Balder the Beautiful, Volume I.: A Study in Magic and Religion: the Golden Bough, Part VII., The; Fire-Festivals of Europe and the Doctrine of the External SoulFrazer, James George
Religion
Balder the Beautiful, Volume I.: A Study in Magic and Religion: the Golden Bough, Part VII., The; Fire-Festivals of Europe and the Doctrine of the External Soul
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
the diviner that he may discover how to cure his impotence; and while he
is closeted with the wizard, they fetch another man, who finishes the
ceremony with the young wife, in order that the relish may be given out
and that people may rub their feet with it. But if it happens that when
a girl comes to maturity she is not yet betrothed to any man, and
therefore has no husband to go to, the matrons tell her that she must go
to a lover instead. And this is the custom which they call _chigango_.
So in the evening she takes her cooking pot and relish and hies away to
the quarters of the young bachelors, and they very civilly sleep
somewhere else that night. And in the morning the girl goes back to the
_kuka_ hut.[73]
[Abstinence from salt associated with a rule of chastity in many
tribes.]
From the foregoing account it appears that among these tribes no sooner
has a girl attained to womanhood than she is expected and indeed
required to give proof of her newly acquired powers by cohabiting with a
man, whether her husband or another. And the abstinence from salt during
the girl's seclusion is all the more remarkable because as soon as the
seclusion is over she has to use salt for a particular purpose, to which
the people evidently attach very great importance, since in the event of
her husband proving impotent she is even compelled, apparently, to
commit adultery in order that the salted relish may be given out as
usual. In this connexion it deserves to be noted that among the Wagogo
of German East Africa women at their monthly periods may not sleep with
their husbands and may not put salt in food.[74] A similar rule is
observed by the Nyanja-speaking tribes of Central Angoniland, with whose
puberty customs we are here concerned. Among them, we are told, "some
superstition exists with regard to the use of salt. A woman during her
monthly sickness must on no account put salt into any food she is
cooking, lest she give her husband or children a disease called _tsempo_
(_chitsoko soko_) but calls a child to put it in, or, as the song goes,
'_Natira nichere ni bondo chifukwa n'kupanda mwana_' and pours in the
salt by placing it on her knee, because there is no child handy. Should
a party of villagers have gone to make salt, all sexual intercourse is
forbidden among the people of the village, until the people who have
gone to make the salt (from grass) return. When they do come back, they
must make their entry into the village at night, and no one must see
them. Then one of the elders of the village sleeps with his wife. She
then cooks some relish, into which she puts some of the salt. This
relish is handed round to the people who went to make the salt, who rub
it on their feet and under their armpits."[75] Hence it would seem that
in the mind of these people abstinence from salt is somehow associated
with the idea of chastity. The same association meets us in the customs
of many peoples in various parts of the world. For example, ancient
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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