Mythology

98 history have borne the marks of an epidemic, and even Dr Mayo was not averse to the proposition that a man who had a wasting disease, or was threatened with one, could imagine himself vampirised and thus spread the contagion to others. Vampirism is only another proof of the power of the mind over the body. It is the fixed idea that does the work. Mr Stanley Redgrove quotes an illustration from J. G. Fraser s Psyche s Task: In illustration of the real power of the imagination, we may instance the Maori superstition of the Taboo. According to the Maoris, any one who touches a tabooed object will assuredly die, the tabooed object being a sort of anti-talisman. Professor Frazer says: Cases have been known of Maoris dying of sheer fright on learning that they had unwittingly eaten the remains of a chiet s dinner, or handled something that belonged to him, since such objects were ipso facto tabooed. He gives the following case on good authority: A woman, having partaken of some fine peaches from a basket, was told that they had come from a tabooed place. Immediately the basket dropped from her hands and she cried out in agony that the atua or godhead of the chief, whose divinity had been thus profaned, would kill her. That happened in the afternoon, and next day by twelve o clock she was dead. For us the power of the taboo does not exist; for the Maori, who implicitly believes in it, it is a very potent reality, but this power of the taboo resides, not in the external objects, but in his own mind. Very true. And the power of the vampire is the power of the idea. (6) ROBIN REDBREAST. Birds have always figured conspicuousjy in pagan superstitions, and it is possible that the superstitions which still linger among us, in some places at least, with regard to certain English birds, may be an echo of the older variety. Robins are held in high esteem by most people, except gardeners and farmers, an esteem which is partly accounted for by their coloured breasts and partly by the song-powers of the male bird. Probably, too, this esteem arises out of the old time superstition referred to in ancient ballads, beginning with The Babes in the Wood. Percy says: No burial this pretty pair Of any man receives, Till Robin Redbreast painfully, Did cover them with leaves. From this fancy seems to have grown the notion that it is unlucky to kill or keep a robin, and this is alluded to in the following lines of an eighteenth century poet, which occur in an ode to the Robin: For ever from his threshold fly, Who, void of honour, once shall try, With base inhospitable breast, To bar the freedom of his guest; O rather seek the peasant s shed, For he will give thee wasted bread, And fear some new calamity, Should any there spread snares for thee. J. H. Pott s Poems, 1780.

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