Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globeBourke, John Gregory
Religion
Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globe
Bourke, John Gregory
Scatology
“Dunghill. A coward. A cock-pit phrase, all but gamecocks being styled
dunghills.”—(Grose, “Dictionary of Slang,” London, 1811.)
Tailors who accepted the wages prescribed by law were styled “Dung” by
the “Flints,” who refused them.—(Idem.)
Among the rough games of English sailors was one, “The Galley,” in which
a mopful of excrement was thrust in a landsman’s face.—(Idem.)
In Angola, Africa, flatulence is freely permitted among the natives;
but any license of this kind taken while strangers are in the vicinity
is regarded as a deadly insult.—(“Muhongo,” translated by Rev. Mr.
Chatelain.)
In the report of one of the early American explorations to the
Trans-Missouri region occurs the story that the Republican Pawnees,
Nebraska, once (about 1780-90) violated the laws of hospitality by
seizing a calumet-bearer of the Omahas who had entered their village,
and, among other indignities, making him “drink urine mixed with bison
gall.”—(“Long’s Expedition,” Philadelphia, 1823, vol. i. p. 300.)
Bison gall itself sprinkled upon raw liver, just warm from the carcass,
was regarded as a delicacy. The expression “excrement eater” is applied
by the Mandans and others on the Upper Missouri as a term of the vilest
opprobrium, according to Surgeon Washington Matthews, U. S. Army (author
of “Hidatsa,” and other ethnological works of authority), whose remarks
are based upon an unusually extended and intelligent experience.
“They gave me the abuse of the Punjabi, ... pelting me with sticks and
cow-dung till I fell down and cried for mercy.”—(“Gemini,” Rudyard
Kipling, in “Soldiers Three,” New York, 1890.)
“May the garbage of the foundations of the city be thy food; may the
drains of the city be thy drink.”—(“The Chaldean Account of Genesis,”
George Smith, New York, 1880.)
Among the Cheyenne expressions of contempt is to be found one which
recalls the objurgations of the Bedouins; namely, _natsi-viz_, or
“s—t-mouth.”—(Personal notes of September 25, 1878, interview with the
chiefs of the Northern Cheyennes, Ben Clark, interpreter.)
Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, who has made such prolonged and careful studies of
the manners and myths of the tribes of the Siouan stock, is authority for
the statement that the worst insult that one Ponca can give another is to
say, “You are an eater of dog-dung;” and it is noticeable that the words
of the expression are rarely used in the language of every-day life. He
gives other examples from myths, etc., and supplies a variant of the
story narrated by Captain Long; but as all this is to appear in one of
the Doctor’s coming books, it is omitted from these pages.
The Kamtchatkans say, “May you have one hundred burning lamps in your
podex,” “Eater of fæces with his fish-spawn,” etc.—(Steller, translated
by Bunnemeyer.)
“Stercus.” As a term of abuse.—“Nolo stercus curiæ dici
Glauciam.”—(Cicero, “De Oratoribus,” 3, 41, 164; Andrew’s “Latin
Dictionary,” New York, 1879, article “Stercus.”)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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