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SPIRIT BASIS OF BELIEF AND CUSTOM.
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the north of the Zambesi, have a great fear of spirits. They think that spirits cause sickness and wish to take away the living. When one man has killed another, a sacrifice is made to lay the ghost.38 The South-West Africans believe that if the spirits of the departed are appeased, there is no other cause of death except witchcraft.39 Sneezing is supposed to be spirit-caused. Gardiner notes that when Dingaru, a Zulu chief, sneezed, his people said :"May he grow greater."40 The Nubras divide diseases into two classes, wind or spirit diseases and blood diseases.1 The Moors of Morocco, when they stumble or fall, stain their clothes, cat their fingers, break a pot, or hear an ass bray, say: "God damn the devil." 12 The old belief that spirits cause diseases seems to have been modified by the Moors of North Africa, who now consider every sickness a judgment.43
The American Indians almost universally believe that death is caused by witchcraft.44 The Zaparo Indians of South America think illness and death due to sorcery.45 In the West Indies, Columbus (1495) found a sorcerer, who pulled diseases off the patient as one pulls off a pair of trousers ;46 and the Californian Indians spend all their time in shaking off evil
spirits. 47
Homer's 49 Greeks thought that disease was caused by a demon, 49 and this belief was upheld by Pythagoras.50 Madness they thought was due to a spirit.51 The Romans called madmen lymphati, ghost-baunted, and a Temple of Fever stood on the Palatine Hill.52 The Roman matrons were cared of barrenness by being beaten with thongs by the priest of the Lupercalia. The Lupercalia continued to be held in Rome till the middle of the fifth century.53 The Skandinavians believed that Runic letters eased women in labour, kept off poison, dispelled evil thoughts, and cared child-diseases and melancholy:54 In Russia, the ague is called the Female Neighbour or the Female Friend. Ague is a spirit which will worry her patient till she goes, and before she goes she appears in terrible dreams.55 Toothache is cured in Russia by rubbing on the gam the ends of candles, which have been burnt in church.56 Barrenness is supposed to be a spirit-disease, and so in France, even to-day, women are said to sit on dolmens to cure sterility.67 Formerly in England it was held that pestilences and other diseases and sicknesses were due to wicked spirits. In the Episteles and Gospelles, London, imprinted by Richard Bankes, & sermon on "Rogation Dayes" runs: "In these Rogation Days, it is to be asked of God and prayed for, that God of His goodness will defend and save the corn in the field and that He will vouchsafe to purge the air; for this cause be certain Gospels read in the wide fields among the corn and grass, that by the virtue and operation of God's word the power of the wicked spirits, which keep in the air and infect the same (whence come pestilence and other kinds of diseases and sicknesses), may be laid down and the air made pure and clean to the intent the corn may remain unharmed and not infected of the said hurtful spirits,"58 In England a stoppage in the throat was supposed to be due to witchcraft, or spirits, and the following remedy was resorted to as a cnre:- “Hold the diseased by the throat, and say- Blaze, the martyr and servant of Jesus Christ, commands thee to pass up or down.'"*60 In England convulsions were an attack of dwarves.co Pestilences vame in human form.61 Barrenness was a spirit-disease, which was believed to affect trees, as well as men and women. So, till 1790, the Devonshire farmers used to go round their apple
* Livingstone's Travels in South Africa, p. 484. Op. cit. p. 140. Gardiner's Zulu Country, p. 52. 1 Schweinfurth's Heart of Africa, Vol. II, p. 825.
13 Rohlf's Morocco, p. 60. 15 Op. cit. p. 76.
44 First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, p. 168. 16 Jour, Anthrop. Inst. Vol. VII. p. 506.
46 Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 129. 47 Bancroft, Vol. III. p. 497.
48 B. C. 1000. 49 Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 137. 60 B. C. 510. 81 Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 138. 62 Pliny's Natural History, Vol. I. p. 3. 69 Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Vol. IV. p. 78. 04 Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 118.
Mrs. Romanoff's Rites and Customs of the Greco-Russian Church, p. 326. 68 Op. cit. p. 90.
67 Walhouse in Jour. Anthrop. Inst. Vol. VII. p. 31. 58 Brand's Popular Antiquities, Vol. I. pp. 201, 202, 60 Op.cit. Vol. I. p. 52. 60 Taylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 140.
61 Op.cit. Vol. I. pp. 295, 296.
