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Expulsion of the Trows in Shetland on Up-helly-a', the twenty-fourth day after Christmas.

In the Shetland Islands the Yule or Christmas holidays begin, or used to begin, seven days before Christmas and last till Antinmas, that is, the twenty-fourth day after Christmas. In the Shetland parlance these holidays are known as “the Yules.” On the first night, called Tul-ya's e'en, seven days before Christmas, certain mischievous elves, whom the Shetlanders name Trows, “received permission to leave their homes in the heart of the earth and dwell, if it so pleased them, above ground. There seemed to have been no doubt that those creatures preferred disporting themselves among the dwellings of men to residing in their own subterranean abodes, for they availed themselves of every permission given, and created no little disturbance among the mortals whom they visited. One of the most important of all Yule-tide observances was the ‘saining’ required to guard life or property from the Trows. If the proper observances were omitted, the ‘grey-folk’ were sure to take advantage of the opportunity.”⁴²⁰ On the last day of the holidays, the twenty-fourth day after Christmas, which in Shetland goes by the name of Up-helly-a', Uphellia, or Uphaliday, “the doors were all opened, and a great deal of pantomimic chasing and driving and dispersing of unseen creatures took place. Many pious ejaculations were uttered, and iron was ostentatiously displayed, ‘for Trows can never abide the sight o' iron.’ The Bible was read and quoted. People moved about in groups or couples, never singly, and infants were carefully guarded as well as sained by vigilant and learned ‘wise women.’ Alas, the poor Trows! their time of frolic and liberty was ended, and on Twenty-fourth night they retired to their gloomy abodes beneath the sod, seldom finding opportunity to reappear again, and never with the same licence, until the Yules returned. All that pantomime, all that invoking of holier Powers, were but methods of ‘speeding the parting guest,’ and mortals were rejoicing that the unbidden, unwelcome grey-folk must depart. When day dawned after Twenty-fourth night the Trows had vanished and the Yules were ended.”⁴²¹ Of late years Up-helly-a' has been celebrated in Lerwick with pompous and elaborate masquerades. The chief event of the evening is a torch-light procession of maskers or “guizers,” as they are called, who escort the model of a Norse galley through the streets, and finally set it on fire by throwing their torches into it. But in this form the celebration seems to date only from the latter part of the nineteenth century; in former times an old boat filled with tar and ignited was dragged about and blazing tar-barrels were drawn or kicked through the streets.⁴²² The fire, however procured, was probably in origin intended to chase away the lingering Trows from the town at the end of the holidays.

Annual expulsion of witches and demons in Europe.

Thus it would seem that the custom of annually banishing witches and demons on a day or night set apart for the purpose has not been confined to Central Europe, but can be traced from Calabria and Rome in the south to the Shetland Islands in the far north.

Chapter IV. Public Scapegoats

§ 1. The Expulsion of Embodied Evils

The expulsion of embodied evils.

Thus far we have dealt with that class of the general expulsion of evils which I have called direct or immediate. In this class the evils are invisible, at least to common eyes, and the mode of deliverance consists for the most part in beating the empty air and raising such a hubbub as may scare the mischievous spirits and put them to flight. It remains to illustrate the second class of expulsions, in which the evil influences are embodied in a visible form or are at least supposed to be loaded upon a material medium, which acts as a vehicle to draw them off from the people, village, or town.

Expulsion of demons personified by men among the American Indians. Expulsion of a demon embodied in an image among the Mayas of Yucatan.

The Pomos of California celebrate an expulsion of devils every seven years, at which the devils are represented by disguised men. “Twenty or thirty men array themselves in harlequin rig and barbaric paint, and put vessels of pitch on their heads; then they secretly go out into the surrounding mountains. These are to personify the devils. A herald goes up to the top of the assembly-house, and makes a speech to the multitude. At a signal agreed upon in the evening the masqueraders come in from the mountains, with the vessels of pitch flaming on their heads, and with all the frightful accessories of noise, motion, and costume which the savage mind can devise in representation of demons. The terrified women and children flee for life, the men huddle them inside a circle, and, on the principle of fighting the devil with fire, they swing blazing firebrands in the air, yell, whoop, and make frantic dashes at the marauding and bloodthirsty devils, so creating a terrific spectacle, and striking great fear into the hearts of the assembled hundreds of women, who are screaming and fainting and clinging to their valorous protectors. Finally the devils succeed in getting into the assembly-house, and the bravest of the men enter and hold a parley with them. As a conclusion of the whole farce, the men summon courage, the devils are expelled from the assembly-house, and with a prodigious row and racket of sham fighting are chased away into the mountains.”⁴²³ In spring, as soon as the willow-leaves were full grown on the banks of the river, the Mandan Indians celebrated their great annual festival, one of the features of which was the expulsion of the devil. A man, painted black to represent the devil, entered the village from the prairie, chased and frightened the women, and acted the part of a buffalo bull in the buffalo dance, the object of which was to ensure a plentiful supply of buffaloes during the ensuing year. Finally he was chased from the village, the women pursuing him with hisses and gibes, beating him with sticks, and pelting him with dirt.⁴²⁴ The Mayas of Yucatan divided the year into eighteen months of twenty days each, and they added five supplementary days at the end of the year in order to make a total of three hundred and sixty-five days. These five supplementary days were deemed unlucky. In the course of them the people banished the evils that might threaten them in the year on which they were about to enter. For that purpose they made a clay image of the demon of evil Uuayayab, that is u-uayab-haab, “He by whom the year is poisoned,” confronted it with the deity who had supreme power over the coming year, and then carried it out of the village in the direction of that cardinal point to which, on the system of the Mayan calendar, the particular year was supposed to belong. Having thus rid themselves of the demon, they looked forward to a happy New Year.⁴²⁵

Expulsion of a demon personified by a man among the aborigines of Queensland. Expulsion of demons embodied in effigies in India and Russia. Expulsion of demons embodied in animals or boys in Esthonia and Spain.

Some of the native tribes of Central Queensland believe in a noxious being called Molonga, who prowls unseen and would kill men and violate women if certain ceremonies were not performed. These ceremonies last for five nights and consist of dances, in which only men, fantastically painted and adorned, take part. On the fifth night Molonga himself, personified by a man tricked out with red ochre and feathers and carrying a long feather-tipped spear, rushes forth from the darkness at the spectators and makes as if he would run them through. Great is the excitement, loud are the shrieks and shouts, but after another feigned attack the demon vanishes in the gloom.⁴²⁶ On the last night of the year the palace of the Kings of Cambodia is purged of devils. Men painted as fiends are chased by elephants about the palace courts. When they have been expelled, a consecrated thread of cotton is stretched round the palace to keep them out.⁴²⁷ In Munzerabad, a district of Mysore in Southern India, when cholera or smallpox has broken out in a parish, the inhabitants assemble and conjure the demon of the disease into a wooden image, which they carry, generally at midnight, into the next parish. The inhabitants of that parish in like manner pass the image on to their neighbours, and thus the demon is expelled from one village after another, until he comes to the bank of a river into which he is finally thrown.⁴²⁸ Russian villagers seek to protect themselves against epidemics, whether of man or beast, by drawing a furrow with a plough right round the village. The plough is dragged by four widows and the ceremony is performed at night; all fires and lights must be extinguished while the plough is going the round. The people think that no unclean spirit can pass the furrow which has thus been traced. In the village of Dubrowitschi a puppet is carried before the plough with the cry, “Out of the village with the unclean spirit!” and at the end of the ceremony it is torn in pieces and the fragments scattered about.⁴²⁹ No doubt the demon of the disease is supposed to be in the puppet and to be destroyed with it. Sometimes in an Esthonian village a rumour will get about that the Evil One himself has been seen in the place. Instantly the whole village is in an uproar, and the entire population, armed with sticks, flails, and scythes, turns out to give him chase. They generally expel him in the shape of a wolf or a cat, occasionally they brag that they have beaten the devil to death.⁴³⁰ At Carmona, in Andalusia, on one day of the year, boys are stripped naked and smeared with glue in which feathers are stuck. Thus disguised, they run from house to house, the people trying to avoid them and to bar their houses against them.⁴³¹ The ceremony is probably a relic of an annual expulsion of devils.

Annual expulsion of the demon of plague among the Khasis of Assam. The Tug of War probably a contest with demons represented by human beings. The Tug of War at funerals in Chittagong and Burma.

Some of the Khasis of Assam annually expel the demon of plague. The ceremony is called Beh-dieng-khlam, that is “Driving away (beh) the plague (khlam) with sticks (dieng)”; it takes place in the Deep-water month (June). On the day fixed for the expulsion the men rise early and beat the roof with sticks, calling upon the demon of the plague to leave the house. Later in the day they go down to the stream where the goddess Aitan dwells. Then long poles or bamboos, newly cut, are laid across the stream and the people jump on them, trying to break them; when they succeed, they give a great shout. Next a very large pole or bamboo is similarly laid across the stream, and the people divide themselves into two parties, one on each side of the stream, and pull against each other at opposite ends of the pole. According to one account the party which succeeds in dragging the pole to their side of the stream is supposed to gain health and prosperity during the coming year. According to another account, if the people on the east bank win in the contest or “tug-of-war,” good luck and prosperity are assured; but if the people on the west bank are victorious, then everything will go wrong. On this occasion the people disguise themselves as giants and wild beasts, and they parade images of serpents, elephants, tigers, peacocks, and so on. The men dance with enthusiasm, and the girls, dressed in their best, look on. Before the assembly breaks up, the men play a sort of game of hockey with wooden balls.⁴³² In this ceremonial contest or “tug of war” between two parties of the people, we may conjecture that the one party represents the expelled demons of the plague; and if that is so, we may perhaps assume that in the struggle the representatives of the demons generally allow themselves to be overcome by their adversaries, in order that the village may be free from pestilence in the coming year. Similarly in autumn the Central Esquimaux divide themselves into two parties, representing summer and winter respectively, which pull at opposite ends of a rope; and they draw omens of the weather to be expected in the coming winter according as the party of summer or of winter prevails in the struggle.⁴³³ That in such contests, resembling our English game of “French and English” or the “Tug of War,” the one side may represent demons is proved by a custom observed by the Chukmas, a tribe of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in South-Eastern India. “On the death of a Dewan or of a priest a curious sport is customary at the funeral. The corpse is conveyed to the place of cremation on a car; to this car ropes are attached, and the persons attending the ceremony are divided into two equal bodies and set to work to pull in opposite directions. One side represents the good spirits; the other, the powers of evil. The contest is so arranged that the former are victorious. Sometimes, however, the young men representing the demons are inclined to pull too vigorously, but a stick generally quells this unseemly ardour in the cause of evil.”⁴³⁴ The contest is like that between the angels and devils depicted in the frescoes of the Campo Santo at Pisa. In Burma a similar struggle takes place at the funeral of a Buddhist monk who passed for a saint in the popular estimation: ropes are attached to opposite ends of the car on which the coffin is placed, all the able-bodied men of the neighbourhood hold on to one or other of the two ends and pull as if for dear life against each other; even the women and girls sometimes join in the tug of war, and policemen have been seen, in a state of frantic excitement, waving their batons to encourage the combatants and dragging back shirkers by main force into the fighting line. The struggle is sometimes prolonged for hours or even days.⁴³⁵ With the example of the Chukmas before us, we may conjecture that the original motive of this internecine strife was a persuasion that the eternal happiness or misery of the departed saint depended on the issue of this contest between the powers of good and evil for the possession of his mortal remains.

The Tug of War as a rain-making ceremony in Burma and else where.

But in Burma the tug of war has been employed for more secular purposes than the salvation or perdition of souls. “The inhabitants,” we are told, “still have a custom of pulling a rope to produce rain. A rain party and a drought party tug against each other, the rain party being allowed the victory, which in the popular notion is generally followed by rain.”⁴³⁶ The mode in which this salutary result follows from tugging at a rope is explained by the Burmese doctrine of nats or spirits who cause rain. But it is only when these spirits sport in the air that rain falls; when they shut themselves up in their houses there is drought. Now in some Burmese writings “it is said, that when the sun is in the path of the goat, these Nat do not chuse to leave their houses on account of the great heat, whence there is then no rain. For this reason, the inhabitants of the Burma empire, in times of drought, are wont to assemble in great numbers, with drums and a long cable. Dividing themselves into two parties, with a vast shouting and noise, they drag the cable contrary ways, the one party endeavouring to get the better of the other: and they think, by this means, to invite the Nat to come out from their houses, and to sport in the air. The thunder and lightning, which frequently precede rain, are the clashing and shining of the arms of these Nat, who sometimes sport in mock battles.”⁴³⁷ Apparently, therefore, in the tug of war, practised as a rain-charm, the one party represent the spirits who have to be dragged reluctantly from their houses in order to make rain in the sky. Similarly in the Timor-laut Islands, when the people want a rainy wind from the west, the population of the village, men, women, and children divide into two parties and pull against each other at the end of a long bamboo. But the party at the eastern end must pull the harder, in order to draw the desired wind out of the west.⁴³⁸ We can now perhaps understand why among the Khasis the victory of the eastern side in the tug of war is thought to prognosticate good luck and prosperity, and why the victory of the western side is believed to portend the contrary; the distinction is at once intelligible when we remember that in the country of the Khasis the rainy wind is the monsoon which blows from the south-west, whereas the wind which blows from the south-east is hot and dry.⁴³⁹ Thus a victory of the eastern party in the tug of war means that they have drawn rain and consequently fertility into the country from the west; whereas a victory of the western party signifies that they have dragged drought and consequently dearth into the country from the east.

The Tug of War between the sexes. The Tug of War in Kamtchatka and New Guinea.

However, a somewhat different turn is given to the ceremony of rope-pulling in the East Indies by another writer, who informs us, that while the contest only takes place in some of these islands when rain is wanted, it is closely connected with those licentious rites performed for the fertilization of the ground which have been described in another part of this work.⁴⁴⁰ According to this account the men and women appear to take opposite sides in the tug of war, and in pulling against each other they imitate by their movements the union of the sexes.⁴⁴¹ If that is so, it would seem that the rite is a magical ceremony designed to promote the fertility of the ground by means of homoeopathic or imitative magic. The same may perhaps be the intention of the tug of war as it is practised for the benefit of the crops by some of the Naga tribes of Assam, and this is the more likely because in the case of these tribes we are definitely told that the sexes take opposite sides, the women and girls tugging against the men and boys. This is done by the Tangkhuls of Assam a month after the rice has been sown; the ceremony is performed “in order to take the omens for the future of the crops,” and it “is followed by considerable license.” The tug of war between the sexes with its attendant license is repeated before the first-fruits are cut by the sacred headman.⁴⁴² In Corea about the fifteenth day of the first month villages engage in the same kind of contest with each other, and it is thought that the village which wins will have a good harvest. The rope which they pull is made of straw, two feet in diameter, with its ends divided into branches. The men lay hold of the main stem, while the women grasp the branches, and they often tug harder than the men, for they load their skirts with stones, which adds weight to the force of their muscles.⁴⁴³ In Kamtchatka, when the fishing season is over, the people used to divide into two parties, one of which tried to pull a birch-tree by a strap through the smoke-hole into their subterranean winter dwelling, while the other party outside, pulling at the end of the tree, endeavoured to hinder them. If the party in the house succeeded, they raised shouts of joy and set up a grass effigy of a wolf, which they preserved carefully throughout the year, believing that it espoused their young women and prevented them from giving birth to twins. For they deem the birth of twins a dreadful misfortune and a horrible sin; they put it down to the wolf in the forest, and all who chance to be in the house at the time shew a clean pair of heels, leaving the mother and her infants to shift for themselves. Should the twins be both girls, the calamity is even greater.⁴⁴⁴ In the village of Doreh, in Dutch New Guinea, when some of the inhabitants have gone on a long journey, the people who stay at home engage in a Tug of War among themselves to determine whether the journey will be prosperous or not. One side represents the voyagers and the other side those who are left behind. They pull at opposite ends of a long bamboo, and if the bamboo breaks or the side which represents the people at home is obliged to let go, the omen is favourable.⁴⁴⁵

The Tug of War in Morocco to procure rain or sunshine.

In Morocco, also, the Tug of War is resorted to as a means of influencing the weather, sometimes in order to procure rain and sometimes to procure sunshine; and here men and women appear usually to take opposite sides in the contest. For example, among the Igliwa, a Berber people of the Great Atlas, when rain is wanted, they take a rope and the men pull at one end and women at the other. While they are tugging away, a man suddenly cuts the rope and the women fall down. The same device for procuring rain in time of drought is practised by the Ait Warain, another Berber tribe of Morocco; but among them in the heat of the contest the women as well as the men will sometimes let go the rope and allow the opposite party to fall on their backs. However, the Tsûl, another Berber tribe of Morocco, employ the Tug of War for the opposite purpose of ensuring a supply of sunshine and heat in autumn, when they wish to dry their figs and grapes; the contest takes place at night by the light of the moon.⁴⁴⁶ The apparent contradiction of employing the same procedure for opposite purposes vanishes if we suppose that, as the Assamese custom seems to indicate, the intention is to draw either a rainy or a dry wind out of the quarters from which the breezes that bring rain or sunshine usually blow, and which will usually be on opposite sides of the sky. Hence in order fully to understand the Tug of War, when it is practised for the purpose of influencing the weather, we should know, first, the directions from which the rainy and the dry winds respectively come in the country under consideration, and second, the direction in which the rope is stretched between the contending parties. If, for example, as happens in Assam, the rainy wind blows from the west, and a victory of the eastern party in the Tug of War is an omen of prosperity, we may conclude with a fair degree of probability that the intention of the contest is to draw the rain from the quarter of the sky in which it is lingering. But these niceties of observation have usually escaped the attention of those who have described the Tug of War.

Games of ball in Morocco to procure rain or sunshine.

In various parts of Morocco games of ball are played for the sake now of procuring rain and now of procuring dry weather; the ball is sometimes propelled with sticks and sometimes with the feet of the competitors. An Arab questioned as to why a game of ball should bring on rain explained that the ball is dark like a rain-cloud.⁴⁴⁷ Perhaps the answer furnishes the clue to the meaning of the rite. If in such games played to influence the weather the ball represents a rain-cloud, the success or failure of the charm will depend on which side contrives to get the ball home in the enemy's quarters. For example, if rain is desired and the rainy wind blows in Morocco, as may perhaps be assumed, from the west, then should the western side succeed in driving the ball through the eastern goal, there will be rain; but if the eastern party wins, then the rain is driven away and the drought will continue. Thus a game of ball would in theory and practice answer exactly to the Tug of War practised for the same purposes.

The Tug of War in Morocco to ensure prosperity.

In Morocco, however, the Tug of War is apparently used also for the purpose of ensuring prosperity in general without any special reference to the weather. Dr. Westermarck was informed by an old Arab from the Hiaina that the Tug of War “is no longer practised at the Great Feast, as it was in his childhood, but that it is performed in the autumn when the threshing is going on and the fruits are ripe. Then men and women have a tug of war by moonlight so that the bäs, or evil, shall go away, that the year shall be good, and that the people shall live in peace. Some man secretly cuts two of the three cords of which the rope is made, with the result that both parties tumble down.”⁴⁴⁸ In this contest one party perhaps represents the powers of good and the other the powers of evil in general. But why in these Moroccan cases of the Tug of War the rope should be so often cut and one or both sides laid on their backs, is not manifest. Perhaps the simple device of suddenly slacking the rope in order to make the opposite side lose their footing, and so to haul the rope away from them before they can recover themselves, may have led to the more trenchant measure of cutting it with a knife for the same purpose.

Spiritual significance of the Tug of War. The Tug of War in French Guiana, in North-Western India.

These examples make it probable that wherever the Tug of War is played only at certain definite seasons or on certain particular occasions, it was originally performed, not as a mere pastime, but as a magical ceremony designed to work some good for the community. Further, we may surmise that in many cases the two contending parties represent respectively the powers of good and evil struggling against each other for the mastery, and as the community has always an interest in the prevalence of the powers of good, it may well happen that the powers of evil do not always get fair play in these conflicts; though no doubt when it comes to be “pull devil, pull baker,” the devil is apt, in the spirit of a true sportsman, to tug with as hearty good will as his far more deserving adversary the baker. To take cases in which the game is played without any alleged practical motive, the Roocooyen Indians of French Guiana engage in the Tug of War as a sort of interlude during the ceremonial tortures of the youth.⁴⁴⁹ Among the Cingalese the game “is connected with the superstitious worship of the goddess Patiné; and is more intended for a propitiation to that deity, than considered as an indulgence, or pursued as an exercise. Two opposite parties procure two sticks of the strongest and toughest wood, and so crooked as to hook into one another without slipping; they then attach strong cords or cable-rattans of sufficient length to allow of every one laying hold of them. The contending parties then pull until one of the sticks gives way.” The victorious piece of wood is gaily decorated, placed in a palanquin, and borne through the village amid noisy rejoicings, often accompanied with coarse and obscene expressions.⁴⁵⁰ The use of foul language on this occasion suggests that the ceremony is here, as elsewhere, observed for the purpose of ensuring fertility. In the North-Western provinces of India the game is played on the fourteenth day of the light half of the month Kuar. The rope (barra) is made of the grass called makra, and is thicker than a man's arm. The various quarters of a village pull against each other, and the one which is victorious keeps possession of the rope during the ensuing year. It is chiefly in the east of these provinces that the game is played; in the west it is unknown.⁴⁵¹ Sometimes the contest is between the inhabitants of neighbouring villages, and the rope is stretched across the boundary; plenty is supposed to attend the victorious side.⁴⁵² At the Great Feast, a yearly sacrificial festival of the Mohammedan world, some tribes in Morocco practise a Tug of War. Thus among the Ait Sadden it is observed on the first day of the festival before the sacrifice; among the Ait Yusi it is performed either before the religious service or in the afternoon of the same day, and also in the morning of the Little Feast. Both sexes generally take part in the contest, the men tugging at one end of the rope and the women at the other, and sometimes the weaker party applies for help to persons of the same sex in a neighbouring village. When they are all hard at it, the men may suddenly let go the rope and so send the women sprawling on their backs.⁴⁵³

The Tug of War in Shropshire and Radnorshire. Contests for a ball (soule) in Normandy.

At Ludlow in Shropshire a grand Tug of War used to take place on Shrove Tuesday between the inhabitants of Broad Street Ward on the one side and of Corve Street Ward on the other. The rope was three inches thick and thirty-six yards long, with a red knob at one end and a blue knob at the other. The rope was paid out by the Mayor in person from a window in the Market Hall at four o'clock in the afternoon. The shops then put up their shutters, and the population engaged in the struggle with enthusiasm, gentle and simple, lawyers and parsons bearing a hand on one side or the other, till their clothes were torn to tatters on their backs. The injured were carried into the neighbouring houses, where their hurts were attended to. If the party of the Red Knob won, they carried the rope in triumph to the River Leme and dipped it in the water. Finally, the rope was sold, the money which it brought in was devoted to the purchase of beer, and drinking, squabbling, and fighting ended the happy day. This ancient and highly popular pastime was suppressed in 1851 on the frivolous pretext that it gave rise to disorderly scenes and dangerous accidents.⁴⁵⁴ A similar custom has long been observed on Shrove Tuesday at Presteign in Radnorshire. The rope is pulled by two parties representing the upper and the lower portions of the town, who strive to drag it either to a point in the west wall or to another point in Broad Street, where the River Lugg is reached.⁴⁵⁵ In the Bocage of Normandy most desperate struggles used to take place between neighbouring parishes on Shrove Tuesday for the possession of a large leathern ball stuffed with bran and called a soule. The ball was launched on the village green and contended for by representatives of different parishes, who sometimes numbered seven or eight hundred, while five or six thousand people might assemble to witness the combat; for indeed it was a fight rather than a game. The conflict was maintained with the utmost fury; old scores were paid off between personal enemies; there were always many wounded, and sometimes there were deaths. The aim of each side was to drive the ball over a stream and to lodge it in a house of their own parish. It was thought that the parish which was victorious in the struggle would have a better crop of apples that year than its neighbours. At Lande-Patry the ball was provided by the bride who had been last married, and she had the honour of throwing it into the arena. The scene of the fiercest battles was St. Pierre d'Entremont, on the highroad between Condé and Tinchebray. After several unsuccessful attempts the custom was suppressed at that village in 1852 with the help of four or five brigades of police. It is now everywhere extinct.⁴⁵⁶ The belief that the parish which succeeded in carrying the ball home would have a better crop of apples that year raises a presumption that these conflicts were originally practised as magical rites to ensure fertility. The local custom of Lande-Patry, which required that the ball should be provided and thrown by the last bride,⁴⁵⁷ points in the same direction. It is possible that the popular English, or rather Scotch, game of football had a similar origin: the winning side may have imagined that they secured good crops, good weather, or other substantial advantages to their village or ward.