Chapter 36

To the tombs of saints a direct healing power was ascribed in the Mid. Ages, everything in contact with them brought help, even a draught of the water poured over bones, garments, splinters and earth. Turf and dew off the grave can heal (Greg. Tur. vitæ patr. 6. 7). (23) Beda 3, 9 tells of St. Oswald: 'In loco ubi pro patria dimicans a paganis interfectus est, usque hodie sanitates infirmorum et hominum et pecorum celebrari non desinunt. Unde contigit ut pulverem ipsum, ubi corpus ejus in terram corruit, multi auferentes et in aquam mittentes suis per haec infirmis multum commodi afferrent: qui videlicet mos adeo increbuit, ut paulatim ablata exinde terra fossam ad mensuram staturae virilis reddiderit.' 3, 11: 'De pulvere pavimenti in quo aqua lavacri illius effusa est, multi jam sanati infirmi.' 3, 13: 'Habeo quidem de ligno in quo caput ejus occisi a paganis infixum est.....tunc benedixi aquam, et astulam roboris praefati immittens obtuli aegro potandam: nec mora, melius habere coepit.' 4, 3 of St. Ceadda (d. 672): 'Est autem locus idem sepulcri tumba in modum domunculi facta coopertus, habente foramen in pariete, per quod solent hi qui causa devotionis illo adveniunt manum suam immittere, ac partem pulveris inde assumere, quam cum in aquas miserint atque has infirmantibus jumentis sive hominibus gustandas dederint, mox infirmitatis ablata molestia, cupitae sanitatis gaudia redibunt.' 4, 61 of Earconwald: 'Etenim usque hodie feretrum ejus caballarium, quo infirmus vehi solebat, servatum a discipulis ejus, multos febricitantes vel alio quolibet incommodo fessos sanare non destitit. Non solum autem suppositi eidem feretro vel appositi curantur aegroti, sed et astulae de illo abscissae atque ad infirmos allatae citam illis solent afferre medelam.' ----- Relics not only heal, but bring fortune, peace and fruitfulness, pretty much as the jewels of elves and dwarfs did in particular families: 'ubicunque hae reliquiae fuerint, illic pax et augmentum et lenitas aëris semper erit' (Pertz 1, 71). (24)

The legends are full of the marvellous deliverances vouchsafed to pilgrim patients at the tombs of saints. An incredible number of sick had recourse to this method; but it is cleverly parodied in our Beast-apologue (Reinh. pp. cv. cxxvi): the hare with his fever, the wolf with his earache, are cured the moment they lie down on the grave of the martyred hen. From such delusion the heathens were free: I nowhere find it stated that they sought healing from relics or at the mounds of their kings and giants. They resorted however to sacred woods, p. 72-4 (see Suppl.). (25)

In Greece, particularly in Bœotia, it was customary for patients, on recovery, to set up in the temple a metal model of the part of the body which had been affected. Amongst anaqhmata an inscription mentions proswpon, titqoj, aidoion, ceir, &c.; (26) these votive offerings were afterwards melted down to make sacred vessles. The custom of votive tablets with limbs depicted on them may indeed have been imported into Germany by the Romans while yet heathens, unless we will admit that our fathers themselves had known them before. The passage from Gregory given p. 81 says expressly: 'membra, secundum quod unumquemque dolor attigisset, sculpebat in ligno.' and further on, 'visi enim in eo barbari gentili superstitione, modo auri argentique dona, modo fercula ad potum vomitumque ebrii offerre, cultumque quo nihil insanius, istic simulacrum inanis dei, ac ut quemque affecti membri dolor presserat, sculpebat in ligno suspendebatque opitulaturo idolo.' This was done in Ripuaria in the 6^th cent. Eligius refers to the same thing, Sup. A: 'pedem similitudines, quos per bivia ponunt, fieri vetate, et ubi invenerit igni cremate; per nullam aliam artem salvari vos credatis nisi per invocationem et crucem Christi!' and the Indiculus §29, 'de ligneis pedibus vel manibus pagano ritu'; a woman with a palsied arm is admonished in a dream 'ut instar semivivae manum ceream formando exprimeret, et ad sanctae Idae tumulum deferret' (begin. of 10^th cent., Pertz 2, 573). At the same time even these authorities teach us an important distinction: the Greek bought his anaqhma out of gratitude, when the malady was healed; the German hung up the limb in the temple or at the cross-roads, with a view to obtain relief thereby, 'opitulaturo idolo,' and 'per nullam aliam artem salvari vos credatis.' And for this purpose a wooden or perhaps waxen image sufficed, which would have been a paltry present to the succouring deity; conf. another passage from Gregory in my RA. 674, and Ruinart's note thereon. So that this German heathenry is of a piece with the sorcery by wax images (p. 1091), and with heathen sacrifices, which kept up an analogy between the thing prayed for and the thing offered: those who wished for children presented a child of wax, wood or silver, while conversely a figure of wax or silver served as penance for slaying the body. But what shocked the early teachers as sheer paganism was afterwards humoured and licensed by the church. A votive tablet at Alt-öttingen represents an unhappy man with an arrow passing through his eyebrow into the eye-pupil (Schm. 1, 242). (27) At places famed for pilgrimages we find hands, feet, etc. of wood or wax fastened to the walls; outside the church were hung up the crutches on which the sick had come, and which they needed no longer in going away healed: 'ut incredibilis materies scabellorum atque oscillorum post perceptam sanitatem a redeuntibus ibi remaneret,' Acta Bened. sec. v, p. 102; conf. Pertz 2, 574. Among the Greeks the sick often slept in the temple of the deity in whom they put their trust, and received in a dream instructions as to cure; (28) much the same occurs in medieval legends, e.g. that passage in the Life of St. Ida. Put together with this the first dream in a new house of stable, p. 1146 (see Suppl.).

There were superstitious signs, by observing which you could tell whether one dangerously ill would fall a prey or get well: the cries, the flight, the wheeling of birds have been noticed on p. 1135. Burchardt (Sup. C, 195d) instances the lifting up of stones to see if any live beast were underneath; which is like snatching up a handful of earth and looking for a living creature in it (F, 9). The look of the bird Galadrôt, and the position of Death, whether at the patient's head or feet (p. 853) were significant omens. That standing at the feet was an advantage we find already in Pliny 30, 10 [24]: 'Eundem (ricinum, tick) in augurio vitalium habent: nam si aeger ei respondeat qui intulerit, a pedibus stanti interrogantique de morbo, spem vitae certam esse: moriturum nihil respondere. Adjiciunt, ut evellatur (ricinus) ex aure laeva canis cui non sit alius quam niger color.' ----- It is believed in Scotland to this day, that if you cannot see the mannikin in the sick man's eye, he is sure to die: the bystander's image is no longer mirrored in the lustreless pupil of the breaking eye. And as far back as the AS. dialogue between Adrian and Ritheus (Thorpe p. 48): 'Saga me, on hwâm mæig man geseon mannes deáð? Ic þe secge, twege manlîcan beoð on mannes eágum: gif þû þâ ne gesihst, þonne swilt (dies) se man, and bið gewiten (gone) ær þrim dagum.' Put by the side of this, that the korh is not to be seen in a bewitched man's eyes either, and in a witch's eye it is seen upside down, or double (pp. 1074-80). When a dying man cannot get his release, a shingle of the roof is to be turned (Sup. I, 439), three tiles taken up (721), or any hollow house untensil inverted (664). The like means are adopted in convulsions (853) and childbirth (561): 'if it go hard with her in travail, the husband shall take three shingles out of the roof, and put them in again wrong side up,' Ettn. hebamme p. 663; conf. supra p. 1116.

I have kept to the last what I had to say of the plague and the numerous traditions based on its appearing. After great floods, when heavy fog and sultry mist poison the air, it suddenly breaks out and spreads resistless over the earth.

To the Gr. loimoj (p. 888) correspond, in gender as well, our OHG. sterpo, scelmo (MHG. schelme), Gl. jun. 219 scalmo, fihusterbo, ON. skelmis-drep or drep alone; OHG. wuol, Diut. 1, 501a, AS. wól, gen. wôles. The Latin names pestis, lues are fem., so are the Serv. kuga, moriya; but masc. again the Boh. Pol. mor, Lith. maras, Lett. mehris. The Serv. Slov. kuga is the M. Nethl. koghe (Detmar 1, 81. 113. 127. 148. 377), and even a MHG. poem (Meyer and Mooyer, p. 46a) has koge. MHG. usually 'der gâhe tôt,' swift death, Wigal. 3726 (Nethl. gâ-dôt, Maerl. 1, 230. 293); but also 'der grosse tôd,' great death, Swed. diger-döden (ON. digr crassus, tumidus); ON. svarti dauði, Dan. 'den sorte död,' black death, perhaps even in allusion to Surtr (p. 809). (29)

To the Greeks the whizzing shafts of wrathful Apollo brought the plague: a man dying suddenly is slain by Apollo's artillery, a woman by that of Artemis; conf. the destroying angel, 2 Sam. 24, 16. Hermes, protector of the flock, carries round it the ram, to ward off murrain; afterwards he carries it round the city also, Krioforoj. (30) Virgins were sacrificed to stay the ravages of pestilence. Pliny 26, 9 [60] says a maiden can cure boils (panos) by laying verbascum on them: Experti affirmavere plurimum referre, si virgo imponat nuda, jejuna jejuno, et manu supina tangens dicat, 'Negat Apollo pestem posse crescere, cui nuda virgo restinguat!' atque retrorsa manu ter dicat, totiesque despuant ambo. The ceremony was transferred from the heavy scourge to lighter ones: the disrobing of the maiden was required for allaying drought (p. 593-4), and in many other cases (see Suppl.).

That angel of death means Death himself, who comes to gather his own. A Lombard legend speaks of two angels, a good and a bad, who traverse the land: 'Pari etiam modo haec pestilentia Ticinum quoque depopulata est, ita ut cunctis civibus per juga montium seu per diversa loca fugientibus, in foro et per plateas civitatis herbae et fructeta nascerentur. Tuncque visibiliter multis apparuit, quia bonus et malus angelus noctu per civitatem pergerent, et ex jussu boni angeli malus angelus, qui videbatur venabulum manu ferre, quotiens de venabulo ostium cujuscunque domus percussisset, tot de eadem domo die sequenti homines interirent. Tunc per revelationem cuidam dictum est, quod pestis ipsa prius non quiesceret quam in basilica beati Petri, quae ad vincula dicitur, sancti Sebastiani martyris altarium poneretur. Factum est, et delatis ab urbe Roma b. Sebastiani reliquiis, mox ut in jam dicta basilica altarium constitutum est, pestis ipsa quievit,' Paul. Diac. 6, 5. In the year 589, when the Tiber had overflowed, and a plague had arisen which carried off many men, St Gregory ordered a solemn procession of the Cross; 80 people in the church dropped down 'allen gâhes' at his feet and died; then, rising from prayer, 'sach er stên ûf dem Dietrîches hûse einen engel mit pluotigem swerte, der wiskete daz selbe swert durch sinen gêren (wiped it on his skirt). do verstuont (understood) der heilige man, daz der êwige Vater sînes zornes hin ze den liuten erwinden wolte,' would turn from his anger. (31)

Like such an angel of death, the Norse Hel rides about on her steed (pp. 314. 844), which is no other than the dead-horse seen in churchyards, p. 1142 (see Suppl.).

A Voigtland tradition makes the plague come on as a blue vapour, shaped like a cloud, Jul. Schmidt p. 158. By this is meant the sultry mist that precedes a pestilence; 'blue vapour' suggests the fire of the Thunder-god, p. 178. A plague that raged in the Odenwald showed itself in the shape of a little blue flame in the sacristy of the town-church at Erbach; and they walled it in. In Amm. Marcel. 23, 6 (A.D. 363): 'Fertur autem quod post direptum hoc idem figmentum (Apollinis simulacrum), incensa civitate (Seleucia), milites fanum scrutantes invenere foramen angustum: quo reserato ut pretiosum aliquid invenirent, ex adyto quodam concluso a Chaldaeorum arcanis labes primordialis exsiluit, quæ insanabilium vi concepta morborum, ejusdem Veri Marcique Antonini temporibus ab ipsis Persarum finibus ad usque Rhenum et Gallias cuncta contagiis polluebat et mortibus.' ----- Again, in the year 1709 the plague at Conitz in Prussia was charmed into a hole of the lime-tree in the churchyard, then a plug kept ready for the purpose, and fitting exactly, was driven in; since which she has never contrived to show her face in the country again (Tettau and Temme p. 222). This agrees with the blocking-up of Unsælde and the shrewmouse (pp. 878. 1168), but also with the general notion of diseases being transferable to trees. The immuring of the plague in church and temple is based on its having issued from the divinity (see Suppl.).

Augustine's De verbo apostol. 168 pictures the plague as a woman that prowls about, and can be bought off with money: 'Proverbium est Punicum, quod quidem Latine vobis dicam, quia Punice non omnes nostis; Pun. enim prov. est antiquum: Numum vult Pestilentia? duos illa da, et ducat se.'

During the great pestilence under Justinian, men saw brazen barks on the sea, and black men without heads sitting in them, wherever they sailed to, the plague at once broke out. In a city of Egypt the only inhabitants left alive were seven men and a boy ten years old; they were escaping with their valuables, when in a house near the town-gate all the men dropped down dead, and the boy alone fled; but under the gate a spectre seized him, and dragged him back into the house. Soon after, a rich man's steward came to fetch goods out of the house, and the boy warned him to haste away: at the same instant both man and boy fell dead to the ground. So says bishop John (Assemanni biblioth. orient. 2, 86-7).

The Mod. Greeks think of the plague as a blind woman that wanders through the towns from house to house, killing all she can touch. But she goes groping and feeling round the wall, and if you are wise enough to keep in the middle of the room, she can't get at you. According to one folk-tale, it is three terrible women that traverse the towns in company, one carrying a large paper, another a pair of scissors, the third a broom. Together they walk into the house where they mean to find victims: the first enters their names on her list, the next wounds them with her scissors, the last sweeps them away (Fauriel's Disc. prél. lxxxiii). Here are the three Fates (p. 410) or Furies and Eumenids converted into death-goddesses.

There is a beautiful Breton lay in Villemarqué 1, 46-51, called Bosen Elliant, the Elliant plague. A miller, so goes the tale, saw a woman robed in white sitting, staff in hand, at the ford of the river, wishing to be carried over. He took her on his horse, and set her down on the other side. Then she said, 'Young man, and knowst thou whom thou hast put across? I am the Plague; and now having ended my journey round Bretagne, I will go to mass in Elliant church; every one whom I touch with my staff, shall speedily die, but thee and thy mother no harm shall befall.' And so it came to pass: all the people in that bourg died, save the poor widow and her son. Another folksong makes him convey her on his shoulders: nine children are carried out of one house, the churchyard is filled up to the walls: 'beside the churchyard stands an oak, to its top is tied a white kerchief, for the Plague has snatched away all the people.' She was banished at last by songs being sung about her: when she heard herself called by her name, she withdrew from the land, and never came back. The request to be carried across is exactly like those of the goddess Berhta and beings of elf kind.




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