Note 239.1 — Chapter XII · TOTEMISM—THE BLOOD COVENANT—CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH SALIVA.

The mingling of blood—the Blood-covenant as it is called—is a simple though repulsive ceremony. It is sufficient that an incision be made in the neophyte’s arm and the flowing blood sucked from it by one of the clansmen, upon whom the operation is repeated in turn by the neophyte. Originally, perhaps, the clansmen all assembled and partook of the rite; but if so, the necessity has ceased to be recognised almost everywhere. The form, indeed, has undergone numberless variations. Sometimes the blood is dropped into a cup and diluted with water or wine. Sometimes food eaten together is impregnated with the blood. Sometimes it is enough to rub the bleeding wounds together, so that the blood of both parties is mixed and smeared upon them both. Among the Kayans of Borneo the drops are allowed to fall upon a cigarette, which is then lighted and smoked alternately by both parties. But, whatever may be the exact form adopted, the essence of the rite is the same, and its range is world-wide. It is mentioned by classical writers as practised by the Arabs, the Scythians, the Lydians and Iberians of Asia Minor, and apparently the Medes. Many passages of the Bible, many of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, are inexplicable apart from it. Ancient Arab historians are full of allusions to it. Odin and Loki entered into the bond, which means for us that it was customary among the Norsemen—as we know, in fact, from other sources. It is recorded by Giraldus of the Irish of his day. It is described in the Gesta Romanorum. It is related of the Huns or Magyars, and of the mediæval Roumanians. Joinville ascribes it to one of the tribes of the Caucasus; and the Rabbi Petachia of Ratisbon, who travelled in Ukrainia in the twelfth century, found it there. In modern times every African traveller mentions it; and most of them have had to undergo the ceremony. In the neighbouring island of Madagascar, it is well known. All over the Eastern Archipelago, in Australia, in the Malay peninsula, among the Karens, the Siamese, the Dards on the northern border of our Indian empire, and many of the aboriginal tribes of Bengal, the wild tribes of China, the Syrians of Lebanon and the Bedouins, and among the autochthonous peoples of North and South America, the rite is, or has been quite recently, in use. Nor has it ceased to be practised in Europe by the Gipsies, the Southern Slavs and the Italians of the Abruzzi. The band of the Mala Vita in Southern Italy, only broken up a year or two ago, was a blood-brotherhood formed in this way. Most savage peoples require their youths at the age of puberty to submit to a ceremony which admits them into the brotherhood of the grown men, and into all the rights and privileges of the tribe. Of this ceremony the blood-covenant is usually an essential part, as it is also, either actually, or by symbol which represents an act once literally performed, in the initiation-rite not only of the Mala Vita, but of almost all secret societies, both civilised and uncivilised. In the French department of Aube, when a child bleeds, he puts a little of his blood on the face or hands of one of his playfellows, and says to him: “Thou shalt be my cousin.” In like manner in New England, when a school-girl, not many years since, pricked her finger so that the blood came, one of her companions would say: “Oh, let me suck the blood; then we shall be friends.”239.1