Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 92, August 2, 1851: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.Various
History
Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 92, August 2, 1851: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
I have Query to make, but must defer it to another time, as I have
already taken up enough of your paper.
JARLTZBERG.
"JUSJURANDUM PER CANEM"
(Vol. iii., p. 192.).--
"SEDEM ANIMÆ IN DIGITIS PONUNT"
(Vol. ii., p. 464.).--
"FIAT JUSTITIA, RUAT COELUM"
(Vol. ii., p. 494.).
An extraordinary mode of swearing, akin to the oaths already noticed,
is recorded by Ysbrant Ides in his _Travels from Moscow to China_
(London, 1705, and reprinted in the second volume of Harris's
Collection):--
"Two Tunguzian hostages falling out, one accused the other before
the Waywode (or Viceroy) of having conjured his deceased brother
to death. The Waywode asked the accuser if he would, according to
the Tunguzian custom, put the accused to his oath? To this he
answered in the affirmative; after which the accused took a _live
dog_, laid him on the ground, and with a knife stuck him into the
body, just under his left foot, and immediately clapped his mouth
to the wound, and sucked out the dog's blood as long as he could
come at it; after which he lift him up, laid him on his shoulders,
and clapped his mouth again to the wound in order to suck out the
remaining blood. An excellent drink indeed! And this is the
greatest oath and most solemn confirmation of the Truth amongst
them; so that on credit of this the accused was set free, and the
accuser punished for his false accusation."
The dog, designed, as Cicero observes, for man's use, was doubtless
selected for his sagacity and faithfulness; and by Loccenius, in his
_Leges W. Gothicæ_, "tria canum capita" are stated to have been
"Hunnorum gentis insignia," the progenitors of the Tunguzians, p. 107.
In Northern Europe "sanguine Deos placari creditum; canibus etiam cum
hominibus permistè in luco suspensis." (_Ibid._ p. 105.)
Among the northern nations, not only their testimoniary oaths were thus
sanctioned by blood, but their confederative also, in which their
fraternisation was symbolised by reciprocal transfusion of blood.
"Dear as the blood that warms my heart."
Gray's _Bard_.
It was the custom of the Scythians "non dextras tantum implicare, sed
pollices mutuo vincire, nodoque perstringere; mox sanguine in artus
extremos se effundente levi ritu _cruorem elicere_, atque invicem
lambere." (Hanseanius _De Jurejurando Verterum_.) Quintus Curtius
remarks that among the Hindoos (between whom and the Scythians Sir W.
Jones and other ethnographers have observed various traces of affinity)
the joining of right hands was their usual mode of salutation; "dextra
fidei sedes."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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