3 5 when ripe," and then not even the owner of the tree would think of touching the fruit so claimed by others.1 Of the Barotse we are told that "when they do not want a thing touched they spit on straws and stick them all about the object." When a Balonda has placed a beehive on a tree, he ties a "piece of medicine" round the trunk, and this will prove sufficient protection against thieves. Jacob of Edessa tells us of a Syrian priest who wrote a curse and hung it on a tree, that nobody might eat the fruit.* In the early days of Islam a masterful man reserved water for his own use by hanging pieces of fringe of his red blanket on a tree beside it, or by throwing them into the pool; and in modern Palestine nobody dares to touch the piles of stones which are placed on the boundaries of landed property. The old inhabitants of Cumaná on the Caribbean Sea used to mark off their plantations by a single cotton thread, in the belief that anybody tampering with these boundary marks would speedily die." A similar idea seems still to prevail among the Indians of the Amazon. Among the Jurís a traveller noticed that in places where the hedge surrounding a field was broken, it was replaced by a cotton string; and when Brazilian Indians leave their huts they often wind a piece of the same material round the latch of the door. Sometimes they also hang baskets, rags, or flaps of bark on their landmarks. In these and in various other instances just referred to it is not expressly stated that the taboo mark embodies a curse, but their similarity to cases in which it does so is striking enough to 8 1 Junker, Travels in Africa during ground as a threat that if the owner the Years 1882-1886, p. 86. cultivated the land "malo leto periturus esset insidiis eorum, qui scopulos posuissent"; and so great was the fear of such stones that nobody would go near a field where they had been put. 7 Gomara, Primera parte de la historia general de las Indias, ch. 79 (Biblioteca de autores españoles, xxii. 206). 8 von Martius, Von dem Rechtszustande unter den Ureinwohnern Brasiliens, p. 37 sq. 9 Ibid. p. 34. F preclude much doubt about their real meaning. It is true that an object which is sacred by itself may, on that account, protect everything in its neighbourhood; in Morocco any article deposited in the horm of a saint is safe, and among pagan Africans the same effect is produced by using fetishes as protectors of fields or houses. But a thing of inherent holiness may also be chosen for taboo purposes for the reason that its sanctity is supposed to give particular efficacy to any curse with which it may be loaded. 3 We have previously noticed another method of charging a curse with magic energy, namely, by giving it the form of an appeal to a supernatural being. So also spirits or gods are frequently invoked in curses referring to theft. On the Gold Coast, "when the owner of land sees that some one has been making a clearing on his land, he cuts the young inner branches of the palm tree and hangs them about the place where the trespass has been committed. As he hangs each leaf he says something to the following effect: The person who did this and did not make it known to me before he did it, if he comes here to do any other thing, may fetish Katawere (or Tanor or Fofie or other fetish) kill him and all his family.' In Samoa, in the case of a theft, the suspected persons had to swear before the chiefs, each one invoking the village god to send swift destruction if he had committed the crime; and if all had sworn and the culprit was still undiscovered, the chiefs solemnly made a similar invocation on behalf of the 1 Cf. van Gennep, op. cit. p. 185 (natives of Madagascar). It was an ancient Roman usage to inter the dead in the field belonging to the family, and in the works of the elder Cato there is a formula according to which the Italian labourer prayed the manes to take good care against thieves (Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit. p. 75). Cicero says (Pro domo, 41) that the house of each citizen was sacred because his household gods were there. 2 Rowley, Africa Unveiled, p. 174. Bastian, Afrikanische Reisen, p. 78 sq. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa, p. 85. Cf. Schneider, Die Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker, p. 230. 3 Supra, i. 564. Soc. no. xviii. 4 thief. The Hawaiians seem likewise to have appealed to an avenging deity in certain cursing ceremonies, which they performed for the purpose of detecting or punishing thieves. In ancient Greece it was a custom to dedicate a lost article to a deity, with a curse for those who kept it. Of the Melanesian taboo, again, Dr. Codrington observes that the power at the back of it "is that of the ghost or spirit in whose name, or in reliance upon whom, it is pronounced." In Ceylon, "to prevent fruit being stolen, the people hang up certain grotesque figures around the orchard and dedicate it to the devils, after which none of the native Ceylonese will dare even to touch the fruit on any account. Even the owner will not venture to use it till it be first liberated from the dedication." 5 On the landmarks of the ancient Babylonians, generally consisting of stone pillars in the form of a phallus, imprecations were inscribed with appeals to various deities. One of these boundary stones contains the following curse directed against the violator of its sacredness :-"Upon this man may the great gods Anu, Bêl, Ea, and Nusku, look wrathfully, uproot his foundation, and destroy his offspring"; and similar invocations are then made to many other gods. Now we can understand why gods so frequently take notice of offences against property. They are invoked in curses uttered against thieves; the invocation in a curse easily develops into a genuine prayer, and where this is the case the god is supposed to punish the offender of his own free will. Besides, he may be induced to do so by offerings. And when often appealed to in connection with theft, a supernatural being may finally come to be looked upon as a guardian of property. This, for instance, I take to be the explanation of the belief prevalent among the Berbers of Haha, in Southern Morocco, that some of the local saints punish thieves who approach their sanctuaries, even though the theft was committed elsewhere; being constantly appealed to in oaths taken by persons suspected of theft, they have become the permanent enemies of thieves. We can, further, understand why in some cases certain offences against property have actually assumed the character of a sacrilege, even apart from such as are committed in the proximity of a supernatural being. Curses are sometimes personified and elevated to the rank of divine agents; this, as we have seen, is the origin of the Erinyes of parents, beggars, and strangers, and of the Roman divi parentum and dii hospitales; and this is also in all probability the origin of the god Terminus. Or the curse may be transformed into an attribute of the chief god, not only because he is frequently appealed to in connection with offences of a certain kind, but also because such a god has a tendency to attract supernatural forces which are in harmony with his general nature. This explains the origin of conceptions such as Zeus opios and Jupiter Terminalis, as well as the extreme severity with which Yahweh treated the removal of landmarks. In all these cases there are indications of a connection between the god and a curse. Apart from other evidence to be found in Semitic antiquities, there is the anathema of Deuteronomy, "Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark." That the boundary stones dedicated to Zeus opios were originally charged with imprecations appears from a passage in Plato's 'Laws' quoted above, as also from inscriptions made on them. The Etruscans cursed anyone who should touch or displace a boundary mark :-Such a person shall be condemned by the gods; his house shall disappear; his race shall be extinguished; his limbs shall be covered with ulcers and waste away; his land shall no longer produce 3 fruits; hail, rust, and the fires of the dog-star shall destroy his harvests. Considering the important part played by blood as a conductor of imprecations, it is not improbable that the Roman ceremony of letting the blood of a sacrificial animal flow into the hole where the landmark was to be placed 2 was intended to give efficacy to a curse. In some parts of England a custom of annually "beating the bounds" of a parish has survived up to the present time, and this ceremony was formerly accompanied by religious services, in which a clergyman invoked curses on him who should transgress the bounds of his neighbour, and blessings on him who should regard the landmarks.3 The practice of cursing a thief may possibly even lie at the bottom of the belief of some savages that such a person will be punished after death. In a following chapter we shall notice instances where the efficacy of a curse is supposed to extend beyond the grave. But we shall also find other reasons for savage doctrines of retribution in the world to come. In the cases referred to above it is not expressly said that the post mortem punishment of the thief is inflicted by a god. : I have here only dealt with rules relating to property which have been recognised by custom or law. But the established principles of ownership have not always been admitted to be just in the civilised countries of the West they have called forth an opposition which is rapidly gaining in strength. The limited scope of the present work does not allow me to attempt a detailed account of this movement, with its variety of arguments and its multitudinous schemes of reform. The main reasons for complaint are :-first, that our actual law of property does not ensure to every labourer the whole produce of his labour; secondly, that it does not provide for every want |