The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
robbers are not buried like honest folk, but left to rot where they lie;
and a pile of stones is raised over the mouldering corpse. Every one who
passes such a pile must fling a stone at it, on pain of incurring God’s
malison.(50) Between sixty and seventy years ago an Englishman was
travelling from Sidon to Tyre with a couple of Musalmans. When he drew
near Tyre his companions picked up some small stones, armed him in the
same fashion, and requested him to be so kind as to follow their example.
Soon afterwards they came in sight of a conical heap of pebbles and stones
standing in the road, at which the two Musalmans hurled stones and curses
with great vehemence and remarkable volubility. When they had discharged
this pious duty to their satisfaction, they explained that the missiles
and maledictions were directed at a celebrated robber and murderer, who
had been knocked on the head and buried there some half a century
before.(51)
(M14) In these latter cases it may perhaps be thought that the sticks and
stones serve no other purpose than to keep off the angry and dangerous
ghost who might be supposed to haunt either the place of death or the
grave. This interpretation seems certainly to apply to some cases of the
custom. For example, in Pomerania and West Prussia the ghosts of suicides
are much feared. Such persons are buried, not in the churchyard, but at
the place where they took their lives, and every passer-by must cast a
stone or a stick on the spot, or the ghost of the suicide will haunt him
by night and give him no rest. Hence the piles of sticks or stones
accumulated on the graves of these poor wretches sometimes attain a
considerable size.(52) Similarly the Baganda of Central Africa used to
stand in great fear of the ghosts of suicides and they took many
precautions to disarm or even destroy these dangerous spirits. For this
purpose the bodies of suicides were removed to waste land or cross-roads
and burned there, together with the wood of the house in which the deed
had been done or of the tree on which the person had hanged himself. By
these means they imagined that they destroyed the ghost so that he could
not come and lure others to follow his bad example. Lest, however, the
ghost should survive the destruction of his body by fire, the Baganda, in
passing any place where a suicide had been burnt, always threw grass or
sticks on the spot to prevent the ghost from catching them. And they did
the same, for the same reason, whenever they passed the places on waste
ground where persons accused of witchcraft and found guilty by the poison
ordeal had been burnt to death. Baganda women had a special reason for
dreading all graves which were believed to be haunted by dangerous ghosts;
for, imagining that they could conceive children without intercourse with
the other sex, they feared to be impregnated by the entrance into them of
the ghosts of suicides and other unfortunate or uncanny people, such as
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