Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

266

CATTLE-DISEASE DEMONS.

makes Him bear an exact resemblance to the dangerous sorcerer that fills the savage mind with dread. It is probable that the covetous eye denounced in the decalogue means the evil eye, which was supposed to blight an object intensely desired but not to be obtained.

Gopolu, already referred to (p. 136) as the Singhalese demon of hydrophobia, bears the general name of the 'Cattle Demon.' He is said to have been the twin of the demigod Mangara by a queen on the Coromandel coast. The mother died, and a cow suckled the twins, but afterwards they quarrelled, and Gopolu being slain was transformed into a demon. He repaired to Arangodde, and fixed his abode in a Banyan where there is a large beehive, whence proceed many evils. The population around this Banyan for many miles being prostrated by diseases, the demigod Mangara and Pattini (goddess of chastity) admonished the villagers to sacrifice a cow regularly, and thus they were all resuscitated. Gopolu now sends all cattle diseases. India is full of the like superstitions. The people of Travancore especially dread the demon Madan, 'he who is like a cow,' believed to strike oxen with sudden illness, sometimes men also.

In Russia we find superstition sometimes modified by common sense. Though the peasant hopes that Zegory (St. George) will defend his cattle, he begins to see the chief foes of his cattle. As in the folk-song

We have gone around the field,

We have called Zegory. . . .

O thou, our brave Zegory,

Save our cattle,

In the field and beyond the field,

In the forest and beyond the forest,

Under the bright moon,

Under the red sun,

From the rapacious wolf,

BIHLWEISEN.

From the cruel bear,

From the cunning beast.1

267

Nevertheless when a cattle plague occurs many villages relapse into a normally extinct state of mind. Thus, a few years ago, in a village near Moscow, all the women, having warned the men away, stripped themselves entirely naked and drew a plough so as to make a furrow entirely around the village. At the point of juncture in this circle they buried alive a cock, a cat, and a dog. Then they filled the air with lamentations, crying—'Cattle Plague! Cattle Plague! spare our cattle! Behold, we offer thee cock, cat, and dog!' The dog is a demonic character in Russia, while the cat is sacred; for once when the devil tried to get into Paradise in the form of a mouse, the dog allowed him to pass, but the cat pounced on him -the two animals being set on guard at the door. The offering of both seems to represent a desire to conciliate both sides. The nudity of the women may have been to represent to the hungry gods their utter poverty, and inability to give more; but it was told me in Moscow, where I happened to be staying at the time, that it would be dangerous for any man to draw near during the perform

ance.

In Altmark 2 the demons who bewitch cattle are called 'Bihlweisen,' and are believed to bury certain diabolical. charms under thresholds over which the animals are to pass, causing them to wither away, the milk to cease, etc. The prevention is to wash the cattle with a lotion of sea cabbage boiled with infusion of wine. In the same province it is related that once there appeared in a harvestfield at one time fifteen, at another twelve men (apparently), the latter headless. They all laboured with 1 Ralston's Songs of the Russian People,' p. 230.

[ocr errors]

24 'Sagen der Altmark.' Von A. Kuhn. Berlin, 1843.

[blocks in formation]

scythes, but though the rustling could be heard no grain fell. When questioned they said nothing, and when the people tried to seize them they ran away, cutting fruitlessly as they ran. The priests found in this a presage of the coming cattle plague. The Russian superstition of the plough, above mentioned, is found in fragmentary survivals in Altmark. Thus, it is said that to plough around a village and then sit under the plough (placed upright), will enable any one to see the witches; and in some villages, some bit of a plough is hung up over a doorway through which cattle pass, as no devil can then approach them. The demons have a natural horror of honest work, and especially the culture of the earth. Goethe, as we have seen, notes their fear of roses: perhaps he remembered the legend of Aspasia, who, being disfigured by a tumour on the chin, was warned by a dove-maiden to dismiss her physicians and try a rose from the garland of Venus; so she recovered health and beauty.

CHAPTER XII.

DEATH.

The Vendetta of Death-Teoyaomiqui-Demon of Serpents-Death on the Pale Horse-Kali-War-gods-Satan as Death-Deathbeds-Thanatos-Yama-Yimi-Towers of Silence-AlcestisHercules, Christ, and Death- Hel — Salt-Azraël-Death and the Cobbler-Dance of Death-Death as Foe, and as Friend.

SAVAGE races believe that no man dies except by sorcery. Therefore every death must be avenged. The Actas of the Philippines regard the Indians' as the cause of the deaths among them; and when one of them loses a relative, he lurks and watches until he has spied an ‘Indian' and killed him.1 It is a progress from this when primitive man advances to the belief that the fatal sorcerer is an invisible man-a demon. When this doctrine is taught in the form of a belief that death entered the world through the machinations of Satan, and was not in the original scheme of creation, it is civilised; but when it is inculcated under a set of African or other non-christian names, it is barbarian.

The following sketch, by Mr. Gideon Lang, will show the intensity of this conviction among the natives of New South Wales :

'While at Nanima I constantly saw one of these, named Jemmy, a remarkably fine man, about twenty-eight years

1 Wake's 'Evolution of Morality,' i. 107.

270

VENDETTA OF DEATH.

of age, who was the 'model Christian' of the missionaries, and who had been over and over again described in their reports as a living proof that, taken in infancy, the natives were as capable of being truly christianised as a people who had had eighteen centuries of civilisation. I confess that I strongly doubted, but still there was no disputing the apparent facts. Jemmy was not only familiar with the Bible, which he could read remarkably well, but he was even better acquainted with the more abstruse tenets of christianity; and so far as the whites could see, his behaviour was in accordance with his religious acquirements. One Sunday morning I walked down to the black fellows' camp, to have a talk with Jemmy, as usual. I found him sitting in his gunyah, overlooking a valley of the Macquarrie, whose waters glanced brightly in the sunshine of the delicious spring morning. He was sitting in a state of nudity, excepting his waistcloth, very earnestly reading the Bible, which indeed was his constant practice; and I could see that he was perusing the Sermon on the Mount. I seated myself, and waited till he concluded the chapter, when he laid down the Bible, folded his hands, and sat with his eyes fixed abstractedly on his fire. I bade him 'good morning,' which he acknowleged without looking up. I then said, 'Jemmy, what is the meaning of your spears being stuck in a circle round you?' He looked me steadily in the eyes, and said solemnly and with suppressed fierceness, 'Mother's dead!' I said that I was very sorry to hear it; 'but what had her death to do with the spears being stuck around so?' 'Bogan black-fellow killed her!' was the fierce and gloomy reply. 'Killed by a Bogan black!' I exclaimed: why, your mother has been dying a fortnight, and Dr. Curtis did not expect her to outlive last night, which you know as well as I do.' His only reply was a dogged

« ZurückWeiter »