Note 262.1 — Chapter XII · TOTEMISM—THE BLOOD COVENANT—CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH SALIVA.

Turning now to some other practices, we may begin by glancing at the widely diffused lustration of a babe with saliva. The object of the custom is said to be protection against the Evil Eye. Persius, in the first century of the Christian era, describes with great scorn a grandmother or superstitious aunt as taking the child from its cradle and rubbing its forehead with spittle applied with the middle finger.262.1 Nor is the custom by any means extinct. To lick a cross on the infant’s brow is among the Transylvanian Saxons a preservative from spells.262.2 And over the whole of Europe it is the most ordinary act of politeness to spit on a baby. Among the Dalmatians and Bosnians, when caressing and complimenting a pretty infant, it is necessary, in order to destroy the enchantment produced by the praise, to spit on its forehead; and if you chance to forget this, the parents with a pistol at your breast will constrain you to remember it. Everywhere in the Balkan peninsula the superstition prevails, as well as in Corsica, in the Land beyond the Forest and among the Huzules on the north-eastern slopes of the Carpathians.262.3 A visitor to Ireland in the reign of Charles II. records the same among the peasantry of his day; and even yet it is far from disappearing. People in Wicklow spit on a child for good luck the first day it is brought out after birth. At Innisbofin, in the west of Ireland, when the old women meet a baby out with its nurse they either spit upon it or spit on the ground all round in a circle, to keep off the fairies.262.4 The design to ward off the spells of witches or (what amounts to the same thing) of fairies appears, however, to be only a specialisation of a more general intention. The evidence points to the meaning of the ceremony as a welcome into the world, an acknowledgment of kindred, a desire to express those friendly feelings which in archaic times none but a kinsman could entertain, whatever flattering words might be spoken. It is said that the ceremony referred to by Persius was performed on the day the babe received its name. In Connemara, immediately after birth, the father spits on his child.263.1 Some such custom would seem to have been known in Iceland under the name of Spittle-baptism.263.2 When Mohammed’s elder grandson was born, the prophet spat in his mouth and named him Hasan.263.3 Among the Mandingos and among the Bambaras of Western Africa, in the ceremony of naming a child, the griot or priest spits thrice in its face.263.4 In Ashanti the father varies the performance by squirting a mouthful of rum into his child’s face and calling it by a name.263.5 And in the Roman Catholic rite of baptism—a rite, we are called on to believe, having nothing in common with these heathenish practices—the person operated on, whether babe or adult, is to this day bedaubed with the priest’s saliva.