Custom and Myth 3

Custom and Myth 3

Let us next observe a remarkable peculiarity of the turndun, or

Australian bull-roarer. The bull-roarer in England is a toy. In

Australia, according to Howitt and Fison, {34} the bull-roarer is

regarded with religious awe. 'When, on lately meeting with two of the

surviving Kurnai, I spoke to them of the turndun, they first looked

cautiously round them to see that no one else was looking, and then

answered me in undertones.' The chief peculiarity in connection with the

turndun is that women may never look upon it. The Chepara tribe, who

call it bribbun, have a custom that, 'if seen by a woman, or shown by a

man to a woman, the punishment to both is _death_.'

 

Among the Kurnai, the sacred mystery of the turndun is preserved by a

legend, which gives a supernatural sanction to secrecy. When boys go

through the mystic ceremony of initiation they are shown turnduns, or

bull-roarers, and made to listen to their hideous din. They are then

told that, if ever a woman is allowed to see a turndun, the earth will

open, and water will cover the globe. The old men point spears at the

boy's eyes, saying: 'If you tell this to any woman you will die, you will

see the ground broken up and like the sea; if you tell this to any woman,

or to any child, you will be killed!' As in Athens, in Syria, and among

the Mandans, the deluge-tradition of Australia is connected with the

mysteries. In Gippsland there is a tradition of the deluge. 'Some

children of the Kurnai in playing about found a turndun, which they took

home to the camp and showed the women. Immediately the earth crumbled

away, and it was all water, and the Kurnai were drowned.'

 

In consequence of all this mummery the Australian women attach great

sacredness to the very name of the turndun. They are much less

instructed in their own theology than the men of the tribe. One woman

believed she had heard Pundjel, the chief supernatural being, descend in

a mighty rushing noise, that is, in the sound of the turndun, when boys

were being 'made men,' or initiated. {35} On turnduns the Australian

sorcerers can fly up to heaven. Turnduns carved with imitations of water-

flowers are used by medicine-men in rain-making. New Zealand also has

her bull-roarers; some of them, carved in relief, are in the Christy

Museum, and one is engraved here. I have no direct evidence as to the

use of these Maori bull-roarers in the Maori mysteries. Their

employment, however, may perhaps be provisionally inferred.

 

One can readily believe that the New Zealand bull-roarer may be whirled

by any man who is repeating a Karakia, or 'charm to raise the wind':--

 

Loud wind,

Lasting wind,

Violent whistling wind,

Dig up the calm reposing sky,

Come, come.

 

In New Zealand {36a} 'the natives regarded the wind as an indication of

the presence of their god,' a superstition not peculiar to Maori

religion. The 'cold wind' felt blowing over the hands at spiritualistic

seances is also regarded (by psychical researchers) as an indication of

the presence of supernatural beings. The windy roaring noise made by the

bull-roarer might readily be considered by savages, either as an

invitation to a god who should present himself in storm, or as a proof of

his being at hand. We have seen that this view was actually taken by an

Australian woman. The hymn called 'breath,' or haha, a hymn to the

mystic wind, is pronounced by Maori priests at the moment of the

initiation of young men in the tribal mysteries. It is a mere

conjecture, and possibly enough capable of disproof, but we have a

suspicion that the use of the mystica vannus Iacchi was a mode of raising

a sacred wind analogous to that employed by whirlers of the turndun.

{36b}

 

Servius, the ancient commentator on Virgil, mentions, among other

opinions, this--that the vannus was a sieve, and that it symbolised the

purifying effect of the mysteries. But it is clear that Servius was only

guessing; and he offers other explanations, among them that the vannus

was a crate to hold offerings, primitias frugum.

 

We have studied the bull-roarer in Australia, we have caught a glimpse of

it in England. Its existence on the American continent is proved by

letters from New Mexico, and by a passage in Mr. Frank Cushing's

'Adventures in Zuni.' {37} In Zuni, too, among a semi-civilised Indian

tribe, or rather a tribe which has left the savage for the barbaric

condition, we find the bull-roarer. Here, too, the instrument--a 'slat,'

Mr. Gushing calls it--is used as a call to the ceremonial observance of

the tribal ritual. The Zunis have various 'orders of a more or less

sacred and sacerdotal character.' Mr. Cushing writes:--

 

These orders were engaged in their annual ceremonials, of which little

was told or shown me; but, at the end of four days, I heard one

morning a _deep whirring noise_. Running out, I saw a procession of

three priests of the bow, in plumed helmets and closely-fitting

cuirasses, both of thick buckskin--gorgeous and solemn with sacred

embroideries and war-paint, begirt with bows, arrows, and war-clubs,

and each distinguished by his badge of degree--coming down one of the

narrow streets. The principal priest carried in his arms a wooden

idol, ferocious in aspect, yet beautiful with its decorations of

shell, turquoise, and brilliant paint. It was nearly hidden by

symbolic slats and prayer-sticks most elaborately plumed. He was

preceded by a guardian with drawn bow and arrows, while another

followed, _twirling the sounding slat_, which had attracted alike my

attention and that of hundreds of the Indians, who hurriedly flocked

to the roofs of the adjacent houses, or lined the street, bowing their

heads in adoration, and scattering sacred prayer-meal on the god and

his attendant priests. Slowly they wound their way down the hill,

across the river, and off toward the mountain of Thunder. Soon an

identical procession followed and took its way toward the western

hills. I watched them long until they disappeared, and a few hours

afterward there arose from the top of 'Thunder Mountain' a dense

column of smoke, simultaneously with another from the more distant

western mesa of 'U-ha-na-mi,' or 'Mount of the Beloved.'

 

Then they told me that for four days I must neither touch nor eat

flesh or oil of any kind, and for ten days neither throw any refuse

from my doors, nor permit a spark to leave my house, for 'This was the

season of the year when the "grandmother of men" (fire) was precious.'

 

Here then, in Zuni, we have the bull-roarer again, and once more we find

it employed as a summons to the mysteries. We do not learn, however,

that women in Zuni are forbidden to look upon the bull-roarer. Finally,

the South African evidence, which is supplied by letters from a

correspondent of Mr. Tylor's, proves that in South Africa, too, the bull-

roarer is employed to call the men to the celebration of secret

functions. A minute description of the instrument, and of its magical

power to raise a wind, is given in Theal's 'Kaffir Folklore,' p. 209. The

bull-roarer has not been made a subject of particular research; very

probably later investigations will find it in other parts of the modern

world besides America, Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. I have myself

been fortunate enough to encounter the bull-roarer on the soil of ancient

Greece and in connection with the Dionysiac mysteries. Clemens of

Alexandria, and Arnobius, an early Christian father who follows Clemens,

describe certain toys of the child Dionysus which were used in the

mysteries. Among these are _turbines_, [Greek], and [Greek]. The

ordinary dictionaries interpret all these as whipping-tops, adding that

[Greek] is sometimes 'a magic wheel.' The ancient scholiast on Clemens,

however, writes: 'The [Greek] is a little piece of wood, to which a

string is fastened, and in the mysteries it is whirled round to make a

roaring noise.' {39} Here, in short, we have a brief but complete

description of the bull-roarer of the Australian turndun. No single

point is omitted. The [Greek], like the turndun, is a small object of

wood, it is tied to a string, when whirled round it produces a roaring

noise, and it is used at initiations. This is not the end of the matter.

 

In the part of the Dionysiac mysteries at which the toys of the child

Dionysus were exhibited, and during which (as it seems) the [Greek], or

bull-roarer, was whirred, the performers daubed themselves all over with

clay. This we learn from a passage in which Demosthenes describes the

youth of his hated adversary, AEschines. The mother of AEschines, he

says, was a kind of 'wise woman,' and dabbler in mysteries. AEschines

used to aid her by bedaubing the initiate over with clay and bran. {40a}

The word [Greek], here used by Demosthenes, is explained by Harpocration

as the ritual term for daubing the initiated. A story was told, as

usual, to explain this rite. It was said that, when the Titans attacked

Dionysus and tore him to pieces, they painted themselves first with clay,

or gypsum, that they might not be recognised. Nonnus shows, in several

places, that down to his time the celebrants of the Bacchic mysteries

retained this dirty trick. Precisely the same trick prevails in the

mysteries of savage peoples. Mr. Winwood Reade {40b} reports the

evidence of Mongilomba. When initiated, Mongilomba was 'severely flogged

in the Fetich House' (as young Spartans were flogged before the animated

image of Artemis), and then he was 'plastered over with goat-dung.' Among

the natives of Victoria, {40c} the 'body of the initiated is bedaubed

with clay, mud, charcoal powder, and filth of every kind.' The girls are

plastered with charcoal powder and white clay, answering to the Greek

gypsum. Similar daubings were performed at the mysteries by the Mandans,

as described by Catlin; and the Zunis made raids on Mr. Cushing's black

paint and Chinese ink for like purposes. On the Congo, Mr. Johnson found

precisely the same ritual in the initiations. Here, then, not to

multiply examples, we discover two singular features in common between

Greek and savage mysteries. Both Greeks and savages employ the

bull-roarer, both bedaub the initiated with dirt or with white paint or

chalk. As to the meaning of the latter very un-Aryan practice, one has

no idea. It is only certain that war parties of Australian blacks bedaub

themselves with white clay to alarm their enemies in night attacks. The

Phocians, according to Herodotus (viii. 27), adopted the same 'aisy

stratagem,' as Captain Costigan has it. Tellies, the medicine-man

([Greek]), chalked some sixty Phocians, whom he sent to make a night

attack on the Thessalians. The sentinels of the latter were seized with

supernatural horror, and fled, 'and after the sentinels went the army.'

In the same way, in a night attack among the Australian Kurnai, {41a}

'they all rapidly painted themselves with pipe-clay: red ochre is no use,

it cannot frighten an enemy.' If, then, Greeks in the historic period

kept up Australian tactics, it is probable that the ancient mysteries of

Greece might retain the habit of daubing the initiated which occurs in

savage rites.

 

'Come now,' as Herodotus would say, 'I will show once more that the

mysteries of the Greeks resemble those of Bushmen.' In Lucian's Treatise

on Dancing, {41b} we read, 'I pass over the fact that you cannot find a

single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing. . . . To prove this

I will not mention the secret acts of worship, on account of the

uninitiated. But this much all men know, that most people say of those

who reveal the mysteries, that they "dance them out."' Here Liddell and

Scott write, rather weakly, 'to dance out, let out, betray, probably of

some dance which burlesqued these ceremonies.' It is extremely

improbable that, in an age when it was still forbidden to reveal the

[Greek], or secret rites, those rites would be mocked in popular

burlesques. Lucian obviously intends to say that the matter of the

mysteries was set forth in ballets d'action. Now this is exactly the

case in the surviving mysteries of the Bushmen. Shortly after the

rebellion of Langalibalele's tribe, Mr. Orpen, the chief magistrate in

St. John's Territory, made the acquaintance of Qing, one of the last of

an all but exterminated tribe. Qing 'had never seen a white man, except

fighting,' when he became Mr. Orpen's guide. He gave a good deal of

information about the myths of his people, but refused to answer certain

questions. 'You are now asking the secrets that are not spoken of.' Mr.

Orpen asked, 'Do you know the secrets?' Qing replied, 'No, only the

initiated men of that dance know these things.' To 'dance' this or that

means, 'to be acquainted with this or that mystery;' the dances were

originally taught by Cagn, the mantis, or grasshopper god. In many

mysteries, Qing, as a young man, was not initiated. He could not 'dance

them out.' {42}

 

There are thus undeniably close resemblances between the Greek mysteries

and those of the lowest contemporary races.

 

As to the bull-roarer, its recurrence among Greeks, Zunis, Kamilaroi,

Maoris, and South African races, would be regarded, by some students, as

a proof that all these tribes had a common origin, or had borrowed the

instrument from each other. But this theory is quite unnecessary. The

bull-roarer is a very simple invention. Anyone might find out that a bit

of sharpened wood, tied to a string, makes, when whirred, a roaring

noise. Supposing that discovery made, it is soon turned to practical

use. All tribes have their mysteries. All want a signal to summon the

right persons together and warn the wrong persons to keep out of the way.

The church bell does as much for us, so did the shaken seistron for the

Egyptians. People with neither bells nor seistra find the bull-roarer,

with its mysterious sound, serve their turn. The hiding of the

instrument from women is natural enough. It merely makes the alarm and

absence of the curious sex doubly sure. The stories of supernatural

consequences to follow if a woman sees the turndun lend a sanction. This

is not a random theory, without basis. In Brazil, the natives have no

bull-roarer, but they have mysteries, and the presence of the women at

the mysteries of the men is a terrible impiety. To warn away the women,

the Brazilians make loud 'devil-music' on what are called 'jurupari

pipes.' Now, just as in Australia, _the women may not see the jurupari

pipes on pain of death_. When the sound of the jurupari pipes is heard,

as when the turndun is heard in Australia, every woman flees and hides

herself. The women are always executed if they see the pipes. Mr.

Alfred Wallace bought a pair of these pipes, but he had to embark them at

a distance from the village where they were procured. The seller was

afraid that some unknown misfortune would occur if the women of his

village set eyes on the juruparis. {44}

 

The conclusion from all these facts seems obvious. The bull-roarer is an

instrument easily invented by savages, and easily adopted into the ritual

of savage mysteries. If we find the bull-roarer used in the mysteries of

the most civilised of ancient peoples, the most probable explanation is,

that the Greeks retained both the mysteries, the bull-roarer, the habit

of bedaubing the initiate, the torturing of boys, the sacred obscenities,

the antics with serpents, the dances, and the like, from the time when

their ancestors were in the savage condition. That more refined and

religious ideas were afterwards introduced into the mysteries seems

certain, but the rites were, in many cases, simply savage. Unintelligible

(except as survivals) when found among Hellenes, they become intelligible

enough among savages, because they correspond to the intellectual

condition and magical fancies of the lower barbarism. The same sort of

comparison, the same kind of explanation, will account, as we shall see,

for the savage myths as well as for the savage customs which survived

among the Greeks.

 

 

 

 

THE MYTH OF CRONUS.

 

 

In a Maori pah, when a little boy behaves rudely to his parents, he is

sometimes warned that he is 'as bad as cruel Tutenganahau.' If he asks

who Tutenganahau was, he is told the following story:--

 

'In the beginning, the Heaven, Rangi, and the Earth, Papa, were the

father and mother of all things. "In these days the Heaven lay upon the

Earth, and all was darkness. They had never been separated." Heaven and

Earth had children, who grew up and lived in this thick night, and they

were unhappy because they could not see. Between the bodies of their

parents they were imprisoned, and there was no light. The names of the

children were Tumatuenga, Tane Mahuta, Tutenganahau, and some others. So

they all consulted as to what should be done with their parents, Rangi

and Papa. "Shall we slay them, or shall we separate them?" "Go to,"

said Tumatuenga, "let us slay them." "No," cried Tane Mahuta, "let us

rather separate them. Let one go upwards, and become a stranger to us;

let the other remain below, and be a parent to us." Only Tawhiri Matea

(the wind) had pity on his own father and mother. Then the fruit-gods,

and the war-god, and the sea-god (for all the children of Papa and Rangi

were gods) tried to rend their parents asunder. Last rose the forest-

god, cruel Tutenganahau. He severed the sinews which united Heaven and

Earth, Rangi and Papa. Then he pushed hard with his head and feet. Then

wailed Heaven and exclaimed Earth, "Wherefore this murder? Why this

great sin? Why destroy us? Why separate us?" But Tane pushed and

pushed: Rangi was driven far away into the air. "_They became visible,

who had hitherto been concealed between the hollows of their parents'

breasts_." Only the storm-god differed from his brethren: he arose and

followed his father, Rangi, and abode with him in the open spaces of the

sky.'

 

This is the Maori story of the severing of the wedded Heaven and Earth.

The cutting of them asunder was the work of Tutenganahau and his

brethren, and the conduct of Tutenganahau is still held up as an example

of filial impiety. {46a} The story is preserved in sacred hymns of very

great antiquity, and many of the myths are common to the other peoples of

the Pacific. {46b}

 

Now let us turn from New Zealand to Athens, as she was in the days of

Pericles. Socrates is sitting in the porch of the King Archon, when

Euthyphro comes up and enters into conversation with the philosopher.

After some talk, Euthyphro says, 'You will think me mad when I tell you

whom I am prosecuting and pursuing!' 'Why, has the fugitive wings?' asks

Socrates. 'Nay, he is not very volatile at his time of life!' 'Who is

he?' 'My father.' 'Good heavens! you don't mean that. What is he

accused of?' 'Murder, Socrates.' Then Euthyphro explains the case,

which quaintly illustrates Greek civilisation. Euthyphro's father had an

agricultural labourer at Naxos. One day this man, in a drunken passion,

killed a slave. Euthyphro's father seized the labourer, bound him, threw

him into a ditch, 'and then sent to Athens to ask a diviner what should

be done with him.' Before the answer of the diviner arrived, the

labourer literally 'died in a ditch' of hunger and cold. For this

offence, Euthyphro was prosecuting his own father. Socrates shows that

he disapproves, and Euthyphro thus defends the piety of his own conduct:

'The impious, whoever he may be, ought not to go unpunished. For do not

men regard Zeus as the best and most righteous of gods? Yet even they

admit that Zeus bound his own father Cronus, because he wickedly devoured

his sons; and that Cronus, too, had punished his own father, Uranus, for

a similar reason, in a nameless manner. And yet when _I_ proceed against

_my_ father, people are angry with me. This is their inconsistent way of

talking, when the gods are concerned, and when I am concerned.'

 

Here Socrates breaks in. He 'cannot away with these stories about the

gods,' and so he has just been accused of impiety, the charge for which

he died. Socrates cannot believe that a god, Cronus, mutilated his

father Uranus, but Euthyphro believes the whole affair: 'I can tell you

many other things about the gods which would quite amaze you.' {48}

 

* * * * *

 

We have here a typical example of the way in which mythology puzzled the

early philosophers of Greece. Socrates was anxious to be pious, and to

respect the most ancient traditions of the gods. Yet at the very outset

of sacred history he was met by tales of gods who mutilated and bound

their own parents. Not only were such tales hateful to him, but they

were of positively evil example to people like Euthyphro. The problem

remained, how did the fathers of the Athenians ever come to tell such

myths?

 

* * * * *

 

Let us now examine the myth of Cronus, and the explanations which have

been given by scholars. Near the beginning of things, according to

Hesiod (whose cosmogony was accepted in Greece), Earth gave birth to

Heaven. Later, Heaven, Uranus, became the husband of Gaea, Earth. Just

as Rangi and Papa, in New Zealand, had many children, so had Uranus and

Gaea. As in New Zealand, some of these children were gods of the various

elements. Among them were Oceanus, the deep, and Hyperion, the sun--as

among the children of Earth and Heaven, in New Zealand, were the Wind and

the Sea. The youngest child of the Greek Heaven and Earth was 'Cronus of

crooked counsel, who ever hated his mighty sire.' Now even as the

children of the Maori Heaven and Earth were 'concealed between the

hollows of their parents' breasts,' so the Greek Heaven used to 'hide his

children from the light in the hollows of Earth.' Both Earth and her

children resented this, and, as in New Zealand, the children conspired

against Heaven, taking Earth, however, into their counsels. Thereupon

Earth produced iron, and bade her children avenge their wrongs. {49a} Now

fear fell on all of them, except Cronus, who, like Tutenganahau, was all

for action. Cronus determined to end the embraces of Heaven and Earth.

But, while the Maori myth conceives of Heaven and Earth as of two beings

which have never been separated before, Hesiod makes Heaven amorously

approach his wife from a distance. Then Cronus stretched out his hand,

armed with a sickle of iron, or steel, and mutilated Uranus. Thus were

Heaven and Earth practically divorced. But as in the Maori myth one of

the children of Heaven clave to his sire, so, in Greek, Oceanus remained

faithful to his father. {49b}

 

This is the first portion of the Myth of Cronus. Can it be denied that

the story is well illustrated and explained by the New Zealand parallel,

the myth of the cruelty of Tutenganahau? By means of this comparison,

the meaning of the myth is made clear enough. Just as the New Zealanders

had conceived of Heaven and Earth as at one time united, to the prejudice

of their children, so the ancestors of the Greeks had believed in an

ancient union of Heaven and Earth. Both by Greeks and Maoris, Heaven and

Earth were thought of as living persons, with human parts and passions.

Their union was prejudicial to their children, and so the children

violently separated the parents. This conduct is regarded as impious,

and as an awful example to be avoided, in Maori pahs. In Naxos, on the

other hand, Euthyphro deemed that the conduct of Cronus deserved

imitation. If ever the Maoris had reached a high civilisation, they

would probably have been revolted, like Socrates, by the myth which

survived from their period of savagery. Mr. Tylor well says, {50a} 'Just

as the adzes of polished jade, and the cloaks of tied flax-fibre, which

these New Zealanders were using but yesterday, are older in their place

in history than the bronze battle-axes and linen mummy-cloths of ancient

Egypt, so the Maori poet's shaping of nature into nature-myth belongs to

a stage of intellectual history which was passing away in Greece five-and-

twenty centuries ago. The myth-maker's fancy of Heaven and Earth as

father and mother of all things naturally suggested the legend that they in old days abode together, but have since been torn asunder.'