THE FIFTIETH BROTHER. 37 are one to-day. We have joined hands. Hurt not Bula Matari's people; steal not from them; offend them not. Bring food and sell to him at a fair price, gently, kindly, and in peace; for he is my brother. Hear you, ye people of Iboko-you by the river side, and you of the interior?' "We hear, Mata Bwyki!' shouted the multitude."1 And the ceremony was ended. A little later than this, Stanley, or Tandelay, or Bula Matari, as the natives called him, was at Bumba, and there again he exchanged blood in friendship. Myombi, the chief,” he says, “was easily persuaded by Yumbila to make blood-brotherhood with me; and for the fiftieth time my poor arm was scarified, and my blood shed for the cause of civilization. Probably one thousand people of both sexes looked on the scene, wonderingly and strangely. A young branch of a palm was cut, twisted, and a knot tied at each end; the knots were dipped in wood ashes, and then seized and held by each of us, while the medicineman practised his blood-letting art, and lanced us both, until Myombi winced with pain; after which the knotted branch was severed; and, in some incomprehensible manner, I had become united forever to my fiftieth brother; to whom I was under the obligation of defending [him] against all foes until death."2 1 The Congo, II., 79–90. 2 Ibid., II., 104 f. 1 The blood of a fair proportion of all the first families of Equatorial Africa now courses in Stanley's veins; and if ever there was an American citizen who could appropriate to himself pre-eminently the national motto, "E pluribus unum," Stanley is the man. The root-idea of this rite of blood-friendship seems to include the belief, that the blood is the life of a living being; not merely that the blood is essential to life, but that, in a peculiar sense, it is life; that it actually vivifies by its presence; and that by its passing from one organism to another it carries and imparts life. The inter-commingling of the blood of two organisms is, therefore, according to this view, equivalent to the inter-commingling of the lives, of the personalities, of the natures, thus brought together; so that there is, thereby and thenceforward, one life in the two bodies, a common life between the two friends: a thought which Aristotle recognizes in his citation of the ancient "proverb": "One soul [in two bodies]," " a proverb which has not lost its currency in any of the centuries. That the blood can retain its vivifying power whether passing into another by way of the lips or by way of the veins, is, on the face of it, no less plausible, than that 1 Aristotle's Ethics, IX., 8, 3. ment, by Aristotle, but as the "proverbs" of friendship. This is not made as an original statecitation of one of the well-known LEGENDS OF THE NORSELAND. 39 the administering of stimulants, tonics, nutriments, nervines, or anæsthetics, hypodermically, may be equally potent, in certain cases, with the more common and normal method of seeking assimilation by the process of digestion. That the blood of the living has a peculiar vivifying force, in its transference from one organism to another, is one of the clearly proven re-disclosures of modern medical science; and this transference of blood has been made to advantage by way of the veins, of the stomach, of the intestines, of the tissue, and even of the lungs-through dry-spraying.1 4. TRACES OF THE RITE IN EUROPE.2 Different methods of observing this primitive rite of blood-covenanting are indicated in the legendary lore of the Norseland peoples; and these methods, in all their variety, give added proof of the ever underlying idea of an inter-commingling of lives through an inter-commingling of blood. Odin was the beneficent god of light and knowledge, the promoter of heroism, and the protector of sacred covenants, in the mythology of the North. Lôké, or Lok, on the other hand, was the discordant and corrupting divinity; 1 See Nouveau Dictionnaire de Médecine et de Chirurgie Pratiques, (ed. 1884) s. v. "Transfusion." 2 See Appendix, infra. 3 symbolizing, in his personality, "sin, shrewdness, deceitfulness, treachery, malice," and other phases of evil. In the poetic myths of the Norseland, it is claimed that at the beginning Odin and Lôké were in close union instead of being at variance;2 just as the Egyptian cosmogony made Osiris and Set in original accord, although in subsequent hostility; and as the Zoroastrians claimed that Ormuzd and Ahriman were at one, before they were in conflict. Odin and Lôké are, indeed, said to have been, at one time, in the close and sacred union of blood-friendship; having covenanted in that union by mingling their blood in a bowl, and drinking therefrom together. The Elder Edda," or the earliest collection of Scandinavian songs, makes reference to this confraternity of Odin and Lôké. At a banquet of the gods, Lôké, who had not been invited, found an entrance, and there reproached his fellow divinities for their hostility to him. Recalling the indissoluble tie of blood-friendship, he said: 1 See Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship, Lect. I.; also Anderson's Norse Mythology, pp. 215-220; 371-374. 2 See Anderson's Norse Mythol., pp. 372, 408 f. 3 See Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, III., 142; Renouf's The Religion of Ancient Egypt, p. 118 f.; Ebers's Picturesque Egypt, I., 100 f. 4 See De Wette's Biblische Dogmatik, & 79. 5 See Carlyle's Hero Worship, Lect. I. . THE BLOOD-BURIAL. "Father of Slaughter,1 Odin, say, Rememberest not the former day, For mutual drink, our blended blood? The festive banquet ne'er to share, Unless thy brother Lok was there?" 41 In citing this illustration of the ancient rite, a modern historian of chivalry has said: "Among barbarous people [the barbarians of Europe] the fraternity of arms [the sacred brotherhood of heroes] was established by the horrid custom of the new brothers drinking each other's blood; but if this practice was barbarous, nothing was farther from barbarism than the sentiment which inspired it."2 Another of the methods by which the rite of bloodfriendship was observed in the Norseland, was by causing the blood of the two covenanting persons to inter-flow from their pierced hands, while they lay together underneath a lifted sod. The idea involved seems to have been, the burial of the two individuals, in their separate personal lives, and the intermingling of those lives-by the intermingling of their bloodwhile in their temporary grave; in order to their 'Odin "is the author of war." He is called "Valfather (Father of the slain), because he chooses for his sons all who fall in combat." Anderson's Norse Mythol., p. 215 f. 2 Mills's History of Chivalry, chap. IV. |