Chapter VIII · THE LIFE-TOKEN IN TALE AND CUSTOM.

It is not uncommon for the plants to be set by natural or adoptive parents. The young Klepht in a modern Greek folksong begs his mother:

“Do thou plant a rose-tree, and plant a dusky clove,

And water them with sugar, and water them with musk.

So long they blossom, mother, so long they put forth flowers,

This son of thine will not be dead, but meet the Turks in battle.

But if the day of sorrow, the bitter day should come,

If the two trees fade together, and if their flowers fall,

These pools and mirrors have led me to anticipate somewhat. And before returning to Life-tokens a few words must be spent upon the cognate subject of Tokens of Fidelity. The extension of the idea of a life-token to a faith-token is obvious where the persons parted are lovers or spouses. In such cases it would not be enough for one to know that the other was living: constant assurance of the absent one’s fidelity would be as necessary to the other’s happiness as his life. There is another magical object, familiar in certain stages of civilisation, with which the Faith-token may easily be confounded. I mean the Test of Chastity, like the mirror in the beautiful tale of Zayn al-Asnam, or Florimel’s girdle in the Faerie Queene. With this test of chastity in a general sense we have not here to do; nor is it necessary to discuss the Faith-token itself at any length.

“They plighted a youth and maiden beneath my shelter;

They swore by my branches that they would cling together,

“Carry it still about you, and as oft

As you desire to know how she’s affected,

With curious eyes peruse it: while it keeps

The figure it now has, entire and perfect,

She is not only innocent in fact,

But unattempted; but if once it vary

From the true form, and what’s now white and red

Incline to yellow, rest most confident

She’s with all violence courted, but unconquer’d;

But if it all turn black, ’tis an assurance

The fort by composition or surprise

Is forced or with her free consent surrender’d.”

I do not propose, however, to trace the Faith-token through literature. If a gift of doubtful benefit to a jealous lover, many a literary artist in search of a plot has found it useful. Our business is with the Life-token, to which we may now return. Tales of life-tokens credited as facts are not very numerous. Perhaps one or two of the stories already mentioned may be included in that category. The rest may be treated together with superstitions and customs.

In many variants of the Perseus cycle, as well as in many of the märchen cited in the present chapter, we have found the life-token to be a tree planted before or at the time of the hero’s birth, or sometimes planted by himself or merely indicated by him. In the Smyrnæan tale, it will be remembered, the queen plants a pumpkin on the birth of each of her sons. The pumpkin brings forth one fruit, wherein the strength of the boy resides; and when it is cut the boy falls ill. As I have already pointed out, the pumpkin would seem here to be the life itself, and not merely the life-token. A distinction between the life and the life-token is generally observed in märchen. On the one hand, we have the story of Punchkin with his hidden soul, in which the magician, or demoniacal enemy of the hero, cannot be slain by any evil inflicted on his own body. His soul, or life, must be sought out in a distant spot where, enveloped in various coverings and protected by numerous defences, is a parrot, or an egg, to destroy which is to kill the magician. On the other hand, we have in the variants of The King of the Fishes and other types the mysterious token left at home while its owner sallies forth in search of adventures. If he fall, or suffer reverses, the token at home, if a tree or a flower, withers; if a knife, or a phial of liquid, or some other article, it drops blood, or rusts, or changes colour, or indicates in some other manner its sympathy with the hero’s fortunes.

“Douglas.

Last night, no sooner was I laid to rest,

But just three drops of blood fell from my nose

And stain’d my pillow, which I found this morning,

And wondered at.

Queen Mary.

That rather does betoken

Some mischief to thyself.

Douglas.

Perhaps to cowards,

Who prize their own base lives; but to the brave,

The tales and superstitions we have examined in this chapter are conclusive as to the wide range of a belief in the mysterious connection of a man’s life and health with some object external to himself. And they point with equal certainty to the belief that this connection originates in some relationship, either natal or established subsequently to birth by possession or ownership, or by appointment of the person concerned. In other words, the external object is believed to be, or to contain, a part of the man himself, or the man and the external object are regarded as two parts of a greater whole. This is the reason why, in märchen belonging to The King of the Fishes and other types, the tree growing in the garden at home is an index of the adventurer’s fate in the palace of the Medusa-witch. Both the tree and the hero are sprung from the magical fish; both are of his substance; and hence their sympathy. So, among the Maories and in Pomerania, when the navel-string or after-birth is buried and a tree planted over it, the latter would be conceived to absorb the substance of the object at its root—that is to say, of something which is already part of the child himself—and in that way become connected with him. Our evidence, though extending from Polynesia and Melanesia to the East Indies, though good for Germany and for portions of the American continent, does not directly establish the practice of such burials as universal. But such a custom is a fair inference wherever we find the planting of a tree at birth, especially where, as in the majority of cases, the tree is looked upon as betokening the child’s fate. Yet the custom could not have been one of the most archaic. It must have been unknown so long as mankind were wanderers having no settled places of abode or defined territory. Earlier than this, therefore, must have been the belief that some other relic such as hair, weapons, ornaments or clothes, which had been in contact with their owner’s body, or even some more arbitrary thing appointed by him, acquired the mysterious connection of which I am speaking. By constant use, or by habitual wear, things not originally part of a man would become inseparably associated with him in the minds of all his acquaintance, impregnated with his personality, identified with his corporeal presence. After a while mere ownership would be enough to warrant the ascription of this quality, at least to any portable object. The Maori claims of territorial right, based upon the burial of the claimant’s after-birth and navel-string, are instances of the subtle bond in native thought between ownership and a personal substance like that which was supposed to penetrate the trees whose existence was appealed to as evidence. True, these claims could only be made by members of a settled community, or of one whose limits of wandering were fixed. But the state of thought they disclose is thoroughly archaic, rooted in a still ruder past.

Not only, however, is a man’s property credited with the mysterious sympathy which enables it to become his life-token. It is not even necessary for him to appoint a life-token for himself, whether part of his property or not. Both in the stories and in actual life, and that very low down in savagery, a kinsman is represented as able to appoint a life-token, or at all events to divine, by the condition of a perfectly arbitrary object, what is the fate of an absent person. This power is with one exception limited to a kinsman. In the last resort it is possible to obtain tidings of a distant friend through a sorcerer. Here other beliefs are brought into play. Setting this exceptional case aside, we may class all the others together under the heads of Life-tokens—

1. By original corporeal connection with the absent person.

2. By virtue of his ownership.

3. By his appointment.

4. By corporeal connection with a kinsman of the absent person.

5. By virtue of a kinsman’s ownership.

6. By a kinsman’s appointment.

The appointment of a life-token not belonging to the person concerned, or his kinsman, was, we may assume, at first by a magical formula, as in the instance of the taboo set upon the banana by the twins in the Melanesian story. In this way a consecration to the speaker, an ἀνάθεμα, was performed, which would have the effect of ownership. In course of time, and of the changes wrought by advancing civilisation, the taboo would be forgotten; and a simple declaration of the intention to make the object his life-token would remain. The cases of appointment thus resolve themselves into ownership; and ownership, as we have seen, is nothing but an extension of the idea of corporeal connection. The reason why the corporeal connection with a kinsman, or his ownership of the life-token, is equivalent to that of the absent hero, is because the kinsman, being of the same stock as the hero, is deemed to have an original corporeal bond with him like that of the tree in the märchen growing from the bones or scales of the fish from whose flesh the hero is sprung. They are both of the same substance, two parts of a greater whole. This will be brought out more clearly as we proceed. We are then face to face with the question why separated portions of the same substance should remain in such sympathy with one another that the condition of the one will betoken the condition of the other. To explain this we must enter upon a wider survey of savage customs and superstitions.