of food, the men of the emu totem paint on the ground the sacred design of their totem, especially the parts of the emu which they
like best to eat, namely, the fat and the eggs. Round this painting the men sit and sing. Afterwards performers, wearing head-dresses
to represent the long neck and small head of the emu, mimic the appearance of the bird as it stands aimlessly peering about in all directions.
The Indians of British Columbia live largely upon the fish which abound in their seas and rivers. If the fish do not come in due season, and the Indians are hungry, a Nootka wizard will make an image of a swimming fish and put it into the water in the direction from which the fish generally appear. This ceremony, accompanied by a prayer to the fish to come, will cause them to arrive at once.
The islanders of Torres Straits use models of dugong and turtles to charm dugong and turtle to their destruction. The Toradjas of
Central Celebes believe that things of the same sort attract each other by means of their indwelling spirits or vital ether. Hence they
hang up the jawbones of deer and wild pigs in their houses, in order that the spirits which animate these bones may draw the living
creatures of the same kind into the path of the hunter. In the island of Nias, when a wild pig has fallen into the pit prepared for it,
the animal is taken out and its back is rubbed with nine fallen leaves, in the belief that this will make nine more wild pigs fall into the
pit, just as the nine leaves fell from the tree. In the East Indian islands of Saparoea, Haroekoe, and Noessa Laut, when a fisherman is
about to set a trap for fish in the sea, he looks out for a tree, of which the fruit has been much pecked at by birds. From such a tree
he cuts a stout branch and makes of it the principal post in his fish-trap; for he believes that, just as the tree lured many birds to its
fruit, so the branch cut from that tree will lure many fish to the trap.
The western tribes of British New Guinea employ a charm to aid the hunter in spearing dugong or turtle. A small beetle, which
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haunts coco-nut trees, is placed in the hole of the spear-haft into which the spear-head fits. This is supposed to make the spear-head stick fast in the dugong or turtle, just as the beetle sticks fast to a man's skin when it bites him. When a Cambodian hunter has set
his nets and taken nothing, he strips himself naked, goes some way off, then strolls up to the net as if he did not see it, lets himself be caught in it, and cries, "Hillo! what's this? I'm afraid I'm caught." After that the net is sure to catch game. A pantomime of the same sort has been acted within the living memory in our Scottish Highlands. The Rev. James Macdonald, now of Reay in Caithness, tells us that in his boyhood when he was fishing with companions about Loch Aline and they had had no bites for a long time, they used to make a pretence of throwing one of their fellows overboard and hauling him out of the water, as if he were a fish; after that the trout or silloch would begin to nibble, according as the boat was on fresh or salt water. Before a Carrier Indian goes out to snare martens, he sleeps by himself for about ten nights beside the fire with a little stick pressed down on his neck. This naturally causes
the fall-stick of his trap to drop down on the neck of the marten. Among the Galelareese, who inhabit a district in the northern part of Halmahera, a large island to the west of New Guinea, it is a maxim that when you are loading your gun to go out shooting, you should always put the bullet in your mouth before you insert it in the gun; for by so doing you practically eat the game that is to be
hit by the bullet, which therefore cannot possibly miss the mark. A Malay who has baited a trap for crocodiles, and is awaiting results, is careful in eating his curry always to begin by swallowing three lumps of rice successively; for this helps the bait to slide more easily down the crocodile's throat. He is equally scrupulous not to take any bones out of his curry; for, if he did, it seems clear that the sharp-pointed stick on which the bait is skewered would similarly work itself loose, and the crocodile would get off with the bait.
Hence in these circumstances it is prudent for the hunter, before he begins his meal, to get somebody else to take the bones out of
his curry, otherwise he may at any moment have to choose between swallowing a bone and losing the crocodile.
This last rule is an instance of the things which the hunter abstains from doing lest, on the principle that like produces like, they should spoil his luck. For it is to be observed that the system of sympathetic magic is not merely composed of positive precepts; it comprises a very large number of negative precepts, that is, prohibitions. It tells you not merely what to do, but also what to leave undone. The positive precepts are charms: the negative precepts are taboos. In fact the whole doctrine of taboo, or at all events a large part of it, would seem to be only a special application of sympathetic magic, with its two great laws of similarity and con-
tact. Though these laws are certainly not formulated in so many words nor even conceived in the abstract by the savage, they are
nevertheless implicitly believed by him to regulate the course of nature quite independently of human will. He thinks that if he acts
in a certain way, certain consequences will inevitably follow in virtue of one or other of these laws; and if the consequences of a
particular act appear to him likely to prove disagreeable or dangerous, he is naturally careful not to act in that way lest he should in-
cur them. In other words, he abstains from doing that which, in accordance with his mistaken notions of cause and effect, he falsely
believes would injure him; in short, he subjects himself to a taboo. Thus taboo is so far a negative application of practical magic.
Positive magic or sorcery says, "Do this in order that so and so may happen." Negative magic or taboo says, "Do not do this, lest so
and so should happen." The aim of positive magic or sorcery is to produce a desired event; the aim of negative magic or taboo is to
avoid an undesirable one. But both consequences, the desirable and the undesirable, are supposed to be brought about in accordance
with the laws of similarity and contact. And just as the desired consequence is not really effected by the observance of a magical
ceremony, so the dreaded consequence does not really result from the violation of a taboo. If the supposed evil necessarily followed
a breach of taboo, the taboo would not be a taboo but a precept of morality or common sense. It is not a taboo to say, "Do not put
your hand in the fire"; it is a rule of common sense, because the forbidden action entails a real, not an imaginary evil. In short, those
negative precepts which we call taboo are just as vain and futile as those positive precepts which we call sorcery. The two things are
merely opposite sides or poles of one great disastrous fallacy, a mistaken conception of the association of ideas. Of that fallacy,
sorcery is the positive, and taboo the negative pole. If we give the general name of magic to the whole erroneous system, both theo-
retical and practical, then taboo may be defined as the negative side of practical magic. To put this in tabular form:
Magic
|
----------------------
| |
Theoretical Practical
(Magic as a (Magic as a
pseudo-science) pseudo-art)
|
-----------------
| |
Positive Magic Negative Magic or Sorcery or Taboo
I have made these remarks on taboo and its relations to magic because I am about to give some instances of taboos observed by