The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and ReligionFrazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
Again, magic may be wrought on a man sympathetically, not only
through his clothes and severed parts of himself, but also through
the impressions left by his body in sand or earth. In particular, it
is a world-wide superstition that by injuring footprints you injure
the feet that made them. Thus the natives of South-eastern Australia
think that they can lame a man by placing sharp pieces of quartz,
glass, bone, or charcoal in his footprints. Rheumatic pains are
often attributed by them to this cause. Seeing a Tatungolung man
very lame, Mr. Howitt asked him what was the matter. He said, "some
fellow has put _bottle_ in my foot." He was suffering from
rheumatism, but believed that an enemy had found his foot-track and
had buried it in a piece of broken bottle, the magical influence of
which had entered his foot.
Similar practices prevail in various parts of Europe. Thus in
Mecklenburg it is thought that if you drive a nail into a man's
footprint he will fall lame; sometimes it is required that the nail
should be taken from a coffin. A like mode of injuring an enemy is
resorted to in some parts of France. It is said that there was an
old woman who used to frequent Stow in Suffolk, and she was a witch.
If, while she walked, any one went after her and stuck a nail or a
knife into her footprint in the dust, the dame could not stir a step
till it was withdrawn. Among the South Slavs a girl will dig up the
earth from the footprints of the man she loves and put it in a
flower-pot. Then she plants in the pot a marigold, a flower that is
thought to be fadeless. And as its golden blossom grows and blooms
and never fades, so shall her sweetheart's love grow and bloom, and
never, never fade. Thus the love-spell acts on the man through the
earth he trod on. An old Danish mode of concluding a treaty was
based on the same idea of the sympathetic connexion between a man
and his footprints: the covenanting parties sprinkled each other's
footprints with their own blood, thus giving a pledge of fidelity.
In ancient Greece superstitions of the same sort seem to have been
current, for it was thought that if a horse stepped on the track of
a wolf he was seized with numbness; and a maxim ascribed to
Pythagoras forbade people to pierce a man's footprints with a nail
or a knife.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account