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 corpse, but at his approach the dead chief’s wounds bleed afresh. The typical instance in English history is the passage of Matthew Paris, that after Henry II.’s death at Chinon his son Richard came to view the body, “Quo superveniente, confestim erupit sanguis ex naribus regis mortui; ac si indignaretur spiritus in adventu ejus, qui ejusdem mortis causa esse credebatur, ut videretur sanguis clamare ad Deum.” In Shakespeare (Rich. III., act 1, sc. 2):

At Hertford assizes (1628) the deposition was taken as to certain suspected murderers being required to touch the corpse, when the murdered woman thrust out the ring finger three times and it dropped blood on the grass (Brand, iii. 231); and there was a case in the Scottish High Court of Justiciary as late as 1668 (T. F. Thiselton Dyer, Folklore of Shakespeare, p. 487). Durham peasants, apparently remembering the old belief, still expect those who come to look at a corpse to touch it, in token that they bear no ill-will to the departed (W. Henderson, Folklore of Northern Counties, p. 57).

Certain ordeals are closely related to oaths, so that the two shade into one another. Let the curse which is to fall on the oath-breaker take effect at once, it then becomes a sign condemning the swearer—in fact, an ordeal. Thus the drinking of water on which a curse or magical penalty has been laid is a mere oath so long as the time of fulfilment is unfixed (see ). But it becomes an ordeal when, as in Brahmanic India, the accused drinks three handfuls of water in which a sacred image has been dipped; if he is innocent nothing happens, but if he is guilty sickness or misfortune will fall on him within one to three weeks (for accounts of these and other Hindu ordeals see Ali Ibrahim Khan in Asiatic Researches, i. 389, and Stenzler’s summary in Z. D. M. G., vol. ix.). The earliest account of such an ordeal is in Numbers v., which describes the mode of administering to a woman charged with unfaithfulness the bitter water mixed with the dust of the tabernacle floor, with the curse laid on it to cause her belly to swell and her thigh to fall if guilty. Ewald (Antiquities of Israel, 236) regards the draught as in itself harmless, and the operation of this curse on the guilty as due to the influence of the mind on the body. But the term “bitter” is applied to the water before it has been cursed, which suggests that it already contained some drug, as in the poison-water ordeal still in constant use over a great part of Africa. Thus the red water of Guinea is a decoction made by pounding in a wooden mortar and steeping in water the inner bark of one of the mimosas, producing a liquor like that of a tan-vat, astringent, narcotic, and when taken in sufficient quantity emetic. The accused, with solemn ceremony and invocation, drinks freely of it; if it nauseates him and he throws it up he is triumphantly acquitted, but if he becomes dizzy he is guilty, and the assembly fall on him, pelt him with stones and even drag him over the rocks till he is dead. Here the result of the ordeal depends partly on the patient's constitution, but more on the sorcerer who can prepare the proper dose to prove either guilt or innocence. Among the various drugs used in different parts of Africa are the mbundu root, the Calabar bean, the tangena nut (Tanghinia veneniflua, a strong poison and emetic). The sorcerers who administer this ordeal have in their hands a power of inflicting or remitting judicial murder, giving them boundless influence (details in J. L. Wilson, Western Africa, pp. 225, 398; Burton, Lake Regions of Central Africa, ii. 357; Bosman, “Guinea,” in Pinkerton’s Voyages, xvi. 398, &c.). The poison-ordeal is also known to Brahmanic law, decoction of aconite root being one of the poisons given, and the accused if not sickening being declared free (Stenzler, l.c.). Theoretically connected with the ordeal by cursed drink is that by cursed food, which is, however, distinguished among this black catalogue by being sometimes an effectual means of discovering the truth. The ordeal by bread and cheese, practised in Alexandria about the 2nd century, was practically the same as that known to English law five to ten centuries later as the corsnaed or “trial slice” of consecrated bread and cheese which was administered from the altar, with

the curse that if the accused were guilty God would send the angel Gabriel to stop his throat, that he might not be able to swallow that bread and cheese. In fact, if guilty and not a hardened offender he was apt to fail, dry-mouthed and choking through terror, to get it down. The remembrance of this ancient ordeal still lingers in the popular phrase, “May this bit choke me if I lie!” In India the corresponding trial by rice is prescribed in the old laws to be done by suspected persons chewing the consecrated grains of rice and spitting them out, moist and untinged with blood, on a banyan leaf; this or the mere chewing and swallowing of a mouthful of rice-grains is often used even by the English as a means of detecting a thief. A classical mention of the ordeals by carrying hot iron in the hands and by passing through the fire is made more interesting by the guards who offer to prove their innocence in this way offering further to take oath by the gods, which shows the intimate connexion between oaths and ordeals (Soph., Ant. 264, see also Aeschyl., fr. 284).

The passing through the fire is described in the Hindu codes of Yâjnavalkya and others, and is an incident in Hindu poetry, where in the Râmâyana the virtuous Sitâ thus proves her innocence to her jealous husband Râma (Stenzler, p. 669; Pictet, Origines Indo-Europeennes, part ii. p. 457). It was not less known to European law and chronicle, as where Richardis, wife of Charles the Fat, proves her innocence by going into a fire clothed in a waxed shift, and is unhurt by the fire (Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer, p. 912). Yet more minutely prescribed in the Hindu ordeal-books is the rite of carrying the glowing hot iron seven steps, into the seven or nine circles traced on the ground, the examination of the hands to see if they show traces of burning, and the binding them up in leaves. The close historical connexion of the Hindu ordeal laws with the old European is shown by the correspondence of minute details, as where in a Scandinavian law it is prescribed that the red-hot iron shall be carried nine steps (Grimm, op. cit., p. 918). In Anglo-Saxon laws the iron to be carried was at first only one pound weight, but Athelstan’s law (in Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, iv. 6) enacts that it be increased to weigh three pounds. Another form well known in old Germany and England was the walking barefoot over glowing ploughshares, generally nine. The law-codes of the early middle ages show this as an ordinary criminal procedure (see the two works last referred to), but it is perhaps best remembered in two non-historical legends. The German queen Kunigunde, “haec dicens stupentibus et flentibus universis qui aderant, vomeres candentes nudo vestigio calcavit et sine adustionis molestia transiit” (Vista Henrici, ap. Canisium, vi. 387). Queen Emma, mother of Edward the Confessor, accused of familiarity with Alwyn bishop of Winchester, triumphantly purges herself and him by the help of St Swithin—each of the two thus acquitted giving nine manors to the church of Winchester, in memory of the nine ploughshares, and the king being corrected with stripes (John Bromton, see Freeman's Norm. Conq., vol. ii. App.). To dip the hand in boiling water or oil or melted lead and take out a stone or ring is another ordeal of this class. The traveller may find some of these fiery trials still in use, or at least in recent memory, in barbaric regions of Africa or further Asia—the negro plunging his arm into the caldron of boiling oil, the Burman doing feats with melted lead, while the Bedouin will settle a conflict of evidence by the opposing witnesses licking a glowing hot-iron spoon (Burckhardt, Arabien, pp. 98, 233). This latter feat may be done with safety by any one, provided the iron be clean and thoroughly white hot, while if only red-hot it would touch and burn the tongue. Probably the administerers of the ordeal are aware of this, and of the possibility of dipping the hand in melted metal; and there are stories of arts of protecting the skin (see the recipe in Albertus Magnus, De Mirabilibus, though it is not known what can be really done beyond making it horny like a smith's, which would serve as a defence in stepping on