The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12). Frazer James George

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water sprinkled over the Mongol now completes his protection against perils and dangers.21 This last is a case of the beneficent transference of evil; for in it no attempt seems to be made to shift the burden of misfortune to anybody else.

      § 2. The Transference to Stones and Sticks

      Fatigue transferred to stones, sticks, or leaves.

      In the western district of the island of Timor, when men or women are making long and tiring journeys, they fan themselves with leafy branches, which they afterwards throw away on particular spots where their forefathers did the same before them. The fatigue which they felt is thus supposed to have passed into the leaves and to be left behind. Others use stones instead of leaves.22 Similarly in the Babar Archipelago tired people will strike themselves with stones, believing that they thus transfer to the stones the weariness which they felt in their own bodies. They then throw away the stones in places which are specially set apart for the purpose.23 A like belief and practice in many distant parts of the world have given rise to those cairns or heaps of sticks and leaves which travellers often observe beside the path, and to which every passing native adds his contribution in the shape of a stone, or stick, or leaf. Thus in the Solomon and Banks' Islands the natives are wont to throw sticks, stones, or leaves upon a heap at a place of steep descent, or where a difficult path begins, saying, “There goes my fatigue.” The act is not a religious rite, for the thing thrown on the heap is not an offering to spiritual powers, and the words which accompany the act are not a prayer. It is nothing but a magical ceremony for getting rid of fatigue, which the simple savage fancies he can embody in a stick, leaf, or stone, and so cast it from him.24

      Heaps of stones or sticks among the American Indians.

      An early Spanish missionary to Nicaragua, observing that along the paths there were heaps of stones on which the Indians as they passed threw grass, asked them why they did so. “Because we think,” was the answer, “that thereby we are kept from weariness and hunger, or at least that we suffer less from them.”25 When the Peruvian Indians were climbing steep mountains and felt weary, they used to halt by the way at certain points where there were heaps of stones, which they called apachitas. On these heaps the weary men would place other stones, and they said that when they did so, their weariness left them.26 In the passes of the eastern Andes, on the borders of Argentina and Bolivia, “large cairns are constantly found, and every Puna Indian, on passing, adds a stone and a coca leaf, so that neither he nor his beast of burden may tire on the way.”27 In the country of the Tarahumares and Tepehuanes in Mexico heaps of stones and sticks may be observed on high points, where the track leads over a ridge between two or more valleys. “Every Indian who passes such a pile adds a stone or a stick to it in order to gain strength for his journey. Among the Tarahumares only the old men observe this custom. Whenever the Tepehuanes carry a corpse, they rest it for some fifteen minutes on such a heap by the wayside that the deceased may not be fatigued but strong enough to finish his long journey to the land of the dead. One of my Huichol companions stopped on reaching this pile, pulled up some grass from the ground and picked up a stone as big as his fist. Holding both together he spat on the grass and on the stone and then rubbed them quickly over his knees. He also made a couple of passes with them over his chest and shoulders, exclaiming ‘Kenestíquai!’ (May I not get tired!) and then put the grass on the heap and the stone on top of the grass.”28 In Guatemala also piles of stones may be seen at the partings of ways and on the tops of cliffs and mountains. Every passing Indian used to gather a handful of grass, rub his legs with it, spit on it, and deposit it with a small stone on the pile, firmly persuaded that by so doing he would restore their flagging vigour to his weary limbs.29 Here the rubbing of the limbs with the grass, like the Babar custom of striking the body with a stone, was doubtless a mode of extracting the fatigue from them as a preliminary to throwing it away.

      Heaps of stones or sticks among the natives of Africa.

      Similarly on the plateau between Lakes Tanganyika and Nyassa the native carriers, before they ascend a steep hill with their loads, will pick up a stone, spit on it, rub the calves of their legs with it, and then deposit it on one of those small piles of stones which are commonly to be found at such spots in this part of Africa. A recent English traveller, who noticed the custom, was informed that the carriers practise it “to make their legs light,”30 in other words, to extract the fatigue from them. On the banks of the Kei river in Southern Africa another English traveller noticed some heaps of stones. On enquiring what they meant, he was told by his guides that when a Caffre felt weary he had but to add a stone to the heap to regain fresh vigour.31 In some parts of South Africa, particularly on the Zambesi, piles of sticks take the place of cairns. “Sometimes the natives will rub their leg with a stick, and throw the stick on the heap, ‘to get rid of fatigue,’ they avow. Others say that throwing a stone on the heap gives one fresh vigour for the journey.”32

      The heaps of stones or sticks generally on the tops of mountains or passes.

      From other accounts of the Caffre custom we learn that these cairns are generally on the sides or tops of mountains, and that before a native deposits his stone on the pile he spits on it.33 The practice of spitting on the stone which the weary wayfarer lays on the pile is probably a mode of transferring his fatigue the more effectually to the material vehicle which is to rid him of it. We have seen that the practice prevails among the Indians of Guatemala and the natives of the Tanganyika plateau, and it appears to be observed also under similar circumstances in Corea, where the cairns are to be found especially on the tops of passes.34 From the primitive point of view nothing can be more natural than that the cairns or the heaps of sticks and leaves to which the tired traveller adds his contribution should stand at the top of passes and, in general, on the highest points of the road. The wayfarer who has toiled, with aching limbs and throbbing temples, up a long and steep ascent, is aware of a sudden alleviation as soon as he has reached the summit; he feels as if a weight had been lifted from him, and to the savage, with his concrete mode of thought, it seems natural and easy to cast the weight from him in the shape of a stone or stick, or a bunch of leaves or of grass. Hence it is that the piles which represent the accumulated weariness of many foot-sore and heavy-laden travellers are to be seen wherever the road runs highest in the lofty regions of Bolivia, Tibet, Bhootan, and Burma,35 in the passes of the Andes and the Himalayas, as well as in Corea, Caffraria, Guatemala, and Melanesia.

      Fatigue let out with the blood.

      While the mountaineer Indians of South America imagine that they can rid themselves of their fatigue in the shape of a stick or a stone, other or the same aborigines of that continent believe that they can let it out with their blood. A French explorer, who had seen much of the South American Indians, tells us that “they explain everything that they experience by attributing it to sorcery, to the influence of maleficent beings. Thus an Indian on the march, when he feels weary, never fails to ascribe his weariness to the evil spirit; and if he has no diviner at hand, he wounds himself in the knees, the shoulders, and on the arms in order to let out the evil with the blood. That is why many Indians, especially the Aucas [Araucanians], have always their arms covered with scars. This custom, differently applied, is almost general in America; for I found it up to the foot of the Andes, in Bolivia, among the Chiriguana and Yuracares nations.”36

      Piles of stones or sticks on the scene of crimes. The Liar's Heap.

      But it is not mere bodily fatigue which the savage fancies he can rid himself of by the simple expedient of

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