Note 132.1 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

A belief not uncommon is that great care must be taken in the disposal of an amputated limb, lest evil consequences to the trunk ensue. Quite recently in New England a serious consultation was held by the friends of a man who had had his foot amputated as the result of crushing it in a railway accident; and it was decided to burn it, “in order that the stump should not always continue to be painful, and the man troubled by disagreeable sensations, as would surely follow if the foot were put into the ground.”132.1 Similar dangers threaten the man who clips his hair or cuts his nails. In Sussex the peasantry allow no portion of their hair to be carelessly thrown away, lest a bird find it and carry it off to work into its nest; for, until it had finished, the true owner of the hair would suffer from headache. Or if a toad get hold of a maiden’s long back hairs, she will have a cold in her head for so long as the animal keeps the hair in its mouth.132.2 In Germany also the action of birds is dreaded—especially theft by a starling, for then cataract will ensue. Hair is therefore burnt, or thrown into running water.132.3 Headache is the result of throwing away hairs in the Tirol. Wherefore they are burnt, or in the Unterinnthal, if thrown away, are first spit upon.132.4 In Norway the consequences are even worse: there the owner of a hair obtained by a toad will lose his reason.133.1 In the Atlantic States of North America the combings of the hair must not be thrown away, but burned, for the same reason as in Sussex, or because the birds might carry them to Hell, and so render it necessary for the owner to go thither to recover them.133.2 Among the Danubian Gipsies, hair which has fallen, or been cut off, is a source of anxiety. Headache will be caused by the birds working it into their nests, and can only be relieved by a complicated counter-charm. If a snake be guilty of carrying hair into its hole, the man from whose head it has come will continue to lose more, until that in the snake’s hole has decayed away.133.3 The Undups of Borneo will not burn their refuse hair, nor throw it into the water, for fear of headache. But it may be flung to the winds, or cast on the ground: it is better still to bury it. On the other hand, the tribes about Lake Nyassa burn their hair; but they bury the parings of their nails.133.4 At the other side of the African continent, among the Bodo, the nails are buried;133.5 while the Wayova of the Upper Congo, when they become old or sick, tie the clippings of their hair and nails with amulets in a string which they wear wrapped around them.133.6 In Mashonaland the hair is not cut until it is long and tangled, and too full of life to be endured any longer. It is then shaved entirely off and hung to a tree.133.7 The practices of the Western world are similar. The natives of the Youkon river in Alaska hang what they cut from their hair and nails in packages on the trees.134.1 The Gauchos of the Pampas of South America deem it of the utmost imprudence to throw away their hairs, wherefore they roll them up in a ball and hide them in the walls of the house.134.2 In the Cuyabá valley of central Brazil it is believed that to tread on hair-clippings is to render insane the man from whose head they came.134.3 The Maoris attached great importance to the cutting of the hair. It was always performed with much ceremony and many spells. In one place the most sacred day of the year was appointed for it: the people assembled from all the neighbourhood, often more than a thousand in number. Some of the hair was cast into the fire. Elsewhere the hair was laid upon the altar in the sacred grove, and there left.134.4 Algerian Jews and Arabs and Orthodox Polish Jews carefully bury or burn their nail-parings.134.5 A Galician Jew will not throw away the cuttings of his hair, lest he suffer from headache.134.6 It seems, indeed, a general opinion among Jews, if we may trust an American Jew, that “he who trims his nails and buries the parings is a pious man; he who burns them is a righteous man; but he who throws them away is a wicked man, for mischance might follow should a female step over them.”134.7 Contact with menstrual blood, and consequent ceremonial defilement, is evidently what is dreaded, just as if the blood had touched the man himself. For some such reason, perhaps, the Flamen Dialis was required, among the Romans, when he cut his hair or his nails, to bury the severed portions beneath a lucky tree.135.1 Ahura Mazda is gravely represented in the Vendîdâd as telling Zoroaster that when a man drops his refuse hair or nails in a hole or crack, and observes not the lawful rites, lice are produced, which destroy the corn in the field and the clothes in the wardrobe. The prophet is commanded, therefore, to take these portions of the body, whenever they are detached, ten paces from the faithful, twenty from the fire, thirty from the water and fifty from the consecrated bundles of baresma, and there to dig a hole, drawing three, six or nine furrows around it with a metal knife, and chanting the Ahuna-Vairya a corresponding number of times. In the hole he is to bury the hair or nails, saying aloud the fiend-smiting (though slightly irrelevant) words, in the case of hair: “Out of him by his piety Mazda made the plants grow up”; or in the case of nails: “The words that are heard from the pious in holiness and good thought”; and the nails are to be dedicated to the Ashô-zusta bird, which is believed to be the owl, as weapons for him against the Daêvas.135.2 This elaborate ritual and the belief it embodies are, of course, comparatively late in civilisation; but they are an adaptation to Zoroaster’s lofty religion of pre-existing superstitions. In the Grihya-Sûtra, one of the ancient books of the Hindus, it is enjoined as a religious rite to gather the hair and nails which have been cut off, mix them with bull’s dung (the bull was a sacred animal) and bury the whole in a cow-stable, or near an Udumbara-tree, or in a clump of Darbha-grass. And when a boy received the tonsure, in the third year of his age, the barber threw the locks upon the same savoury substance, which was then buried in the forest. The hair left on the head was arranged according to the custom of his gotra and of his family.136.1 The ritual first shaving now takes place in India at the shrine of some goddess; and the locks are safely deposited in a place where they are not liable to be trodden on.136.2 In Japan, when a boy, at or after the age of fifteen, receives his permanent name, and is admitted to the privileges of manhood, his forelock is ceremonially cut. It is taken by the sponsor to the youth’s guardians, who wrap it in paper and offer it at the shrine of the family gods; or else it is kept with care in the house until its owner dies, and then put into the coffin with him.136.3 Throughout the East Indian islands much importance is attached to the first hair-cutting. On Timor it takes place three months after birth, at new moon. The child’s eldest uncle cuts a lock from four places on the head with a bamboo knife, and wrapping each of the locks in a flake of cotton he blows it away from the palm of his hand into the air. More usually it is carefully preserved. In North Celebes the rite is performed by a priest. The clippings are put into a young cocoa-nut and hung up under the thatch of the house. Another tribe of the same island puts the hair, moistened with sweet-scented oil, into a young kalapa-fruit, and hangs it before the house above the ladder until it fall in course of time. The Ambonese bury the clippings under a sago-palm, or lay them in a silver box with an amulet against sickness and hang it about the child’s neck. The Aru Islanders hide them in a pisang- or banana-tree. The inhabitants of Roti lay them first with water in a cocoa-nut-shell; afterwards the father stuffs them into a little bag of plaited leaves, which he fastens in the top of a loutar-palm.137.1 The Bambaras, a tribe of the Upper Niger, celebrate the birth of a child by the sacrifice of a bull or sheep at the door of the mother’s hut. The infant’s head is then shaved, and the hair is placed in a calabash containing dega, a composition of millet and milk prepared for the occasion. The friends invited to the feast then place each one his right hand on the calabash, while the griot, or medicine-man, pronounces blessings on the babe. The hairs are afterwards given to the mother, who carefully preserves them.137.2 Among the Ictasanda gens of the Omahas of North America, when a child had reached four years his hair had to be cut in the customary shape. The proper person to cut the first lock was the keeper of the sacred pipes. It was done with certain ceremonies; and the lock was put with those of other children cut at the same time into a sacred buffalo hide.137.3 There may have been more reasons than one for placing hair ceremonially cut on occasions like these in a sacred receptacle. This is a subject to which I shall return. But it is clear that one object at all events was safe custody. The locks thus shorn from the head must be guarded with care, lest any evil come to them, and through them to the person of whose body they once formed part.