Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/883

ORDEAL 819 ordeal remained popular in the Middle Ages (see the de scription and picture in Cornelius Agrippa, De Occ. Phil.}; it is mentioned in Hudibras (ii. 3) : "... th oracle of sieve and shears That turns as certain as the spheres." From this ancient ordeal is evidently derived the modern Christian form of the key and Bible, where a Psalter or Bible is suspended by a key tied in at Psalm 1. 18 : "When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him " ; the bow of the key being balanced on the fingers, and the names of those suspected being called over, he or she at Avhose name the book turns or falls is the culprit (see Brand, Popular Antiquities, ed. Bohn, vol. iii. p. 351). One of the most remarkable groups of divinations pass ing into ordeals are those which appeal to the corpse itself for discovery of its murderer. The idea is rooted in that primitive state of mind which has not yet realized the full effect of death, but regards the body as still able to hear and act. Thus the natives of Australia will ask the dead man carried on his bier of boughs who bewitched him ; if he has died by witchcraft he will make the bier move round, and if the sorcerer who killed him be present a bough will touch him (Eyre, Australia, vol. ii, p. 344). That this is no isolated fancy is shown by its recurrence among the negroes of Africa, where, for instance, the corpse causes its bearers to dash against some one s house, which accuses the owner of the murder (J. L. Wilson, Western Africa, p. 231 ; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 193). This somewhat resembles the well-known ordeal of the bier in Europe in the Middle Ages, which, however, seems founded on a different principle, the imagination that a sympathetic action of the blood causes it to flow at the touch or neigh bourhood of the murderer. Apparently the liquefaction of the blood which in certain cases takes place after death may have furnished the ground for this belief. On Teutonic ground, this ordeal appears in the Nibelungenlied, where the murdered Siegfried is laid on his bier, and Hagen is called on to prove his innocence by going to the corpse, but at his approach the dead chief s wounds bleed afresh. The typical instance in English history is the passage of Matthew Paris, that after Henry II. s death at Chinon his son Richard came to view the body, " Quo superveniente, confestim erupit sanguis ex naribus regis mortui ; ac si indignaretur spiritus in adventu ejus, qui ejusdem mortis causa esse credebatur, ut videretur sanguis clamare ad Deum." In Shakespeare (Rich. III., act 1, sc. 2) : " gentlemen, see, see ! dead Henry s wounds Open their congeal d mouths, and bleed afresh ! " At Hertford assizes (4 Car. I.) the deposition was taken as to certain suspected murderers being required to touch the corpse, when the murdered woman thrust out the ring finger three times and it dropped blood on the grass (Brand, vol. iii. p. 231); and there was a case in the Scottish High Court of Justiciary as late as 1668 (T. F. Thiselton Dyer, Folklore of Shakespeare, p. 487). Durham peasants, ap parently remembering the old belief, still expect those who come to look at a corpse to touch it, in token that they bear no ill-will to the departed (W, Henderson, Folklore of Northern Counties, p. 57). Certain ordeals are closely related to oaths, so that the two shade into one another. Let the curse which is to fall on the oath-breaker take effect at once, it then becomes a sign condemning the swearer, in fact, an ordeal. Thus the drinking of water on which a curse or magical penalty has been laid is a mere oath so long as the time of fulfil ment is unfixed (see OATH). But it becomes an ordeal when, as in Brahmanic India, the accused drinks three handfuls of water in which a sacred image has been dipped ; if he is innocent nothing happens, but if he is guilty sick ness or misfortune will fall on him within one to three weeks (for accounts of these and other Hindu ordeals see Ali Ibrahim Khan in Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p, 389, and Stenzler s summary in Z. D. J/. G., vol. ix.). The earliest account of such an ordeal is in Numbers v., which describes the mode of administering to a woman charged with unfaithfulness the bitter water mixed with the dust of the tabernacle floor, with the curse laid on it to cause -her belly to swell and her thigh to fall if guilty. Ewald (Antiqui ties of Israel, 236) regards the draught as in itself harmless, and the operation of this curse on the guilty as due to the influence of the mind on the body. But the term " bitter " is applied to the water before it has been cursed, which suggests that it already contained some drug, as in the poison-water ordeal still in constant use over a great part of Africa. Thus the red water of Guinea is a decoction made by pounding in a wooden mortar and steeping in water the inner bark of one of the mimosas, producing a liquor like that of a tan-vat, astringent, narcotic, and when taken in sufficient quantity emetic. The accused, with solemn ceremony and invocation, drinks freely of it ; if it nauseates him and he throws it up he is triumphantly acquitted, but if he becomes dizzy he is guilty, and the assembly fall on him, pelt him with stones, and even drag him over the rocks till he is dead. Here the result of the ordeal depends partly on the patient s constitution, but more on the sorcerer who can prepare the proper dose to prove either guilt or innocence. Among the various drugs used in different parts of Africa are the mbundu root, the Calabar bean, the tangena nut (Tanghinia veneni^ta, a strong poison and emetic). The sorcerers who administer this ordeal have in their hands a power of inflicting or remitting judicial murder, giving them boundless influence (details in J. L. Wilson, Western Africa, pp. 225, 398 ; Burton, Lake Regions of Central Africa, vol. ii. p. 357 ; Bosnian, " Guinea," in Pinkerton s Voyages, vol. xvi. pp. 398, &c.). The poison-ordeal is also known to Brahmanic law, decoc tion of aconite root being one of the poisons given, and the accused if not sickening being declared free (Stenzler, I.e.). Theoretically connected with the ordeal by cursed drink is that by cursed food, which is, however, distinguished among this black catalogue by being sometimes an effect ual means of discovering the truth. The ordeal by bread and cheese, practised in Alexandria about the 2d century, was practically the same as that known to English law five to ten centuries later as the corsnxd or " trial slice " of consecrated bread and cheese which was administered from the altar, with the curse that if the accused were guilty God would send the angel Gabriel to stop his throat, that he might not be able to swallow that bread and cheese. In fact, if guilty and not a hardened offender he was apt to fail, dry -mouthed and choking through terror, to get it down. The remembrance of this ancient ordeal still lingers in the popular phrase, " May this bit choke me if I lie ! " In India the corresponding trial by rice is prescribed in the old laws to be done by suspected persons chewing the consecrated grains of rice and spitting them out, moist and untinged with blood, on a banyan leaf ; this or the mere chewing and swallowing of a mouth ful of rice-grains is often used even by the English as a means of detecting a thief. A classical mention of the ordeals by carrying hot iron in the hands and by passing through the fire is made more interesting by the guards who offer to prove their innocence in this way offering further to take oath by the gods, which shows the intimate connexion between oaths and ordeals (Soph., Ant., 264, see also ^Eschyl., fr. 284). rip.ev S eToi.fj.OL Kdl fj.vSpovs cCipfiv x^/JOi? KO.L wvp diepTreiv, KO.I Oeovs bpKw^ordv TO ftr/re dpaffai pr/re Tt2 t^vveiSevai TO TrpayfJ.0. j3ovfu<ravTi ^r dp-ya.<rp.lvifi.