Читать книгу The Threshold Covenant; or, The Beginning of Religious Rites - H. Clay Trumbull - Страница 9

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In the building of a house, as a new home, the prominence given to the laying of the threshold, or to its dedicating by blood, is another indication, or outcome, of its altar-like sacredness. In Upper Syria a sacrifice is often made at the beginning of the building of a new house, and again at the first crossing of its threshold. “When a new house is built,” among the Metâwileh, “the owner will not reside in it until, with certain formalities, a black hen has been carried several times round the house and slaughtered within the door,” as if in covenant dedication of the house.^[122]

Among the Copts in Egypt, when the threshold of a new house is laid, the owner slaughters a sheep or a goat on the threshold, and steps over the blood, as if in covenant for himself and his household with Him to whom all blood, as life, belongs. Then he divides the sacrificed victim among his neighbors; and they in turn come and step across the blood on the threshold, invoking as they do so a blessing on the new house and its owner, while coming into covenant with him.^[123]

The foundation-stone of a new building is, in a sense, the threshold of that structure. Hence to lay the foundations in blood is to proffer blood at the threshold. Traces of this custom are to be found in the practices or the legends of peoples wellnigh all the world over.^[124] Apparently the earlier sacrifices were of human beings.^[125] Later they were of animals substituted for persons. The idea seems to have been that he who covenanted by blood with God, or with the gods, when his house, or his city, was builded, was guarded, together with his household, while he and they were dwellers there; but, if he failed to proffer a threshold sacrifice, his first-born, or the first person who crossed the bloodless threshold, would be claimed by the ignored or defied deity.

There is, indeed, a suggestion of this idea in the curse pronounced by Joshua, when he destroyed the doomed city of Jericho, against him who should rebuild its walls, he not being in covenant with and obedient to the Lord. “Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: with the loss of his firstborn shall he lay the foundation thereof, and with the loss of his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.”^[126] A later record tells of the fulfilment of this curse. It says of the reign of Ahab: “In his days did Hiel the Bethel-ite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof with the loss of Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof with the loss of his youngest son Segub; according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by the hand of Joshua the son of Nun.”^[127]

Human sacrifices, in order to furnish blood at the foundations of a house, or of a public structure, have been continued down to recent times, or to the present, in some portions of the world; and there are indications in popular tradition that they were frequent in a not remote past.

It is said that at the building of Scutari, in Asia Minor, “the workmen were engaged on its fortifications for three years, but the walls would not stand. Then they protested that the only possible way to succeed was to lay under or in them a living human being. They accordingly laid hold of a young woman who brought them dinner, and immured her.”^[128]

According to a story in China, when the bridge leading to the site of St. John’s College, in Shanghai, was in process of building, an official present took off his shoes, as indicating his rank, and threw them into the stream, in order to stay the current, and enable the workmen to lay the foundations. Finding this unavailing, he took off his garments and threw them in. Finally he threw himself in, and as his life went out the workmen were enabled to go on with their building. To this day the belief is general that that structure stands fast because of this sacrifice.^[129]

“When the walls of Algiers were built of blocks of concrete [by Muhammadans], in the sixteenth century, a Christian captive named Geronimo was placed in one of the blocks and the rampart built over and about him. Since the French occupation of Algiers a subsidence in the wall led to an examination of the blocks, and one was found to have given way. It was removed, and the cast of Geronimo was discovered in the block. The body had gone to dust, and the superincumbent weight had crushed in the stone sarcophagus.”^[130]

A story told among the Danes is, that “many years ago, when the ramparts were being raised round Copenhagen, the wall always sank, so that it was not possible to get it to stand firm. They therefore took a little innocent girl, placed her in a chair by a table, and gave her playthings and sweetmeats. While she thus sat enjoying herself, twelve masons built an arch over her, which, when completed, they covered with earth to the sound of drums and trumpets. By this process the walls were made solid.”^[131]

“Thuringian legend declares that to make the castle of Liebenstein fast and impregnable, a child was bought for hard money of its mother, and walled in. It was eating a cake while the masons were at work, the story goes, and it cried, ‘Mother, I see thee still;’ then later, ‘Mother, I see thee a little still;’ and as they put in the last stone, ‘Mother, now I see thee no more.’ ”^[132]

A similar story is told of a Slavic town on the Danube. A plague devastated it, and it was determined to build it anew, with a new citadel. “Acting on the advice of their wisest men, they sent out messengers before sunrise one morning in all directions, with orders to seize upon the first living creature they should meet. The victim proved to be a child (Dyetina, archaic form of Ditya), who was buried alive under the foundation-stone of the new citadel. The city was on that account called Dyetinets [or Detinetz], a name since applied to any citadel.”^[133]

It is even said that “when, a few years ago, the Bridge Gate of the Bremen city walls was demolished, the skeleton of a child was found imbedded in the foundations.”^[134]

A Scottish legend tells that St. Columba found himself unable to build a cathedral on the island of Iona unless he would secure its stability and safety by the blood of a human sacrifice. Thereupon he took his companion, Oran, and buried him alive at the foundations of the structure, having no trouble after that.^[135]

And it is said that under the walls of the only two round towers of the ancient Irish examined, human skeletons were found buried.^[136]

Until the transfer of Alaska to the United States, in 1867, by the Russian government, human sacrifices at the foundation of a new house were common in that portion of America. The ceremonies are thus described by one familiar with them: “The rectangular space for the building is … cleared, a spot for the fireplace designated, and four holes dug, wherein the corner posts are to be set. … A slave, either man or woman who has been captured in war or is even a descendant of such a slave, is blindfolded and compelled to lie down face uppermost, in the place selected for the fireplace [the site of the domestic altar]. A sapling is then cut, laid across the throat of the slave, and, at a given signal, the two nearest relatives of the host sit upon the respective ends of the sapling, thereby choking the unhappy wretch to death. But the corner posts must receive their baptism; so four slaves are blindfolded, and one is forced to stand in each post-hole, when, at a given signal, a blow on the forehead is dealt with a peculiar club ornamented with the host’s coat of arms.” It is said that even to the present time, on the building of a house in Alaska, “the same ceremonies are enacted, with the exception of the sacrifices, which are prevented by the United States authorities.”^[137]

In Hindoostan, Burmah, Tennasserin, Borneo, Japan, Galam, Yarriba, Polynesia, and elsewhere, there are modern survivals of this foundation-laying in blood.^[138] It would seem, indeed, to have been wellnigh universal as a primitive usage.

Popular ballads give other indications of such customs, in various lands. “In a song, of which there are several versions, of the building of the bridge of Arta, it is told how the bridge fell down as fast as it was built, until at last the master-builder dreamed a dream that it would only stand if his own wife were buried alive in the foundations. He therefore sends for her, bidding her dress in festival attire, and then finds an excuse to make her descend into the central pile, whereupon they heap the earth over her, and thus the bridge stands fast.”^[139]

“In another song the same story is told of the Bridge of Tricha, with the difference only that it is a little bird that whispers in the architect’s ear how the pile may be made to stand. A similar superstition connected with the building of the monastery Curtea de Argest, in Wallachia, forms the subject of a fine poem by the Roumanian poet Alexandri.”^[140]

There is an indication of a like custom among the Vlachs in Turkey, as shown in their folk-poetry. The ballad of the “Monastery of Argis” tells of such an incident, in which the master-builder Manoli plays a part.^[141]

Various substitutes for human offerings at the laying of a foundation-stone, or a threshold, have been adopted in different countries. Thus, in modern Greece, “after the ground has been cleared for the foundations of a new house, the future owner, his family, and the workmen attend, together with the pappas [the priest] in full canonicals, accompanied by incense, holy water, and all due accessories. A prayer is said, and those present are aspersed, and the site is sprinkled with the consecrated water. Then a fowl or a lamb, which you have noticed lying near with the feet tied together, is taken by one of the workmen, killed and decapitated, the pappas standing by all the while, and even giving directions; the blood is then smeared on the foundation-stone, in the fulfilment of the popular adage that ‘there must be blood in the foundation.’ ”^[142]

The modern Greek term for this ceremony, stoicheionein, would seem to indicate a sacrifice to the deity of the threshold, or the foundation.

“The Bulgarians, it is said, when laying a house foundation, take a thread, and measure the shadow of some casual passer-by. The measure is then buried under the foundation-stone, and it is expected that the man whose shadow has been thus treated will soon become but a shade himself. … Sometimes a victim is put to death on the occasion; the foundations being sprinkled with the blood of a fowl, or a lamb, or some other species of scapegoat.”^[143]

Among the Russian peasants the idea prevails that the building of a new house “is apt to be followed by the death of the head of the family for which the new dwelling is constructed, or that the member of the family who is the first to enter it will soon die. In accordance with a custom of great antiquity, the oldest member of a migrating household enters the new house first; and in many places, as, for instance, in the Government of Archangel, some animal is killed and buried on the spot on which the first log or stone is laid.”^[144]

The “upper corner” of a house, in Russia, is peculiarly sacred, having even more honor than the doorway threshold in the ordinary home. Yet this upper corner seems to be in a sense the real threshold, or foundation corner, of the building. A cock is the ordinary victim sacrificed “on the spot which a projected house is to cover.” The head of this cock is buried “exactly where the ‘upper corner’ of the building is to stand.” And this corner is thenceforward a sacred corner. Opposite to it is the stove. It is called the “great” and the “beautiful” corner. The family meal is eaten before it, and every one who enters the cottage makes obeisance toward it. Formerly ancestral images are supposed to have been in that corner, and now holy pictures are there.^[145] It would seem to be in accordance with this idea that the foundation-stone, or threshold, of a new building, which in civilized lands is now laid with imposing ceremonies, is known as the “corner-stone.” Yet the “corner-stone” of a modern building is sometimes at the corner of the central doorway.^[146]

It is worthy of note that in ancient Egypt the one door of an ordinary dwelling-house was placed at one side, or end, of the front wall, and not in the center; so that the corner-stone of the building was literally a portion of the threshold.^[147] The same was true of many an old-time New England house; the “front door” was at the left-hand side (as one approached the house) of the gable end. Thus the threshold of the door was often the corner-stone.

Ancient Romans were accustomed to place statues and images, instead of living persons, under the foundations of their buildings, as has been shown by recent researches in and about Rome.^[148] In one instance, where a fine statue of colossal size and in perfect preservation was unearthed, at the foundations of a convent which was being enlarged, “by order of the monks, it was buried again,” as if in deference to the primitive belief that it was essential to the stability of the structure.^[149]

There is a Swedish tradition “that under the altar in the first Christian churches a lamb was usually buried, which imparted security and duration to the edifice.”^[150] And, “according to Danish accounts, a lamb was buried under every altar, and a living horse was laid in every churchyard before a human corpse was laid in it. Both lamb and horse are to be seen occasionally in the church- or grave-yard, and betoken death. Under other houses pigs and hens were buried alive.”^[151]

A new sacrificial stone, or altar of sacrifice, laid on the summit of a Mexican temple, in 1512, was consecrated by Montezuma by the blood of more than twelve thousand captives.^[152]

When the new railroad was built between Jaffa and Jerusalem, a few years ago, there were sacrifices of sheep at its beginning. And there were similar sacrifices at the foundations of the Turkish building, at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago.

In all these facts or legends, blood on the threshold of the building, in the foundation-stones of the structure, is shown to have been deemed an essential factor in a covenant with, or in propitiation of, the deity of the place.