SUPPLEMENT. 367 as their A trace of this primitive among the primitive German peoples, of opening "the veins upon their foreheads, and mixing the flowing blood with their drink,' method of entering into the blood-covenant. custom would seem to be found in a still extant method of making brotherhood among the students in German universities. Bayard Taylor describes this ceremony as he observed it at Heidelberg, in 1846.1 When new students are to be made " Burschen" (or fellows), while at the same time the bands of brotherhood are to be kept fresh and sacred among those who are already banded together in their student life, the "consecration song" of the Landesvater is sung with mutual beer-drinking and cap-piercing. The ceremony includes the striking of glasses together, as held in the right hand-before drinking; the crossing of swords, as held in the left hand; the piercing of each one's cap with a sword (the caps of all who take part in the ceremony being successively strung upon the two swords of those who conduct it); the exchanging of the cap-laden swords between those leaders; the return of each pierced cap to its owner; the resting of the ends of the crossed swords on the heads, covered by the pierced caps, of each pair participating in turn in the ceremony; with the singing in concert of the song of consecration, of which these two verses are an illustration: / "Take the beaker, pleasure seeker, With thy country's drink brimmed o'er ! In thy left the sword is blinking, "In left hand gleaming, thou art beaming, Thus I pierce the cap, while swearing, It in honor ever wearing, I a valiant Bursch will be!" In this rite the cap instead of the head is punctured, and the beer 1 In Views Afoot, cited in Chambers's Cyclo. of Eng. Lit. alone (beer as the popular substitute for wine) instead of the old-time draught of blood and wine is shared, in symbol of the cutting of the covenant of blood. This cutting of the head, or of some other portion of the body, in order to let the blood flow out toward another as a symbol of life-giving, is a primitive custom which shows itself in many parts of the world. Bruce says: "As soon as a near relation dies in Abyssinia, a brother or parent, cousin-german or lover, every woman in that relation, with the nail of her little finger, which she leaves long on purpose, cuts the skin of both her temples, about the size of a sixpence; and therefore you see either a wound or a scar in every fair face in Abyssinia." Pitts tells 2 of a practice in Algiers of cutting the arms in testimony of love showing toward the living, somewhat like that already referred to as prevalent in Turkey. Letting the blood flow over the dead, or for the dead, from gashes on the head or the breast or the limbs, is a custom among various tribes of North American Indians, and in different islands of the sea. This would seem to be one of the primitive customs forbidden in the Mosaic law: "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead." 6 3 The primitive rite of blood-covenanting by the inter-transfusion of blood through the cutting of the clasped hands of the parties to the covenant, would seem to impart a new meaning to a divine assurance, in the words of the Evangelical Prophet, which has been deemed of peculiar tenderness and force-without its symbolism being fairly 1 Travels, III., 680. 2 A Faithful Account of the Religions and Manners of the Mahometans, Chap. 3. 3 See p. 85, supra. See also La Roque, cited in Harmer's Observations, V., 435. 4 See article on " Mortuary Customs of North American Indians,” in First Ann. Rep. of Bureau of Ethnol., pp. 112, 159, 164, 183, 190. 5 See Angas's Sav. Scenes, I., 96, 315, 331; II., 84, 89 f., 212. Lev. 19: 28; 21: 5; Deut. 14: 1. SUPPLEMENT. 369 understood. Herodotus tells of the rite of blood-covenanting among the Arabians, by cutting into the palms of the hands, in order that the blood of the two may be unalterably interchanged.1 Isaiah, writing not far from the time of Herodotus, uses this illustration of Jehovah's unfailing fidelity to his people: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon [I have cut thee into] the palms of my hands.” 2 A mother and a child were for a time as one; but they may be separated and become mutually forgetful. They, however, who have become as one personality, through an intermingling of their life-blood at the palm of the hand, cannot be wholly separated. Jehovah has covenanted with his people in a covenant that will never be forgotten by him.3 The covenant relation which thus makes a friend nearer and dearer than brother, or son, or daughter, or wife, it is which is referred to in the climax of human relationships in the law of Moses, as "thy friend which is as thine own soul; "4 such a friend, made by the covenant of the pierced hands, will never be forgotten by his other self. It has been already mentioned that there were indications of the bloodcovenant and its involvings in the sacred writing of the Zoroastrians,5 and in the writings of Herodotus with reference to the Persian invasion of Egypt, and now, as the last pages of this volume go to press, there comes an illustration of the existence of this rite in Persia in its primitive form at the present time. 6 Mr. J. H. McCormick, now of Schenectady, New York, was, for 3 The attempts to explain this figure of speech (see Rosenmüller, Stolberg, Burder, Roberts, etc.) by a reference to the custom of tattooing pictures of sacred shrines on the arms and breasts of pilgrims, gives no such idea as this of loving unity between God and his people, as more enduring than that of mother and child.. 6 See p. 365 f. 4 Deut. 13: 6. See p. 169. a number of years, connected with the Royal Engineers' British Service, in India and Persia. It was while he was at Dehbeed, in Persia, in the early part of 1871 that he witnessed the consummation of this rite, and he gives this description of it: "Near Dehbeed there is a large cave where jackals frequent. On the 2d of February, 1871, a boy nine years old, who was the son of Alee Muhammad, wandered into this cave, and his cries attracted the notice of Jaffar Begg (one of my ghootans, or line policemen, who was in charge of the caravansary), who immediately armed himself, and, with two powerful dogs, entered the cave, and there in a far-away corner he found young Alee Muhammad crouched. He brought him out in safety, and handed him over to his father, who lived about half a mile away. The father's joy was so great, and he was so grateful to his son's deliverer, that he, being a Persian gentleman, proposed their entering into life-brotherhood, and Jaffar Begg joyfully accepted the proposition. Having procured two new pocket-knives, they both, that is, Jaffar Begg and Alee Muhammad, appeared at the place appointed, about three hundred yards from my office,-Jaffar having invited me to witness the ceremony. At 10 A. M., February 4, 1871, a large Persian carpet was spread out on the sand. The two men knelt down on it, placing a small stone in front of each. These stones were brought from the centre of Muhammadan worship at Mecca. Both men prayed to God. Each man touched his sacred stone with his forehead, his mouth, and his heart three times. Then they had a pipe together; then a cup of coffee without milk or sugar; then a second prayer; then a second pipe and a second cup of coffee; then a third prayer. "After this Jaffar took out his pocket-knife and cut Alee Muhammad's right wrist on the inside, sucking the blood from the cut. Alee Muhammad drew his pocket-knife and cut Jaffar's right wrist on the inside, sucking the blood from the cut. Both wounds bleeding freely, the wrists were brought together, wound to wound, and the two men repeated together an invocation, calling God to witness that these two persons were now made one by blood until death. Then the hakeem, or doctor, dressed their wounds. They had a final prayer together, in which all present, except myself, joined. They had another pipe, and another cup of coffee, after which they separated. The sacredness of this bond is greater than language can express." In the modern observance of this rite in Persia, it will be seen that the main features of the rite in all the ages are preserved. The mutual tasting of the blood, the inter-transfusion of the blood, the stones of witness, the invoking of God's approval, the mutual smoking of the pipe, the drinking together, and the communion feast, all are here. The old rite and the new are one in the blending of two lives into one in God's sight. In Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire there is an incidental suggestion of the survival of this rite along the passing centuries in Western Asia. During the struggle of Baldwin II. to preserve the waning power of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, about the middle of the thirteenth century, "the throne of the Latin emperor was protected by a dishonorable alliance with the Turks and Comans. To secure the former, he consented to bestow his niece on the unbelieving sultan of Cogni; to please the latter, he complied with their pagan rites; a dog was sacrificed between the two armies; and the contracting parties tasted each other's blood, as a pledge of their fidelity.”1 Several Japanese students have informed me that there are survivals of the blood-covenant in Japan, in the custom of the signing of mutual covenants in the blood of the parties to the covenant. The Rev. Dr. John G. Paton, the veteran Scotch missionary among the cannibals of the New Hebrides, testifies to the sacred character of cannibalism among that people. He informs me that they evidently seek inter-communion with the gods by partaking of the blood and the flesh of their victims. This testimony corresponds with that of other |