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
“As the mythology and traditions of other heathen nations are more or
less immoral and obscene, so it is with these people.” (“Nat. Trib. of S.
Australia,” p. 200.) “Mingarope having retired upon a natural occasion
was highly pleased with the red color of her excrement, which she began
to mould into the form of a man, and tickling it, it showed signs of life
and began to laugh.”—(Idem, p. 201.)
The myth relating that differences in language sprung up after certain of
the tribes had eaten the excrement of the goddess “Wurruri” is given on
p. 268; it has been recited in this volume on a previous page. There was
another god, named Nurunduri, of whom the story is told that he once made
water in a certain spot, “from which circumstance the place is called
Kainjamin (to make water.)”—(Idem, p. 205.)
Among the Bilgula of British Columbia, there is a myth which relates that
a certain stump of a tree was a cannibal and had captured a girl. Once,
when he had gone out to fish for halibut, “he ordered his urinary vessel
to call him if the girl should make an attempt to escape. When she did
so, the vessel cried, ‘Rota-gota, Rota-gota, gota.’”—(Personal letter
from Dr. Franz Boas, Clark University, Worcester, Mass.)
There is a riddle among the Kamtchatkans in regard to human feces: “My
father has numerous forms and dresses; my mother is warm and thin and
bears every day. Before I am born, I like cold and warmth, but after I
am born, only cold. In the cold I am strong, and in the warmth, weak; if
cold, I am seen far; if warm, I am smelled far.”—(Steller, translated by
Bunnemeyer.)
Among some of the Eskimo tribes the Raven is represented as talking to
its own excrement and consulting it; excrement occurs frequently in their
legends.—(Personal letter from Dr. Boas, as above.)
From the preceding paragraph we see that the Eskimo must have formerly,
even if they do not now, consulted excrement in their Divination; the
extract from Gilder, given under “Mortuary Ceremonies” confirms this
hypothesis.
The people of Kamtchatka believed that rain was the urine of Billutschi,
one of their gods, and of his genii; but, after this god has urinated
enough, he puts on a new dress made in the form of a sack, and provided
with fringes of red seal hair, and variously colored strips of leather.
These represent the origin of the Rainbow.
The Kamtchatkan god Kutka was once pursued by enemies, but saved himself
“by ejecting from his bowels all kinds of berries, which detained his
pursuers.”
The myths of the Kamtchatkans offer a parallel to the stories that the
presents of the devil always turned into dross. There is the story of the
god Kutka, upon whom, as we have seen, many tricks were played. In one
the food with which he supplied himself “turned into peat, rotten wood,
and piss.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.)
“The Central Eskimo believe that rain is the urine of a deity.”—(See “The
Central Eskimo,” Boas, p. 600.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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