Note 203.1 — Chapter VII · DEATH AND BIRTH AS TRANSFORMATION.

In classical legends we meet everywhere cases of transformation, either before or after death, of men and women into trees or plants, or into some of the lower animals. The most famous case, and one which has recently been submitted to careful examination by two distinguished living anthropologists, is that of Attis, who was changed into a pine-tree and in that form worshipped. It would be impertinent in me, after the acute and exhaustive discussions by Mr. Frazer and Mr. Grant Allen, to occupy any space with the consideration either of the legend or the cult. I only refer to them in this place as an illustration of ancient belief in metamorphosis, and for the purpose of recalling the reader’s attention to its identity with the superstitions of savage tribes, as well as those preserved in modern folklore, which we are now reviewing. The cult of Attis may not have been based, as Mr. Grant Allen thinks, on the worship of a dead man. “The tree-spirit and the corn-spirit, like most other deities,” may not “originate in the ghost of the deified ancestor.”203.1 We need not go the length of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Euhemerism; on the contrary, we may regard it as a child (one among many) of his passion for explaining everything quite clearly, for stopping up all gaps and stubbing up all difficulties in his synthesis, rather than an all-sufficient account of the beginnings of religion. It is certain, however, that the legend as we have it, the worship as it is recorded for us, implied a belief in metamorphosis as a possible and actual occurrence consequent upon death. This belief had descended to classic times from savagery, for to the savage mind death very often is merely metamorphosis. Nor, as we have seen, is the metamorphosis confined to vegetable forms. The pious Æneas beheld his father Anchises in a snake that crept from his tomb. The Zulu, not less pious, beholds his father in a snake lurking about his kraal.204.1 The ancient Egyptians held that the souls of the departed could assume animal forms.204.2 The Yorubas think the souls of the dead are sometimes born again in animals, or, though more rarely, in plants.204.3 In the East Indies, a Dyak who dies by accident, as by drowning, is not buried, but carried into the forest and simply laid down there. It is believed that his soul enters a tree, a fish, or some other brute. Accordingly certain kinds of fish are not eaten, and certain kinds of wood are not used, because they willingly harbour souls. On the other hand, the soul of a man over whom all proper funeral rites have been performed enters the City of Souls. But it cannot abide there for ever. After a life seven times as long as on the earth it dies and returns to this world, where it enters a mushroom, a fruit or a leaf, in the hope that it may be eaten by a human being or one of the lower animals. In such case the deceased is born again in the next offspring of the living creature which has eaten it; otherwise he comes to an end.204.4 The inhabitants of Nias believe that the soul at death divides into three parts. One of them goes to the village of the dead, and there often takes brute-form. Thus murderers become grasshoppers, those who die without male issue become night-flying moths, old men become hogs, and young children earthworms. Another part, called the ehèha, must be received in his mouth by the son of the dying person from the mouth of the latter, else it turns into a small animal and lingers about the body until search be made for it. When found, it is safely conveyed into a statuette representing the deceased.205.1 The natives of Ugi, in the Solomon Islands, believe that the souls of the dead pass into fireflies.205.2 The Moquis of North America maintained that death was nothing but a process of transmutation, and that the body was changed into animals, plants, and inanimate objects.205.3 The medicine men and women of the Sioux, it was believed, might be changed after death into wild beasts.205.4 Among the Gallinomero of California bad men were thought to return in the shape of coyotes, just as the Buddhist population of Ladak hold that a malicious person is reincarnated as a marmot.205.5 A Tirolese tale exhibits the shapes even yet believed over a wide extent of Christendom to be assumed by guilty and by innocent souls. For many years, it is said, a large toad haunted the steps of a vaulted grave at Meran. Flung away it was, and killed it was; but the next Ember Day there it would be sitting again upon the steps. At last a pious woman guessed that it was a poor soul, and spoke to it, asking what were the conditions of its deliverance. They were hard, but she fulfilled them; and as soon as atonement was made the toad changed into a dove, white as a stainless flower, and flew up before its deliverer’s eyes into heaven.206.1 The numerous British legends of ghost-laying, in which the dead unquiet soul appears as a bull, a black dog, a toad, a fly, or what not, recur to the mind in this connection. The beast that is, after a struggle, imprisoned by the parson, or some other conjurer, in a boot, a snuff-box, or a bottle, or bricked up in the haunted chamber, is only the changed form of a once living man or woman. But the superstition as thus presented has been so often and so well commented on, that it is needless to illustrate it further.