OCR Text |
Show PAINT IS PAINT EVERYWHERE. In last week's "Everybody's Magazine," Dr. L. T. Thompson, without intending any offense, illustrates illus-trates a view he advances on Neuropathy by referring refer-ring to the superstition of the Irish peasant's belief in witchcraft. Dr. Thompson need not have gone beyond his father's birthplace, Protestant England, for multitudinous examples of witchcraft. If the doctor knows anything of the superstitions of the people of New England states today or of the gross beliefs of the whites of the southern states, he need not have gone so far afield for his illustrations. Alice Fletcher's paper, read at the annual meeting meet-ing of the Rutland County Historical society, June, 1887, lifts the curtain on the incantations, superstitious super-stitious charms and strange practices of the people of rural New England. The fact is, a rural people everywhere will be either superstitious, fanatical or materialistic, and, of the three, superstition is the mildest form of self-deception to which the human mind lends itself. Materialism is, indeed, one of the latest weak ness to me numan mind, while Fetichism, or the hope to control external phenomena by witchcraft, is the earliest. The fetich mode of thought is undoubtedly low and absurd, if you will, but it is immeasurably better for mankind than gross materialism. The idea of vicarious or representative influence, that if you wish to injure anybody you can do so by an injury to a bit of his clothing or a lock of his hair, is, so far as it goes, a spiritual idea presupposing presup-posing notions about the interdependence of nature, and as far as possible removed from mere materialism, material-ism, which in itself represents retrogression. Burning in effigy, and waxen images stuck with pins or burned in order to injure the persons they represented undoubtedly belonged to witchcraft but the atrocious murders, the secret assassinations' and the burning alive of negroes belong to materialism. materi-alism. Here are a few examples of the superstitions obtaining ob-taining in Protestant countries which the doctor and men like him will do well to look into before they exploit Ireland for specimens of witchcraft In Sweden there are still cunning men who can strike out a thief's eye by cutting a human figure on the bark of a tree and driving nails or arrows into the representative eye; and the Norwegians to this day shoot in the water at images of their absent enemies. In Suffold, England, as lato ns the last century, if an animal was thought to be bewitched, it was burned over a large fire, believing that as it consumed away the author of its bewitchment be-witchment consumed away too. In the north of England it is still believed that the name of a person written on a pipkin, containing contain-ing a live frog stuck full of pins, will injuriously affect the bearer of the name. And there are a numerous set of popular traditions which clearly relate to the same state of thought. There is a feeling so wide that it may be said to include all England and Scotland, that cut hair should always be burned, never thrown away, and the reason given for the practice is that if a bird took away locks of cut hair, the owner would suffer from headache or lose the rest of his hair. A similar idea prevails pre-vails about teeth; all over England children are taught to throw extracted teeth into the fire, lest a dog by swallowing them should provoke toothache. So with the nail that has scratched and the knofe that has cut you keep the nail or knife free from rust and the wound will not fester.- In Lincolnshire and other parts of England the remedies for wartOire all superstitions. I In Somersetshire a good ague cure is to shut up a large black spider in a box and leave it to perish; per-ish; that spider and ague may disappear together. In Devonshire some of the hair of a child with the whooping cough is given to a dog between two slices of buttered bread, that the dog may take the cough with the hair. Sir John Lubbock, speaking of the influence of tradition, says: "When we require examples of crime and superstition, we go among those whom we do not like, forgetting, or rather unwilling to admit, that among ourselves may be found instances of depravity and examples of witchcraft as deplorable deplor-able as those of the Fetich people of equatorial Africa." Is it not about time for men of common sense to perceive that paint on the face of the society woman and paint on the face of the Navajo brave is paint, and that to make a trip to an Indian reservation res-ervation for paint when he can scrape it from his wife's cheek is the act of a stupid man ? |