Read Ebook: Ritual and belief by Hartland Edwin Sidney

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The man who, in Europe or elsewhere, makes use of spells to injure individuals, or even of the Evil Eye, is practising magic: he is doing an antisocial act. The man who defends himself with a gesture, with spells, or by loading his body with amulets, is not doing an antisocial act; he is simply protecting himself. But is he practising religion or magic? Be it remembered here that a man may have the Evil Eye without knowing it. Pius the Ninth, Vicar of Christ, was reputed to have the Evil Eye. Nothing was so fatal as his blessing; the faithful quailed at his glance and doubtless protected themselves with amulets. So the Boloki of the Congo hold that "one can have witchcraft without knowing it." In these cases there can be no antisocial intention. Among the Thonga of South-Eastern Africa a common procedure is to point at one's enemy with the index-finger. This is antisocial: it is witchcraft. Before they go to war a ceremony is performed by an old woman, naked and in a state of ritual purity, over the warriors, and an incantation is muttered, to enable them to kill their foes. This may not be antisocial; but is it anything else than magic? True, the men murmur prayers to their ancestral spirits for help; but then religion is penetrated with magic. Even Professor Durkheim admits that he cannot show a solution of continuity between them; the frontiers between their respective domains are often undefined, unfixed. At all events he cannot say where the one ends and the other begins.

Perhaps, however, not the intention but the tendency, whether social or antisocial, is the test. In that case it is hard to conceive anything more antisocial than the operations of the Holy Inquisition. They were, it is true, not performed by supernatural instrumentality, or for supernatural purposes. To that extent they are not directly parallel with the rites we have been considering. But they were carried on by persons consecrated to religion, as religious acts, surrounded by religious rites, by exorcisms, imprecations, conjurations, shielded by the Church with all her powers, and sanctioned, if not set in motion, by the highest ecclesiastical authorities. They desolated every society where the institution was introduced. Secrecy has been already noted as a characteristic of magic as opposed to religion. Naturally antisocial acts are performed in secret. The deeds of the Holy Office were done in the deepest dens of the building, and surrounded by impervious precautions against discovery, except the last dread act. In that consummation of cruelty, that supreme Act of Faith, as it was called, its officials nominally took no part; though it was well known that they insisted upon it relentlessly and with every terror, ghostly or secular, which they knew so well how to wield. On the other hand, the African sorcerer, conjuring the rain or the sunshine so necessary for the crops, performs an eminently social work, and does it very often in the open eye of day and before the assembled people. When a fisher-boat was launched in the north-east of Scotland a bottle of whisky used to be broken on the prow or stern with the words:

"Frae rocks an' saands An' barren lands An' ill men's hands Keep's free. Weel oot, weel in, Wi' a gueede shot."

"On the arrival of the boat at its new home the skipper's wife, in some of the villages, took a lapful of corn or barley, and sowed it over the boat." These are not antisocial acts; they have no antisocial tendency; and they are not performed in secret. Must we account them religious, and the operations of the Inquisition magical?

The second observation is that the definition ignores the whole of life not occupied by crises. When the Californian Hupa awakes in the morning and sees the dawn, it cannot be said that he is at his wits' end, that the ordinary and expected has been replaced by the extraordinary and unexpected. What does he do? He greets the dawn with a silent prayer that he may see many dawns, for he regards it as a person who is benevolently inclined to him. This surely is religion. The point is met by the further statement that "the religion of a savage is part of his custom; nay, rather it is his whole custom so far as it appears sacred--so far as it coerces him by way of his imagination. Between him and the unknown stands nothing but his custom. It is his all-in-all, his stand-by, his faith and his hope. Being thus the sole source of his confidence, his custom, so far as his imagination plays about it, becomes his 'luck.' We may say that any and every custom, in so far as it is regarded as lucky, is a religious rite." In that case religion is much more than the facing of the unknown, the organized effort to face crisis. It is custom coercing man by way of his imagination. A convenient custom coerces by way of their imagination weary women at Tlemcen in Algeria not to sweep out the house for three days at the New Year, so that they may not lose their luck. Can we legitimately call this religion? Or take another case. There are people in England who will not utter a boast, or tell a small social fib, without taking the precaution to touch wood. I have known educated women drag a chair across the room to a visitor who had just boasted of immunity from a trifling ailment, in order that she might touch wood. Despite their education, they were coerced by way of their imagination to this little ceremony. There must be thousands of things done merely for luck, and done habitually, by peoples alike in barbarism and in civilization. Some of them probably are relics of a once living belief. About others there is no such presumption; yet they exercise the same constraint. Does that make them religious rites? Does it make even those that once were portions of some living belief, but are so no longer, religious rites now? Of course it is all a matter of definition of terms. But a definition of religion which would include all these would be catholic indeed.

The criticisms in this chapter involve no reflection on the perspicacity of scientific writers who are trying to obtain a clear vision of religion and magic and of their specific differences. But they do aim at illustrating the futility of the attempt absolutely to define anything so fluid and elusive as religion. Both religion and magic owe their origin to society; they are born and nurtured in a social atmosphere. Both are concerned with forces mysterious, far-reaching, enveloping and constraining men and things. These forces are not always personal, though their evolution usually takes a personal direction. The means used by both are similar, because the forces are the same, or at least alike. Spell and prayer are very near akin; the one passes insensibly into the other. And the material means common to both are chosen arbitrarily or according to some fancied symbolism, and employed in closely parallel ways. There is, in short, no decided boundary between religion and magic.

The task remains, notwithstanding, of defining the words for the purposes of the following pages. It is hopeless to attempt to harmonize the definitions we have considered. Whatever definition we adopt, it is clear that we cannot so express it as to confine religion within its own bounds, or to outlaw magic from the territory occupied by its rival. Yet a working definition is needed. In framing it regard ought to be paid to the ordinary meaning of the words: the definition must not be arbitrary.

This then is the sense in which I venture to think the words Magic and Magical should be employed. It is based upon their general, if somewhat vague, usage; and it is therefore intelligible to the ordinary reader without recourse to a special definition. It is substantially that of Professor Frazer, save that it affirms nothing concerning the origin of the power active in magical practices: it simply takes them as they are--again an undeniable convenience. It follows that for our purpose Religion will be confined to cultual systems, whose objects, so far as they are personal, are endowed with free will, are to be approached with true worship, and may or may not grant the prayers of their suppliants. Here also we have common usage on our side, with all its advantages. In this use of the word Religion, where the object is impersonal, or is but vaguely personal, it is none the less treated with reverence and submission, as something transcending man; it is the object of an emotional attitude, actively directed towards it. The object thus, even where it is not personal, tends to become so. Buddhism, in its original form, and similar religions are the product of comparatively high civilizations. The puritan severity of their primitive thought and practice was speedily relaxed; they acquired personal gods, and thus liberated themselves from a rule of life based upon philosophical considerations and the effort to escape without the aid of the higher personalities, of which they despaired, from the evils by which they felt themselves oppressed. In the lower civilizations, as we have seen, no sooner is an impersonal power conceived as acting than it assumes personal characteristics. When once the attention is concentrated upon any manifestation of it, these characteristics, originally vague, are likely to be emphasized, and may grow into true personalities. In magic, on the other hand, the impersonal power does not so readily become thus transformed, because the attention fastens on the personal agent, the magician, rather than on the power by which he operates.

When all is said, however, religion is social--that is to say, moral--in its aims and tendencies, whereas magic lends itself to individualist aims. Religion binds the society together by raising the individual above himself, and teaching him to subordinate his desires and actions to the general good; magic has no compunction in assisting to carry out the wishes of the individual, though they may be contrary to the interests of the society as a whole. To that extent it is disruptive, antisocial, immoral; and when thus applied it may be described as Black, or Evil, or Hostile Magic. Here perhaps we find the origin of the opposition between them. So far from religion and magic having been originally hostile, the further we go back into savage life, and presumably, therefore, towards primitive humanity, the more we find them interwoven, indistinguishable. It is only in the advance of civilization, and the consequent evolution of religion and of magic that they become conscious of mutual hostility. When once the separation had begun it would tend to widen. Certain methods and means would be regarded as proper to the one, certain other methods and means as proper to the other, albeit neither of them, not even the highest known and recognized form of religion, has hitherto been able to shake itself entirely free from the methods of the other. This is not incompatible with increasing hostility. The loftier the claims of religion become, the closer its relations with the profoundest thought of mankind, the more awful the sanctions it invokes, the more inevitable, the more irreconcilable the hostility becomes. Family quarrels are ever the bitterest.

The discussion has led to some anticipation of the argument. We turn back again to the personal potentiality.

"Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape."

It may be well to illustrate the foregoing speculation from the customs and superstitions of the Arunta of Central Australia. The Arunta have been represented to be the lowest and least evolved of known humanity in their beliefs and institutions: they are, it is said, still in the stage of primitive absence of religion; magic alone is the object of their belief; magic alone they practise. Now none of the Australian tribes are, strictly speaking, in a primitive condition. The civilization of all of them has evolved to some extent. It has evolved, speaking in general terms, along similar lines; and these lines have been conditioned by the environment. It is admittedly significant that, in a land where so many archaic types of the lower animals have survived, we should find archaic types of human culture. Yet the most archaic types of Australian culture are far from being primitive. So far are they that the social organization is of the most complex character, the product of a succession of stages of development. The least archaic types exhibit the old social organization breaking down and new structures in course of formation. With the evolution of society an evolution of belief has also been going on. It has not been exactly concurrent. Culture rarely or never evolves equally in all directions. It is a mental process, partly conscious, partly unconscious. The collective mind of a given society, like the individual minds of which it is composed, is not exercised equally on all subjects at the same time. Hence while, for example, we find among the Euahlayi tribe, in the north of New South Wales, an advanced theology and a more developed worship than have been recorded elsewhere in Australia, the social organization is still on the basis of female descent; and though the clansmen eat without scruple their hereditary totems, in other respects the totemic system seems to be in full force. In the same way the Arunta and their neighbours certainly preserve relics of a very archaic condition of thought and social organization. Though for certain purposes a son inherits from his mother's husband, it is doubtful whether descent is counted through the father for social purposes; the physical relation between father and child, indeed, is but imperfectly recognized. On the other hand, they have developed a very elaborate theory of reincarnation, and their totemic system seems to be in course of transformation into a number of societies bearing in some respects remarkable resemblance to those of the tribes of British Columbia. Magical practices are more prominent than religious.

Yet a closer examination will lead us to the conclusion that something more than, on any definition of magic, we can call magical practices, something we must recognize as religion, albeit of a low type, is not wholly wanting to the natives of Central Australia. We may perhaps grant that Twanyirika, with whose name the women and uninitiate children are kept in awe, is a bugbear "to frighten babes withal," and nothing more. The Kaitish and the Loritja, adjacent tribes sharing the general culture of the Arunta, at all events believe in the real existence of a superior being, who invented the initiation rites and is pleased when men perform them now. Indeed, if Herr Strehlow's investigations are to be trusted, the Arunta themselves are not destitute of belief in such a being, though we learn little about him, and he has no influence on the destinies of mankind. Among the Warramunga, a tribe a little further to the north, the Wollunqua, a gigantic mythical snake, is the object of important rites, and one of the totem-clans is called by its name. It dwells in a certain water-hole in a lonely valley of the Murchison Range, "and there is always the fear that it may take it into its head to come out of its hiding-place and do some damage." Hence propitiation is necessary. This is effected by building a mound of sandy earth and delineating on it a representation of the animal. "They say that when he sees the mound with his representation drawn upon it, he is gratified, and wriggles about underneath with pleasure." On the evening of the day succeeding that on which the ceremonies in connection with this mound were witnessed by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "the old men who had made the mound said that they had heard the Wollunqua talking, and that he was pleased with what had been done and was sending rain; the explanation of which doubtless was that they, like ourselves, had heard thunder in the distance. No rain fell, but a few days later the distant rumble of thunder was again heard at night-time; and this, the old men now said, was the Wollunqua growling because the remains of the mound had been left uncovered. They also told the younger men that a heavy bank of clouds which lay on the western horizon had been placed there as a warning by the Wollunqua, and at once cut down boughs and hid the ruins of the mound from view, after which the Wollunqua ceased from growling, and all went on peacefully until the end of the series" of ceremonies. There are, of course, myths associated with the Wollunqua. The mound recalled one of them. During its building and the ceremonies about it chants were sung referring to the deeds of the Wollunqua, breaking out from time to time into refrains of words, now at least meaningless, and said to belong to the language of the mythical past. The name Wollunqua is avoided in common parlance. A circumlocution is employed instead, "because, so they told us, if they were to call it too often by its real name, they would lose their control over it and it would come out and eat them all up." How does this differ from the familiar taboo of sacred names? When the explorers were taken to visit the Wollunqua's dwelling-place , the two chief men of the totemic group went down to the water's edge and addressed him in whispers with bowed heads, praying him to remain quiet and do them no harm, for they were mates of his and had brought up two great white men to see where he lived and to tell them about him. "We could plainly see that it was all very real to them, and that they implicitly believed that the Wollunqua was indeed alive beneath the water, watching them, though they could not see him." In all these rites it can hardly be denied that we have the elements of a true cult. The only one as to which any qualification could be admitted is "the savage attack," described as being made on the mound when the ceremony relating to it was concluded. The result of it was that the figures delineated on the mound were destroyed, and all that remained was a rough heap of sandy earth. This is represented as an attempt to "coerce the mythic beast." It is not quite certain that the interpretation is correct, for it does not rest on native statements, but is an inference of the explorers. The obliteration of sacred figures drawn on sand or earth for the purpose of a rite is not confined to the cult of the Wollunqua, nor even to Australia. It is equally found among the Pueblo tribes of North America and the Mongolian Buddhists of Central Asia. Its object is to hide the sacred symbols from the eyes of the profane. But if the interpretation were correct , it is no more than we might expect. If a savage deals with the mythic figures of his imagination as he deals with his fellowman, we must not be surprised that he should pass from cajolery to coercion, from prayer to defiance. Peoples on a much higher religious horizon do not hesitate to threaten, and even to offer violence to, the objects of their worship, when they are unable to obtain otherwise what they want.

On the North American continent the medicine-man was not "possessed," as among the Siberian tribes and the Bantu; but his mode of initiation was similar. The Ojibway sorcerer after prolonged fasting was initiated by the supernatural powers. Among many of the Californian tribes "a spirit, be it that of an animal, a place, the sun or other natural object, a deceased relative or an entirely unembodied spirit, visits the future medicine-man in his dreams, and the connection thus established between them is the source and basis of the latter's power. This spirit becomes his guardian spirit or 'personal.' From it he receives the song or rite or knowledge of the charm, and the understanding which enable him to cause or remove disease, and to do and endure what other men cannot." The Skidi Pawnee is allured to the abode of the mysterious animal-powers, and there taught their knowledge and gifted with their powers; or he is visited by a supernatural being in dreams for the same purpose.

In Europe the dominant religion has proscribed witchcraft with terrors spiritual and physical, which have emphasized its separation and intensified its spiritual aspect. The judicial records are full of stories of initiation to the Black Art that begin by the formal renunciation of Christian worship and baptism. The novice tramples upon symbols of the Christian faith, or otherwise treats them with indignity. He utters incantations with appropriate rites to call up the devil. That gentleman then appears to receive his formal profession of allegiance, admit him ceremonially into his band of worshippers, and tutor him in the methods of his art. That the confessions of this procedure were not wholly imaginary, and dictated by the orthodox functionaries who examined the tortured victim, is rendered probable from the fact that down to the present day, in many continental countries, if not in the British Islands, the peasant witch enters upon her trade by a rite recalling its main features.

It would be easy to expand the list. Enough has, however, been said to show that over a wide area of the world and in the most various stages of civilization what we call supernatural beings are concerned with the preparation of the magician's career, and that the Arunta beliefs do not differ in this respect from those current among many other peoples. In none of the foregoing cases does the shaman or magician as such exercise the functions of priest. He offers no sacrifices, he addresses no prayers on behalf of the community to the divinities. He performs wonders by the aid of the spirits; but the spirits who first invade and then help him are by no means everywhere those who are the object of worship. It is not my intention to discuss the psychological and physiological aspects of the phenomena. They recall the phenomena of "conversion" among ourselves. Occurring, as they usually do, at or shortly after the commencement of adult life, they display the effervescence of puberty, accentuated by the neurotic peculiarities of the individual, acted upon, directed and controlled by the social environment. As in the case of "conversion," too, they are liable to become epidemic, particularly at times of social and political crisis, where feeling in the tribe is more than commonly excited.

Before passing away from the subject we may turn to a different type of shaman. Among the Veddas the shaman is in effect the priest. The spirits to whom offerings are made are those of the dead. It is the shaman who makes the offering, and performs the invocation; and he is in return possessed by them. But here the novice is chosen and trained by one who already exercises the profession. He does not become possessed in his capacity as novice. Possession only takes place at the public ceremonies; it is temporary; and it may affect others besides the shaman. The position of shaman is practically hereditary, for the novice trained is usually the shaman's son, or his sister's son, that is to say, his actual or potential son-in-law. The Veddas are on a level of civilization as low as the Arunta. Though they do not practise rites of such senseless and revolting cruelty, in their natural condition and apart from external influence they live entirely by hunting and the collection of honey; they build no huts, but take advantage of caves and rock-shelters; their pottery is of the roughest description; and the iron arrowheads, axes and other implements which they possess are obtained by barter from the Sinhalese, for they do not exercise the art of smithying. The lowest and wildest of them, however, know nothing of hostile magic. Even protective magic is hardly practised; and the charms they make use of appear to be derived from the neighbouring Sinhalese. It is true they have traditions that it used to be customary to seek strength and confidence to avenge insults by chewing a small dried piece of the liver of a man who had been killed for the purpose. This is an application of a well-known magical principle. But, so far as our information goes, it is a solitary case. If therefore the Vedda shaman is not initiated by the spirits, it is not because the Veddas have not yet passed out of the age of magic. If there be an age of magic in which religion is unknown, for aught that appears they have not yet passed into it. At all events they cannot be said to confirm the generalization that magic precedes religion; for magical practices once adopted persist with remarkable tenacity into the highest planes of culture.

The conclusion is that there is no solid and convincing proof of the development of magic prior to religion. If the Mincopies, the Veddas, and the tribes of Central Australia fail us, whither shall we turn for evidence?

Yet there is a consideration generally applicable to savage life that must not be overlooked here. Vague, uncertain, and contradictory as the savage may be in his beliefs, sluggish as his mind may be in regard to matters of speculation,--in matters of practical importance, the provision of food and shelter, the protection of his women and children, and the defence of his little community against aggression by human foes or the wild beasts, he is bound to be on the alert and to act. His wits are therefore sharpened for action. Action is natural to him; thought which has no immediate objective in action is strange. The energies remaining when the body is satisfied with food, when shelter is assured, and hostilities against his fellow-man or the lower animals are for the moment forgotten, must be expended in other kinds of action. Bodily recreation--play--satisfies this craving for movement and excitement, while at the same time it fulfils the useful purpose of keeping his faculties, bodily and mental, ready and supple, and of training them still further for more directly practical ends. This form of activity, organized into dances and games, easily begets ritual. The Hottentots danced all night at full moon with extravagant gestures, saluting the moon and invoking her for cattle-fodder and milk. The Wichita of North America played every year in the spring a game of shinny, which represented, there can be little doubt, the contest of winter and spring. In such cases as these, and they are legion, a recreation has been indulged in at a period appropriate for it--the dance in the clear, cool night, the game under the mild returning warmth and stimulating influences of the early spring. Because it thus naturally recurs at definite times it comes to be regarded as proper, even necessary: it develops into a rite. To a similar game played by the Omaha was attached, in the phrase of the writers who describe it, "a cosmic significance." The impulse to movement, to exertion, liberates emotion; the emotion is in turn intensified by its collective expression; and this intensification would lead to the conviction that the expression has somehow or other in itself an influence on external nature, just as it would have in human relations. The exact mechanism by which it acted probably would not trouble the savage at an early stage. Later, it would be fitted into the framework of his ideas. The Hottentot rite came to be addressed to the moon. The Wichita rite seems to have been thought to assist directly in conquest of the evil power of winter and the renewal of life.

To such an origin must be ascribed the rehearsal of a battle that takes place in many savage tribes before the warriors go forth on a raid, and the dances and other ceremonies accomplished by women left at home when their husbands are absent fighting or hunting. More obviously must it be held responsible for a variety of other performances, of which the common spell in this country and on the continent of Europe, to recover an article stolen or the waning affections of a lover, is a type. The love-lorn maiden takes some object, frequently a shoulder-bone of lamb, and sticks a knife or a pin into it, saying:

"'Tis not this bone I mean to stick, But my lover's heart I mean to prick, Wishing him neither rest nor sleep Till he comes with me to speak."

Of spells like this the preparation of an effigy, and the assaults upon it representing acts done to the person for whom the effigy stands, are an elaboration. The overcharged emotion first of all finds a vent in an attack upon any convenient object. Then from various causes a special object is singled out as the appropriate vehicle of the performer's wrath, hatred or jealousy, the act gradually becomes more solemn and deliberate, and a formal rite is evolved.

It should hardly be necessary to say that it is not claimed that the foregoing paragraphs explain the genesis of all rites. But that many do thus originate accords with all we know of human nature. In any case a rite was not instituted because men were previously convinced of its efficacy. The primitive savage may have been a man of preternatural stupidity; but even he would not have been equal to putting the cart before the horse in that fashion. The rite must have been an established habit before a conscious meaning filtered into it. Interpretation would be a gradual process. If the rite were shared by the social group, and by expansion or accretion attained sufficient importance, the interpretation might take the form of a myth. The myth in turn would contribute to the stability of the rite, by means of the sacred character it would affix to it, or the reminiscence of an ancient experience it would be supposed to embody.

Thus ritual, religious or magical, is evolved long before belief has become definite and cogent. It may emerge from what I may style the mere surface of human nature, from necessities mainly physical, from direct nervous reaction. It may, on the other hand, have roots in the social relations of mankind. The savage naturally, habitually--I might almost say instinctively--applies the forms of social life to his relations with his non-human surroundings. Presumably, as we have seen, primitive man in his rough way did likewise.

But this affords no argument for holding that magic preceded religion. Rites are not necessarily magical because they are not addressed to defined personalities. They may be yet inchoate. Not until reflection has begun to clarify in some degree man's relation to his environment can we reckon them satisfactorily under the one head or the other. If I am right in contending that magic and religion flow from a common source, rites may remain for generations in an indecisive condition which is neither, but may crystallize in either shape according to the specific occasion, the environment, or the dominant mental and institutional tendency of the social group. Such a transformation will be gradual and piecemeal, and in large part, if not entirely, unconscious. Many things done "for luck," even in the higher civilizations, are still in this indeterminate state. The intellectual atmosphere is unfavourable; their development is arrested, probably for ever. I suspect that an accurate appreciation of the Intichiuma rites practised by the Arunta and their neighbours would show that they too are not finally to be assigned to either category.

The part played by society in the generation of religion demands some further observations. From whatever type of anthropoid ape man has been evolved, it is safe to believe that he has from the first lived in communities. But for this he could have made no progress, if even he could have existed as man. The condition of the solitary apes is incapable of improvement. It is incredible that if rudimentary human beings had lived like them in a group consisting at the utmost of a male, female, and still dependent young, they would ever have emerged into humanity, or that if they had emerged they would have been able to hold their own against the foes that surrounded them. The lowest human beings are never found solitary. If they wander on the food-quest, or are driven away from higher and more powerful societies, they do not fail to come together at certain times to enjoy the companionship of their fellows, to exchange experiences, to plan hunts or raids, to perform rites in common and partake of common pleasures. This implies organization. In fact, such communities, when they meet and live the communal life, are not found to be a mere incoherent congeries of individuals. They are true societies, organized, some more, some less closely, on a definite plan, in which every individual has his place. The Australian natives have evolved social institutions of proverbial complexity. The Bushmen of South Africa, persecuted and broken by intrusive races, have left us on the walls of the caverns they haunted representations marvellous in their skill of ceremonies apparently totemic. And if this interpretation of the drawings be doubtful, such remains as have been preserved of their traditions afford evidence of an organization by no means contemptible. The Seri of the Californian Gulf, perhaps on a still lower plane of civilization, and certainly leading their life in more miserable surroundings, are divided into clans and furnished with a social hierarchy built up on a reverence for women almost chivalrous in its type.

The existence everywhere of organized societies implies the paramount influence of the community over the individual. Nor is that influence only a matter of implication. Abundant evidence is found of the control wielded by society over the actions and the very thoughts of its members. The individual is nothing: the group is everything. As Professor Durkheim remarks, every society exercises power over its members, power physical and above all moral. It keeps them in a sensation of perpetual dependence. It is distinct from the individuals who compose it, and consequently its interests are distinct from theirs. But as it cannot attain its ends except through and by means of the individual, it makes an imperious claim on his assistance, exacting it even to the sacrifice of his inclinations and interests. Thus at every moment we are obliged to submit to rules of conduct and of thought which we have neither made nor wished to make, and which may even be contrary to our most fundamental instincts.

In these days and among civilized societies, when individualism is so strongly developed in thought and action, we are apt to forget to what an extent religion is an expression of the social organization. An eminent Oxford professor, not long ago deceased, used to say that religion was a social secretion. That may be an excellent way to phrase the relations between society and religion in modern Europe. It is a very incomplete account of them as they exist on the Australian steppe or in the forests of Brazil. In the lower culture religion is much more than a social secretion: it is one aspect of the social organization, inseparable from the rest. The organization cannot be understood without it--nay, it cannot exist apart from it. In these societies every member has his position and takes his share in religious rites. Whatever his place in the social scale, he is on the same level of knowledge, he shares in the same beliefs, with his fellows. The mental atmosphere of each is charged with the same electric fluid, which communicates itself to all alike. Especially on the occasions of reunion its action is intensified, frequently resulting in excitement, in vehement exaltation, translated into the wildest and most extravagant actions. But these reunions are not merely social, they are religious festivals. For religion pervades every thought and deed both of the individual and of the community. It binds the members together as no other force could do. The power of society over the individual is the power of religion. For religion is not as yet distinguished from politics, from law, from medicine, or from other forms of social activity that in our stage of culture have long vindicated their freedom.

Professor Durkheim's theory of religion is exhibited in detail only in one type. He speaks of "the aptitude of society to erect itself into a god or to create gods"; but he illustrates his thesis only in the case of totemism, which he takes as an example of the religion of the least advanced people hitherto thoroughly examined. He is careful to say that the question whether totemism has been more or less widespread is of secondary importance; it is at all events the most primitive and the simplest religion it is possible to reach. But his whole argument, if it prove anything, goes to show the universality of totemism. For the idea of the soul, according to the data of ethnography, appears to him to have been coeval with humanity, and that not merely in germ but in all its essential characters; and the soul is nothing else than the totemic principle incarnated in each individual, a portion of the collective soul of the group, that is to say of the totem, individualized. Now totemism is certainly a very archaic form of religion. That it was universal is, however, very far from being demonstrated. It may well be that many branches of the human race have outgrown it, and that its traces have been obliterated. But among peoples very low down in culture there are many where it is unknown, or at least unrecognizable. It is more than possible, could we ascertain the facts, that Bushman society was organized on the basis of totemism. But there are other tribes no higher than Bushmen and Australian Blackfellows where we fail to discern it. The Veddas of Ceylon are indeed divided into clans with female descent. Yet no totem has emerged after the most careful enquiries. Their religion is essentially a cult of the dead, based on fear. The dead man is addressed as "Lord! New Driver-away of Vaeddas!" Sacrifices are offered and eaten as an act of communion with the deceased. In addition to the dead of the local group, "certain long-dead Veddas who may be regarded as legendary heroes" are invoked, of whom the most important are Kande Yaka, an ancient hunter whose assistance is implored for good hunting, and his brother Bilindi Yaka, a sort of pale double of himself. But they are not known among all the Vedda communities, though Kande is regarded by some as Lord or leader of the dead. There are also other spirits, who appear to be of foreign origin and superimposed upon the original cult of the dead, and are perhaps on their way to become nature-spirits. The religion of the Andaman Islanders "consists of fear of the evil spirits of the wood, the sea, disease and ancestors, and of avoidance of acts traditionally displeasing to them." There is besides an anthropomorphic being, Puluga, who is said to be "the cause of all things." He receives no active worship, though acts thought to be displeasing to him are avoided "for fear of damage to the products of the jungle." There is some evidence that he is the north-east wind; and Sir R. C. Temple is of opinion that he is "fundamentally, with some definiteness, identifiable with the storm, mixed up with ancestral chiefs." He acts by his daughters, the Morowin, who are his messengers; but he seems to content himself with pointing out to the evil spirits offenders against himself, without actually taking steps against them. Totemism is nowhere hinted at by the enquirers who have busied themselves with this childlike, and on the whole harmless, but somewhat capricious people.

If the concept of the soul were coeval with humanity, and if it were only the totemic principle individualized, then totemism must have been coeval with humanity, and it must have been universal. If so, it is at least curious that the Veddas, the Andaman Islanders, and the forest-tribes of Brazil--all of them on the horizon of civilization on which totemism is found--should display no traces of it. If the concept of impersonal force, the substratum of religious and magical beliefs, be derived from the authority of society over the individual, and not merely strengthened and developed by it, it is odd that religious and magical beliefs should, so low down in culture, have issued in such widely divergent forms. The worship of the dead, the conciliation of hostile nature-spirits, the fear of an anthropomorphic being of enormous power, are all explicable as the result of the action of external conditions on human mentality and emotions. They are not explicable as the direct product of the authority of the group over the individual. And if totemism had originally held sway over the Veddas, the Mincopies and the Brazilian tribes, it is not easy to conceive how it could have evolved in directions so diverse,--and that without leaving any authentic witness to its past. It is quite another thing if the action of the group had been rather to combine and consolidate, to intensify and to organize the sensations and emotions awakened in its members by external nature, to give them a measure of definiteness in the process, and to habituate the individual to certain modes of reaction to the sensations, and to certain forms of expression of the beliefs engendered by the emotions thus awakened.

The constraining influence may take a variety of forms, and is by no means confined to one plane of civilization, or to one cultural area. Sometimes it is expressed in knots to which is widely attributed what we call magical power. In Morocco, where civilization has rather deteriorated than progressed for many ages, the cult of the dead is largely prevalent. Professor Westermarck records that a Berber servant of his told him that once when in prison he invoked a certain great female saint whose tomb was in a neighbouring district, and tied his turban, saying: "I am tying thee, L?lla Rah'ma Yusf, and I am not going to open the knot till thou hast helped me." And a person in distress will sometimes go to her grave and knot the leaves of some palmetto growing in its vicinity, with the words: "I tied thee here, O saint, and I shall not release thee unless thou releasest me from the toils in which I am at present."

At any rate the Moroccan rite involves a threat; and a threat is near akin to a curse. Much may be done with gods, as with men, by means of a little judicious bluff. A certain Malay robber kept six tame spirits, to whom he made an offering from time to time. When he did so he called them by name, bidding them: "Come here! Eat my offering! Take you care that my body is not affected, that the flow of my blood is not stayed! Likewise with the bodies of my wife and children. I'll turn the earth and the sky the wrong way round!" He was fully convinced of the power of these spirits and apparently of the value of his terrible threat, though, as Mr Annandale, who reports the case, points out, the spirits had been unable to save him from being convicted and imprisoned for his crimes.

Nor did the magician hesitate to compel even the gods to perform his wishes, and to threaten them, like the Malay robber, with dire disaster to themselves and the universe as a punishment of their obstinacy. In one papyrus preserved to us, for example, a woman in labour declares herself to be Isis and summons the gods to her help. If they refuse to come, "Then shall ye be destroyed, ye nine gods; the heaven shall no longer exist, the earth shall no longer exist, the five days over and above the year shall cease to be, offerings shall no longer be made to the gods, the lords of Heliopolis. The firmament of the south shall fail, and disaster shall break forth from the sky of the north. Lamentations shall resound from the graves, the midday sun shall no longer shine, the Nile shall not bestow its waters of inundation at the appointed time." Such bombastic menaces as these continued to be part of the practitioner's stock-in-trade in the Roman Empire to the downfall of paganism.

Among the ancient Greeks in Plato's time there were soothsayers and medicine-men who professed to have power over the gods, so that they could compel them to do their bidding, even though it were to injure another person. I am not aware whether any of their spells have been preserved.

Among the Lushai-Kuki of Assam, Pathian the creator, a quasi-supreme and benevolent being, was acquainted with, but is not definitely stated to have been the author of, witchcraft. It was taught by his daughter, as a ransom for her life, to Vahrika, who had caught her stealing water from his private supply. Vahrika is described as "something like" Pathian--a purely mythological figure. He in turn taught it all to others. In Japan, Jimmu Tenn?, the deified legendary founder of the empire, is said to have first taught the use of magical formulae; while the gods Ohonamochi and Sukunabikona are credited with the invention of medicine and magic. The ancient Egyptians held Thoth, the god of writing and guardian of law, "to have written the most sacred books and formulas with his own hand, and therein to have set down his knowledge of magic, in which art Isis was his only rival. His pre-eminence in magic naturally led to his becoming the god of medicine, for magic was fully as important to the medical practitioners of the Nile Valley as knowledge of remedies." In other words, medicine was not yet separated from magic, the physician was a sorcerer, who may have been versed in simples, but whose practice was essentially mysterious and derived its effect rather from what we call supernatural than natural modes of action. Hence to recognize Thoth as god of medicine was equivalent to recognizing him as god of magic, a character peculiarly suitable to a god of letters.

Finally, not to lengthen the list, if we may trust the Ynglinga-saga, Odin was the author of those crafts which men have long since plied, and among them of magic. He "was wise in that craft wherewith went most might, which is called spell-craft; and this he himself followed. Wherefore he had might to know the fate of men and things not yet come to pass; yea, or how to work for men bane or illhap or ill-heal, and to take wit or strength from men and give them unto others." He was a notorious shape-shifter. "He knew how by words alone to slake the fire or still the sea, and how to turn the wind to whichso way he would." He could "wake up dead men from the earth." He "knew of all buried treasures where they were hidden; and he knew lays whereby the earth opened before him, and mountains and rocks and mounds, and how to bind with words alone whoso might be found dwelling therein; and he would go in and take thence what he would. From all this craft he became exceeding famed, and his foes dreaded him, but his friends put their trust in him, and had faith in his craft and himself; but he taught the more part of his cunning to the temple-priests, and they were next to him in all wisdom and cunning: albeit many others got to them much knowledge thereof, and thence sorcery spread far and wide and endured long." Although the opening chapters of the Ynglinga-saga, from which I have extracted these particulars, are a late and euhemerized version of the Scandinavian mythology, the account of Odin's magical powers contains little that does not appear in the early poems, or cannot be inferred from them. Whatever may have been the primitive form of this renowned god, there can be no doubt that he was before the close of the pagan age regarded as a god of magic and sorcery. His reputation as god of poetry, and probably as war-god, is bound up with this. The magical value attached to verse is very common among peoples in an archaic stage of culture; and it was shared to the full by the ancient Norsemen. Many of them--at least in Viking days, and it is by no means unlikely much earlier--combined in their own persons the warrior with the poet and the sorcerer. Nor shall we go far astray if we conclude that these various strands had been long interwoven to form the character of the Lord of the Anses. The intimate relation existing among the Norse between religion and magic is further indicated by the superior magical knowledge and powers ascribed to them and stated to be originally derived from Odin.

So on the mainland of India, in the Nilgiri Hills, the Toda sorcerer, having procured some human hair--not that of the person to be injured, for it would be impossible to get it--ties together by its means five small stones, and with a piece of cloth makes a bundle of them. Over them thus tied up he utters his incantation. It begins by calling on his gods; and whether the opening clauses be precisely rendered or not in the following free translation, it is clear that the gods are invoked. Indeed, Dr Rivers, after careful enquiry, expresses the opinion that "in the formulae used in Toda sorcery appeal to the gods is even more definite than in the prayers of the dairy ritual," the most important of the religious ceremonies. "In them," he says, "the names of four most important gods are mentioned, and it seems quite clear that the sorcerer believes he is effecting his purpose through the power of the gods." The spell runs something like this: "For the sake of Pithioteu, ?n, Teikirzi and Tirshti; by the power of the gods, if there be power; by the gods' country, if there be a country; may his calves perish; as birds fly away, may his buffaloes go when the calves come to suck; as I drink water, may he have nothing but water to drink; as I am thirsty, may he also be thirsty; as I am hungry, may he also be hungry; as my children cry, so may his children cry; as my wife wears only a ragged cloth, so may his wife wear only a ragged cloth." The bundle thus enchanted he hides in the thatch of the victim's hut.

Turning to another continent, we may find an example of adaptability of a more elaborate ceremony. The Navaho are in the main an Athapascan people who have wandered down to the sterile plains of New Mexico and Arizona. There, ages ago, they came into contact with the more settled Pueblo tribes. The researches of American anthropologists show the practical identity of certain of their religious rituals with those of their Pueblo neighbours. It would seem that these rituals have been taken over from the latter. This is only natural, seeing that the Navaho came down from the north with an undeveloped culture and organization into a country where new needs were experienced and a higher civilization was met with. But in taking over the rituals they have applied them to purposes different from those of their original performers. The chief aim of the ceremonies as used among the Pueblo tribes is to obtain fertility, and the condition of fertility is rain. This is clear from the use made of corn-meal and corn-pollen. "Pollen is the symbol of fertility, and the rite at bottom is for rain. The Navaho took over the use of the corn and the pollen together with the other features; but the corn no longer served its previous purpose as a prayer for rain and the ripening of the crops: it was used for the cure of disease." The Dene or Athapascans, of which stem the Navaho are a branch, are a people of migratory hunters. Agriculture would be foreign to them. Their principal ceremonies are concerned with the conjuration of evil spirits and the cure of diseases, which are usually ascribed to the spirits. It was natural that when they borrowed the ceremonies of a settled agricultural community they should imbue them with their own ideas. In their hands the cure of disease "became the fundamental feature of the borrowed rites. A ceremony intended for rain-making would naturally need some alteration in order to serve as a cure of disease." And it has received it. The fact that they have been able so to adapt the rites probably points to some want of definiteness in the form of the rites at the time they were borrowed.

Another illustration of adaptability is seen in the rites at wells or rocks common all over Europe. What may have been the original cause of the sacredness of a well or a rock, what may have been the original intention of the processions, the dances and the decorations we have of course no means of knowing. We may guess that some peculiarity in the shape of the rock, the sweet or healing waters of the fountain, or some sudden and unexplained or untoward incident first called and concentrated popular attention, and that a precise, intelligible meaning may hardly have been attached to the few and simple ceremonies first performed. In course of time, we may conjecture, ritual and belief were elaborated and defined. However this may be, we know that before the end of paganism--at least in those countries of the west where inscriptions have been preserved--a spirit or god was believed to haunt the place and to preside over the rites of which it was the scene. To him they were addressed, and it was his favour they sought to conciliate. Christianity came and diverted the rites to new objects, not altogether forbidding, but baptizing them, in accordance with the policy enunciated in Pope Gregory's famous letter to the Abbot Mellitus. All these changes necessitate adaptations of practice. That which at first was formless receives a definite form. That which may have been an indeterminate expression of awe and reverence becomes distinctly worship, though not without elements, often retained to the last, that we should call magical. And the changes in the nominal objects of worship are accompanied by progressive changes in the details of the ritual. Lastly when, as in many cases, official recognition of the ritual is abandoned, and it is left to the unguided superstition of the peasant, it tends to slip back into its original indeterminate condition. Acts are performed or avoided, and ceremonies undertaken, not as worship of a power known and resident on the hallowed spot, but for benefits sometimes precise, more often for luck mysterious, impersonal, half-credited, or from fear of something equally mysterious, but for that reason all the more terrible. Beyond this, the practices linger into a stage, unknown to the savages who began them, where they are performed for pleasure, or else in the hope of monetary gain, by children and adolescents, and die away gradually under the stress of modern life and the influence of the schoolmaster.

The earlier stages of this round may, as we have seen, be observed occasionally in the rites of peoples still in the lower culture. Close observation, accurate analysis and comparison would probably result in finding them more frequently. Meanwhile let us turn to another question.

In denouncing witchcraft the Christian Church has followed the lead of the Hebrew religion. The Hebrew law against witchcraft was unambiguous, pitiless. "Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live" is the grim direction of the oldest Hebrew writing. It is expanded by the Deuteronomist: "When thou art come into the land which Yahw? thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found with thee anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one that useth divination, one that practiseth augury, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto Yahw?; and because of these abominations Yahw? thy God doth drive them out from before thee." This is pretty comprehensive. Yet it left many practices within the national religion, recognized as part of it, though essentially magical. The scapegoat I have already mentioned. The ordeal of the water of bitterness, to which a woman suspected by her husband of infidelity was compelled to submit, is equally a magical proceeding. Both are sanctioned, not to say prescribed, by Yahw?; though in their present form the prescriptions may be late. Divination is prohibited, and consultation with familiar spirits or the ghosts of the dead, augury, and the taking of omens. Nevertheless, the children of Israel enquired of Yahw?, and he answered them by dreams; and the high priest divined by means of Urim and Thummim. Teraphim seem to have been amulets--one might almost say fetishes. They are referred to more than once in the Hebrew books. As late as the prophet Hosea they were not merely tolerated but regarded as necessities to the prosperity of the people. "For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and without pillar , and without ephod or teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and shall come with fear unto the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days." The use of the ephod was probably connected with divination, and Yahw?, speaking through the prophet, expressly countenanced not only this, but also the use of teraphim. With growing monotheism they were, however, eventually repressed.

Indeed, a comparison of the passages in which reference is made to various magical practices will suggest that the real reason of the hostility to them arose from their connection with heathenism. They were representative practices of a rival religion. They hindered the concentration of worship on Yahw? at his sole shrine on Mount Zion. On the other hand, the casting out of evil spirits continued unabated and unreproved into New Testament times, and the wearing of personal amulets in the shape of phylacteries persists among the uneducated classes of Jews to the present day and has full rabbinical sanction. Both these practices are uncontrovertibly magical.

Similar considerations inspired mediaeval hostility to witchcraft, and continued it with little decrease of intensity into the eighteenth century. Witchcraft was rebellion against the established religion. It was identified with heresy. It involved contempt of the omnipotent priesthood, derogating thus not merely from its reputation, but also its gains. It was believed even to set up a rival god. This belief was an inheritance from primitive Christianity, which looked upon the heathen gods as devils. Every miracle which imposed on the credulity of those ages, if performed by a Christian, was attributed to divine interference; if performed, on the contrary, by a pagan, was with as little hesitation ascribed to Satan and his underlings. In either case nobody doubted the fact of the occurrence, or thought it worth while minutely to examine the evidence. The hostility of the Church to witchcraft had, however, the excuse that the heathen rites were in a large measure magical, and that magic, other than Black Magic, was avowedly practised during pagan times and regarded with toleration, if not complacency. Heathenism died a hard death. Somewhat changed in form it survived for centuries; and many of the heretical sects were more or less impregnated with it.

But all this does not fully account for the horror and hatred felt against magic alike by churchmen and the laity. What gave intensity to the opposition was the dread that magical powers would be used to the disadvantage, the injury, the death of all against whom the magician had a grudge. So persistently did this dread take hold of the imagination that the practice of magic was finally identified with Black Magic, and to be accused of witchcraft meant to be charged with the attempt to injure, and perhaps to slay, one's neighbours by mysterious, and because mysterious, horrible means. Against proceedings of this kind there was no protection but in hunting out and putting an end to the magicians. This feeling had manifested itself even in pagan times. Both in Greece and at Rome the laws condemned magicians to death.

On the other hand, so great is the terror inspired by magic, and so instinctively gregarious is mankind, that mere eccentricity, the failure to follow the crowd, is often of itself sufficient to start the cry of witchcraft. The slavery of man in the lower culture to custom is a commonplace of anthropology. That custom is religious to the core, for religion is only one aspect of the social polity. Everyone observes it, because upon it depends the weal of all alike. Everyone's eye too is upon his neighbour; and a departure from custom is sure to be noticed, and equally sure to be resented as something sinister. At the least it is viewed with suspicion and concern. Done innocently, it will bring misfortune on the doer and all connected with him. Done with a purpose, it is abhorred and punished as evil magic. Happily the fear of witchcraft is not everywhere an obsession. Where it is, as almost all over Africa, it has become the most powerful cause of the stagnation of culture. Mr Weeks, a missionary of long experience, and an admirable observer, speaking of the Bangala on the Upper Congo, says the native "has a wonderful power of imitation, but he lacks invention and initiative; but this lack is undoubtedly due to suppression of the inventive faculty. For generations it has been the custom to charge with witchcraft anyone who commenced a new industry or discovered a new article of barter. The making of anything out of the ordinary has brought on the maker a charge of witchcraft that again and again has resulted in death by the ordeal. To know more than others, to be more skilful than others, more energetic, more acute in business, more smart in dress, has often caused a charge of witchcraft and death. Therefore the native, to save his life and live in peace, has smothered his inventive faculty, and all spirit of enterprise has been driven out of him."

This deplorable result is attributable to the suspicion of antisocial ends. It is this kind of magic which alone is reprobated in the lower culture. Death is very generally regarded as unnatural. If not caused by open violence, it must be due to spirits or to magic. Magic indeed is often deemed responsible for deaths by violence, or deaths credited to the immediate action of the spirits. Magic sets both causes in motion. Hence at a death, however occasioned, an inquest is commonly held to ascertain who is responsible; the accused is required to undergo an ordeal, and is punished if found guilty--as he usually is. But it is not the practice of magic that is condemned; it is the application of magic to the injury of the community. The chieftain of a tribe of Bantu "smells out" and puts to death the witch who has slain his father. The same chieftain will habitually practise magic on another chief before fighting with him. He will make rain, or employ a wizard for the purpose. His sacrifices and acts of worship are inextricably mingled with magic. Even when the schism between magic and religion has attained much wider dimensions than anywhere among the Bantu, it is rather magic in its antisocial aspect than in itself that is reprobated and punished. The departure from established custom and established belief involves a severance from the community and an imputation of antisocial ends. The pursuit of individual desires and hatreds at odds with the general interest is what arouses the anger of society. Practices essentially magical may be incorporated in religious rites and exercised for what is believed to be the public good; and they will continue to be exercised with general assent, even in the highest forms of religion.

THE BOLDNESS OF THE CELTS

AElian, writing of the boldness of the Celts, relates that many of them await the overflowing sea, some throwing themselves armed into the waves and receiving their onset with drawn swords and threatening spears, just as if they could scare back or wound them. This report seems to have come to him in the shape of gossip; nor does he assign it to any tribe or definite locality. That there was some ground for it, however, is to be inferred from the existence in the Book of Ballymote, an Irish manuscript of the end of the fourteenth century, of a short tradition, obviously of much earlier date, concerning Tuirbhe Tr?ghmar, the father of Gob?n Saer, who owned Tr?igh Tuirbhi. "'Tis from that heritage he, standing on Telach Bela , would hurl a cast of his axe in the face of the flood-tide, so that he forbade the sea, which then would not come over the axe."

European folk-tales have been found recording a similar belief. Among the Basques we are told that a witch once determined to sink a certain fishing-boat and drown its crew. Her plan was to overwhelm it with three immense waves, the first of milk, the second of tears, and the third of blood. The boat might ride in safety over the first two; but the third wave would be herself in person, and the only way to escape would be to launch a harpoon into the midst of it: the weapon would pierce her heart, and the boat with its crew would be saved. With the want of caution which, fortunately for the heroes of folk-tales, is so remarkable a characteristic of cunning and malevolent beings, the plot was laid in the hearing of the cabin-boy. At the critical moment he nerved his arm to fling the harpoon, and struck the wave in the midst. It divided and dashed upon the shore, covering all the strand with a bloody foam. The bark was saved; but on his return the master found his wife dying of her wound, for she was the witch who had planned the destruction of her husband and his craft. This Basque story, though only recorded in a literary version, appears to be a genuine folk-tale, since it is also found substantially the same among the traditions of the Frisian Islands and Norway.

Other waters than the sea have likewise been endowed with personality. Rivers and streams have everywhere been regarded as conscious beings, or as the haunt of such beings. Usually they have been reckoned as endowed with a might too mystical and too tremendous to be attacked by man; but occasionally men of heroic mould have been supposed to fight and overcome them. Professor Frazer has argued with probability that the angel who wrestled with Jacob at the ford of the Jabbok was in the original tale the river-god himself, the awful spirit of the Jabbok. He has not adduced any direct parallel in support of the conjecture, though the examples of offerings to streams for leave to cross them, of which he has collected a number from various parts of the world, do show that these waters are inhabited by supernatural beings, who must be treated with respect and whose goodwill must be obtained. Where he has failed to find parallels it is not likely that another can succeed. Yet it is curious that he should have overlooked the traditions of the water-kelpie current in his native Scotland. Take one story told by Dr Gregor concerning a water-kelpie who used to come out of the stream and visit the sheeling where a certain blacksmith's family and cow spent the summer. His visits, as was natural, caused terror and annoyance. At last the wife told the husband, who resolved to kill the creature. The wife took fright at the proposal and tried to dissuade him, under the fear that the kelpie would carry him off to his pool. He was deaf to her appeals. Preparing two long, sharp-pointed spits of iron, he repaired to the sheeling. He made a large fire on the hearth, and laid the two spits in it. In a short time the kelpie made his appearance as usual. The smith waited his opportunity, and with all his might drove the red-hot spits into the creature's sides. It fell on the ground like a heap of starch.

In this case the kelpie was killed. More numerous are the tales in which he approaches a traveller in the shape of a horse and induces him to mount; then he rushes to the pool, carrying the unwary man to his death. Often, however, he can be caught and made to work, by throwing over his head a bridle on which had been made the sign of the cross. When this was done, the creature became quiet and might be employed in labour needing strength and endurance, like that of carrying stones to build a mill or a farm-steading. When set free again, he took his leave, repeating the words:

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