A Cursory History of Swearing. Julian Sharman
perverseness with which men have always clung to this undying evil, and cited the Levitical story of “the son of the Israelitish woman,”—the impious oaths demanded of old time by emperors and satraps, and the resistance of the martyred Polycarp.
Who knows but that at that moment we may have thought our friend little better than a fool, and his words the drivel of idiotcy? We have said somewhere, speaking of morality, that we have no opinion of professions of it. It must be known that he was mild and retiring and submissive. He could not give blow for blow as other boys could; he could not cheat or lie or gamble as other boys did. He was more awkward of limb and coarser dressed. Anyhow, we have set down here some of our first impressions of swearing, and now we are cursorily writing its history.
CHAPTER II.
“Now don’t let us give ourselves a parcel of airs and pretend that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because we have the spirit to swear them—imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too.”—Tristram Shandy.
When Hesiod fabled the god of oaths to be the son of Discord, the poet could hardly have foreseen the grim reality that would attach to his satiric allegory. It is now a very small thing—a matter of no consequence at all—that serious and well-meaning men once attested their assertions by making passing reference to Minerva or Helios. But yet is it none the less necessary to realise that they made such reference for the express purpose of being believed, and that when not pronouncing one or other of these forms of speech, they ran a strong chance of being absolutely disbelieved.
Hesiod has dimly chronicled the genealogy of oaths. But it was for other generations to chronicle their posterity, to hear them derided in the amphitheatre, and to see the divinities that inspired them shattered and broken down. But there is a singular survival and continuity of the ancient practice: men still swear by Jove.
A like process of declension seems to have gone on in all countries and in the same fashion. To begin with, the origin of all swearing was the same—the one intense dread of falsehood against which as yet no laws were sufficient to guard. Fancy the mortal distress of barbarian man when he first wakes to the belief that his enemies can, by smooth speech, wrest from his hands what his prowess or his labour has acquired. No art that he is aware of can pervert the action of tongues set falsely going. Seeing how illimitable is the crop of words, he may even imagine a plague of lies that will fall thick about him like locusts or caterpillars; and then arrives the old expedient. Men fasten upon a symbol such, as it is hoped, the hardiest will revere, and syllable it out as evidence of truth.
If we are not mistaken, it may even be said that the degree of refinement that a community has attained is discernible by taking as a standpoint the merchantable character of truth. Wherever civilisation is advancing, the ultimate unserviceability of lying becomes the more apparent, and there ensues in consequence a depreciation in the value of veracity. The more widely truth is recognised, the more does it deteriorate in price, while falsehood ceases to arouse its former measure of reprobation. Then it is, and not, indeed, until then, that the old blundering remedy by means of oaths and oath-taking is laid aside as out of date and no longer availing. Nowadays, at least among most races of mankind, the ordinary inducements to veracity are of themselves felt to be sufficiently powerful as to leave no ground for contending that truthfulness should be the subject of rewards and bounties. No money value is attached as of right to the performance of an obvious duty, but in remoter times the recognition of such a doctrine, could it have been recognised at all, would have spared the coffers of Roman sesterces and have made the work of the Athenian pay-clerks hang lightly on their hands. The fact would seem to be that the prevalency of this deliberative swearing will always be found in inverse ratio to the prevalency of truth.
The later civilisations may, therefore, be said to have profited by centuries of untruthfulness in that they have learnt the preponderating advantages of an intelligible code of truth. To seek an illustration by comparison of two periods perfectly dissimilar, it may be affirmed that there was no greater proportion of really truthful men in France at the period, say, of Voltaire, than twelve hundred years previously at the period of Gregory of Tours. But the countrymen of Voltaire had become fairly apprised of the expediency of common veracity, and their assertions, in consequence, were not accustomed to be disbelieved. But among the Frédégondes, the Clotaires, and the Cunégondes of Gregory’s Frankish history, the case is wholly different. In that day it might almost be supposed from a perusal of the work that the faculty of truth-telling was lost, or more correctly that it had never arisen, so necessary was it considered to put a statement to the severest test before the possibility of its accuracy could be admitted. In an indulgent, selfish, but disciplined civilisation, a statement is generally presumed to be true which bears the ordinary impress of veracity. In periods considerably less intellectual and enlightened, we shall find that nothing is presumed to be true until it has been subjected to a searching process of corroboration. It is in fact this process of corroboration that has furnished all ranks of swearers with their necessary side-arms and equipment.
In the two conditions of society we have just indicated, there is revealed at once the cause and effect of promiscuous oath-taking. The one, incredulous and diffident of belief, imposes oath upon oath as its natural safeguard, and engages in an unremitting struggle to render the bond of truthfulness subservient to a despotic will. The other is weary of forms that have outlived whatever spirit was once imparted them; it has snapped asunder the galling fetters, and made sportive capital of the lumber that remains. An intervening age of irony probably sufficed to undermine the sanctity of the swearing obligation, until at last the oath of more sober times has come to be a common catchword, or the fustian ornament of somewhat spirited talk. In short, we shall always find that the sonorous expletive of recent days is nothing else than the once deliberative oath of Christian piety.
Human ingenuity has seldom been more industriously employed than in attempting to restore successive breaches in the observances of swearing. Among the Western nations, it is said, religious sentiment had nothing to do with the foundation of the usage. With them swearing is represented to have been of purely military origin, and the oaths taken upon sword and javelin to have owed nothing to the emotions of piety. The process undergone by the military oath of Gaul before it finally culminated in an expression of religious import, was of a very slow and gradual kind. The Franks were accustomed to appeal to the drawn sword as being the only arbiter of existence. In course of time the sanctity of this engagement was broken through, and to ensure due regard for the solemnity of the oath, it was found necessary to make the weapon the subject of an impressive ceremony. By the capitularies of Dagobert, the sword and harness of the warrior were required to be consecrated. Still later, the name of God was brought into the compact. “If two neighbours,” ordains King Dagobert, “are in dispute as to the boundary of their possessions, let them bring into the camp a turf of the disputed territory; and each, with hands resting on the points of their swords, and taking God to be the witness of the truth, shall give battle until victory decides the question.” Not only was the military oath superseded; but, as years wore on, even these additional guarantees proved themselves to be ineffectual. The interposition of saints next came to be deemed essential, and again with the most conflicting results. When Chilperic and his brothers divided the kingdom of Clotaire, and swore never to enter the capital except as allies, their treaty was ratified by oaths taken in the name of Saint Hilaire, Saint Policeute, and Saint Martin. As time advanced, these further methods of precaution in their turn proved abortive. Chilperic, seizing Paris in contravention of his oath, carried as an antidote the relics of more potent and illustrious saints in the van of his victorious army. So dangerous a precedent being once admitted, it became necessary to resort to still other expedients. It was thought as well to ascertain with what degree of veneration the intending swearer might happen to regard that particular member of the calendar whose name was proposed to be invoked. In doubtful cases, therefore, it was not unusual to conduct a deponent from one shrine to another, that among the multitude of oaths one of them at least might prove effectual. A son of Clotaire, being plied by a rebel agent with insurrectionary advice, thought it prudent to conduct his adviser before the altars