Note 22.3 — Chapter VIII · THE LIFE-TOKEN IN TALE AND CUSTOM.

For divination of this kind no special connection would be necessary between the life and the pool or fountain, such as is hinted at in the quotation concerning the “Worme unknown.” This is not always so. At Brereton, in Cheshire, is a lake whereon floating logs betokened the death of the head of the family of Brereton.22.3 Leonard Vair in his book on charms and sortileges mentions a very curious case communicated to him by Cardinal Granvelle. At the monastery of Saint Maurice on the borders of Burgundy, near to the Rhone, was a fish-pond which was kept stocked with as many fish as there were monks. When any of the monks fell sick (we are bound to believe it on the authority of a bishop and cardinal), one of the fish floated on the surface of the water, half dead; and if the monk were going to die, the fish would die three or four days before him.23.1 In like manner, on a mountain in Franconia a fountain issues near the cradle (Stammhaus) of an ancient noble family. The clear stream gushes forth incessantly the whole year round; and it was believed to fail only when one of the family was about to die.23.2 It is reported of the holy spring of Szörény that its water becomes blood-red as often as a King of Hungary dies.23.3 There is a crater-lake in Madagascar, about eighty miles south-south-west of Antanánarívo, called Tritriva. It is of a deep green colour, almost black. The natives hold that there is an intimate and secret relation between the lake and the members of a neighbouring tribe, the Zanatsara. When a tribesman is taken ill, the waters of the lake are at once examined. If they are troubled and become of a brown colour, it is a presage of death: if they remain clear, the patient will have a chance of life.24.1 In these cases we have precisely the conditions of the Life-token; and we may be allowed to conjecture that other cases of inquiry after absent friends, or divination for the sick, were originally limited to persons believed to stand in some special relation with the fountain consulted. Further, the stories and superstitions regarding mirrors have evidently been transferred from pools and springs, to which they must have originally attached. And in the Eskimo practice, and the divination at Patras, and elsewhere, in the performances of Indian and Egyptian conjurers and of the fetish-men and priests of Equatorial Africa and the Pacific Islands, we may perhaps trace some of the intermediate stages.