CHAPTER XI.

DISEASE.

The Plague Phantom--Devil-dances--Destroying Angels--Ahriman in
Astrology---Saturn--Satan and Job--Set--The Fatal Seven--Yakseyo
--The Singhalese Pretraya--Reeri--Maha Sohon--Morotoo--Luther on
Disease-demons--Gopolu--Madan--Cattle-demon in Russia--Bihlweisen
--The Plough.


A familiar fable in the East tells of one who met a fearful phantom,
which in reply to his questioning answered--'I am Plague: I have come
from yon city where ten thousand lie dead: one thousand were slain by
me, the rest by Fear.' Perhaps even this story does not fully report
the alliance between the plague and fear; for it is hardly doubtful
that epidemics retain their power in the East largely because they have
gained personification through fear as demons whose fatal power man
can neither prevent nor cure, before which he can only cower and pray.

In the missionary school at Canterbury the young men prepare themselves
to help the 'heathen' medically, and so they go forth with materia
medica in one hand, and in the other an infallible revelation from
heaven reporting plagues as the inflictions of Jehovah, or the
destroying angel, or Satan, and the healing of disease the jealously
reserved monopoly of God. [172]

The demonisation of diseases is not wonderful. To thoughtful
minds not even science has dispelled the mystery which surrounds
many of the ailments that afflict mankind, especially the normal
diseases besetting children, hereditary complaints, and the strange
liabilities to infection and contagion. A genuine, however partial,
observation would suggest to primitive man some connection between
the symptoms of many diseases and the mysterious universe of which he
could not yet recognise himself an epitome. There were indications
that certain troubles of this kind were related to the seasons,
consequently to the celestial rulers of the seasons,--to the sun
that smote by day, and the moon at night. Professor Monier Williams,
describing the Devil-dances of Southern India, says that there seems
to be an idea among them that when pestilences are rife exceptional
measures must be taken to draw off the malignant spirits, supposed
to cause them, by tempting them to enter into these wild dancers,
and so become dissipated. He witnessed in Ceylon a dance performed by
three men who personated the forms and phases of typhus fever. [173]
These dances probably belong to the same class of ideas as those of
the dervishes in Persia, whose manifold contortions are supposed
to repeat the movements of planets. They are invocations of the
souls of good stars, and propitiations of such as are evil. Belief
in such stellar and planetary influences has pervaded every part of
the world, and gave rise to astrological dances. 'Gebelin says that
the minuet was the danse oblique of the ancient priests of Apollo,
performed in their temples. The diagonal line and the two parallels
described in this dance were intended to be symbolical of the zodiac,
and the twelve steps of which it is composed were meant for the twelve
signs and the months of the year. The dance round the Maypole and the
Cotillon has the same origin. Diodorus tells us that Apollo was adored
with dances, and in the island of Iona the god danced all night. The
Christians of St. Thomas till a very late day celebrated their worship
with dances and songs. Calmet says there were dancing-girls in the
temple at Jerusalem.' [174]

The influence of the Moon upon tides, the sleeplessness it causes,
the restlessness of the insane under its occasional light, and such
treacheries of moonshine as we have already considered, have populated
our uninhabited satellite with demons. Lunar legends have decorated
some well-founded suspicions of moonlight. The mother draws the
curtain between the moonshine and her little Endymion, though not
because she sees in the waning moon a pining Selene whose kiss may
waste away the beauty of youth. A mere survival is the 'bowing to
the new moon:' a euphonism traceable to many myths about 'lunacy,'
among them, as I think, to Delilah ('languishing'), in whose lap
the solar Samson is shorn of his locks, leaving him only the blind
destructive strength of the 'moonstruck.'

In the purely Semitic theories of the Jews we find diseases ascribed
to the wrath of Jehovah, and their cure to his merciful mood. 'Jehovah
will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed; ... he
will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt whereof thou wast
afraid.' [175] The emerods which smote the worshippers of Dagon were
ascribed directly to the hand of Jehovah. [176] In that vague degree
of natural dualistic development which preceded the full Iranian
influence upon the Jews, the infliction of diseases was delegated to
an angel of Jehovah, as in the narratives of smiting the firstborn
of Egypt, wasting the army of Sennacherib, and the pestilence sent
upon Israel for David's sin. In the progress of this angel to be
a demon of disease we find a phase of ambiguity, as shown in the
hypochondria of Saul. 'The spirit of Jehovah departed from Saul,
and an evil spirit from Jehovah troubled him.' [177]

All such ambiguities disappeared under the influence of Iranian
dualism. In the Book of Job we find the infliction of diseases and
plagues completely transferred to a powerful spirit, a fully formed
opposing potentate. The 'sons of God,' who in the first chapter
of Job are said to have presented themselves before Jehovah, may
be identified in the thirty-eighth as the stars which shouted for
joy at the creation. Satan is the wandering or malign planet which
leads in the Ahrimanic side of the Persian planisphere. In the
cosmographical theology of that country Ormuzd was to reign for
six thousand years, and then Ahriman was to reign for a similar
period. The moral associations of this speculation are discussed
elsewhere; it is necessary here only to point out the bearing of the
planispheric conception upon the ills that flesh is heir to. Ahriman
is the 'star-serpent' of the Zendavasta. 'When the pâris rendered
this world desolate, and overran the universe; when the star-serpent
made a path for himself between heaven and earth,' &c.; 'when Ahriman
rambles on the earth, let him who takes the form of a serpent glide
on the earth; let him who takes the form of the wolf run on the earth,
and let the violent north wind bring weakness.' [178]

The dawn of Ormuzd corresponds with April. The sun returns from
winter's death by sign of the lamb (our Aries), and thenceforth
every month corresponds with a thousand years of the reign of the
Beneficent. September is denoted by the Virgin and Child. To the dark
domain of Ahriman the prefecture of the universe passes by Libra,--the
same balances which appear in the hand of Satan. The star-serpent
prevails over the Virgin and Child. Then follow the months of the
scorpion, the centaur, goat, &c., every month corresponding to a
thousand years of the reign of Ahriman.

While this scheme corresponds in one direction with the demons of
cold, and in another with the entrance and reign of moral evil in
the world, beginnings of disease on earth were also ascribed to this
seventh thousand of years when the Golden Age had passed. The depth of
winter is reached in domicile of the goat, or of Sirius, Seth, Saturn,
Satan--according to the many variants. And these, under their several
names, make the great 'infortune' of astrology, wherein old Culpepper
amply instructed our fathers. 'In the general, consider that Saturn
is an old worn-out planet, weary, and of little estimation in this
world; he causeth long and tedious sicknesses, abundance of sadness,
and a Cartload of doubts and fears; his nature is cold, and dry,
and melancholy. And take special notice of this, that when Saturn is
Lord of an Eclipse (as he is one of the Lords of this), he governs all
the rest of the planets, but none can govern him. Melancholy is made
of all the humors in the body of man, but no humor of melancholy. He
is envious, and keeps his anger long, and speaks but few words, but
when he speaks he speaks to purpose. A man of deep cogitations; he
will plot mischief when men are asleep; he hath an admirable memory,
and remembers to this day how William the Bastard abused him; he
cannot endure to be a slave; he is poor with the poor, fearful with
the fearful; he plots mischief against the Superiours, with them that
plot mischief against them; have a care of him, Kings and Magistrates
of Europe; he will show you what he can do in the effects of this
Eclipse; he is old, and therefore hath large experience, and will
give perilous counsel; he moves but slowly, and therefore doth the
more mischief; all the planets contribute their natures and strength
to him, and when he sets on doing mischief he will do it to purpose;
he doth not regard the company of the rest of the Planets, neither
do any of the rest of the Planets regard his; he is a barren Planet,
and therefore delights not in women; he brings the Pestilence; he is
destructive to the fruits of the earth; he receives his light from
the Sun, and yet he hates the Sun that gives it him.' [179]

Many ages anterior to this began in India the dread of Ketu,
astronomically the ninth planet, mythologically the tail of the
demon Rahu, cut in twain as already told (p. 46), supposed to be
the prolific source of comets, meteors, and falling stars, also of
diseases. From this Ketu or dragon's tail were born the Arunah Ketavah
(Red Ketus or apparitions), and Ketu has become almost another word
for disease. [180]

Strongly influenced as were the Jews by the exact division of the
duodecimal period between Good and Evil, affirmed by the Persians,
they never lost sight of the ultimate supremacy of Jehovah. Though
Satan had gradually become a voluntary genius of evil, he still had
to receive permission to afflict, as in the case of Job, and during
the lifetime of Paul appears to have been still denied that 'power of
death' which is first asserted by the unknown author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews. [181] Satan's especial office was regarded as the
infliction of disease. Paul delivers the incestuous Corinthian to
Satan 'for the destruction of the flesh,' and he also attributed the
sickness and death of many to their communicating unworthily. [182]
He also recognises his own 'thorn in the flesh' as 'an angel from
Satan,' though meant for his moral advantage. [183]

A penitential Psalm (Assyrian) reads as follows:--

O my Lord! my sins are many, my trespasses are great; and the wrath
of the gods has plagued me with disease, and with sickness and sorrow.


I fainted, but no one stretched forth his hand!
I groaned, but no one drew nigh!
I cried aloud, but no one heard!
O Lord, do not abandon thy servant!
In the waters of the great storm seize his hand!
The sins which he has committed turn them to righteousness. [184]


This Psalm would hardly be out of place in the English burial-service,
which deplores death as a visitation of divine wrath. Wherever such
an idea prevails, the natural outcome of it is a belief in demons of
disease. In ancient Egypt--following the belief in Ra the Sun, from
whose eyes all pleasing things proceeded, and Set, from whose eyes came
all noxious things,--from the baleful light of Set's eyes were born the
Seven Hathors, or Fates, whose names are recorded in the Book of the
Dead. Mr. Fox Talbot has translated 'the Song of the Seven Spirits:'--


They are seven! they are seven!
In the depths of ocean they are seven!
In the heights of heaven they are seven!
In the ocean-stream in a palace they were born!
Male they are not: female they are not!
Wives they have not: children are not born to them!
Rule they have not: government they know not!
Prayers they hear not!
They are seven! they are seven! twice over they are seven! [185]


These demons have a way of herding together; the Assyrian tablets
abundantly show that their occupation was manifested by diseases,
physical and mental. One prescription runs thus:--


The god (...) shall stand by his bedside:
Those seven evil spirits he shall root out, and shall expel them
from his body:
And those seven shall never return to the sick man again!


It is hardly doubtful that these were the seven said to have been
cast out of Mary Magdalen; for their father Set is Shedîm (devils)
of Deut. xxxii. 17, and Shaddai (God) of Gen. xvi. 1. But the fatal
Seven turn to the seven fruits that charm away evil influences at
parturition in Persia, also the Seven Wise Women of the same country
traditionally present on holy occasions. When Ardá Viráf was sent
to Paradise by a sacred narcotic to obtain intelligence of the true
faith, seven fires were kept burning for seven days around him,
and the seven wise women chanted hymns of the Avesta. [186]

The entrance of the seven evil powers into a dwelling was believed by
the Assyrians to be preventible by setting in the doorway small images,
such as those of the sun-god (Hea) and the moon-goddess, but especially
of Marduk, corresponding to Serapis the Egyptian Esculapius. These
powers were reinforced by writing holy texts over and on each side
of the threshold. 'In the night time bind around the sick man's head
a sentence taken from a good book.' The phylacteries of the Jews were
originally worn for the same purpose. They were called Tefila, and were
related to teraphim, the little idols [187] used by the Jews to keep
out demons--such as those of Laban, which his daughter Rachel stole.

The resemblance of teraphim to the Tarasca (connected by some with
G. teras, a monster) of Spain may be noted,--the serpent figures
carried about in Corpus Christi processions. The latter word is
known in the south of France also, and gave its name to the town
Tarascon. The legend is that an amphibious monster haunted the Rhone,
preventing navigation and committing terrible ravages, until sixteen
of the boldest inhabitants of the district resolved to encounter
it. Eight lost their lives, but the others, having destroyed the
monster, founded the town of Tarascon, where the 'Fête de la tarasque'
is still kept up. [188] Calmet, Sedley, and others, however, believe
that teraphim is merely a modification of seraphim, and the Tefila,
or phylacteries, of the same origin.

The phylactery was tied into a knot. Justin Martyr says that the
Jewish exorcists used 'magic ties or knots.' The origin of this
custom among the Jews and Babylonians may be found in the Assyrian
Talismans preserved in the British Museum, of which the following
has been translated by Mr. Fox Talbot:--


Hea says: Go, my son!
Take a woman's kerchief,
Bind it round thy right hand, loose it from the left hand!
Knot it with seven knots: do so twice:
Sprinkle it with bright wine:
Bind it round the head of the sick man:
Bind it round his hands and feet, like manacles and fetters.
Sit down on his bed:
Sprinkle holy water over him.
He shall hear the voice of Hea,
Darkness shall protect him!
And Marduk, eldest son of Heaven, shall find him a happy
habitation. [189]


The number seven holds an equally high degree of potency in Singhalese
demonolatry, which is mainly occupied with diseases. The Capuas or
conjurors of that island enumerate 240,000 magic spells, of which all
except one are for evil, which implies a tolerably large preponderance
of the emergencies in which their countervailing efforts are required
by their neighbours. That of course can be easily appreciated by
those who have been taught that all human beings are included under a
primal curse. The words of Micah, 'Thou wilt cast all their sins into
the depths of the sea,' [190] are recalled by the legend of these
evil spells of Ceylon. The king of Oude came to marry one of seven
princesses, all possessing præternatural powers, and questioned each
as to her art. Each declared her skill in doing harm, except one who
asserted her power to heal all ills which the others could inflict. The
king having chosen this one as his bride, the rest were angry, and
for revenge collected all the charms in the world, enclosed them in a
pumpkin--the only thing that can contain spells without being reduced
to ashes--and sent this infernal machine to their sister. It would
consume everything for sixteen hundred miles round; but the messenger
dropped it in the sea. A god picked it up and presented it to the King
of Ceylon, and these, with the healing charm known to his own Queen,
make the 240,000 spells known to the Capuas of that island, who have
no doubt deified the rescuer of the spells on the same principle that
inspires some seaside populations to worship Providence more devoutly
on the Sunday after a valuable wreck in their neighbourhood.

The astrological origin of the evils ascribed to the Yakseyo (Demons)
of Ceylon, and the horoscope which is a necessary preliminary to
any dealing with their influences; the constant recurrence of the
number seven, denoting origin with races holding the seven-planet
theories of the universe; and the fact that all demons are said, on
every Saturday evening, to attend an assemblage called Yaksa Sabawa
(Witches' Sabbath), are facts that may well engage the attention
of Comparative Mythologists. [191] In Dardistan the evil spirits are
called Yatsh; they dwell 'in the regions of snow,' and the overthrow of
their reign over the country is celebrated at the new moon of Daykio,
the month preceding winter.

The largest proportion of the Disease Demons of Ceylon are descended
from its Hunger Demons. The Preta there is much the same phantom
as in Siam, only they are not quite so tall. [192] They range from
two to four hundred feet in height, and are so numerous that a Pali
Buddhist book exhorts people not to throw stones, lest they should
harm one of these harmless starveling ghosts, who die many times
of hunger, and revive to suffer on in expiation of their sins in a
previous existence. They are harmless in one sense, but filthy; and
bad smells are personified in them. The great mass of demons resemble
the Pretraya, in that their king (Wessamony) has forbidden them to
satisfy themselves directly upon their victims, but by inflicting
diseases they are supposed to receive an imaginative satisfaction
somewhat like that of eating people.

Reeri is the Demon of Blood-disease. His form is that of a man with
face of a monkey; he is fiery red, rides on a red bull, and all
hemorrhages and diseases of the blood are attributed to him. Reeri
has eighteen different disguises or avatars. One of these recalls his
earlier position as a demon of death, before Vishnu revealed to Capuas
the means of binding him: he is now supposed to be present at every
death-bed in the form of a delighted pigmy, one span and six inches
high. On such occasions he bears a cock in one hand, a club in the
other, and in his mouth a corpse. In the same country Maha Sohon is the
'great graveyard demon.' He resides in a hill where he is supposed to
surround himself with carcases. He is 122 feet high, has four hands
and three eyes, and a red skin. He has the head of a bear; the legend
being that while quarrelling with another giant his head was knocked
off, and the god Senasura was gracious enough to tear off the head
of a bear and clap it on the decapitated giant. His capua threatens
him with a repetition of this catastrophe if he does not spare any
threatened victim who has called in his priestly aid. Except for this
timidity about his head, Maha is formidable, being chief of 30,000
demons. But curiously enough he is said to choose for his steeds the
more innocent animals,--goat, deer, horse, elephant, and hog.

One of the demons most dreaded in Ceylon is the 'Foreign Demon'
Morotoo, said to have come from the coast of Malabar, and from
his residence in a tree disseminated diseases which could not be
cured until, the queen being afflicted, one capua was found able
to master him. Seven-eighths of the charms used in restraining the
disease-demons of Ceylon, of which I have mentioned but a few, are
in the Tamil tongue. In various parts of India are found very nearly
the same systematic demonolatry and 'devil-dancing;' for example in
Travancore, to whose superstitions of this character the Rev. Samuel
Mateer has devoted two chapters in his work 'The Land of Charity.'

The great demon of diseases in Ceylon is entitled Maha Cola Sanni
Yakseya. His father, a king, ordered his queen to be put to death in
the belief that she had been faithless to him. Her body was to be cut
in two pieces, one of which was to be hung upon a tree (Ukberiya),
the other to be thrown at its foot to the dogs. The queen before
her execution said, 'If this charge be false, may the child in my
womb be born this instant a demon, and may that demon destroy the
whole of this city and its unjust king.' So soon as the executioners
had finished their work, the two severed parts of the queen's body
reunited, a child was born who completely devoured his mother,
and then repaired to the graveyard (Sohon), where for a time he
fattened on corpses. Then he proceeded to inflict mortal diseases
upon the city, and had nearly depopulated it when the gods Iswara
and Sekkra interfered, descending to subdue him in the disguise of
mendicants. Possibly the great Maha Sohon mentioned above, and the
Sohon (graveyard) from which Sanni dealt out deadliness, may be best
understood by the statement of the learned writer from whom these facts
are quoted, that, 'excepting the Buddhist priests, and the aristocrats
of the land, whose bodies were burnt in regular funeral-piles after
death, the corpses of the rest of the people were neither burned nor
buried, but thrown into a place called Sohona, which was an open piece
of ground in the jungle, generally a hollow among the hills, at the
distance of three or four miles from any inhabited place, where they
were left in the open air to be decomposed or devoured by dogs and
wild beasts.' [193] There would appear to be even more ground for
the dread of the Great Graveyard Demon in many parts of Christendom,
where, through desire to preserve corpses for a happy resurrection,
they are made to steal through the water-veins of the earth, and find
their resurrection as fell diseases. Iswara and Sekkra were probably
two reformers who persuaded the citizens to bury the poor deep in
the earth; had they been wise enough to place the dead where nature
would give them speedy resurrection and life in grass and flowers,
it would not have been further recorded that 'they ordered him (the
demon) to abstain from eating men, but gave him Wurrun or permission
to inflict disease on mankind, and to obtain offerings.' This is very
much the same as the privilege given our Western funeral agencies and
cemeteries also; and when the Modliar adds that Sanni 'has eighteen
principal attendants,' one can hardly help thinking of the mummers,
gravediggers, chaplains, all engaged unconsciously in the work of
making the earth less habitable.

The first of the attendants of this formidable avenger of his mother's
wrongs is named Bhoota Sanni Yakseya, Demon of Madness. The whole
demonolatry and devil-dancing of that island are so insane that one is
not surprised that this Bhoota had but little special development. It
is amid clear senses we might naturally look for full horror of
madness, and there indeed do we find it. One of the most horrible
forms of the disease-demon was the personification of madness among
the Greeks, as Mania. [194] In the Hercules Furens of Euripides,
where Madness, 'the unwedded daughter of black Night,' and sprung of
'the blood of Coelus,' is evoked from Tartarus for the express purpose
of imbreeding in Hercules 'child-slaying disturbances of reason,'
there is a suggestion of the hereditary nature of insanity. Obedient
to the vindictive order of Juno, 'in her chariot hath gone forth the
marble-visaged, all-mournful Madness, the Gorgon of Night, and with
the hissing of hundred heads of snakes, she gives the goad to her
chariot, on mischief bent.' We may plainly see that the religion
which embodied such a form was itself ending in madness. Already
ancient were the words mantikê (prophecy) and manikê (madness) when
Plato cited their identity to prove one kind of madness the special
gift of Heaven: [195] the notion lingers in Dryden's line, 'Great
wits to madness sure are near allied;' and survive in regions where
deference is paid to lunatics and idiots. Other diseases preserve in
their names indications of similar association: e.g., Nympholepsy,
St. Vitus's Dance, St. Anthony's Fire. Wesley attributes still epilepsy
to 'possession.' This was in pursuance of ancient beliefs. Typhus, a
name anciently given to every malady accompanied with stupor (typhos),
seemed the breath of feverish Typhon. Max Müller connects the word
quinsy with Sanskrit amh, 'to throttle,' and Ahi the throttling
serpent, its medium being angina; and this again is kynanchê,
dog-throttling, the Greek for quinsy. [196]

The genius of William Blake, steeped in Hebraism, never showed
greater power than in his picture of Plague. A gigantic hideous form,
pale-green, with the slime of stagnant pools, reeking with vegetable
decays and gangrene, the face livid with the motley tints of pallor
and putrescence, strides onward with extended arms like a sower sowing
his seeds, only in this case the germs of his horrible harvest are not
cast from the hands, but emanate from the fingers as being of their
essence. Such, to the savage mind, was the embodiment of malaria,
sultriness, rottenness, the putrid Pretraya, invisible, but smelt
and felt. Such, to the ignorant imagination, is the Destroying Angel
to which rationalistic artists and poets have tried to add wings
and majesty; but which in the popular mind was no doubt pictured
more like this form found at Ostia (fig. 16), and now passing in
the Vatican for a Satan,--probably a demon of the Pontine Marshes,
and of the fever that still has victims of its fatal cup (p. 291). In
these fearful forms the poor savage believed with such an intensity
that he was able to shape the brain of man to his phantasy; bringing
about the anomaly that the great reformer, Luther, should affirm,
even while fighting superstition, that a Christian ought to know
that he lives in the midst of devils, and that the devil is nearer
to him than his coat or his shirt. The devils, he tells us, are
all around us, and are at every moment seeking to ensnare our lives,
salvation, and happiness. There are many of them in the woods, waters,
deserts, and in damp muddy places, for the purpose of doing folk a
mischief. They also house in the dense black clouds, and send storms,
hail, thunder and lightning, and poison the air with their infernal
stench. In one place, Luther tells us that the devil has more vessels
and boxes full of poison, with which he kills people, than all the
apothecaries in the whole world. He sends all plagues and diseases
among men. We may be sure that when any one dies of the pestilence,
is drowned, or drops suddenly dead, the devil does it.

Knowing nothing of Zoology, the primitive man easily falls into the
belief that his cattle--the means of life--may be the subjects of
sorcery. Jesus sending devils into a herd of swine may have become
by artificial process a divine benefactor in the eye of Christendom,
but the myth makes Him bear an exact resemblance to the dangerous
sorcerer that fills the savage mind with dread. It is probable that the
covetous eye denounced in the decalogue means the evil eye, which was
supposed to blight an object intensely desired but not to be obtained.

Gopolu, already referred to (p. 136) as the Singhalese demon of
hydrophobia, bears the general name of the 'Cattle Demon.' He
is said to have been the twin of the demigod Mangara by a queen
on the Coromandel coast. The mother died, and a cow suckled the
twins, but afterwards they quarrelled, and Gopolu being slain was
transformed into a demon. He repaired to Arangodde, and fixed his
abode in a Banyan where there is a large bee-hive, whence proceed
many evils. The population around this Banyan for many miles being
prostrated by diseases, the demigod Mangara and Pattini (goddess of
chastity) admonished the villagers to sacrifice a cow regularly,
and thus they were all resuscitated. Gopolu now sends all cattle
diseases. India is full of the like superstitions. The people of
Travancore especially dread the demon Madan, 'he who is like a cow,'
believed to strike oxen with sudden illness,--sometimes men also.

In Russia we find superstition sometimes modified by common
sense. Though the peasant hopes that Zegory (St. George) will defend
his cattle, he begins to see the chief foes of his cattle. As in
the folk-song--


We have gone around the field,
We have called Zegory....
O thou, our brave Zegory,
Save our cattle,
In the field and beyond the field,
In the forest and beyond the forest,
Under the bright moon,
Under the red sun,
From the rapacious wolf,
From the cruel bear,
From the cunning beast. [197]


Nevertheless when a cattle plague occurs many villages relapse into a
normally extinct state of mind. Thus, a few years ago, in a village
near Moscow, all the women, having warned the men away, stripped
themselves entirely naked and drew a plough so as to make a furrow
entirely around the village. At the point of juncture in this circle
they buried alive a cock, a cat, and a dog. Then they filled the
air with lamentations, crying--'Cattle Plague! Cattle Plague! spare
our cattle! Behold, we offer thee cock, cat, and dog!' The dog is
a demonic character in Russia, while the cat is sacred; for once
when the devil tried to get into Paradise in the form of a mouse,
the dog allowed him to pass, but the cat pounced on him--the two
animals being set on guard at the door. The offering of both seems to
represent a desire to conciliate both sides. The nudity of the women
may have been to represent to the hungry gods their utter poverty,
and inability to give more; but it was told me in Moscow, where I
happened to be staying at the time, that it would be dangerous for
any man to draw near during the performance.

In Altmark [198] the demons who bewitch cattle are called 'Bihlweisen,'
and are believed to bury certain diabolical charms under thresholds
over which the animals are to pass, causing them to wither away, the
milk to cease, etc. The prevention is to wash the cattle with a lotion
of sea cabbage boiled with infusion of wine. In the same province it
is related that once there appeared in a harvest-field at one time
fifteen, at another twelve men (apparently), the latter headless.
They all laboured with scythes, but though the rustling could be
heard no grain fell. When questioned they said nothing, and when
the people tried to seize them they ran away, cutting fruitlessly as
they ran. The priests found in this a presage of the coming cattle
plague. The Russian superstition of the plough, above mentioned, is
found in fragmentary survivals in Altmark. Thus, it is said that to
plough around a village and then sit under the plough (placed upright),
will enable any one to see the witches; and in some villages, some
bit of a plough is hung up over a doorway through which cattle pass,
as no devil can then approach them. The demons have a natural horror
of honest work, and especially the culture of the earth. Goethe,
as we have seen, notes their fear of roses: perhaps he remembered
the legend of Aspasia, who, being disfigured by a tumour on the chin,
was warned by a dove-maiden to dismiss her physicians and try a rose
from the garland of Venus; so she recovered health and beauty.