Note 59.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Yet human beings who are neither saints nor witches, and the lower animals also, have their potentialities, the benefit of which is capable of being transferred to others. This is one of the reasons for cannibalism. Among the Veddas of Ceylon, one of the lowest known peoples, it is said to have been the custom, when a man had been killed, for the slayer to open the body and take out a piece of the liver, which he would dry in the sun and keep in his pouch. Indeed a man was sometimes put to death for the purpose. Its object was to make its possessor strong and confident to avenge insults. He would bite off a piece of the dried liver and chew it, saying to himself: “I have killed this man; why should I not be strong and confident and kill this other one who has insulted me?”59.1 So the Turks, after the death of the Albanian hero Scanderbeg, dug up his body and from his bones constructed amulets to inspire courage into the wearer on the battlefield.60.1 This potentiality may be communicated, like the Melanesian mana, through other objects; and the possibility has led to certain funeral customs in Europe as well as elsewhere. After a death in the Highlands of Bavaria it was formerly the duty of the housewife to prepare corpse-cakes (Leichen-nudeln). Having kneaded the dough, she placed it to rise on the dead body, which lay on a bier enswathed in a linen shroud. When the dough had risen, the cakes were baked for the expected guests. To the cakes so prepared the belief attached that “they contained the virtues and advantages of the deceased,” and that his “living strength passed over into the kinsmen who consumed the cakes, and was thus retained within the kindred.”60.2 The eating of the flesh of animals remarkable for qualities such as ferocity, strength, fleetness, and so forth, with intent to acquire these qualities is well known. One illustration will be sufficient here. The Basuto, before going to war, make assurance doubly, trebly sure by a cruel rite. The foreleg of a living bull is cut off. The warriors eat it and are sprinkled with blood from the animal, which is then killed. They are lanced by the witch-doctor, and a powder made of the flesh of the bull is rubbed into the wounds. In this way, namely, by eating the flesh, by sprinkling the blood, and by inoculation, “the strength and courage of the animal” are imparted to them.60.3