Note 266.1 — Chapter XII · TOTEMISM—THE BLOOD COVENANT—CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH SALIVA.

So the custom of spitting on one’s money for luck appears to be an emphatic way of identifying oneself with it. It is usual in England for country people attending a market to sell, to spit on the first money received and put it into a pocket apart; and the object is rightly suggested in an old dictionary “to render it tenacious that it may remain with them, and not vanish away like a fairy gift.”266.1 A Walloon receiving money from one suspected of sorcery bites it, otherwise it would return to the sorcerer, together with all the pieces in contact with it in the pocket.266.2 The biting is evidently a method of touching the coin with the saliva. So an Eskimo licks anything which is given him; while in some parts of England it is believed that to spit on a gift, such as a piece of money, is to ensure more.266.3 For the same reason, as noted in a previous chapter, the Danubian Gipsy who desires to assure a maiden’s love will obtain some of her hairs, spit on them, and then hide them in the coffin of a dead man. A Transylvanian Saxon in a business matter, before he pays the first money, spits on it, that it may bring him more.266.4 An Esthonian, if he be required to empty his purse, will spit into it.266.5 A Spaniard, in buying a lottery ticket, spits on the money before handing it over, in the hope of thus securing the winning number. Others spit on the ground, put the foot on the spittle, and only take it off on receiving the ticket.267.1 The Persian gamester, who always attributes losses to the Evil Eye, blows on the cards or the dice, and feigns to spit on his money before staking it on the game.267.2 In France a player spits on his chair.267.3 The Cherokee fisherman, before baiting his hook, chews a small piece of Venus’ Flytrap, and spits it upon the bait and the hook, at the same time repeating an incantation addressed to the fish. “Our spittle,” he says, “shall be in agreement,” implying, as Mr. Mooney tells us, “that there shall be such close sympathy between the fisher and the fish that their spittle shall be as the spittle of one individual.”267.4 A Girondin fisherman, having baited his hook, spits on the worm to make the fish bite better.267.5 In Norway the fisherman also spits upon the bait for luck; the tradesman and the working-man spit on the first money they take. In the Lofoden Islands the fisherman’s wife accompanies him to the boat, and always spits in it to bestow luck upon him.267.6 In Upper Ogowe, in Africa, a fetish-horn is shaken around a man to bring him luck, a certain herb is chewed and the quid is spit out upon him; and in the same way chewed herbs are spit upon a new-born child to preserve it from spells. Among the Okandas of the same region, in order to assure to a pirogue a prosperous voyage, the women come with a bouquet of leaves. Striking the forepart of the vessel with the leaves, they make a noise as of driving away something, and finally spit upon it.267.7 Olenda, the king of the Ashira in Equatorial Africa, when he gave his parting blessing to his sons and Du Chaillu, whom they were to accompany on a journey, took a sugar-cane, and biting off a piece of the pith spat a little of the juice in the hand of each of the party, at the same time blowing on the hand.268.1 In his book on the Highlands of Æthiopia Major Cornwallis Harris describes a search for a lost camel. The man who was sent on the search was given the rope wherewith the animal had been fettered; but before it was put into his hands, spells were muttered over it; and we are told that “the devil was dislodged by the process of spitting upon the cord at the termination of each spell.”268.2 So in the old Roman Catholic liturgy, when the priest puts his spittle on the ears and nose of the person he is baptizing he says: “Effeta, quod est adaperire, in odorem suavitatis; tu autem effugare, diabole, adpropinquavit enim judicium Dei!”268.3 This conjuring formula perhaps derives its value from the blessed word Effeta, transliterated in our Bibles as Ephphatha, used by Christ, and having nothing to do with the dislodgment of the devil to which the latter part of the spell, like those muttered over the camel-fetter, refers. Moreover, the dislodgement of the devil is an incomplete explanation in both cases, as we shall see directly.