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APRIL, 1897.]
SPIRIT BASIS OF BELIEF AND CUSTOM.
97
after a baptism.73 A loving cap goes the round of the table at a Rassian Imperial banquet.7* Red wine is poured in the form of a cross on the throne or altar-table of a Russian church.75 The Germans, at their feasts, drank each other's heulth in turn, saluting each other by name. Percy (1770) adds one custom of drinking to the menory of the dead instead of to the spirits of the dead.76 Among the early Scottish Highlanders, according to the poems of Ossian (A. D. 300-600), spirits, drunk out of shells, were held in high honour.77 The worshipfulness of several sacred English trees, among them the birch, alder, fir and mountain ash or rowau, seems to be dne to the fact that liquor was made from them,78 The English word ale used to mean a feast.79 To spill wine is lucky, since wine poured out drives off evil spirits. The evil omen of spilling salt is turned aside by pouring out wine.80 In Scotland, special hard-drinking marked the unicide's funeral, the body had to be baptised in whiskey.81 In England, in 1827, it was usual after n death to lay in the mouth of a bee-hive some wine-soaked funeral cakes. While seeing the New Year in, householders drank spiced hot ale called lamb's wool.83 Paupers, or in some districts young women, carried from door to door a bowl of spiced ale adorned with ribbons singing songs. These bowls were known as Wassail bowls from the Anglo-Saxon Wies hæl, Be in health.85 In old times, in Yorkshire, fishers sprinkled the prows of their boats with good liquor, a custom they had learnt from their ancestors, 86 and which lives in the breaking of a bottle of wine over a ship's bow in launching her. After his coronation the English king takes the Sacrament of bread and wine 87
Spittle. All the world over the rabbing on of spittle, especially of the fasting spittle, has been found to cure wounds and to lessen inflammation. Spittle is, therefore, & widespread guardian or spirit-scarer. Again, spittle is one of the issdes of the body, and, as all issues hold part or some of the spirits of him from whose body they come, it follows that the spittle-issue of a holy man has special healing and evil-scaring properties. Once more: if spittle is a guardian home and is also a home of the spirit of the spitter, it follows that spittle is & likely lodging for trespassing, possessing and other evil spirits. When, by inhaling, smelling or otherwige, a person becomes possessed by an influence, disease, or other evil spirit, the trespassing spirit is likely to make his abode in the spittle of the possessed. It follows that, by getting rid of his spittle, the person trespassed upon is likely to get rid of the disease-spirit or other evil lodger. These three experiences and conclusions, namely, that spittle is healing, that in his spittle lives some of a man's spirit or spirits, that as trespassing spirits lodge in the spittle of the possessed they may be spat out, seem to form the sense basis of the world-wide honour and horror of spittle which the following cases illustrate.
In the Konkan, that is, the seaboard to the north and south of Bombay, when & person is affected by the Evil Eye, salt and mastard seed are waved round his face and thrown into fire, and he is told to spit. In Gujarat, when a Shi's travels with Sunni, ho spits secretly to avert or avaunt the evil Sunni influence. Among the human-sacrificing Khonds of North-East Madras, Macpherson noted in 1842 that a member of a tribe who did not sacrifice said to a sacrificer: - "You traffic in your
* Mrs. Romanoff's Rites arut Customs of the Greco-Russian Church, p. 77. 5 Jones' Crortus, p. 392. 55 Mrs. Ronanoffs Rites and Customs of the Greco-Russian Church, p. 91. 76 Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 195.
11 The references are frequent. The joy of the shell (Clerke's Oasian, I, 200; II. 107) the shells resound (op. cit. II. 187): the shell of joy wont round in praise of the king of Morven (op. cit. II. 99): the souls of the warriors brighten with the strength of the shells (op. cit. II. 95).
78 Compare Hunter in Evelyn's Silva, Vol. I. p. 225. 9 Brand's Popular Antiquities, Vol. I. p. 279. 89 Op. cit. Vol. III. p. 165.
81 Mitchell's Highland Superstiliore, p. 34. $2 Dyer's Folk-Lore, p. 128.
.85 Chambers's Book of Days, p. 727. 84 Brand's Popular Antiquities, Vol. I. p. 1.
36 Op.cit. Vol. I. p. 333. 8 From S. notes.
87 Jones' Cronus, p. 121. 15 Information from Mr. P. B. Joshi.
59 Information froun Mr. Fazal Lutfullah.
