accuser; and I conclude that at the bottom of this belief there is a vague idea that the absence of all clothes will prevent the oath from clinging to themselves. They say that it is bad not only to swear, but even to be present when an oath is taken by somebody else. And at Demnat, in the Great Atlas, I was told that when a person has made oath at a shrine, he avoids going back to his house the same way as he came, since otherwise, at least if he {60} has sworn false, his family as well as himself would have to suffer. [Footnote 207: _Atharva-Veda_, ii. 7. 5.] [Footnote 208: Goldziher, _Abhandlungen_, i. 38 _sq._] [Footnote 209: _Ecclesiasticus_, xxi. 27.] [Footnote 210: Wood-Martin, _op. cit._ ii. 57 _sq._] [Footnote 211: Plato, _Leges_, ix. 881.] [Footnote 212: Plutarch, _Questiones Romanae_, 44.] [Footnote 213: _Idem_, _Vita Cassi_, 16.] [Footnote 214: Georgi, _op. cit._ iii. 54 _sq._] [Footnote 215: Burckhardt, _Bedouins and Wahábys_, p. 73.] [Footnote 216: _Ibid._ p. 165.] If a curse is infectious, it is naturally liable to contaminate those who derive their origin from the infected individual. The house of Glaucus was utterly extirpated from Sparta, in accordance with the words of the oracle, "There is a nameless son of the Oath-god who has neither hands nor feet; he pursues swiftly, until, having seized, he destroys the whole race, and all the house."[217] So, too, the Erinyes visited the sins of the fathers even on the children and grandchildren;[218] and the Erinyes were originally only personifications of curses.[219] It is said in the Ecclesiasticus:--"A man that useth much swearing shall be filled with iniquity, and the plague shall never depart from his house. . . . If he swear in vain, he shall not be innocent, but his house shall be full of calamities."[220] Casalis remarks of the Basutos, that "the dreadful consequences that the curse of Noah has had for Ham and his descendants appear quite natural to these people."[221] The Dharkâr and Majhwâr in Mirzapur, believe that a person who forswears himself will lose his property and his children;[222] but as we do not know the contents of the oath, it is possible that the destruction of the latter is not ascribed to mere contagion, but is expressly imprecated on them by the swearer.[223] Among the Rejangs of Sumatra, {61} "any accident that happens to a man, who has been known to take a false oath, or to his children or grandchildren, is carefully recorded in memory, and attributed to this sole cause."[224] Among the Karens the following story is told:--"Anciently there was a man who had ten children, and he cursed one of his brethren, who had done him no injury; but the curse did the man no harm, and he did not die. Then the curse returned to the man who sent it, and all his ten children died."[225] The Moors are fond of cursing each other's father or mother, or grandfather, or grandfather's father, such a curse being understood to involve their descendants as well.