book 137, p. 357, article “Spain.”)

From Strabo we learn that the Iberians “do not attend to ease or luxury, unless any one considers it can add to the happiness of their lives to wash themselves and their wives in stale urine kept in tanks, and to rinse their teeth with it, which they say is the custom both with the Cantabrians and their neighbors.” (Strabo, “Geography,” Bohn, lib. iii. cap. 4, par. 16, London, 1854. In a footnote it is stated that “Apuleius, Catullus, and Diodorus Siculus all speak of this singular custom.”) The same practice is alluded to by Percy, and also by the “Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences,” Neufchatel, 1745, vol. xvii. p. 499; and the practice is said to obtain among the modern Spaniards as well. “Les Espagnols font grand usage de l’urine pour se nettoyer les dents. Les anciens Celtibériens faisoient la même chose.”—(Received from Prof. Frank Rede Fowke, London, June 18, 1888.) “Bien que soigneux de leurs personnes et propres dans leur manière de vivre, les Celtibères se lavent tout le corps d’urine, s’en frottant même les dents, estimant cela un bon moyen pour entretenir la santé du corps.”—(Diodore, v. 33.) “Nunc Celtiber, in Celtiberia terra Quod quisque minxit, hoc solet sibi mane Dentem atque russam defricare ginginam.” (Catullus, “Epigrams,” 39.) The manners of the Celtiberians, as described by Strabo and others, have come down through many generations to their descendants in all parts of the world; all that he related of the use of human urine as a mouth-wash, as a means of ablution, and as a dentifrice, was transplanted to the shores of America by the Spanish colonists; and even in the present generation, according to Gen. S. V. Bénèt, U. S. Army, traces of such customs were to be found among some of the settlers in Florida. The same custom has been observed among the natives along the Upper Nile. “The Obbo natives wash out their mouths with their own urine. This habit may have originated in the total absence of salt in their country.”—(“The Albert Nyanza,” Sir Samuel Baker, p. 240.) In England likewise there was a former employment of the same fluid as a dentifrice. “‘Nettoyer ses dents avec de l’urine, mode espagnole,’ dit Erasme.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, quoting Erasmus, “De Civilitate.”) Urine was employed as a tooth-wash, alone or mixed with orris powder. “Farina orobi (bitter vetch) permisceatur cum urina.”—(“Medicus Microcosmus,” Danielus Beckherius, pp. 62-64.) A paragraph in Paullini’s “Dreck Apothek,” p. 74, would show that in Germany the same usages were not unknown. As a dentifrice he recommends urine as a wash; or a powder made of pulverized gravel stone, mixed with urine. Ivan Petroff states that the peasants of Portugal still wash their clothes in urine.—(Ivan Petroff, in “Trans. American Anthropological Society,” 1882, vol. i.) Urine is used on whaling vessels, when stale, for washing flannel shirts, which are then thrown overboard and towed after the ship.—(Dr. J. H. Porter.) Dr. V. T. McGillicuddy, of Rapid City, Dakota, furnishes the information that Irish, German, and Scandinavian washerwomen who have immigrated to the United States persist in adding human urine to the water to be used for cleansing blankets. “I have observed somewhere that the Basks and some Hindus clean their mouths with urine, but I do not remember the book.”—(Dr. Alfred Gatchett, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C.) Dr. Carl Lumholtz, of Christiania, Norway, states that he had seen the savages of Herbert River, Australia, in 18° south latitude, with whom he lived for some months, use their own urine to clean their hands after they had been gathering wild honey. The statement concerning the Celtiberians may also be found in Clavigero.—(“Hist. de Baja California,” p. 28, quoting Diodorus Siculus.) Diderot and D’Alembert assert unequivocally that in the latter years of the last century the people of the Spanish Peninsula still used urine as a dentifrice.—(“Les Espagnols,” etc., reading as above given from “Dict. Raisonné.” See Encyclopédie, Geneva, 1789, article “Urine.”) XXVIII. URINE IN CEREMONIAL OBSERVANCES. But in the examples adduced from Whymper concerning the people of the village of Unlacheet, on Norton Sound, “the _dancers_ of the Malemutes of Norton Sound bathed themselves in urine.” (Whymper’s “Alaska,” London, 1868, pp. 142, 152.) Although, on another page, Whymper says that this was for want of soap, doubt may, with some reason, be entertained. Bathing is a frequent accompaniment, an integral part of the religious ceremonial among all the Indians of America, and no doubt among the Inuit or Eskimo as well; when this is performed by dancers, there is further reason to examine carefully for a religious complication, and especially if these dances be celebrated in sacred places, as Petroff relates they are. “They never bathe or wash their bodies, but on certain occasions the men light a fire in the kashima, strip themselves, and dance and jump around until in a profuse perspiration. They then apply urine to their oily bodies and rub themselves until a lather appears, after which they plunge into the river.”—(Ivan Petroff in “Transactions American Anthropological Society,” vol. i. 1882.) “In each village of the Kuskutchewak (of Alaska) there is a public building named the kashim, in which councils are held and festivals kept, and which must be large enough to contain all the grown men of the village. It has raised platforms around the walls, and a place in the centre for a fire, with an aperture in the roof for the admission of light.”—(Richardson, “Arctic Searching Expedition,” London, 1851, p. 365.) Those kashima are identical with the estufas of Zuñis, Moquis, and Rio Grande Pueblos. Whymper himself describes them thus: “These buildings may be regarded as the natives’ town hall; orations are made, festivals and feasts are held in them.” No room is left for doubt after reading the fuller description of these kashima, contained in Bancroft. He says the Eskimo dance in them, “often _in puris naturalibus_,” and make “burlesque imitations of birds and beasts.” Dog or wolf tails hang to the rear of their garments. A sacred feast of fish and berries accompanies these dances, wherein the actors “elevate the provisions successively to the four cardinal points, and once to the skies above, when all partake of the feast.”—(Bancroft, “Native Races,” vol. i. p. 78.) There is a description of one of these dances by an American, Mr. W. H. Gilder, an eyewitness. “The kashine (_sic_) is a sort of town hall for the male members of the tribe.... It is built almost entirely under ground, and with a roof deeply covered with earth. It is lighted through a skylight in the roof, and entered by a passage-way and an opening which can only be passed by crawling on hands and knees.... In the centre of the room is a deep pit, where in winter a fire is built to heat the building, after which it is closed, and the heat retained for an entire day. In this building the men live almost all the time. Here they sleep and eat, and they seldom rest in the bosom of their families.” He further says that there was “a shelf which extends all round the room against the wall.... One young man prepared himself for the dance by stripping off all his clothing, except his trousers, and putting on a pair of reindeer mittens.... The dance had more of the character of Indian performances than any I had ever previously seen among the Esquimaux.”—(“Ice-Pack and Tundra,” pp. 56-58.) The following information received from Victor Namoff, a Kadiak of mixed blood, relates to a ceremonial dance which he observed among the Aiga-lukamut Eskimo of the southern coast of Alaska. The informant, as his father had been before him, had for a number of years been employed by the Russians to visit the various tribes on the mainland to conduct trade for the collection of furs and peltries. Besides being perfectly familiar with the English and Russian languages, he had acquired considerable familiarity with quite a number of native dialects, and was thus enabled to mingle with the various peoples among whom much of his time was spent. The ceremony was conducted in a large partly underground chamber, of oblong shape, having a continuous platform or shelf, constructed so as to be used either as seats or for sleeping. The only light obtained was from native oil lamps. The participants, numbering about ten dozen, were entirely naked, and after being seated a short time several natives, detailed as musicians, began to sing. Then one of the natives arose, and performed the disgusting operation of urinating over the back and shoulders of the person seated next him, after which he jumped down upon the ground, and began to dance, keeping time with the music. The one who had been subjected to the operation just mentioned, then subjected his nearest neighbor to a similar douche, and he in turn the next in order, and so on until the last person on the bench had been similarly dealt with, he in turn being obliged to accommodate the initiator of the movement, who ceases dancing for that purpose. In the meantime all those who have relieved themselves step down and join in the dance, which is furious and violent, inducing great perspiration and an intolerable stench. No additional information was given further than that the structure may have been used in this instance as a sudatory, the urine and violent movements being deemed sufficient to supply the necessary amount of moisture and heat to supply the participants with a sweat-bath.—(Personal letter from Dr. W. J. Hoffman, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., June 16, 1890.) Elliott describes the “Orgies” in the “Kashgas” as he styles them. “The fire is usually drawn from the hot stones on the hearth.... A kantog of chamber-lye poured over them, which, rising in dense clouds of vapor, gives notice by its presence and its horrible ammoniacal odor to the delighted inmates that the bath is on. The kashga is heated to suffocation; it is full of smoke; and the outside men run in from their huts with wisps of dry grass for towels and bunches of alder twigs to flog their naked bodies. “They throw off their garments; they shout and dance and whip themselves into profuse perspiration as they caper in the hot vapor. More of their disgusting substitute for soap is rubbed on, and produces a lather, which they rub off with cold water.... This is the most enjoyable occasion of an Indian’s existence, as he solemnly affirms. Nothing else affords a tithe of the infinite pleasure which this orgy gives him. To us, however, there is nothing about him so offensive as that stench which such a performance arouses.”—(Henry W. Elliott, “Our Arctic Province,” New York, 1887, p. 387.) “Quoique généralement malpropres, ces gens ont, comme les autres Inoits et la plupart des Indiens, la passion des bains de vapeur, pour lesquels le kachim a son installation toujours prête. “Avec l’urine qu’ils recueillent précieusement pour leurs opérations de tannage, ils se frottent le corps; l’alcali, se mélangeant avec les transpirations et les huiles dont le corps est imprégné, nettoie la peau comme le ferait du savon; l’odeur âcre de cette liqueur putréfiée paraît leur être agréable, mais elle saisit à la gorge les étrangers qui reculent suffoqués, et ont grand’peine à s’y faire. Horreur! horreur! oui, pour ceux qui ont un pain de savon sur leur table à toilette; mais pour ceux qui ne possèdent pas ce détersif?”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 71, “Les Inoits Occidentaux.”) “Nul s’étonnera que les Ouhabites et les Ougagos de l’Afrique orientale en fassent toujours autant. Mais on a ses préférences. Ainsi Arabes et Bedouines recherchent l’urine des chamelles. Les Banianes de Momba se lavent la figure avec de l’Urine de vache, parceque, disent-ils, la vache est leur mère. Cette dernière substance est aussi employée par les Silésiennes contre les taches de rousseur. Les Chowseures du Caucase la trouvent excellente pour entretenir la santé et développer la luxuriance de la chevelure. A cette fin, ils recueillent soigneusement le purin des étables, mais le liquide encore imprégné de chaleur vitale passe pour le plus énergique. Les trayeuses flattent la bête, lui sifflent un air, chatouillent certain organe et au moment précis, avancent le crâne pour recevoir le flot qui s’épanche; la mère industrieuse fait inonder la tête de son nourrisson en même temps que la sienne.”—(Idem, p. 73.) The “Estufa” of the Pueblos was no doubt, in the earlier ages of the tribal life, a communal dwelling similar to the “yourts” of the Siberians, like which it had but one large opening in the roof, for the entrance of members of the family, or clan, and the egress of smoke. An examination of the myths and folk-lore of Siberia might reveal to us the birth and the meaning of the visits of our good old Christmas friend, Santa Claus, who certainly never sprang from European soil. A god, loaded with gifts for good little children, could descend the ladders placed in the chimneys of “yourts” and “estufas,” but such a feat would be an impossibility in the widest chimneys ever constructed in Germany or England for private houses. The habitations of the natives of Ounalashka, according to Langsdorff, are made with the entrances through the roofs, precisely like those of the people of Kamtchatka.—(“Voyages,” vol. ii. p. 32.) The “Estufa” model was perpetuated in the Temples of India, exactly as the Imperial market-places of Rome supplied the type of the “Basilica” of the Christian Church. An article in “Frazer’s Magazine,” signed F. P. C., gives the dimensions of the great Snake Temple of Nakhon-Vat in Cambodia: “Six hundred feet square at the base, ... rises in the centre to the height of one hundred and eighty feet, ... probably the grandest temple in the world.... In the inner court of this temple are ‘tanks’ in which the living serpents dwelt and were adored.... The difference between these ‘tanks’ and the ‘Public Estufas’ is simply this: the latter are partially or almost completely roofed.” Some time after reaching the conclusion just expressed and much loss of study in a fruitless examination of Encyclopædias, which did not contain so much as the name of the patron of childhood, the work of Mr. George Kennan was perused in which the same views are anticipated by a number of years; it is by no means the least important fact in an extremely interesting volume. “The houses, if houses they could be called, were about twenty feet in height, rudely constructed of drift-wood which had been thrown up by the sea, and could be compared in shape to nothing but hour-glasses. They had no doors or windows of any kind, and could only be entered by climbing up a pole on the outside, and slipping down another pole through the chimney,—a mode of entrance whose practicability depended entirely upon the activity and intensity of the fire which burned underneath. “The smoke and sparks, although sufficiently disagreeable, were trifles of comparative insignificance. I remember being told, in early infancy, that Santa Claus always came into a house through the chimney; and, although I accepted the statement with the unreasoning faith of childhood, I could never understand how that singular feat of climbing down a chimney could be safely accomplished.... My first entrance into a Korak ‘yourt,’ however, at Kamenoi, solved all my childish difficulties, and proved the possibility of entering a house in the eccentric way which Santa Claus is supposed to adopt.”—(George Kennan, “Tent Life in Siberia,” 12th edition, New York, 1887, p. 222.) Steller describes a Festival of the Kamtchatkans occurring at the end of November, after the winter provisions are in; in this, one party, on the outside of the house, attempts to lower a birch branch down through the chimney; the party on the inside attempts to capture it.—(Steller, “Kamtchatka,” translated by Mr. Bunnemeyer.) “Every time they make water, or other unclean exercise of nature, they wash those parts, little regarding who stands by. Before prayer, they wash both face and hands, sometimes the head and privities.”—(Blount, “Voy. into the Levant,” in Pinkerton, vol. x. p. 261.) “Among the Negroes of Guinea, when a wife is pregnant for the first time, she must perform certain ‘ceremonies,’ among which is ‘going to the sea-shore to be washed.’ She is followed by a great number of boys and girls, who fling all manner of dung and filth at her in her way to the sea, where she is ducked and made clean.”—(Bosman, “Guinea,” in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 423.) “In 1847, I was then twenty-six years old, once an old woman (in Cherbourg) came to me with a washing-pan, and asked me to piss into it, as the urine of a stout, healthy young man was required to wash the bosoms of a young woman who was just delivered of a child.”—(Personal letter from Captain Henri Jouan, French Navy, to Captain Bourke, dated Cherbourg, France, July 29, 1888.) In Scotland, the breasts of a young mother were washed with salt and water to ensure a good flow of milk. The practice is alluded to in the following couplet from “The Fortunate Shepherdess,” by Alexander Ross, 1778. “Jean’s paps wi’ sa’t and water washen clean, Reed that her milk get wrang, fen it was green.” (Quoted in Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. ii. p. 80, art. “Christening Customs.”) This practice seems closely allied to the one immediately preceding. We shall have occasion to show that salt and water, holy water, and other liquids superseded human urine in several localities, Scotland among others. “Being to wean one of their children, the father and mother lay him on the ground, and whilst they do that which modesty will not permit me to name, the father lifts him by the arm, and so holds him for some time, hanging in the air, falsely believing that by these means he will become more strong and robust.”—(Father Merolla, “Voyage to the Congo,” in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 237, A.D. 1682.) In the Bareshnun ceremony, the Parsee priest “has to undergo certain ablutions wherein he has to apply to his body cow’s urine, and sand and clay, which seem to have been the common and cheapest disinfectant known to the ancient Iranians.”—(Dr. J. W. Kingsley, Personal letter to Captain Bourke, apparently citing “The History of the Parsees,” by Dosabhai Framje Karaka.) The Manicheans bathed in urine.—(Picart, “Coûtumes,” etc.; “Dissertation sur les Perses,” p. 18.) “Le lecteur le plus dégoûté s’en occupe presque à son insu; quand il demande à son ami, Comment allez-vous? s’il vous plaît si ce n’est là—où se fait ce que nous disons? Dans un pays voisin on se salue en disant, La matière est-elle louable? Et en Angleterre, c’est la même pensée qu’on exprime lorsqu’on dit, en abordant quelqu’un, How do you do? Comment faites-vous?”—(Bib. Scat. p. 21.) “There is a place where whenever the King spits the greatest ladies of his court put out their hands to receive it; and another nation where the most eminent persons about him stop to take up his ordure in a linen cloth.”—(Montaigne, Essays, “On Customs.”) “A few days after birth, or according to the fancy of the parents, an ‘angekok,’ who by relationship or long acquaintance with the family, has attained terms of great friendship, makes use of some vessel and with the urine of the mother washes the infant, while all the gossips around pour forth their good wishes for the little one to prove an active man, if a boy, or, if a girl, the mother of plenty of children. The ceremony, I believe, is never omitted, and is called Gogsinariva.”—(“The Central Eskimo,” Boas, p. 610, quoting G. F. Lyon, “Private Journal of H. M. S. Hecla, during the recent Voyage of Discovery under Captain Parry,” London, 1824.) The same custom is practised by the Eskimo of Cumberland Sound (idem). “Buffalo dung I have seen carefully arranged in (Crow) Indian dance tepees, having apparently some connection with the ceremonies.”—(Personal letter from Dr. A. B. Holder, Memphis, Tenn., to Captain Bourke, Feb. 6, 1890.) “In one of the sacred dances of the Cheyennes, there is to be seen an altar surrounded by a semi-circle of buffalo chips. This dance or ceremony is celebrated for the purpose of getting an abundance of ponies.”—(See the description in Dodge’s “Wild Indians,” pp. 127, 128.) The sacred pipes used in the Sun Dance of the Sioux are so placed that the bowl rests upon a “buffalo chip.”—(“The Sun Dance of the Ogallalla Sioux,” Alice Fletcher, in “Proceed. American Association for the Advancement of Science,” 1882.) The drinking of the water in which a new-born babe had been bathed is intimated in the myths of the Samoans. When the first baby was born “Salevao provided water for washing the child, and made it Saor, sacred to Moa. The rocks and the earth said they wished to get some of that water to drink. Salevao replied that if they got a bamboo he would send them a streamlet through it, and hence the origin of springs.”—(“Samoa,” Turner, London, 1884, p. 10.) Although it is not so stated in the text, yet from analogy with other cosmogonies we may entertain a suspicion as to how the god provided the water,—no doubt from his own person. STERCORACEOUS CHAIR OF THE POPES. “Stercoraire, Chaire (Hist. des Papes); c’est ainsi qu’on nommoit à Rome, au rapport de M. L’Enfant, une chaire qui étoit autrefois devant le portique de la basilique, sur laquelle on faisait asseoir le Pape le jour de sa consécration. Le chœur de musique lui chantoit alors ces paroles du Psaume 113, selon l’Hébreu, et le 112, selon la Vulgate, v. 6, et suiv. ‘Il tire de la poussière celui qui est dans l’indigence et il élève le pauvre de son avilissement pour le placer avec les princes de son peuple;’ c’étoit pour insinuer au Pape, dit cardinal Raspon, la vertu de l’humilité, qui doit être la compagne de sa grandeur. Cet usage fut aboli par Léon X, qui n’étoit pas né pour ces sortes de minuties.”—(“Encyc. ou Dict. Raison. des Sciences,” etc., Neufchatel, 1765, tome quinzième, article as above.) Consult Ducange also, “Stercoraria Sedes,” wherein it is stated that the use of this chair could be traced back to the tenth century. “Stercoraria sedes, in qua creati pontifices ad frangendos elatos spiritus considerent, unde dicta.”—(Baronius, “Annales,” Lucca, 1758.) Read also the remarks upon the subject of Ducking Stools, from which this seems to have been derived, under “Ordeals and Punishments.” Father Le Jeune relates, among the ceremonies observed by the Indians of Canada upon capturing a bear, that no women were allowed to remain in the lodge with the carcass, and that special care was taken to prevent dogs from licking the blood, gnawing the bones, or _eating the excrement_.—(See “Relations,” 1634, vol. i., Quebec, 1858.) XXIX. ORDURE IN SMOKING. Among all the observances of the every-day life of the American aborigines, none is so distinctly complicated with the religious idea as smoking; therefore, should the use of excrement, human or animal, be detected in this connection, full play should be given to the suspicion that a hidden meaning attaches to the ceremony. This would appear to be the view entertained by the indefatigable missionary, De Smet, who records such a custom among the Flatheads and Crows in 1846: “To render the odor of the pacific incense agreeable to their gods it is necessary that the tobacco and the herb (skwiltz), the usual ingredients, should be mixed with a small quantity of buffalo dung.”[63] The Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and others of the plains tribes, to whom the buffalo is a god, have the same or an almost similar custom. The Hottentots, when in want of tobacco, “smoke the dung of the two-horned rhinoceros or of elephants.”—(Thurnberg’s Account of the Cape of Good Hope, quoted in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 141.) The followers of the Grand Lama, as already noted, make use of his dried excrements as snuff, and an analogous employment of the dried dung of swine retained a place in the medical practice of Europe until the beginning of the present century, and may, perhaps, still survive in the Folk-medicine of isolated villages. The people of Achaia say “that the smoke of dried cow dung, that of the animal when grazing I mean, is remarkably good for phthisis, inhaled through a reed.”—(Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. xxviii. cap. 67.) Dung is also used in Central Africa. “A huge bowl is filled with tobacco and clay and sometimes with a questionable mixture, the fumes are inhaled until the smoker falls stupefied or deadly sick—this effect alone being sought for.”—(“Central Africa,” Chaillé Long, p. 266.) “In Algeria, gazelle droppings are put in snuff and smoking tobacco; the Mongol Tartars mix the ashes of yak manure with their snuff.”—(Personal letter from W. W. Rockhill.) Mr. Rudyard Kipling shows in his “Plain Tales from the Hills” (“Miss Youghal’s Sais”) that the native population of India is accustomed to use a mixture of one part of tobacco to three of cow-dung. XXX. COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE. “To multiply and replenish the earth,” was the first command given to man; to love, and to desire to be loved in return, is the strongest impulse of our nature, and therefore it need surprise no student who sets about investigating the occult properties attributed to the human and animal egestæ to find them in very general use in the composition of love-philters, as antidotes to such philters, as aphrodisiacs, as antiphrodisiacs, and as aids to delivery. ORDURE IN LOVE-PHILTERS. Love-sick maidens in France stand accused of making as a philter a cake into whose composition entered “nameless ingredients,” which confection, being eaten by the refractory lover, soon caused a revival of his waning affections.[64] This was considered to savor so strongly of witchcraft that it was interdicted by councils. The witches and wizards of the Apache tribe make a confection or philter, one of the ingredients of which is generally human ordure, as the author learned from some of them a few years since. The Navajoes, of same blood and language as the Apaches, employ the dung of cows (as related in the “Snake Dance of the Moquis,” p. 27.) Frommann gives an instance of a woman who made love-philters out of her own excrement. As late as Frommann’s day, the use of such philters was punishable with death. The remedies for love-philters were composed of human skull, coral, verbena flowers, secundines, or after-birth, and a copious flow of urine. He says that Paracelsus taught that when one person ate or drank anything given off by the skin of another, he would fall desperately in love with that other. “Quod illi, qui ederunt aut biberunt aliquid a scorte datum, in amorem alicujus conjiciantur et rapiantur.” (Frommann, “Tractatus de Fascinatione,” pp. 820, 826, 970, quoting Paracelsus, Tract. 1, de Morbis Amantium, cap. v.) He also cites Beckherius to the effect that some philters were made of perspiration, menses, or semen.—(Idem, quoting Beckherius, “Sapgyr. Microc.,” p. 89.) John Leo, in Purchas (vol. ii. p. 850), speaks of “the roote Surnay growing also upon the Western part of Mount Atlas.... The inhabitants of Mount Atlas doe commonly report that many of those damosels which keepe Cattell upon the said Mountaines, lose their Virginitie by no other occasion than by making water upon said Roote.... This roote is said to be comfortable and preseruatiue unto the priuie partes of man, and being drunk in an Electuary to stirre up Venereal lust.” Reginald Scot mentions a “Wolves yard” among the ingredients in a love-philter.—(“Discoverie of Witchecraft,” London, 1651, p. 62.) Human ordure was in constant use in the manufacture of these philters, being administered both internally and externally. On this point it may be proper to give the exact words of Schurig, who explains that it was sometimes put in porridge, and in other cases in the shoes. In the last example, the man who made such use of the excrement of his lady love was completely cured of his infatuation, after wearing the defiled shoes one hour. “Contra Philtræ tam interne quam externe adhiberi solet amatæ puellæ stercus, ab exsiccato enim atque in pulmento personæ philtratæ exhibito amorem in maximam antipathiam mutatam annotavit Eberhardus Gockelius ... etiam Capitanei cujusdam meminit qui, postquam amasiæ stercus novis calceis imposuerat, posteaque iisdem per integram horam spatiatus fuerat ab illius amore liberabatur.”—(“Chylologia,” p. 774.) Leopard-dung was in repute as an aphrodisiac.—(Idem, p. 820.) “The urine that has been voided by a bull immediately after covering ... taken in drink,” as an aphrodisiac; and “the groin well rubbed with earth moistened with this urine.”—(Pliny, Bohn, lib. xxviii. cap. 80.) “The wizard, witch, sorcerer, druggist, doctor, or medicine man ... played the part of an ochreous Cupid. Instead of smiles and bright eyes, his dealings were with some nasty stuff put into beer, or spread slyly upon bread.... In the Shroft book of Egbert, Archbishop of York, one of their methods is censured; and it is so filthy that I must leave it in the obscurity of the original old English.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 45.) An ointment of the gall of goats, incense, goat-dung, and nettle-seeds was applied to the privy parts previous to copulation to increase the amorousness of women.—(See “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 351, quoting Sextus Placitus.) “Love-charms are made of ingredients too disgusting to mention, and are given by the Mussulmans to women to persuade them to love them.”—(“Indo-Mahomedan Folk-Lore,” No. 3, H. C., p. 180, in “Notes and Queries,” 3d series, vol. xi., London, 1867.) Vambéry has this obscure passage: “The good woman had the happy idea to prescribe to the sick Khan five hundred doses of that medicine said to have worked such beneficial effects upon the renowned poet-monarch of ancient history.... The Khan of Khiva took from fifty to sixty of these pills ‘for impuissance.’”—(“Travels in Central Asia,” New York, 1865, p. 166.) Besides these elements there were employed others equally disgusting; for example, the catamenial fluid, which seems to have been in high repute for such purposes: “Quædam auditæ sunt jactantes se sua excrementa propinasse, præcipue menstrua, quibus cogant se amari.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 45, quoting Cæsalpinus, “Dæmonum Investigatio,” fol. 154 b. Cæsalpinus died in 1603.) “He has taken the enchanted philter, and soiled my garment with it.”—(“Chaldean Magic,” Lenormant, London, 1877, p. 61, quoting an Incantation of the Chaldean sorcerers. It is, of course, a matter of impossibility to tell of what this philter was composed.) “They say that if a man takes a frog, and transfixes it with a reed entering its body at the sexual parts, and coming out at the mouth, and then dips the reed in the menstrual discharge of his wife, she will be sure to conceive an aversion for all paramours.”—(Pliny, lib. xxxii. cap. 13.) “Sanguis menstruus, qui, a Paracelso vocatur Zenith Juvencularum; hic primus virginis impollutæ multa in se habet arcana non semper revelanda. Ut autem pauca adducam, extreme linteum a primo sanguine menstruo madidum et exsiccatum, hanc denuo humectatum et applicatum pedi podagraci, mirum quantum lenit dolores podagræ. Idem linteum, si applicetur parti Erysipelate affectæ, incontinenti erysipelas curat. In affectibus ab incantationibus et veneficiis oriundis multa præstat sanguis menstruus; nam et ipse sanguis menstruus ad veneficia adhibetur, et sunt mulieres, quæ pro philtris utuntur sanguine suo menstruo.” He instances such a philter, made with menstrual and a hare’s blood, which drove the recipient to mania and suicide. It was further used to make people “impenetrable” to an enemy’s weapon, and to cure burning sores. (See Michael Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” vol. ii. p. 270, art. “Schrod. Dilucid. Zoölogia.”) A medical student was frequently courted by his neighbor’s daughter, but he disregarded her advances. At one time, however, he slept with the brother of the girl in her father’s house, and after that was so infatuated that he would rise at midnight to kiss the jambs of the door of her house. Some time afterwards, he sent his clothes to a tailor to be mended, and, sewed up in his trousers, was found a little bundle of hair from an unmentionable part of the girl’s body, containing the initials S. T. I. A. M., which were by some interpreted to mean “Sathanas te trahat in amorem mei.” As soon as this little bunch of hair was burned, the poor fellow had rest.—(Paullini, pp. 258, 259.) Human semen was equally used for the very same purpose. There is nothing to show whether male lovers used this ingredient, and maidens the menstrual liquid, or both indiscriminately; but it seems plausible to believe that each sex adhered to its own excretion. “Semen, f. Sperma, non modo comperimus per se a nonnullis ad veneris scilicet ligaturam maleficam dissolvendam, sed et Momiam magneticam inde fieri quæ amoris concilietur fervor. Quin et homunculum suum inde meditatur Paracelsus.”—(Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” vol. ii. p. 266.) Semen, Beckherius informs us, was used in breaking down “Ligatures” placed by witches or the devil, and in restoring impaired virility. But it was sometimes employed in a manner savoring so strongly of impiety that Beckherius preferred not to speak further.—(“Medicus Microcosmus,” p. 122.) Flemming tells us that we should not pass over in silence the fact that human seed has been employed by some persons as medicine. They believed that its magnetic power could be used in philters, and that by it a lover could feed the flame of his mistress’s affections; hence from it was prepared what was known as “magnetic mummy,” which, being given to a woman, threw her into an inextinguishable frensy of love for the man or animal yielding it,—a suggestion of animal worship. Others credited it with a wonderful efficacy in relieving inveterate epilepsy, or restoring virility impaired by incantation or witchcraft; for which purpose it was used while still fresh, before exposure to the air, in pottage, mixed with the powder of mace. Flemming alludes to a horrible use of relics, good and bad, upon which human semen had been ejaculated; but this involved so much of the grossest impiety that he declined to enter into full details.—(“De Remediis ex Corpore Humano desumtis,” Samuel Augustus Flemming, Erfurt, 1738, p. 22.) The love-philter described in the preceding paragraph recalls a somewhat analogous practice among the Manicheans, whose eucharistic bread was incorporated or sprinkled with human semen, possibly with the idea that the bread of life should be sprinkled with the life-giving excretion.[65] The Albigenses, or Catharistes, their descendants, are alleged to have degenerated into or to have preserved the same vile superstition.[66] Understanding that these allegations proceed from hostile sources, their insertion in this category has been permitted only upon the theory that as the Manichean ethics and ritual present resemblances to both the Parsee and Buddhist religions (from which they may to some extent have originated), there is reason for supposing that ritualistic ablutions, aspersions, and other practices analogous to those of the great sect farther to the east, may have been transmitted to the younger religion in Europe. The following is taken from an episcopal letter of Burchard, Bishop of Worms:— “N’avez vous pas fait ce que certaines femmes ont coutume de faire? Elles se dépouillent de leurs habits, oignent leur corps nu avec du miel, étendent à terre un drap, sur lequel elles répandent du bléd, se roulent dessus à plusieurs reprises; puis elles recueillent avec soin tous les grains qui se sont attachés à leur corps, les mettent sur la meule qu’elles font tourner à rebours. Quand ils sont réduits en farine, elles en font un pain qu’elles donnent à manger à leurs maris afin qu’ils s’affaiblissent et qu’ils meurent. Si vous l’avez fait, vous ferez pénitence pendant quarante jours au pain et à l’eau.... Fecisti quod quædam mulieres facere solent? Tollunt menstruum suum sanguinem et immiscent cibo vel potui, et dant viris suis ad manducandum vel ad bibendum, ut plus diligantur ab eis.... Fecisti quod quædam mulieres facere solent? Prosternunt se in faciem, et discoopertis natibus, jubent ut supra nudas nates, conficiatur panis, et eo decocto tradunt maritis suis ad comedendum. Hoc ideo faciunt ut plus exardescant in amorem illarum. Si fecisti duos annos per legitimas ferias pœnitias.”—(Dulaure, “Traité des Différens Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 262 _et seq._) The method of divination by which maidens strove to rekindle the expiring flames of affection in the hearts of husbands and lovers by making cake from dough kneaded on the woman’s posterior, as given in preceding paragraph, seems to have held on in England as a game among little girls, in which one lies down on the floor, on her back, rolling backwards and forwards, and repeating the following lines:— “Cockledy bread, mistley cake, When you do that for our sake.” While one of the party so lay down the rest of the party sat round; they lay down and rolled in this manner by turns. Cockle Bread. This singular game is thus described by Aubray and Kennett: “Young wenches have a wanton sport which they call ‘moulding of cockle bread,’ viz.: they get upon a table-board, and then gather up their knees as high as they can, and then they wobble to and fro, as if they were kneading of dough, and say these words: ‘My dame is sick, and gone to bed, And I’ll go mould my cockle bread, Up with my heels, and down with my head!— And this is the way to mould cockle bread.’” —(Quoted in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 414, article “Cockle Bread.”) These words “mistley” and “cockledy” were not to be found in any of the lexicons examined, or in the “Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English” of Thomas Wright, M. A., London, 1869, although in the last was the word “mizzly” meaning “mouldy.” It may possibly mean mistletoe. “Cockle is the unhappy ‘lolium’ of Virgil, thought, if mixed with bread, to produce vertigo and headache; therefore, at Easter, parties are made to pick it out from the wheat. They take with them cake, cider, and toasted cheese. The first person who picks the cockle from the wheat has the first kiss of the maid and the first slice of the cake.”—(Fosbroke, “Encyclopædia of Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 1040.) Vallencey describes a very curious ceremony among the Irish in the month of September. “On the eve of the full moon of September ... straw is burnt to embers, and in the embers each swain in turn hides a grain, crying out, ‘I’ll tear you to pieces if you find my grain.’ His maiden lover seeks, and great is her chagrin if she does not find it. On producing it, she is saluted by the company with shouts; her lover lays her first on her back, and draws her by the heels through the embers, then turning her on her face repeats the ceremony until her nudities are much scorched. This is called _posadamin_, or the meal-wedding.... When all the maidens have gone through this ceremony, they sit down and devour the roasted wheat, with which they are sometimes inebriated.”—(“De Rebus Hibernicis,” vol. ii. p. 559.) He undoubtedly means ergot; he himself says that it is “a grain that is sometimes found growing amongst the wheat in Ireland.” He also calls these “weddings” a “Druidical custom.”—(Idem, p. 598.) A similar phallic dance is alluded to in John Graham Dalyell’s “Superstitions of Scotland,” Edinburgh, 1834, p. 219. In Sardinia “the village swains go about in a group ... to wait for the girls who assemble on the public square to celebrate the festival. Here a great bonfire is kindled, round which they dance and make merry. Those who wish to be ‘sweethearts of Saint John’ act as follows: The young man stands on one side of the bonfire, and the girl on the other; and they, in a manner, join hands by each grasping a long stick, which they pass three times backwards and forwards across the fire, thus thrusting their hands thrice rapidly into the flames.” At this dance, we read of “a Priapus-like figure, made of paste; but this custom, rigorously forbidden by the Church, has fallen into disuse.” (“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 291.) “In some parts of Germany young men and girls leap over midsummer bonfires for the express purpose of making the hemp or flax grow tall.”—(Idem, p. 293.) “Amongst the Kara-Kirghis barren women roll themselves on the ground under a solitary apple-tree in order to obtain offspring.” (Idem, vol. i. p. 73.) That this is a manifestation of tree worship, the author leaves us no room to doubt; and a consultation of his text will be rewarded by several examples of a still more definite character,—such as marriage with trees, wearing the bark as a garment in the hope of progeny, etc. Hoffman mentions a widow among the Pennsylvania Germans who “became impressed with a boatman with whom she casually became acquainted, and as he evinced no response to her numerous manifestations of regard, she adopted the following method to compel him to love her, even against his will. With the blade of a penknife she scraped her knee until she had secured a small quantity of the cuticle, baked it in a specially prepared cake, and sent it to him, though with what result is not known. The woman was known to have the utmost faith in the charm.”—(“Folk-Medicine of Pennsylvania Germans,” American Philosophical Society, 1889.) “I was at Madrid in 1784.... A beggar, who generally took his stand at the door of a church, had employed his leisure in inventing and selling a species of powder to which he attributed miraculous effects. It was composed of ingredients the mention of which would make the reader blush. The beggar had drawn up some singular formularies to be repeated at the time of taking the powder, and required, to give it its effect, that those who took it should put themselves into certain postures more readily imagined than described. His composition was one of those amorous philtres in which our ignorant ancestors had so much faith; his, he pretended, had the power of restoring a disgusted lover and of softening the heart of a cruel fair one.”—(Bourgoanne’s “Travels in Spain,” in Pinkerton, vol. v. p. 413.) “When a young man is trying to win the love of a reluctant girl he consults the medicine-man, who then tries to find some of the urine and saliva which the girl has voided, as well as the sand upon which it has fallen. He mixes these with a few twigs of certain woods, and places them in a gourd, and gives them to the young man, who takes them home, and adds a portion of tobacco. In about an hour he takes out the tobacco and gives it to the girl to smoke; this effects a complete transformation in her feelings.”—(“Conversation with Muhongo,” an African boy from Angola, translated by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.) Lovers who wished to increase the affections of their mistresses were recommended to try a transfusion of their own blood into the loved one’s veins.—(Flemming, “De Remediis,” etc., p. 15.) See notes taken from Flemming, under “Perspiration;” also under “After-Birth and Woman’s Milk,” and under “Catamenial Fluid.” Beaumont and Fletcher may have had such customs in mind when writing “Wit without Money.” “_Ralph._ Pray, empty my right shoe, that you made your chamber-pot, and burn some rosemary in it.”—(v. i.) Rosemary, like juniper (q. v.), was extensively used for disinfecting sleeping apartments. ANTI-PHILTERS. To protect the population from the baleful effects of the love-philter, there was, fortunately, the anti-philter, in which, strangely enough, we come upon the same ingredients. Thus mouse-dung, applied in “the form of a liniment, acts as an antiphrodisiac,” according to Pliny (lib. xxviii. cap. 80). “A lizard drowned in urine has the effect of an antiphrodisiac upon the man whose urine it is.” (Idem, lib. xxx. cap. 49.) “The same property is to be attributed to the excrement of snails and pigeon’s dung, taken with oil and wine.”—(Idem.) A powerful antiphrodisiac was made of the urine of a bull and the ashes of a plant called “brya.” “The charcoal too of this wood is quenched in urine of a similar nature, and kept in a shady spot. When it is the intention of the party to rekindle the flames of desire, it is set on fire again. The magicians say that the urine of a eunuch will have a similar effect.”—(Idem, lib. xxiv. cap. 42.) “According to Osthanes ... a woman will forget her former love by taking a he-goat’s urine in drink.”—(Idem, lib. xxviii. cap. 77.) Hen-dung was an antidote against philters, especially those made of menstrual blood. “Contra Philtra magica, in specie ex sanguine menstruo femineo.” (“Chylologia,” p. 816, 817.) Dove-dung was also administered for the same purpose, but was not quite so efficacious. A journeyman cabinet-maker had been given a love-potion by a young woman, so that he couldn’t keep away from her. His mother then bought a pair of new shoes for him, put into them certain herbs, and in them he had to run to a certain town. A can of urine was then put into his right shoe, out of which he drank, whereupon he perfectly despised the object of his former affection. A prostitute gave a love-potion to a captain in the army. Some of her ordure was placed in a new shoe, and after he had walked therein an hour, and had his fill of the smell, the spell was broken. Paullini here quotes Ovid,— “Ille tuas redolens Phineu medicamina mensas Non semel est stomacho nausea facta meo.” A man was given in his food some of the dried ordure of a woman whom he formerly loved, and that created a terrible antipathy toward her.—(Paullini, p. 258.) “The seeds of the tamarisk mixed in a drink or meat with the urine of a castrated ox will put an end to Venus.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 43, quoting Pliny, lib. 21, c. 92.) “Galenos says that the priests eat rue and agnus castus, it seems, as a refrigerative.”—(Idem, p. 43.) The herb rue was used by the Romans as an amulet against witchcraft, and was also employed in the exorcisms of the Roman Catholic Church.—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 315, article “Rural Charms.”) An examination of the best available authorities upon the properties of this plant disclosed the following: “It was formerly called ‘herb of grace’ (see Hamlet, act iv. scene 5), because it was used for sprinkling the people with holy water. It was in great repute among the ancients, having been hung about the neck as an amulet against witchcraft, in the time of Aristotle.... It is a powerful stimulant.” (Chambers’s Encyclopædia, article “Rue.”) “Rue is stimulant and anti-spasmodic; ... occasionally increases the secretions.... It appears to have a tendency to act upon the uterus; ... in moderate doses proving emmenagogue, and in larger producing a degree of irritation in the organ which sometimes determines abortion; ... taken by pregnant women, ... miscarriage resulted; ... used in amenorrhœa and in uterine hemorrhages.” (“United States Dispensatory,” Philadelphia, 1886, article “Ruta.”) Here are presented almost the same conditions as were found in the mistletoe,—the plant had a direct, irritant action upon the genito-urinary organs, and in all probability was employed to induce the sacred urination and to asperse the congregation with the fluid for which holy water was afterwards substituted. Rue and agnus castus are mentioned by Avicenna as medicines which “coitus desiderium sedant.” (Vol. i. pp. 266, b 45, 406, a 60.) The same author (vol. i. p. 906, a 63) mentions rue with the testicles of a fox as an Aphrodisiac, and the testicles of the goat are mentioned in the same connection.—(Idem, p. 907, b 67.) Dulaure (“Des Différens Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 288) speaks of certain “fasciniers” or charlatans, who vended secretly love-philters to barren women. “Ils prononçaient pour opérer leurs charmes des mots latins et avaient l’intention de fixer dans les alimens des époux une poudre provenant des parties sexuelles d’un loup.” Beckherius repeats the antidote for a love-philter of placing some of the woman’s ordure in the man’s shoe: “Si, in amantis calceum, stercus amatæ ponatur;” and he also cites the couplet from Ovid already quoted, p. 225. “Secundines” were also employed to render abortive the effects of philters. (See Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” Schroderi dilucidati Zoölogia, vol. ii. p. 265.) “In philtris curandis spiritus secundinæ vel pulvis secundinæ mirabilis facit.” This was of great use in epilepsy, but should be, if possible, “secundinam mulieris sanæ, si potest esse primiparæ et quæ filium enixa fuit.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 271.) Against philters, as well as to counteract the efforts of witches attacking people just entering the married state, by such maleficent means as “ligatures,” and other obstacles, ordure was facile princeps as a remedy. Likewise, to break up a love affair, nothing was superior to the simple charm of placing some of the ordure of the person seeking to break away from love’s thraldom in the shoe of the one still faithful. It is within the bounds of possibility that this remedy would be found potential even in our own times, if faithfully applied. “Contra philtra, item pro ligatis et maleficiatis a mulieribus sequens Johannes Jacobus Weckerus ... pone de egestione seu alvi excremento ipsius mulieris mane in fotulari dextro maleficiati et statim cum ipse sentiet fœtorum solvitur maleficium.... Quod si in amantis calceum stercus amatæ posueris, ubi odorem senserit, solvitur amor,” etc. (several examples are given).—(“Chylologia,” p. 791.) Mr. Chrisfield, of the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., imparts a fact which dovetails in with the foregoing item in a very interesting manner. He says that, in his youth, which was passed on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, he learned that, among the more ignorant classes of that