Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/291

 and the part spat upon seems to have been just under the nose.

However, even with the Masai, the custom was evidently in a state of decay, for Mr. Thompson mentions that they did not insist upon spitting on him, but contented themselves with merely going through the form.

That examples of the actual personal interchange of saliva should be rare need not surprise us. Instances of the actual sucking of blood are also comparatively rare; for, as civilisation proceeded, the drinking of human blood would become repulsive and performed symbolically only. Thus Speke mentions that among the Unyamuezi the most sacred bond known is made by commingling the blood, which they perform by cutting incisions in each other's legs, and letting the blood trickle together. And just as the use of saliva would probably mark an epoch of milder and less brutal manners, so we would expect to find it following on the lines of the milder, and less repulsive, forms of blood covenant, and expect to find many more cases of commingling it than consuming it. That is indeed the case, and instances of commingling the saliva are numerous. For example, in the "Younger Edda" we read that the Aesir and the Vanir made a covenant of peace, and in token of it each party stepped up to a vessel, and let fall into it their saliva. In South Hungary, Mr. Leland tells us that on Easter Monday the gipsies made a wooden box called the bichapen—"the thing sent as a gift" "In this, at the bottom, are two sticks, laid across as in a ' cradle', and on these are laid herbs and other fetich stuff, which everyone touches with the finger, then the whole is enveloped in a winding of white and red wool, and is carried by the oldest person of the tribe from tent to tent, after which it is borne to the next running stream, and left there after everyone has spat on it. By doing this, they think that all the diseases and disorders which would have befallen them during the coming year are conjured into the box."

In Newcastle, also, on the occasion of the colliers beginning an agitation for increased wages. Brand tells us that it was customary for the men to spit on a stone together, by way of cementing their confederacy. We have already seen how Mr. Henderson and his