthazar,
Kaufman, and Purmann, healed a leper, in 1683, by passing the blood of
a lamb into his veins.”[252]
Even to-day, in South Africa, “when the Zulu King is sick, his
immediate personal attendants, or _valets_, are obliged to allow
themselves to be wounded; that a portion of their blood may be
introduced into the king’s circulation, and a portion of his into
theirs.”[253] In this plan, the idea seems to be, that health may have
power over disease, and that death may be swallowed up in life, by
equalizing the blood of the one who is in danger, and of the many who
are in strength and safety. Moreover among the Kafirs those who are
still in health are sometimes “washed in blood to protect them against
wounds”;[254] as if an outer covering of life could be put on, for the
protection of their life within. Transfused human blood is also said
to be a common prescription of the medicine-men of Tasmania, for the
cure of disease.[255]
And so it would appear, that, whatever may be its basis in
physiological science, the opinion has prevailed, widely and always,
that there is a vivifying power in transferred blood; and that blood
not only represents but carries life.
3. A NEW NATURE THROUGH NEW BLOOD.
It was a primeval idea, of universal sway, that the taking in of
another’s blood was the acquiring of another’s life, with all that was
best in that other’s nature. It was not merely that the taking away of
blood was the taking away of life; but that the taking in of blood was
the taking in of life, and of all that that life represented. Here,
again, the heart, as the fountain of blood, and so, as the centre
and source of life, was preeminently the agency of transfer, in the
acquiring of a new nature.
Herodotus tells us of this idea in the far East, twenty-four centuries
ago. When a Scythian, he said, killed his first man in open warfare, he
drank in his blood, as a means of absorbing his fairly acquired life;
and the heads of as many as he slew, the Scythian carried in triumph
to the king;[256] as the American Indian bears away the scalps of his
slain, to-day. Modern historians, indeed, show us other resemblances
than this, between the aboriginal American and the ancient Scythian.
The Jesuit founder of the Huron Mission to the American Indians, “its
truest hero, and its greatest martyr,” was Jean de Brébeuf. After
a heroic life among a savage people, he was subjected to frightful
torture, and to the crudest death. His character had won the admiration
of those who felt that duty to their gods demanded his martyrdom; and
his bearing under torture exalted him in their esteem, as heroic beyond
compare. “He came of a noble race,” says Parkman,[257]--“the same
[race], it is said, from which sprang the English Earls of Arundel; but
never had the mailed barons of his line confronted a fate so appalling,
with so prodigious a constancy. To the last he refused to flinch, and
‘his death was an astonishment to his murderers.’” “We saw no part of
his body,” wrote an eye witness,[258] “from head to foot, which was
not burned [while he was yet living], even to his eyes, in the sockets
of which these wretches had placed live coals.” Such manhood as he
displayed under these tortures, the Indians could appreciate. Such
courage and constancy as his, they longed to possess for themselves.
When, therefore, they perceived that the brave and faithful man of
God was finally sinking into death, they sprang toward him, scalped
him, “laid open his breast, and came in a crowd to drink the blood of
so valiant an enemy; thinking to imbibe with it some portion of his
courage. A chief then tore out his heart, and devoured it.”
Not unlike this has been a common practice among the American Indians,
in the treatment of prisoners of war. “If the victim had shown
courage,” again says Parkman, concerning the Hurons, “the heart was
first roasted, cut into small pieces, and given to the young men
and boys, who devoured it, to increase their own courage.”[259] So,
similarly, with the Iroquois.[260] And Burton says of the Dakotas:[261]
“They are not cannibals, except when a warrior, after slaying a foe,
eats, porcupine-like, the heart or liver, with the idea of increasing
his own courage.” Schomburgk, writing concerning the natives of British
Guiana, says: “In order to increase their courage, and [so their]
contempt of death, the Caribs were wont to cut out the heart of a slain
enemy, dry it on the fire, powder it, and mix the powder in their
drink.”[262]
The native Australians find, it is said, an inducement to bloodshed,
in their belief--like that of the ancient Scythians--that the life,
or the spirit, of the first man whom one slays, enters into the life
of the slayer, and remains as his helpful possession thereafter.[263]
The Ashantee fetishmen, of West Africa, apparently acting on a kindred
thought, make a mixture of the hearts of enemies, mingled with blood
and consecrated herbs, for the vivifying of the conquerors. “All who
have never before killed an enemy eat of the preparation; it being
believed that if they did not, their energy would be secretly wasted
by the haunting spirits of their deceased foes.”[264] The underlying
motive of the bloody “head-hunting” in Borneo, is the Dayak belief,
that the spirits of those whose heads are taken are to be subject to
him, who does the decapitating. The heads are primarily simply the
proof--like the Indian’s scalps--that their owner has so many lives
absorbed in his own.[265]
A keen observer of Fellâheen life in Palestine has reported:[266]
“There is an ugly expression used among the fellâheen of South
Palestine, in speaking of an enemy slain in war--‘_Dhabbahhtho
bisnâny_’ (‘I slew him with my teeth’)[267]; and it is said that there
have been instances of killing in battle in this fashion by biting at
the throat. In the Nablous district (Samaria), where the people are
much more ferocious, the expression is, ‘I have drunk his blood’; but
that is understood figuratively.”
An ancient Greek version of the story of Jason, telling of that hero’s
treatment of the body of Apsyrtos--whom he had slain--says: “Thrice
he tasted the blood, thrice [he] spat it out between his teeth;” and
a modern collator informs us, that the scholiast here finds “the
description of an archaic custom, popular among murderers.”[268] This
certainly corresponds with the Semitic phrases lingering among the
Fellâheen of Palestine.
In the old German epic, the Nibelungen Lied, it is told of the brave
Burgundians, when they were fighting desperately in the burning hall of
the Huns, that they were given new courage for the hopeless conflict,
by drinking the blood of their fallen comrades; which “quenched their
thirst, and made them fierce.”[269] With their added life, from the
added blood of heroes, they battled as never before.
“It strung again their sinews, and failing strength renewed.
This, in her lover’s person, many a fair lady rued.”[270]
Is there not, indeed, a trace of the primitive custom--thus recognized
in all quarters of the globe--of absorbing the life of a slain one by
drinking in his blood, in our common phrase, “blood-thirstiness,” as
descriptive of a life-seeker? That phrase certainly gains added force
and appropriateness, in the light of this universal idea.
It is evident that the wide-spread popular belief in nature-absorption
through blood-appropriation, has included the idea of a _tribal_
absorption of new life in _vicarious_ blood. Alcedo, a Spanish-American
writer, has illustrated this in his description of the native
Araucanians of South America. When they have triumphed in war, they
select a representative prisoner for official and vicarious execution.
After due preparation, they “give him a handful of small sticks and a
sharp stake, with which they oblige him to dig a hole in the ground;
and in this they order him to cast the sticks one by one, repeating the
names of the principal warriors of his country, while at the same time
the surrounding soldiers load these abhorred names with the bitterest
execrations. He is then ordered to cover the hole, as if to bury
therein the reputation and valor of their enemies, whom he has named.
After this ceremony, the toqui, or one of his bravest companions to
whom he relinquishes the honor of the execution, dashes out the brains
of the prisoner with a club. The _heart_ is immediately taken out,
and presented palpitating to the general, who sucks a little of the
_blood_, and passes it to his officers, who repeat in succession the
same ceremony.”[271] And in this way the life of the conquered tribe
passes, symbolically, into the tribal life of the conquerors.
Burckhardt was so surprised at a trace of this idea in Nubia, that he
could hardly credit the information concerning it; “although several
persons asserted it to be a fact,” he says; “and he heard no one
contradict it.”[272] As he learned it: “Among the Hallenga, who draw
their origin from Abyssinia, a horrible custom is said to attend the
revenge of blood. When the slayer has been seized by the relatives of
the deceased, a family feast is proclaimed, at which the murderer is
brought into the midst of them, bound upon an angareyg; and while his
throat is slowly cut with a razor, the blood is caught in a bowl, and
handed round amongst the guests; every one of whom is bound to drink of
it, at the moment the victim breathes his last.” The forfeited life of
the murderer here seems to be surrendered to, and formally appropriated
by, the family, or clan, which he had, to the same extent, depleted of
character and life.
A practice not unlike this is reported of the Australians, in their
avenging the blood of a murdered person. They devour their victims;
who are selected from the tribe of the murderer, although they may be
personally, innocent of the murder. The tribe depleted by the murder,
replaces its loss by blood--which is life--from the tribe of the
murderer. Indeed, “when any one of a tribe [in New South Wales] dies
a natural death, it is usual to avenge [or to cancel] the loss of the
deceased by taking blood from one or other of his friends.”[273] In
this way, the very life and being of those whose blood is taken, go to
restore to the bereaved ones the loss that death has brought to them.
Strange as this idea may seem to us, its root-thought, as a fact, is
still an open question in the realm of physiological science. The
claim is positive, in medical works, that insanity has been cured by
the transfusion of a sane man’s blood;[274] that a normal mind has
been restored, through a normal life gained in new blood. Moreover,
the question, how far the nature, or the characteristics, of an
organism, are affected, in blood transfusion, by the nature, or the
characteristics, of the donor of the transfused blood, is by no means
a settled one among scientists. Referring to a series of questions in
this line, propounded by Robert Boyle, more than two centuries ago,
Roussel has said, within the past decade: “No one has been able to give
any positive answers to them, based upon well-conducted operations”;
and, “they still await solution in 1877, as in 1667.”[275]
4. LIFE FROM ANY BLOOD, AND BY A TOUCH.
Because blood is life, all blood, and any blood, has been looked upon
as a vehicle of transferred life. And because blood is life, and the
heart is a fountain of blood, and so is a fountain of life,--a touch
of blood, or, again, the minutest portion of a vital and vivifying
heart, has been counted capable of transferring life, with all that
life includes and carries; just as the merest cutting of a vine, or the
tiniest seed of the mightiest tree, will suffice as the germ of that
vine or that tree, in a new planting. The blood, or the heart, of the
lower animals, has been deemed the vehicle of life and strength, in
its transference; and a touch from either has been counted potent in
re-vivifying and in improving the receiving organism.
Thus, for example, Stanley, in the interior of Africa, having received
“a fine, fat ox as a peace-offering,” from “the great magic doctor of
Vinyata,” when making a covenant of blood with him,[276] was requested
to return the heart of the ox to the donor; and he acceded to this
request. After this, Stanley’s party was several times assailed by the
Wanyaturu, from the neighborhood of Vinyata. Thereupon his ally Mgongo
Tembo explained, says Stanley: “That we ought not to have bestowed the
_heart_ of the presented ox upon the magic doctor of Vinyata; as by the
loss of that diffuser of blood, the Wanyaturu believed we had left our
own bodies weakened, and would be an easy prey to them.”[277]
Another modern traveler in Equatorial Africa finds fresh bullock’s
blood counted a means of manhood. While the young Masâi man is passing
his novitiate into warrior life, he seeks new strength by taking in
new blood. Having employed medical means to rid his system of the
remains of all other diet, says Thompson, the novice went to a lonely
place with a single attendant; they taking with them a living bullock.
There “they killed the bullock, either with a blow from a rungu, or by
stabbing it in the back of the neck. They then opened a vein and drank
the blood fresh from the animal.” After this, the young man gorged
himself with the bullock’s flesh.[278] And whenever the Masâi warriors
“go off on war-raids they also contrive to eat a bullock [after this
fashion], by way of getting up their courage.”[279]
Again, it is said, that Arab women in North Africa give their
male children a piece of the lion’s heart to eat, to make them
courageous.[280] And an English traveler in South Africa[281]
describing the death of a lion shot by his party, says: “Scarcely was
the breath out of his body than the Caffres rushed up, and each took a
mouthful of the blood that was trickling from the numerous wounds; as
they believe that it is a specific which imparts strength and courage
to those who partake of it.”
That the transference of life, with all that life carries, can be made
by the simplest blood-anointing, as surely as by blood absorption, is
strikingly illustrated by a custom still observed among the Hill Tribes
of India. The Bheels, are a brave and warlike race of mountaineers, of
Hindostan. They claim to have been, formerly, the rulers of all their
region; but, whether by defeat in war, or by voluntary concession, to
have yielded their power to other peoples--whom they now authorize to
rule in their old domain. “The extraordinary custom, common to almost
all the countries [of India] that have been mentioned,” says Sir J.
Malcolm,[282] “of the _tika_, or mark that is put upon the forehead of
the Rajput prince, or chief, when he succeeds to power, being moistened
with blood taken from the toe or thumb of a Bhill, may be received as
one among many proofs of their having been formerly in possession of
the principalities, where this usage prevails.
... The right of giving the blood for this ceremony, is claimed by
particular families; and the belief, that the individual, from whose
veins it is supplied, never lives beyond a twelvemonth, in no degree
operates to repress the zeal of the Bhills to perpetuate an usage,
which the Rajput princes are, without exception, desirous should
cease.” The Bheels claim that the right to rule is vested in their
race; but they transfer that right to the Rajpoot by a transfer of
blood--which is a transfer of life and of nature. Thus the Bheels
continue to rule--in the person of those who have been vivified by
their blood.
So, again, among the ancient Caribs, of South America, “‘as soon as a
male child was brought into the world, he was sprinkled with some drops
of his father’s blood’; the father ‘fondly believing, that the same
degree of courage which he had himself displayed, was by these means
transmitted to his son.’”[283] Here it is evident, that the voluntary
transfusion of blood is deemed more potent to the strengthening of
personal character, than is the transmission of blood by natural
descent.
In South Africa, among the Amampondo, one of the Kaffir tribes, it is
customary for the chief, on his accession to authority, “to be washed
in the blood of a near relative, generally a brother, who is put to
death on the occasion, and his skull used as a receptacle for his
blood.”[284] In order to give more life and more character than the
ordinary possession to the newly elevated chieftain, the family blood
is withdrawn from the veins of one having less need of it, that it may
be absorbed by him who can use it more imposingly.
In the Yoruba country, in Central Africa, “when a beast is sacrificed
for a sick man, the blood is sprinkled on the wall, and smeared on the
patient’s forehead, with the idea, it is said, of thus transferring to
him the [divinely] accepted victim’s life.” Life is life, and whether
that life be in the blood of one organism or of another, of man or
of an inferior animal, its transference carries with it all that life
includes. That seems to be the thought in Yoruba; and, as all life is
of supernatural origin and preservation, its transference can be by a
touch as easily as by any other method.[285]
5. INSPIRATION THROUGH BLOOD.
Because blood, as life, belongs to, and, in a peculiar sense,
represents, the Author of life, blood has been counted a means of
inspiration. The blood of the gods, in myth and legend, and again the
blood of divinely accepted sacrifices, human and animal, in ancient and
modern religious rituals, has been relied on as the agency whereby the
Author of life speaks in and through the possessor of that blood.
The inspiring power of blood, is a thought that runs all through the
early Norseland legends. Thus, Kvaser, according to the Scandinavian
mythology, was a being created by the gods with preternatural
intelligence. Kvaser traversed the world, teaching men wisdom; but
he was treacherously murdered by the dwarfs Fjalar and Gala. The
dwarfs let Kvaser’s blood run into two cups and a kettle. “The name
of the kettle is Odrœrer, and the names of the cups are Son and Bodn.
By mixing up his blood with honey, they composed a drink of such
surpassing excellence, that whoever partakes of it acquires the gift of
song.”[286] And that was the origin of poetry in the world; although
there have been a good many imitations of the real article since that
day.
So, again, in the Elder Edda, the hero Sigurd killed Fafner, at the
instigation of Fafner’s brother Regin. Regin cut out the heart of his
brother, and gave it to Sigurd to roast, while he drank the blood of
the murdered one. Touching the bleeding heart with his fingers, and
then putting his fingers into his mouth, Sigurd found that he was now
able to understand the voice of birds; and thenceforward he was a hero
inspired.[287] Afterwards he gave his bride, Gudrun, “to eat of the
remnant of Fafnir’s heart; so _she_ grew wise and great-hearted.”[288]
Down to the present time, there are those in the far East, and in the
far West, who seek inspiration by blood-drinking. All along the North
Pacific coast, the shamanism of the native tribes shows itself in a
craving for blood as a means and as an accompaniment of preternatural
frenzy. The chief sorcerer, or medicine-man, has his seasons of
demoniacal possession, when he can communicate with the powers of the
air. At such times he is accustomed to spring upon the members of his
tribe, and bite out from their necks or bodies the bleeding flesh, as
a help to inspiration and debauch. None would venture to resist these
blood-thirsty assaults; but the scars which result are always borne
with pride.[289]
Another phase of this universal idea is reported by a recent traveler
in the Himalayan districts of India; where, as he thinks, the forms
of religion ante-date in their origin those of Hindooism, or of
Brahmanism, and “have descended from very early ages.” When a favor is
sought from a local divinity, “it is the _chela_ [or primitive seer]
who gasps out the commands of the _deoty_ [the ‘deity’], as he [the
chela] shivers under the divine afflatus, and [under] the vigorous
application of the _soongul_, or iron scourge.” But before the chela
can have “the divine afflatus” he must drink-in living blood. Thus,
this traveler witnessed an appeal to the snake-god, Kailung Nag, for
fine weather for the sowing of the crops. The sacrificial sheep was
procured by the people; the ceremonies of wild worship, including
music, dancing, incense-burning, and bodily flagellations, proceeded.
“At length, all being ready, the head of the victim was struck off with
an axe. The body was then lifted up by several men, and the chela,
seizing upon it like a tiger, drank the blood as it spurted from the
neck. When all the blood had been sucked from the carcass, it was
thrown down upon the ground, amid yells and shouts of ‘_Kailung Maharaj
ki jai!_’ [‘Victory to the great king Kailung’]. The dancing was
then renewed, and became more violent, until after many contortions,
the chela [now blood-filled] gasped out that the deota accepted the
sacrifice, and that the season would be favorable. This was received
with renewed shouts, and the chela sank down upon the ground in a state
of exhaustion.”[290]
In the folk-lore of Scotland, as representing the primitive traditions
of Western Europe, there are illustrations of the idea that the
blood of the gods was communicated to earthly organisms. Thus, a
scientific antiquarian of Scotland records in this line: “There was
a popular saying that the robin”--the robin red-breast--“had a drop
of God’s blood in its veins, and that therefore to kill or hurt
it was a sin, and that some evil would befall any one who did so;
and, conversely, any kindness done to poor robin would be repaid
in some fashion. Boys did not dare to harry a robin’s nest.” On
the other hand, the yellow-hammer and the swallow were said, each
“to have a drop of the Devil’s blood in its veins”; so the one of
these birds--the yellow-hammer--was “remorselessly harried”; and the
other--the swallow--“was feared, and therefore let alone.”[291] A
similar legendary fear of the swallow, and the guarding of his nest,
accordingly, exists in Germany and in China.[292]
Another indication of the belief, that human blood has a vital
connection with its divine source, and is under the peculiar oversight
of its divine Author, is found in the wide-spread opinion that the
blood of a murdered man will bear witness against the murderer, by
flowing afresh at his touch; the living blood crying out from the dead
body, by divine consent, in testimony of crime against the Author of
life. Ancient European literature teems with incidents in the line of
this “ordeal of touch.”
Thus it was, according to the Nibelungen Lied, that Kriemhild fastened
upon Hagan the guilt of murdering her husband Siegfried; when Hagan and
his associates were gathered for the burial of the hero.
“Firmly they made denial; Kriemhild at once replied,
‘Whoe’er in this is guiltless, let him this proof abide.
In sight of all the people let him approach the bier,
And so to each beholder shall the plain truth appear.’
It is a mighty marvel, which oft e’en now we spy,
That, when the blood-stain’d murderer comes to the murder’d nigh,
The wounds break out a-bleeding; then too the same befell,
And thus could each beholder the guilt of Hagan tell.
The wounds at once burst streaming, fast as they did before;
Those who then sorrowed deeply, now yet lamented more.”[293]
Under Christian II., of Denmark, the “Nero of the North,” early in the
sixteenth century, there was a notable illustration of this confidence
in the power of blood to speak for itself. A number of gentlemen being
together in a tavern, one evening, they fell to quarreling, and “one
of them was stabbed with a poniard. Now the murderer was unknown, by
reason of the number [present]; although the person stabbed accused a
pursuivant of the king’s who was one of the company. The king, to find
out the homicide, caused them all to come together in the stove [the
tavern], and, standing round the corpse, he commanded that they should,
one after another, lay their right hand on the slain gentleman’s naked
breast, swearing that they had not killed him. The gentlemen did so,
and no sign appeared against them. The pursuivant only remained, who,
condemned before in his own conscience, went first of all and kissed
the dead man’s feet. But, as soon as he had laid his hand upon his
breast, the blood gushed forth in abundance, both out of his wound
and his nostrils; so that, urged by this evident accusation, he
confessed the murder, and was by the king’s own sentence, immediately
beheaded.”[294]
A striking example of the high repute in which this ordeal of touch was
formerly held, and of the underlying idea on which its estimate was
based, is reported from the State Trials of Scotland. It was during the
trial of Philip Standsfield, in 1688, for the murder of his father,
Sir James. The testimony was explicit, that when this son touched the
body, the blood flowed afresh, and the son started back in terror,
crying out, “Lord, have mercy upon me!” wiping off the blood, from his
hand, on his clothes. Sir George M’Kenzie, acting for the State, at the
inquest, said concerning this testimony and its teachings: “But they,
fully persuaded that Sir James was murdered by his own son, sent out
[with him] some surgeons and friends, who having raised the body, did
see it bleed miraculously upon his touching it. In which, God Almighty
himself was pleased to bear a share in the testimonies which we
produce: that Divine Power which makes the blood circulate during life,
has oft times, in all nations, opened a passage to it after death upon
such occasions, but most in this case.”[295]
Mr. Henry C. Lea, in his erudite work on Superstition and Force, has
multiplied illustrations of the ordeal of touch, or of “bier-right,”
all along the later centuries.[296] He recalls that “Shakspeare
introduces it, in King Richard III., where Gloster interrupts the
funeral of Henry VI., and Lady Anne exclaims:
‘O gentlemen see, see! dead Henry’s wounds
Open their congealed mouths, and bleed afresh.’”
He refers to the fact that it was an old-time Jewish custom to ask
pardon of a corpse for any offences committed against the living man,
laying hold of the great toe of the corpse while thus asking; and if
the asker had really inflicted any grievous injury on the deceased,
the body was supposed to signify that fact by a copious hemorrhage
from the nose.[297] “This, it will be observed,” he adds, “is almost
identical with the well-known story which relates that, when Richard
Cœur-de-Lion hastened to the funeral of his father, Henry II., and
met the procession at Fontevraud, the blood poured from the nostrils
of the dead king, whose end he had hastened by his disobedience and
rebellion.” Mr. Lea shows that in some instances the bones of a
murdered man are said to have given out fresh blood when handled by a
murderer as long as twenty years, or even fifty, after the murder; and
he gives ample evidence that a belief in this power of blood to speak
for itself against the violator of God’s law, still exists among the
English-speaking people, and that it has manifested itself as a means
of justice-seeking, in the United States, within a few years past.
6. INTER-COMMUNION THROUGH BLOOD.
Beyond the idea of inspiration through an interflow of God-representing
blood, there has been in primitive man’s mind (however it came
there) the thought of a possible inter-communion with God through an
inter-union with God by blood. God is life. All life is from God, and
belongs to God. Blood is life. Blood, therefore, as life, may be a
means of man’s inter-union with God. As the closest and most sacred of
covenants between man and man; as, indeed, an absolute merging of two
human natures into one,--is a possibility through an inter-flowing of a
common blood; so the closest and most sacred of covenants between man
and God; so the inter-union of the human nature with the divine,--has
been looked upon as a possibility, through the proffer and acceptance
of a common life in a common blood-flow.
Whatever has been man’s view of sin and its punishment, and of his
separation from God because of u
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