V. Avendidad, Zendavesta (Darmesteter’s translation), Max Müller’s

edition. “Sacred Books of the East,” Oxford, 1880, p. 62.) “She shall drink gomez mixed with ashes, three cups of it, or six or nine, to wash over the grave within her womb.... When three nights have passed, she shall wash her body, she shall wash her clothes, with gomez and with water by the nine holes, and thus shall she be clean.”—(Idem, pp. 63, 90.) “Avec une tendre sollicitude, les bonnes amies versent sur la tête de la femme en travail le contenu d’un pot de chambre pour fortifier, disent-elles.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, p. 43; “Les Inoits Orientaux.”) “The Commentaires of Bernard the Provincial, informs us” says Daremberg, “that certain practices, not only superstitious but disgusting, were common among the doctrines of Salerno; one, for instance, was to eat themselves, and also to oblige their husbands to eat, the excrements of an ass fried in a stove in order to prevent sterility.”—(“The Physicians of the Middle Ages,” Minor, Cincinnati, Ohio, p. 6, translated from Dupouy’s “Le Moyen Age Médical.”) Mr. Havelock Ellis calls attention to the use of cow’s urine after confinement by the women of the Cheosurs of the Caucasus. See also under “Witchcraft,” “Therapeutics,” “Divination,” “Amulets and Talismans,” “Cures by Transplantation,” “Ceremonial Observances.” WEANING. For an example of Urinal Aspersion, in connection with Weaning, see on page 211. XXXIII. INITIATION OF WARRIORS.—CONFIRMATION. The attainment by young men of the age of manhood is an event which among all primitive peoples has been signalized by peculiar ceremonies; in a number of instances ordure and urine have been employed, as for example: The observances connected with this event in the lives of Australian warriors are kept a profound secret, but, among the few learned is the fact that the neophyte is “plastered with goat dung.”—(See “Aborigines of Australia,” A. Brough Smyth, London, 1878, vol. i. p. 59, footnote.) In some parts of Australia, Smyth says that the youth of fourteen or fifteen had to submit himself to the rite of “Tid-but,” during which his head was shaved and plastered with mud (“the head is then daubed with clay”) “and his body is daubed with clay, mud, and charcoal-powder and filth of every kind.” (Smyth had previously specified goat-dung.) “He carries a basket under his arm, containing moist clay, charcoal, and filth.... He gathers filth as he goes, and places it in the basket.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 60.) The young initiate throws this filth at all the men he meets, but not at the women or children, as these have been warned to keep out of his way. This is the account given by Smyth, but Featherman, from whom Smyth derived his information, makes no such restriction in his text, simply stating that the young man was considered to be “excommunicated _de facto_.” (See A. Featherman, “Social History of the Races of Mankind,” 2d Division, London, 1887, p. 152.) But, in either case, it is surely remarkable to stumble upon the counterpart of one of the proceedings of the Feast of Fools in such a remote corner of the globe. “Among many of the tribes, the ceremony of introducing a native into manhood, is said to be accompanied with some horrible and disgusting practices.”—(“The Nat. Tribes of S. Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, Introduction, xxviii, received through the kindness of the Royal Soc. of Sydney, N. S. Wales, T. B. Kyngdon, Secretary.) “In order to infuse courage into boys, a warrior, Kerketegerkai, would take the eye and tongue of a dead man (probably of a slain enemy), and after mincing them and mixing with his urine, would administer the compound in the following manner. He would tell the boy to shut his eyes and not look, adding: ‘I give you proper kaikai’ (‘kaikai’ is an introduced word, being the jargon English for food). The warrior then stood up behind the sitting youth, and putting the latter’s hand between his (the man’s) legs, would feed him. After this dose, ‘heart along, boy no fright.’”—(A. C. Haddon, “The Ethnography of the Western Tribes of Torres Straits,” in Journal of the Anthrop. Institute, Great Britain and Ireland, xix. no. 3, 1890, p. 420. Received through the kindness of Professor H. C. Henshaw, U. S. Geol. Survey, Washington, D. C.) “Some other customs are altogether so obscene and disgusting I must, even at the risk of leaving my subject incomplete, pass them over by only thus briefly referring to them.”—(“Nat. Tr. of S. Australia,” p. 280.) Monier Williams repeats almost what Müller says about the Parsis. A young Parsi undergoes a sort of confirmation, during which “he is made to drink a small quantity of the urine of a bull.”—(“Modern India,” London, 1878, p. 178.) FEARFUL RITE OF THE HOTTENTOTS. A religious rite of still more fearful import occurs among the same people at the initiation of their young men into the rank of warriors—a ceremony which must be deferred until the postulant has attained his eighth or ninth year. It consists, principally, in depriving him of the left testicle, after which the medicine man voids his urine upon him.[67] “At eight or nine years of age, the young Hottentot is, with great ceremony deprived of his left testicle.” (Kolbein, p. 402.) He says nothing about an aspersion with urine in this instance, but on the succeeding page he narrates that there is first a sermon from one of the old men, who afterwards “evacuates a smoking stream of urine all over him, having before reserved his water for that purpose. The youth receives the stream with eagerness and joy; and making furrows with the long nails in the fat upon his body, rubs in the briny fluid with the quickest action. The old man, having given him the last drop, utters aloud the following benediction: ‘Good fortune attend thee; live to old age. Increase and multiply. May thy beard grow soon.’”—(Idem, p. 403.) “The young Hottentot, who has won the reputation of a hero by killing a lion, tiger, leopard, elephant, etc., is entitled to wear a bladder in his hair; he is formally congratulated by all his kraal. One of the medicine-men marches up to the hero and pours a plentiful stream over him from head to foot,—pronouncing over him certain terms which I could never get explained. The hero, as in other cases, rubs in the smoking stream upon his face and every other part with the greatest eagerness.”—(Idem, p. 404.) Rev. Theophilus Hahn cites Kolbein in “Beiträge für Kunde der Hottentoten,” in Jahrbuch für Erdkunde, von Dresden, 1870, p. 9, as communicated by Dr. Gatchett of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D.