Note 220.1 — Chapter XI · SACRED WELLS AND TREES.

Outside Europe the ritual cutting and dedication of hair has been found in modern times all over the world. I have space for but few examples, and must content myself with referring the reader for others to the learned work on the subject by the late Professor Wilken, who has made a large collection. Mr. Ainsworth relates that he saw in an Arab cemetery on the Euphrates tresses of hair attached to sticks over the graves of females.220.1 And Olearius, who was in Persia in 1637, saw a funeral procession in which three men carried before the corpse each one a tree (the equivalent, probably, of Mr. Ainsworth’s sticks) bearing, among other things, three tresses of the wives of the dead man, torn or cut off in sign of fidelity.220.2 When King Ummeda of Búndi, in India, abdicated, an image was made of him and burnt on a funeral pyre, as if it had been his corpse; and among the ceremonies was that of taking off the hair and whiskers of his successor and offering them to his manes.220.3 At the junction of the Ganges and Jumna and at other sacred places of pilgrimage, Hindu women cause their hair to be cut by the priest with golden shears, and the locks thrown with certain ceremonies into the stream.220.4 The Kirghiz, nominally adherents of Islam, have shrines at the graves of sundry holy men, to whom they offer prayer and sacrifice, and fasten not only ribbons and strips of cloth, but also hair to the bushes, reeds and tall grasses growing around.220.5 Among the offerings to Pélé, the goddess of the volcano Kirauea in Hawaii, Mr. Ellis found at her temple locks of human hair; and he learned that they were frequently presented by those who passed by the crater.220.6 About Lake Nyassa, in East Central Africa, one of the funeral rites is the shaving of the heads of the deceased man’s relatives. The hair is buried on the site of his house, which is taken down unless he be buried in it. Two or three months later the mourners are shaved again, and the hair is buried at the grave or in the bush.221.1 On the Gold Coast the ceremony of taking an oath bears a certain resemblance to the Abruzzian practice above cited. This oath is administered by the fetish-priest. His bossum, or fetish, consists usually of a wooden vessel or calabash filled with various objects. When the person who takes the oath has made his statement and uttered the customary imprecation on himself if he violate his oath, he goes thrice round the sacred vessel repeating the imprecation every time. The priest then, taking a portion of the contents of the vessel, rubs with it the man’s head, arms, abdomen and legs, turns it round three times over his head, and cutting off a piece of nail from one of the fingers and another piece from one of the toes of the oath-taker, and plucking a few hairs from his head, he throws them all into the vessel.221.2 The Australian natives at a burial feast tear out parts of their beards, singe them and throw them on the corpse. Sioux mourners are described as cutting locks of their own hair and flinging them upon the dead body;221.3 and in various parts of America widows are required to shave or cut their hair.221.4 Indeed, haircutting or shaving for the dead is found everywhere. The locks, it is true, are not always thrown upon the corpse or upon the grave; but, as we shall hereafter see in connection with the practice of blood-shedding, it is often considered enough simply to cut the hair or to shave. In such cases the rite must be looked upon as mutilated. The original intention is to bring the hair into contact with the dead. The true rite was exemplified at the death of Asclepios, when