Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/294

256 revoked all his imprecations, took a little water in his mouth and spurted it out towards him. Now if, alongside of this, we place Pliny's advice to spit on anyone whom he may see taken with an epileptic fit, we can easily see that the original idea of spitting might have been to cure the invalid, by the transference to him of a fresh instalment of the tribal life. But how does that account for the belief that the spitting will prevent the onlooker from taking infection? Let us direct our attention to Mr. Turner's example, and let us suppose that, when all the family assemble to "confess and throw out", one member conspicuously absents himself. It seems to me that his friends would have some grounds for suspecting him of having cursed the sick man, and been the cause of his illness. And as we find that, generally speaking, primitive retribution partakes of the "eye for an eye" character, it is conceivable that the absentee would in turn be cursed by the rest of the family, and wished the same disease as he had wished the invalid, and would, out of sheer terror, probably take ill. It would, therefore, be politic for all the friends of the sick man to attend at any ceremony of the kind. Nor need the ceremony necessarily be confined to members of the invalid's family. Anyone who came in contact with him might be suspected of harbouring malicious designs, and the only way for such a person to avoid suspicion would be to spit. Hence it would be wise for anyone who came in contact with any invalid to spit in his presence, thereby testifying his willingness to give his life to make the sick man strong, and disarming suspicion and its consequences.

Further, if we accept the idea that the life of the family or clan may sometimes be believed to be in the saliva, we can explain the custom of a stranger spitting on an infant when he looks on it, or on a witch when he meets one. Here, as before, we get the hint from the blood rite. "On one occasion", says Livingstone, "I became a blood relation to a young African woman by accident. She had a large cartilaginous tumour between the bones of her forearm, which, as it gradually enlarged, so distended the muscles as to render her unable to work. She applied to me to excise it, and, when removing the tumour, one of the small arteries spurted some blood into my eye. She remarked, when I