delinquent well. He was remarkable for courage, and had signalised himself in the wars of the tribe. … No sooner did he hear the fatal news than he was seized by the most extraordinary convulsions and cramp in the stomach, which never ceased till he died, about sundown the same day. He was a strong man, in the prime of life, and if any pakeha [European] freethinker should have said he was not killed by the tapu [taboo] of the chief, which had been communicated to the food by contact, he would have been listened to with feelings of contempt for his ignorance and inability to understand plain and direct evidence.”562 This is not a solitary case. A Maori woman having eaten of some fruit, and being afterwards told that the fruit had being taken from a tabooed place, exclaimed that the spirit of the chief whose sanctity had been thus profaned would kill her. This was in the afternoon, and next day by twelve o'clock she was dead.563 An observer who knows the Maoris well, says, “Tapu [taboo] is an awful weapon. I have seen a strong young man die the same day he was tapued; the victims die under it as though their strength ran out as water.”564 A Maori chief's tinder-box was once the means of killing several persons; for having been lost by him, and found by some men who used it to light their pipes, they died of fright on learning to whom it had belonged. So too the garments of a high New Zealand chief will kill any one else who wears them. A chief was observed by a missionary to throw down a precipice a blanket which he found too heavy to carry. Being asked by the missionary why he did not leave it on a tree for the use of a future traveller, the chief replied that “it was the fear of its being taken by another which caused him to throw it where he did, for if it were worn, his tapu” (i.e. his spiritual power communicated by contact to the blanket and through the blanket to the man) “would kill the person.”565
No wonder therefore that the savage should rank these human divinities amongst what he regards as the dangerous classes, and should impose exactly the same restraints upon the one as upon the other. For instance, those who have defiled themselves by touching a dead body are regarded by the Maoris as in a very dangerous state, and are sedulously shunned and isolated. But the taboos observed by and towards these defiled persons (e.g. they may not touch food with their hands, and the vessels used by them may not be used by other people) are identical with those observed by and towards sacred chiefs.566 And, in general, the prohibition to use the dress, vessels, etc., of certain persons and the effects supposed to follow an infraction of the rule are exactly the same whether the persons to whom the things belong are sacred or what we might call unclean and polluted. As the garments which have been touched by a sacred chief kill those who handle them, so do the things which have been touched by a menstruous woman. An Australian blackfellow, who discovered that his wife had lain on his blanket at her menstrual period, killed her and died of terror himself within a fortnight.567 Hence Australian women at these times are forbidden under pain of death to touch anything that men use. They are also secluded at child-birth, and all vessels used by them during their seclusion are burned.568 Amongst some of the Indians of North America also women at menstruation are forbidden to touch men's utensils, which would be so defiled by their touch that their subsequent use would be attended by certain mischief or misfortune.569 Amongst the Eskimo of Alaska no one will willingly drink out of the same cup or eat out of the same dish that has been used by a woman at her confinement until it has been purified by certain incantations.570 Amongst some of the Tinneh Indians of North America the dishes out of which girls eat during their seclusion at puberty “are used by no other person, and wholly devoted to their own use.”571 Again amongst some Indian tribes of North America men who have slain enemies are considered to be in a state of uncleanness, and will not eat or drink out of any dish or smoke out of any pipe but their own for a considerable time after the slaughter, and no one will willingly use their dishes or pipes. They live in a kind of seclusion during this time, at the end of which all the dishes and pipes used by them during their seclusion are burned.572 Amongst the Kafirs, boys at circumcision live secluded in a special hut, and when they are healed all the vessels which they had used during their seclusion and the boyish mantles which they had hitherto worn are burned together with the hut.573 When a young Indian brave is out on the war-path for the first time the vessels he eats and drinks out of must be touched by no one else.574
Thus the rules of ceremonial purity observed by divine kings, chiefs, and priests, by homicides, women at child-birth, and so on, are in some respects alike. To us these different classes of persons appear to differ totally in character and condition; some of them we should call holy, others we might pronounce unclean and polluted. But the savage makes no such moral distinction between them; the conceptions of holiness and pollution are not yet differentiated in his mind. To him the common feature of all these persons is that they are dangerous and in danger, and the danger in which they stand and to which they expose others is what we should call spiritual or supernatural, that is, imaginary. The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary; imagination acts upon man as really as does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid. To seclude these persons from the rest of the world so that the dreaded spiritual danger shall neither reach them, nor spread from them, is the object of the taboos which they have to observe. These taboos act, so to say, as electrical insulators to preserve the spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or inflicting harm by contact with the outer world.575
No one was allowed to touch the body of the King or Queen of Tahiti;576 and no one may touch the King of Cambodia, for any purpose whatever, without his express command. In July 1874 the king was thrown from his carriage and lay insensible on the ground, but not one of his suite dared to touch him; a European coming to the spot carried the injured monarch to his palace.577 No one may touch the King of Corea; and if he deigns to touch a subject, the spot touched becomes sacred, and the person thus honoured must wear a visible mark (generally a cord of red silk) for the rest of his life. Above all, no iron may touch the king's body. In 1800 King Tieng-tsong-tai-oang died of a tumour in the back, no one dreaming of employing the lancet, which would probably have saved his life. It is said that one king suffered terribly from an abscess in the lip, till his physician called in a jester, whose antics made the king laugh heartily, and so the abscess burst.578 Roman and Sabine priests might not be shaved with iron but only with bronze razors or shears;579 and whenever an iron graving-tool was brought into the sacred grove of the Arval Brothers at Rome for the purpose of cutting an inscription in stone, an expiatory sacrifice of a lamb and a pig was offered, which was repeated when the graving-tool was removed from the grove.580 In Crete sacrifices were offered to Menedemus without the use of iron, because, it was said, Menedemus had been killed by an iron weapon in the Trojan war.581 The Archon of Plataeae might not touch iron; but once a year, at the annual commemoration of the men who fell at the battle of Plataeae, he was allowed to carry a sword wherewith to sacrifice a bull.582 To this day a Hottentot priest never uses an iron knife, but always a sharp splint of quartz in sacrificing an animal or circumcising a lad.583 Amongst the Moquis of Arizona stone knives, hatchets, etc., have passed out of common use, but are retained in religious ceremonies.584 Negroes of the Gold Coast remove all iron or steel from their person when they consult their fetish.585 The men who made the need-fire in Scotland had to divest themselves of all metal.586 In making the clavie (a kind of Yule-tide fire-wheel) at Burghead, no hammer may be used; the hammering must be done with a stone.587 Amongst the Jews no iron tool was used in building the temple at Jerusalem or in making an altar.588 The old wooden bridge (Pons Sublicius) at Rome, which was considered sacred, was made and had to be kept in repair without the use of iron or bronze.589 It was expressly provided by law that the temple of Jupiter Liber at Furfo might be repaired with iron tools.590 The council chamber at Cyzicus was constructed of wood without any iron nails, the beams being so arranged that they could be taken out and replaced.591 The late Raja Vijyanagram, a member of the Viceroy's Council, and described as one of the most enlightened and estimable of Hindu princes, would not allow iron to be used in the construction of buildings within his territory, believing that its use would inevitably be followed by small-pox and other epidemics.592
This superstitious objection to iron perhaps dates from that early time in the history of society when iron was still a novelty, and as such was viewed by many with suspicion and dislike. For everything new is apt to excite the awe and dread of the savage. “It is a curious superstition,” says a recent pioneer in Borneo, “this of the Dusuns, to attribute anything—whether good or bad, lucky or unlucky—that happens to
