between a person and his clothes, so that whatever is done to the clothes will be felt by the man himself, even though he may be far
away at the time. In the Wotjobaluk tribe of Victoria a wizard would sometimes get hold of a man's opossum rug and roast it slowly
in the fire, and as he did so the owner of the rug would fall sick. If the wizard consented to undo the charm, he would give the rug
back to the sick man's friends, bidding them put it in water, "so as to wash the fire out." When that happened, the sufferer would feel
a refreshing coolness and probably recover. In Tanna, one of the New Hebrides, a man who had a grudge at another and desired his
death would try to get possession of a cloth which had touched the sweat of his enemy's body. If he succeeded, he rubbed the cloth
carefully over with the leaves and twigs of a certain tree, rolled and bound cloth, twigs, and leaves into a long sausage-shaped bundle,
and burned it slowly in the fire. As the bundle was consumed, the victim fell ill, and when it was reduced to ashes, he died. In this
last form of enchantment, however, the magical sympathy may be supposed to exist not so much between the man and the cloth as
between the man and the sweat which issued from his body. But in other cases of the same sort it seems that the garment by itself is
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enough to give the sorcerer a hold upon his victim. The witch in Theocritus, while she melted an image or lump of wax in order that her faithless lover might melt with love of her, did not forget to throw into the fire a shred of his cloak which he had dropped in her house. In Prussia they say that if you cannot catch a thief, the next best thing you can do is to get hold of a garment which he may have shed in his flight; for if you beat it soundly, the thief will fall sick. This belief is firmly rooted in the popular mind. Some eighty or ninety years ago, in the neighbourhood of Berend, a man was detected trying to steal honey, and fled, leaving his coat behind him. When he heard that the enraged owner of the honey was mauling his lost coat, he was so alarmed that he took to his bed and died.
Again, magic may be wrought on a man sympathetically, not only through his clothes and severed parts of himself, but also through the impressions left by his body in sand or earth. In particular, it is a world-wide superstition that by injuring footprints you injure
the feet that made them. Thus the natives of South-eastern Australia think that they can lame a man by placing sharp pieces of quartz, glass, bone, or charcoal in his footprints. Rheumatic pains are often attributed by them to this cause. Seeing a Tatungolung
man very lame, Mr. Howitt asked him what was the matter. He said, "some fellow has put bottle in my foot." He was suffering from
rheumatism, but believed that an enemy had found his foot-track and had buried it in a piece of broken bottle, the magical influence
of which had entered his foot.
Similar practices prevail in various parts of Europe. Thus in Mecklenburg it is thought that if you drive a nail into a man's footprint
he will fall lame; sometimes it is required that the nail should be taken from a coffin. A like mode of injuring an enemy is resorted to
in some parts of France. It is said that there was an old woman who used to frequent Stow in Suffolk, and she was a witch. If, while
she walked, any one went after her and stuck a nail or a knife into her footprint in the dust, the dame could not stir a step till it was
withdrawn. Among the South Slavs a girl will dig up the earth from the footprints of the man she loves and put it in a flower-pot.
Then she plants in the pot a marigold, a flower that is thought to be fadeless. And as its golden blossom grows and blooms and
never fades, so shall her sweetheart's love grow and bloom, and never, never fade. Thus the love-spell acts on the man through the
earth he trod on. An old Danish mode of concluding a treaty was based on the same idea of the sympathetic connexion between
a man and his footprints: the covenanting parties sprinkled each other's footprints with their own blood, thus giving a pledge of
fidelity. In ancient Greece superstitions of the same sort seem to have been current, for it was thought that if a horse stepped on the
track of a wolf he was seized with numbness; and a maxim ascribed to Pythagoras forbade people to pierce a man's footprints with a
nail or a knife.
The same superstition is turned to account by hunters in many parts of the world for the purpose of running down the game. Thus a German huntsman will stick a nail taken from a coffin into the fresh spoor of the quarry, believing that this will hinder the animal from escaping. The aborigines of Victoria put hot embers in the tracks of the animals they were pursuing. Hottentot hunters throw into the air a handful of sand taken from the footprints of the game, believing that this will bring the animal down. Thompson Indians used to lay charms on the tracks of wounded deer; after that they deemed it superfluous to pursue the animal any further that day, for being thus charmed it could not travel far and would soon die. Similarly, Ojebway Indians placed "medicine" on the track
of the first deer or bear they met with, supposing that this would soon bring the animal into sight, even if it were two or three days' journey off; for this charm had power to compress a journey of several days into a few hours. Ewe hunters of West Africa stab the footprints of game with a sharp-pointed stick in order to maim the quarry and allow them to come up with it.
But though the footprint is the most obvious it is not the only impression made by the body through which magic may be wrought
on a man. The aborigines of South-eastern Australia believe that a man may be injured by burying sharp fragments of quartz, glass,
and so forth in the mark made by his reclining body; the magical virtue of these sharp things enters his body and causes those acute
pains which the ignorant European puts down to rheumatism. We can now understand why it was a maxim with the Pythagoreans
that in rising from bed you should smooth away the impression left by your body on the bed-clothes. The rule was simply an old
precaution against magic, forming part of a whole code of superstitious maxims which antiquity fathered on Pythagoras, though
doubtless they were familiar to the barbarous forefathers of the Greeks long before the time of that philosopher.
4. The Magician's Progress
WE have now concluded our examination of the general principles of sympathetic magic. The examples by which I have illustrated them have been drawn for the most part from what may be called private magic, that is from magical rites and incantations practised for the benefit or the injury of individuals. But in savage society there is commonly to be found in addition what we may call public magic, that is, sorcery practised for the benefit of the whole community. Wherever ceremonies of this sort are observed for the com-
mon good, it is obvious that the magician ceases to be merely a private practitioner and becomes to some extent a public functionary.
The development of such a class of functionaries is of great importance for the political as well as the religious evolution of society.
For when the welfare of the tribe is supposed to depend on the performance of these magical rites, the magician rises into a position
of much influence and repute, and may readily acquire the rank and authority of a chief or king. The profession accordingly draws
into its ranks some of the ablest and most ambitious men of the tribe, because it holds out to them a prospect of honour, wealth,
and power such as hardly any other career could offer. The acuter minds perceive how easy it is to dupe their weaker brother and to
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