yet there are some who retain to the full the angelology and demonology of Origen and Tertullian. These two views may be well contrasted by setting side by side the judgments of two ecclesiastics of the Roman Church, as to the belief in pervading demons prevalent in uncivilized countries. The celebrated commentator, Dom Calmet, lays down in the most explicit terms the doctrine of angels and demons, as a matter of dogmatic theology. But he is less inclined to receive unquestioned the narratives of particular manifestations in the medieval and modern world. He mentions indeed the testimony of Louis Vivez, that in the newly discovered countries of America, nothing is more common than to see spirits which appear at noonday, not only in the country but in towns and villages, speaking, commanding, sometimes even striking men; and the account by Olaus Magnus of the spectres or spirits seen in Sweden and Norway, Finland and Lapland, which do wonderful things, some even serving men as domestics and driving the cattle out to pasture. But what Calmet remarks on these stories, is that the greater ignorance prevails in a country, the more superstition reigns there.1 It seems that in our own day, however, the tendency is to encourage less sceptical views. Monsignor Gaume's book on 'Holy Water,' which not long since received the special and formal approval of Pius IX., appears at an epoch when the millions of evil angels which surround us are more enterprising than ever;' and here Olaus Magnus' story of the demons infesting Northern Europe is not only cited but corroborated. On the whole, the survey of the doctrine of pervading spirits through all the grades of culture is a remarkable display of intellectual continuity. Most justly does Ellis the missionary, depicting the South Sea Islanders' world crowded with its innumerable pervading spirits, point out the closeness of correspondence here between doctrines of the savage and the 1 Calmet, 'Dissertation sur les Esprits,' vol. i. ch. xlviii. civilized animist, expressed as both may be in Milton's familiar lines: 'Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth, 3 Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep.'1 As with souls, so with other spirits, man's most distinct and direct intercourse is had where they become actually present to his senses in dreams and visions. The belief that such phantoms are real and personal spirits, suggested and maintained as it is by the direct evidence of the senses of sight, touch, and hearing, is naturally an opinion usual in savage philosophy, and indeed elsewhere, long and obstinately resisting the attacks of the later scientific doctrine. The demon Koin strives to throttle the dreaming Australian; 2 the evil 'na' crouches on the stomach of the Karen; the North American Indian, gorged with feasting, is visited by nocturnal spirits; the Caribs, subject to hideous dreams, often woke declaring that the demon Maboya had beaten them in their sleep, and they could still feel the pain.5 These demons are the very elves and nightmares that to this day in benighted districts of Europe ride and throttle the snoring peasant, and whose names, not forgotten among the educated, have only made the transition from belief to jest. A not less distinct product of the savage animistic theory of dreams as real visits from personal spiritual beings, lasted on without a shift or break into the belief of medieval Christendom. This is the doctrine of the incubi and succubi, those male and female nocturnal demons which consort sexually with men and women. We may set out 1 Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 331. 2 Backhouse, ‘Australia,' p. 555; Grey, Australia,' vol. ii. p. 337. 3 Mason, Karens,' 1.c. p. 211. 4 Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part iii. p. 226. 5 Rochefort, 'Antilles,' p. 419. 6 Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 1193; Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' p. 332; St. Clair and Brophy, 'Bulgaria,' p. 59; Wuttke, 'Volksaberglaube,' p. 122; Bastian, 'Psychologie,' p. 103; Brand, vol. iii. p. 279. The mare in nightmare means spirit, elf, or nymph; compare Anglo-Sax. wudumære (wood-mare) = echo. 1 with their descriptions among the islanders of the Antilles, where they are the ghosts of the dead, vanishing when clutched; in New Zealand, where ancestral deities 'form attachments with females and pay them repeated visits,' while in the Samoan Islands such intercourse of mischievous inferior gods caused many supernatural conceptions;'2 and in Lapland, where details of this last extreme class have also been placed on record. From these lower grades of culture the idea may be followed onward. Formal rites are specified in the Hindu Tantra, which enable a man to obtain a companion-nymph by worshipping her and repeating her name by night in a cemetery. Augustine, in an instructive passage, states the popular notions of the visits of incubi, vouched for, he tells us, by testimony of such quantity and quality that it may seem impudence to deny it; yet he is careful not to commit himself to a positive belief in such spirits. 5 Later theologians were less cautious, and grave argumentation on nocturnal intercourse with incubi and succubi was carried on till, at the height of medieval civilization, it is found accepted in full belief by ecclesiastics and lawyers. Nor is it to be counted as an ugly but harmless superstition, when for example it is set forth in the Bull of Pope Innocent VIII. in 1484, as an 1 'Vita del Amm. Christoforo Colombo,' ch. xiii.; and 'Life of Colon,' in Pinkerton, vol. xii. p. 84. 2 Taylor, 'New Zealand,' pp. 149, 389. Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 119. 3 Högström, 'Lapmark,' ch. xi. 4 Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol. ii. p. 151. See also Borri, 'Cochin-China,' in Pinkerton, vol. ix. p. 823. 5 Augustin. 'De Civ. Dei,' xv. 23: 'Et quoniam creberrima fama est, multique se expertos, vel ab eis qui experti essent, de quorum fide dubitandum non esset, audisse confirmant, Silvanos et Faunos, quos vulgo incubos vocant, improbos sæpe extitisse mulieribus, et earum appetisse ac peregisse concubitum; et quosdam dæmones, quos Dusios Galli nuncupant, hanc assidue immunditiam et tentare et efficere; plures talesque asseverant, ut hoc negare impudentiæ videatur; non hinc aliquid audeo definire, utrum aliqui spiritus . . . possint etiam hanc pati libidinem; ut sentien tibus feminibus misceantur.' See also Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 449, 479; Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' p. 332; Cockayne, 'Leechdoms of Early England,' vol. i. p. xxxviii., vol. ii. p. 345. accepted accusation against 'many persons of both sexes, forgetful of their own salvation, and falling away from the Catholic faith.' The practical outcome of this belief is known to students who have traced the consequence of the Papal Bull in the legal manual of the witchcraft tribunals, drawn up by the three appointed Inquisitors, the infamous Malleus Maleficarum; and have followed the results of this again into those dreadful records which relate in their bald matter-of-fact phraseology the confessions of the crime of diabolic intercourse, wrung from the wretched victims worked on by threat and persuasion in the intervals of the rack, till enough evidence was accumulated for clear judgment, and sentence of the stake.1 I need not dwell on the mingled obscenity and horror of these details, which here only have their bearing on the history of animism. But it will aid the ethnographer to understand the relation of modern to savage philosophy, if he will read Richard Burton's seriously believing account in the 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' where he concludes with acquiescence in a declaration lately made by Lipsius, that on the showing of daily narratives and judicial sentences, in no age had these lecherous demons appeared in such numbers as in his own time-and this was about A.D. 1600.2 In connexion with the nightmare and the incubus, another variety of nocturnal demon requires notice, the vampire. Inasmuch as certain patients are seen becoming day by day, without apparent cause, thin, weak, and bloodless, savage animism is called upon to produce a satisfactory explanation, and does so in the doctrine that there exist certain demons which eat out the souls or hearts or suck the blood of their victims. The Polynesians said that it was the 1 The Malleus Maleficarum' was published about 1489. See on the general subject, Horst, 'Zauber-Bibliothek,' vol. vi.; Ennemoser, 'Magic,' vol. ii.; Maury, 'Magie,' &c. p. 256; Lecky, 'Hist. of Rationalism,' vol. i. 2 Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy,' iii. 2. 'Unum dixero, non opinari me ullo retro ævo tantam copiam Satyrorum, et salacium istorum Geniorum se ostendisse, quantum nunc quotidianæ narrationes, et judiciales sententiæ proferunt.' departed souls (tii) which quitted the graves and grave-idols to creep by night into the houses, and devour the heart and entrails of the sleepers, and these died. The Karens tell of the 'kephu,' which is a wizard's stomach going forth in the shape of a head and entrails, to devour the souls of men, and they die.2 The Mintira of the Malay Peninsula have their 'hantu penyadin;' he is a water-demon, with a dog's head and an alligator's mouth, who sucks blood from men's thumbs and great toes, and they die.3 It is in Slavonia and Hungary that the demon blood-suckers have their principal abode, and to this district belongs their special name of vampire, Polish upior, Russian upir. There is a whole literature of hideous vampire-stories, which the student will find elaborately discussed in Calmet. The shortest way of treating the belief is to refer it directly to the principles of savage animism. We shall see that most of its details fall into their places at once, and that vampires are not mere creations of groundless fancy, but causes conceived in spiritual form to account for specific facts of wasting disease. As to their nature and physical action, there are two principal theories, but both keep close to the original animistic idea of spiritual beings, and consider these demons to be human souls. The first theory is that the soul of a living man, often a sorcerer, leaves its proper body asleep and goes forth, perhaps in the visible form of a straw or fluff of down, slips through keyholes and attacks its sleeping victim. If the sleeper should wake in time to clutch this tiny soul-embodiment, he may through it have his revenge by maltreating or destroying its bodily owner. Some say these 'mury' come by night to men, sit upon their breasts and suck their blood, while others think it is only children's blood they suck, they being to grown people mere nightmares. Here we have the actual phenomenon of nightmare, adapted to a particular purpose. The second 1 J. R. Forster, 'Observations during Voyage round World,' p. 543. 2 Cross, 'Karens,' l. c. p. 312. 3 Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 307. |
