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BOANERGES

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

iLoitHon: FETTER LANE, E.G.

C. F. CLAY, Manager

ffiUinburflt: loo, PRINCES STREET

Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO.

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^/l rights reserved

BOANERGES

BY

J^,v^^s RENDEL HARRIS

Cambridge : at the University Press

1913

<',

(fTambritigc :

FEINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE tINIVEESITY PRESS.

CHAP. I. II. III. IV. V.

VI. VII. VIII.

IX.

X.

XL

XII. XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI.

CONTENTS

Preface Errata Introduction

Boanerges .... The Parentage of the Twins The Thunder-bird . The Red Robes of the Dioscuri The Twin-Cult in West Africa The Twin-Cult in South Africa The Twin-Cult in East Africa The Twin-Cult in Madagascar The Twin-Cult in South America The Twin-Cult amongst the North Indians

American

Of Twins in Ancient Mexico .

The Twin-Heroes of North and South America

The Twin-Cult in Saghalien, Northern Japan,

and the Kurile Islands .... Of Twins in Burma, Cambodia, and the Malay

Archipelago

The Twin-Cult in Polynesia, Melanesia, and

Australia

The Twin-Cult in Assam, etc.

The Twin-Fear in Ancient India .

The Twin-Cult in Central Asia Minor .

Why did the Twins go to Sea?

The Twins and the Origin of Navigation

The Twins in Phoenician Tradition

PAGES

vii — ix

X

xi — xxiv

1—12

13—19

20—30

31—48

49—97

98—107

108—128

129—131

132—141

142—151 152—154 155—159

160—164

165—170

171—178 179—181 182—190 191—194 195—204 205—215 216—220

VI

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGES

XXII. The Voyage to Colchis of Jason and his

Companions 221—233

XXIII. The Ploughs and Yokes of the Heavenly Twins 234—249

XXIV. The Twin-Cult at Edessa .... 250—264 XXV. Further Traces of the Twins in Arabia and

in Palestine 265—270

XXVI. The Twin-Cult in Egypt 271—274

XXVII. The Story of Esau and Jacob interpreted . 275—280 XXVIII. Further Traces of Dioscurism on the Sea of

Galilee 281—288

XXIX. The Dioscuric Element in II Maccabees . 289—290

XXX. On the Names commonly given to Twin

Children 291—296

XXXI. On the Twins in the Lettish Folk-songs and

on the Holy Oak 297—303

XXXII. The Heavenly Twins in Graeco-Roman Tradi-

tion 304—312

XXXIII. Some Further Points of Contact between

Graeco-Roman Beliefs and Savage Life . 313 — 316

XXXIV. Some Further Remarks on Twin-Towns and

Twin-Sanctuaries 317 — 325

XXXV. The Case of King Keleos .... 326—332

XXXVI. Jason and the Symplegades .... 333—337

XXXVII. Jason and Triptolemos 338—343

XXXVIII. The Woodpecker and the Plough . . . 344—347

XXXIX. The Korybantes and the infant Zeus . . 348—353

XL. Bees and the Holy Oak 354—357

XLI. The Twins in Western Europe . . . 358—360

XLII. Dioscurism and Jasonism .... 361 — 374 XLIII. Some Further Remarks upon Graeco-Roman

Dioscurism 375 — 379

XLIV. Are the Twin-Myths one or many? . . 380—383 XLV. Twins in the Bridal-Chamber and in the Birth- Chamber 384—388

Additional Notes 389—419

Index 420—424

PEEFACE

XN publishing the present volume, I must confess that there are results arrived at, and other results adum- brated, which I did not anticipate when I set to work to arrange into something like order the mass of information which I had collected concerning the antiquity and wide diffusion of Twin-cults, and their influence upon religions past and present. The investigation, however, opened up from point to point, in a way that made it impossible for me to limit its scope or obscure its meaning. As often as I repeated to myself the warning to beware of the idea that one had found a master-key in mythology, so often some fresh door or window would open under the stress of the particular key that I was carrying ; and it was necessary to go on with what one had begun, when the first stages of enquiry were so rich in results. However much one might elect to rest and be thankful over the elucidations which a knowledge of Twin-cults furnishes to the history of the Ancient Roman State or of the Modern Roman Church, we could not stop the investigation in mid-stream, and say that it should not be carried into the history of the Ancient Jewish State, or the Modern Christian Church. There was a harvest of results in the myths and legends of the Book of Genesis, which now for the first time became intelligible; but the pathway of the enquirer led on from Genesis into the books of the Maccabees ; and by establishing Dioscurism for the period immediately preceding the Christian era, one was

Vm PREFACE

able to take a flying leap into the very centre of the Gospel history. As said above, this was not what I originally ex- pected or intended : but the motion of the enquiry could not be arrested. If we have really found a clue for the elimina- tion of certain Gospel miracles from the pages of history, we must follow the clue as far as it can fairly be traced, on the ground that what is good for the Old Testament or for Judaism cannot necessarily be illicit for the New Testament or for Christianity. The value of the enquiry and its supposed results will be estimated later on by those who are more expert than ourselves in theological learning, and in the folk-lore which we have assumed to be a branch of theology.

No book that I have ever written has left me with a greater burden of indebtedness to my friends; they have furnished me with parallels and with facts from the four corners of the world and from the longest extension of time. It is impossible to name them all ; here and there the reader will find an acknowledgement made for some service or information, or verified quotation. My own students, from their international character (Woodbrooke being a meeting place of the nations), have delved for me into the folk-lore of Europe, Asia, Australia, and America : if I mention one who has worked harder for me and brought home more spoil than others, it will be my friend, Mr R, H. D. Willey. Dr Glover, as in previous cases, has helped me with many wise sugges- tions, and with the elimination of many errors, typographical and otherwise. Mr F. G. Montagu Powell supplied me with an actual carved image of a dead twin, which he had obtained from his son, who is a doctor in Lagos. Dr Frazer gave me many a hint from his vast collection of folk-lore. Mr Fritz Krenkow helped me where I was altogether unfurnished, in the region of early Arabic literature. My Missionary friends,

PREFACE IX

too, in many a field of foreign service, found for me one desired link after another. From Miss Jane Harrison and Prof. Gilbert Murray I have had some wise criticisms and valuable confirmations. It has been difficult to acknow- ledge all that I received : but I tender grateful thanks to one and all, with the assurance that none of my friends is in any way involved in any discredit attaching to conclusions that I have drawn or suggested.

In two directions I should like to have improved the book ; first, it has occasionally happened that a reference could not be verified, owing to the distance at which I live from the great libraries : second, it will be felt at many points, that the book ought to have been illustrated ; the expense has deterred me from an adornment of the pages which I recognise to be almost necessary.

For the first time in my life I have made an index to my book, for which, rough as it is, my readers will be grateful.

RENDEL HARRIS.

"woodbrooke,

Selly Oak.

1 August 1913.

H. B.

EREATA

p. 61, 1. 3, for contrast read compare.

p. 63 note, add sets after Benin.

p. 78, 1. 19, for Cessou read Ceston, and again 1. 25.

p. 213, note i, for Larkey read Larkby.

p. 241, note, for J. H. Allen read J. H. Allan.

p. 284, note ^, for Sauve read Sauv6, and corr. ref. to v. 157 fif.

p. 287, 1. 12, for Xenophon read Xanthippos.

INTEODUCTION

In the present treatise, I propose to make a more extended study of the Cult of the Heavenly Twins than I was able to attempt in my previous investigations into the subject. It was inevitable that the discovery which I made of the existence of pairs of twin saints in the Church calendars, and which led back naturally to the place of the Heavenly Twins in the religions of Greece and Rome, should require to be approached from the side of anthropology rather than from that of ecclesiastical or classical culture, as soon as it became clear that the phenomena under examination were world wide, and that the religious practices involved were the product of all the ages of human history. At the same time, I do not want to discuss the subject altogether de novo, nor have I the expectation of writing the one book on this particular subject. The banquet of research at which I am seated is likely to be one of many courses : if I could fancy myself beginning once more at the first course, I have no prospect of sitting the feast out ah ovo usque ad mala. Indeed, I am reasonably sure that I shall never get to the apples at all, and on that ground might well be absolved from the completeness which one naturally desires in the study of a single compartment of knowledge. For these reasons, then, I think it best to assume some of the results which I have arrived at in previous books and articles on the subject, and to use these results as a basis for further study, making such changes as may be necessary in the light of clearer knowledge, and confirming previous enquiries made in limited areas by the parallels which are supplied by a wider know- ledge of the world and of the history of man.

h 2

Xll INTRODUCTION

My first book on the Twin-Cult was an expansion of a

short course of lectures given in Cambridge in the year

1903. It was entitled the Dioscuri in the Christian Legends.

Starting from the observation that there was a tendency in

human nomenclature to express by similarity of sound or by

parallelism of meaning the twin relationship, it was suggested

(and this was the real point of departure in the enquiry)

Florus that Florus and Laurus in the Byzantine and other calendars

Laurus were twins. Vespasian's retort upon a courtier who had

twin- corrected him for saying plostrum instead of plaustrum by

' calling him Flaurus instead of Florus, may be used to

illustrate the pronunciation of the names.

It was then noted that amongst the Russian peasantry

\j Florus and Laurus (or as they say Frol and Laviur) are

with care regarded as the patron saints of horses, which led to the

o orses; ^^^^^ suggestion that they were the representatives of the

Great Twin-Brethren of pre-Christian times.

That they were twins was confirmed by a reference to they were their Acts in the Synaxaria of the Greek Church, where they were described as twin-brethren, who were of the craft of stone-masons, the day of their celebration being the 18th of August.

This might have been confirmed by calendars of the Syrian Church ; for example, in the Paris Syriac MS. 142, they are commemorated as follows :

18th of Ab. Commemoration of the holy martyrs, the twin-brethren Laurus and Florus.

Ah was, of course, the substitute for August, when the festival was taken over, and it is to be observed that it was as twins that they were in the first instance commemorated in Syria.

The next fact betrayed by the Church calendars, was that the 18th of August was the day on which the Greek Church honours St Helena, the mother of Constantine, which immediately suggested that the Cult of the Twins was accompanied by a cult of their sister ; Castor and Pollux, as Florus and Laurus, being ecclesiastically attached to their

stone- masons.

INTRODUCTION XIU

sister Helen, who has now become the Dowager Empress of Cult of T» , . Helen,

iiyzantium.

The next step was to show why the Byzantine hagiolo- gists describe the twins as stone-masons, rather than as horse riders or horse-rearers, as in Homer and elsewhere ; or since the Russian connection between the Twins and horses was probably primitive, we had to ask the question whether the Heavenly Twins were builders in stone as well as tamers of Heavenly horses. The latter was well known, not only from Homeric builders, references to horse-taming Castor, but also from the parallel cults in ancient Greece and in India (where the Twins are actually known as Agvinau or the Dual Horsemen). The other part of the identification was made for Castor and Pollux, from Greek traditions of cities that they had built, and of cities that they had destroyed : in particular it was shown that the title Aairepcrai,, which had been given to them in ancient times, and was commonly interpreted by the scholiasts as the Destroyers of the City Las, was a misunder- standing of an original Stone-Workers. And a comparison with kindred myths, such as that of the Theban twins, Zethus and Amphion, confirmed the belief that the twins were builders of cities, and patrons and inventors of architec- ture. By this time, the questions of the origin, meaning, and diffusion of the Twin-Cult were moved into a wider field. The Greek parallels showed that the worship of the Great Twin- Brethren was not confined to Sparta, nor to Dorian colonies. The Indian parallels suggested that the myth might go back to the origins of the Aryan race. The Twins were found in Persia as well as in India, and, if we examined the Vedic hymns, we could deduce such a variety of useful offices discharged by the twins, as to make it certain that a cult, which we find so highly differentiated, must be of extreme antiquity.

It was then shown that a cult of the same kind had Twin- been described by Tacitus, as prevailing among the Naharvali g^^^^a, the in Eastern Europe (perhaps in Lithuania), and that the Naharvali. existing folk-songs of the Lettish people describe certain Sons of God who ride upon horses, and who are identified.

XIV INTRODUCTION

from certain points of view, with the Morning Star, and the Evening Star. This discovery was important, not only for its confirmation of the observation of Tacitus, who said that the young men named Alois amongst the Lithuanians were honoured as Castor and Pollux amongst the Romans, but also because it suggested that there was an earlier stage of stellar identification which preceded that of the well-known stars in the constellation Gemini. It was clear that at one time the Aryan race did not know that the Morning Star was the same as the Evening Star ; and because they were alike, they were treated as twins, rather than as the same star. Moreover, they never appeared in the East and West on the same night, but, as it was said, when one was up, the other was down, and conversely, which led at once to the beautiful story of the divided immortality of Castor and Pollux in the Greek mythology. This strange belief in the duality of the planet Venus was illustrated subsequently on a journey across Asia Minor, when I could not find anyone who was aware that the Morning Star was the same as the Evening Star. The Greeks themselves seem to have arrived at this knowledge quite late. Twins half We are now able to detect the earlier belief which lay

A 1 •/

half im- behind the Greek legend of the divided immortality of mortal. Castor and Pollux, and to suspect that in each case of a pair of Great Twin Brethren, one of the pair was mortal and the other was immortal ; this was due, not to a study of the stars, but to the dual paternity, which had affected the mother of twins, one parent being an immortal god, and the other a mortal man. This observation turned out to be very important ; it was not suspected at the time, as proved afterwards to be the case, that the belief in question was not confined to the Aryan race, but that, in some form or other, the dual paternity theory could be illustrated fi-om the most uncivilized and savage races that exist upon the planet ; so that we need not have begun <|ur enquiry with ancient histories or with classical writers ; we might have begun it with the modern missionary and traveller engaged in work for and observations of the rudest peoples. This point was

INTRODUCTION XV

to come out more clearly at a later stage. It is interesting to note that in these investigations the Zodiac had already- been left far behind; whatever may be the reason for including the Heavenly Twins in the Zodiac, or in an early calendar of months, we were not dealing with Babylonian myth-making, but with something much earlier. In the history of the Twins, the elevation to a Zodiacal peerage is almost the last honour that is conferred upon them.

The next step in the enquiry was to collect from the Twins in Vedic literature the varied functions discharged by the Twin-Brethren, some of which could be paralleled at once from Western twin-cults. The principal of these functions were:

(1) To save from darkness :

(2) To restore youth and remove senility :

(3) To protect in battle :

(4) To act as physicians (especially as miracle-workers, in healing the blind, the lame, etc.):

(5) To be the patrons of the bride -chamber, and bless newly married people :

(6) To promote fertility in men, as well as in animal life and in plant life (as by the invention of the plough and the bestowal of the rain and dew) :

(7) To protect travellers by land and sea, under which latter head their fame became great in the Mediterranean, where, indeed, it subsists even to the present day.

It has already been intimated that a cult so highly evolved has antiquity written large upon it : it must go back to the earliest pages of human history. A superficial objection has been, however, made to some of the character- istics here recognised as denoting the Twin-Horsemen, on the ground that the functions assigned to them really belong to other gods, as, for instance, rain-making to Indra, and military prowess to other gods; so that we ought not to emphasise their functions so strongly on the ground of occasional Vedic references, and it is even said that, in any case, more proof

XVI INTRODUCTION

is required that the Vedic Horsemen are the Dioscuri. The objection may be noted ; it will answer itself as the enquiry proceeds: when it has been shown that similar beliefs can be traced all over the rest of the world, we shall not be able to insulate India, or even Palestine. It may, however, be remarked in passing, that the variety of functions assigned to the Great Twins is just as marked in the West as in the East : though their place in the pantheon of Olympus is barely recognised, they share functions with almost every Twins Olympic god : but it is not they who are encroaching upon than^^ the Olympians: every one knows, by this time, that, with Olympic some exceptions, it is the Olympians who are modern: the overlapping in function between them and the Twins arises from the fact that the religious stratum which appears in the Olympic religion is superposed upon earlier strata, which it does not wholly cover: and when the antiquity of the Twin-Cult is demonstrated, there is no difficulty in their exercising powers of divination with Athena, or going hunting after the fashion of Artemis. With Zeus they share antiquity as well as function, and the latter because they are Dioscuri, Zeus hoys.

To return to the investigation in Dioscuri and the Christian legends. The attempt to classify the functions which the Dioscuri exercised both in the East and the West, led to a startling result in another quarter of the Christian world. It is well known that legend had been busy with St Thomas and with his place in the propagation of Christianity in the East, say from Edessa to India. These legends occur in an early Syriac document, called by the Dioscuri name of the Acts of Thomas, which gives the story of St ^Tlwmas'^ Thomas' apostolate in native Syriac, showing no signs of a translation. It is well known that the name Thomas means nothing more or less than Twin; and when we read the account of his mission, we find him discharging Dioscuric functions all along the line. He can build palaces and temples and tombs; he can make ploughs and yokes, and masts for ships; he can tame animals for driving, and he can act as the patron of a wedding ; to say nothing of other

INTRODUCTION XVll

powers and interests not so obviously Dioscuric. In all these functions he has with him as his immortal companion and counterpart, similar in every respect to himself, the Lord Jesus; and although the scribes of the Acts have tried to obliterate the startling statement, he is, over and over again, recognised as being the Twin of the Messiah. Attempts on the part of the scribes to substitute a slightly different word, to read Abyss of the Messiah, or Ocean-flood of the Messiah (Tehoma for Tauma), only serve by their unintelligi- bility to bring more strongly into relief the fact that in the earliest days of the Syrian Church at Edessa, Jesus and Thomas were regarded as Twin-Brethren. They were, in consequence, the Dioscures of the City: and there was raised the interesting question whether we could find the original Dioscures, whom they might be assumed to have displaced, in the same way as Castor and Pollux were displaced in the West by Floras and Laurus and other pairs of saints. It was well known that the chief religion at Edessa was Solar, Twins at in which the Sun was honoured along with two assessors, ^^^^' named Monim and Aziz. The names appear to be Semitic, but there can be little doubt that they correspond to the Twin-Brethren of the Aryan religions : in particular, their close relation to the Sun-god, shows them to be parallel to the two torch bearers of the Mithraic monuments, one of whom stands with a torch raised, and the other with his torch depressed, and who are known by the names of Cautes and Cautopates. As, however, in spite of the similarity of these names, which suggests twinship, nothing was known as to the meaning of the names, nor as to the functions which they discharged, we could not take the final step of identifying Monim and Aziz with Cautes and Cautopates. The Mithraic or Persian figures remained over for further investigation. It was, however, fairly established that the Edessan religion had Dioscuric features. It is inconceivable that there should be so many twin-traits in the Acts of Thomas unless the writer had been using Jesus and Thomas to replace some other pair of Great Brethren.

In this connection we tried to establish the existence of

XVlll INTRODUCTION

Twin the Dioscuric stars on the coinage of Edessa, and to show Edessa. ^^^^ *he two great pillars, which still rise above the city from the ramparts of its citadel, were votive pillars in honour of the Twins, and it was suggested that the Syriac inscription on one of the pillars could be read in that sense. Under both these heads there was something wanting to the argument ; the numismatic evidence was susceptible of other interpretations and the decipherment of the inscription on the pillar was challenged by Prof. Burkitt on an important point. So that, here again, caution and repeated investigation were necessary. The main points as to the existence of Dioscuric worship at Edessa are quite clearly made out. The Twins were there from old time, and they were replaced by Jesus and Thomas. That was the chief result of the enquiry, and, it need hardly be said, it raised at once the question whether the Twins had been similarly displaced elsewhere, and whether Jesus and Thomas were really Twins, or whether they were only treated as such by the hagiologist, for the sake of the good results that would follow in the depaganisation of Edessa.

Collaterally, again, the question was raised as to the place of the Twin-Cult in the Semitic religion. Edessa, itself, was in ancient times a meeting point of religions : it is so, almost as decidedly, to-day. We must not, however, assume Semitic ancestry for the Twins because they are called Monim and Aziz: these might be only names given by the Edessan Arabs to the Aryan or Parthian Twins. The question as to the existence of Twins in Semitic religion has to be investigated on its own merits, as, for instance, in Phoenicia (though we are not quite sure that Phoenicia is originally Semitic) and in Palestine and Arabia. On these points also further enquiry was to be desired.

In the volume which followed, named the Cult of the Heavenly Twins (published in 1906), the enquiry was re- sumed : and this time, instead of beginning with the pairs of twin-saints under ecclesiastical disguise in the Calendar, I began at the opposite end of the evolution of the cult, with a study of the Taboo of Twins, which prevails to this day

INTRODUCTION XIX

among savage tribes, and constitutes their greatest Fear or Supreme Reverence, and so furnishes the basis from which the evolution of Natural Religion must inevitably proceed. It was shown, in the first instance, that the Taboo in question, which can be traced through almost all elementary Twin- races, involved in its earliest stage the destruction of the ^mongele- mother of the twins, the twins themselves, and of the house mentary and the chattels which might conceivably have been infected by the Taboo. From this simple solution of the problem raised by the great Fear for the Savage, we passed on to consider those subsequent stages of reflection in which reason was sought for the phenomenon, and for the best way of dealing with it, and measures of mitigation were proposed for the severity with which the unfortunate causes of the Taboo were treated. It became more and more clear that this initial application of reason, which started from the observation that the mother had either done or suffered something dreadful, resulted in the hypothesis of a double paternity, of the kind which is common in Greek and Roman mythology ; only the second father was not yet become an Olympian : he was, perhaps, only a spirit, or the externalised soul of some person or thing, or an animal — by preference a bird. It was natural that the hypothesis of dual parentage should lead to some difference in the treatment of the children ; if only one was abnormal, a very elementary instinct of justice would suggest that only one should be killed. From this point the progress of humane feeling was seen in the further development of lenity in the substitution of exile for death, or its equivalent, exposure. The mother and children are now isolated, and the result of their isolation is to make their retreat in wood or in island, into a sanctuary : thus, from the taboo on twins, there arose the sanctuary rights of Twin-towns. It was suggested that these Twin-towns, which still exist in their earliest simplicity Formation in parts of Africa, were at one time very common in Europe, to^ng, and that Rome itself was such a sanctuary. An important discovery was then made, that the Taboo on Twins is not always interpreted as Evil, but that there are tribes to-day

XX INTRODUCTION

which regard Twins as a blessing, though they show, by their, purifications of the persons involved, and of the community in which they appear, that the second interpretation either leans upon the first, which it has corrected, or, which is perhaps the more accurate way of stating the case, that the primitive Fear, aroused by the uncommon or abnormal event, has been explained in two opposite senses. It is curious that, to this day, tribes which are locally almost contiguous, will take opposite views of the perplexing phe- nomenon. Those which think twins a blessing appear to do so, because they find them serviceable; they, with their mother, stand for abnormal fertility, which is thought of as contagious; and they are credited with control of the influences which make for fertility, which gives them at once a place of authority, because of their usefulness, in the tribes where they are born. The next important step was the discovery that there were tribes in S.E. Africa, which had Twins referred the parentage of both the twins to the Sky (or of the Sky. Perhaps to its equivalent, the Thunder) and that the Twins had obtained, through this parentage, the title of Sky- children, or Thunder-children. We are now at a stage in the evolution of the cult which must have been very nearly that of the ancestors of the Greeks, when they gave to their idealised Twin-Brethren, the title of Dioscuri, or Zeus' boys. From this point, the investigation proceeds with comparative ease, the more savage interpretations of twinship being now left behind, except for stray survivals of ancient customs; and an increasing sense is developed of the greatness, and goodness, and usefulness of the Twins, as being, either wholly or in part, the descendants and representatives of the Sky-god. Various It was now possible to explain why the Twins had such

of twins. ^ prominent place in agriculture, and amongst the tribal rain-makers. Successive inventions could be directly traced to them, and they became the patrons of sexual acts and the restorers of lapsed sexual functions. They acquired mantic gifts, and became prophets and healers; they used their relation to the all-seeing Heaven to determine whether men

INTRODUCTION XXI

spoke truly, and became the patrons of trust, and of commerce which reposes on trust, and the punishers of perjury. In cases where the twins were not, both of them, credited to celestial parentage, it was natural that steps should be taken to define, if possible, the Immortal one of the pair, and to distinguish him from his less favoured brother. Traces were found of favourite forms of differentiation, such as Red and White, Rough and Smooth, Strong and Weak, Mechanic or Artist, or by the discrimination of names expressing either the priority of one twin over the other, or their special characteristics. The naming of twins was evidently a subject deserving further and closer attention. The use of assonant names was especially noticed.

The rest of the book was chiefly devoted to the expansion and verification of the former thesis that the ecclesiastical calendar was full of cases of disguised twins, who were, Twins presumably, transferred to the service of the Church from calendar. the Dioscuric cults which prevailed all over Europe before the introduction of Christianity. The most interesting cases were those of Cosmas and Damian, Protasius and Gervasius, the Tergemini at Langres (Speusippus and his brethren), Nearchus and Polyeuctes. A further enquiry was made into the case of Judas Thomas; and some explanations were given of the symbols proper to represent the Dioscuri in Sparta and elsewhere.

It will be seen that the investigations, which we have thus briefly summarised, had thrown a great light upon the history of that branch of human culture, which we now call Dioscurism. Much still remained to be cleared up, both with regard to the savage origins, and with regard to the ecclesiastical disguises of the cult : special investigation was also necessary in explanation of certain functions discharged by the Heavenly Twins, which did not seem to have any connection with savage life, or with savage explanations of life. To take a single case of one of the most widespread Dioscuric functions, the protection of sailors in the Mediter- ranean and elsewhere, it was by no means obvious how such

XXll

INTRODUCTION

Twins protect sailors.

Twins as Eiver-

Saints.

a function should have fallen to the lot either of twins, or the descendants of twins. The same thing appears in the functions of chariot-driving and horse - training : we may easily prove these functions to exist over wide areas ; but we cannot easily prove that they were implicit in the archaic cult. These and similar enquiries remain over, to be dis- cussed more carefully as we know our Twins better, and as we cease to be satisfied with merely recording the facts, without giving a reason for the facts.

In order to solve the question as to why the Heavenly Twins became the special patrons of sailors, and are so, to some extent, even to the present day, it did not seem to me to be adequate to label the Twins as Universal Saviours, and then deduce from that title one of their most striking functions ; nor did it seem sufficient to say that the respect paid by sailors to the Twins was due to the control which the Twins exercised over the weather by their affiliation with the Sky-god ; for we found them exercising their art over inland waters and streams, as well as over open seas, and iur those cases the control of the weather seemed hardly an adequate motive. Accordingly I proceeded to make a further study of the Dioscuri as Sea-Saints, and discovered that there were not a few cases in which it could be proved that the Twins had definitely come down-stream, and had been honoured on rivers before ever they came to be revered at sea : an interesting case was that of Romulus and Remus, who are still worshipped on the Riviera as San Romolo and San Remo, and under other disguises can easily be recognised on the Atlantic sea-board and else- where.

These results were presented to the Oxford Congress for the History of Religions in 1908, and were published in the Contemporary Review in January of the following year. Many new illustrations were given, not only of the general thesis that the Dioscuri were River-Saints before they were Sea-Saints, but also of their care of navigation in dangerous shallows and straits, and of their patronage of harbours and of lighthouses.

INTRODUCTION XXllI

Some of these points may be re-stated in the following pages : but at present it is to be noticed that in taking the Dioscuri up-stream and inland, we had definitely abandoned the idea that the reason of their nautical activity lay in their care of the weather. We shall, therefore, be obliged to seek for another solution, and we shall find it before very long. We are to go up the stream of time, as well as to ascend the great rivers : we must go back to the time before man had donned the ' robur et aes triplex,' which, Horace says, must have been the equipment of the first navigator; we must proceed as if the sea did not exist, and search for simpler experiments than those which made Horace wonder : and as the stream of time is ascended by us, the Twins are to ascend with us, and help us to the explanation of their various functions. It does not, at first sight, seem likely that the art of navigation can be proved to be a Dioscuric art from its first inception, but this is the direction in which the ship's head (the ship itself being now much diminished) appears to be pointing.

Now let us make the briefest possible summary of the results already arrived at, so that in the following pages we may see how to confirm them and how to extend them, where to limit the area or the time to which they are to be referred, and where to extend and make universal the facts which have come to our knowledge. The following summary, necessarily incomplete, will assist our further investigations.

The appearance of Twins is regarded by primitive man with aversion : they are a great Fear, a Taboo. The mother of such twins, and the twins themselves, must b'e killed : the settlement must be purified from the Taboo. She, the mother, is either a criminal or a victim ; she has had con- nection with a spirit, or the numen residing animistically in some object ; perhaps it was a bird, perhaps it was the thunder, or the lightning, or the sky.

Alleviations are proposed ; spare one child (but which ?), spare the mother. Exile the mother and kill the children : exile the mother and the children, to an island or a village

XXIV INTRODUCTION

of their own : make a twin-island, or twin-sanctuary, or twin-village, or place of refuge.

Or perhaps they are not bad at all; then do not kill them : use purificatory rites and revere them ; perhaps they are the children, one of them at least, of the Sky, or the Thunder. Then they can help with rain-making, and their mother, by contact, can fertilise fields and plants and crops. Primitive agriculture is of the woman ; how much more is it of the woman who has borne twins ! Perhaps they will show us how to make digging-sticks and ploughs. As they are fertile they will help women who are going to have offspring, and men and women who are past having any. If their father is the Sky the boys will get rain from him ; and he will help them to find stolen property (for he sees and knows every- thing), and to know if men speak truly : and they will help trading (for the merchants can deposit their goods securely in the neighbourhood of their sanctuaries), and they will punish lying. As they know what their father knows, they will tell us in dreams things that we ought to know, and the medicines that we ought to apply to our diseases ; and we will make images of them by which we may keep them in remembrance, and make our salutations before them.

This is a brief summary of the facts already collected about Twins.

CHAPTER I

BOANERGES

As is well known, the title which we place at the head of this chapter is the name which is given in the Gospel of Mark to James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, and which is explained by the Evangelist as meaning ' Sons of Thunder.' Sons of Neither of the two other Synoptic writers, Matthew and Luke, transfers this statement of Mark to his pages. It may, perhaps, be inferred that they found the explanation unintelligible or objectionable. The only other ancient Christian writing in which it occurs is in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, where Justin professes to be giving information from the Memoirs of the Apostles, and was, therefore, either working directly from the Petrine tra- dition in Mark, or from some collateral tradition^: in either case, the antiquity of the statement is confirmed ; and the probability that Justin's source is Mark will be increased when we observe that they appear to share in a peculiar and perhaps corrupt form of spelling for the name.

The difficulties attaching to the Marcan statement relate, first, to the form of the spelling ; second, to the meaning of its equivalent translation.

As there seemed to be no Hebrew word exactly answering to the termination -reges or -erges, those of the early Fathers who were scholars could do little with the linguistic problem, and it was reserved for Jerome to suggest that, as the word

^ Justin, Dial. 106. 'He clianged the name of one of the Apostles and called him Peter : and in his (Peter's) memoirs it is also recorded to have happened, that he changed the name of the sons of Zebedee to Sons of Thunder (Boanerges).'

H. B. 1

2 BOANERGES [CH.

for Thunder in Hebrew is re'em, where the middle letter (Ayin) is often transliterated in Greek by g, an error had been made in the final consonant of a Semitic word : Boane- would, then, be an attempt to transliterate, from some dialect or other, the word for * Sons of,' which we commonly write B'ne.

It is possible that Jerome's is the right solution. It may, however, be suggested, that there is a closely related root in the Arabic language, which may furnish us the necessary explanation ; the word ragasa (u*»-j) means to ' roar aloud,' 'to thunder 1.' Perhaps, then, this is the root that we are in search of.

Turn, now, to the explanation which Mark gives of the matter. He tells us to equate the transliterated Semitic word with ' Sons of Thunder ' ; and we shall see that no room is left for reasonable doubt as to what was meant by the peculiar appellation given to the two young men.

None of the Fathers, however, seems to have had any suspicion as to the true meaning; and the modern com- mentators are as much at sea as their patristic antecedents. The common method of interpretation is to compare the forceful actions and utterances of James and John with the Origen on thunder. Thus, in the recently discovered scholia of Origen oanerges. ^^ ^j^^ Apocalypse, when Origen comes to discuss the seven thunders in c. 10, v. 3, and the proposal to incorporate the voices of these seven thunders in the Apocalypse, he remarks parenthetically that ' if you enquire into the case of the Sons of Thunder, James and John, whom Jesus called Boanerges, that is. Sons of Thunder, you will find them very properly called Sons of Thunder on account of the loud voice of their ideas and doctrines ^'

The same line is taken among the moderns by Dr Swete, who tells us» that ' in the case of James, nothing remains to

1 The same word occurs in Hebrew (? Aramaic) in the second Psalm, • Wherefore do the heathen rage ? ' as our translators imitatively rendered the word. Cf. the Latin, Quare/remwerujit gentes? ' " Texte u. Untersuch. xxxvin. 3, p. 40.

^ Comm. on Mark, iii. 17. ■ >

l] BOANERGES S

justify the title beyond the fact of his early martyrdom, probably due to the force of his denunciations (Acts xii. 2) : John's vorjTT) fipovrrj (Orig. Philoc. XV. 18) is heard in Gospel, Epistles, and Apocaljrpse.'

It is not necessary to examine into any further ex- planations, either ancient or modem, of the perplexing Boanerges, since it is clear that ' Sons of Thunder ' is quite intelligible from the standpoint of folk-lore, and means that the persons so named were either actually twins or so twin- like in appearance or action, that they might appropriately be spoken of as 'the twins.' As the results which will follow this identification are of the highest importance, it will be well to set down some of the confirmations of the correctness of the interpretation. Can we find ' sons of thunder ' elsewhere, either exactly so named or in equivalent language ? Can we find either ' sons of the sky,' or ' sons of lightning,' as parallels to the Boanerges ? And if they are found, is there any evidence which suggests that the idea that twins were children of the thunder was as much at home in Palestine as in the outside world ? The first and most obvious remark to be made is that the expression is qvum proadme the equivalent of the title by which the Spartan Twins were known ; for ' Dioscuri ' is literally ' Zeus' boys,' and while it is common to explain Zeus Twins etymologically as the equivalent of the bright sky (Dyaus), -g^l everyone knows that the actual Zeus is just as much the Thunder as he is the Bright Sky ; in Graeco-Roman circles he is, in fact, the thunder-god rather than the sky-god ; and, as might be expected, when we move into regions further . north it is the Thunder-god whom we meet in the person of Thor, and not the bright sky at all. The fact is that the original notion of ' sky * involved the idea of ' thunder ' ; and just as in the African tribes of to-day, one word did duty for both.

We shall see, by-and-by, when we examine into the cult of the Heavenly Twins more closely, that in almost every case in which the Twins are represented, in art, in worship, by an attached priesthood, or by appropriate sacrifices, one colour

1—2

4 BOANERGES [CH»

dominates the representations, the red colour of the lightning. There is not the slightest objection to the equation of the Greek Dioscuri with the Children of the Thunder.

To take the matter a. step further: it has been shown that amongst the Baronga tribes in Portuguese East Africa, it is the custom to attach to twins, when born, the collective Bana-ba- name of ' Bana-ba-Tilo,' or ' children of Tilo,' where the word ' Tilo ' is used for ' sky ' in the general sense, including the thunder and lightning, and possibly the rain. And it was evident, as soon as attention was drawn to it, that we had here in an African tribe the very same nomenclature of twins which we find for the special ideal twins. Castor and Pollux, amongst the Greeks. It is curious that Dr Frazer, who had studied the account of the Baronga customs given by M. Junod, the Swiss missionary, did not notice the equivalence between Bana-ba-Tilo and Dioscuri, until I pointed it out to him ; and he promptly retorted upon my own lack of vision by remarking that in that case we had the explanation of the perplexing Boanerges in the New Testa- ment. We had between us arrived at the equivalence : Boanerges = Dioscuri = Bana-ba-Tilo !

We shall have to refer to the Baronga tribes again for other features of the twin-cult: at the present point, all that is necessary is to show how widespread is the idea that twins are to be assigned, either wholly or in part, to the parentage of the thunder\

Now let us return to Palestine. If we take the Survey Twins in map of the Palestine Exploration Society, we shall find a Palestine. yjUage not far from Jaffa, marked by the name of Ibn Ahraq or Ihraq. It is four or five miles from Jaffa, and a little to the north of the road that leads from Jaffa to Jerusalem. The name means ' Son of Lightnings,' and suggests at once a classification with the 'Sons of Thunder' that we are discussing : only, in that case, we should expect a dual or a plural in the Arabic. Now let us look at the book of

1 M. Junod's work, Les Ba-ronga, 6tude ethnographique sur les indigenes- de la Baie de Delagoa, was published at Neuch&tel in 1898 in vol. 10 of Bulletin de la Soci6t€ Neuchateloise de Geographic.

l] BOANERGES 3

Joshua xix. 45, where we shall find a series of place-names in the tribe of Dan and amongst them Jehud and Bne- Baraq and Oath-Rimmon. Here we have the name in its original form, with the desired plural, while the worship of the thunder is further attested by the presence in the neighbourhood of a place which is compounded with that of the Thunder-god (Rimmon). We need not, therefore, hesitate to say that there was an ancient town in Palestine, not far from Jaffa, which was named after the Heavenly Twins. Further confirmation will be found in the great inscription of Sennacherib, which mentions a town Bana-ai- bar-qa in connection with Joppa and Beth-dagon. We are sure, then, that such a town as was named Sons of Lightning existed from the earliest times in Western Palestine.

We have now to investigate further the meaning of this peculiar appellation: and it seems as if it could be only one of three things : either (a) it is a settlement of people coming from elsewhere, and bringing with them the name of their protector-gods, much as the Greeks gave the name of Tyndaris to a settlement in Sicily, in honour of the Tyndaridae, or Sons of Tyndareus (Castor and Pollux) ; or

(b) it is a place-name of the same category as a number of Dioscuric shrines, where sailors made appeal and presented votive offerings, the position of such sanctuaries being determined by dangerous rocks, shallows, and straits ; or

(c) it is a primitive sanctuary of the Twins, and a twin- town, similar to those which are being formed by exiled twin-mothers and their children in West Africa at the present day.

Of these explanations the second is the most probable, for, as is well known, the shore at Jaffa has outside it a dangerous reef of rocks which was certain to require a special oversight on the part of those who have the care of sailors. Perhaps the actual position of the modern village Ibn Ibraq is moved somewhat from its original site. We should have expected the Dioscureion to be on high ground, especially if it served as lighthouse and look-out station as well as shrine. Here, then, we have, and again

6 BOANERGES [CH,

on Palestinian soil, a decided memory of Twin-cult. It may, perhaps, be urged that the village belongs to the Philistines and their cult, and in the same way that the Boanerges of Galilee are Aryan and not Semitic. That may be so, but our first business is to find them ; if we want to get them out of the Holy Land again, that will come later, and will require special proof, which will perhaps not be forth- coming. Wherever these commemorated twins come from, they are to be studied along with the similar phenomena that are being recorded and observed all over the world. There must be no preliminary exclusion of the Holy Land. Twins in For instance, it is well known that Cyrene and the

Cyrene. Cyrenaica are under the protection of the Dorian twins, and that the Cyrenians regarded themselves, when they posed as Greek, as being a Dorian colony. Hence they put on their coins stars, horses and the silphium plant, which are the sacred symbols of the Dioscuri ^ But it must be noted that they had other than Spartan reasons for the cult of the Twins, for just off their coast lay the Great Syrtis, one of the chief perils to ancient navigation, which we remember to have been dreaded when the tempestuous wind Euraquilo swept St Paul's ship across the Mediterranean from Crete to Africa. Amongst the famous cities of the Pentapolis we find the name of Barca, which again reminds us by its name and by its coins, that the city was named after the Children of the Lightning. And this name is Semitic and not Dorian Greek; so that we hesitate to ascribe the cult of the Twins in the Cyrenaica only to Dorian (Spartan) colonizers 2. It is much more likely to be Phoenician first

^ e.g. Hunter Collection, no. 36 (Cyrene): a coin showing silphium plant between two stars etc.

2 The recognition of Cyrene as a cult centre for twin-worship has a literary as well as a numismatic interest. When the author of the second book of Maccabees epitomized the five books of Jason of Cyrene, his first section was concerned with the attempt of Heliodorus to rob the temple at Jerusalem, and his repulse by certain young men, who have been recognised as the Dioscuri, slightly disguised as angels. But in that case, Jason must have given the first place to this incident, and this is natural enough, for he was writing in Cyrene and for Cyrenian readers, who would understand perfectly the kind of interposition which he was recording, and be predisposed to accept his interpretation.

ij 'i BOANERGES f

and Dorian after. In the same way the Twins of Bn6 Barqa may be Palestinian first and Philistian or Phoeniciaij afterwards. A somewhat similar case, of the carrying of the Twins by colonization, will be found in the Spanish city Barcelona, whose ancient name Barkinon shows that it was a Punic settlement. It is not inconceivable, there- fore, that in the neighbourhood of Jaffa, Phoenician navigators or settlers should have established a shrine or a sanctuary or a settlement, named after the Twins, and we shall see later an abundant evidence of the Twin Cult in Phoenicia itself If, on the other hand, it should be urged that the colony (if it was a colony) was Philistian, and came originally from Crete, we shall be equally able to establish Twin-worship for the early civilization of that famous island. And, in brief, whoever may have been the people that were responsible for the settlement and naming of Bne Barqa, the name itself can only stand for the Heavenly Twins, considered as the Sons of the Lightning. We have, then, the companion term of the highest antiquity for the Boanerges of the New Testament. Nor does there seem any reasonable doubt as to the accuracy of our interpretation.

At this point, however, it becomes necessary to stop and consider more closely the forms under which thunder and lightning were regarded by primitive mankind, and the characteristics which they attributed to them. One caution may be expressed before we turn to this investi- gation. It has been suspected thg,t in attributing twins to the parentage of the Thunder, whether one or both of them be so honoured, that we are on a plane of human evolution, where the facts of racial propagation are not regarded as established in final form, and according to an unvarying law. Parentage, for the primitive man, can come from anywhere : from natural forces, and unusual objects and events. The wind was credited with the fecundation of mares; the Egyptian bull Apis was conceived from a lightning flash, if we may believe Herodotus. Amongst the North American Indians, we find parentage imagined

B BOANERGES [Cfl.

in the most diverse forms. And it seems certain, therefore,

that there may be cases where single births are credited

to the Thunder and the Lightning, as well as dual births.

We must not dogmatically affirm that every Son of Thunder

is necessarily a twin.

Thunder- To take a single example: the Aramaean people in

ancient ^.E. Syria worshipped, amongst other objects of devotion,

Damascus, ^jjg gQ^ Hadad, who is the equivalent of the Babylonian

god Adad, the god of thunder. It seems, moreover, that a

number of the Syrian kings of Damascus took the title of

Bar-hadad. We should clearly be wrong in assuming that

Bar-hadad was a twin : for we can make out a sequence of

kings of Syria as follows :

Tab-Rimmon.

Bar- Hadad = Heb. Ben-hadad.

Hadad-idri = Heb. Hadad-ezer.

Bar- Hadad = Heb. Ben-hadad.

Hazael.

Four out of these five are affiliated to the Thunder-god, either in the Assyrian form Ramman, or in the Babylonian (?Am- orite) form Adad or Hadad. Now the succession of the names shows that the reference to the Thunder-god must be a matter of dignity, not an indication of twin-ship. It will be otherwise with private persons who do not stand in the same close relationship to the gods as their kings. Such persons may, and constantly do, have theophoric names ; but the term Son of Thunder is more than an ordinary theophoric name, implying the gift or grace of a god in the birth of a child. The probability is, therefore, that when such a name was borne by a private individual, the name connoted twin- ship. To take a curious illustration, we find in the chronicle of Joshua the Stylite^ that a bishop of Telia in the sixth century was named Bar-hadad. The persistence of the ancient name must be conceded, although it may be questioned whether its meaning continued to be understood : and the easiest explanation of the persistence of such a pagan name

1 Ed. Wright, c. 58. . - ' .

l] BOANERGES 9

in Christian circles is that it was for the general population the name of a twin. If, however, it should be thought that this explanation is unwarranted, the occurrence of the name with its undoubted meaning would be one more reason for caution in the too rapid inference from Thunder Sonship to Twinship.

There is another direction in which we may require a preliminary caution. We have shown that it does not necessarily follow that when the parenthood of the Thunder is recognised, it necessarily extends to both of the twins. The Dioscuri may be called unitedly. Sons of Zeus ; but a closer investigation shows conclusively that there was a tendency in the early Greek cults to regard one twin as of divine parentage, and the other of human. Thus Castor is credited to Tyndareus, Pollux to Zeus ; and of the Theban twins, Amphion is divine, and the son of Zeus, while Zethus is human and of ordinary parentage ; and a little reflection shows, that such a distinction was, in early days, almost inevitable. The extra child made the trouble, and was credited to an outside source. Only later will the difficulty of discrimination lead to the recognition of both as Sky-boys or Thunder-boys. An instance from a remote civilization will show that this is the right view to take.

For example, Arriaga, in his Extirpation of Idolatry in Twins in Per'u, tells us that ' when two children are produced at one birth, which, as we said before, they call Chuchos or Curi, and in el Cuzco Taqui Hua-hua, they hold it for an impious and abominable occurrence, and they say, that one of them is the child of the Lightning, and require a severe penance, as if they had committed a great sin^' And it is interesting to note that when the Peruvians, of whom Arriaga speaks, became Christians, they replaced the name of Son of Thunder, given to one of the twins, by the name of Santiago, having learnt from their Spanish teachers that St James (Santiago,

^ Arriaga, Extirpacion de la Idolatria del Piru, p. 32, Lima, 1621, ' Quando nacen dos de un parto, qui como diximos arriva llaman Chuchos, 0 Curi, y en el Cuzco Taqui Huahua, lo tienan por cosa sacrilega y abo- minabile, y aunque dizen, qui el uno es hijo del Bayo, hazen grande peni- tencia, como si uviessen hecho un gran peccado.'

10

BOANERGES

[ch:

S. Diego) aiid St Johii had been called Sons of Thunder by our Lord, a phrase which these Peruvi?in Indians seem to have understood, where the great commentators of the Christian Church had missed the meaning. When they heard the Spaniards fire off their harquebuses, they used to call the piece fired by the name of Illapa (i.e. Thunder^) or Rayo (i.e. Lightning) or Santiago (i.e. Son of Thunder) ^ Santiago, for them, was the equivalent of the thunder.

Another curious and somewhat similar transfer of the language of the Marcan story in the folk-lore of a people, distant both in time and place, but sharing the Jewish or Galilean popular beliefs, will be found, even at the present day, amongst the Danes. Dr Blinkenberg, in his valuable Thunder- monograph on The Thunderweapon, has collected evidence Denmark, from many parts of Denmark to show that it is still common to pay regard to Thunderstones, as being animistically in- habited by the Thunder, and able in consequence to avert the lightning from persons or places, in time of storm ^

1 See Acosta, Natural and Moral history of the Indes, reprinted by Hakluyt Society, Lond. 1880, p. 304, ' The thunder they (the Peruvians) called by three divers names, Chuquilla, Catuilla, and Intillape (Yllapa is Thunder in Quichna) , supposing it to be a man in heaven with a sling and a mace, and that it is in his power to cause rain, haile, thunder and all the rest that appertaines to the region of the air. '

2 Arriaga, I.e. p. 33, 'En el nombre de Santiago tienen tambien super- sticion y suelen dar esto nombre ad uno de los Chuchos come a hijos de Bayo, q suelen llamar Santiago. No entiendo que sera por el nombre Boanerges, que les pusso al apostol Santiago y a su hermano S. Juan Christo nuestro Serior, llamandoles Eayos, que esto quiere dezir hijos del trueno, segun la frasse Hebrea, sino o porque se avra estendido por aca la frasse, 0 conseya de los muchachos de Espaiia, que quando truena, dizen que corre el cavallo de Santiago, or porque veian, que en las guerras que tenian los Espaiioles, quando querian disparar los arcabuzes, que los Indies llaman Illapa, o Eayo, apellidavan primero Santiago, Santiago. De qualquiera manera que sea, usurpan con grande supersticion el nombre de Santiago, y assi entra las denias constituciones que dexan los Visitadores acabade la visitaes una, que nadie se llamo Santiago, sino Diego.'

3 It must not be supposed that this use of the thunderstone as a lightning-averter is peculiar to Denmark. Probably the horse-shoes which one sees everywhere in country houses in England belong to the same category. Usener {Gottemamen, p. 287) gives an account of the pulling down of an old convent at Bonn in the year 1884, when an axe of the stone age was discovered under one of the beams. Evidently it had been regarded as a thunder axe, and had been used for the protection of the

l] ; : '! BOANERGES 1 1

Besides the conventional flint axes and celts, which commonly pass as thunder-missiles all over the world, the Danes regard the fossil sea-urchin as a thunderstone, and give it a peculiar name. Such stones are named in Sailing, sebedaei-stones or s'hedaei; in North Sailing they are called sepadeje-stones. In Norbaek, in the district of Viborg, the peasantry called Zebedee- them Zebedee stones ! At Jebjerg, in the parish of Orum, district of Randers, they called them sebedei-Biones. At Romshinde, in the district of Aarhus, the man who carried a zebedee-stone in his pocket believed himself immune from thunder. At Salten, and at Taaning in the same district, they were called seppedij-stone^. At Klakring, in the district of Vejle, they were called spadejo-stoneB, and are put under the roof as a protection against lightning.

The name that is given to these thunderstones is, there- fore, very well established, and it seems certain that it is derived from the reference to the Sons of Zebedee in the Gospel as sons of thunder. The Danish peasant, like the Peruvian savage, recognised at once what was meant by Boanerges, and called his thunderstone after its patron saint. Probably he displaced some earlier title in giving the stone this name.

Feilberg, in his great dictionary, discusses the meaning of the name under the head of Spudejesten, and with the following conclusion: the word spadeje signifies a witch, a prophetess ; hence the stone is a witch-stone. The zebedee- stone is a perversion of this, under the influence of Mark iii. 17. In Kolkar's dictionary, the same derivation is given, and the same allusion to Mark iii. 17 ; and the name bodejesten is explained in the same way as milkmaid-stone from bodeje, a milkmaid. There is no difficulty about the latter derivation, as the stones are actually used in dairies to keep the thunder from souring the milk; but the other derivation is inadequate, and in view of the Peruvian analogy, it is more natural to suppose that the stones were regarded

sacred building against lightning. We shall see later how the same result is accomplished by the attachment to a building of the body or representation of the thunder-bird.

12 BOANERGES [CH. I

as embodiments of the thunder, in which case the thunder- stone becomes naturally enough a Zebedee-stone',

' It may be asked whether this does not require or suggest a further possibility that Zebedee may itself be a thunder-name, whose meaning having been obscured, an alternative name for the Sons of Thunder was introduced.

The name Zabdai (Zebedee) is good Hebrew ; it will be found, for instance, in the last chapter of Ezra in the form Zabad bis, and Zebedaiah (i.e. God has bestowed). It must be regarded as a genuine Hebrew name, unless there should be reason to believe that Zabdai is a Hebrew substitute for some non- Semitic name. Of non-Semitic influence in Galilee, there seem to be decided traces; but it is extremely unlikely that we can refer Zebedee to such a source. The only possible direction would be the name of the Phrygian Zeus, which the Greeks give as Sabazios, Sabadios, and a variety of similar spellings. Usener traces the root of this name (Gotternamen, p. 44) to the word storm, which would make Sabazios originally a storm god. His cult can be traced as far east as Cilicia and Cappadocia; and in the west he follows the Koman armies with Mithra. I know, however, of no trace of him in Syria or Northern Palestine. In his cult-monuments we sometimes find depicted the Eagle and the Lightning, and the Oakbranch. On a bronze relief of Sabazios in Copenhagen, the corners of the plate are occupied by the Dioscuri, standing by the side of their horses. This may be nothing but Syncretism. On the other hand, the Eagle is the Thunder-bird, and as we shall see, the Oak-tree is the Thunder-tree ; so we have five suggestions for identifying Sabazi with the Thunder. If such identification were possible, Zebedee might still be a real person, for his name would be theophoric. In the mysteries of Sabazios the initiate became identified with his god. The identification of Sabazi with Zebedee would not, therefore, imply that Zebedee was not a real person. The name occurs, moreover, a number of times in the recently recovered papyri from Elephantine, in the forms Zabdai and Zebadaiah, so that there appears to be no reason for questioning its Hebraism, or introducing a mythological meaning.

On the other hand, it might be suggested that the awkward and unnatural expression, 'the mother of Zebedee's children,' which occurs twice in the Gospel of Matthew (xx. 20, xxvii. 56), would be perfectly lucid, if 'Zebedee's children ' were equivalent to the Dioscuri or Zeus' boys.

CHAPTER II

THE PARENTAGE OF THE TWINS

In the previous chapter it was shown that the popular belief which expressed itself in the name Boanerges was very widely spread over the ancient and the modern world. It was not maintained that the Thunder, considered as parent, had no children except twin children, but it was clear that such were commonly assigned to him ; and that one child out of a pair of twins was his by right, the other was his by concession. The second child gravitated, so to speak, to the same parentage as the first.

It becomes proper, therefore, to discuss more at length the primitive conception of the Thunder, in order that we may explain from it, wherever possible, the functions assigned to the Twins in early or later stages of evolution. We shall, therefore, indicate briefly some of the forms through which the idea of Thunder has passed, without attempting an exhaustive treatment of the subject.

Everyone knows the Thunder-god in the latest form Aryan which he took for our ancestors, or for the artists and poets „q^ of Greek and Roman civilization. The conception was anthropomorphic; the Thunder was either Thor with his mell, or Jupiter with his lightning in hand, or Zeus, striking men and ships with his bolts. There was a European Sky-god, who was viewed alternatively as a Thunder-god. The thunder was, in fact, his monopoly. A very little study, however, of classical literature and archaeology, will show that this monopoly is an acquired monopoly. The thunder has been ' cornered,' to use a modern commercial expression. Rival firms have been suppressed or made tributary ; they produce the article, but after the rule of 'sic vos non vobis.'

14 THE PARENTAGE OF THE TWINS [CH.

Hephaestus is a rival Thunder-god, to whom nothing is left but the smithy: the Cyclopes, too, appear to have had a foundry of their own, and Hesiod expressly calls one of them by the name of Brontes or Thunderer. Prometheus, too, the Fire-bringer, belongs to the same circle of ideas; he is, perhaps, an original Zeus, for the fire and the lightning are closely related, and Zeus himself is in one passage called Promantheus\

Poseidon, also, appears at one time or another to have been of similar occupation, for the trident which he wields is not, as has sometimes been supposed, the archaic fish-spear, but the forked lightning, whose correct analogue is the group of lightning-shafts in the hands of the ancient Assyrian gods I All of these forms, however, belong to the anthropomorphic stage in which the thunder is visaged as a man. The There are, however, abundant indications that this anthro-

bird.^ ^^ pomorphic stage has been reached by a somewhat long journey. The Greeks themselves recognised that Zeus had antecedents ; there was an ornithomorph, and possibly several theriomorphs, before the anthropomorph. When we see Zeus accompanied by an eagle in whose claws the sheaf of lightning is disposed, we have one case out of many similar ones, where two forms of a cult are expressed at one glance, the elder and the younger, the eagle being the cult-ancestor of Zeus ; we shall see presently reason to believe that there is an earlier form of thundering bird than the eagle, and that the eagle has actually displaced the woodpecker : but for the present it is sufiicient to state that the human thunder-gods

^ Tzetzes in Lycoph. Alex. 537.

2 Hence I infer that Mr A. B. Cook is wrong in connecting the trident with the lordship of the sea : in describing a scarab of Etruscan workmanship, in which a naked male deity is stepping into a chariot, grasping a thunderbolt in his right hand, a trident in his left, Mr Cook remarks, ' the thunderbolt marks him as a sky-god, the trident as a water-god etc' He goes on to give Brunn's description of a bas-relief at Albano, where ' the central figure is a god, bearded and crowned, who by the attributes of a thunderbolt and a trident on his right, and a cornucopia surmounted by an eagle on his left side, is shown to be Jupiter conceived as lord of the sky, the sea, and the under- world.' For sea, read lightning : and so with the rest of the examples adduced by Mr Cook {Folk-Lore, 1904, pp. 274-^).

Il] THE PARENTAGE OP THE TWINS 15

have been evolved out of animal and bird forms, or have at least been evolved side by side with such forms.

The memory of such cult ancestry lingered amongst the Greeks and Latins to a very late day. They told legends of a time when Zeus was not, and when Woodpecker was king ; King and even if such statements should be made by a comic poet^ pecker, he was not playing the innovator when he made the state- ment, but the thoughtful conservative. In the same way, artists all over the world have drawn the Thunder with bird characteristics, very commonly with bird's feet. The popular pictures of the devil with cock's feet are only an intimation that the devil is one of the dispossessed thunder-gods. In China, as we shall see later on, the thunder is drawn as a man hurling lightnings, but the man has bird's feet. In Crete there was a legend of the death of Zeus, which caused holy horror to the pious Greeks of Olympian times, and was the foundation for the much misunderstood saying that ' the Cretans were aye liars ' ; but along with this legend there was another as to the death of Picus, who was also Zeus. Picus is, of course, the woodpecker. The statement is pre- served for us by Suidas, under the form of an epitaph,

^EvddBe Keirat Bava>v [/3ao-tXeto9] IT^/co? o koI Zev?.

All of which is suggestive enough, and intimates to us that we should make an investigation into the bird-forms or animal-forms with which the thunder was identified by men of ancient days. Nor can we, in such an enquiry, ignore the question as to whether the thunder had inanimate forms, or vegetable forms, with which the primitive animist had alternatively made his equation. That such forms existed is clear from the persistent belief in the thunderstone, extant in Europe down to the present day; such stones being recognised in the stone axes of early times, or in fossil-forms (like the sea-urchins amongst the Danes), which the thunder has tenanted in such a way as to make them either a danger or a means of security. In the vegetable world, as we shall see, there are various thunder-incarnations. It suffices to

1 Aristophanes, Aves, 478.

16 THE PARENTAGE OP THE TWINS [cH.

mention, in the first instance, the oak-tree, which is for the Europeans of ancient time the same thing in vegetable life as the eagle was in bird life, comparable also to the sky itself, as being an animistic dwelling of the thunder. Mr The A. B. Cook, in a series of remarkable papers on the European

Oak.° ^^ sky-god ^ has shown how closely the cult of the sky-god amongst our ancestors was connected with the cult of the sacred tree, the oak being the tree most commonly honoured, though there are distinct traces of other tree cults. We shall find the best explanation of the equation between the sky-god and the oak-tree in the lightning which passes from one to the other, and makes its secondary dwelling in the tree that it strikes. We shall probably see reason for be- lieving that peculiar sanctity attaches to a hollow oak. In the same way the Romans regarded as sacred, and fenced off from the public with appropriate warnings, the spot of ground where a lightning flash struck, or where a thunder- stone was supposed to have fallen. The thunderstone itself, when identified, became a sacred object, either dangerous, as still containing the thunder within it, or protective, on the hypothesis that lightning does not strike lightning. The thunder-weapon accordingly becomes one of the principal objects of cult, and in some points of view is regarded as almost divine. In the East the gods constantly carry it, in the form of an axe, frequently a double axe, while The in the West the most common form of the axe is known to

Thunder- ^g ^^ ^^le hammer of Thor. On the ancient Cretan monu- ments, on the Hittite and Assyrian sculptures, the sky-god (storm-god, thunder-god) is constantly represented with or by the single or double axe; and in many cases the god carries his axe (thunderstone) in one hand, and his bunch of lightnings in the other, the bunch of lightnings being often in the form of a single or double trident^.

We have thus two series of identifications to keep in mind:

1 Folk-Lore, 1904.

2 For illustration, see Blinkenberg, The Thunderweapon: Eoseher, s.v. Bamman, Teshub, Dolichenus, etc.

axe

it] the parentage of the twins 17

Sky-god or Thunder-god = Oak-god (with various substitute or

alternative trees). or Lightning-god = Thunderstone (stone-axe, double-axe, hammer, etc., including fossils with imagined thunder- forms). = Lightning (trident, double trident, etc.), to which must be added the anthropomorphic, ornitho- morphic or zoomorphic representations of the thunder.

These representations of the thunder as beast, bird or man are of the first importance in our enquiry as to the origin and development of the twin-cult ; for, if the Twins are regarded as the sons of the thunder, the parentage will be more easily recognisable when the thunder takes an animate shape. It is not impossible that thunder-trees or thunderstones should be identified with twins, but it is, in the nature of the case, much less likely than that the twins should be recognised in forms of animal life, which have been associated either with the thunder, or the thunder-tree. Moreover, we shall be able to trace the modification of the parentage of the Twins fi:'om a bird ancestry to a human ancestry, since this very change of view is actually taking place among certain savage tribes at the present day, the Thunder being considered by them in the first instance as a bird, and in a later and secondary identification being en- dowed with a human form. As we have said, it is these identifications and modifications which need to be carefully watched, if we are to determine how such an idea as that of the great Twin Brethren of the Dorians arose out of the senseless but terrible taboo which we find still existing in savage Africa at the present day.

Of bird ancestries, we shall show that the first place must be given to the woodpecker, but that there are a number of other birds, more or less demonstrably thunder- birds ; we shall also come across suspicious cases of thunder- beasts, including the squirrel, the flying-squirrel and perhaps the beaver ; and all of these must be grouped in an equation of identification similar to what is given above, so that the

H. B. 2

18 THE PARENTAGE OF THE TWINS [CH.

Sky-god

or Thunder-god = woodpecker, robin, stork (?), swan (?),

eagle, etc. or Lightning-god = squirrel or beaver (?), etc.

= thunder- man (Zeus, Jupiter, Thor, etc.), and according to the state of evolution of the idea of the thunder, will be the form assigned to the Twins considered as of Thunder-parentage.

The importance of the last consideration will be evident. If, for example, we find Twins regarded as Woodpeckers, or as human beings with names or characteristics which imply The Twins woodpecker antecedents, then the twin-cult which we are peckers. " considering is older than the time when the woodpecker had given place to an eagle or to an Olympian Jove. We are working from a very ancient stratum of civilization, if it can be called civilization, and not fi'om a time when gods and goddesses many had already been recognised and defined. To say that the Twins in Greek religion are pre-Olympian is to put it very gently indeed. They may be Zeus' boys, but just as there was a time when there was no Zeus, so there was a time when there were no boys. And it is to the study of such a time that we must turn if we are to under- stand the cult.

If, moreover, we must not derive our cult fi:om Olympian Zeus, or from any similar anthropomorph, still less must we begin by discussing the Twins as they were finally lodged in the Zodiac. For even if the Zodiac were as ancient as the neo-Babylonian school imagine (which it almost certainly is not), its antiquity would be a mere handbreadth compared with the space of distant time in which our forefathers worked out their fears of the elemental forces into the fabric of a noble, though idolatrous, religion. The Zodiac can be left almost to the last section of such an enquiry as that upon which we are engaged.

Returning, then, to our theme, the suggested parentage of Twins by the Thunder or Lightning requires that we should examine rapidly the forms which the Thunder-cult takes in different parts of the world, and determine in what

Il] THE PARENTAGE OF THE TWINS 19

cases a Twin-cult has associated itself with the Thunder-cult. The two parts of the enquiry will, almost of necessity, go on side by side ; but perhaps it will be best to fix our minds at first upon the Thunder rather than upon the Twins.

If it should happen that anyone should be sceptical as to the multiplicity of the forms, animate and inanimate, which have been suggested for the Thunder in the previous pages, we have only to remind ourselves that exactly the same thing happens with regard to the Corn Spirit, which is recognised as man, as woman, as maid, as wolf, dog, cat, hare, and a number of animals associate or associable with the cornfield.

2—2

CHAPTER III

THE THUNDER-BIED

The Thunder-bird was, as I suppose, first discovered amongst the Red Indians of North America, and it is still extant among surviving tribes of that rapidly disappearing race. Thunder For example, among the Den^ Indians in the north-west

Eed°^ of Canada, known as the Hare-skin Ddnds, there is a belief Indians, that the thunder is a huge bird : all winter long he lies hidden under ground, somewhere in the west-south-west. But when the warm weather returns, he returns along with the migrant birds ; then, if he shakes his tail, we hear the thunder ; and if he winks his eyes there are dazzling light- nings ^

What is here reported of the Den^ Indians is common belief of the whole race, although some tribes, such as the Iroquois, may have changed or abandoned their beliefs under the influence of the white man. If, however, we go back to the accounts given of Indian beliefs by the first Jesuit Missions, we find enquiries made and reports collected which prove how universal was the belief in the thunder-bird. Thus the missionary, Le Jeune, in his Relation under date

^ Pettitot, Traditions Indiennes du Canada Nord-Ouest, Ligendes et Traditions des Detii Peaux-de-Lievre, p. 283, ' Iti est un oiseau gigantesque> qui demeure au pays des manes avec le gibier Emigrant. II y s^joume tout I'hiver sous terre, k la retomb^e de la voAte celeste, bien loin, au Pied-du- Ciel, dans I'ouest sud-ouest. Mais lorsqu'il fait chaud de nouveau, lorsque le gibier ail^ revient vers nous k tire d'aUes, vers notre pays accourt Iti, suivi de toutes les ames ou revenants. Alors, s'il fait vibrer les plumes de la queue, nous entendons gronder le tonnerre, et s'il clignotte des yeux les Eclairs de la foudre nous ^blouissent, dit-on. Celui-ci est une divinit6 mauvaise, car elle cause la mort des hommes.'

CH. Ill] THE THUNDER-BIRD 21

1632 {Jesuit Relations, v. 57) tells of the Indians in the neighbourhood of Quebec that ' they (the Iroquois) believe The that the thunder is a bird, and a savage one day asked a "^ Frenchman if they did not capture them in France ; having told him yes, he begged him to bring him one, but a very little one : he feared that it would frighten him if it were large.' Two years later (1633, 1634), Le Jeune reports again ' {Jesuit Relations, vi. 225), ' I asked them (the Montagnais) about the thunder : they said they did not know what animal it was ; that it ate snakes and sometimes trees ; that the Hurons believed it to be a very large bird. They were led to this belief by a hollow sound made by a kind of swallow which appears here in the summer. I have not seen any of these birds in France, but have examined some of them here. They have a beak, a head and a form like the swallow, except that they are a little larger ; they fly about in the evening, repeatedly making a dull noise.' Le Jeune explains that the Hurons compared this noise with that made by the thunder- bird : ' there is only one man who has seen this bird, and he only once in his lifetime. This is what my old man told me.'

Evidently the Hurons as well as the Iroquois believed in the thunder-bird. In a note which is added to the tenth volume of the (reprinted) Jesuit Relations (x. 319, 320), the matter is summed up as follows:

'The myth of the Thunder-bird was, in some form or other, common to the North American tribes from Mexico to Hudson's Bay, and from the S. Lawrence to Bering Strait, and it is still current among most of the northern and western tribes. They explain the vivid and (to them) mysterious and terrible phenomena of the thunderstorm as proceeding from * an immense bird, so large that its shadow darkens the heavens: the thunder is the sound made by the flapping of its wings, the lightning is the flashing or the winking of its eye, and the deadly and invisible thunderbolts are arrows sent forth by the bird against its enemies. The Indians greatly dread this imaginary bird, often addressing prayers to it during a thunderstorm.'

It would be a mistake to suppose that the Thunder is

22 THE THUNDER-BIRD [CH.

always imagined to be a large bird ; on the contrary, as we shall see presently (and the point is important for our enquiry), there are tribes that have seen the thunder in a form as small as the humming bird. The legends of the Dakota Indians and of some other tribes identify the thunder-bird with the Creator of the World, and say that it brought fire from heaven for the use of men : they tell of an unceasing strife between Unktaha, the god of waters, and Wauhkem, the thunder-bird. Mrs Mary Eastman gives the The following Sioux explanation of the thunder^: 'Thunder is

Sioux. a large bird, flying through the air; its bright tracks are seen in the heavens, before you hear the clapping of its wings. But it is the young ones that do the mischief. The parent bird would not hurt a Dahcotah. Long ago a thunder- bird fell from the heavens ; and our fathers saw it as it lay, not far from the Little Crow's village.'

For a more detailed statement of Dakota beliefs, with an important modification, v. infra. Lillooet Mr Teit, in his account of the Indians on the Lillooet

River in British Columbia^, tells us, in an account to which Transition we shall have to refer again, that ' some describe the thunder- Thunder- ^^^^ ^® being like the ruby-throated humming-bird and of bird to about the same size. Others describe the thunder as a bird man. ' about one metre in length. On its head it has a large crest, like that of the blue jay, but standing far backward.... When it turns its head from side to side, as it does when angry, fire darts from its eyes, which is the lightning.... /Some of the lower Lillooet Indians say that the thunder is a man. It is said that he was seen on the Lower Lillooet river some years ago, during a heavy thunderstorm. Each time a jlash of lightning came he could be seen standing on one leg.'

We shall have to return to this account, but for the present it is sufficient to note, over and above the con- ventional Red Indian account of the origin of thunder and lightning, that the bird is sometimes regarded as extremely small, and that the actual change from the ornithomorph to

1 Eastman, Dahcotah or Life and Legends of the Sioux, p. 19.

2 Teit, The Lillooet Indians.

Xn^ THE THUNDER-BIRD 23'

the anthropomorph is actually in process amongst the Indians of British Columbia. Both of these points should be care- fully noted.

This important transformation in the belief can also be The traced among the Dakotas, to whom we were just now ^^^0*8,3. referring: for they say that the Thunder-bird which was killed at Little Crow's village on the Mississippi River, had Thunder- a face like a man, with a nose like an eagle's hill ; its body ^^^^ ^^^^ was long and slender. Its wings had four joints to each, face. which were painted in zigzags to represent lightning'^.

Here, then, we see the same transformation going on, with the aid of a pictorial symbol. It is not difficult, in view of such beliefs, to realise the changes which produced out of birds the thunder-gods of antiquity, for they also often carry on, more or less definitely, the bird tradition. In the case of the Dakotas, the human form is just beginning to appear. In the case of the Thompson Indians, the change appears to have been completely made, though it has not been accepted by the whole community. In Graeco -Roman religions, Jupiter will keep at his side the eagle out of whom he has been evolved. In China, all the bird will disappear except the feet, the bill, and perhaps the wings.

The same belief in the Thunder-bird, but apparently without any deflection in the direction of the Thunder-man, will be found amongst the Thompson Indians of British The Columbia^. According to them, the thunder is 'a little ^^^°2fs?" larger than the grouse, and of somewhat similar shape :...the thunder-bird shoots arrows, using its wings like a bow. The rebound of its wings in the air, after shooting makes the thunder.... The arrow-heads fired by the Thunder are found in many parts of the country. They are of black stone and of very large size. Some Indians say that lightning is the twinkling of the thunder's eyes etc'

In the same way the Ahts of Vancouver Island believe The Ahts. in a great thunder-bird. His name is Tootooch. He is a

^ Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, vol. ni. p. 486; ibid. p. 233.

2 Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, p. 338 seq.

24 THE THUNDER-BIRD [CH.

mighty, supernatural bird, dwelling aloft and far away. The flap of his wings makes the thunder (Tootah) and his tongue is the forked lightning^.

The importance of these statements is obvious in view of the belief in the thunder-arrow and the thunder-axe amongst our own ancestors, and amongst modern Europeans, like the Danish farmers, whom we have described above. It is not necessary, for our purpose, to collect further evidence of the Thunder-bird amongst the North American Indians : those who wish to examine further into the subject may consult Myron Eells on ' The Thunder-bird,' in the Journal of the American Anthropological Society^; or Brinton's Myths of the New World, pp. 239, 245, or Chamberlain, 'Thunder- bird amongst the Algonquins,' in the Journal of the American Anthropological Society^. We shall presently see that there is no need to describe these beliefs so exclusively as Myths of the New World : but before returning to the Old World in search of parallels to the Indian beliefs, it may be as well to point out that the thunder-bird can be located amongst the Esquimaux, and that it can be followed south into Mexico, and into South America. A few instances may be given. For the Esquimaux, see Hoffmann, Graphic Art of the Esquimaux, pi. 72, where a picture of the thunder-bird, from the Escjuimaux' point of view is given.

The AmoiDgst the Caribs, the Thunder-god is called Sawaku ;

Caribs. sometimes he is spoken of as a star, and sometimes as a bird, who blows the lightning through a great reed^

The Amongst the Brazilians, the fear of the thunder is very

great ; they have a thunder-god named Tupa, whose voice or the flapping of whose wings, makes the thunder. From him comes the name Tupecanongo, given to the thunder, while the lightning is called Tupaberaba, i.e. the flashing of Tupa. Some of the Brazilians think the thunder is the noise made by departed spirits. They also attribute to the thunder-god the invention of agriculture.

^ Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 177.

2 Vol. n. pp. 329-36. * Vol. m. pp. 51-4.

* Miiller, Amerikanische Urreligionen.

Brazil ians.

Ill] THE THUNDER-BIRD 25

It is suflficient to point out that, even if Tupa should be regarded as a thunder-man, it is a thunder-man who has been evolved out of a thunder-bird, which appears to be not very dissimilar to the type current among the North American Indians^.

The belief in a thunder-bird, which we find so widely Thunder- diffused over North and South America, can be traced amongst Polynesia, the Polynesians, with the aid of the observations we have already made as to the development of the belief. For instance, John Williams, the martyr of Erromanga, brought home amongst other relics the image of the god Taan, the god of Thunder : and he tells us that, ' when the thunder peals, the natives said that this god was flying, and pro- ducing this sound by the flapping of his luings.' This is almost exactly the language by which we found the thunder- bird described by the Dakotas or the Brazilians ^

In the same way we are informed by Ellis, the Poly- nesian missionary, that 'among the Hervey Islands, they worshipped a god of thunder; but he does not appear to have been an object of great terror to any of them. The thunder was supposed to he produced by the clapping of his mings'^.' Evidently another slightly disguised thunder-bird.

Now let us try South Africa, and see whether the same beliefs are current.

Mr Dudley Kidd* tells us that 'the natives in Zululand The

. • • Zulus

believe that if one examines the spot where lightning struck

the ground, the shaft of an assegai will be found.' This

corresponds exactly to the European or Red Indian belief

in the thunderstone or thunder-arrow. 'The lightning is

thus thought to be some dazzling spear hurled through the

air. Others maintain that a special brown bird will be

found at this spot, which is supposed to be surrounded by

a mist or haze — probably their interpretation of the dazzling

of their eyes by the bright light. This idea is modified in

1 For the Brazilian Thunder-god, see Miiller, ut supra, p. 271. ' Williams, Missionary Enterprise, p. 109. 3 Ellis, Polynesian Researches, p. 417. * The Essential Kafir, p. 120.

26 THE THUNDER-BIRD [CH.

The Pondoland, where the natives assure you that lightning is

°" °^* caused by a brown bird, which spits fire down on the earth.

The Bom- The Bomvanas modify this again, by saying that the bird sets

vanas. ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^ g^^^ ^^^ throws it down on the earth. I was

on the point of shooting one of these birds, and the natives ' cried out in horror, begging me not to "shoot the lightning".'

Mr Kidd goes on to explain that, in the native opinion, the thunder is caused by the flapping of the bird's wings, a belief which we have found in North and South America, and in Polynesia. When the thunder is loud and crackling, the agent is said to be the female bird ; when it is distant and rumbling, the male bird.

A further modification of the thunder-bird is said, by Mr Kidd, to exist in Natal, where ' a white bird^ of enormous size comes down and flaps his wings. An old native was quite indignant with a missionary who contradicted this assertion. The old man wanted to know how such a person could ever presume to teach the natives, when he did not know that thunder was caused by a bird.' Mr Kidd goes on to explain the various means employed by the South Lightning African Bantus to avert the lightning. The Kafirs stick aver ers. g^ggggg^jg through the roof when a storm begins ; and others place a hoe leaning against the side of the house. These practices are clearly parallel to our European methods of protection from the thunderstone by means of the thunder- stone. It is more difficult to understand why the natives on the Zambesi place pieces of ostrich shell on their roofs as a protection against lightning. Does this mean that any African tribe had identified the ostrich with a thunder- bird ? The real business of protection against lightning belongs to the medicine men. These have for their business, as Mr Kidd says, to control the clouds, which they drive about like herds of oxen. They use as medicine the assegai shafts which lie on the ground where the lightning strikes, they catch the thunder-bird and make medicine of its feathers, and they even eat the birds so as to be strong to fight the storm.

1 Is this a case of white lightning ?

Ill] THE THUNDER-BIRD 27

Something of this kind had been noticed by the great African missionary, Dr Moffat, amongst the Bechuanas. He The tells us^ 'Thunder they supposed to be caused by a certain anas" bird which may be seen soaring very high during the storm, and which appeared to the natives as if it nestled among the forked lightnings. Some of these birds are not infrequently killed, and their having been seen to descend to the earth may have given rise to this ludicrous notion. I have never had an opportunity of examining this bird, but presume it belongs to the vulture species.' The missionary little suspected that the ' ludicrous notion ' was once the common belief of his own European ancestors. How near his descrip- tion of the Bechuana thunder-bird approaches to the eagle of Zeus ! Amongst the Zulus the same belief can be traced ; we have a striking statement on the subject in Callaway's Religious System of the Amazulu'^ which, has the advantage of giving the Zulu belief in their own words, as follows: ' There is a bird of heaven : it too is killed ; it comes down The when the lightning strikes the earth and remains on the " "^'

ground The bird of heaven is a bird which is said to

descend from the sky, when it thunders, and to be found in the neighbourhood of the place where the lightning has struck. The heaven doctors place a large vessel of amasi mixed with various substances near a pool such as is frequently met with on the tops of hills: this is done to attract the lightning that it may strike in that place. The doctor remains at hand watching, and when the lightning strikes the bird descends and he rushes forward and kills it.' The body of the captured bird makes a very powerful medicine. The heaven doctor here described might equally be called thunder-doctor or rain-doctor; for the same term commonly describes sky, thunder, and lightning among African tribes, a usage which has its parallel in the terms in which the Greek poets describe Zeus. We shall return to these Zulu beliefs at a later point. For the present, it is sufficient to show that the thunder-bird has a leading place

1 Moffat, Missionary Labours in S. Africa, 4th ed. p. 338. " p. 119.

28 THE THUNDER-BIRD [CH.

in South African religion, and that the thunder-man does

not seem to have yet arrived, unless the medicine man

should be his foreshadowing and prototype.

Thunder- Crossing to Madagascar, we might suppose that we had

Mada-° passed outside the area of belief in the thunder-bird ; there

gascar. is, however, as my friend John Sims points out, a bird known

to the natives as vorombdratra, which is exactly hird-of-

thunder.

In West Africa, among the negro tribes, we have the curious phenomenon of an advance in civilization relatively to the Bantus ; for the thunder appears, in some places, to Yoruba be regarded as a man. Amongst the negroes of the Guinea Coast, the thunder-god is Shango, and I have not as yet detected any trace of bird-ancestry about him; though it is very probable that closer acquaintance would disclose it. Ellis shows in his Yoruba-speaking Peoples (p. 47^ the two stages of belief closely adjacent : ' the notion we found amongst the Ewes that a bird-like creature was the animating entity of the thunderstorm has no parallel here, and Shango is purely anthropomorphic'

The exact passage in which Ellis describes the lightning- god of the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast is deserving of study \

' Khebioso, whose name is often abbreviated to So, is the lightning-god, and the word itself is used to mean lightning, though the more correct term for that is So-fia. On the Gold Coast, the lightning is wielded by the Sky-god, Nyankupon. Eye- 'The name Khebioso is compounded of Khe (bird), bi

(to let go light, to throw out light), and so (fire), so that it literally means the bird, or bird-like creature, that throws

out fire The Ewe-speaking negroes imagine that Khebioso

is a flying god, who partakes in some way of the nature of a bird. The general idea appears to be that Khebioso is a bird-like creature, hidden in the midst of the black thunder- cloud, from which he casts out the lightning, and by some the crashing of the thunder is believed to be the flapping of its enormous wings'

^ Ellis, Ewe-speaking peoples, p. 37.

Ill] THE THUNDER-BIRD 29

Ellis also notes that the negroes of the Slave Coast, as elsewhere, identify the flint implements of the Stone Age with thunderbolts, and they are consequently called So-Kpe {Kpe = stone). ' After a building has been struck by lightning, the priests of Khebioso, who at once run to the spot to demand that the inmates should make amends for the evident offence they have given their god, almost invariably produce a flint arrow-head, or axe, which they of course bring with them, but pretend to have found in or near the building.'

The case of Shango, who is also known by the name of Hurler of Stones (i.e. of thunderbolts), is interesting, as we shall see later, on account of his having migrated to Brazil with the slaves of the Portuguese, where he held his own as an object of religion, even after the conversion of the Brazilian negroes to Roman Catholicism.

The thunder-bird is also known to the Bakerewe, who The live on the largest island in the Victoria Nyanza Lake ^. ^ak^^^^^- I give the account at length. ' Foudre (nkuba) — Comme la plupart des Negres, les Bakerewe personifient la foudre ; c'est un coq mysterieux, au plumage de feu, qui s'abat capricieusement sur les hommes et les choses, tuant, de- truisant ou brulant tout ce qu'il touche. Bref! c'est un esprit des plus malfaisants. Cependant il y a un moyen de I'empecher de nuire : etre assez prompt pour le couvrir, des qu'il apparait, d'une corbeille fortement tress^e, dans laquelle il demeure prisonnier quelques instants, pour s'en retoumer bientdt purement et simplement par ou il est venu, sans causer le moindre dommage.'

So, then, the domestic cock is amongst the thunder-birds, and his colour is red.

When we pass into Asia, we find ourselves nearing the beliefs of our ancestors; the thunder is now commonly re- garded anthropomorphically, although there are still traces of bird-ancestry in the existing beliefs. One of the most striking cases has already been alluded to, the Chinese representation of the thunder-god with bird's feet. There 1 See Hurel in Anthropos, 1911, Heft i. p. 75.

30 THE THUNDER-BIRD [CH. Ill

Chinese is in the possession of Mr Freer, of Detroit, a beautiful god! painting of the thunder-god by Hokusai, a Japanese painter

who affects Chinese archaism ; the picture, which I had the opportunity of studying when I was in Detroit some time since, shows this very peculiarity of the human form joined to bird's feet. We shall refer to this picture again when we come to discuss the colour of the thunder-god. More striking is the figure of the Chinese thunder-god which Miss Harri- son {Themis, p. 115) has reproduced from Simpson {The Buddhist Praying Wheel). Here we have the god beating a series of drums arranged in a circle ; he has a thunderbolt in his left hand, and his bird-ancestry is betrayed by wings, claws and an eagle's beak.

We have now, perhaps, illustrated sufficiently for our purpose the existence of a wide-spread belief in the thunder-bird. It is not our intention to deal exhaustively with this subject; but we have to prove that the belief was held by our own Indo-European ancestors, for until we know what was the idea of the thunder that prevailed amongst them, we cannot trace to its origin the Cult of the Heavenly Twins, considered as the Children of the Thunder. As far as we have gone, we have found evidence of the existence of two dominant fears in the mind of primitive man, one the perfectly natural fear of thunder and lightning, the other, which at first sight seems as artificial as the other is natural, the fear of twins; and we have already more than a suspicion that these two fears are closely involved in one another : so much of religious practice and belief is traceable to one or other of these forms of terror that we might almost say that on these two dreads hang nine-tenths of subsequent religion.

We now know how to recognise the thunder-bird when we see him in proprid persona, or in forms which have displaced him. There is, however, a further direction in which identification of the thunder can be made; in this also we shall find constant connection between the Thunder and the Twins: we refer to the colour identification to which we propose to devote our next chapter.

CHAPTER IV

THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI

In the present chapter we are going to show that the The proper colour for the raiment of the Dioscuri is red, and that ^earTed this red colour is significant of the relation in which they cloaks. stand to the Thunder^

That the Dioscuri, when they have appeared at important functions in Greek or Roman history, wore scarlet chlamydes can be deduced from the traditional account of their heroical deeds, which frequently make mention of their dress and involve us in the belief that the colour is significant : no doubt if the coins or other monuments, on which they are represented riding victoriously towards or firom some great enterprise, could talk to us in colour as well as in form, they would say the same thing, for it is the same chlamys in metal or stone that is described as red in the prose of the historians : and just as we know that their horses, wherever represented, are, for the most part, white, so we know that their robes, flying in the wind, are red.

It has not, however, been as commonly recognised that the reason why the robes are red lies in the fact that the Twins are personifications of the lightning, being either Sons of Zeus or Sons of Thunder, or Children of the Sky, or whatever other title may express their superhuman •affinities.

Suppose, then, we start from the statement that red is

1 Most of this chapter has already appeared in the Contemporary Review for May, 1912 ; the matter is reproduced here by the courtesy of the Editors.

32 THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI [CH.

the proper colour for the lightning, and illustrate that statement by reference

Red is the (1) To the colour ascribed to the Thunder-bird, who

Thunder- i^ ^^^ zoomorphic representative of thunder

bjrd,of and lightning:

man, (2) To the colour ascribed to the anthropomorphic

^ "^^ representation of the deity who controls the

priest. thunder :

(3) To the colour worn by the priests and human representatives of the aforesaid deity. If all these developments of the idea of thunder and lightning tell the same story of colour, we shall have little doubt as to the meaning of that colour when it appears in the raiment of the Heavenly Twins.

We begin, then, with the Thunder-bird. And first of all, we select some cases of savage tribes who have evolved the idea of the Thunder-bird. We alluded above to the Zulus, whose opinions were so carefully recorded in Calla-

Zululand. way's Religious System of the Amazulu. Amongst these statements about the bird of heaven, or sky-bird, or thunder-bird, which comes down when the lightning strikes, we are told that the witch-doctors lie in wait for the thunder by the side of a pool near a hill-top, and that, when the lightning strikes, they rush forward and kill it. ^ It is said to have a red bill, red legs, and a short red tail like fire : its feathers are bright and dazzling, and it is very fat.' In the same book^ we are furnished with an account given by a Zulu who had actually seen a feather of the bird, exhibited to him by the man who had found it. The story runs thus:

'As regards that bird, there are many who have seen it with their eyes, and especially doctors, and those persons who have seen it when it thunders, and the lightning strikes the ground ; the bird remains where the ground was struck. If there is any one near that place he sees it in the fog on the ground and goes and kills it. When he has killed it, he begins to be in doubt, saying, "Can it be that I shall

1 I.e. p. 381.

IV] THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI 33

continue to live as I have killed this bird, which I never saw before ? Is it not really that bird which it is said exists, the lightning bird which goes with the lightning ? " He is in doubt because he sees that its characteristics are not like those of birds which he has seen for a long time ; he sees that it is quite peculiar, for its feathers glisten. A man may think that it is red : again he sees that it is not so, that it is green. But if he looks earnestly he may say, " No, it is something between the tw^o colours as I am looking at it." I myself once saw a feather of this kind as I was living on the Umsundugi, for I had wished for a long time to see the " colour of the bird, and at length I saw one of its feathers. The man, to whom it belonged, took it out of his bag, and truly I saw it and said, "Indeed it is the feather of a dreadful bird ! " '

This very naive account shows that what was expected was a bird of a red colour ; if an actual bird obtained at the right time should turn out to be green, the savage looks at it, and it turns out to be between red and green.

Now let us turn back to the North American Indians whom we were describing in a previous chapter.

Amongst the Lillooet Indians of British Columbia, we Lillooet found first an identification of the thunder with the ruby- " ^^"^* throated humming-bird. Then apparently because the bird was too insignificant there was a suggestion that the thunder was ' a bird about a metre in length ; on its head it has a large crest, like that of the blue jay, but standing far backward. Its body is blue and its throat red.' Then after a statement that 'the Indians claim that it was seen in the mountains near Pemberton some years ago ' the account continues, * The humming-bird is the friend of the thunder ' (i.e. not really the thunder-bird, though some think it to be so). ' Some of the Lower Lillooet Indians say that the thunder is a man. It is said that he was seen on the Lower Lillooet River some years ago, during a heavy thunder-storm. Each time a flash of lightning came, he could be seen standing on one leg. His head and hair were red and the hair stood out stiff from one side of his

H. B. . 3

34

THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI

[CH.

head^' Here the colour will be noted, not only for the humming-bird's throat, and for the unknown bird to whom he is related (not being the thunder-bird exactly but just his friend), whose throat also is red, but also because we have here, as we pointed out in the previous chapter, amongst the Lillooet Indians, the very transition from the zoomorphic to the anthropomorphic representation of the thunder; in which connection we note that when the thunder passes over from the ranks of birds to men, he carries his colour with him. The same feature comes out Thompson amongst the Thompson Indians, of whom we are told that ' Some describe the colour of its plumage as wholly red, while others say that it resembles the female blue grouse, but has large red bars above its eyes, or has a red head, or some red in its plum,age^.'

The same thing occurs among the Shuswap Indians, where the conception of the thunder is said to be the same as amongst the Thompson Indians. ' The thunder-bird is large and black, and covered with down or short downy feathers. Some part of its body — according to some, its head — is bright red^.'

The prominence which is given to the colour of the thunder is something which belongs to the nature of the case, and ought to be carefully noted ; for it is a dominant factor in a number of traditional lines of thought. The writer of the article on the Cherokees* in Hastings' Cyclo- pedia of Religion and Ethics, sees the stress laid on the colour and the meaning of it : he says ' The Cherokees possess quite a number of anthropomorphic deities of more or less importance. Of these Asgaya Gigagei (Red Man) is perhaps the most frequently invoked. He appears to be connected in some way with the thunder.... The facts that he

Shuswap Indians.

Chero- kees.

1 Teit, The Lillooet Indians.

- Teit, The lliovipxon Indians of British Columbia, pp. 3^8-99.

3 Teit, The Shustcap (Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, New York). The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. i. pt. vil 1909, p. 597.

* Mr Lewis Spence. He is quoting, from the Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington.

IV] THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI 35

is described as being of a red colour, and that the Cherokees were originally a mountain people, seem to point to the conclusion that he was a thunder-god. Other thunder-gods of the American race, the Con of the Peruvians, for example, Peruvians. are described as red in colour, and dwelling in clouds upon the mountain tops — their hue, of course, denoting the light- ning. The Chac or rain (cloud) gods of the Mayas were Mayas. called " the Red Ones " owing to their emanating from the clouds. A portion of the feather-shield of Tlaloc, the Mexican god of rain, was also of a red colour.'

We are certain, then, that the colour of the thunder- god or storm-god is commonly regarded as red, and in par- ticular the thunder-god considered as thunder-bird, must be a bird with red feathers, a red head, or breast, or tail. It may, perhaps, be objected that we do not prove that red always connotes lightning: nor is every red bird a thunder-bird : that may be freely admitted ; it may be, for instance, a fire- bird, or a sun-bird, especially a rising-sun bird. Such cases may be found both East and West : but the fire-bird is only slightly differentiated fi-om the thunder-bird or lightning- bird, and we shall sometimes find the two omithomorphs to be the same. Lightning and fire are in the nature of the case next door neighbours. Supposing, then, that we have proved red to be the proper colour of the American thunder- *gods, can we affirm the same thing for the other hemisphere, and, in particular, was the thunder-god of the Aryans a bird, and was it a red bird ? The answers to such questions have l3een coming in for some time past from various quarters, and there has been an increasing perception of the existence of an ancient bird-cult, earlier than the anthropomorphic deities of Greece and Rome. Peculiar importance appears to be attached to the woodpecker in the early traditions of either civilization. As we have already stated, the w^oodpecker in Wood- Oreek tradition antedates Zeus ; in Latin the same bird w^as ^uit honoured as Picus Feronius, and associated with the early ^?'^^^^^ history of Romulus and Remus. It assisted the wolf in the nutrition of the twins, which is very nearly the same thing as saying that the woodpecker is an alternative parent.

3—2

36 THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI [CH.

Some persons have treated the woodpecker as a fire-bird, and have supposed it to be the inventor of the fire-stick, from its habit of drilling into trees in search of food ; and, on the same hypothesis, it has been brought into contact with the Prometheus legends. As we have already said, the ideas of lightning and fire are closely connected : but it is clear that the woodpecker must be the lightning bird, for it is the predecessor of Zeus and of Zeus' eagle ^. Between Zeus and the woodpecker stands the intermediate zoomorph, the eagle, which is certainly a thunder-bird ; but even if the eagle were not there as a connecting link, the thunderous character of Zeus is so well known that it would be hard to describe his predecessor in any other terms: in other words, the original thunder-bird of the Aryans was a wood- pecker.

But was he red in colour ? The answer is that almost all the woodpeckers are distinguished by red heads or by red feathers. The woodpecker that was the predecessor of Zeus is probably the great black woodpecker. Its head is a. brilliant red^.

^ In proving the woodpecker to be the European thunder-bird, we are making an unnecessary geographical limitation. The Arabs of N.W. Africa call it Hedad, or Heddad, which is the Amorite thunder-god as we know it in the name Ben-Hadad, Thus the Syrian kings show the name Picus just as do Italian kings,

2 Its head is one of the significant features in the account given of its; origin in the Norse legends. Here it is known as Gertrude's fowl, and is supposed to be the metamorphosis of an old woman in a red cap. (We shall see something like this presently in the story of the metamorphosis of King Picus.) The Norse legend will be found in Grimm (Teut. Myth. p. 673, Eng. trans.) or in Dasent's Popular Tales from tlie Norse, p. 230. It runs as. follows: When our Lord walked on earth with Peter, they came to a woman that sat baking; her name was Gertrude, and she wore a red cap on her head. Faint and hungry from his long journey, our Lord asked for a little cake. She took a little dough and set it on, but it rose so high that it filled the pan ; she thought it too large for an alms, took less dough, and began to bake it, but this grew as big, and still she refused to give it. The third time she took still less dough, and when the cake swelled to the same size, 'Ye must go without,' said Gertrude, 'all that I bake becomes too big for you.' Then was the Lord angry, and said, ' Since thou hast grudged to give me ought, thy doom is that thou be a little bird, seek thy scanty sustenance 'twixt wood and bark, and only drink as oft as it shall rain. No sooner were these words spoken than the woman was changed into Gertrude's fowU

IV] THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI 37

It may, then, be taken for granted that the woodpecker had been recognised as a thunder-bird by the colour of his head. Some would add (as we have already intimated) that he was also a fire-bird, on account of his drilling holes in trees after the manner of a fire-stick. As we have said, it is not always easy to tell whether a bird with red crest or red plumage is a fire-bird or a lightning-bird, or whether it is both. Some Red Indians use the tail feathers of the red flicker when they desire to set on fire with their arrows the wigwam of an enemy ^; in this case, the red flicker is a fire-bird ; but is he also a lightning-bird ? I do not know for certain, but as they profess to be imitating the thunder in using the red feathers in question, it seems likely.

There is, however, a parallel case of some importance, in which we can decide that the bird under discussion was both fire-bird, and lightning- bird. I refer to the robin redbreast. The The evidence is abundant and interesting that it was a thunder- fire-bird, but it may be suspected that as it was so iden- bird, tified from its colour (and without any thought of the fire- drill, as is the case of the woodpecker) that it may just as easily be a thunder-bird. Let us see.

Its smallness is no disqualification for discharging the functions which might seem more naturally to belong to the eagle of Zeus : for we have already seen the ruby-throated humming-bird acting as Thunder to the American Indians ; and one writer on American folk-lore tells us^ that he was actually shown the nest of the Thunder, and was surprised at its minuteness. So the robin is not excluded, nor even

and flew up the kitchen chimney. And to this day we see her in her red cap, and the rest of the body black, for the soot of the chimney had blackened her : continually she hacks into the bark of trees for food, and pipes before rain, because, being always thirsty, she then hopes to drink.

1 Teit, The Thompson Indians, p. 346. ' On account of their belief that the thunder shoots the ordinary thunder arrow-heads, and tail-feathers of the red-shafted flicker, which sets on fire everything that it touches, the Indians attached feathers of this bird to their arrows, which they shot at enemies' houses. They also made arrows intended to fire houses from wood of trees struck by lightning, or tied a splint of such wood to their ordinary arrows.'

2 Catlin, Life among the Indians, p. 166.

93 THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI [CH.

his constant companion, the wren. As a bringer of fire, the robin appears in a curious story told by Swainson^ An old woman, a native of Guernsey, declared that the robin was the first who brought fire to Guernsey, and that in crossing the water, his feathers were singed, and he has remained red ever since. She added that her mother had a great veneration for the robin, ' for what should we have done without fire ! ' The story suggests to us that the robin has been taboo from the earliest times, and not merely because of a Christian legend that has been attached to him. And in his case, it may be inferred that no dis- tinction was made between the robin as fire-bird, and the robin as thunder-bird. The name Robin is the friendly form of Robert, it is Shakespeare's ' bonny sweet Robin ' ; Robert is a common Norman name substituted for Rothbart (Red-beard), which is well known to be a title of Thor. So we get to the thunder-god at last. The very name Robin Redbreast is almost a dittograph.

It would be easy to bring forward other cases of the folk-lore explanations of the plumage of birds. For instance, it can be shown that Greece and Rome had other thunder- birds beside the woodpecker. If the woodpecker was honoured in ancient Rome, and elsewhere in Italy (for at Picenum they worshipped a woodpecker on a pillar, i.e. on the substitute for a sacred tree), recent investigation has confirmed ancient tradition as to its sanctity in ancient The Crete ^ ; there is also evidence that the cock was worshipped

thunder- ^^ a thunder-bird in early times. We have already alluded bi^d- to him in that capacity, amongst a tribe dwelling on an

island in the Victoria Nyanza. At Sparta, also, as the Dioscuric reliefs there discovered show, the cock is in evidence from the third century B.C. onwards, which suggests that at Sparta the cock had become, at some period, the cult animal in the worship of the Great Twin Brethren. In

^ Folk-lore of British birds, p. 16.

2 I am referring to the famous painted sarcophagus discovered by the Italians at Hagia Triada, where sacred birds are perched on pillars sur- mounted by thunder-axes, and I am assuming that they are woodpeckers.

IV] THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI 39

the great votive relief at Verona, in which Argenidas ex- presses his devotion for a safe return from a sea voyage, Mr A. B. Cook has detected a cock, perched on the rocks overhanging the harbour, where the returned ship rides at anchor. He has also shown that a cock was connected with the worship of Zeus Felchanos, where the second name ' under its equivalent Vulcanus makes it fairly certain that the deity covered by the two names was a thunder-god \ From these and similar indications we infer that the cock is a thunder-bird, and its red crest is in harmony with the identification. A curious confirmation of this arises from the fact that the cock in modern times discharges a function Thunder- which belonged in ancient days to the thunder-eagle. lig^tninR^'' Vitruvius tells us^ that eagles are to be put upon the ends of the roofs of temples, to protect them from lightning; the same duty is discharged for modern churches and barns by the mounted cock upon the weather-vane ; and it is amusing (and we may add, it is characteristically ecclesias- tical) to see the old and new sometimes side by side, when the modern lightning conductor runs up by the side of the ancient lightning averter. From these and similar cases we see that the worship of the thunder passed through an ornithomorphic stage, and that the proper colour by which one recognises the representative of the thunder or lightning is red. No doubt the cock has to do with the lightning, and that he is what the Red Indian would call Thunder, with power to avert the Thunder.

The question will arise at this point as to why, if the cock is the cult-bird of the Dioscuri in Sparta at the time to which we refer, it was not so at an earlier date. The answer The cock is that it is a religious importation that came from Persia, came^from where it was discharging the same function of thunder- Persia, hood and original royalty as the woodpecker was doing in Greece. The Greeks call it ' the Persian bird,' and Aristophanes tells us distinctly of the place of honour which it occupied

1 See A. B. Cook, Folk-Lore, 1904. For the Spartan reliefs, see Tod and Wace, Cat. of Sparta Museums, p. 113, etc.

2 See S. Eeinach, Mythes, Cultes et Beligions, torn. iii. p. 73.

40 THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI [CH.

in Persian folk-lore. Thus in the Birds (11. 480 sqq. tr. Rogers) :

"Zeus won't in a hurry the sceptre restore to the Woodpecker tapping

the Oak. In times prehistoric 'tis easily proved, by evidence weighty and ample, That Birds and not Gods were the rulers of men, and the lords of the

world; for example Time was that the Persians were ruled by the cock, a king autocratic,

alone ; The sceptre he wielded or ever the names, Megabazus, Darius, were

known ; And the Persian he still by the people is called, from the Empire that

once was his own."

Aristophanes clearly claims for the cock a position parallel

to that of the woodpecker antedating Zeus ; consequently

the real king displaced in Persia is not Megabazus or Darius,

but some deity more or less parallel to Zeus, in the Persian

The cock pantheon. Let us test the matter by enquiring whether the

i^-iu^ cock is a cult animal in Mithraism. A reference to Cumont^ Mithra-

cult. will show a number of cases where a cock attends the

Mithraic twins Cautes and Cautopates.

" On donne souvent un coq pour compagnon a Cautes," with reference to monuments where the cock is seen at the feet of Cautes, or on his hand. On another monument the cock is said to stand at the feet of Cautopates.

It was natural to interpret these of a Solar cult, rather than of the thunder : but first interpretations are not always correct or final : and it does not by any means follow that the thunder-bird is excluded. Moreover, since Cautes, who has the cock on his hand, shows by that sign, in the manner known to archaeologists, that he has displaced in the cult what he is carrying, we may say that the Mithraic twins were originally a c©uple of cocks in the same way that in ancient Greece we identify them with a couple of wood- peckers.

This protective power of the Thunder against the

Thunder can also be seen in the Zulu belief to which we

have already alluded ; for if the Zulu medicine man finds

a thunder-bolt, *he uses it as a heaven-medicine,' and so

^ Monuments relatifs au culte de Mithra, u 210, 212.

IV] THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI 41

they say that the courage which they possess of contend- ing with the heaven (i.e. the lightning) is that thunder- bolt, which is found where the lightning has struck. Especially the bird also, which is called the lightning bird, they say that it is among the most powerful of all lightning- medicines ^

We come in the next place to the anthropomorphic repre- sentation of thunder and lightning : and here our previous Com- investigation has helped us, by showing us, in the case of the orindian Lillooet Indians, an actual transformation of function from thunder- bird to man ; and with that transference, the symbolic colour scan- is also transferred. When one reads as above, the Lillooet <ii"*^i^'^- Indian's account of the man with red face and red hair, who was seen every time a flash of lightning came, we are reminded of the thunder-god of our own ancestors. For Thor had red hair and a red beard, and when he blew therein it thundered and lightened. We see how close the American Indian had come to the Scandinavian idea.

But it is not only Thor that makes the connection between the earlier zoomorphs of the thunder and the red colour of the thunder. Jupiter Capitolinus himself was Jupiter formerly a red-painted image ; so that there could be no j^^us* ^s mistake in saying that he was, par excellence, the Thunder. Thunder. He was fulminate, as far as colour could make him, and strangely like the Northern Thor, What the Dioscuri by their drapery suggest, he reinforces by a more complete statement.

With regard to the Dioscuri themselves, the association of red colour with them, is not a mere Roman peculiarity : it must be an Aryan idea, for we find that the Veda says The that red is the proper colour of the A^vins (the Indian ^^l^^^^ horsemen, who correspond to the Dioscuri). Accordingly Oldenberg says^ 'in certain special sacrifices, along with a bull offered to Indra, there is introduced a red-coloured goat for the Ayvins, for the Ayvins equally are of red colour.' It has been pointed out, for example, that, in the old times,

1 Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 380.

2 Oldenberg, Veda, p. 358.

•

42 THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI [CH.

a successful Roman general, to whom a triumph was granted, was considered as an actual impersonation of Jupiter, and to fulfil that dramatic action, he was painted red^.

This painting of the triumphant Roman general may be

compared with the humbler parallel of the man amongst

The the Thompson Indians of British Columbia to whom twins

Thunder- qj.q given in charge when they are bom. He wears a head-

among the band, generally of the bark of Eleagnus argentea, into which

InciianT°° are stuck eagle or hawk feathers. He paints his whole face

red, and holds a fir-branch in each hand. Evidently the

man is, here also, personating the thunder, and pretending to

be the father of the twins ^

That this is the meaning of the red-painted face may be seen from cases where the father of the twins himself takes on the decoration. Thus Boas tells us in his sixth report on the N.W. tribes of Canada*, that the ' parents of twins must build a small hut in the woods far from the village. There they have to stay, two years. The father must continue to clean himself by bathing in ponds for a whole year, and must keep his face painted red.' The father is raised to thunder- rank by the possession of twin-children.

What is true of the successful Roman general who impersonates Jupiter for one particular occasion, is probably true of the priests who represent him in other senses. Now these priests are the successors of a long line of medicine men, occupied inter alia with the management of the weather, and working by sympathetic and other magic, for the kind of weather that they want. If, then, we can show that red is the proper colour for such performances, it will not be difficult to

1 We may refer to Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxxiii. 36. 'Minium quoque...nunc inter pigmenta magnae auctoritatis, et quondam apud Eomanos non solum magnae, sed etiam sacrae. Enumerat auctores Verrius, quibus credere sit necesse, Jovis ipsius simulacri faciem diebus festis minio illini solitam, triumphantumque corpora; sic Camillum triumphasse.'

See also Rushforth in Smith-Weyte-Marindin ; Diet. Ant. ii. 894, who points out the identification of the triumphing general with the god. See Suet. Aug. 94; Juv. x. 38; Liv. x. 7, 10, etc.

2 Teit, The Thompson Indians , p. 310 {Jesup N. Pacific Expedition, vol. i. 1898-1900).

3 1890, p. 39.

IV] THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI 43

generalise for the priesthood the same colour as applies to the divinity. Here is one curious case from a very debased civilization, that of the negroes in Brazil, who have become Thunder- nominally Roman Catholic, but have largely reverted to the °^* savage cults of the West Coast of Africa from which they negroes originally came. They build rude oratories (terreiros) in the manner of the African fetish huts, and have mingled in an indiscriminate manner the saint worship of the Roman Catholic Church with the original fetishism. In every one of these huts, for example, will be found images of Cosmas and Damian, one of the conventional Roman substitutes for twin-worship. This combination of cults they call the worship of the Orisas (or saints). In the catalogue of these, the third place is given to the thunder-god Shango ; he is the thunder-god of the Yorubas in West Africa. His other name is Dzakouta, which means the ' hurler of stones,' by reference to the thunderbolts. The wooden figure of Shango which is found in all these oratories represents a priest with the insignia of the deity, and especially with a flint hatchet in each hand, and another flint hatchet over his head. And amongst the other insignia of this thunder-representing figure, not the least significant is his red apron. To the worship of Shango, an order of devotees is attached, every one of whom is dressed in red. And the Abbe Etienne Ignace, to whom we owe these observations, remarks that the colour is meant to represent the lightning; 'cette couleur, en effet, est de nature a rappeler les eclairs rutilants qui s'echappent des mains de cette divinite\'

The hatchets, too, as we have seen elsewhere, are thunder- axes, and can be paralleled in many a Greek and Oriental cult, as in the worship of Jupiter Dolichenus and amongst the ancient Cretans.

This single illustration from an out-of-the-way corner will show how the medicine men and priests of old-time thought of the thunder and lightning and their various representations and qualities. There can be no doubt that the red raiment of the Heavenly Twins at Rome means the ^ Anthropos for 1908, pp. 886, sqq.

44 THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI [CH.

same as the red colour of the images, priests and worshippers amongst the negroes in Brazil. The story The transition from the red feathers of the woodpecker Picus. to the red raiment of the Dioscuri, can be studied very prettily in the inverse order, in Ovid's account of the meta- morphosis of Picus, king of Latium, at the hands of Circe, the enchantress. According to Ovid, this enchantment was an act of feminine revenge upon Picus, because he did not respond to Circe's amatory proposals : he was, in fact, con- tracted elsewhere. Picus, the king of Ausonian lands, of Satumian descent, a lover of horseflesh, and skilled in cavalry warfare, goes out to hunt the wild boar in the woods. Him Circe spies from out the glade, as he rode along, with two boar-spears in his left-hand, and (notice the horseman's raiment) robed in a scarlet chlamys buckled with gold^

Now notice what happens when Circe transforms him from king Picus into king Woodpecker : his wings become the colour of the robe, his golden buckle turns to feathers, and his neck is ringed with gold. Nothing remains of the ancient Picus except his name.

Purpureum chlamydis pennae traxere colorem, Fibula quod fuerat, vestemque momorderat aurum, Pluma fit, et fulvo cervix praecingitur auro, Nee quicquam antiqui Pico nisi nomina restat,

Ov. Met. XIV. 393-396.

Ovid's metamorphosis is an artificial one, in exactly the opposite direction to what really took place : the tradition was not a mythological one from man to bird, but a change of cult from ornithomorph to anthropomorph. The real king Picus is the woodpecker, who was king before Zeus. Let us then transform him back again, and we shall see that his golden throat and red feathers become the scarlet chlamys bound with gold of the thunder-man. The scarlet colour of king Picus' chlamys answers then to the red feathers of the woodpecker: and we have traced this colour through the bird form to the human form in theology, and in the

1 Poeniceam fulvo chlamydem contractus ab auro, Ov. Met. xiv. 345.

IV] THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI 45

images of the gods and the dress of their worshippers in ritual.

We can now rjeturn to the description of the Dioscuri which has come down to us in the ancient legends; no better instance could be found than Pausanias' story of the The M«s- two young warriors from Messene, who dressed themselves ^jj-ggg ^^g up as Dioscuri, and deceived the Spartans who were gathered Dioscuri. for a religious festival in honour of the Twins\ '^Once when the Lacedemonians were celebrating a festival in camp in honour of the Dioscuri, and were carousing and making merry after their mid-day meal, Gonippus and Panormus appeared to them, clad in white tunics and purple cloaks ('XXa/jLv8a<i 7rop(f>vpd<;, tr. red cloaks) riding on gallant steeds, with caps (ttiXoi) on their heads, and spears in their hands. When the Lacedemonians saw them, they did obeisance and prayed, thinking that the Dioscuri were come to the sacrifice. But when once the young men were in their midst, they galloped through them all, stabbing with their spears ; and after laying many low, they rode off to Andania. Thus they dishonoured the sacrifices of the Dioscuri. It was this, I believe, that roused the hatred of the Dioscuri against the Messenians.'

No doubt the young Messenian cavalry-officers got them- selves up for the sport by a proper equipment in caps, tunics, cloaks and colours. I think there can be no doubt that Pausanias means us to understand that their chlamydes were red.

The same thing may be noted in the account of the The battle of the Sagras river, where the Locrians unexpectedly ^^^ ^j^g defeated the men of Crotona by the aid of the Dioscuri. Locrians. The Latin version of this story is in Justin. The Locrians had appealed to the Spartans for aid, but the Spartans had a distaste to go so far afield, and recommended the Locrians to consult the Dioscuri. When the day of battle came, there appeared on the wings of the little Locrian army two young warriors of strange appearance, and unusual size, riding white horses and wearing scarlet cloaks. These ' Pausanias, tr. Frazer, iv. 27. 1.

46 THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI [CH.

strange auxiliaries decided the day in favour of the Locrians, and the news of the battle was miraculously telegraphed on the very same day to Athens and Sparta ^

Another curious legendary point which betrays the origin The Twin of Castor and Pollux as the Sons of the Thunder will be in the found in the story of the sceptic who doubted their veracity, Forum at as they stood by the pool of Juturna and told the victory at the Lake Regillus. The Twins touched the unbeliever's beard. It was at once changed to a red colour; the victim of the miracle went ever afterwards by the name of Aheno- barbus, and transmitted the title to his clan. If the thing had happened in Northern Lands, he would have been nick- named Rothbart, and every one would have recognised that he had had dealings with Thor, who bears the same supple- mentary name^.

Not only was it the case that the Dioscuri were believed

to have worn red chlamydes on those occasions when they

miraculously turned the tide of the battle, but there is

The reason to believe that the soldiers who were immediately

anny*° under their patronage were also clothed in scarlet. Cer-

imitates tainly this was the case with the Spartans, who used to go the Twins. . % , . _ , i rv, x ,

into battle carrying the sacred cross-beams (ooKava) that

were the visible representations of the presence of the Twin

Brethren. They wore cloaks of the appropriate red colour

and marched to the music of flutes that played a tune

known as Castor's tune. I suppose this means that Castor

was the inventor of it, so that we have here a case of the

patronage of music by one of the Twins, as we have it in

' Justin. XX. 2, 3. ' Quo metu territi Locrenses ad Spartanos decurrunt; auxilium supplices deprecantur ; illi longinqua militia gi-avati, auxilium a Castore et Polluce petere eos jubent....In cornibus quoque duo juvenes diverso a caeteris armorum habitu, eximia magnitudine et albis equis, et coccineis paludamentis, pugnare visi sunt, nee ultra apparuerunt, quam pugnatum est. Hanc admirationem auxit incredibilis famae velocitas ; nam eodem die, qua in Italia pugnatum est, et Corintho et Athenis et Lacedae- mone nuntiata est victoria.'

^ The story will be found in Plutarch, Aemilius Paullus, xxv. eW oi /jUv iTn\j/av(Ta.i, \iyovTa.i. r^s vTrriv7]s avrov rotv x^po^v drp^fia /uetStwcrey i] 5e eidvi iK fieXalvTji rptx^s eU wippav /xera/SaXoOco, ry fxkv Xbytp iri<TTiv, rifi S' dv5pi vapaffxet" iTrlKXTjciv tov. 'Arp/d^ap^ov, orrep earl xttX/cojrurywj'a.

IV] THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI 47

the Theban pair, Zethus and Amphion, of whom the latter is reported to have built Thebes, or to have helped to build it, by the music of his lyre^ We remember also the Hebrew triad, Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal ; of whom Jubal is the in- ventor of the harp and organ. If this is the right explanation of Castor's tune, this agrees with the idea that we get of him elsewhere, that he was the gentler of the pair, and his brother the professional ruffian.

At Sparta, then, the music was Dioscuric, and so was the drapery. On a certain occasion when an earthquake had destroyed Sparta, and when the Messenians were in revolt, the Spartans sent a messenger to Athens for help; and Aristophanes describes the appearance of the suppliant, seated on the altar, with pale face and red coat\

The Spartan army, then, was thoroughly Dioscurized. And it is natural to ask the question whether the same thing is not true of the Roman Knights, who rode in pro- cession, called Transvectio Equitum, on the day of the Commemoration of the Battle of the Lake Regillus,

We have now shown, from many points of view, that red is the proper Dioscuric colour ; our investigation having taken us into the earlier cults that preceded the great religions of Greece, Rome, and India, and into the omitho- morphic worship which precedes some, at least, of the an- thropomorphic representations of deity. The colour of the thunder has affected all its living representatives. Moreover the suspicion arises that this may apply, to some extent, to the vegetable and inanimate representatives of the Thunder, Here is an interesting case. We have seen that, in general,

^ Cf. Marlowe, Br Faustus, Act n. sc. 2 :

' Have not I made blind Homer sing to me ?

And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes, With ravishing sounds of his melodious harp, Made music with my Mephistophilis ? ' 2 This is pointed out by Frazer, Attis, p. 108, who gives the reference to

Aristophanes, Lysistrata (1138, seq.). Other allusions {v. Frazer, in loc.)

will be found in Plutarch, Lycurgus, 22; Xenophon, Eespiih. Lacedaem.

XL. 3 ; Aristotle in a scholion to Aristophanes, Acharn. 320 ; Plutarch, Instit.

Lacon. 24.

48 THE RED ROBES OF THE DIOSCURI [CH. IV

the thunder-tree is the x)ak, though there are traces of other

dwellings for the mysterious flame: at Sparta, the Twins

were detected once in a wild pear-tree. In Palestine, also,

sacred oaks are the fashion, and it is from such sacred oak

(or terebinth) that the Thunder^god and the Twins came to

The pome- visit Abraham. There is, however, another tree, the pome-

Thunder- gr^nate tree, whose name, Rimraon, has perplexed the lexico-

tree: graphers. They usually content themselves by saying it is

etymologically of unknown origin. As Rimmon (Assyrian,

Rammanu) is the name for one of the thunder-gods of

Mesopotamia, we are naturally invited to consider the

pomegranate as a thunder-tree ; and anyone who has ever

seen a pomegranate orchard, aflame with scarlet blossoms in

the early spring, will have no doubt as to the reasons of the

identification.

the holly- It is possible that this observation may lead us to the

*f^® • reason for the sanctity of the holly-tree, and the rowan-tree

tree. (mountain-ash) in our own islands^

Even inanimate objects will sometimes furnish us with the colour suggestion. Blinkenberg reports that in the islands off Esthonia, people believe that the thunder-stone turns red on the approach of a storm\

1 The rowan-tree is simply the red tree; not from the English roan which goes back through Italian rovano to the Latin rufus; but from a Norse form said to be derived from a word meaning red and supposed to be related to the Icelandic reynir : see Skeat, Etym. Diet.

2 The reference is to Russwurm, Eibofolke, ii, 249. The whole passage is important. ' Wahrend eines Gewitters werden die Donnerkeile ganz roth (I. of Worms), und man legt sie dann in das Gefass, aus welchem das Vieh trinkt, damit es durch den Schreck beim Donner nicht Schaden leide : denn dadurch wird die Milch ganz kraftlos und giebt keinen Rahm (Dago, Wichterpal, and Worms). Die Donnerkeile sichern auch gegen Einschlagen des Blitzes (Wichterpal, Worms).... Wenn man Korn aussaet, legt man sie in das Kiilmit (Kjolmt) aus welcher man streuet, so schadet in dem Jahre... das Gewitter dem Korne nicht,... wer daher einen Donnerkeil findet, der darf ihn nicht weggeben, well er sonst sein GUick verscherzen wiirde (Worms).'

CHAPTER V

THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA

We have spent some time in explaining the beliefs which savage peoples have as to the nature of thunder and lightning, and have taken pains to point out, without attempting an exhaustive treatment, the wide-spread idea that the thunder is a bird. It was necessary to do this because of another belief, also widely held, which is our main study, that Twins are the Children of Thunder. It was impossible to deal adequately with the genesis of the Twin-cult, unless we had some previous idea of Thunder- cult. Now that we are sufficiently informed on that point, we can go on to discuss the Twin-cults more minutely. Is the taboo on Twins as universal as it is early ? Are there any wide stretches of human life or of human history that know nothing of such a taboo ? And does the taboo, where it exists, work out from a Fear into anything that can be called a Religion ? To answer these questions, we want to know more about peoples savage of to-day, and about peoples less cultured than ourselves in bygone days.

We shall begin with Africa, because there we shall find civilization most elementary, and we may therefore be able to get nearest to the origin of the Great Fear, and to mark most certainly its early developments. There are still many parts of Africa, where we only know the coast-line, and a little of the hinterland. Where the coast-line belongs to a progressive European power, the custom of killing twins is sure to be in process of disappearance ; and on this account, the evidence is apt to be elusive. We shall, however, be able to establish quite easily the general existence of Twin-

H. B. 4

50

THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA

[CH.

Dapper's Geo- graphy.

Blomert's

travels.

Twins killed in Benin.

Muller on the Gold- Coast, Twins of same sex live.

cults all over Africa, both amongst the negroes, and amongst the Bantus.

I believe the first to publish information about the Twin- cult in West Africa was Dr Olfert Dapper, whose book entitled Nauwkeurige Beschrijvinge der Afrikaansche Ge- westen was published at Amsterdam in 1668, It certainly is strange that we should have no English or Portuguese relations of an earlier date. The important thing about Dapper is that he is a scientific geographer, and describes countries and peoples he has never visited; he tells us, in his preface, that he obtained much information about the country between Cape Verde and the kingdom of Lovango (Loango) from the writings of Samuel Blomert, which had been handed to him by the great Leyden scholar, Isaac Vossius : and he mentions that Blomert's account was very full, and that it contained a large amount of information not previously recorded. Blomert had, as Dapper tells us, lived several years in Africa.

It may be assumed, then, that it was from Blomert that Dapper obtained the statement that in Benin * no twins are ever found ; but as may be supposed, they are bom there as well as elsewhere, for it is suspected that either of them is every time choked by the midwife, the giving birth to twins being considered a dishonour in the country, for they firmly believe that one man cannot be the father of two children at one time.'

In this account we have evidence that twins are killed, a conjecture as to how they are got rid of, and the native reason for their removal. We know enough about the Twin- cult to inspire us with confidence in Dapper's statements. The case was otherwise with those who followed him, as we shall presently see.

In 1673, W, T. Muller published at Hamburg an account of a part of the Gold Coasts In this we find (p. 184) that when a woman brings into the world twins of the same sex, they preserve them alive. If, however, they should be of

^ Die Afrikansclie auf der Guineisclien Gold-cust gelegene Landscha/t Fetu.

y] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA 51

opposite sexes, they select one of them to live, and kill the other. We shall see, later on, cases of especial severity towards twins of opposite sexes, and reasons assigned for that severity ^

In 1704 there was published at Utrecht, by Bosman, a Bosnian's work entitled Nauwkeurige Beschrijvinge van de Guinese, tio^n"f which contained accounts by D. van Nyendael of the manners Guinea. and customs of the natives on the Gulf of Guinea.

Bosman, in his preface, challenges Dappers statements, and so does Nyendael. They argue that Dapper had never visited Benin, and that his accounts are contradicted by their own. That Dapper was never in Benin, we have his own statement for ; he was not a traveller, but a scholar writing on Universal Geography ; that his evidence contradicted V. Nyendael's is not to his discredit. The discord brings at once to the front the important fact that precisely opposite views of twins may be taken in the very same district. Thus V. Nyendael relates that ' if a woman bear two Twins children at birth, it is believed to be a good omen, and ^^ ^°°^^ the king is immediately informed thereof, and he causes Benin (?) public joy to be expressed by all sorts of music... In all parts of the Benin territory, twin-births are esteemed good omens, except at Arebo, where they are of the contrary except at opinion, and treat the twin-bearing woman very barbarously ; ^'^^^°- for they actually kill both mother and infants, and sacrifice them to a certain devil, which they fondly imagine harbours in a wood, near the village. But if the man happens to be more than ordinarily tender, he generally buys off his wife, by sacrificing a female slave in her place : but the children are, without possibility of redemption, obliged to be made the satisfactory offerings which this savage law requires.'

So it is clear that v. Nyendael had come across both interpretations of the twin-taboo (though he makes too little

^ ' Wanns gesehieht dass die Miitter Zwillinge eines Geschlechtes zur Welt traget, so behalten sie dieselbe beim Leben. Sind aber die Zwillinge unterschiedenes Geschlechtes, ein Knablein und ein Magdlein, so erwahlen sie eines darausz, welches sie wollen, das ander aber wird von ihnen erwehnter massen get6dtet...Gleicher Gestalt wird auch das zehende Kind, welches eine Miitter gebiehret, unschuldiger Weise getodtet.'

4—2

52 THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA [CH.

of the savagery of the Guinea negroes), and that he had also detected the beginning of the modification of the more savage interpretation. There was, therefore, no need to challenge Dapper's statements which might have been as true as his own : v. Nyendael goes on to give cases which he had known ; the first one, which he dates in the year 1690, was of a native merchant, whose wife had borne twins : the merchant redeemed his wife with a slave, but sacrificed the children. Next year, the same thing happened to a priest's wife, and the priest sacrificed, with his own hands, the two children, and a substituted slave woman. Exactly a year later, the priest's wife repeated the offence of twin-bearing, and V. Nyendael suspects that she atoned for her fertility by death.

We are now in possession of trustworthy information as to the state of opinion on twins in the district of Benin. They were liked and not liked ; the centre of dislike appears to have been Arebo. More than a hundred years later, Benin was visited by Lieut, (afterwards Commander) John King of the British Navy. It was somewhere between the years 1815 and 1821 ^ He saw much service on the Guinea Coast, but his account of Benin appears only to be known in a French translation ^ Lieut. Lieut. King notes that the barbarous custom of exposing

^*°s- twins which formerly existed at Arebo (lat. 5° 80', long. 5° 10') has now introduced itself at Gatto : the children were placed in an earthen pot, face upwards, and allowed to perish on the top of a hill.

From this statement we arrive at a confirmation of V. Nyendael's statement about Arebo (unless King should be quoting from v. Nyendael) ; we have also the very doubtful statement that the inhumanity of twin-murder was spreading elsewhere. It is not at all likely that the Guinea natives were becoming more inhuman with the course of time : the natural explanation is that the observers were coming across more traces of the murders of twins, and not that more twins were

^ See O'Byme's Naval Biography. Lond. 1849. 2 Journal des Voy. vol. xm. Paris, 1823.

V] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA 53

being murdered. As to their placing of twins in earthen pots on the top of a hill, that is confirmed by later travellers ; the top of the hill only means that portions of the country are tabooed for the purpose of getting rid of the dangerous invaders. Any part of the bush, for instance, into which twins have been thrown, becomes, as we shall see, infected with the taboo of the exposed children, and will be universally avoided, except for the purpose of such exposures.

When Captain John Adams published in 1823 his Captain Memarks on the Country from Cape Palmas to the River Adams. Congo, he noticed the same variety in the treatment of twins. He tells us (p. 37) that all twins born in Fanti- Twins land are called by the same name Attah, which signifies ^^^comed twin, and that the mothers are held in great esteem for Fantis being thus prolific. Whereas in Bonny, the reverse takes Bonny, place : ' the mothers of twins are compared to goats and are not infrequently destroyed.' We shall find this comparison of the twin-mother with the multiple-bearing lower animals in many parts of the world : it is not, however, to be re- garded as the root idea of the great taboo, whose leading characteristic is fear rather than disgust.

Captain Hugh Crow tells us in his Memoirs, published in Captain London in 1830, that at Bonny both the mother and the ^^^^ twins are put to death. Here we have the taboo in its extreme form, without any modification. So far we have been following what may be called a history of the discovery of the Twin-cults ; and the authors quoted, most of whom we have verified, will be found collected in Ling Roth's book on Greater Benin^, We shall obtain some more information for our purpose from this valuable book. In recent times, the evidence of travellers and of missionaries has greatly ex- tended our knowledge. We will continue the examination of the beliefs of the natives in the Niger Delta, making notes from point to point of any important developments in the cult.

For example, there lies before me a magazine which makes reports of a mission in the Niger Delta called the 1 Greater Benin. Halifax, 1903.

54

THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA

[CH.

Twins killed in Qua Iboe district.

Twin- mothers banished,

Qua Iboe Mission Quarterly, and relates to work carried on near the mouth of the Qua Iboe River. In the issue for August, 1911, Mr R. W. Smith reports a visit he paid to a native church at Enon. He describes the change which the Gospel was making in the people, and by contrast speaks of what had happened upon a previous visit. He tells us that 'about two months previous to this service, I heard the people wailing in the village. Some young fellows asked me to come and see a woman who had just given birth to twins. I went with them to a little dilapidated hut. The woman was sitting on the ground, and the children were lying on the clay floor. There was no one to help her.

' I went outside and asked the women to do something. They told me that Twins were a sign of God's wrath ; if they assisted this woman, their own children would be blighted. I must say to their credit, they looked greatly distressed, and I am sure would have liked to help, but this horrible fear possessed them to such a degree as almost to paralyse their minds. I caught the husband, who wanted to run away, and tried to make him help, but he moaned and groaned so much that I was glad to get rid of him. One of the young fellows and myself washed the infants, and as the woman refused to suckle them, I got a tin of milk, and we tried to feed them. For two days we kept them alive, but at last they died.'

This very simple account of the Twin-cult in our own time will show clearly the extent to which the Great Fear still prevails, stronger than neighbourliness, and more potent than the love of father, or even mother, for the children. In the next issue of the same magazine (Nov, 1911, p. 199), Mr Smith gives a further account of his conflict, as a Christian teacher, with the great Taboo. As it brings out some further important features of the Cult, I transcribe some sentences.

' You have heard how women who give birth to twins are treated in Qua Iboe. The children are killed and the women banished to a village where only mothers of tivins are allowed to live. The man who was foremost in welcoming me

V] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA 55

to the town (of Ikot-Idung) had five wives. One, whose name was Chonko, his favourite, immediately after my arrival, gave birth to twins. The father came and said " What shall I do." I said, "Do you want to send her away?" and he said, "No"; I said, "Alright, my house is nearly finished, are you prepared to leave your own compound and take your wife there and nurse her ? " He assented and went. The custom is to condemn a house where twins have been horn. The people said to me, " Look ! we have built you a nice house, now you've gone and spoilt it, because you will have very bad fortune if you live there after that woman is gone." The chiefs threatened the man. The walls and floor were very damp, and the mud had not dried. He caught a severe cold sleeping on the ground, yet he remained firm, and to-day his wife is living with him. This brave stand has influenced the minds of all, and I hope to see the cruel custom soon done away with completely.'

The writer has given us two fresh pieces of information ; one, that the taboo on the unfortunate woman and children extends to their house, and, he might have added, to all their possessions. A Biblical parallel may be found in the story of Achan in the book of Joshua, who had touched tabooed spoil, with lamentable results to himself and all that was his.

The second point of importance is that the woman might be expelled to live in a place where other similar tabooed women live ; in other words, we have the suggestion of the formation of a twin-town or sanctuary.

Mr Smith did not notice, that the abolition of the twin- taboo which he was trying to accomplish radically by the introduction of the Christian faith, was already begun by a slower evolutionary method. Apparently, it was already the custom to spare the woman, and to assign her a permanent exile in place of an immediate death.

Many more testimonies to the beliefs of the negroes in the Delta of the Niger and in adjacent districts might be quoted at this point. Some of them have already been given, or reference has already been made to them in the

56 THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA [CH.

second chapter of my book on the Cult of the Heavenly

Twins, and it is not necessary to repeat them, simply for the

sake of making a complete literature on the Twin-cult.

It is proper, however, to allude briefly to such parts of the

evidence of travellers and of missionaries as throw into

relief either the inner meaning of the cult, or the various

stages of development through which it passes.

Miss One of the most striking and pathetic accounts of the

Kingslev's ^°^^ which the twin-terror has upon the native mind is

story. given by Miss Kingsley in her Travels in West Africa^.

She relates the case of a poor slave woman who had become

an outcast through bearing twins, and the way in which the

children were saved by the heroic intervention of Miss

Slessor, a lady missionary at Okyou. The story should be

read in Miss Kingsley 's own pages, which are abbreviated in

Mr Ling Roth's book on Greater Benin, and still more

by myself in the work just referred to. A single sentence

from Miss Kingsley lets in a flood of light, without her

Twin knowing it, on the history of the taboo : 'All children are

and others ^^^^own (into the bush) who have arrived in this world in the

exposed, way considered unorthodox, or who cut their teeth in an

improper manner. Twins are killed among all the Niger

Delta Tribes, and in districts out of English control, the

mother is killed too, except in 0-mon, where the sanctuary

Twin- is. There Twin mothers and their children are exiled to an

aries. island in the Cross River. They have to remain on the

island, and if any man goes across and marries one of them,

he has to remain on the island too.'

The opening sentence as to children born in an un- orthodox manner is a delicate allusion to another savage terror, the dread of children born feet first. It is an im- portant study, as the history of Ancient Rome, with its worship of Venus Verticordia, appears to involve European peoples in the same primitive belief and dread. We shall come across more of this sort of thing. With regard to the twin-births, however, of which Miss Kingsley remarks that ' there is always a sense of there being something uncanny

1 p. 324.

V] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA 57

about twins,' the passage which we have quoted conveys an excellent idea both of the extent of the taboo, its original intensity, and the mode in which the taboo has been gradually lifted. The reference to the sanctuary on the Cross River is of the first importance, as we shall see later. It means that the origin of sanctuaries is to be sought, in part at least, in the isolation of twins with their mothers and attached or annexed friends. Here again we shall want to examine the matter in the light of Greek and Roman origins.

The Cross River, which is a little to the east of the Sanctu- Niger, after passing through the district of 0-mon, to which t^e^cross Miss Kingsley refers, runs out into the Gulf of Guinea at Old River. Calabar ; and from a missionary of the Calabar Mission (quoted by me in Cult, pp. 12-14), named Goldie, we obtained the same statement as that made by Miss Kingsley with regard Mr Goldie to the formation of sanctuaries S to the following effect : |.jq„ ^f that ' the mother, who was visited with the much dreaded twin- affliction of a twin-birth, was no doubt formerly destroyed with her infants ; but we found on our arrival that, though she was driven out of the town, and mourned for as dead, she was permitted to live in the farm districts, and a hamlet was built on the outskirts of each town, called the ' twin- mother's village,' in which those resided who were under- going the banishment for life.'

This passage also is illuminating : it shows that the twin- sanctuary is something much more common than the single island in the Cross River, of which Miss Kingsley speaks ; in other words, if the course of human evolution in Europe is anything like what we see in the Niger Delta, the pro- gressive civilization of antiquity must have been prolific in Twin-towns to an extent comparable with the abnormal fertility of the female population. There should be many Twin-towns, as Mr Goldie properly calls them, and we shall have to keep our eyes open for such towns, and such islands, as bear marks, in their nomenclature or otherwise, of an origin in the twin-taboo.

Returning to Mr Goldie's account, it will be found that

1 Goldie, Calabar and its Mission, pp. 24 seq.

58 THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA [CH.

he gives a similar account to what we find elsewhere of the exposures of twin-children in the bush, where their bodies are commonly carried in earthen pots, and left for the ants or the hyenas to devour. It is not pleasant to describe these cruelties, but it must be done to some extent, if we are to realise the intensity of the twin-taboo; for without a proper realisation of that intensity, we shall constantly be disposed towards a sceptical attitude, and be asking ourselves the question whether it is possible that a taboo of the kind we are discussing can have had the wide range or the deep hold upon the human mind which we attribute to it ; and it is only as we observe how every other natural in- stinct gives way before it, that we see how potent the taboo must have been, and is, in the formation of belief

Thus Mr Goldie reports of the case in which he un- successfully intervened to save certain exposed twin-children, that the mother refused any help, and would rather die than become a twin-mother. The poor slave woman of whom Extent Miss Kingsley and Miss Slessor make report has a rankling tensi\y'of sense of injustice with regard to the way in which she has Taboo. been treated by her people, and the destruction of her goods and chattels, but she has not the least maternal instinct towards the rescued children, whom she appears to detest as cordially as any of the rest of the community.

An English doctor who was called in to the assistance of a negi'o woman in this region reports that, when the first child of a certain pair of twins arrived, the women in the court- yard made themselves ecstatically happy over it, until it was whispered from within the house, that a second child was en route, when they dashed the helpless babe to the ground and fled as if they were escaping from wild beasts.

An even stronger proof of the hold of the taboo will be found by most Christians in its power to resist the affections Twins produced and developed by the reception of the Faith : it is excluded difficult, or has been in recent times, to persuade native Christian Christians to admit to their fellowship in the Church any Churches, pej-gons marked by the taint of a twin-birth \ These, and ^ See Cult of the Heavenly Ttoins, pp. 14, 15.

V] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA 59

similar instances which might be given will help us to understand why we are right in laying emphasis on the place which such a taboo must have assigned to it in human history.

It is interesting, also, and necessary to watch the varia- tions in the treatment of the subject by tribes who would have been expected, from their physical contiguity, to think the same. Mr Goldie, to whom we have just referred, points this out clearly ^ He tells us that ' a small tribe near Ikorofiong (on the Cross River) kill both mother and children ; the people of Akaba, another small tribe in our neighbourhood, drive the poor mother into the bush, and allow her to perish of want. The Calabar people sometimes pick them up, the women going to the side of the river to hail any canoe passing. Another tribe drives off both father and mother, but the father is allowed to return to society on paying a fine, and catching a certain animal without killing it.' That the father should be taboo is rare and not quite intelligible : nor do I see the meaning of the catching of the animal referred to. Is the animal in any way concerned with the parentage in the minds of the savages ? One would like to know. So far, at all events, we have not found the West African negroes assigning the twin-children to the parentage of the Thunder, or employing them as Rain-makers, in con- sequence of a Sky or Thunder paternity. Perhaps they are not commonly in want of rain.

To return to our collection of facts ; here is an extract Mockler- from a traveller through the Niger country, which explains ^^"^5?^"^^" Miss Kingsley's reference to a Taboo on children who do not supersti- cut their teeth properly, and throws light again on the variety that appears in the cult. We are told by Mockler- Ferryman in his work on British Nigeria^ that 'certain births are considered unlucky ; in the Niger Delta, for instance, a woman who bears twins is proclaimed an out- cast, and her offspring destroyed. Children who cut their upper teeth first are also supposed to be under evil influence,

^ Cult of the Heavenly Twins, p. 15. 2 p. 231.

60

THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA

[CH.

Major Partridge on Cross Eiver natives.

and are made away with, and the child of a mother dying in giving it birth is buried alive. But these superstitions are not universal, for in some districts twins are considered the greatest good-luck ; and whereas some tribes offer up albino babies to their gods, others reverence them.'

Hence we have a suggestion, not very definite, that in certain cases the gods were supposed to be implicated in abnormal births.

We have already referred to the beliefs of the natives in that part of Nigeria which borders on the Cross River. For this district we have a body of official information from Major Partridge, which will show some of the difficulties the British Government has had to contend with in its attempt to extirpate the twin-taboo ^ He tells us (p. 38) that 'one day a man living in a village distant only half an hour's walk from the town complained to me in court that, his wife having given birth to twins, the villagers wanted to drive away the mother and infants, and make him pay to the community a fine of five goats. (Here the father is clearly sharing the responsibility for what has occurred.) The chief of the village was summoned to attend court, and stated that, though their ancient custom forbade any mother of twins to go near the village stream, the woman in question had actually drawn water therefrom, and had thus polluted the stream, and that in consequence of her action a leopard was infesting their neighbourhood, and so they wanted to banish her and her babies and fine the father. (It is not quite certain whether this means for polluting the stream or for producing twins ; perhaps it means both.) I had to explain that this custom of theirs was unnecessary in the eyes of the Government, and to issue an order that the man and his family were not to be molested, and the complainant did not Twins due appear again. The natives believe that when twins are horn, one is the product of the mothers intercourse with a man, and

paternity.

the other of her intercourse with an evil spirit, and she is

looked upon as no better than a she-goat or a dog, and driven

forth, while her babies are either drowned, or cast into the

^ Partridge, Cross River Natives (Hutchinson, 1905).

V] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA 61

bush to perish.' The latter part of this statement is, I suspect, an alternative explanation for the former part ; we shall find it common to contrast the prolific woman with the lower animals : the allusion to a spirit ancestry, and the consequent differentiation of the twins, is of the highest importance for our enquiry. Some further notes may be made from Major Partridge's book\ An account is given (p. 62) of a visit to Ezialli, said to be the richest of the Aro rulers. The visitor learns in conversation that the Aros regard the Vulture as a sacred bird, and that it has hitherto been the custom, when a woman bears twins, to kill both the mother and her off- spring.

Some further notes on the twin-taboo are given (pp. 257 seq.) ; we are told that the husband of a twin-mother repudiates her, and she is driven away from the community. The twins were generally to be killed, but there were ex- ceptions. When the mother w^as a free-born woman, pro- perly married according to native custom, one baby was destroyed, but she was permitted to rear the other. When she was a slave, one was destroyed, and the other given to another woman to bring up. At a case heard at Ogada, the plaintiff being an Ikwe, and the defendant an Eshupum, an old woman of Ogada stated that ' the old Ikwe custom is that, Ikwe when a woman bears twins, they drive her away. Some- "^^^g^^^ times they bring her here and give her to us, but they take Twin- back the children when old enough to leave their mother.' This shows that the custom varies considerably. Among igarras the Igarras, up the Niger, twins are welcomed and considered ^^^s^^^

•^ * *^ twins as

as lucky. lucky.

Perhaps the most important study of the twin-taboo on the Lower Niger, is that given in Leonard's book on The Lower Niger and its tribes'^. Leonard brings out many important- details of the influence of the taboo on the life of the persons that are, or may be, affected by it. For

^ The full title of which is: Cross River Natives, being some notes on the primitive pagans of Obibura Hill District, Southern Nigeria, including a description of the circles of upright sculptured stones on the left bank of the Aweyong Eiver.

2 Published in 1906 (Macmillan).

62 THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA [CH.

instance (p. 310) ' on the birth of twins — looked on as this is, as unnatural and monstrous — all domestic utensils are at once destroyed,' Leonard suggests that the destruction of twins, if not exactly a sacrifice to ancestral spirits, is closely akin to it. It is an offence against the ancestral gods that must, of necessity, be removed, along with the offending cause, the woman. He continues^ with the important obser- vation that the origin of the custom is 'lost in antiquity, and due apparently to the conception that one birth at a time is the distinguishing feature between man and all other creation, and therefore the birth of twins was regarded as an unnatural event, to be ascribed solely to the influence of malign spirits, acting in conjunction with the power of evil ...Indeed, according to their ancient faith, although two Second energies are required to produce a unit, the production of to spirit ^^^ such units is out of the common groove, therefore un- ancestry. natural, because it implies at once a spirit duality, or enforced possession of some intruding and malignant demon, in the yielding and offending person of a member of the household.... For, in their opinion, the natural product of two human energies, as a single unit, is only endowed or provided with one soul-spirit. The custom that prevails amovg the Ibo or Brass men, of allowing one, always the first-horn of the twins, to live, is a practical admission of this conception.'

Here we have the dual paternity clearly brought out, and the important additional fact that among the Ibo or people on the Brass river, the first-born is reckoned to be of human parentage. We ought, on this belief, to say Castor and Pollux, not Pollux and Castor ; Zethus and Amphion for the Theban twins would also be the right order as is clear also from the ' divine Amphion ' where Amphion only means somebody's twin. Leonard goes on to state in the strongest terms the 'horror and detestation' which twins produce in every home in the Niger Delta. * It is the standing law of the priests that no time is to be lost in removing the un- fortunate infants. This is generally done by throwing them ' I.e. p. 458 seq.

V] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA 63

into the Bush, to be devoured by wild animals, or the equally ferocious driver ants, or sometimes, as is done by the Ibibio, Ijo, and other coast tribes, by setting them adrift on creeks in roughly made baskets of reeds and bulrushes, when they are soon drovmed or swallowed by sharks or crocodiles^.' Leonard goes on to explain the various modifications of the taboo. The mother, for instance, may be quarantined in a detached hut for sixteen days. After this they go through purification rites, ending up with the sacrifice of a chicken or pup, and with the removal of the chalk which had previously been smeared upon them. We shall meet elsewhere with this custom of whitewashing the twins. The father also pays to the priests a fine of about 1600 manillas (say £6. 13s. 4c?.).

On the subject of the formation of twin- towns, Leonard is perfectly explicit.

'In the Ibibio country, and formerly among the Efik,... Formation the women, looked on as unclean for the rest of their lives, are towns obliged to reside in villages, which are known as Twin-towns! l?.^^® The husband continues to maintain the wife, and the children country. are returned when weaned, i.e. at the end of two or three years. Should the woman have children of any other member of the community, the possession of them reverts to her original husband. Special sacrifices are made when a twin- child is received back from taboo, as well as in all cases of intercourse between the tabooed and the community. By this means, the women of the community are supposed to be protected against the contagion of the twin-curse.' But what is to be done if the first offending woman should repeat the offence ? ' In this case,' says Leonard, * the proba- bilities are that the death of the mother would be demanded by the household and by the community as well. Or, if not killed, she would be driven into the bush and left to die, although, if discovered by a stranger, he is at liberty to claim her as his own property, that is, at least, if he feels

1 This striking variation in the treatment of twins by the coast tribes in the Bay of Benin, us thinlcing whether this may not be the real mean-

ing of the stories told of the exposure of Moses and Sargon. The parallel story of Eomulus and Remus must be kept in mind.

64 THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA [CH.

inclined to run the risk of a venture so truly provocative of offence.' It is a natural assumption that the stranger, so annexing a twin mother, even with the modified taboo described above, would find himself migrating to a twin- village, or furnishing in his own dwelling the nucleus of such a village. Rites of Leonard goes on to describe the method by which the

tion. Ibo clans purify house and community on the arrival of

twins. All the people in that quarter of the village appear to be affected, and have to throw away their food and drink and half-burnt firewood ; in short, everything which might be affected by the contagion. It is not, however, stated that the house itself in which the twin-birth takes place is destroyed or abandoned. To that extent some modification of taboo appears to have been introduced : at an early stage we may be sure that the house or hut would have been abandoned or destroyed. The mother, herself, is promptly isolated ; and we have this important supplementary state- ment that when a woman is delivered of a child, and it is known that another is to follow, ' she is instantly carried into the bush, and whenever the second is born it is immediately thrown away, while the first-born is retained, and named Inmeaho, which means two people.' We may probably infer that this second child is the offence, and is due to the spirit parentage. The name should be noticed, for it is charac- teristic of the situation that twins have special names. The same thing occurs at Brass where the first-born is kept, and the other thrown away. In this case, if the child is a male it is called Isele, and if a female Sela, both names meaning Selected. It is implied by the name that one has been destroyed, but that it is settled in advance which one is to be kept. It is not a case of ' that is the one that I should keep.' The election is according to law and not according to grace. Leonard also alludes to the case, hinted at by Miss Kingsley, of a child whose manner of birth is irregular. Such a child is called Mkporooko, i.e. had or evil feet, and its birth causes the same taboo as a twin-birth. The mother, in such a case, goes to the Twin-town.

^

V] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA 65

So much, then, is clear, that the majority of the tribes of the Niger Delta hold strongly the belief in the twin-curse ; there may be some local modifications, but the general prohibition of intercourse with those affected by twin-birth, the avoidance of common roads, dwellings and markets, is practically universal.

We have already alluded (p. 61, sup.) to Major Partridge's

statement that higher up the Niger, among the Igarras, the

taboo is interpreted in exactly the opposite sense. This is

confirmed by Leonard, who shows that they regard the

uncanny event as due to good spirits rather than malign.

In this case, then. Twins are regarded as a blessing. Yet

the Igarra tribes are in contact on the south and on the east

with the Ibo tribes, who take the gloomy view of the

situation. Even more curious is the reversal of judgement

with regard to the relative importance of the twins ; the Second-

second-born is regarded as the elder : it is assumed that the ^^j^ jj^a

birth-right follows the younger child of the pair: the real primo-

^ geniture

elder has sent the younger into the world in advance of him rights.

in token of his superiority. This curious and important belief will have to be alluded to again, when we come to discuss certain Biblical twins. The Igarra, however, make no differ- ence in the treatment of twins, who are regarded as exactly equal and who, when adult, are married on the same day.

An annual twin-day festival is kept up, in honour of the birth of all twins in the community. Twins are supposed to have special powers : they cannot be poisoned and they have mantic foresight as to children not yet bom. All of this is very important. When I was first engaged on the West African beliefs, I did not immediately get evidence of the dual paternity, or the intervening spirit father. This comes out with clearness in the statements of Partridge and Leonard. The latter has especially thrown light upon the savage mind and the savage custom. It remains to be seen whether in any of the districts described the second paternity can be identified with Sky, Rain, or Thunder: or whether some other explanations may be the ones which express more exactly what the natives really think.

H. B. 6

66

THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA

[CH.

Koler on Bonny

natives.

Onitsha natives destroy twins.

Twin- mothers compared to lower animals.

Insults

and

curses.

There are still some customs attaching to the twin-cult in the Niger Delta, which need to be brought out, as well as some further confirmations of statements already reported.

In 1848 Hermann Koler published at Gottingen, a book called Einige Notizen iXhei' Bonny. He remarks^ with regard to the customs of the natives at Bonny, that, however little trouble a single child may give to its mother, yet if she were brought to bed of twins, it would mean very ill fortune for her : the twins would be evidence of her guilt, and the mother and children would be put to deaths Here we have again the implication that one man cannot be the parent of two simultaneous children.

In Mockler-Ferryman's account of Major Claude Mac- donald's mission to the Niger and Benue rivers, we have some important statements ^ At Sierra Leone, the party were received by a missionary, a native of the place, named Strong, who told them ' Strange tales of the barbarism of the people of Onitsha, — tales of human sacrifices, destruction of twins, and slavery, which we listened to Avith horror and disgusts' Onitsha is on the Niger river, half-way from Lokoja to the coast. When they called on the king of Onitsha, they made a proclamation in the name of the Queen of England 'against all human sacrifices, twin-murders and slavery. The poor king, being a good Conservative, begged that the customs might last out his time'.' With regard to the Ibo tribes of whom we have written above, they report^ that ' one of the most barbarous customs of the Ibo tribes is the destruction of twins. A woman, by giving birth to twins is considered to have committed an unnatural offence, and to have made herself akin to the lower order of animals. Her twins are taken from her and thrown into the bush to perish, whilst the miserable woman herself is proclaimed an outcast, and driven from her village. No greater insult can be offered to an Ibo woman than to call her twin-hearer, or

1 I.e. p. 102.

^ ' So wenig Umstande aber ein einziges Kind der Mutter macht, so ungliicklich ist es fur sie von Zwillingen entbunden zu werden ; es gilt als Beweis von Schuld, und Mutter und Kinder werden getodtet.'

3 Mockler-Ferryman, Up the Niger. Lond. 1892.

* p. 20. » p. 23. 6 p, 39.

V] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA 67

to hold up two fingers at her. This barbarism, at one time common in all Ibo tribes, has been considerably abated amongst the tribes dwelling near the main river, owing to the exertions of the Royal Niger Company.'

The interesting form of symbolic cursing in the Niger region should be noted. It has important ecclesiastical parallels to which we may allude later.

The same observation, which we previously noted, with regard to the appreciation of twins by the Igbarra tribes, is also recorded by the Macdonald expedition: they say^, ' Cannibalism is not practised by the Igbirras, and twins are worshipped under the impression that their birth brings luck to the family.' This is the strongest statement that we have come across yet of the devotion to twins of certain African tribes.

From another writer we obtain confirmation of the peculiar form of cursing prevalent in the Niger Delta. In a book of J. Smith on Trade and Travels in the Gulph j. Smith of Guinea (Lond. 1851), we find as follows^: 'In the g'^g^^^ °^ Bonny, woe be to the women who have two children at a birth, or who even become mothers of more than four, for their children are destroyed and the woman banished. The greatest possible insult you can offer an inhabitant of this place, is to call him nam-a-shoohra, meaning one of twins, Twin- or, as they would say, half a man : nam-a-shoobra also °"'^^^'^^" conveys the idea of being the son of one of the lower animals'; [not necessarily; the writer has misunderstood the comparison of the twin-mother with the lower animals]. 'The fiend-like expression of the countenance of a chief when applying this dreadful blasphemous language to a slave, with arm and two fingers extended, pointing at the unlucky offender, and thus intimating by sign as well as by speech that he is only half a man, is one of those displays of human passion often witnessed, but not easily to be described or forgotten.' The writer does not understand the twin-curse, and his explanation about being half a man is probably his own imagination. The situation described is intelligible enough, in view of what has preceded. 1 I.e. p. 141. 2 i,c. p. 47,

5-2

68

THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA

[CH.

Aro tribes

detest

twins.

Ellis on Yoruba tribes.

Twins sacred to monkey- god.

Among the Aro tribes, there was a curious concurrence noted by Partridge^ of a belief in the sanctity of the vulture, and the customary belief in the detestability of twins, which suggests a possibility of a connection between the bird and the twins. It seems to be a proper subject for enquiry whether the vulture may be the second parent in the twin- product, and whether, on the other hand, it may perhaps be a thunder-bird. We have not means of deciding these points at present, and must content ourselves with setting down the evidence, which occurs in the description of a visit paid by Major Partridge to Ezialli, the richest of the Aro rulers. 'The chief has a clean skin brought for his guest to sit on, and compliments are exchanged through an interpreter. The visitor learns that the Aros regard the vulture as a sacred bird, and that it has hitherto been the custom, when a woman bears twins, to kill both the mother and her offspring.'

Now we have probably said enough about the twin- customs of the Benin Coast and the Lower Niger; let us move westward and see how things stand in the Yoruba country. For this our natural guide will be Ellis, in his book on the Yoruha-speaking peoples of the West Coast of Africa. Amongst the minor gods of the Yorubas, Ellis gives the sixteenth place to Ibeji, who is described as follows'':

' Iheji.

Ibeji, twins Q)i, to beget, e;Y, two) is the tutelary deity of twins, and answers to the god Hoho of the Ewe-tribes. A small black monkey, generally found amongst mangrove trees, is sacred to Ibeji. Offerings of fruit are made to it, and its flesh may not be eaten by twins or the parents of twins. This monkey is called Edon dudu, or Edun oriokiiTiy and one of twin children is generally named after it, Edon or Edun. When one of twins dies, the mother carries with the surviving child to keep it from pining for its lost comrade, and also to give the spirit of the deceased child

1 I.e. p. 62.

p. 80.

V] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFEICA 69

something to enter into without disturbing the living child, a small wooden figure, seven or eight inches long, roughly fashioned in human shape, and of the sex of the dead child.... At Erapo, a village on the Lagoon between Lagos and Badagry, there is a celebrated temple to Ibeji, to which all twins, and the parents of twins, from a long distance round make pilgrimages. It is said to be usual in Ondo to destroy one of twins. This is contrary to the practice of the Yoru- bas, and, if true, the custom has probably been borrowed from the Benin tribes of the East.'

It is clear that the Yorubas have come to regard twins favourably : as to the destruction of twins at Ondo, there is no reason to suppose that twin-murder has been borrowed : it is much more likely that the Ondo people have a belief which is in process of modification, than that they have de- liberately abandoned a humane view of twins for the opposite.

We have now struck a new area of savage belief: we Twins have the twins deified in a small way, and provided with ^°.^' , , a temple, and we seem to be on the road to their represen- tation by means of images. As Ellis points out, the origin of this image-making is animistic, rather than religious. I am, myself, in possession of such an image, obtained from Images a doctor at Lagos. It has several nails driven into the t^ins crown of its head, and the natural explanation is that the medicine-man, or some one of that character, first conjured the spirit of the dead child into the' image, and then fixed it there by means of nails. The chief from whom the doctor obtained it parted with it, because, the second twin being now dead, there was no further danger to be guarded against. The image had become useless. It may be remarked that it is extremely ugly, and apparently was originally an- drogyne. Whether such an image would develope naturally into a god under favourable circumstances, is difficult to say.

Ellis does not say whether the Ibeji are represented regu- larly by images: nor is there any clue to the meaning of the cult-animal (in this case a black monkey) which turns up in the story. From the pilgrimages, we may, perhaps, infer as in a previous case, the existence of an annual festival.

70

THE TWIN -CULT IN WEST AFRICA

[CH.

Tshi.

tribes

make

image

of dead

twin.

Twins at

Porto

Novo,

Miss Kingsley has also given an interesting account of the substitution of an image for a dead twin child. This was among the Tshi-speaking tribes. She says :

'I remember once among the Tschwi trying to amuse a sickly child with an image which was near it and which I thought was its doll. The child regarded me with its great melancholy eyes pityingly, as much as to say, " a pretty fool you are making of yourself," and so I was, for I found out that the image was not a doll at all, but an image of the child's dead twin, which was being kept near it as a habi- tation for the deceased twin's soul, so that it might not have to wander about, and, feeling lonely, call its companion after it.'

Returning for a moment to the Yoruba customs, it will be seen that there is no evidence as yet brought forward to connect the twins with the thunder-god. The latter is named Shango, and is quite the normal type ; he could be placed in the same row with Thor and Zeus. It remains to be seen whether he has any bird ancestries, or whether he has the twins in any way under his protection.

A somewhat similar report as to the making of images of twins is reported in Les Missions Catholiques, for 1875. In this case the images are of twins born dead : and household sacrifices to these images are supposed to result in answers to prayers, and a knowledge of future events. A picture is given, hideous enough"^ of the two images arranged Janus- fashion. The main points of the report are given in a note\ The place for which this custom is reported is Porto Novo on the Slave Coast. Further information from the same centre will be found in Les Missions Catholiques for 1884. It is interesting to note that the small monkey previously referred to turns up here also, and that it is supposed there is spiritual confraternity between the twins and the monkeys.

^ Vol. vn. 1875, p. 592. Igbedji ( jumeaux). Les femmes qui mettent au monde des jumeaux morts font fabriquer une statue a double face et d'une seule pi6ce....Elles la placent dans un coin de leur maison, et lui offrent deux poules, des bananes, et de I'huile de palme, afin d'obtenir les faveurs dont elles ont besoin, et surtout la connaissance de I'avenir.

V] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA 71

Les Missions Gatholiques, XVI. (1884), p, 250. Ibeji. ' Quand une femme a deux enfants jumeaux, on ne les tue pas a Porto-novo, comme cela se pratique dans le Benin, mais les Noirs croient que ces enfants ont pour compagnons Twins des- genies semblables a ceux qui animent les singes d'une ^onkeys° petite espece, tres commune dans les forets de la Guinee. Quand les enfants seront grands, ils ne pourront pas manger de la chair de singe, et, en attendant, la mere fait des offrandes aux singes de la foret, leur porte des bananes, et autres friandises pour les adoucir.' If one of the children should be sick, the mother goes into the forest with the witch doctor, taking with her a basket full of provisions for the spirits. ' On la depose au pied d'un arbre ; le feticheur evoque les esprits et quand ceux-ci manifestent leur presence on se retire pour les laisser manger en paix. Apres quelque temps on vient voir si les genies ont trouve I'offrande a leur gout. Lorsque tout a disparu, heureux prdsage pour la sant6 de I'enfant. L'esprit qui accepte le sacrifice est bien entendu un esprit en chair et en os qui, prevenu a temps, s'etait cache pres d'un endroit convenu.'

Whether we call such performances religious or not, it will be agreed that they contain all the elements necessary for the evolution of a religion, spirits to be propitiated, priests, and sacrifices.

Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, Ellis on Ellis notes an interesting case of twin-trees, in which a deity tribes. is supposed to reside, to which twins born in Cape Coast are brought to be named \ This god, formerly worshipped, was Kottor-Krahah, who resided at the Wells now known by that name. He was said to have migrated with the Fantis from beyond Coomassie. When the emigrants came to the sight of the present Kottor-Krabah wells, they were reduced to great straits for want of water. The god showed them where to dig at the foot of two large silk-cotton trees. ' The two silk-cotton trees were afterwards named N'ihna- atta (Ihna, silk-cotton trees, attah, twins), and were regarded as belonging to the god, who, it was believed, resided in

^ Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 42.

72 THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA [CH.

them. One tree was said to be male, the other female.

.Sheep were in former times sacrificed to Kottor-Krabah,

and twins born in Cape Coast were carried to the trees to

be named.'

There is certainly some link between twins and this

mysterious and elusive god; but what the connection is must remain, for the present, obscure.

We have not found any traces, as yet, of the use of twins as rain-makers in W. Africa, This may be mere lack of information from the observers of the phenomena; or it may be that the connection between twins and the sky-god has not been made in these parts. This is a matter that will require closer investigation : we must not generalise too rapidly and say ' all twins are sons of Thunder,' but we must delimit, if possible, the area over which that identification is probable. Twins in When we move again to the westward, we come to

7°^^' the area which the Germans call by the name of Togo- land, for which we have a variety of information fi-om the most careful explorers and observers. For instance, Klose, in his book entitled Togo unter Deutscher Flagge, draws attention to the treatment of twins, using in part a dis- sertation by Clerk, entitled Meine Reisen in den Hinterldndern von Togo\ From Klose, then, we learn that amongst the Kratyi tribes, people believe that in the case of twin-births an evil spirit has had a hand in the game, for which reason they mercilessly kill the innocent children. Should the women be so unfortunate as to bear twins a second time, the people do not shrink from throwing the innocent children on to an ant-heap, since this is the only way in which they can prevent a similar recurrence. It is note- worthy that most of the savage races regard twin-births as of evil omen and that an evil spirit is responsible therefor*.

From the same writer we learn the customs of the Bassari, a tribe living between 9° and 10° N. Lat. and between 0° and 1° E. Long.^: 'Twins are regarded as

1 N. Clerk in Mittheilungen d, Geogr. Gesell. Jena IX.

2 Klose, I.e. p. 350. {Characteristik der Kratyileute und der Haussa.)

3 1.0. p. 509 sqq.

Y] the twin-cult in west AFRICA 73

ill-omened by the Bassari. If the first-born children are Twins twins, one child is preserved, the other is put in a large pot fiTs'^ri. and buried alive. Should the twins be boy and girl, the boy is kept: should they be of the same sex, they follow the Spartan custom, of preserving the stronger. To express in some way the relationship of the twins to one another, they sacrifice a fowl and divide it into two parts. One half is given to the child that is to be buried, the other half is put into a pot and buried near by. This sacrifice placates at once the Fetish and reminds the spirit of the dead child of his near relation to the living child, so that he shall not wreak vengeance on him. Twin children, not first-born, are in any case buried alive. Later on the father of the twins goes to the Fetish doctor, to pray for his help against the recurrence of the event.

* Women who have borne twins must not take part in agricultural operations, for fear of damaging the crops. Only after the birth of another child are they permitted to work in the fields '^

As we shall see later on, twins and twin-mothers are in many places especially valued for their influence on agri- culture ; apparently because they can, by sympathetic magic, communicate their own fertility. It will be noticed above that there is, in certain cases, a slight margin of choice, with regard to the child whose life is preserved.

For this same district we have a further description by Wolf on a German missionary named Franz Wolf. The account will be found in Anthropos, Bd vii. Heft 1 and 2, pp. 81-95 2. From this article we get a good deal of valuable information : according to Wolf, twins and triplets are welcomed amongst the Fo. They are regarded as Ohoho's children. Twins are common, triplets also occur. Of twins and triplets the last born is first in rank, and the explanation is given, valeat quantum, that persons of high rank send messengers before thera. Fixed names are attached to them, e.g.

1 Very nearly the same statements by Klose in Globus, lxxxi. (1902), p. 190 sqq.

2 The title is: Beitrag zur Ethnographie der Fo-neger in Togo.

74 THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA [CH.

Twins: both boys: Es6 and Esi,

both girls: Huevi and Hues4, one boy and one girl: the boy Esi and the girl Esihue. Triplets (a known case) :

boy, Ese : girl, Esi: girl, Esihue.

Children of twins have also definite names assigned to them :

First-bom: boy, Dosu, girl, Devi. Second; boy, Dosavi,

girl, Dohnevi. Third: boy, Donyo,

girl, Dosovi.

The mother has to divide her food into equal portions, and eat similarly from each portion, evidently so that each child whom she nourishes shall be equally served. If she did not, the neglected child would be cross and die. Ohoho the The Ohoho-cult. Wolf cannot decide whether Ohoho, twins? to whose parentage the twins are referred, is the guardian of the twins, or whether he is God who has taken possession of them. They appear in some way to identify twins with Ohoho, and call the father Ohohodyito (Ohoho-bearer), and the mother Ohohono (Ohoho-mother).

After the birth, a couple of plates of food are prepared for the Ohoho, and a woman, herself the mother of twins, gives the invitation to the food which she has prepared, and of which she has placed small portions in the dishes, in the terras ' This food is yours, I give it to you.' The remainder of the food is eaten by the visitors. Here again we have a rudimentaiy sacrifice with suggestions of a twin-priesthood. When a twin dies, there are curious ceremonies to be gone through, which may be of importance in the interpre- tation of the twin-cult. Capture The parents buy a white hen, maize-beer, a new calabash,

of a dead and a piece of white linen. They go out with a crowd of ^'^^^- natives into the bush. They look about for a long- tailed monkey (Meerkatze), and when they see it, they say, ' See !

V] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA 75

there is Ese,' meaning the dead child. (The monkey's name is Esio.) A twin-mother takes the calabash, pours some beer into it, and calls the monkey, saying 'Come, Ese, let us go home.' After three calls, she shuts the calabash with the stopper, and binds it up in the white linen. Ese is now inside. Then a woman kneels, and the twin-mother puts the calabash on her head. The woman has a string of cowries given her, which she holds in her teeth. She is now supposed to be possessed by the deity Ohoho. They return home, the twin-mother marching in front. They throw cowries to the carrier woman, which are picked up for her. On reaching home, the contents of the calabash, which are now supposed to involve Ohoho, are poured into the twin dishes. The birth sacrifice is repeated, and finally the dish that is supposed to belong to the dead child is covered up.

There really seems something like Totemism in the foregoing account of Ohoho, the twins, and the long-tailed monkey. Wolf himself appears to have maintained the existence of individual totems amongst the F6-tribe\ in the case of twins. He suggests that the totems of twins are the two kinds of monkey, to which the people in Togo-land pay respect; the esio (Meerkatze), and the okla (Husarenaffe). Twins may never kill and eat the former; they may kill, but not eat the latter. It is said by the natives that twins, in sleep, turn into one or other of these monkeys, and go into the fields to eat maize. If one of the monkeys is killed, the corresponding twin dies.

The parents of twins set apart every year a little patch of maize for the twins to eat, when turned into monkeys. This patch is never reaped, but left undisturbed.

There are traces of hereditary totemism in some tribes (e.g. the Atak-pame), the totem-name being derived in the first instance from the twin-mother. I suppose that in such cases a person bears the twin name without being actually a twin.

Further information, in much greater detail, is given by 1 See Anthropos, vol. vi. pp. 457, 458.

76 THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA [CH.

Spieth a Togo-land missionary, named Spieth, in a book on the tribes. Ewe-speaking tribes ^ Spieth describes at great length the manners and customs of the Ho-tribe, the Akoviewe, and the Kpenoe. About 600 pages are given to the Ho-district, and a close and careful study is made of the subject of twins, and the rites associated therewith. If we epitomise his reports, we find that the birth of twins is an exceeding joy. The path, of the twin-mother is better than the path of a rich man; a special drum is beaten to express the joy proper to this case.

The taboo imposed in such cases is not long : the father and mother are obliged to fast and to be silent until other twin parents come on the scene. To these they pay ransom, to the amount of 20 hoka. The woman who presides over the ceremonies prepares and eats food, the midwife prepares palm- wine, with which she first washes her hands. A festival is decreed at the nearest market-town of the Ho- tribe : and on a certain day the relatives come together, under the leadership of the visiting twin-mother who has charge of the proceedings; the parents have now to buy back their house and chattels from the visitors. The old woman says a prayer to the effect that everybody may have twins. The parents now have their hair ceremonially cut. Beans are cooked in a couple of pots and taken into the market place, and girls are appointed to feed the company therefrom with spoons. The happy parents are led up and down the street to the music of drums. More palm-wine is drunk, and it is then on sale to the general public, at the price of 5 hoha for two calabashes. The mother of the ceremonies is then paid off and goes to her home.

No ceremonies are allowed for twins of opposite sexes.

The twins themselves are forbidden to eat the flesh of the Hussar-monkey. The reason assigned is that twins are called by the name of ' Children of the Hussar-monkey.' Neither must they eat rat. If any one shoots one of these monkeys, the twin-parents are allowed to cudgel him. Here, then, again we have the appearance of the monkey as 1 Spieth, E)ve-Stavime, Berlin, 1906, pp. 202-206.

V] THE TWIN-CULT IN WEST AFRICA 77

cult-animal, and this time he is definitely connected with the parentage of the children. The meaning of this is not yet clear, but we shall perhaps find that this particular monkey is associated with the care of the weather.

It will be observed that however joyfully twins are regarded, there are plenty of suggestions of ransom on the part of the parents, both for themselves and their property.

With something of the same kind of ceremonies, Spieth Twins describes (p. 616) the twin-births amongst the Akoviewe. ^"^o^lwe^ The woman who is assisting the twin-mother leaves her on the arrival of the first child for fear of falling into a swoon or catching an incurable cough.... Various vegetables and fruits are soaked in water, and the mother and children are soaked therein. The father is prohibited from eating offerings made to the Hussar monkey, or from eating the flesh of the <