FOOTNOTES FOR CHAPTER FOUR

¹ "The Scapegoat" pp. 89-90.

² This is true, alas, even in Christendom. But outside its pale, "Superstition has sacrificed countless lives, wasted untold treasures, embroiled nations, severed friends, parted husbands and wives, parents and children, putting swords and worse than swords between them; it has filled jails and mad-houses with innocent or deluded victims;has broken many hearts, embittered the whole of many a life, and not content with persecuting the living it has pursued the dead into the grave and beyond it, gloating over the horrors which its foul imagination has conjured up to appall and torture the survivors. How numerous its ramifications and products have been is merely hinted in the following list of subjects given as cross-references in a public library catalogue card: Alchemy, apparitions, astrology, charms, delusions, demonology, devil-worship, divination, evil eye, fetishism, folk-lore, legends, magic, mythology, occult sciences, oracles, palmistry, relics, second sight, Sorcery, spiritualism, supernatural, totems and witchcraft. This force has pervaded all provinces of life from the cradle to the grave, and, as Frazer says, beyond. It establishes customs as binding as taboo, dictates forms of worship and perpetuates them, obsesses the imagination and leads it to create a world of demons and hosts of lesser spirits and ghosts and ghouls, and inspires fear and even worship of them."(The New Schaff Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge," Vol. XI, p. 169.)

Professor F. B. Dresslar of the University of California prepared a list of those things with which superstition was connected in that State. He secured the list through questions to grown-up people in the present century. It was as follows: Salt, bread and butter, tea and coffee, plants and fruit; fire, lightning, rainbow, the moon, the stars; babies, birds, owls, peacocks and their feathers, chickens, cats, dogs, cows, swine, horses, rabbits, rats, frogs and toads, fish, sheep, crickets, snakes, lizards, turtles, wolves, bees, dragon flies; chairs and tables, clocks, mirrors, spoons, knives and forks, pointed instruments, pins, hairpins, combs, umbrellas (mostly unlucky), candles, matches, teakettle, brooms, dishcloths, handkerchiefs, gardening tools, ladders, horseshoes, hay; days of the week and various festivals or fasts, especially Halloween, birthdays; various numbers, counting, laughing, singing, crying; starting on a journey and turning back, two persons simultaneously saying the same thing, passing in at one door and out at another, walking on opposite sides of a post, stepping on cracks, sneezing, crossing hands while shaking hands, use of windows as exits, stumbling; itching of palm, eye, nose, ear, or foot; warts, moles; various articles of dress, shoes, precious stones, amulets and charms, rings,money; wish-bones; death and funerals, dreams, spiritisms, weddings,and initials.

³ Skeat's "Malay Magic," pp. 43-45.

⁴ "Taboo and the Perils of the Soul," pp 274-275.

⁵ Skeat's "Malay Magic," p. 355.

⁶ "The Ban of the Bori," p. 57.

⁷ "O Satan, this is a safe deposit from us as God is our witness."

⁸ Correspondence in a magazine called Central Asia for December, 1916.

⁹ There are traditions in Bukhari and Muslim to show' the sacred power of Mohammed's blood, spittle, etc. It is also taught that even the exereta of the prophet of Arabia were free from all defilement. Cf. "Insan al Ayun al Halebi " Vol.11, p.222.

¹⁰ Margin of Sirat at Halabi, Cairo Edition, 1308 A.H., vol. iii, pp 238-9.

¹¹ Der Christliche Orient, Sept., 1911.

¹² "The Moslem World" Vol.I, p.306.

¹³ Hamilton's "Hedaya," Vol.II, p.439.

¹⁴ Letter from Miss S.Y. Holliday of Tabriz.

¹⁵ "The Achenese,33 p.298.

¹⁶ Dr. B. J. Esser, Poerbolinggo, Java, in a letter.

¹⁷ "Malay Beliefs," p.53.

¹⁸ Regarding the hair of Mohammed, a legend is told among the Malays that on his journey to heaven on the monster Al-burak, they cleft the moon and when Mohammed was shaved by Gabriel the houris of heaven fought for the falling locks so that not a single hair was allowed to reach the ground. "Malay Beliefs," p.43.

¹⁹ "Fetishism in West Africa," p. 83. "Malay Beliefs," p. 72.

²⁰ "Superstition and Education," p. 72.

²¹ "Jewish Encyclopedia," Art. Nails.

²² "Jewish Encyclopedia," Art. Nails.

²³ Minhaj et Talibin Nawawi p.120.

²⁴ Burton's "Pilgrimage," Vol.II, p.205.

²⁵ "Bulletin da la Societe de Geographie d'Alger et de l'Afrique du Nord," 1907, No.4.

²⁶ Dresslar remarks concerning similar beliefs in the United States, "Experiments upon school children show that there is more disparity between the right and left sides of the body of the brighter pupils than there is between the right and left of the duller ones. Doubtless this same augmented difference holds throughout life, or at least to the period of senescence. It is nothing more nor less than the result of specialization which increases as growing thought-life calls upon the right members of the body for finer adjustment and more varied and perfect execution. Hence, the right members become more the special organs of the will than the left, induce a greater proportion of emotional reaction, and altogether become more closely bound up with the mental life. That this specialization gives an advantage in accuracy, strength, control, and endurance of the right side there can be no doubt. But it seems equally certain that it introduces mental partialities not at all times consistent with well-balanced judgment, or the most trustworthy emotional promptings. Indeed this difference is recorded in the meaning and use of the two words, dextrous and sinister. The thought that relates itself to the stronger side is more rational than that which deals with the weaker and less easily controlled half.

"In addition to this fundamental basis for psychic differentiation with respect to the left and right, it is probable that the beating of the heart, strange and wonderful to the primitive mind, had some influence in connecting the left side with the awful and mysterious." ("Superstition and Education," pp. 208-207.)

²⁷ Mr. Lefebure in his short work, "La Main de Fatima," has gathered all that is known on the subject.

²⁸ "The Ban of the Bori," p. 174.