On the Nightmare  

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On the Nightmare (1931) is a book by psychoanalyst and Freud biographer Ernest Jones. Jones chose a version of Fuseli's The Nightmare as the frontispiece of his book, however neither Freud nor Jones mentioned these paintings in their writings about dreams.

Full text[1]

THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO - ANALYTICAL

LIBRARY

EDITED BY ERNEST JONES No. 20

THE INTERNATIONA!^ PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL LIBRARY EDITED BY ERNEST JONES

No. 20 "

ON THE NIGHTMARE

BY

ERNEST JONES, M.D.

VICE-PRESIDENT (EX- PRESIDENT) OP THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL ASSOCIATION; MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY,

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON; AUTHOR OF " ZUR PSYCHOANALYSE DER CHRISTLICHEN RELIGION," ETC.

PUBLISHED BY LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF AT THI

HOGARTH PRESS, 52 TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.

AND THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

MCMXXXI

^Printed in Great Britain by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.

So on his Nightmare, through the evening fog, Flits the squat fiend o'er fen, and lake, and bog ; Seeks some love-wilder' d maid with sleep oppressed, Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast- Such as of late, amid the murky sky, Was marked by Fuseli's poetic eye ; Whose daring tints, with Shakspeare's happiest grace, Gave to the airy phantom form and place Back o'er her pillow sinks her blushing head, Her snow-white limbs hang helpless from the bed ; While with quick sighs and suffocative breath Her interrupted heart-pulse swims in death.

ERASMUS DARWIN.

PREFACE

f | ^HE history of this book is as follows. Only Part I. I has appeared hitherto in English, in the A merican Journal of Insanity, January 1910. Part II. is a translation from a booklet entitled Der Alptraum in seiner Beziehung zu gewissen Formen des mittelalterlichen Aberglaubens, which was published in 1912 as Heft XIV. of the Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde. Part III. was being prepared for publication when the War broke out, and pressure of other work has laid it aside till now. Part IV., now marked off separately, was the Conclusion to Der Alptraum. Most of the book was thus written in the years 1909 and 1910. In revising it for English publi- cation I have freely re-arranged the material, especially in Part III. Some confirmatory material of which I have jotted down notes from time to time has been added, but anything substantially post-dating the original is enclosed in square brackets. Professor Priebsch has read through the chapter on etymology (Part III. Chapter V.), but while grateful to him for his kindly criticism I do not wish to hold him responsible for the views there expressed. To the courtesy of Professor Ganz of Basle I owe both the permission to reproduce the plate of Fuseli's celebrated picture and also practical assistance in making this possible. To my wife, Dr. Katherine Jones, I am deeply indebted for much expert criticism and suggestion and for unfailing encouragement and help in what in the circumstances of my life was an arduous labour.

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8 ON THE NIGHTMARE

The question may naturally arise why, in a study ad- vancing so rapidly as psycho-analysis is, one should think it worth while to publish work done more than twenty years ago. The answer lies only partly in the numerous requests that it should be made accessible. A more compelling reason will be discovered in the fol- lowing considerations.

For the true significance of the Nightmare to be pro- perly appreciated, first by the learned professions and then by the general public, would in my opinion entail consequences, both scientific and social, to which the term momentous might well be applied. What is at issue is nothing less than the very meaning of religion itself. In this book I have, brought forward reasons why an intensive study of the Nightmare and the beliefs held about it makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that re- ligion is in its essence one of the means hitherto per- haps the most valuable of helping mankind to cope with the burden of guilt and fear everyone inherits in his unconscious from the deepest stirrings of mental life, the primordial conflict over incest. Other workers, notably Freud and Reik, have confirmed and amplified this con- clusion, which the world will one day have seriously to take into its reckoning.

January 1931

CONTENTS PART I

PAGE

PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE . . .11

PART II

THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE NIGHTMARE AND

CERTAIN MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS . . 55

CHAP.

INTRODUCTION ...... 57

I. DREAMS AND BELIEFS . . . . -58

II. THE NIGHTMARE . . . . -73

III. INCUBUS AND INCUBATION . . . .82

IV. THE VAMPIRE ...... 98

V. THE WEREWOLF . . . . .131

VI. THE DEVIL ...... 154

VII. WITCHES ...... 190

SUMMARY ...... 237

PART III

THE MARE AND THE MARA: A PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL CONTRIBUTION TO ETYMOLOGY . . . 241

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 243

II. THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND . . . 248

III. THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY . . 273

IV. THE HORSE AND MEDLEVAL SUPERSTITIONS . 320 V. THE MR ROOT 326

10 ON THE NIGHTMARE

PART IV

CONCLUSION ...... 341

INDEX OF AUTHORS . . . . . 351

GENERAL INDEX ..... 359

PART I PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE

II

PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE

No malady that causes mortal distress to the sufferer, not even seasickness, is viewed by medical science with such complacent indiffer- ence as is the one which is the subject of this book. Text- books, both on bodily and on mental disorders, may in vain be ransacked for any adequate description of the phenomenon, and still less satisfying is the search for anything more than the most superficial consideration of the pathogenesis of it. The clinical aspects of the malady are commonly ignored except for some desultory remarks on the frequency of bad dreams in certain affec- tions, particularly mitral disease, of which condition in- deed they are sometimes alleged to be a diagnostic indication. 1 On the rare and embarrassing occasions on which a physician's aid is sought the consolation offered usually takes the form of irrelevant advice on matters of general hygiene, coupled perhaps with the administra- tion of such potent remedies as silica and cinnibar 2 or with a half -jocular remark concerning the assimilable -capacity of the evening meal. The relief afforded to the sufferer does not surpass that obtainable in ages when the treatment in vogue consisted in scarifying the throat and shaving the head, 3 in bleeding at the ankle, 4 or in the administration of wild carrot, Macedonian parsley 5 and the black seeds of the male peony, 6

The reasons for this state of affairs are manifold, but the central one can be hinted at. It is not often realised that most descriptions of Nightmare given by its victims

1 Artiques, Essai sur la valeur stmeiologique du reve. These de Paris, 1884, No. 99. M. A. Macario, Du sommeil, des reves et du somnambulisme, 1857, etc -

2 Marggraf, Die Schlaflosigkeit, Schlafsucht, das Alpdrucken und nervose Herzklopfen, 1905, S. 12.

8 A. Caelius, Tard. Pass., 1618, i. 3.

4 Rhases, Ad. Mansor. ix. 12. Con tin. i.

5 Paulus Aegineta, Sydenham Transactions, vol. i. p. 388.

6 Andrew Bell, Nocturnal Revels, or a General History of Dreams, 1707, Pt. i. p. 14.

13

14 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

are an inarticulate and feeble echo of the dread reality. This is one result of the general human tendency to shun deep emotions whenever possible, leading to an imper- fect appreciation of the intensity of mental suffering. Another manifestation of this tendency is the still pre- vailing materialistic attitude towards the origin and nature of mental symptoms in general, and of dreams in particular, which are regarded by physicians as being produced by unaccountable alimentary and circulatory vagaries and as having no serious import. It is significant in this connection that earnest consideration of the malady has as a rule been offered only by actual sufferers, such as Bond, 1 Hodgkin, Boerner, Fosgate, Waller, Mac- nish, Boschulte, and others.

Even from a physical standpoint, however, it is questionable if the condition is so negligible. When it is remembered that the occurrence of a cerebral haemor- rhage probably always takes place at a moment when the blood pressure is above the average for that of the in- dividual, it would seem to follow that the number of attacks occurring during sleep must be small. Some years ago I was able to show, 2 on the contrary, that the pro-

1 J. Bond, An Essay on the Incubus, or Nightmare, 1753. In the preface he states that his was the first book written expressly on the subject. Before his date, however, had appeared the following works: W. Schmidt, De Ephialte sive Incubone, Rostock, 1627. Teichmeyer, De Incubo, Jena, 1640. Welsch, De Incubo, Leipsic, 1643. A. Wanckel, De Incubo, Witteberg, 1651. G. F. Aeplinius, Diss. sistens aegrum incubo laborantem, Jena, 1678. J. P. Jorolis, De Incubo, Ultrajeckti, 1680. D. C. Meinicke, De Incubo, Jena, 1683. J. Muller, De Ephialte seu Incubo, Leipsic, 1688. C. G. Wenzlovius, De Incubo, Frankfort, 1691. G. S. S. Herzberg, De Incubo, Traj. ad Rhenum, 1691. C. L. Gockel, De Incubo ex epitome praxeos clinicae, Jena, 1708. J. M. Rosner, De Incubo, Erfodiae, 1708. C. B. Hagedorn, De Incubo, Kiel, 1730. Huisinga, Diss. sistens incubi causas praecipuas, Lugd. Bat., 1734. M. Chardulliet, De Incubo, Argentorati, 1734. D. Textoris, De Incubo, Jena, 1740.

In the next hundred years appeared, apart from the many works cited elsewhere in this book, Kok, De Incubo, Lou vain, 1795. J. F. E. Waechter, De Ephialte, Halle, 1800. J. Unthank, De Incubo, Edinburgh, 1803. L. Dubosquet, Dissertation sur le cauchemar, Paris, 1815. S. Simpson, De Incubo, Bonn, 1825. H. J. Wolter, De Incubo, Berlin, 1827. J. C. F. Adler, De Incubo, Berlin, 1827. F. Dony, De Incubo, Berlin, 1829. C. D. F. Hainlin, De Incubo, Gottingen, 1830. C. G. Kiihn, Pr. inert. Caelii Aureliani de incubo tractatio, Leipsic, 1830. A. Castellano, Dello incubo commentario medico, Venice, 1840. J. Kutsche, De Incubo ejusque medela, Berlin, 1842.

8 Ernest Jones, The Onset of Hemiplegia in Vascular Lesions', Brain, 1905, vol. xxviii. p. 533.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 15

tection against cerebral haemorrhage afforded by sleep is decidedly less than might have been supposed, and one cannot help thinking that the rise of blood pressure that must accompany the violent agonies of many bad dreams, and especially of Nightmares, is probably related to this fact. Vaschide and Marchand 1 have found that the blood pressure rises 25 mm. during an Angst attack in the waking state, and this, though clinically and patho- genetically akin to it, is much less severe than a Night- mare attack. Kornfeld's 2 observations led him to con- clude that the rise of blood pressure constitutes the chief symptom of an Angst attack, and that the extent of this rise is the most accurate measure of the intensity of the attack. [The evidence for the rise of blood pressure during sleep disturbed by Nightmare dreams has been con- sidered at length by Mac William. 3 ] Thus the unanimous opinions of the older authors, from Paulus Aegineta 4 and Avicenna 5 to Boerhaave, 6 Bond, 7 Macnish, 8 Arbuth- not, 9 Forbes Winslow, 10 Hammond 11 and Foville, 12 con- cerning the important part played by Nightmares in the causation of apoplexy may well have had a very con- siderable backing of truth.

On the mental side, the frequency with which attacks of Nightmare precede or accompany the development of hysteria and insanity has been noted by the majority of

1 N. Vaschide and Marchand, 'Contribution k l'e*tude de la psycho-physio- logic des Emotions a propos d'un cas d'ereuthophobie', Revue de Psychiatric, juillet, 1900, t. iii. p. 193, and 'Ufficio che le condizioni mentali hanno sulle modificazioni della respirazione e della circolazione perif erica', Revista speri- mentale di freniatria, 1900, vol. xxvi. p. 512.

2 Kornfeld, Centralblatt f. d. ges. Therapie, 1902, No. n, u. 12.

8 J. A. MacWilliam, 'Blood Pressures in Man under Normal and Pathological Conditions', Physiological Review, 1925, vol. v. p. 303.

• Paulus Aegineta, op. cit. p. 388.

5 Avicenna, cited by Motet in S. Jaccoud's Nouveau Dictionnaire, 1867, t. vi. Art. 'Cauchemar*.

6 H. Boerhaave, Aph., 1709, No. 1020.

7 Bond, op. cit. pp. 64, 65, 69.

8 R. Macnish, The Philosophy of Sleep, 1834, p. 138.

9 J. Arbuthnot, On the Nature and Choice of Aliments, 1731.

10 Forbes Winslow, On Obscure Diseases of the Brain and Disorders of tht Mind, 1860, p. 6n.

11 W. A. Hammond, Sleep and its Derangements, 1869, p. 149.

18 Foville, cited by T, Hodgkin, Brit. Med. Jour. t May 16, 1863, p 502.

l6 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

writers on the subject. 1 Consideration of the actual rela- tion of it to these affections will be postponed until some conclusion has been reached on more preliminary ques- tions. Before entering on a discussion of the pathogenesis of the condition it will be well to consider in some detail its clinical characteristics and to define its essential features.

Striking descriptions of the condition have been given by Psellus, 2 Hammond, 3 Radestock 4 and many others, As the most graphic accounts, impossible to surpass, have been given by self-sufferers I will quote from some of the more interesting of these sources and will then attempt to summarize the most salient of the character- istics there described. Bond, 5 a century and a half ago, tersely described the chief features of the condition as follows: The Nightmare generally seizes people sleeping on their backs, and often begins with frightful dreams, which are soon succeeded by a difficult respiration, a violent oppression on the breast, and a total privation of voluntary motion. In this agony they sigh, groan, utter indistinct sounds, and remain in the jaws of death, till, by the utmost efforts of nature, or some external assist- ance, they escape out of that dreadful torpid state. As soon as they shake off that vast oppression, and are able to move the body, they are affected with a strong Palpi- tation, great Anxiety, Languor, and Uneasiness; which symptoms gradually abate, and are succeeded by the pleasing reflection of having escaped such imminent danger/

1 P. Chaslin, Du rdle du reve dans Involution du delire, 1887, pp. 40, 44, 46, 54. D. Cubasch, Der Alp, 1877, S. 8. J. E. D. Esquirol, Des maladies mentales, 1832, t. ii. ch. xxi. P. Janet, Nevroses et idees fixes, 1898, t. i. ch. ii. et iv. etc. G. Kelle, Du sommeil et ses accidents en general et en particulier chez les epileptiques et chez les hysteriques. Lhomme, 'Rapport m6dico-16gal sur 1'dtat mental du Gendarme S . . .', Annales medico-psychologiques, 1863, 46 se"rie, t. ii. p. 338. M. E. Escande de Messieres, Les rSves chez les hysteriques. These de Bordeaux, 1895. Sante de Sanctis, / sogni, studi psychologici e clinici di un alienista, 1899,

?p. 140-172. N. Vaschide et Meunier, Revue de Psychiatrie, fe*v., 1901, p. 38. . Waller, A Treatise on the Incubus, or Nightmare, 1816, p. 7. 9 M. C. Psellus, Opus medicum. Carmen de re medica, 1741 ed. 8 Hammond, op. cit. pp. 183, 184.

4 P. Radestock, Schlaf und Traum, 1879, S. 126, 127.

5 Bond, op. cit. p. 2.

x PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 17

The picture painted by Macnish 1 is so vivid in its colouring as to deserve reproduction if only for its liter- ary interest. 'Imagination cannot conceive the horrors it frequently gives rise to, or language describe them in adequate terms. They are a thousand times more fright- ful than the visions conjured up by necromancy or diablerie] and far transcend everything in history or romance, from the fable of the writhing and asp-encircled Laocoon to Dante's appalling picture of Ugolino and his famished offspring, or the hidden tortures of the Spanish Inquisition. The whole mind, during the paroxysm, is wrought up to a pitch of unutterable despair; a spell is laid upon the faculties, which freezes them into inaction; and the wretched victim feels as if pent alive in his coffin, or overpowered by resistless and unmitigable pressure.

'The modifications which nightmare assumes are in- finite; but one passion is almost never absent that of utter and incomprehensible dread. Sometimes the sufferer is buried beneath overwhelming rocks, which crush him on all sides, but still leave him with a miserable con- sciousness of his situation. Sometimes he is involved in the coils of a horrid, slimy monster, whose eyes have the phosphorescent glare of the sepulchre, and whose breath is poisonous as the marsh of Lerna. Everything horrible, disgusting or terrific in the physical or moral world, is brought before him in fearful array; he is hissed at by serpents, tortured by demons, stunned by the hollow voices and cold touch of apparitions. A mighty stone is laid upon his breast, and crushes him to the ground in helpless agony: mad bulls and tigers pursue his palsied footsteps: the unearthly shrieks and gibberish of hags, witches, and fiends float around him. In whatever situa- tion he may be placed, he feels superlatively wretched: he is Ixion working for ages at his wheel: he is Sisyphus rolling his eternal stone: he is stretched upon the iron bed of Procrustes: he is prostrated by inevitable destiny beneath the approaching wheels of the Car of Jugger-

1 Macnish, op, cit. pp. 122-125.

l8 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

naut. At one moment he may have the consciousness of a malignant demon being at his side: then to shun the sight of so appalling an object, he will close his eyes, but still the fearful being makes its presence known; for its icy breath is felt diffusing itself over his visage, and he knows that he is face to face with a fiend. Then, if he looks up, he beholds horrid eyes glaring upon him, and an* aspect of hell grinning at him with even more than hellish malice. Or, he may have the idea of a monstrous hag squatted upon his breast mute, motionless and malignant; an incarnation of the evil spirit whose in- tolerable weight crushes the breath out of his body, and whose fixed, deadly, incessant stare petrifies him with horror and makes his very existence insufferable.

'In every instance, there is a sense of oppression and helplessness; and the extent to which these are carried, varies according to the violence of the paroxysm. The individual never feels himself a free agent; on the con- trary he is spellbound by some enchantment, and re- mains an unresisting victim for malice to work its will upon. He can neither breathe, nor walk, nor run, with his wonted facility. If pursued by any imminent danger, he can hardly drag one limb after another; if engaged in combat, his blows are utterly ineffective; if involved in the fangs of any animal, or in the grasp of an enemy, extrication is impossible. He struggles, he pants, he toils, but it is all in vain: his muscles are rebels to the will, and refuse to obey its calls. In no case is there a sense of complete freedom: the benumbing stupor never departs from him; and his whole being is locked up in one mighty spasm. Sometimes he is forcing himself through an aper- ture too small for the reception of his body, and is there arrested and tortured by the pangs of suffocation pro- duced by the pressure to which he is exposed; or he loses his way in a narrow labyrinth, and gets involved in its contracted and inextricable mazes; or he is entombed alive in a sepulchre, beside the mouldering dead. There is in most cases an intense reality in all that he sees, 01 hears, or feels. The aspects of the hideous phantoms

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE IQ

which harass his imagination are bold and defined; the sounds which greet his ear appallingly distinct; and when any dimness or confusion of imagery does prevail, it is of the most fearful kind, leaving nothing but dreary and miserable impressions behind it/

A more accurate and no less graphic account is given by Motet, 1 'Au milieu du sommeil, le dormeur est pris tout a coup d'un profond malaise, il se sent suffoque, il fait de vains efforts pour inspirer largement Tair qui lui manque, et il semble que tout son appareil respiratoire soit frappe d'immobilite. Ce qui pour le reveur est le plus penible, c'est le sentiment de son impuissance. II voudrait hitter contre ce qui I'opprime, il sent qu'il ne peut ni se mouvoir ni crier. Des ennemis menagants 1'enveloppent de tous cotes, des armes s'opposent a sa fuite, il entrevoit un moyen de salut, il s'epuise en vains efforts pour 1'atteindre. D'autres fois il se sent entraine dans une course rapide; il voudrait s'arreter, un gouffre beant s'entrouve sous ses pas, il est precipite, et le som- meil s'interrompt apres une violente secousse, comme celle que produit, dans la veille, une chute, un faux pas. Tout ce que T esprit peut in venter de dangers, tout ce qu'il y a de plus effrayant, se present e dans le cauchemar. La sensation la plus habituelle, est celle d'un corps lourd qui comprime le creux epigastrique. Ce corps peut prendre toute sorte d' aspects; ordinairement c'est un nain difforme qui vient s'asseoir sur la poitrine et re- garde avec des yeux menagants. Chez quelques person- nes la sensation penible est, pour ainsi dire, prevue. Le cauchemar commence par une veritable hallucination; Tetre qui va sauter sur la poitrine (ephialte) est aper$u dans la chambre, on le voit venir, on voudrait pouvoir lui echapper, et deja Timmobilite est absolue; ilbondit sur le lit, on voit ses traits grimagants, il s'avance et quand il a pris sa place accoutum6e, le cauchemar arrive a son summum d'intensite. A ce moment le corps est couvert de sueur, Tanxiet6 est extreme; parfois s'6chap- pent des cris, des g6missements, et enfin un reveil

1 Motet, ibid.

20 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

brusque, accompagne le plus souvent (Tun mouvement violent, termine cette scene de terreur/

From these and other descriptions we may say that the three cardinal features of the malady are (i) agoniz- ing dread; (2) sense of oppression or weight at the chest which alarmingly interferes with respiration; (3) con- viction of helpless paralysis. Other accessory features are commonly present as well, but they will be discussed after the triad just mentioned has been considered in more detail.

The dread that occurs in Nightmare and in other un- pleasant dreams is best denoted by the German word Angst, for there is in English no term that indicates the precise combination of fearful apprehension, of panic- stricken terror, of awful anxiety, dread and anguish that goes to make up the emotion of which we are treating. The striking characteristic of it in pronounced cases of Nightmare is its appalling intensity. That Shakespeare well appreciated this is shown by Clarence's outburst on awaking from such a dream. 1

As I am a Christian faithful man I would not spend another such a night, Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days, So full of dismal terror was the time.

was the cause of

OU 1U11 Ul Ulbllld.1 LC11U1 Wctb UlC L111W

After describing the experience that so much misery he continues: 2

I trembling waked, and for a season after Could not believe but that I was in hell, Such terrible impression made my dream.

Bond 3 is equally emphatic: 1 have often been so much oppressed by this enemy of rest, that I would have given ten thousand worlds like this for some Person that would either pinch, shake, or turn me off my Back; and I have been so much afraid of its intolerable insults, that I have slept in a chair all night, rather than give it an oppor- tunity of attacking me in an horizontal position/

1 King Richard the Third, Act i. Sc. 4, 1. 4. 2 Op. cit. 1. 61. . 3 Bond, op. cit. p. 71.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 21

Macnish, 1 in the more distended style that is his wont, says: There is something peculiarly horrible and paralyzing in the terror of sleep. It lays the energies of the soul prostrate before it, crushes them to the earth as beneath the weight of an enormous vam- pyre, and equalizes for a time the courage of the hero and the child. No firmness of mind can at all times with- stand the influence of these deadly terrors. The person awakes panic-struck from some hideous vision; and even after reason returns and convinces him of the unreal nature of his apprehensions, the panic for some time continues, his heart throbs violently, he is covered with cold perspiration, and hides his head beneath the bed- clothes, afraid to look around him, lest some dreadful object of alarm should start up before his affrighted vision. Courage and philosophy are frequently opposed in vain to these appalling terrors. The latter dreads what he disbelieves; and spectral forms, sepulchral voices, and all the other horrid superstitions of sleep arise to vindi- cate their power over that mind, which, under the fancied protection of reason and science, conceived itself shielded from all such attacks, but which, in the hour of trial, often sinks beneath their influence as completely as the ignorant and unreflecting hind, who never employed a thought as to the real nature of these fantastic and illusive sources of terror. The alarm of a frightful dream is sometimes so overpowering, that persons under the impression thus generated, of being pursued by some imminent danger, have actually leaped out of the win- dow to the great danger and even loss of their lives/

The second cardinal feature in the attack is the sense of stifling oppression on the chest as of an overpowering weight that impedes the respiration often to the ex- treme limit of endurance. Radestock 2 regards this in- hibition of respiration as the central symptom of the attack: 'Steigert sich die Athembeklemmung zur Athem- noth, welche im Wachen als beschwerliches Athemholen empfunden wird, so entsteht das vielgefiirchtete Alp-

1 Macnish, op. cit. p. 68. a Radestock, op. cit. S. 126.

22 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

driicken.' ('If the interference with breathing increases to the point of suffocation, felt in the waking state as a great difficulty in drawing breath, then there comes about the greatly dreaded Nightmare/) Erasmus Dar- win, 1 on the other hand, maintained that there cannot exist any actual difficulty of breathing, since the mere suspension of volition will not produce any, the respira- tion going on as well asleep as awake; he, therefore, doubted the observation. Waller 2 pertinently remarked to this that 'any person that has experienced a paroxysm of Night-mare, will be disposed rather to give up Dr. Darwin's hypothesis than to mistrust his own feelings as to the difficulty of breathing, which is by far the most terrific and painful of any of the symptoms. The dread of suffocation, arising from the inability of inflating the lungs, is so great, that the person, who for the first time in his life is attacked by this " worst phantom of the night ", generally imagines that he has very narrowly escaped death, and that a few seconds more of the com- plaint would inevitably have proved fatal/

The third typical feature of the malady is the utter powerlessness, amounting to a feeling of complete par- alysis, which is the only response of the organism to the agonizing effort that it makes to relieve itself of the choking oppression. Many writers, such as Kelle, 3 Hodg- kin, 4 etc., put this in the forefront of the picture, and Macnish 5 considers it a diagnostic feature in distinguish- ing Nightmare from other forms of unpleasant dreams. He writes: 'In incubus, the individual feels as if his powers of volition were totally paralyzed; and as if he were altogether unable to move a limb in his own behalf, or utter a cry expressive of his agony. When these feelings exist, we may consider the case to be one of nightmare: when they do not, and when, notwithstanding his terror, he seems to himself to possess unrestrained

1 Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia, 1796, vol. i. Sect, xviii. 3, p. 205.

2 Waller, op. cit. p. 13. 8 Kelle, op. cit. p. 23.

4 T. Hodgkin, Brit. Med. Journ., May 16, 1863, p. 501.

5 Macnish, op. cit. p. 73.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 23

muscular motion, to run with ease, breathe freely, and enjoy the full capability of exertion, it must be regarded as a simple dream/ Erasmus Darwin, 1 indeed, held the view that the malady was nothing more than too deep a sleep; 'in which situation of things the power of volition, of command over the muscles, of voluntary motion, is too completely suspended; and that the efforts of the patient to recover this power constitute the disease we call Night-mare'. This paralysis is perhaps most charac- teristic with the voice. To quote Macnish 2 again: 'In general, during an attack, the person has the conscious- ness of an utter inability to express his horror by cries. He feels that his voice is half choked by impending suffocation, and that any exertion of it, farther than a deep sigh or groan, is impossible. Sometimes, however, he conceives that he is bellowing with prodigious energy, and wonders that the household are not alarmed by his noise. But this is an illusion: those outcries which he fancies himself uttering, are merely obscure moans, forced with difficulty and pain from the stifled penetralia of his bosom/

The relation to one another of the members of this triad of symptoms is admirably portrayed by Cubasch 3 : 'zu einer beliebigen Stunde der Nacht fiihlt der Traii- mende plotzlich, oder nach und nach, dass die Respira- tion behindert ist; irgend ein Wesen, meistens ein zottiges Thier, oder eine hassliche menschliche Gestalt stemmt sich dem Schlafer auf die Brust, oder schniirt ihm die Kehle zu, und sucht ihn zu erwiirgen; die Angst wird mit der Athemnoth immer grosser, jede Gegenwehr ist un- moglich, denn wie durch Zauberkraft sind alle Glieder gelahmt; der Ungliickliche sucht zu fliehen umsonst, er ist wie angewurzelt an die Stelle; die Gefahr, die Angst wird immer grosser, da endlich iiberwindet eine letze furchtbare Kraft anstrengung das feindliche Wesen, eine heftige Bewegung erweckt den Traumenden aus seinem Schlafe und Alles ist voriiber, nur der kalte Schweiss

1 Darwin, cited by Waller, op. cit. p. 12. 2 Macnish, op. cit. p. 140. 3 Cubasch, op. cit. S. 8.

24 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

auf dem ganzen Korper, ein laut horbares Herzklopfen erinnert den Erwachten an den verzweifelten Kampf auf Leben und Tod, an die grassliche Todesangst, die er soeben zu iiberstehen hatte. Dieses sind in Kiirze die Erscheinungen des Alps; nie fehlende Symptome sind die Athemnoth und die mil ihr vergeschwisterte Angst, das Gefiihl eines schweren Korpers auf der Brust, das Unvermogen, irgend welche Gegenwehr zu leisten, oder irgend eine Bewegung zu machen/ ('At any particular hour of the night the dreamer feels, either suddenly or gradually, that his respiration is impeded. Some kind of Being, most often a shaggy animal, or else a hideous human form presses on the sleeper's breast, or pinions his throat and tries to strangle him. The terror increases with the suffocation, every effort at defence is impossible, since all his limbs are paralysed as though by magical power. The unhappy person seeks to escape, but in vain, for he is rooted to the spot. The danger, the terror, be- comes ever greater, and then at last a final frightful effort overcomes the adverse Being, a vigorous move- ment wakens the dreamer from his sleep, and all is over only the cold sweat over the whole body and a loudly audible beating of the heart serve to remind the waking person of his desperate life and death struggle, of the horrible and deathly terror he has just had to endure. These are in short the signs of Nightmare: invariable symptoms are the suffocation and the dread accompany- ing this, the sensation of a heavy body on the breast and the impossibility of offering any defence or of making any sort of movement/)

At the culmination of the attack there are commonly present many accessory evidences of the effort with which the patient, in a mortal panic, has escaped; such are, an outbreak of cold sweat, convulsive palpitation of the heart, singing in the ears, sense of pressure about the forehead, a terror - stricken countenance. Many writers, including Bond, 1 Waller, 2 Motet 8 and Fos-

1 Bond. See quotation above. 2 Waller, op. cit. p. 55. Motet, loc. cit.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 25

gate, 1 lay especial stress on the exhaustion and malaise that immediately follow. Throughout the next day it is common for the patient still to suffer from malaise, heavi- ness, depression, dread, lack of confidence, pains in the head and weakness in the lower extremities. In cases of recurrent attacks the dread of the coming night maybe so great that the patient avoids going to bed, and sometimes spends night after night in a chair. Bond 2 relates the case of a gentleman who was bled and purged by way of treatment until he was too weak to endure more. 'He, therefore, was obliged to sleep in a chair all night, to avoid Night-mare. But one night he ventured to bed, and was found half dead in the morning. He continued para- lytic for two years; and after taking the round of Bath and Bristol to no purpose, he died an Idiot/ The signs that indicate to the patient that he is in danger of the attack recurring are well narrated by Waller 3 as 'a weight and great uneasiness about the heart, requiring often a sudden and full inspiration of the lungs. If I sit down to read I find my thoughts involuntarily carried away to distant scenes, and that I am in reality dreaming, from which state I am only aroused by a sense of something like suffocation, the unpleasant sensation before men- tioned about the heart. I am relieved for the moment by a sudden and strong inspiration or by walking it off, but there is present a strong inclination to sleep, which if followed inevitably results in Incubus/

Though the agonizing struggle usually subsides very soon after waking, it is not rare for the attack to con- tinue for some time in spite of clear consciousness. In the second quotation from Macnish given above there is a graphic description of this, and it may further be illus- trated by the following sketch drawn by Waller 4 : The uneasiness of the patient in his dream rapidly increases, till it ends in a kind of consciousness that he is in bed, and asleep; but he feels to be oppressed with some

1 B. Fosgate, 'Observations on Nightmare 1 , American Journal of the Medical Sciences, 1834, vol. xv. p. 81. * Bond, op. cit. p. 65.

8 Waller, op. cit. pp. 56, 57. * Waller, op. cit. pp. 22, 23.

26 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

weight which confines him upon his back, and prevents his breathing, which is now become extremely laborious, so that the lungs cannot be fully inflated by any effort he can make. The sensation is now the most painful that can be conceived; the person becomes every instant more awake and conscious of his situation: he makes violent efforts to move his limbs, especially his arms, with a view of throwing off the incumbent weight, but not a muscle will obey the impulse of the will: he groans aloud, if he has strength to do it, while every effort he makes seems to exhaust the little remaining vigour. The difficulty of breathing goes on increasing, so that every breath he draws, seems to be almost the last that he is likely to draw; the heart generally moves with increased velocity, sometimes is affected with palpitation; the countenance appears ghastly, and the eyes are half open. The patient, if left to himself, lies in this state generally about a minute or two, when he recovers all at once the power of volition/

We have now to consider a few points concerning the circumstances under which the attack takes place. Some writers, such as Cubasch, 1 Waller, 2 etc., emphatically maintain that it can arise only during sleep, and indeed only during exceptionally deep sleep. We saw above that Darwin made this the basis of his explanation of the condition. There can be no doubt, however, that attacks in every way indistinguishable from the classical Night- mare not only may occur but may run their whole course during the waking state. Rousset's thesis is based mainly on the study of such an attack, which he rightly con- siders 3 to be of the same nature as the ordinary Night- mare. Macnish, in relating a self-observation, 4 says: The more awake we are, the greater is the violence of the paroxysm. I have experienced the affection stealing upon me while in perfect possession of my faculties, and have undergone the greatest tortures, being haunted by

1 Cubasch, op. cit. S. 7, 9. 2 Waller, op. cit. p. 21.

8 Csar Rousset, Contribution A Vltude du cauchemar, 1876, p. 24. 4 Macnish, op. cit. p. 132.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 27

specters, hags, and every sort of phantom having, at the same time, a full consciousness that I was labouring under incubus, and that all the terrifying objects around me were the creation of my own brain/ In another place 1 he devotes a chapter to this condition, which he desig- nates 'Daymare'; Still, 2 using a kindred term, has given an excellent description of a similar condition in children. It is however probable, as was long ago indicated by Fosgate, 3 that it is chiefly or perhaps exclusively recur- rent attacks, of the nature of a relapse, that occur during the waking state, and that a person who for some time has been free from the malady will be again attacked only during sleep.

The most likely times for Nightmare to appear are either within the first two or three hours of sleep, or else in the morning in the torpid state that so often super- venes after an over-long or over-deep sleep. Motet 4 and Pfaff 5 state that it generally occurs in the first half of the night; Waller 6 says that it is almost always produced by sleeping too long, frequently by sleeping too soon, and that in his own case indulging in sleep too late in the morning is an almost certain method of bringing on an attack. I have noticed that the attack tends to recur at about the same time in the same subject, and have the impression that it more frequently appears in the early part of the night than in the morning. Macnish 7 states that dreams of all kinds occur more frequently in the morning than in the early part of the night, but this is a kind of fact that is not easily established and more modern observations lend it but little support.

It has always been a generally accepted opinion that Nightmare is more likely to attack a person who is sleep- ing on his back, and this view is strongly maintained by,

1 Macnish. op. cit. ch. vi. p. 142 et seq.

2 G. F. Still, 'Day Terrors (Pavor diurnus) in Children', Lancet, Feb. 3, 1900, p. 292.

8 Fosgate, loc. cit.

4 Motet, loc. cit.

6 E. R. Pfaff, Das Traumleben und seine Deutung, 1873, S. 37.

6 Waller, op. cit. p. no,

7 Macnish, op. cit. p. 47.

28 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

among others, Burton, 1 Lower,* Bond, 8 Macnish 4 and Rousset. 8 To avoid the supine posture in sleep has com- monly been a therapeutic recommendation, and we shall presently see that the observation has been made to play an important part in several hypotheses concerning the malady. On the other hand Fosgate 6 and Hammond 7 find the posture assumed in sleep to be of little import- ance in relation to the onset of Nightmare, and Splitt- gerber 8 modified the usual view by saying the attack generally occurs in persons lying either on the back or on the left side. Waller 9 has pointed out that, on account of the feeling in the chest as of some weight pressing him down, the sufferer is often deceived about his original position, especially as during his struggle he tends in any case to assume the supine posture. Boerner 10 and Cubasch 11 consider even that the prone posture is com- moner in attacks than is the supine. In my experience the supine posture is decidedly the more frequent of the two, as is generally believed. I have never known of an instance of true Nightmare occurring when the patient was in a lateral position, though presumably in very ex- ceptional cases this may be so, for Macnish 12 has given clear accounts of attacks that he has suffered in every position, even when sitting in a chair.

We now come to the vexed problem of the patho- genesis of the malady, and the temptation is great to follow the example of Cubasch, 13 who avoids discussion of previous opinions by saying: 'Ich iibergehe die ver- schiedenen Erklarungen, die von medicinischer Seite aus versucht wurden, die sich aber alle nicht beweisen lassen, oft sogar geradezu unmoglich sind/ ('I pass by the

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), 1826 ed., pp, 134, 434.

R. Lower, Tractatus de Corde, 1669, p. 145.

Bond, op. cit. pp. 71, 74, etc.

Macnish, op. cit. pp. 139, 272. 6 Rousset, op. cit. p. 41.

Fosgate, loc. cit. 7 Hammond, op. cit. p. 186.

F. Splittgerber, Schlaf und Tod, 1866, S. 166.

Waller, op. cit. pp. 73, 74.

10 J. Boerner, Das Alpdrucken, seine Begriindung und Verhutung, 1855, S. 8, 9, 27.

11 Cubasch, op. cit. S. 22.

12 Macnish, op. cit. p. 128. u Cubasch, op. cit. S. 17.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 29

various medical explanations that have been proffered, since they are all unproven and often even absolutely impossible/) The criticism passed on medical views of Nightmare by Waller, 1 that 'in all probability every one of them is wrong, so that it can be of little utility to inquire into them', would be as true to-day as when it was written nearly a century ago if it were not for the epoch-making work of one man Professor Freud on the psychogenesis of dreams and the relation of them to the neuroses.

It would be a laborious and certainly unprofitable task to review most of the hypotheses on the subject that at various times have been put forth, and the only reason why some of the chief ones will be enumerated is that in my opinion there is a kernel of truth in all of them, however widely they may at first sight seem to diverge from the view here to be sustained. As a preliminary re- mark one may say that, from the very multiplicity and protean nature of the 'causes' to which the malady has been attributed ranging from an elongated uvula 2 to the ingestion of West Indian alligator pears, 3 which is said to be an infallible recipe for the production of a Nightmare the prediction might be ventured that writers have in general mistaken for the true cause of the malady factors that play a part, of varying import- ance, in the evocation of a given attack. In other words there is an a priori probability that there is an under- lying abnormal condition, which may be regarded as the predisposition to the affection, and that there is a large number of superficial factors which may be concerned in eliciting the manifestations that we call attacks of Night- mare. It has previously been held that this predisposi- tion is of relatively slight importance in comparison with what may be termed the exciting causes just as we commonly regard it to be with such diseases as scarlet fever, where our attention is focussed on the external

1 Waller, op. cit. p. 69.

8 J. H. Rauch, Case of Nightmare caused by elongation of the uvula', American Journal of the Medical Sciences, 1852, N.S., vol. xxiii. p. 435. 8 Waller, op. cit. p. 105.

30 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

factor so that for instance Waller 1 could state that the malady will attack any person whatever, provided he gets indigestion. On the contrary, the view here main- tained is that the predisposition is of cardinal import- ance, and that when this is developed to a pronounced extent an attack of Nightmare can be elicited by the most insignificant external factor or may occur even in the absence of any external factor whatever. Attention there- fore will here be concentrated on the nature and patho- geny of the predisposition, though something will also be said on the subject of the connection between this predisposition and the external exciting factors to which previous writers have attributed so much significance. Of the eight principal systems of the body four have almost always been selected as being the ones incrimin- ated in the production of Nightmare: the alimentary, the respiratory, the circulatory and the nervous. Many of the hypotheses emitted are now of only historical in- terest and need be no more than mentioned; such are for instance Lower's 2 view that the condition is due to a collection of lymph in the fourth ventricle of the brain, Willis' 3 that incongruous matter from the blood mixes with the nervous fluid in the cerebellum, Fosgate's 4 that it is an affection of the anterior column of the spinal marrow and the nerves arising therefrom, Bailey's 5 that it is a distemper caused by undigested humours stopping the passage of the animal spirits, so that the body cannot move, Hohnbaum's 6 that it is produced by poisonous gases or miasmata, Splittgerber's 7 that it occurs at cer- tain phases of the moon, and Baillarger's 8 that it is due to primary congestion of the brain. Boschulte's 9 curious

1 Waller, op. cit. p. 64. 2 Lower, loc. cit.

8 T, Willis, De anima brutorum, 1672, Cap. 6. p. 127.

4 Fosgate, op. cit. p. 83.

5 N. Bailey, English Dictionary, 1789. Art. 'Nightmare'.

6 Hohnbaum, Psychische Gesundheit und Irresein in ihren Vbergdngen, 1845, S. 38, 41. 7 Splittgerber, loc. cit.

8 J. Baillarger, 'De 1'influence de Tdtat intermdiare a la veille et au sommeil sur la production et la marche des hallucinations', M6m. de I'Acad. roy. de Md. t 1846, t. xii. p. 476.

9 Boschulte, 'Erne Mittheilung liber Alpdriicken', R. Virchow's Arch. f. pathohgische Anatomie und Physiologie, 1881, Bd. Ixxxv. S. 371.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 3!

hypothesis, although of comparatively recent date, must also be classed in the same group. He writes: ( Wir sehen also durch Stockung in den peripherischen Gefassen einen Druck auf die peripherischen Theile der Empfin- dungsnerven veranlasst, dadurch aber, vermoge des me- chanisch-chemisch-physikalischen Prozesses, die Emp- fmdungen zwar parasthetisch erregt, aber in einem Theile des Centralnervensystems oder des Reflex-ap- parats die gebundene motorische Kraft nicht wirksam genug afficirt, wahrend darauf der Reiz des Schellentons, in seiner proportionalen Starke wirkend auf die speci- fische Energie des Gehornerven, jene bis zum volligen Erwachen entfesselt/ ('We thus see how stagnation in the peripheral vessels sets up a pressure on the peri- pheral segments of the sensory nerves of such a kind that, although sensations are, by means of the mechani- cal, chemical and physical process, paraesthetically aroused, the motor power bound in some part of the central nervous system or the reflex apparatus does not adequately function; whereupon the stimulation of vi- bratory tones, working on the specific energy of the auditory nerves in proportion to its strength, thunder- ously arouses them to the point of awakening/) The only modern writer who makes the nervous system re- sponsible for the primary change is Rousset. 1 He attri- butes the malady to an active congestion of the brain, brought about by fearful or excitable ideas of the pre- ceding evening.

The earliest, and still the most popular, medical hypo- thesis of the origin of Nightmare was that it arose from gastric disturbances. This view was originally brought forward by Galen, 2 was elaborated by Paulus Aegineta 3 and is given as the orthodox medical one in the latest editions of Chambers's Encyclopedia^ and of the Im- perial Dictionary , 6 where full accounts of it may be

Rousset, op. cit. pp. 36, 37.

Galen, Comment, ad aph. Hipp., Ed. Kiihn, xvii. 2, S. 628 u. 747.

Paulus Aegineta, loc. cit.

Chambers's Encyclopedia, 1902, vol. iv. p. 89.

Imperial Dictionary of the English Language, 1883, vol. iii. p. 260.

32 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

found. Practically all writers accept it, but so far as I am aware the only one who does so quite empirically is Binz, 1 all others adding some hypothesis concerning the mode of operation of the gastric disorder. As we shall presently see, there is a certain amount of truth in the empirical observation, but the commonly accepted hypotheses have little relation to what probably is the actual ex- planation of it. Two explanations have been offered, (i) that an over-full stomach presses on the diaphragm and thus mechanically impedes the circulation through the heart and lungs, and (2) that the presence of undigested food in the stomach acts as a peripheral source of irrita- tion to the nervous system. That the former of these views, which has been maintained by Paulus Aegineta, 2 Bond, 8 Burton, 4 Floyer, 6 Macnish, 6 Hodgkin, 7 Scholz, 8 Hammond, 9 Herbert Spencer, 10 Motet 11 and many others, is not the inclusive explanation it is often supposed to be was very convincingly demonstrated by Waller's 12 self- observations. He says: 'I religiously abstained, for many years, from eating anything after dinner, and took din- ner also at as early an hour as two o'clock. It was during this period that I suffered most from the disease/ No one can accuse Waller, therefore, of not having put the over-full stomach hypothesis to adequate experimental proof, and he is unequivocal about the results of his investigation. Both Macnish and Hodgkin strongly maintain the improbability of a full stomach interfering with the action of the heart to such an extent as seriously to embarrass the circulation, though they hold that it acts by mechanically impeding the respiration; accord- ing to Macnish the stomach causes pressure on the

1 C. Binz, Vber den Traum, 1878, S. 28. 2 Paulus Aegineta, loc. cit.

Bond. op. cit. p. 51.

Burton, op. cit. vol. i. Pt. 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 5, p. 434.

Sir James Floyer, quoted by Latham, A Dictionary of the English Language, 1882, vol. i. p. 1240.

Macnish, op. cit. p. 134. 7 Hodgkin, loc. cit.

F. Scholz, Schlafund Traum, 1887, S. 30. Hammond, op. cit. pp. 185, 187.

10 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, 1885, vol. i. p. 133.

11 Motet, loc. cit.

18 Waller, op. cit. pp. n, 70, 75.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 33

diaphragm and torpor of the intercostal muscles, with consequent hindering of the pulmonary circulation.

The second explanation, which has been maintained by Paulus Aegineta, 1 Waller, 2 Barclay, 3 Splittgerber, 4 Radestock, 6 Chambers 6 and Maudsley, 7 is to the effect that indigestible or undigested food in the stomach acts by producing irritating afferent impulses, which on reaching the brain are transformed into feelings of terror. Strahl 8 describes the afferent impulses as being not of a nervous nature but as consisting of stomach gases which are carried to the brain and disturb its repose. The pre- cise kind of indigestible food that is most efficacious in this connection is often described, for instance by Wal- ler, 9 with a fulness of detail that betokens a confidence of belief only too incommensurate with the value of the evidence on which it is founded. It is plain that this explanation is even harder to sustain than the last, for at the best it is obvious that there are gaps of consider- able extent in the description of the mode of action of the morbid process.

Distension of the stomach is not the only way in which the circulation has been supposed to get embarrassed. Striimpell, 10 Radestock 11 and others have attributed to a similar mechanism the frequency of Nightmares in cases of heart disease. Albers 12 holds that 'determination of the blood to the chest', from whatever source, is the essential cause of Nightmare. A constrained posture has frequently been invoked as the active agent in bringing about this state of embarrassment, for instance by Hammond, 13 Radestock 14 and Scholz 15 ; Radestock holds that the

Paulus Aegineta, loc. cit. 8 Waller, op. cit. pp. 65, 75, 96, 98.

J.Barclay, Universal English Dictionary. Re vised by Wood ward, 1851^.564.

Splittgerber, loc. cit.

Radestock, op. cit. S. 129. * Chambers 's Encyclopedia, loc. cit.

H. Maudsley, The Pathology of Mind, 1879, p. 32.

Strahl, Der Alp, sein Wesen und seine Heilung, 1833.

Waller, op. cit. pp. 105, 106, 109.

10 L. H, Striimpell, Die Natur und Entstehung der Trdume, 1874, S. 116.

11 Radestock, op. cit. S. 130.

ia Albers, quoted by Ernst von Feuchtersleben, 'The Principles of Medical Psychology', Sydenham Transactions, 1847, p. 198. 18 Hammond, op. cit. p. 186. 14 Radestock, op. cit. S. 118, 125. l5 Scholz, loc. cit.

C

34 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE n.

abnormal posture causes embarrassment of the heart directly, Hammond and Scholz that it does so only by impeding the circulation. Kant 1 formulated the remark- able opinion that Nightmare was a beneficent process the function of which was to wake the individual and so warn him of the danger to which he was exposed from the effect of the constrained posture of his circulation. As we shall presently learn, Freud also sees a teleo- logical function, though of a vastly different kind, in the waking from Nightmare.

The supine posture even, normal and unconstrained, has been incriminated by some writers as the efficient agent in the production of Nightmare. This view was greatly elaborated by Bond, 2 who founded on the basis of it a most complicated hypothesis concerning the mechanism of the circulation, and ascribed all sorts of harmful results to the dangerous practice of lying on the back. He asks, 3 as Kant did, 'Are not these monstrous dreams intended as a stimulus to rouse the sentient principle in us, that we might alter the position of the body, and by that means avoid the approaching danger?' Splittgerber 4 and Rousset 5 also consider the supine position is in itself harmful, though the latter ascribes to it only a predisposing role in that it sets up a passive congestion of the brain which allows active congestion to supervene and originate the attack. Waller, 6 on the other hand, held that the importance of posture as a cause of embarrassment of respiration or of the circula- tion had been greatly overestimated, on the ground that he personally had repeatedly suffered from Nightmare in every position, even when sleeping with his head leaning forwards on a table.

Of late years there has been a reaction against the views that placed in the foreground the circulatory troubles, and that culminated in Maury's 7 work, where the varying state of the cerebral circulation was made to

1 I. Kant, Anthropologie, 1798, Sec. 34, S. 105. * Bond, op. cit. ch. ii.

3 Bond, op. cit. p. 23. 4 Splittgerber, loc. cit.

5 Rousset, op. cit. pp. 38, 39. Waller, op. cit. p. 69.

7 L. F. A. Maury, Le sommeil et les r&ves, 1865.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 35

account for most of the phenomena of sleep and dreams. As the result mainly of the work of Boerner, 1 attention has been more and more concentrated on the respiratory embarrassment as a chief factor in the production of Nightmare. Although the respiratory symptoms had long been noticed they had generally been thought, in the way expounded for instance by Rousset, 2 to be second- ary to the circulatory disturbance. Gradually, however, it was recognized that this might be produced by a primary respiratory trouble, as mentioned by Rade- stock 3 in the case of asthma, and Cubasch 4 indeed holds that with Nightmare this is invariably so. Binz, 5 follow- ing Boerner, has developed what he calls a toxic theory of Nightmare, which he attributes to the poisoning of the brain by carbon dioxide. Prout 6 also takes this position, and explains the frequency with which Night- mare occurs at midnight by the fact, he declares to have established, that the percentage of carbon dioxide in the blood is greatest at that time.

According to these observers, then, gastric disturb- ances would play only a very subsidiary role, and the views of Scholz, 7 that Nightmare always arises from a disorder of either the respiratory or circulatory systems, or of Motet, 8 who gives a long list of 'causes' which, however, he says all act by impeding the circulation and giving a supply of bad blood to the brain, fairly repre- sent a large number of writers on the subject.

In this brief review of the different hypotheses we thus see that they fall fairly distinctly into two groups. On the one hand sources of peripheral irritation, which consist almost exclusively of various indigestible foods, are made to play the chief part in the production of the malady; on the other various mechanical sources of embarrassment to the circulation and respiration, prin- cipally a distended stomach and a constrained posture,

1 Boerner, op. cit. 2 Rousset, op. cit. p. 37.

8 Radestock, op. cit. S. 130. 4 Cubasch, op. cit. S. 17, 18.

6 Binz, op. cit. S. 27, 28.

6 Prout, cited by Radestock, op. cit. S. 129.

7 Scholz, op. cit. S. 27. 8 Motet, loc. cit.

36 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

are asserted to be the efficient agents and to act by bringing about a supply to the brain of non-aerated blood.

So far as I am aware, the first writer to point out the insufficiencies of these physical factors was Moreau 1 of Tours. He laid such stress on the psychological side of the problem as to call forth from Rousset 2 the shocked protest: 'II admet bien une excitation comme point de depart des troubles psychiques, mais avec tant de re- serve, qu'on se demande si, reellement, il fait intervenir le systeme circulatoire dans la production des desordres c6rlbraux/ The heresy of Moreau was, however, soon surpassed by that of Splittgerber, 3 who not only ex- pressed dissatisfaction with the adequacy of the physical explanations but went on to trace the origin of the mental distress in Nightmare to hidden tendencies in the mind and the agonies of an evil conscience, thus lightly foreshadowing the modern psychological view of the malady. Before discussing these matters he says in re- ference to the physical explanations: 'Es fiihren uns aber gerade diese letzten Bemerkungen von selbst darauf, dass wir nun auch noch den eigentlichen und tiefsten Grund aller Verwirrung des Seelenlebens im Traum auf- decken; denn alle turbirende Einwirkung auf die in sich selbst zuriickgezogene Seele von aussen her, sei es dass sie von der weiteren Aussenwelt oder von dem sie enger umschliessenden korperlichen Organismus herriihrt, reicht doch nicht hin, um die Turba des Traumlebens iiberhaupt nach ihrer ganzen Tiefe und Ausdehnung zu erklaren. Oder woher kommt es denn, dass in den phan- tastischen Gebilden des Traums gerade so wie in unserm wirklichen Leben mehr Angstlichkeit als Heiterkeit des Gemiiths, mehr Unfriede als Friede des Gewissens, mehr Unreinheit als Keuschheit des Herzens, mehr Sorge als kindliches Gottvertrauen heimisch sind?' ('These last re- marks, however, lead us to discover the real and deepest

1 J. J. Moreau, 'De I'identit6 de l'6tat de rve et de la folie', Annales mdico-psychologique$, 1855, p. 361.

8 Rousset, op. cit. p. 13. 8 Splittgerber, op. cit. S. 170.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 37

cause of all disturbance of mental life that takes place in dreams; for none of the external interferences acting on the mind withdrawn into itself, whether they pro- ceed from the distant outer world or from the bodily organism that encloses it more nearly, is adequate to explain the turmoil of dream life in its whole depth and extent. Or else whence comes it that in the phantastic imagery of our dreams, just as in our waking life, anxiety is more at home than joyousness of spirit, un- easiness than peace of mind, impurity than chastity of heart, care than childlike trust in God?')

This penetrating query of Splittgerber's well reveals the wide gap between the agents operative according to the physical explanations and the predominating features actually observed in the attack. In reality, to regard the discovery of any conceivable modification of the quantity or quality of the cerebral circulation as a satisfactory and final explanation of such a phenomenon as a sudden and mortal dread of some assaulting monster displays such a divergence from the principles of psycho-physi- ology as to leave no common ground on which the sub- ject can be discussed.

We need not further consider, however, a priori prob- abilities, for on the purely observational side we find that what at once strikes anyone who begins to study the malady uninfluenced by previous views is the singu- lar lack of .correlation between the alleged causes and the actual attacks. In other words, the most damaging criti- cism of all the hypotheses mentioned above is the simple observation of the frequency with which on the one hand the alleged factors occur without being followed by Nightmare, and with which on the other hand given attacks of Nightmare occur without having been pre- ceded by any of the alleged factors. Let us take any one of them as an example, for instance gastric disorders. As a plain fact it may be observed that only a minority of individuals who suffer with Nightmare also suffer from gastric troubles, while on the other hand the percentage of patients with gastric ulcer, carcinoma ventriculi, or any

38 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

other form of gastric disorder except possibly the so- called nervous dyspepsia that is found in patients suffer- ing from Angst neurosis who are subject to Nightmare is correspondingly small. Take again the question of pos- ture; is there the slightest reason to believe either that the sufferers from Nightmare are peculiarly apt to sleep in constrained attitudes, or that their cerebral circula- tion is specially liable to be disorganized by the adoption of a supine posture? As to the over-full stomach hypo- thesis, how many patients who dread the Nightmare, or for the matter of that, how many other people, so dis- tend their stomachs just before retiring to rest as to set up an embarrassment of the heart and lungs enough to cause acute poisoning with the carbon dioxide of non- aerated blood? On the other hand, healthy individuals who are in reality thus poisoned or who are suffocated in any kind of way, from immersion under water, from the choke-damp of colliery explosions or from the leak of a gas stove, may pass through various distressing ex- periences and may suffer from many mental symptoms, but they hardly ever undergo an attack at all resembling that of Nightmare.

Any sceptical inquiry, therefore, immediately reveals two facts. First, that all the alleged causes of Nightmare often occur, both alone and in combination, in persons who never show any symptom of Nightmare; a patient whose stomach is half destroyed with cancer may com- mit all sorts of dietary indiscretions, including even in- dulgence in cucumber the article of food that is most looked askance at in relation to Nightmare he may even sleep on his back, and still will defy medical ortho- doxy in not suffering from any trace of Nightmare. Secondly, that a habitual sufferer from Nightmare may be scrupulously rigorous in regard to both the quality and quantity of all that he eats, may in fact develop a maladie de scrupule in this direction, that he may martyr himself with elaborate precautions to avoid these and other 'causes' of the malady, and by means of a con- trivance of spikes ensure against ever lying let alone

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 39

sleeping on his back, but despite all his endeavours he will have to endure as many and as severe attacks as before.

Thus, apart from any theoretical considerations, purely empiric observation compels the conclusion that any part played by the factors we have mentioned above must be an exceedingly subordinate one, and that what we have called the predisposition of the individual must be a factor of overwhelming importance. My own ex- perience has convinced me that in individuals healthy in a certain respect presently to be defined it is impos- sible by any physical or mental agent to evoke any state resembling that of Nightmare, while in other individuals unhealthy in this respect nothing will prevent the re- currence from time to time of Nightmare attacks, and further that these can be elicited in them by the most insignificant of morbid incidents.

This is the reason why all attempts to base on experi- mental evidence the physical hypotheses concerning Nightmare have had to be carried out on persons who habitually suffered from the malady; such are, for ex- ample, the oft-quoted experiments of Boerner, 1 who succeeded in evoking Nightmares by covering the nasal passages and otherwise obstructing the breathing of sleeping individuals, and of Radcliffe, 2 Hoffmann, 3 Macnish 4 and Waller, 5 all of whom employed various ill-digestible articles of diet. Such methods notoriously fail when applied to individuals who are not already subject to Nightmare.

It is therefore evident that some quite different stand- point is needed from which the problem, and especially the question of predisposition, can be attacked anew. This, it seems to me, is best obtained by considering the phenomena themselves in a more direct and less theo- rizing way than before.

1 Boerner, op. cit.

a A. Radciiffe, cited by H. Spitta, Die Schlaf- und Traumzustdnde der menschlichen Seele> 1882, S. 237.

8 E. Th. Hoffmann, cited by Spitta, op. cit. S. 238.

4 Macnish, op. cit. p. 133. 5 Waller, op. cit. pp. 105, 106, 109.

40 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

Looked at quite simply, the prominent manifestations of Nightmare are seen to be an overmastering dread and terror of some external oppression against which all the energies of the mind appear vainly to be fighting. They are thus pre-eminently mental manifestations, the cen- tral one being a morbidly acute feeling of Angst. We have therefore to enquire into the nature and origin of this emotion in general.

It may at once be said that Angst, when developed to anything approaching the morbid extent present in Nightmare, is altogether a pathological phenomenon, and in fact forms the cardinal feature of the well-defined malady known as Angst neurosis. It is interesting to note in this connection that many years ago Sauvages 1 and Sagar 2 pointed out the kinship of Nightmare and what was then called panophobia (an important clinical type of Angst neurosis). Long prior even to this, Burton, 8 in his discursion of Symptomes of Maids, Nuns, and Widows' Melancholy had given an excellent description of Angst neurosis and had remarked 'from hence proceed . . . terrible dreams in the night'. He further pointed out that the symptoms were cured by marriage, an observa- tion which in a modified sense contains a considerable nucleus of truth.

Many hypotheses have at different times been framed concerning the nature of Angst; thus Arndt 4 attributed it to an abnormal functioning of the heart, Wille 5 to irritation of the brain centres, Roller 6 to irritation of the medulla oblongata, Krafft-Ebing 7 to cramp of the car- diac arteries, and Meynert 8 to impoverishment of the cortex induced by the vascular contraction following on stimulation of the cortical vasomotor centres. The sub-

1 F. Boissier de Sauvages de la Croix, Synopsis nosologiae methodicae, 1763, vol. iii. p. 337.

J. B. M. Sagar, Sy sterna morborum symptomaticum, 1776, vol. ii. p. 520.

Burton, op. cit. vol. i. Pt. i. Sec. 3, Mem. 2, Subsect. IV. p. 302.

Arndt, Wille, Roller, R. Krafft-Ebing, cited by Th. Puschmann, Handb. der Geschichte der Medizin., Bd. iii., 1905, S. 717.

Ibid. Ibid. i Ibid.

Th. Meynert, Psychiatrie, 'Klinik der Erkrankungen des Vorderhirns', 1884.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 4!

ject, however, remained in total obscurity until Freud 1 published his now classical papers on Angst neurosis, in which he established the nosological independence of the affection and stated his conclusions on its nature and aetiology. In these papers he pointed out how important a part is played in the generation of this malady by various abnormalities in the functioning of the sexual activities of the individual. The association in general between the sexual instinct and the emotions of fear and dread is a very intimate 2 one; it is, however, im- possible here to enter into a discussion of the exact relationships of the two, the more so as it is proposed later to deal fully with the subject in another paper. 3 Suffice it to say that the type of emotion designated as Angst is in general closely connected with sexual emotion, and in particular with pathological 'repression' of it or with unsatisfactory functioning of what may broadly be called the psycho-sexual system of activities. vSince Freud's writings it has gradually become recog- nized how important is this factor in the production of Angst neurosis. Stekel 4 has recently published an im- pressive array of evidence in support of this view, and to anyone with any experience in the psycho-analytic method of psychotherapy the remark is a mere truism. The same conclusion has also been reached along other routes by workers, such as Strohmayer, 5 Warda, 6

1 Sigm. Freud, 't)ber die Berechtigung, von der Neurasthenic einen bestimm- ten Symptomenkomplex als "Angstneurose" abzutrennen', Neurolog. Centralbl., 1895, S. 50. 'Zur Kritik der "Angstneurose" ', Wiener klinische Rundschau, 1895, A translation of both papers is reprinted in Freud's Collected Papers, 1924, vol. i. p. 76.

8 [When this essay was first published (1909) the shocked printer changed this word to 'distant', and, in spite of my correcting it in the proof, saw to it that 'distant* was the word that appeared on publication.]

8 'The Pathology of Morbid Anxiety', Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1911, vol. vi., reprinted in my 'Papers on Psycho- Analysis'.

4 W. Stekel, Nervose Angstzustdnde und ihre Behandlung, 1908.

6 W. Strohmayer, 'Zur Characteristik der Zwangsvorstellungen als "Ab- wehrneurose" ', Centralbl, f. Nervenheilk. u. Psychiatr., 15 Mai, 1903, Bd. xxvi., and 'Uber die urs&chlichen Beziehungen der Sexualitat zu Angst- und Zwangs- zustanden', Journ. f. PsychoL u. Neur. t Dez., 1908, Bd. xii. S. 69.

6 W. Warda, 't)ber Zwangsvorstellungspsychosen', Monatsschr. /. Psychiatr. u. Neur., 1902, Bd. xii. S. i, and 'Zur Pathologic und Therapie der Zwangs- neurose', Monatsschr. /. Psychiatr. w. Neur. t 1907, Bd. xxii. Erg&nzungsheft, S. 149.

42 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE w.

Loewenfeld 1 and many others, who do not perform psycho-analyses.

A word must here be said about the modern psycho- logical theory of dreams, which we also owe entirely to Freud. 2 Detailed analysis of many thousand dreams, per- formed by his free association method, convinced Freud that, without exception, every dream represents the ful- filment in the imagination of some desire on the part of the patient, a desire that has either been 'repressed' in the waking state or else could not for some reason or other come to expression. In most of the dreams of adults, where the dream appears on the surface to con- tain no evidence of any desire, the operative desire is one that is unacceptable to the subject's consciousness and has therefore been 'repressed'. This repressed desire can now be allowed to attain imaginary gratification only when it is not recognizable by the subject, so that it appears in another form by becoming distorted, per- verted and disguised. The mechanisms by means of which this concealment of the original desire takes place have been formulated into precise laws by Freud, and of course cannot here be even enumerated. This exceed- ingly epitomized statement of the theory, however, will perhaps serve to indicate the outstanding fact that in most cases the dream as related by the subject bears superficially no likeness to the mental processes to which it owes its origin. One or two corollaries also may be mentioned. It is a general law that the more intense is the 'repression', in other words the greater is the conflict between the repressed desire and the conscious mind, the more distorted will be the dream that represents the fulfilment of that desire, and the less recognizable and likely will seem to the subject the interpretation of it. Broadly speaking, there is an inverse relationship be- tween the amount of distortion present in the ideas themselves (condensation, symbolism, etc.) and the

1 L. Loewenfeld, Die psychischen Zwangserscheinungen, 1904, S. 470, and Sexualleben und Neryenleiden, 40 Aufl., 1906, S. 258 et seq.

2 Sigm. Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 43

amount of Angst present. Thus a repressed wish for a particular sexual experience may be represented in a dream by imagery which, though associatively connected with them in the unconscious, is very dissimilar in ap- pearance to the ideas of that experience: or, on the other hand, the ideas may appear in the dream, but accom- panied by such a strong emotion of dread that any notion of their representing a wish is completely con- cealed from consciousness. In practice one finds in fear dreams all admixtures of these two mechanisms, and it is instructive to observe how the analysis of either type leads to the same conclusions about the underlying con- tent of the dream.

When the distortion of the wish-fulfilment is insuffi- cient to conceal from consciousness the nature of the repressed desire, in other words when the conflict is so great that no compromise can be arrived at, then the sleep is broken and the subject wakes to his danger. 1 When the desire shows such vehemence as to threaten to overpower the repressing force exercised by conscious- ness, and at the same time is of such a nature as to be in the highest degree unacceptable, then we have present the conditions for the most violent mental conflict im- aginable. Conflict of this fierce intensity never arises except over matters of sexuality, for on the one hand the sexual instinct is the source of our most resistless desires and impulses, and on the other no feelings are repressed with such iron rigour as are certain of those that take their origin in this instinct. The mere dimly realized possibility of becoming against his will overmastered by a form of desire that the whole strength of the rest of his mind is endeavouring to resist is often sufficient to in- duce in a given person a state of panic-stricken terror. These intense conflicts never take place in consciousness, for if the desire is repressed it definitely passes out of consciousness, so that the subject is not aware of either the source or the nature of them.

The subject raised by these reflexions is so extensive

1 Sigm. Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 2e Aufl., 1909, S. 358.

44 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

that it is only possible here to state, in what may appear an over-categorical way, a few conclusions, the evidence in support of which must be considered elsewhere. The considerations brought forward above, cursory as they are, may however serve to introduce the main thesis of this essay, namely that the malady known as Nightmare is always an expression of intense mental conflict centreing about some form of 'repressed' sexual desire. This conclu- sion, however, is probably true of all fear dreams, and we can carry it a step further in the particular Nightmare variety. In this dread reaches the maximum intensity known, in either waking or sleeping state, so that we should not be surprised if the source of it lies in the region of maximum 'repression', i.e. of maximum con- flict. There is no doubt that this concerns the incest trends of the sexual life, so that we may extend the formula just given and say: an attack of the Nightmare is an expression of a mental conflict over an incestuous desire.

The definite proof of this conclusion is best obtained by the psycho-analysis of a number of cases. Those who have employed this method know that every case thus studied can be traced to repressed desire, and that the translation of this desire into consciousness is followed by permanent cessation of the malady. The object of this essay, however, is not to discuss psycho-analysis but to point out that in the conflict theory of Nightmare we have a view that better than any other is able to generalize the known facts of the condition. For this reason I shall confine my attention to the facts and ob- servations collected and recorded by writers who were uninfluenced by any inkling of the psychological theory, and shall attempt to show how harmoniously on this theory the diverging views and observations can be re- conciled.

The view just advanced may at once be illustrated by considering the description of a case recorded by Bond 1 a century and a half ago. 'A young Lady, of a tender, lax habit, about fifteen, before the Menses appeared, was

1 Bond, op. cit. Case I. p. 47.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 45

seiz'd with a fit of this Disease, and groan' d so miserably that she awoke her Father, who was sleeping in the next room. He arose, ran into her chamber, and found her lying on her Back, and the Blood gushing plentifully out of her Mouth and Nose. When he shook her, she recover 'd and told him, that she thought some great heavy Man came to her bedside, and, without farther ceremony, stretched himself upon her. She had been heard moaning in sleep several nights before; but, the next day after she imagined herself oppress' d by that Man, she had a copious eruption of the Menses, w r hich, for that time, remov'd all her complaints/

The explanation of such an occurrence, put very simply, is that what the young lady both desired and dreaded actually came to pass in her imagination. The struggle between the two conflicting emotions was so intense, and her dread of the unacceptable desire so lively, that the resulting distress was correspondingly great. That erotic feeling is in most cases more ardent during the days preceding the catamenial period is of course well known, and may be illustrated by another case taken from the same author. 1 'A robust servant Girl, about eighteen years old, was severely oppress' d with the Nightmare, two or three nights before every eruption of the Menses, and used to groan so loudly as to awake her Fellow-servant, who always shook or turn'd her on her Side; by which means she recovered. She was thus afflicted periodically with it, 'till she took a bed- fellow of a different sex, and bore Children/ At a time when Nightmares were attributed to evil spirits Para- celsus 2 stated that the menstrual flux engendered phan- toms in the air and that therefore convents were semin- aries of Nightmares.

The description of the attack may, however, not be so transpicuous as in these cases, especially when the 'repression 1 is more energetic than it probably was there. The oppressing agent will then seem to be not a member

1 Bond, op. cit. p. 49. a Paracelsus, quoted by J. Delassus, Les incubes et Us succubes, 1897, p, 49.

46 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

of the opposite sex but some being having certain attributes thereof, e.g., strength, energy, determination, force. The individual then feels herself assailed by an embracing bear, a wolf, a monster, or even a vague indefinable 'something' that lies on her breast and pro- duces the oppression described above.

It has long been recognized that even in the most terrifying Nightmares the Angst often has a distinctly traceable voluptuous character. This can of course be more readily observed by subjects capable of accurate introspection. More than a thousand years ago Paulus Aegineta 1 wrote: Tersons suffering an attack experience incapability of motion, a torpid sensation in their sleep, a sense of suffocation and oppression, as if from one pressing them down, with inability to cry out, or they utter inarticulate sounds. Some imagine often that they even hear the person who is going to press them down, that he offers lustfiil violence to them but flies when they attempt to grasp him with their fingers/ Waller 2 notes as a frequent symptom, Triapismus interdum vix tole- rabilis et aliquamdiu post paroxysmi solutionem per- sistens', and curiously attributes it 3 to engorgement of the pudic arteries caused by the palpitation of the heart. Loewenfeld 4 also remarks on seminal emissions as a feature of Angst dreams. Boerner 5 writes: 'Bisweilen ist mit dem Gefiihle der Angst das der Wollust gepaart, namentlich bei den Weibern, welche oft glauben, der Alp habe an ihnen den coitus geiibt (Hexenprocesse). Manner haben durch den auf die Genitalien ausgeiibten Druck analoge Sensationen undmeistens Samenergiisse/ ('Sometimes voluptuous feelings are coupled with those of Angst; especially with women, who often believe that the night-fiend has copulated with them (as in the Witch trials) . Men have analogous sensations from the pressure exerted on the genitals, mostly followed by seminal emission/)

1 Paulus Aegineta, loc. cit. 8 Waller, op. cit. p. 25.

• Waller, op. cit. p. 55.

4 L... Loewenfeld, Sexualleben und Nervenleiden, 46 Aufl., 1906, S. 206. See also 'Uber sexuelle Traume', Sexual-Probleme, Okt., 1908, Jahrg. iv. S. 592. 8 Boerner, op. cit. S. 27.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 47

Cubasch 1 similarly finds that the majority of Nightmares manifest erotic features; after describing the symptoms of an attack he adds: 'Haufig gesellen sich bei Mannern noch unwillkiihrliche Samenverhiste hinzu. Bei Frauen ist der Alp meistens liebenswiirdigerer Natur: er stiirzt sich nicht pldtzlich auf sein Opfer, sondern tritt oft ganz gemachlich in die Stube, und steigt dann ebenso gemach- lich auf das Lager, um sich der Traumerin als Beischlafer zuzugesellen/ ('With men they are often accompanied by losses of semen. With women the Bogey (Alp] is for the most part more gallant: he does not suddenly throw himself on his victim, but often enters the room gently and just as gently climbs on to the couch, so as to become a love partner of the sleeper/) The description given by Delassus 2 is equally unequivocal: 'Une angoisse immense etreint Tetre qui sent 1'approche de Tlncube ou du Succube. La gorge se serre; un commencement de suffoca- tion se produit, en meme temps toutes les muqueuses sont caressees par des titillements voluptueux. II semble qu'un amant extraordinairement expert vous enveloppe, vous penetre, se fond en vous. La jouissance alors est insensee, la depense nerveuse terrible/ Madame Bla- vatsky, 3 in a series of thrilling delineations, gives a vivid account of the lustful violence manifested by the threatening being. 'A young girl, almost a child, was desperately struggling against a powerful middle-aged man, who had surprised her in her own room, and during her sleep. Behind the closed and locked door I saw listen- ing an old woman, whose face, notwithstanding the fiendish expression upon it, seemed familiar to me, and I immediately recognized it: it was the face of the Jewess who had adopted my niece in the dream I had at Kioto. She had received gold to pay for her share in the foul crime, and was now keeping her part of the covenant. . . . But who was the victim? O horror unutterable! Unspeakable horror! it was my own child-niece. ... I fastened upon him, but the man heeded it not, he seemed

1 Cubasch, op. cit. S. 8. f Delassus, op. cit. p. 50.

H. P. Blavatsky, Nightmare Tales, 1892, pp. 47, 48.

48 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE FT.

not even to feel my hand. The coward, seeing himself resisted by the girl, lifted his powerful arm, and the thick fist, coming down like a heavy hammer upon the sunny locks, felled the child to the ground.

'I could hardly shut my eyes without becoming witness of some horrible deed, some scene of misery, death or crime, whether past, present or even future. . . . Scenes of wickedness, of murder, of treachery and of lust fell dismally upon my sight, and I was brought face to face with the vilest results of man's passions, the most terrible outcome of his material earthly cravings/

The erotic character may be so evident that the op- pressing agent, however hateful at first, becomes more or less suddenly transformed into a most attractive be- ing of the opposite sex. This type of Nightmare, which is not very rare, was recognized over sixty years ago by Macario, 1 who gave the following graphic description of it: 'II est une variet6 de cauchemar dans lequel les monstres horribles, une femme vieille et hideuse, s'ap- prochent de vous, s'appuient sur votre poitrine de tout le poids de leur corps. L'infortunit6 eprouve alors des angoisses inexprimables; la sueur ruisselle de tous ses pores, toutes les fibres de son etre fremissent d'horreur, et puis tout a coup, comme par enchantement, ces monstres, cette vieille sorcire, se transforment quelque- fois en une jeune et jolie personne; les organes de la g6n6ration sont alors excites par cet objet imaginaire; ils entrent en action et la crise a lieu.'

Hallucinations of exactly the same nature as those described above are extremely common in many forms of mental disorder, and almost every asylum contains patients who bitterly complain of the attentions forced on them by various nightly visitors. Simon, 2 in speaking of erotic hallucinations, points out the same alternation between hateful and attractive visitations that we have just mentioned in connection with Nightmare. He says:

1 M. A. Macario, 'Des r6ves consid6re*s sous le rapport physiologique et pathologique', Annales mtdico-psychologiques, 1847, p. 38. 8 M. Simon, Le monde des v6ves t 1882, pp. 183, 184.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 49

'Tantot le spectre hallucinatoire est de forme agreable: c'est un mari, un amant, une femme aimee et, dans ces cas, la sensation eprouvee par I'hallucine est voluptueuse. Plus souvent, peut-etre, T hallucination visuelle est re- poussante: il s'agit du demon, de quelque etre difforme, d'une vieille femme a 1' aspect hideux dont les embrasse- ments sont pour Faliene un objet d'horreur; d' images de- goutantes qui poursuivent le malade et qui Fobsedent. Dans ces cas, 1' hallucination genitale consiste en une im- pression douloureuse, a tout le moins, penible ou des- agreable/ Chaslin 1 relates an interesting case in which the one type of hallucination appeared in Angst attacks in the waking state, and the other during dreams. The case well illustrates how much more effective is the 'repression' during the waking state, so that when the inhibitions of consciousness have been to some extent abrogated, as during sleep, the desire may be gratified without any concealment. The patient was a woman of twenty-three. 'Les attaques d'hysterie sont prec6dees d'une hallucination: un homme se precipite sur la malade avec un couteau. Grande frayeur. Reves fr6quents de rhomme au couteau n'amenant jamais d' attaques, mais quelquefois le r6veil en sursaut. Reves voluptueux dans lesquels elle voit un homme imaginaire, mais toujours le meme. Jamais d'autres reves penibles/ It is important in this connection to remember how frequent is a voluptuous trait in the Angst attacks of the waking state; indeed this often passes on to actual emission during the attack, a phenomenon to which attention was first drawn by Loewenfeld 2 in the case of men, and by Janet 3 in the case of women.

It is clear that the great rarity with which Nightmare attacks persons who are sleeping in any other posture than the supine or prone one is readily explicable on the psychological view here maintained, for these are the postures in which the love embrace is normally consum-

1 Chaslin, op. cit. p. 54.

8 L. Loewenfeld, 'Zur Lehre von den neurotischen Angstzust&nden', Munch, med. Wochenschr., 1897, No. 24, 25. 8 P. Janet, Les obsessions et la psychasthtnie, 1903, tome i. p. 222.

D

5O PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT.

mated. Burton's 1 observation, then, concerning those who are 'troubled with incubus, or witch-ridden (as we call it): if they lie on their backs, they suppose an old woman rides and sits so hard upon them, that they are almost stifled for want of breath', needs no detailed elu- cidation. In significant accord with this explanation is the well-known fact that most sleepers experience volup- tuous dreams far more often when in the supine posture than when in any other. 2 Paulus Aegineta 3 laid great stress on this in the treatment of satyriasis and allied conditions.

In exactly the same way may be explained the mode of operation of all the other physical factors besides posture, namely as external stimuli which evoke a body of feeling that is already present and very ready to be evoked. It has generally been supposed that they actu- ally create this feeling, a view well expounded for in- stance by Rousset: 4 'Qu'une sensation isolee telle que celle d'un poids pesant au creux epigastrique, sensation que donne la gene croissante de la respiration, que cette sensation, dis-je, parvienne a ebranler le sensorium ainsi assoupi; aussitot elle fera naitre Tidee d'un objet dont la forme sera en rapport avec Tespoir, la crainte, le mysticisme, le sensualisme, en un mot avec les idees habituelles ou dominantes de Tindividu a Tetat de veille; ce sera un chat, un singe, une vieille femme, une sorciere, un monstre hideux, un revenant ou bien enfin un amant redoute ou desire, qu'il s'appelle le diable ou qu'au con- traire il porte un nom moins terrible/ On the contrary it is here maintained that these sensations will arouse the emotions in question only in persons in whom the emotions are already present and, as it were, lying near the surface. What we have called the predisposition is thus the all-important essential in the production of the

1 Burton, op. cit. vol. i. Pt. I, Sec. 2, Mem. 3, Subsect. 2, p. 134.

2 The prevalence of the supine posture over the prone even among males is to be accounted for by the passive part played by the sleeper, who yields often against his will to a desire that is felt to be of external origin, something forced on him: this attitude is closely akin to the feminine and masochistic components of the sexual instinct.

8 Paulus Aegineta, op. cit. pp. 594, 596. * Rousset, op. cit. p. 50.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 51

attack; the external stimuli are of minimal significance. We thus have the key to the easily verifiable observa- tion that these external 'causes' can bring about an attack only in persons who are subject to the malady, and that on the other hand the most scrupulous avoidance of all these alleged 'causes' will not prevent attacks with those in whom the predisposition is sufficiently pro- nounced. It is probable that most of the causes that have been given by various writers in this connection may play some slight part in the manner we have indi- cated, though I am convinced that the significance of them has in the past been greatly exaggerated. For in- stance, that a heavy repast is apt to be followed by an accession of erotic desire is an observation acted on by every roue\ that it, like alcohol, tends to dull the activity of the conscious inhibitions of the waking state and so release suppressed mental trends is so well known as to make it comprehensible that it may occasionally play some part in the evocation of Nightmare; Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus. A full stomach may also act by arousing the sensation of a heavy weight lying in, and therefore on, the abdomen. The relation of diet in general to erotic dreams is fully dealt with by Spitta. 1 Again, in considering the effect of respiratory obstruction as an inciting cause of Nightmare, one has to remember the important, though commonly ignored, connection be- tween stimulation of the upper air passages and erotic excitation. That these passages constitute an eroto- genic zone of varying intensity was first pointed out by Sir Morell Mackenzie 2 ; the subject has been fully dis- cussed since by Endriss among many other writers. This connection holds good in disorders as well as in health, so that pathological irritation or obstruction is apt to arouse various partial, i.e. perverse combinations of the sexual instinct. Thus the observations made in

1 H. Spitta, Die Schlaf- und Traumzustdnde der menschlichen Seele, 1882, S. 252.

8 Sir Morell Mackenzie, 'Irritation of the Sexual Apparatus as an etiological factor in the Production of Nasal Disease', The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, 1884, p. 4.

52 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE PT*

this connection by the older writers almost always con- tain a certain modicum of truth, although the explana- tions of them offered have been wide of the mark in attributing to physical factors ninety-nine per cent of importance in the production of Nightmare, whereas in reality less than one per cent should be so attributed.

We have last to say something about the clinical sig- nificance of Nightmare. I shall take the definition of Nightmare in its strict sense, as a distressing dream necessarily showing, amongst other features, the three cardinal ones that were described above. A large variety of distressing dreams, equalling in intensity the classical Nightmare attack but not having the sense of direct physical oppression characteristic of this, will thus be excluded.

It is impossible to reach even an approximate estimate of the frequency of the malady. Jewell's 1 finding from questionnaire work that they are the most frequent of all dreams is obviously based on an unduly wide concep- tion of Nightmare. Waller's 2 statement that there are few affections more universal among all classes of society is certainly untrue if the definition just given is adhered to, for true Nightmare is beyond doubt much rarer than the more complex forms of Angst dreams. Waller 3 and Macnish 4 both state that men are more subject to it than women, and of these unmarried women more than the married. In judging from my own experience I would say that the second statement is true; as to the first, I have no decisive evidence, though I would agree with Cubasch 5 when he says that the manifestations of Night- mare are generally more stormy and vehement among men, and the agony correspondingly greater. Waller 6 and Macnish 7 also state that sailors are of all men most sub- ject to Nightmare, the former attributing this to their coarse unwholesome food; there is, however, a clue to

1 J. R. Jewell, The Psychology of Dreams', American Journal of Psychology, 1905, vol. xvi. p. 4.

• Waller, op. cit. p. 14. Waller, op. cit. p. 68.

4 Macnish, op. cit. p. 134. 5 Cubasch, op. cit. S. 8.

6 Waller, op. cit. p. 66. 7 Macnish, loc. cit.

i PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE 53

another explanation in Macnish's remark, made in the days when long voyages were common, that the attacks more often occurred at sea than on shore. Bond 1 quaintly observes that 'Melancholy persons, profound Mathe- maticians, and fond pining Lovers, are most subject to this affection', and Bell, a still earlier writer, 2 says that it affects those who 'are Melancholly, of few and gross Spirits and abounding with Phlegm'.

In subjects who pass as being mentally normal, Night- mares never occur as isolated morbid phenomena; on investigation it will always be found that other mani- festations of Angst neurosis are present, with or without evidences of hysteria. In short, Nightmare may in such a subject be regarded as a symptom of this affection, and should be treated accordingly. This fact was partly realized nearly a century ago by Waller 3 when he wrote that 'Nightmare may be considered only as a symptom of great nervous derangement or hypochondriasis'. I may add that in my experience 'repression' of the feminine or masochistic component of the sexual instinct rather than of the masculine is apt to engender the typical Nightmare, a fact which probably explains why the malady is usually more severe, and possibly even more frequent, in men, with whom this component is more constantly and more intensely repressed than with women.

In subjects who deviate still more from the normal, more alarming evidences of a lack of harmonious control of the psycho-sexual activities may be present, such as satyriasis or nymphomania, as in a case recorded by Ribes. 4 This, however, is decidedly uncommon. Also, as was previously mentioned, the affection is frequently met with in various forms of mental alienation, particu- larly manic-depressive insanity and dementia praecox, and especially during the early stages of the disease.

We may summarize the conclusions reached in the

1 Bond, op. cit. p. 27. a Andrew Bell, op. cit. p. 13.

8 Waller, op. cit. p. 7.

4 F. Ribes, ' Observation d'un cauchemar cause" par la nymphomanie', Mtm. et observ. d'anat., de phys., etc., 1845, t. iii. p. 127.

54 PATHOLOGY OF THE NIGHTMARE *T. i

statement that Nightmare is a form of Angst attack, that it is essentially due to an intense mental conflict centre- ing around a repressed component of the psycho-sexual instinct, essentially concerned with incest, and that it may be evoked by any peripheral stimuli that serve to arouse this body of repressed feeling; the importance, however, of such peripheral stimuli in this connection has in the past been greatly over-estimated as a factor in producing the affection.

PART II

THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE NIGHT- MARE AND CERTAIN MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS

55

INTRODUCTION

THE attempt is made in this book to estimate the part that Nightmare experiences have played in the pro- duction of certain false ideas. These ideas incubus, vampire, werewolf, devil and witchcraft have a great deal in common. For three hundred years, from about 1450 to 1750, they were fused together and reached their acme of importance; they are still accepted by many in their original form, and by far more in their essential elements. The deepest source of them is identical with all, and they have all been responsible for an incalculable amount of human suffering. These sources are still active in human nature even though the expression of them has changed in the last couple of centuries, so that interest in the subject is far from being a purely antiquarian one. My attention has been directed not so much to the historical aspects of the ideas in question as to their deeper psychological significance, but in contrast to some members of the so-called historical school of modern ethnology I have adopted the position that these two studies are not independent of each other. In order to obtain a clearer view of the material I have been several times obliged to leave the main theme itself, though I have avoided doing so more than was necessary. Lange 1 remarks 'im geschichtlichen Zusammenhange der Dinge schlagt ein Tritt tausend Faden, und wir konnen nur einen gleichzeitig verfolgen, Ja, wir konnen selbst dies nicht immer, weil der grobere sichtbare Faden sich in zahllose Fadchen verzweigt, die sich stellenweise unserem Blicke entziehen' . ('In historical connections a turn of the spindle moves a thousand threads, and we can follow only one at a time. Indeed, we cannot always do this, because the coarser visible thread ramifies into numerous filaments which at places escape from sight/)

1 R. Lange, Geschichte de$ Materialismus, 1866, S. 282.

57

CHAPTER I

DREAMS AND BELIEFS

T

""\HE interest men have at all ages taken in dreams and the far-reaching significance that has been attributed to them make it very probable that the phenomena there experienced have greatly influenced the forming of waking thoughts. If this, as I have shown elsewhere, 1 can still happen among educated people, it must have done so on a far more extensive scale in past ages when the general importance attaching to dreams was much greater than to-day.

The vividness of dreams is so intense at times that even educated people may find it hard or actually im- possible to distinguish them from real events. 2 I have, for example, mentioned the case of a physician whose mistaking a dream for a real memory led to disagreeable consequences. 3 In fact, this confusion with reality characterizes all intense emotional experiences, not only in dreams, but also in other rarer expressions of the imagination such as ecstatic trances, visions and so on. Johannes Miiller 4 remarks in this connection: 'Eigentiim- lich diesen krankhaften Zustanden ist es, dass die Objek- tivitat der Erscheinungen zuverlassig anerkannt wird. In dem Glauben eines sichtbaren Umganges mit dem Teufel besteigt der Angeklagte den Scheiterhaufen, ein Opfer seiner eigenen Phantasie. Je nachdem die Vision die Gestalt eines guten oder bosen Geistes annahm, wurde der Damonische als heilig verehrt oder als Zauberer ver- brannt. Was bei dem Unbefangenen das Eigenleben der Sinnlichkeit, das Spiel einer dichtenden Phantasie, was

1 'Some Instances of the Influence of Dreams on Waking Life', Journal of Abnormal Psychology, vol. vi. April 1911, p. n.

2 See J. Ennemoser, Geschichte der Magie, 1844, S. 113. F. Fischer, Geschichte des Somnambulismus, 1839, Bd. i. S. 12. A. Lehmann, Aberglaube und Zauberei, Zweite deutsche Auflage, 1908, S. 493. H. Rau, Die Verirrungenin der Religion> 1904, S. 237. * Op. cit. p. 15.

4 Johannes Muller, Vber die phantastischen Gesichtserscheinungen, 1826, S. 68, 69.

58

PT V II CH. i DREAMS AND BELIEFS 59

alien Menschen im Traume nicht mehr wunderbar erscheint, wird in der Geschichte verflucht und verehrt nach der Natur seiner Objekte. Das Gespenst und die Damonen aller Zeiten, die gottliche Vision des Asketen, die Geistererscheimmg des Magikers, das Traumobjekt und das Phantasiebild des Fiebernden und Irren sind eine und dieselbe Erscheinung. Nur der Gegenstand ist verschieden nach der Richtung einer exzentrischen Phan- tasie, eine gottliche Vision dem religiosen Schwarmer, dem furchtsamen ein furchtbares Phantasma, dem aber- glaiibisch buhlerischen Weib der Teufelsspuk, dem t-raiimenden Egmont die Erscheinung der Freiheit, dem Kiinstler ein himmlisches Idol, nach dem er langst gerungen. Der Zeitgeist leiht diesem plastischen Ein- bilden andere Objekte/ ('What is peculiar to these mor- bid states is that the objectivity of the phenomena is accepted with complete assurance. In the belief of having had visible relations with the Devil the accused mount the scaffold, victims of their own phantasy. According as the vision assumed the guise of a good or an evil spirit the daemonically inspired person was revered as holy or burned as a magician. What to the unsophisticated ap- pears as his own sensuousness, the play of an imagin- ative phantasy, what to everyone in their dreams seems nothing wonderful, is in history condemned and revered according to the nature of the objects. The ghost and the demons of all ages, the divine vision of the ascetic, the conjured-up spirits of the magician, the object of dream and phantasy in the feverish and deluded, are all one and the same phenomenon. Only the object is different in accord with the direction of an eccentric phantasy, a divine vision for the religious enthusiast, a frightful phantasm for the fearful, an apparition of the Devil for the superstitious lascivious woman, the manifestation of freedom for a dreaming Egmont, for the artist a long- sought-after celestial image. The spirit of the age lends this plastic imagery other objects/) We may also quote a passage from Hobbes 1 which is peculiarly apposite to

1 T. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651, ch. xii.

60 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT.H

the theme of the present book: 'From this ignorance of how to distinguish Dreams and other strong fancies from Vision and Sense did arise the greater part of the religion of the Gentiles in times past that worshipped Satyres, Faunes, Nymphs, and the like; and nowadays the opinion that rude people have of Fayries, Ghosts, and Goblins, and of the power of Witches/

This difficulty in distinguishing dreams from the experiences of waking life is naturally greater in less tutored minds, such as those of children and savages. Numerous observers have remarked on the extra- ordinary clearness with which dreams impose themselves on the minds of savages as indubitable reality. Herbert Spencer 1 lays special stress on this point and adduces a mass of material in illustration of it. Im Thurn 2 gives many striking examples of it at the present day: one Indian threatened to leave the traveller because the latter, so he said, had inconsiderately made him work all night dragging his canoe up a series of difficult cataracts ; another nearly killed a comrade on the ground that his master had ordered him to inflict a severe chastisement on him (it turned out that he had dreamt this).

That dreams must have exercised a considerable in- fluence in moulding men's beliefs needs, therefore, no further demonstration, and there is also in several im- portant respects unanimity on the further questions of the extent of this influence and the details of the process itself. The first question will be discussed when we come to the form of dream with which we are here concerned, namely the Nightmare. The second question resolves itself into a study of individual beliefs and fancies. Two of the more general of these will next be mentioned; others will be met with later where they more suitably belong.

The first, and in some respects the most important,

1 'Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology, third edition, 1890, vol. i. ch. x. pp. 132-142.

a Sir Everard F. Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, 1883, pp. 344-346.

CH.I DREAMS AND BELIEFS 6l

example of the significance of dreams concerns beliefs about the soul. Tylor's 1 description of this idea among savage peoples has hardly been bettered. According to it the soul is 'a thin, unsubstantial human image, in its nature a sort of vapour, film, or shadow; the cause of life and thought in the individual it animates; independently possessing the personal consciousness and volition of its corporeal owner, past or present; capable of leaving the body far behind, to flash swiftly from place to place; mostly impalpable and invisible, yet also manifesting physical power, and especially appearing to men waking or asleep, as a phantasm separate from the body of which it bears the likeness; continuing to exist and appear to men after the death of that body; able to enter into, possess, and act in the bodies of other men, of animals, and even of things/ The primitive concep- tions of the soul may be divided, following Wundt, into two: those relating to the 'bound soul', the activating principle of various internal organs and external objects, and the 'free soul' or psyche. The latter itself has two roots, according to which may be distinguished the Hauchseele (Breath-Soul) and the Schattenseele (Shadow- Soul). The idea of the Breath-Soul, mainly taken as its name implies from the phenomenon of breathing and the cessation of this after death, has shown itself the better adapted for the higher religious conceptions, but that of the Shadow-Soul has played the more extensive part in all ages, and it is evidently the one with which we shall be mostly concerned in considering the various spirits and goblins that are associated with the emotion of fear.

Most authorities 2 agree that the idea of the Shadow- Soul owes its origin almost exclusively to the experi-

1 E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, third edition, 1891, vol. i. p. 429.

2 Ed. Clodd, Myths and Dreams, 1891, p. 170. J. Fiske, Myths and Myth- Makers, 1872, pp. 78, 220. J. G. Frazer, The Belief in Immortality, 1913, p. 27. Lehmann, op. cit. S. 494. E. H. Meyer, Germanische Mythologie, 1891, S. 61. E. Mogk, Germanische Mythologie, 1906, S. 32. J. Moses, Pathological Aspects of Religion, 1906, p. 6. Herbert Spencer, op. cit. pp. 135, 136; and Recent Discussions in Science, 1871, p. 36. E. B. Tylor, op. cit. p. 430.

62 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

ences of dream life. Wundt, 1 for instance, writes: 'Das urspriinglichste und haufigste Motiv dieser primaren Vorstellung der Schattenseele ist unzweifelhaft das Traumbild . . . (Sie) hat allem Anscheine nach in Traum und Vision ihre einzige Quelle.' (The deepest and most frequent motive of this primary idea of the shadow-soul is undoubtedly the dream image . . . and so far as we can see its sole source is in dreams and visions/) Per- haps the only well-known writer who dissents from this conclusion is Crawley, 2 and the arguments he uses are so intellectualistic as not to commend themselves to any psychologist; I thus see no reason for not accepting the generally received opinion on this matter. The idea of the 'shadow-soul' has throughout preserved the charac- teristics (visibility, fugitiveness and fantastic change- ability) of its visual components. Into the various pro- blems about which is the most primitive form of belief in the soul, 3 the relations between magic and religion, and so on, it is unnecessary to enter here. What is for us of essential importance is the conclusion that dream ex- periences have furnished significant contributions to the developing conception of the soul, whether of the indi- vidual or of supernatural beings, and especially to its characteristics of existence apart from the body (transpor- tation through space, capacity for transformation, etc.). Dreams of the dead have played an important part in fashioning various religious ideas, their influence being all the greater because they so often bring back the fig- ures of lost loved ones. To begin with they strengthen, as Wundt 4 expounds, the conception founded on dreams in general of the 'other self, of the soul that can live and move apart from the body; they constitute further, as Herbert Spencer 5 has shown in detail, an

1 W. Wundt, Volkerpsychologie, Zweiter Band, Mythus und Religion, Zweiter Teil, 1906, S. 86, 87.

• A. E. Crawley, The Idea of the Soul, 1909, pp. 13-15.

8 See, for instance, Irving King, The Development of Religion, 1910, ch. vi., and R. R. Marett, 'Pre-animistic Religion', Folklore, 1900, vol. xi. p. 198, on the conflict between the old animistic and the younger animatistic hypotheses.

• Wundt, op. cit. S. 90.

5 Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology, pp. 182, 201, etc.

CH. i DREAMS AND BELIEFS 63

important source of the belief in immortality and in the existence of another realm which the soul enters after the death of its owner. Again, they are the chief source of the belief that the dead can once more visit the scenes of their previous life, of the widespread idea of returning souls or revenants, 1 an idea that composes one of the chief traits of the mediaeval superstitions with which we are here concerned. It is seldom a matter of no conse- quence for the spirits of the departed to visit the living in dreams: to savages it is sometimes of good, oftener of evil, omen, and in the latter event the spirits have to be propitiated in various ways. 2

The fact that so many of these revenants are the spirits of deceased parents is of fundamental importance in this connection, as will be evident to anyone familiar with the subject of psycho-analysis. The attitude of awe and fear in respect of dream visitors from the dead has been thought to be one of the main sources of ancestor- worship. The two are certainly related, but it is more likely that they both proceed from a common source than that one is the source of the other. The parallelism is none the less of interest, for, although Herbert Spencer's 3 view that ancestor-worship was the basis of all religions can no longer be maintained in its original form, 4 still the intimate connection between ancestor- worship and religious motivation has been shown by re- cent psycho-analytic research to be a fundamental one.

A second class of belief in the formation of which dreams are supposed to have played a prominent part is that in transformation or interchangeability, i.e. the idea that a human spirit can pass into the body of another person or of an animal and that the reverse process can also happen. This was and is one of the most widely-spread superstitions of the world; among

1 See, for instance, F. S. Krauss, Slavische Volksforschungen, 1908, S. no, in.

8 See, for instance, A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, 1904, p. 434, and H. Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, 1896, vol. i. p. 232.

8 Herbert Spencer, op. cit. p. 281 et seq f

4 See Wundt, op. cit. S. 346, 347.

64 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. 11

uncivilized peoples it still holds full sway, 1 and even in Europe it is to be found not merely in the superior guise of metempsychosis, rebirth and the like, but also in its crude original forms. In the Middle Ages it was accepted by many exponents of Roman Catholic doctrine, and, largely for this reason, played an essential part in the construction of the superstitious beliefs we are about to consider. In folklore 2 and mythology metamorphosis has always been a favourite theme. Even in educated circles we still find interesting traces of it, such as when ani- mals are used as national emblems, in armorial bearings, as masks in carnivals and on the stage, as nicknames, etc. Of especial interest in connection with our theme is the fact that metamorphosis was so extensively and so intimately associated with the worship of animals 3 that we are compelled to infer an inherent relationship be- tween the two ideas. There can be little doubt that the idea of metamorphosis has important sources in dream experiences, for here the actual transformation of the figure of a human being into that of an animal and the occurrence of composite beings, half animal, half human, so often takes place directly before the eyes of the dreamer. 4

When the untutored mind takes for reality dream experiences in which he sees himself carried to distant places, or speaks with someone whom he knows in his waking state to be far away, he must infer that the journey has actually taken place, and in an incredibly short space of time. 6 The similarity between the swift flight of birds and his own dreams of flying, which, as Wundt 6 has shown, must have yielded important con- tributions to the conception of winged beings (angels, etc.), served to evoke the belief in the night flights which

1 E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity, 1909, vol. i. ch. iii. pp. 156-252. 8 Marian Roalfe Cox, An Introduction to Folklore, second edition, 1904, ch. ii. pp. 85-129.

• Herbert Spencer, op. cit. pp. 322-346.

• This was pointed put by Guillaume de Paris in 1230. Cited from J. Hansen,

Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess im Mittelalter, 1900, S. 138.

5 Herbert Spencer, op. cit. p. 136.

• Wundt, op. cit. S. 113.

CH. i DREAMS AND BELIEFS 65

exercised considerable influence on various mediaeval ideas.

The conclusions reached up to the present are as fol- lows: in the first place, dreams have played an important part in the genesis of beliefs in a soul that can live and move apart from the body, in fabulous and supernatural beings, in the continued existence of the soul after death with its power of returning from the grave and visiting the living, especially by night in the connection be- tween this idea and the spirits of departed ancestors (leading to the worship of these), in the possibility of human beings being transformed into other persons or into animals, in the identity of the spirits of animals with those of ancestors, and in night flights through the air. In the second place, the various conceptions just enumerated are closely associated with one another. The explanation of this strange connection between ideas apparently so remote from one another has always been impossible until Freud's discovery of psycho-analysis provided an adequate instrument for the investigation of the deeper processes of the human mind. In the course of this book the significance of this important connection will become clearer.

Earlier investigations into the problem of what part dreams have played in the genesis of various kinds of superstition and myths were confined to consideration of the superficial content of dreams. Freud's epoch- making 1 revelation of the latent' content lying behind the 'manifest' content, i.e. behind the dream as directly perceived, enables us to make important progress in this investigation and throws a clear light on many problems that were previously quite obscure. At the same time as this discovery Freud further pointed out the intimate relation between the structure of myths and of dreams, and his hints have since been interestingly developed by Riklin, 2 Abraham 3 and Rank. 4 These writers have shown

1 Sigm. Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900.

1 F. Riklin, Wunscherfullung und Symbolih im Mdrchen, 1908.

8 Karl Abraham, Traum und My thus, 1909.

4 Otto Rank, Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden, 1909.

E

66 NIGHTMARE AND MEDLEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

that there is an astonishing similarity between dreams and myths in respect of the unconscious mechanisms at work, the relation of both to repressed infantile wish- fulfilments, and even, to a considerable extent, to the nature of the symbolism at work in both. The gist of the matter is contained in the following sentences: 'So ist der Mythus ein erhalten gebliebenes Stuck aus dem infantilen Seelenleben des Volkes und der Traum der Mythus des Individuums'; 1 (The myth is thus a part of the infantile mental life of the people that has survived, and the dream the myth of the individual'); and 'Der Mythus enthalt (in verschleierter Form) die Kindheits- wiinsche des Volkes' 2 (The myth contains (in disguised form) the childhood wishes of the people'). We shall see that this can be shown to be also true of certain super- stitious ideas.

This finding, of the substantial identity of individual dreams and of what may be called folk-dreams, raises, however, in a new way the old problem of how far the phenomena of dreams have actually been operative in providing material for the building up of myths. It makes this problem harder, since one can no longer as writers have often done regard the problem as solved as soon as one has simply noted the similarity between dreams and certain myths or kinds of superstition. Our know- ledge that the unconscious meaning of both may be identical opens the possibility that both may be mani- festations of the same underlying forces: a myth may be a collateral of the dream rather than a lineal descendant. It is a problem very similar to that of the relationship between dreams and psychoneurotic symptoms. 3 We know that both of these arise from very similar mechan- isms, from similar sources, and have similar meanings when interpreted; it is further known that the actual occurrence of some symptoms may date from particular dream experiences. In other words, even though both

1 Karl Abraham, op. cit. S. 71. * Karl Abraham, op. cit. S. 36.

• See my paper, 'The Relationship between Dreams and Psychoneurotic

Symptoms , American Journal of Insanity, 1911, vol. Ixviii. [Reprinted in Papers on Psycho- Analysis.]

CH. i DREAMS AND BELIEFS 67

may have a common cause, the symptom may some- times arise via a dream, and this is the only sense in which a neurotic symptom may properly be held to have arisen from a dream. In what sense, now, can it be said that a given myth or superstitious belief owes its origin, partly or wholly, to dream experiences?

The difficulty in answering this question may be ex- pressed thus. First, a sufficient similarity between the belief in question and typical dream experiences must exist to warrant supposition that the two may be genetically related. Previously this would have been the sole evidence available, but with our increased knowledge we cannot be satisfied with any conclusion drawn from it alone and can regard it only as a suggestive stimulus to further investigation; in fact, the most important problems only begin at this point. Secondly, psycho- analytic comparison of the two phenomena must reveal an essential identity between the latent content, i.e. the unconscious meaning, of both. Even this, however, is not sufficient in itself, since, as was remarked above, both may represent separate manifestations of the same underlying source. Thirdly, the belief in question must contain definite features peculiar to, or at least highly characteristic of, dreams. Only when these three criteria are satisfied can we infer with confidence that dream experiences must have helped to build up the super- stitious belief.

For the features characteristic of dream processes the reader is referred to works on that subject, particularly to Freud's Die Traumdeutung. I will merely recall here their predominantly visual imagery, the extensive use made of condensation and displacement mechanisms, the recurrence of certain 'typical' dreams (inhibition dreams, examination dreams, exposure dreams, etc.), and the predominance of sexual symbolism. Thus, to take one or two examples, if we came across a belief that such and such a supernatural occurrence is followed by a state of mental paralysis, we should be justified in sus- pecting that it had been influenced by dream experiences;

68 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

the same would be true for beliefs in impossible creatures obviously compounded of two or more animals, and so on.

We may now consider from this point of view some dreams that have been generally supposed to influence various superstitious beliefs. Naturally this can be true only of dreams common to a great number, if not the majority, of mankind. Now the more 'typical' a dream is, i.e. the more stereotyped its occurrence with a great number of people, the more surely will its latent content be found to be of a sexual nature, and we must therefore be prepared to find that the same may be true of any superstitious beliefs derived, partly or wholly, from them.

Dreams of people who are dead occur most frequently, and are most heavily charged with emotion when the dead person represents the father or mother. They are concerned with the deepest conflicts of love and hate, and originate ultimately in incest motives repressed from consciousness in childhood. This astonishing state- ment has been extensively confirmed in actual psycho- analytic investigations of the unconscious mind, which are taken as the basis for the present study.

In respect of those dreams in which figures of animals play a prominent part the reader should first be re- minded that for the untutored mind, e.g. children and savages, the gulf we perceive between human beings and animals is much less apparent. As Hartland 1 says: The lines we draw between the lower animals and the vege- table and mineral kingdoms on the one hand and human beings on the other hand are not drawn in the lower culture/ Fiske 2 writes similarly: 'Nothing is more char- acteristic of primitive thinking than the close commun- ity of nature which it assumes between man and brute. The doctrine of metempsychosis, which is found in some shape or other all over the world, implies a fundamental identity between the two. . . . The recent researches of Mr. McLennan and Mr. Herbert Spencer have served to connect this feeling with the primeval worship of

1 E. S. Hartland, of. cit. p. 250. 1 Fiske, op. cit. p. 74.

CH. i DREAMS AND BELIEFS 69

ancestors and with the savage customs of totemism/ Even educated people can still feel this relationship in a varying measure, a fact which is often made use of for literary purposes. 1 How recent our present attitude to- wards animals is may be judged by remembering that until the past few centuries human responsibility was legally ascribed to them. 2 They used to be formally tried, and at times condemned to the gallows as murderers. 3 At Basle in 1474, for instance, a cock was tried on the devilish charge of having laid an egg and, though its lawyer pleaded that there was no record of the Devil ever having made a pact with an animal and that, in any case, the laying of an egg was an involuntary act, his client was condemned to death and solemnly burned at the stake as a sorcerer in disguise. A Court of Law held at Troyes in 1516 solemnly admonished caterpillars that had laid waste the district, and made an order that they were to leave the neighbourhood within a given number of days under pain of banishment and excommunica- tion. 4 It was only in 1846 that the English law of Deo- dand was rescinded, according to which any animal that had injured someone was declared the property of the Crown and sold for the benefit of the poor.

Naturally it is in spheres where the dominant interests are of a kind common to human beings and animals that the distinction between these is less sharply defined than elsewhere; this is the reason why children and primitive peoples are much more impressed by the resemblance be- tween them than are poets and philosophers. Doubtless the feature of animals that most attracts a personal interest of untutored minds is the freedom they display in openly satisfying needs, particularly those of a sexual and excremental order, which with human beings have often to be restrained; in fact, the expression 'animal

1 [One may recall, for instance, the success attending David Garnett's Lady into Fox.]

1 See E. P. Evans, Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, 1906.

8 R. M. Lawrence, The Magic of the Horse-shoe, 1899, pp. 308-311.

4 E. Martinengo-Cesaresco, Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs, 1886, p. 183-

70 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

passions' is generally employed to denote sexual im- pulses. Children often owe their first experience of sexual activities to the sight of animal copulation, and every psycho-analyst knows how important the influence of this can be. Animals therefore lend themselves to the indirect representation of crude and unbridled wishes. Analytical experience has shown that the occurrence of animals in a dream regularly indicates a sexual theme, usually an incest one, a typical example being the maiden' s dream of being pursued or attacked by rough animals. In numerous myths the sexual meaning of the trans- formation of human being into animal is quite clear. There is, for instance, a large class of fairy tales in which the wonderful prince appears first in the guise of a frog, snake, bear, bird or any other animal, to disclose his true nature at the appropriate moment. Riklin 1 has clearly shown how the gradual overcoming of the resistance to sexuality is represented by the releasing from the spell in these stories, i.e. the release from guilt and disgust. In many variants the prince is an animal by day and re- sumes his own personality by night, as was so with the son of Indra, 2 the prototype of the class. In Greek myth- ology this disguise was a favourite aid adopted by the gods during their love adventures. One thinks at once of Zeus' seduction of Europa in the form of a bull, of Leda in that of a swan and of Persephone in that of a snake; this last disguise was also employed by Apollo on his visit to Atys, while at other times he masqueraded as a tortoise. To imitate the gods in this respect became indeed at times a religious rite, as when the women in Mendes 'submitted themselves nude and openly to the embraces of the sacred goat, which represented the in- carnation of the procreative deity/ 3 The 'Alp' (bogey) of the Middle Ages often appeared in the guise of a cat, a pig or other animal, 4 and an episode is described at a

1 Riklin, op. cit. S. 41-46.

2 Sir Richard Burton, Adaptation of'Vikram and the Vampire', 1893, preface,

p. 15-

8 Quoted from Moses, op. cit. p. 26.

• W. Hertz, Der Werwolf, 1862, S. 73.

CH. i DREAMS AND BELIEFS 71

Cologne nunnery where a lecherous dog was assumed to be a lewd demon. 1

I would again call attention here to the connection alluded to earlier between animal dreams and animal worship. There can be no doubt that the explanation of animal worship must lie in the equation between animal and ancestor, and psychologically ancestor means parent. Herbert Spencer 2 was of opinion that primitive man was led to identify animals with his ancestors in the follow- ing three ways: first, the stealthy way in which both enter houses at night when the inmates are asleep; secondly, the presence of animals in the neighbourhood of corpses and graves; and thirdly, the confusion arising through primitive language. We know now that there are more significant associations between the two ideas. As the result of our dream studies we cannot fail to be struck by the observation that the associations from the equated (symbolical) animal and parent diverge into two exactly opposite directions and lead to the most re- vered and most despised ideas of which the human mind is capable, those of God and of genital organ respectively. We are thus faced with the riddle not merely of phallic religions, but probably with that of religion altogether. This train of thought alone and it is one supported by many other convergent trains would suggest that the secret of religion is to be sought ultimately in the rela- tion of the child to its parents. This theme is implicit throughout the present work: we shall be concerned with what might be called a parody of religion incubi in- stead of angels, devil instead of God and witches instead of Goddesses and it is in these negative aspects of re- ligion that the underlying incestuous motives can most plainly be demonstrated. [Shortly after this book was first published there appeared Freud's celebrated Totem and Tabu, in which this theme of the relations between the idea of animals and of gods on the one hand, and between those of the idea of animals and of sexuality on

1 E. Laurent u. P. Nagour, Okkultismus und Liebe, 1903, S. 108. 8 Herbert Spencer, op. cit. pp. 345, 346.

72 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS *T. n

the other are faithfully dealt with. The rich contents of this work are by now too well known to need recapitu- lation here; among them is a welcome confirmation and amplification of the chief ideas presented in this chapter.]

CHAPTER II

THE NIGHTMARE

WE have set ourselves the task of showing that similar connections exist between dreams and superstitious beliefs as other psycho-analysts have shown to exist between dreams and myths, and further, that with the former at least dreams have also exercised a certain genetic influence. Before Freud's time a similar attempt to the present one was once made in respect of myths, and interestingly enough the starting point was the same as that here employed, namely the Nightmare. I refer to Laistner's 1 remarkable book pub- lished in 1889. In it he took the clinical characteristics of the Nightmare and with extraordinary ingenuity traced them through a very large series of myths. There was of course at that time no knowledge of the uncon- scious layers of the mind, so that to-day the chief value of his work is a casuistic one. Partly because of certain philological difficulties Laistner's work was unduly neglected by mythologists, though before Freud's it should be counted as perhaps the most serious attempt to place mythology on a naturalistically intelligible basis. It is generally recognized that the Nightmare has exercised a greater influence on waking phantasy than any other dream. 2 This is especially true of the origin of the belief in evil spirits and monsters. Clodd, 3 for in- stance, speaks of 'the intensified form of dreaming called "nightmare", when hideous spectres sit upon the breast, stopping breath and paralysing motion, and to which is largely due the creation of the vast army of nocturnal demons that fill the folk-lore of the world, and that, under infinite variety of repellent form, have had place

1 L. Laistner, Das Rdtsel der Sphinx.

9 E. H. Meyer, Germdnische Mythologie, 1891, S. 10, 61, 76-79. W. Wundt, Volkerpsychologie, Zweiter Band, Mythus und Religion, Zweiter Teil, 1906, S, 118-122.

8 E. Clodd, Myths and Dreams. 1891, p. 171.

73

74 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

in the hierarchy of religions'. Some mythologists even trace the belief in spirits in general to the experiences of the Nightmare. Thus Golther 1 states: 'Der Seelenglaube beruht zum grossen Teil auf der Vorstellung von qualen- den Druckgeistern. Erst allmahlich entstand weiterhin der Glaube an Geister, die den Menschen nicht nur qualten und driickten. Zunachst aber ging der Gespen- sterglaube aus dem Alptraum hervor/ (The belief in the soul rests in great part on the conception of tor- turing and oppressing spirits. Only as a gradual exten- sion of this did the belief arise in spirits that displayed other activities than torturing and oppressing. In the first place, however, the belief in spirits took its origin in the Nightmare/)

All this is not surprising when we remember that the vividness of Nightmares far transcends that of ordinary dreams. Waller 2 says: The degree of consciousness during a paroxysm of Nightmare is so much greater than ever happens in a dream, that the person who has had a vision of this kind cannot easily bring himself to acknow- ledge the deceit. . . . Indeed I know no way which a man has of convincing himself that the vision which has occurred during a paroxysm of Nightmare is not real, unless he could have the evidence of other persons to the contrary who were present and awake at the time/

As Macnish 3 insists: The illusions which occur are perhaps the most extraordinary phenomena of night- mare; and so strongly are they often impressed upon the mind, that, even on awaking, we find it impossible not to believe them real. ... In many cases, no argu- ments, no efforts of the understanding will convince us that these are merely the chimeras of sleep/

Before we discuss the part that the Nightmare has played in giving rise to superstitious ideas we must first say something about the Nightmare itself. The three cardinal features of a typical Nightmare are: (i) agon-

1 W. Golther, Handbuch der germanischen Mythologie, 1895, S. 75.

2 J. Waller, A Treatise on the Incubus, or Nightmare, 1816, pp. 28 8 R. Macnish, The Philosophy of Sleep, 1836, p, 143.

CH. n THE NIGHTMARE 75

izing dread; (2) a suffocating sense of oppression at the chest; and (3) a conviction of helpless paralysis. Less conspicuous features are an outbreak of cold sweat, convulsive palpitation of the heart, and sometimes a flow of seminal or vaginal secretion, or even a paralysis of the sphincters. The explanations of this condition still current in medical circles, and which ascribe it to digestive or circulatory disturbances, are probably farther from the truth than any other medical views, and show as little knowledge of the pathogenesis of the condition as was shown in regard to the infection of wounds before Lister's day, or to tuberculosis before Koch's. This is all the stranger since medical practitioners of earlier centuries were well-informed about the sexual origin of the condition. It is one more illustration of how the advance of medicine in the material field during the past century or two has led to the forgetting of much valuable knowledge in the psychopathological field; the sexual origin of Nightmares had to be re-discovered anew in the twentieth century just as did that of Hysteria.

In a previous essay on the subject 1 I have objected to the current medical hypotheses (a) that from their very nature they are incapable of explaining the essential features of the condition; (&) that the noxious factors invoked frequently occur in patients who do not suffer from the Nightmare and are usually absent in patients who do suffer from it. These factors can therefore at most be operative as incitements, not as the cause itself; the latter one reaches by concentrating on the central symptom of deathly fear. After pointing out how Freud had demonstrated the essential dependence of morbid anxiety on repressed Libido I summarized the con- clusions of the essay in the statement that Nightmare is a form of anxiety attack, that it is essentially due to an intense mental conflict centreing around some repressed component of the psycho-sexual instinct, characteristi-

1 'On the Nightmare', American Journal of Insanity, 1910 [Part I. of this volume].

7*> NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

cally re-activation of the normal incest wishes of infancy, and that it may be evoked by any peripheral stimuli that serve to arouse associatively this body of repressed feeling; the importance, however, of such peripheral stimuli as factors in producing the affection has in the past been greatly over-estimated. I added that repression of the feminine, masochistic component of the sexual instinct rather than that of the more masculine is apt to engender the typical Nightmare, a view to which Adler 1 has also subscribed. The latent content of a Nightmare consists of a representation of a normal act of sexual intercourse, particularly in the form characteristic for women; the pressure on the breast, the self-surrender portrayed by the feeling of paralysis, and the genital secretion directly indicate its sexual nature, and the other symptoms, the palpitation, sweating, sense of suffocation, etc., are merely exaggerations of manifesta- tions commonly experienced in some degree during coitus when fear is present.

Special emphasis should be laid on the circumstance that wishes fulfilled in this way always belong to the most powerfully repressed ones. This explains two signi- ficant facts: in the first place, that the same person may experience on one occasion a voluptuous dream, on an- other a Nightmare. This depends principally on the ob- ject of the wish, so that with a Nightmare the object is always a person whom the inhibiting forces of morality exclude from the erotic sphere. It is therefore compre- hensible that the psycho-analysis of such dreams regu- larly shows them to relate to a near relative, most usually a parent. In the second place, as I have else- where 2 illustrated, an important matter constantly over- looked by modern physicians in discussing the patho- genesis of the Nightmare is that clinically all gradations may be observed between the most extreme form of this on the one hand and erotic dreams on the other. When

1 Alfred Adler, 'Der psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der Neurose 1 , Fortsckritte der Medizin, 21 April 1910, S. 492. 1 Op. cit. pp. 411-413.

CH. II

THE NIGHTMARE 77

the repression is slight, so that its effect is practically nullified by the inhibition of the endopsychic censorship that occurs during sleep, an erotic desire, perhaps one which would be suppressed in waking moments, can come to imaginary fulfilment in a dream. When the re- pression is greater the dream contains a mixture of pleasurable sensation and of discomfort or fear. When the repression is greater still the fear may overshadow the voluptuous feeling, and in the extreme case of the typical Nightmare it entirely replaces it. This circum- stance, that an admixture of erotic and apprehensive emotions may be found in all degrees, we shall see to be extensively paralleled by the various myths and super- stitious beliefs connected with the Nightmare theme.

We have mentioned above the vividness and the im- pression of reality characteristic of the Nightmare. It is therefore not astonishing that in all countries and in all ages except the present it has been attributed to the presence of actual strange beings. Thus we have the Greek Ephialtes, the Latin and Mediaeval Incubus, the German Alp, the Old-German Mara, the Bohemian Mora, the Swiss Schratteli, the Scottish Leamain Sith, the Russian Kikimara, the Arcadian Kiel-uddakarra, the Mexican Ciuateteo, the Assyrian Ardat, 1 the Malay Langsuior, 2 the Tasmanian Evil-Spirit, 3 the Australian Mrart, 4 and the Autu 5 of Borneo. A striking confirma- tion of the conclusions enunciated above is the circum- stance that all these oppressing spirits are character- istically lewd demons. Even the scientific terms used to designate the Nightmare, namely Incubus and Ephi- altes, originally signified a lewd demon. 6 In other words,

1 F. Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, English translation, 1877, p. 38.

a F. A. Swettenham, Malay Sketches, 1895, p. 198.

8 J. West, The History of Tasmania, 1852, vol. ii. p. 90.

4 A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, 1904, p. 439.

5 H. Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, 1896.

6 See, for instance, Bay ley, English Dictionary, 1785. Art. Incubus: 'The Nightmare, a Disease when a Man in his Sleep Supposes he has a great Weight lying upon him: a Devil who has Carnal Knowledge of a Woman under the Shape of a Man 1 . Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. I. Sec. 2, Mem. 3, Subsect. 2: 'and in such as are troubled with incubus, or witch-ridden (as we call it): if they lie on their back, they suppose an old woman rides and sits so hard on them, that they are almost stifled for want of breath*.

78 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

with the sole exception of modern physicians, people have constantly regarded the Nightmare as a sexual assault on the part of a lewd demon. We have seen that this folk belief had a certain justification. The view that the process is essentially a sexual one was quite correct; but the unconscious wishes giving rise to it were pro- jected from the subject on to the outer world, as Freud 1 has shown characteristically happens in superstitions. Science, therefore, in setting aside the popular belief re- jected the truth as well as the error; the observations of the people were, as usual, correct, but their explanations, as usual, false.

The reason why the object seen in a Nightmare is frightful or hideous is simply that the representation of the underlying wish is not permitted in its naked form, so that the dream is a compromise of the wish on the one hand, and on the other of the intense fear be- longing to the inhibition. Maury 2 remarks with but little exaggeration: 'Le dormeur s'imaginait etre lutine par un esprit, oppresse par les impurs embrassements d'un demon incube ou succube. . . . L'origine de cette croyance s'explique par le fait qu'une sen- sation voluptueuse en reve est presque tou jours ac- compagnee d'un sentiment desagreable/ Nashe, 3 who more than three hundred years ago wrote on 'The Terrors of the Night', seems also to have had a prevision of the same explanation: 'When Night in her rustie dun- geon hath imprisoned our ey-sight, and that we are shut seperatly in our chambers from resort, the divell keepeth his audit in our sin-guilty consciences, no sense but sur- renders to our memorie a true bill of parcels of his de- testable impietis. The table of our hart is turned to an index of iniquities, and all our thoughts are nothing but texts to condemn us. The rest we take in our beds is such another kinde of rest as the weerie traveller taketh in the coole soft grasse in summer, who thinking there to

1 Sigm. Freud, Zw Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens, Dritte Auflage, 1910, S. 133. a L. F. Alfred Maury; La magie et I'astrologie, 1860, p. 254.

The Works of Thomas Nashe, 1594, edited by R. B. McKerrow, 1904, vol. i. PP- 345. 386.

CH.II THE NIGHTMARE 79

lye at ease, and refresh his tyred limmes, layeth his faint- ing head unawares on a loathsome neast of snakes. 1 . . . Therefore are the terrors of the night more than of the day, because the sinnes of the night surmount the sinnes of the day/

To Laistner's interesting attempt to follow the traces of the Nightmare motif through a large group of myths Wundt 2 has raised an objection which appears logical, but which consideration shows to be not important: it is that he does not sufficiently distinguish between the Nightmare and other forms of anxiety dreams. It is therefore necessary to say something about this rela- tionship. The Nightmare is only one variety of anxiety dream, and the features it has in common with the other kinds (dreams of grimacing beings, dreams of being ex- amined, pursued, etc.) are more important than those in which it differs. The essential difference is that its latent content is highly specific and stereotyped. In all cases of anxiety dreams the latent content represents the fulfil- ment of a repressed sexual wish, usually an incestuous one, but, whereas in the Nightmare this always relates to the normal sexual act, various perverse sexual wishes come to expression in the other forms of anxiety dream. An example of the latter would be a dream of a frightful attacking animal, expressing the algolagnic combina- tion of lust with brutality or cruelty. Referring to the myths built on the same basis, Laistner 3 writes: 'Hier kommt es uns darauf an, ein fiir allemal anzudeuten, dass auch dieser Zug der Alpsagen durchaus den Erfah- rungen des Alptraums entspricht und dass es guten physiologischen Grund hat, wenn die Sage die bekannte Verbindung der Grausamkeit mit der Wollust den Mit- tagsgeistern zuschreibt/ ('Here we are concerned to point out once for all that this feature also of the Alp sagas quite corresponds to the experiences of the Night-

1 Psycho-analytical readers will observe the interesting Oedipus symbolism here.

1 W. Wundt, Volkcrpsychologic, Zweiter Band, Mythus und Religion, Zweiter Teil, 1906, S. 122.

8 L. Laistner, Das Rdtsel der Sphinx, 1889, Bd, i. S. 45.

80 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIJEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT..II

mare and that there is a good physiological reason for the saga which attributes to the midday spirits the well- known combination of cruelty with voluptuousness/)

As was pointed out in the previous chapter, the dif- ferent conceptions of impossible monsters are very sug- gestive of a source in the experiences of anxiety dreams. This group of ideas is very extensive. 1 The belief in the real existence of such monsters has held its own well into modern times and cannot yet be said to have died out, even amongst civilized nations. 2

Dreams of grimacing figures (Fratzentraume) are more than any others a rich source for the creation of fan- tastic human caricatures and the half-human, half- animal figures so prominent in mythology. Wundt 3 writes: 'Wer kann in dem Zwerg das Abbild der vielen Traumfratzen mit gewaltigem Kopf und Angesicht, wer in den grinsenden Tiermasken vieler Volker und schliess- lich noch in dem Gorgonenangesicht der altesten grie- chischen Kunst die Ahnlichkeit mit den Gesichtsverzer- rungen der Reiztraume verkennen? Dass diese Gattung der Traume eine Quelle neben anderen, und dass sie in Anbetracht der durch alle Einflusse der Traumvision bezeugten intensiven psychischen Wirkung der Traume nicht die unbedeutendste ist, kann daher als im hochsten Grade wahrscheinlich gelt en/ ('Who can fail to recognize in dwarfs the image of the many distorted dream figures with enormous heads and countenances, or in the grin- ning animal masks of many countries, and finally in the Gorgon face of the oldest Greek art the similarity with the facial distortions of the dreams due to irritation? It is therefore highly probable that this class of dream furnishes one source among others, and that, in view of the intense psychical effect of these dreams, this source is not the least important/)

We may now summarize the features that constitute evidence of ideas originating in anxiety dreams. In the

1 See, for example, Meyer, op. cit. S. 97.

1 C. Gould, Mythical Monsters, 1886. See especially ch. ix. "The Sea-Serpent 1 .

• Wundt, op. cit. S. 116.

CH. n THE NIGHTMARE 8l

first place the occurrence of anxiety itself accompanying a mythical or superstitious conception should at least make one think of the possibility of such an origin, for although anxiety, of course, occurs elsewhere than in dreams still it rarely if ever attains there the grade of intensity so common in dreams; further, those subject to continual dread are pretty sure to suffer also from anxiety dreams. Then the occurrence of transformation, especially from human into animal form, makes it very probable that the ideas have their source in anxiety dreams. This is notably so when we find the transforma- tion of a very attractive into an extremely repellent ob- ject, a situation frequently met with in both myths and dreams. This combination of the two extremes of attrac- tion and repulsion, of beauty and hideousness, natur- ally represent the two conflicting forces of wish and inhibition. The inadequacy of the view that refers such dream experiences to variations in gastric activity is here particularly evident; as Fiske 1 well says, 'indigestion doesn't account for beautiful women in key-holes'.

Finally, the combination of anxiety with incestuous themes would lead one to suspect a relationship of the ideas with the experiences of Nightmares, since these contain little else. The sadistic view of sexual functions which so many children hold explains why the parent so often appears in the dream in the symbolic guise of an aggressive animal or monster. The remarkably close con- nection, mentioned earlier, between totemism and ancestor-worship, between the ideas of animal descent and the interchangeability of human and animal person- alities becomes more comprehensible through psycho- analytical knowledge of the symbolism of unconscious repressed wishes.

1 J. Fiske, Myths and Myth-Makers, 1872, p. 95.

CHAPTER III

INCUBUS AND INCUBATION

WE have already commented on the interesting circumstance, so significant for our sexual theory of the Nightmare, that the scientific name for this condition in the Middle Ages also denoted a lewd demon who visits women at night, lies heavily on their chest and violates them against their will. These visitors of women were called Incubi (French follets\ Spanish duendes\ Italian folletti] German A Ipen); those of men were called Succubi (French souleves) . As it runs in Caxton's Crony cle (Descrypcion of Wales) 1 :

That fende that goth a nyght, Wymmen full oft to gyle, Incubus is named by ryght: And gyleth men other whyle, Succubus is that wyght.

The historical roots of this particular conception are too numerous to allow of their being traced here. It must suffice to say that the central idea itself, the belief that sexual intercourse can occur between mortals and super- natural beings, is one of the most widespread of human beliefs. 2 It is to be found in most religions, from the Zoroastrian to modern spiritism; perhaps the most familiar examples are the amours of the Greek gods. Various renowned people, such as Robert, the father of William the Conqueror, Luther, Merlin (born from an incubus and a nun, the daughter of Charlemagne), Caesar, Alexander the Great, Plato, Scipio Africanus, and the whole race of Huns were supposed to have been born from such unions, 3 and the whole island of Cyprus

1 Quoted from J. G. Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland, 1835, p. 682.

• Numerous instances of it in different countries and ages may be found in

H. Freimark, Okkultismus und Sexualitdt, S. 342-348. P. Gener, La Mort et le Diable, 1880, p. 340, etc.

8 Gener, op. cit. pp. 403, 521. R. G. Latham, A Dictionary of the English Language, 1882, p. 1240. P. Sinistrari, Demoniality or Incubi and Succubi (seventeenth century), English translation, 1879, p. 55.

82

PT. it CH. in INCUBUS AND INCUBATION 83

to have been populated from the offspring of incubi. 1 At the end of the seventeenth century the belief was still rife in Scotland, 2 and it has by no means yet died out in many parts of Europe. In certain mystical 3 and spirit- istic 4 circles, particularly in France and America, it has received a new lease of life; the most modern form of it would appear to be the notion of conception from the fourth dimension.

The particular form the belief assumed in the Middle Ages was mainly due to theological influence, which moulded it to its purposes as it did other popular super- stitious beliefs. An astonishing amount of the literature of this period was taken up with detailed discussions concerning the precise activities of these evil spirits. The general conception of them was closely connected with that of the Devil and his army, so that the subject is really a chapter of devil-lore. The Church, following St. Augustin, 6 in his famous passage on 'Silvanos et Faunos, quos vulgo incubos vocant', regarded Incubi essentially as fiends of hell whose function it was to tempt frail humanity; in the elaboration of this idea St. Thomas Aquinas 6 played an important part. An interestingly unorthodox departure was made in the seventeenth cen- tury by Peter Sinistrari, 7 who maintained that Incubi were not demons, but higher beings intermediate be- tween men and angels; they degraded themselves but honoured mankind by human contact. 8 Exorcism had no influence on them, which was one of the respects in which they differed from evil fiends. Sinistrari ingeniously reconciled this view with the pronouncements of the

1 J. Hansen, Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess im Mittelalter, 1900, S. 141.

8 R. Kirk, Secret Commonwealth, 1690, p. 35.

8 See books like Jules Bois, La Satanisme et la magie, 1895. S. De Guaita, Temple de Satan, 1891. Des Mousseaux, Les hauls phenomenes de la magie. J. K. Huysmans, Ld-bas, 1890, and En Route, 1895, etc.

• Freimark, op. cit. S. 335, 364, 368-369, 385. Peixoto, Archivos Brasileires

de Psychiatric, 1909, pp. 74-94.

6 Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi De Civitate Dei, 1825 ed., lib. xv. ch. xxiii.

6 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, Pt. I. Quest, 51, Art. 3-6.

7 Sinistrari, op. cit. pp. 129, 223.

8 That actually they were derived from the idea of revenants, of souls who could not rest in their grave, will be shown in the succeeding chapter.

84 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

Church on the sin of such relations by suggesting that those who did not know the true nature of Incubi, but believed them to be devils, sinned just as grievously as though these spirits really were devils. He was evidently of opinion that the essence of sin lay in the belief in the sinfulness of the act committed.

Women seem to have been troubled by these nightly visitors more than men, and widows and virgins, more particularly nuns, 1 more than married women. Cloisters were especially infected by Incubi, and many instances have been recorded of epidemics of such visitations. 2 The theological teachings about the reality of Incubi evidently permitted manifestations that otherwise would have had to find some other means of expression; Freud 3 has pointed out how the religious beliefs prevailing in the environment must affect the form taken by mani- festations of the unconscious, e.g. , in hysterical symptoms. A favourite guise assumed by Incubi was the clerical. Thus Hieronymus relates the story of a young lady who called for help against an Incubus whom her friends then found under her bed in the guise of the Bishop Sylvanus; the Bishop's reputation would have suffered had he not been able to convince them that the Incubus had assumed his shape. 4 Reginald Scot 5 comments sceptically on this: 'Oh excellent peece of witchcraft wrought by Sylvanus!' Chaucer, in The Wife of Bath's Tale', says slyly that in his day Incubi had become much rarer since the orders of mendicant friars, who, he hints, had re- placed them, had been introduced:

For there as wont to walken was an elf,

There walketh now the limitour 6 himself,

1 Freimark, op. cit. S. 349. Gener, op. cit. S. 519.

2 E. Murisier, Les maladies du sentiment religieux, 1909, p. 49. Ch. Pezet, Con- tribution a Vetude de la demonomanie, 1909, p. 18.

8 See Sigm. Freud, Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. i. S. 7 [Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, 1913* 3e Folge, S. 296, Gesammelte S f chrifien t Bd. vi. S. 34. Collected Papers, vol. ii. p. 293.]

4 H. Institoris and J. Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum t 1487, Part II. Question I. Kap. ii.

Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), 1886 edition, p. 62.

Begging friar.

CH. in INCUBUS AND INCUBATION 85

Women may now go safely up and down; In every bush, and under every tree, There is no other incubus than hee, And he ne will dou them no dishonour.

In the reports of the actual examples of visits by Incubi 1 there appears in the most unambiguous way a feature which has special significance for the present dis- cussion. It is that every possible gradation is to be observed between the pleasurable excitement of volup- tuousness on the one hand and extreme terror and re- pulsion on the other. This variation, and the impossibility of demarking it at any point, shows again the intimate connection between libido and morbid dread. It forcibly reminds one of exactly the same gradation that can be observed clinically between erotic dreams and Night- mares. Simon 2 shows that the same interchange between pleasurable and repellent visions is to be found with erotic hallucinations: Tantot le spectre hallucinatoire est de forme agr^able; c'est un mari, un amant, une femme aimee et, dans ces cas, la sensation 6prouvee par Thallucine est voluptueuse. Plus souvent, peut-etre, T hallucination visuelle est repoussante: il s'agit du demon, de quelque etre difforme, d'une vieille femme a 1' aspect hideux dont les embrassements sont pomTaliene un objet d'horreur; d'images degoutantes, qui poursui- vent le malade et qui Tobsedent. Dans ces cas, Thalluci- nation genitale consiste en une impression douloureuse, a tout le moins, p6nible ou desagreable.'

Hofler's 3 conclusion, therefore, that the belief in de- mons originated in Nightmares, and that in Incubi in erotic dreams, is quite intelligible, but it must be remem- bered that, just as the two kinds of dream pass into each other, so as we shall presently see are the beliefs in Devil and Incubus inextricably intertwined.

In the following passage by Goerres 4 we have a picture

1 See, for example, the accounts quoted by P. L. Jacob, Curiositts infernales,

PP- 8 5-97-

a P. M. Simon, Le monde des reves, 1882, p. 183.

8 M. H6fler, 'Medizinischer Damonismus', Zcntralblatt ftir Anthropologie, 1900, Bd. v. S. i.

4 J. J. von Goerres, cited by J. Delassus, Les incubes et les succubes, 1897, p. 34.

86 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

of Incubus experiences taken from opposite ends of the scale just described: 'Tantot ce sont les angoisses de 1'etouffement, de la paralysie, tantot, au contraire, c'est une surexcitation violente des organes sexuels avec la sensation du degagement du systme musculaire, quelque chose comme le vertige de la vitesse.' The resemblance of this passage to a description of dream experiences, or rather the identity of the two, hardly needs to be pointed out. The following account of the unpleasant variety would well pass for a description of a Nightmare; it is taken from Laurent-Nagour 1 : De Nogent related that his mother had because of her great beauty to sustain the onslaught of Incubi. During a sleepless night the de- mon 'whose habit it was to invade hearts torn with grief appeared in person and, though slumber had not yet closed her eyes, almost crushed her with his stifling weight. The poor lady could not move or groan or even breathe. The servants found their mistress blenched and trembling, and she told them of the danger she had been threatened by, the traces of which were all too plain. The descriptions of the opposite, pleasurable kind of visit are common in the accounts of Incubi and need not be related in detail; as might be expected, the wooing Incubus often assumed the guise of the sleeper's lover, or of the absent or missing mate. 2 Most of the reports contain an admixture of voluptuous and repellent features; pain and disgust also occur often enough. An excellent example of the underlying attraction exerted by a wicked Incubus is related with fine psychological insight by Goerres 3 ; it reminds one of the resistance we encounter nowadays on endeavouring to get neurotic patients to renounce their symptoms: 'En 1643, je fus charge par mes superieurs d'aller exorciser une jeune fille de vingt ans qui etait poursuivie par un Incube. Elle m'avoua sans detour tout ce que F esprit impur faisait avec elle. Je jugeai, d'apres ce qu'elle me dit, que malgre

1 E. Laurent und P. Nagour, Okkultismus und Liebe, 1903, S. 109.

2 Brognoli (1650), cited by Delassus, op. cit. p. 20, Freimark, op. cit. S. 352. J. Michelet, La Sorcitre, 1863, 3me Edition, p. 108.

8 Goerres, op. cit. p. 21.

CH. in INCUBUS AND INCUBATION 87

ses denegations, elle pretait au demon un consentement indirect. En effet, elle etait tou jours avertie de ses ap- proches par une surexcitation violente des organes sexuels; et alors, au lieu d'avoir recours & la priere, elle courait k sa chambre et se met t ait sur son lit. J' essay ai d'eveiller en elle des sentiments de confiance envers Dieu; mais je n'y pus reussir, et elle semblait plutot craindre d'etre delivree.'

It is interesting that the doctrines of the Church ap- pear to take into account the same alternation of fearful and voluptuous feelings on the occasion of the visits of Incubi, for they are concerned with the various attitudes on the part of the subjects towards these visits, particu- larly in respect of the strength of the resistance they manifest. The discussions on this point resemble very much a modern juristic investigation into a case of rape. The authors of the Malleus Maleficamm, for instance, divide such subjects into three classes: '(i) Those who voluntarily submit to Incubi, as witches do; (2) those whom witches have brought together with Incubi or Succubi against their will; and (3) a third class, to which certain virgins in particular belong, who are plagued by Incubus demons entirely against their will/

We may make an interesting contrast between these pleasant and unpleasant experiences, with all their inter- mediate types, from several points of view. Psychologi- cally the matter is, thanks to Freud's investigations, very simple. His doctrine of intrapsychic repression gives us the full explanation. As was pointed out in the preceding chapter, the wishes culminating in unpleasant experiences differ from those of the opposite kind merely in being subject to internal repression or condemnation, so that they are unconscious. Another way of putting this is to say that the erotic wishes in question may be compatible with the standards of the subject's ego, and therefore accepted by it, or not. [In more recent terminology one would say that such wishes may be either ego-syntonic or ego-dystonic.] The gradual evolu- tion of insight into this state of affairs provides a

88 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

curious study in human nature, to which we shall now turn.

It has been necessary to lay stress on the gradualness in the distinction between these two types of wishes, or of the experiences they give rise to respectively, and, although we have said that certain of these wishes are acceptable to the ego, this is, strictly speaking, never completely true. That is to say, all erotic wishes without exception that disturb sleep have to overcome a certain amount of internal opposition, some being, of course, more heavily censured than others. Even at the present day it is customary for nocturnal emissions to be ascribed rather to some 'natural' physical activity on the part of the sexual apparatus rather than to any actual wishes that set this apparatus in operation. The tend- ency has thus always been to avoid any personal respon- sibility for nocturnal erotic wishes, even those most lightly censured, and to ascribe them to some other agency. In the history of mankind we can clearly dis- tinguish two stages in this respect. To begin with, the dream experiences were ascribed to the action of ex- ternal personal agents, such as lewd demons; the wishes were, as a psychiatrist would say, projected outwards on to other beings. The second stage consisted in project- ing the wishes on to various bodily processes, non- mental and non-sexual. We are even yet only beginning to emancipate ourselves from this form of projection, and the medical world in particular shows the greatest timidity in making this step. It will further become plain that this evolution proceeded earlier in the case of those dream wishes that are relatively acceptable to the ego than in the case of strongly repressed ones; in consequence, superstitious causes demons or in- digestion, according to the epoch continued to be invoked in explanation of the unpleasant experiences later than for the pleasurable and evidently sexual experiences.

We read that 'presque tous les peuples de T Orient ont recouru aux incubes et aux succubes dans Implication

CH. m INCUBUS AND INCUBATION 89

qu'ils ont donn^e des reves d'amour et des pollutions nocturnes'. 1

By the time the Middle Ages were reached, however, the opinion was beginning to gain ground, particularly among physicians, that nocturnal pollutions had a purely physical origin. Gervasius of Tilbury, for instance, quotes this as the approved medical view in 1214, though he himself appears to believe at the same time both in this aetiology and in the existence of lewd Succubi. 2 Later the curious compromise was reached that up to the year 1400 Incubi were supposed to have had inter- course with human beings only against the will of the latter, but that after this date the appearance of a race of lecherous witches, led to people giving themselves voluntarily to the Incubi. 8 It is apparent that, just when people were beginning to emancipate themselves from the belief in hallucinated beings in connection with erotic dreams and retaining the belief only in connection with Nightmares, a theological elaboration of the Incubus concept re-animated the ancient belief that the partner in a sexual dream was an actual being.

A neat description of the conflict, with more than a hint of dawning insight, may be quoted from an old play of the early seventeenth century. 4 In it Ursula speaks: 'I have heard you say that dreames and visions were fabulous; and yet one time I dreamt fowle water ran through the floore, and the next day the house was on fire. You us'd to say hobgoblins, fairies, and the like, were nothing but our owne affrightments, and yet o' my troth, cuz, I once dream'd of a young batchelour, and was ridd with the night-mare. But come, so my con- science be cleere, I never care how fowle my dreames are/

Even the bigoted royal author, King James I, at a still earlier date shows signs of a certain amount of

1 Gener, op. cit. p. 520.

• Cited by J. Hansen, op. cit, S. 138, Gervasius of Tilbury, Oiia imperialia,

SS. rerum Brunsvicensium i. 897 et seq. and lib. iii. cap. 93.

• Reginald Scot, op. cit. p. 58.

4 W. Sampson, The Vow-Breaker, or The Fair Maide of Clifton, 1636, Act 3, Scene i.

go NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

insight 1 : 'Philomates: Is it not the thing which we call the Mare, which takes folkes sleeping in their beds, a kinde of these spirits, whereof ye are speaking?

'Epistemon: No, that is but a naturall sickenesse, which the Mediciners have given that name of Incubus unto, ab incubando, because it being a thicke fleume, falling into our breast upon the heart, while we are sleeping, intercludes so our vitall spirits, and takes all power from us, as makes us think that there were some unnaturall burden or spirit, lying upon us, and holding us downe/

At one of the meetings of the Bureau d'adresse* in 1656 the view was taken by several physicians that the belief in Incubi was merely a product of a voluptuous imagination; according to one, Incubi were 'produites par Tabondance ou la qualite de la semence, laquelle, envoyant son espece dans la phantaisie, elle se forme un objet agreable, remue la puissance me trice, et celle-ci la faculte expulstrice des vaisseaux spermatiques'. De Saint -Andre, 3 Louis XV's physician, considered their origin to be partly in the supposed imagination, partly in invented excuses for illicit relations: X'incube est le plus sou vent une chimere, qui n'a pour fondement que le reve, Timagination blessee, et tres souvent Timagination des femmes. . . . L' artifice n'a pas moins de part a Thistoire des incubes. Une femme, une fille, une devote de nom, etc., debauchee, qui affecte de paraitre virtueuse, pour cacher son crime fait passer son amant pour un esprit incube qui Tobsede/ Later writers have confirmed this, and have pointed out in addition the psychopathic nature of the belief. According to Dalyell 4 'the presence of the Incubi and Succubi denotes amorous illusions only'. Delassus, 5 who insists on the sexual nature of the whole subject, says that the morbid appearance of an Incubus demonstrates 'la victoire de Lilith et de

1 King James I., Daemonologie, Third Book, chap. iii. 'The description of a perticular sort of that kinde of following spirit, called Incubi and Succubi.'

2 Recueil general des questions traiUs et conference du Bureau d'adresse.

8 De Saint- Andre*, Lettres au sujet de la magie, des maUfices et des sorciers, 1725.

4 J. G. Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland, 1835, p. 599.

5 Delassus, op. cit. pp. 39, 41, 51.

CH. m INCUBUS AND INCUBATION gi

Nahemah, les reines des Stryges, sur les imprudents qui ont voulu rester chastes, qui ont voulu m^priser les verites 6ternelles du lingam'.

Later authors have laid stress on the morbid nature of the phenomenon. Macario 1 writes: 'Les succubes et les incubes sont des malades atteints d ; hallucinations de la sensibilit6 genitale/ Morel, 2 in 1860, states: 'C'est dans cette categorie de malades hysterico-religieuses que Ton observe particulierement les idees delirantes a propos d'obsessions demoniaques, de succubes et d'incubes, le terme hyperesthesia psychica sexualis semble particu- lierement leur convenir/ Dagonet, 3 in 1876, describes the subject under the term erotomania. Leuret, 4 nearly a hundred years ago, clearly saw the analogy between these beliefs of the Middle Ages and the hallucinations of the insane. He illustrated this by a detailed comparison of one of his patients at the Salpetriere with a woman from whom St. Bernard exorcised evil spirits: 'Les hallu- cinations ont entre elles une si grande analogic, que les etres crees par elles different seulement dans les acces- soires; les descriptions qu'en donnent actuellement nos alienes ressemblent aux descriptions que donnaient autre- fois les saints et les possedes; ... les noms seuls different. Ainsi, pour savoir tout ce qui concerne les incubes, il suffit d'ecouter un de ces malades qui se plaignent de les recevoir pendant la nuit. Les incubes sont et font encore tout ce qu'ils etaient et faisaient jadis/

It will be noted that in contrast to the other super- stitious ideas here being treated, the idea of transforma- tion plays no part in the Incubus idea. The reason for this is very simple and shows very well the artificial nature of the whole conception. The idea of transforma- tion is to be found in the Middle Ages, both in the theological concept of the Devil and in the popular idea of lewd demons (German Alp), but the Church artificially

1 M. A. Macario, 'litudes cliniques sur la dSmonomanie', Annales mtdico- psychologiques, 1843, t. i. p. 441.

2 Morel, quoted by Pezet, op. cit. p. 54.

8 H. Dagonet, quoted by Pezet, op. cit. p. 54.

4 F. Leuret, Fragments psychologiques sur la folie, 1834, pp. 258, 261-264.

92 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

defined an Incubus as a demon in human form. When he appeared as an animal he was another kind of devil and no longer an Incubus, The popular equivalent of the Incubus and Succubus, however, e.g., the Alp and Mara, constantly appeared in animal guise.

• * * * *

The most perfect manifestation of the erotic wishes that have been most fully brought into harmony with the standards of the ego is where the nightly visitor was believed to be not merely not an evil spirit but actually a divine being. It is comprehensible that such experi- ences, to which we have already referred in Chapter I, should be both approved and sought after. In this con- nection special mention may be made of the interesting practice known as Incubation or Temple-Sleep (incu- batio, evKoifirjaw), for, although this was not a pecul- iarly mediaeval idea, still it lasted throughout the Middle Ages, and it affords an instructive counterpart to the Incubus belief. In fact, as Wundt 1 truly remarks, the very similarity of the terms Incubus and Incubation point to an inherent relationship between the two con- ceptions. The subject has an additional value for our present purpose through its close association with an- cestor worship and the idea of animal transformation.

The procedure of Incubation has been most exten- sively investigated in relation to Greece and Rome, but it is a world-spread practice. Thus it has been found in Central America, 2 North Africa, 3 Australia, 4 Borneo, 6 China, 6 India, 7 Persia, 8 etc. Several different practices have been included under the designation Incubation.

1 W. Wundt, Volkerpsychologie, Bd. ii. Teil ii. 1906, S. no.

• Antonio de Herrera, Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las

islas y terra firma del Mar Octane, 1730, vol. iv. ch. iv.

8 G. Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan, 1889, Bd. iii. S. 477.

• Sir George Grey, Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West

and Western Australia, 1841, vol. ii. p. 336.

5 H. Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo 1806 vol. i. p. 185. '

6 O. Stoll, Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Vdlker psychologic, Zweite Auflage, 1904, S. 51, 52. 6

' J. A. Dulaure, Die Zeugung in Glaube, Sitte und Brauch der Volker, 1908 S. 45. 50, 80. y '

8 Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah t traduction fran9aise, 1873, t. i. p. 418.

CH. in INCUBUS AND INCUBATION 93

The most typical is the union of a person with a god or goddess during sleep in the sacellum of the temple, a custom of which the main source seems to have been in Egypt. Others are union with a departed being during sleep on his grave, Grdberschlaf, or with various spirits during sleep near holy wells or springs, a custom chiefly developed in Greece.

Several functions were subserved by the practice. From the idea of close connection with the Godhead de- veloped the custom of assuring divine protection either through the union of men with goddesses, as, for ex- ample, with Isis in Egypt and Rome, 1 with Seraphis in Egypt, Rome and Canopaea, 2 with Diana in Ephesus, 3 and with Ino in Sparta, 4 or through the sacred prostitu- tion of women to the gods, as to Vishnu in India, 5 to Bel 6 and Shamash 7 in Babylon, to Ammon in the Egyptian Thebes, 8 and elsewhere.

It is probable that the inner meaning of the practice always was the wish to secure sexual capacity and fer- tility among those in need of it. It characteristically pre- sents itself, therefore, as a device for remedying im- potence or sterility, or the innumerable afflictions that symbolize these. This meaning is plain to see in connec- tion with the most renowned of all the Incubation cults, that of Aesculapius. Towards the end of its vogue his cult had spread from its source in Epidauros to some three hundred and twenty sites. The cure of sterility was one of the central features of this cult. Thus to cite only two well-known examples: Andromache of Epirus visited Epidauros on account of sterility; in a

1 Alice Walton, 'Cornell Studies in Classical Philology', Number 3, The Cult of Asklepios, pp. 63, 74.

1 L. Preller, Berichte u. d. Verhandl. d. Kdnigl. Sachs. Gesell. d. Wissen- schaften zu Leipzig, 1854, S. 196.

8 Th. Puschmann, Handbuch der Geschichte der Medizin, 1901.

4 Pausanias, Attika t cap. 21.

5 Dulaure, loc. cit.

Cullimore, Oriental Cylinders, Numbers 71, 76, 109. J. G. Frazer, Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship , 1905, p. 170.

7 C. H. W. Johns, 'Notes on the Code of the Hammurabi', American Journal of Semitic Languages, 1903, vol. xix. p. 98.

8 Cullimore, loc. cit. Frazer, loc. cit.

94 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

dream the god lifted up her dress and touched her abdo- men, an experience that resulted in the birth of a son. 1 Andromeda of Chios in the same circumstahces was visited by the god in the form of a snake who lay on her; she bore five sons. 2

The connection between Aesculapius and serpent wor- ship was exceedingly close. Serpents were not only sacred in his temples, but actually represented the god 3 ; in the year 293 B.C. an enormous snake was brought to Rome as an indication that Aesculapius had extended his patronage to the city. Many famous men were born of the serpent-god, e.g., Aratus of Sicyon, Alexander the Great, Augustus (the snake here represented Apollo, the father of Aesculapius), Aristomenes, Publius Scipio the Elder, etc. 4 It is well known that the Serpent God is one of the commonest objects of worship over the whole world. 6 Even the gods of more cultivated societies often make their appearance in this form, especially when en- gaged on love adventures; thus Apollo seduced Atys as a serpent (leaving in memory of his visit a correspond- ing mark on her body), just as Zeus seduced Persephone and Odin Gunnlodh. The circumstances in which the gods assumed this guise provide us with the key for the understanding of snake symbolism and that this is a phallic one is too well attested to need dwelling on here. 6

It is of especial interest that the serpent symbolizes not simply the male member in general, but particu- larly the male member of the father. One of the most widely spread superstitions in the whole world is to the effect that snakes are the incarnation of deceased an-

1 Mary Hamilton, Incubation, or the Cure of Disease in Pagan Temples and Christian Churches, 1906, p. 25.

2 Mary Hamilton, op. cit. p. 27.

8 See especially Puschmann, op. cit. S. 169. Alice Walton, op. cit. pp. 13-16, 65. 91-

4 L. Deubner, De Incubatione, 1900, S. 33.

8 Compare J. B. Deane, The Worship of the Serpent, 1883. H. C. Du Bose, The Dragon, Image and Demon, 1886. J . Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, Second Edition, 1872. C. Howard, Sex Worship, 1902, ch. viii. 'The Serpent and the Cross'. G. Staniland Wake, Serpent Worship, 1888.

6 F. Riklin, Wunscherfullung und Symbolik im Marchen, 1908, S. 40-44. A. J. Storfer, Zur Sonderstellung des Vatermordes, 1911, S. 30, 31.

CH. m INCUBUS AND INCUBATION 95

cestors, 1 a fact which in itself brings snake-worship and ancestor- worship into close association. A product of it is the belief in individual house snakes which desert the house when its male members particularly the father die. 2 The idea is closely connected with the belief that the soul leaves a sleeper in the form of a snake which escapes through the mouth. 3 This symbolism and the recognizably chthonic origin in general of such gods as Aesculapius 4 form a connecting link between the ideas of snakes and graves, snake worship and ancestor wor- ship, and the practices of sleeping in temples or on graves.

Incubation thus became an important method of cur- ing sterility, and Aesculapius* gift in this respect was in- herited later by a number of Christian saints, notably the Archangel Michael, St. Damien and St. Hubert 5 ; the activity of the last mentioned is to be traced in the Ardennes as late as the seventeenth century. This cure of disease by Incubation known as oneiromancy was practised in Scotland 6 and Ireland 7 to an even later date, and it is interesting to note that here the person slept in the skin of a sacrificed sheep, just as the worshippers of Ammon did in Thebes, 8 or those of Amphiarus in Attica. 9 In a Welsh church in Monmouthshire recourse was still had to this practice in the nineteenth century. 10

1 J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, Third Edition, Part iv. (Adonis, Attis, Osiris, second edition), 1907, pp. 76, 77. E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity, 1909, vol. i. p. 169 et seq. Wundt, op. cit. S. 61-64.

• Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. i. p. 57. E. H. Meyer,

Germanische Mythologie, 1891, S. 63, 64, 73. C. L. Rochholtz, Deutscher Glaube und Brauch, 1867, Bd. i. (Deutscher Unsterblichkeitsglaube), S. 146, 147. A. Wuttke, Der deutsche V oik saber glaube der Gegenwart, 1900, S. 51.

8 J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, Viertc Ausgabe, 1876, Nachtrag S. 247, 312. B. Thorpe, Northern Mythology, 1851, vol. i. p. 289.

• Puschmann, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 170.

6 L. F. A. Maury, La magie et lastrologie, 1860, pp. 247, 248, 251.

6 Th. Pennant, A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides in 1772, vol. i. p. 311, in John Pinkerton's 'Voyages and Travels', vol. iii. M. Martin, A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, p. 3, in John Pinkerton's op. cit. vol. iii.

7 J. Richardson, The Folly of Pilgrimages, 1727, p. 70.

8 Herodotus, li. par. 42.

9 Pausanias, i. cap. 34.

10 Howell Rees, 'The Cure of Disease by Inc Ation', British Medical Journal, Oct. 30, 1909, p. 1317.

96 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS *T. n

In the Middle Ages three changes were gradually introduced into the practice of Incubation: (i) Union in sleep was replaced by prayers to the God, Goddess or Saint. (2) More importance was attached to holy wells and springs to which the pilgrimage took place than to the simpler sacred places, groves, etc. This change was doubtless determined by the close unconscious connec- tion between the ideas of water and childbirth. 1 Up to the present day holy wells are the object of adoration throughout Scotland 2 and in many other parts of Europe. (3) The cure of impotence or sterility has been generalized to that of other defects, particularly such as are associ- ated with these ideas in the unconscious (paralysis, blindness, lameness, etc.). The modern pilgrims of Lourdes would be astonished to know how much their pilgrimages have to do with ideas dating from the in- cestuous wishes of the Ancient Greeks.

Finally, Incubation was practised as a means of divining the future or of procuring inspiration. A well- known example of the latter was the inspiration of a tragedy that Aeschylus received from Bacchus in a dream. In Ireland the choice of a king depended on the intimations received during Incubation. 3

The connection between the Nightmare and Incuba- tion, particularly in its original form, is too clear to need any lengthy discussion. Wundt 4 writes: 'In der Tat lassen sich alle diese, der Inkubation im weitesten Sinne zuge- horigen Tatsachen auf zwei einander in mancher Bezie- hung verwandte Ausgangspunkte zuriickverfolgen; auf den Angsttraum und auf den Krankheitsanfall.' ('Actu- ally all these facts to do with Incubation can be traced to two starting-points which have much in common: to anxiety dreams and to attacks of illness/) It is to be noted, however, that the dreams exercising the greatest influence in this direction must have stood in the middle between pure Nightmares and pure erotic dreams, i.e.

1 See Otto Rank, Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden, 1909, S. 69, 70.

• Sir Arthur Mitchell, The Past in the Present, 1880, p. 276.

8 E. O'Curry, On the Manner &nnd Customs of the Ancient Irish. 1873, vol. ii. P. 199. Wundt, he. cit.

CH. in INCUBUS AND INCUBATION 97

dreams containing an admixture of anxious and pleasur- able feelings.

The prominent part taken by serpents in the original Incubation may be adduced in favour of this conclusion, since snake symbolism is highly characteristic of dream processes. Artemidoros seems to have had an inkling of its significance in his saying, 'When a snake pursues any- one during sleep he should be on his guard against wicked women'. 1 This may be compared with the Bran- denburg proverb, 'Wenn man eine Schlange mit ins Bett nimmt, hat man viel Gliick 1 ('If one takes a snake with him to bed he will be very lucky'), or the Oldenburg 2 saying: 'Wenn Schlangen in den Leib eines Menschen hineingehext werden, so driicken sie das Herz/ ('When snakes are bewitched into someone they press on the heart/) Incubation is by no means the only example of a belief that takes its origin from the occurrence of snakes in anxiety dreams. Laistner 3 , for example, in one of the chapters he has devoted to 'Die Alpschlange' has considered in detail the part played by these snakes in those Teutonic myths and superstitious ideas origin- ating in the Nightmare.

In conclusion, we may say that in the Incubus- Incubation group of ideas we have an excellent example for a set of beliefs that have not merely acquired their outer guise from the experiences of the Nightmare, but the latent content of which is also identical with that of the Nightmare: that is to say, it consists of an imaginary fulfilment of certain repressed wishes for sexual inter- course, especially with the parents. The beliefs in question are evidently determined by attempts to ward off the sense of guilt accompanying these wishes (i.e. by projecting them on to the Incubus) or the resulting punishment [e.g., by curing impotence through the iso- pathic principle 4 of Incubation.]

1 Wuttke, op. cit. S. 115. * Wuttke, op. cit. S. 116.

1 L. Laistner, Das RZtsel der Sphinx. 1889, Bd. i. Kap. 17, S. 83-108. 4 [Ernest Jones, 'Fear, Guilt and Hate 1 , International Journal of Psycho- Analysis, vol. ix. footnote p. 386.]

CHAPTER IV

THE VAMPIRE

NONE of the group of beliefs here dealt with is richer or more over-determined than that in the Vampire, nor is there one that has more numer- ous connections with other legends and superstitions. Its psychological meaning is correspondingly compli- cated, and in the analysis of it we shall proceed from its most typical form. It may be said at the outset that the latent content of the belief yields plain indications of most kinds of sexual perversions, and that the belief assumes various forms according as this or that perversion is more prominent.

Webster's International Dictionary defines a Vampire as: 'A blood-sucking ghost or re-animated body of a dead person; a soul or re-animated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave and wander about by night sucking the blood of persons asleep, causing their death.' The Century Dictionary describes a Vampire as: 'A kind of spectral body which, according to a super- stition existing among the Slavic and other races on the Lower Danube, leaves the grave during the night and maintains a semblance of life by sucking the warm blood of men and women while they are asleep. Dead wizards, werewolves, heretics and other outcasts be- come vampires, as do also the illegitimate offspring of parents themselves illegitimate, and anyone killed by a vampire/ According to Horst 1 : 'Ein Vampyr-Gespenst ist eine verstorbene, im Grab fortlebende Person, welche des Nachts aus dem Grab hervorgeht, um den Leben- digen das Blut auszusaugen, wodurch sie ihren in der Erde liegenden Korper im Wachstum und bei vollkom- menem Wohlseyn erhalt und vor der Verwesung be- schiitzt'. ('A Vampire is a deceased person who continues

1 G. C. Horst, Zauber-Bibliothek, 1821, Erster Theil, S. 252.

98

PT. ii CH. iv THE VAMPIRE 99

to live in the grave; which he leaves, however, by night for the purpose of sucking the blood of the living; he is thereby nourished and maintained in good condition, and is thus preserved from decomposition/)

The two essential characteristics of a true Vampire are thus his origin in a dead person and his habit of sucking blood from a living one, usually with fatal effect. It will be expedient to treat them first separately.

Interest of the living in the dead, whether in the body or in the spirit, is an inexhaustible theme, only a small part of which can be considered here. A continued rela- tion between the living and dead may be regarded in two ways, and each of these from the obverse and re- verse. On the one hand it may be desired, and this may result either in the living being drawn to the dead or in the dead being drawn back to the living; on the other hand it may be feared, which may also have the same two effects. In the Ghoul idea a living person visits the body of the dead; the Vampire idea is more elab- orate, for here the dead first visits the living and then draws him into death, being re-animated himself in the process.

We shall see that several different emotions love, guilt and hate impel towards a belief in the idea of re- union with the dead and in the idea with which we are particularly concerned, that of the return of the dead from the grave. The simplest case of all is where some- one longs for the return of a dear lost one, but the greater part of our present problem is taken up with various motives that are supposed to actuate a dead person to return to the living. This latter group is so firmly bound up with the point of view of the corpse that it sometimes needs an effort to remember that they can only repre- sent ideas projected on to him from the minds of the living. In this process, as so commonly with projection, the mechanism of identification is mostly at work; it is as though the living person whose unconscious wishes have been exemplified by the life and conduct of the recently deceased felt that if he were dead he would not

100 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS w.n

be able to rest in his grave and would be impelled by various motives to return.

We shall divide into two broad groups the motives urging to re-union, and particularly to return from the grave: they may be called love and hate respectively.

That Love should concern itself with the re-union of parted lovers, even when the parting has been brought about by death, is natural enough. The derivatives of this theme, however, prove on examination to be unex- pectedly complex. To begin with, the wish for the re- union may be expressed directly on the part of the living or it may be ascribed by projection to the dead. We shall consider first the former of these. The simplest ex- pression of this is the aching longing to meet once more the lost one, a wish commonly gratified in dreams, which reaches its greatest intensity between lovers, married partners or children and parents. Turning from everyday life, we can at once think of various deriva- tives of this fundamental wish. There are the numerous incantation practices for conjuring up the dead which are to be found in all parts of the world, and again the extensive part this theme plays in mythology, of which we may cite as an example the legend of Orpheus bring- ing back Eurydice from the underworld. In modern times the wish, or belief, has often assumed a more abstract form, such as, for example, re-union with the departed by means of telepathy or through a medium. Incidentally it is of interest to observe in the present connection that Goerres, 1 in a special chapter on his subject of Christian Mysticism, ascribes Vampirism to occult exteriorization and telepathy,

As has been said, the wish for re-union is often ascribed to the dead by the mechanism of projection. It is then believed that they feel an overpowering impulse to re- turn to the loved ones whom they had left. The deepest source of this projection is doubtless to be found in the wish that those who have departed should not forget us, a wish that ultimately springs from childhood memories

1 J. J. von Goerres, Die christliche Mystik, 1836-42.

CH. iv THE VAMPIRE 101

of being left alone by the loved parent. The belief that the dead can visit their loved ones, especially by night, is met with over the whole world. 1 It has always been a fruitful theme for mythology and literature; one thinks, for instance, of the various versions of the Lenore legend or of Goethe's Bride of Corinth of which Hock 2 has made the interesting suggestion that it was evoked by a childhood memory and of endless other examples, of which I will quote a short poem by Heine 8 :

Mir traumte von einem KonigskincT, Mit nassen, blassen Wangen; Wir sassen unter der griinen Lind 1 , Und hielten uns liebumfangen.

'Ich will nicht deines Vaters Thron, Und nicht sein Zepter von Golde, Ich will nicht seine demantene Kron', Ich will dich selber, du Holde'.

'Das kann nicht sein', sprach sie zu mir, 'Ich liege ja im Grabe, Und nur des Nachts komm' ich zu dir, Weil ich so lieb dich habe 1 .

(A king's child in my dream I see, On her cheeks are her tears' traces. We sit under the linden tree Locked close in love's embraces.

'I do not want your father's throne Nor his sceptre, his crown or his treasure. I want but thee and thee alone, For I love thee beyond measure'.

'That cannot be', she said to me, Tor I'm dead and the earth is my cover, And but at night I come to thee Because I love my lover'.)

1 Numerous examples are quoted by S. Hock, Die Vampirsagen und ihre Verwertung in der deutschen Literatur, 1900, S. 10 ; and P. L. Jacob, Curiositts infernales, pp. 312-331. * Hock, op. cit. S. 69-81.

8 Compare Z. Werner: 'Liebe bannt des Todes Not' ('Love banishes the pain of death'), Sdmtliche Werkc, Bd. viii. S. 164, and F. Hebbel, 'Jeder Tote 1st ein Vampir, die ungeliebten ausgenommen' ('All dead are vampires, except the unloved ones'), Tagebticher, 1887, Bd. ii. S. 73.

102 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS w. n

We evidently have here a reason why Vampires always visit relatives first, particularly their married partners, a feature on which most descriptions dwell. 1 Widows can become pregnant as the result of such visits. 2 This happened, for example, in the celebrated Meduegya epidemic, 8 and the possibility is still believed in, e.g., in Albania. It was, in fact, the custom in a Vam- pire epidemic to institute the first enquiries with the widow of whoever was thought to be the Vampire. 4 Krauss 5 tells us: 'Es hat sich der Fall schon sehr oft ereignet, dass bei einem grosseren Sterben im Dorf das Weib eines kiirzlich verstorbenen Mannes von den Dorf- bewohnern misshandelt wurde, bis sie eingestand, dass ihr Mann sie besuche und sie das Versprechen gab, sie werde ihn bestimmen, die Leute nicht zu morden/ (The case has often happened that after a number of deaths in a village the wife of a recently deceased man has been maltreated until she confessed that her husband was visiting her and promised to persuade him not to murder people/) The resemblance to the Incubus belief is strik- ing, even to the detail of the event being believed to depend on the woman's wishes.

Plainly there must be a reason why the wish for re- union should here be expressed by the circuitous method of projection instead of quite simply. The evidence goes to show that this reason is a sense of guilt on the part of the living. This also is projected on to the dead. It is be- lieved that certain dead people cannot rest in the grave. As we shall see, there are several grounds for this, but we are at the moment concerned only with the one of sexual guilt. It is felt that because of this the dead per- son cannot rest in the grave and is impelled to try to overcome it by the characteristic method of defiantly

1 Numerous examples are cited by Hock, op. cit. S. 24, 37, 43. See also J. N. Sepp, Orient und Occident, 1903, S. 268.

• J. J. Hanush, 'Die Vampyre', Zeitschrift far deutsche Mythologie und

Sittenkunde, Jahrg. iv. S. 200.

8 Horst, op. cit. S. 277.

4 B. Stern, Medizin, Aberglaube und Geschlechtsleben in der Turkei, 1903, Bd. i. S. 364, 365.

6 F. S. Krauss, Slavische Volksforschungen, 1908, S. 130.

CH. IV

THE VAMPIRE 103

demonstrating that he can commit the forbidden acts. We are, of course, speaking of an unconscious guiltiness, which, paradoxically enough, is most acute in the pre- sence of what is socially and legally the most permitted love object, the married partner, manifesting itself here in the form of marital unhappiness or even actual im- potence. Psycho-analysis has shown unequivocally that this unconscious guiltiness owes its origin to infantile incestuous wishes that have been only imperfectly over- come in the course of development, and we shall pre- sently indicate an interesting feature in the Vampire superstition which confirms this conclusion.

The idea of the dead not being able to rest has become inextricably bound up with the belief that such bodies cannot decompose, and this has played a most important part in the various practices to do with Vampires. It was, and is, firmly held that if the grave in question is opened the presence of a Vampire can be recognized by finding the body in a state of disorder, with red cheeks, tense skin, charged blood-vessels, warm blood, growing hair and nails, and with the left eye open; 1 in the worst cases the grave itself is bespattered with blood, doubt- less from the last victim. Some of these features, such as that concerning the hair and nails, are common after death. The others relate to cases of delayed decom- position that occur in various circumstances and which are familiar enough to medical jurisprudence; the causa- tion is a purely medical question into which I do not propose to enter here. Unfortunately the Greek Ortho- dox Church it is said in a spirit of opposition to the Roman Catholic pronouncement that the bodies of saints do not decompose supported the dogma that it is the bodies of wicked, unholy, and especially excom- municated, persons which do not decompose. Just as the Roman Catholic Church taught that heretics could be turned into Werewolves, the Greek Orthodox Church taught that heretics became Vampires after death. It seems probable, however, that the connection between

1 A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, 1900, S. 479.

104 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS *r. n

the ideas of decomposition and innocence is a more ancient and deeply seated one. Successful decomposi- tion, and the reduction of the corpse to a state of sim- plicity and purity, signified that the dead person was at rest in the earth and that his soul was at peace; in psycho- analytical language, the incestuous re-union with the Mother Earth is permitted only when purified of sin. Endless ties bind the relatives to the dead person until this consummation is achieved, for which the Greek Church fixed the artificial period of forty days; the best known are those to do with providing food and drink for the corpse. Now it is of special interest that not only was the dead person unable to rest in a guilty state, but the Earth herself refused to receive him and cast him forth. Agathias, in his Historia, even relates a story where the dead person himself explained why the earth had refused to receive his body by admitting that he had committed incest with his mother. We know that actual incest is rare enough, but that the wish for it is the primordial sin from which all others are derived. [Even to-day in Greece many of the usual imprecations refer to this belief. The following selection is quoted from Summers, as also the passage afterwards: 'May the earth not receive him'; 'May the ground not consume him 1 ; 'May the earth not digest thee'; 'May the black earth spew thee up'; 'Mayest thou remain incorrupt'; 'May the earth not loose thee'; which is to say may the body not decompose; 'May the ground reject thee'; 'Mayest thou become in the grave like rigid wood'; 'May the ground reject him wholly'. . . . Since even the curse uttered by a man in moments of anger and impatience may have such terrible effects, in Greece it is necessary that there should be some expedient which may dissipate and dis- pel the forces to which these words have given an im- petus capable of producing the most serious and ^hor- rible results. Accordingly at a Greek death-bed there is carried out a certain ritual to attain this end. A vessel of water is brought to the bedside and he throws into it a handful of salt, and when this is dissolved the sick man

CH.IV THE VAMPIRE 105

sprinkles with the lymph all those who are present, say- ing: 'As this salt dissolves so may my curses dissolve/ This ceremony absolves all persons whom he may have cursed in his lifetime from the evil of a ban which after death he would no longer be able to revoke.]

Guilty sexual wishes are not the only ones that are projected on to the dead, nor are they the only reason for the supposed unrest in the grave. We shall therefore have to return to this important theme later to gain a more complete picture of it after dealing with the other reasons for the unrest. Before doing this, however, we have to consider some further derivatives of the wish for re-union based on love.

In contrast with the wish for re-union with the dead there is the equally pronounced dread of such a contin- gency, and this indeed is much the more familiar of the two attitudes. The thought of meeting a ghost evokes apprehension far more readily than curiosity or interest. As Hock 1 very truly says: 'Allen Menschenrassen ge- meinsam ist die Furcht vor ihren Toten/ ('Fear of their dead is common to all races of mankind/) There has in consequence been developed a quite extraordinary num- ber of rituals in connection with burial the object of which is to prevent such possibilities, and many of these are still employed at the present day. 2 Many of these, which will be mentioned later, are devised with the specific prophylactic purpose of preventing the dead returning in Vampire form.

Now fear of the dead has two deep sources both of which originate in childhood. The first, with which we are concerned at present, is derived from love, the second from hate. As these two emotional attitudes so often occur together, even in respect of the same person, it is not always easy to distinguish between the manifesta- tions of them. Love itself does not give rise to fear when it is free and fully accepted by the ego. It gives rise to

1 Hock, op. cit. S. i.

• M. D. Conway, Demonology and Devil-Lore, 1879, vol. i. pp. 52, 53. Hock,

op. cit. S. i. Wuttke, op. cit. S. 480.

106 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS ** n

fear, however, when it is guilty and repressed: one of the most important of Freud's discoveries was that morbid dread always signifies repressed sexual wishes. 1 Further, we know from psycho-analysis that the replacement of repressed sexuality by fear is a process brought about by the persistence in the unconscious of the unsolved in- cest conflicts of infancy. This also explains the constant association of sadism and fear in such beliefs, dreams, etc., for the infantile conception of sexuality is always sadistic in nature. Three changes thus take place in the original wish: (i) love reverts to sadism, (2) the event is feared instead of desired, and (3) the individual to whom the wish relates is replaced by an unknown being. Even the idea of Death itself may be used to represent this unknown being: dying is often depicted as an attack by a ruthless person who overpowers one against one's will. The sexual idea itself may or may not appear in the con- scious belief or fear; it is often concealed by a general apprehension that the creature may throttle one or do some vaguely dreadful thing to one. We are thus led to a large group of myths and superstitious ideas in which the revenant inflicts various injuries, and to a still larger group in which the attack proceeds not necessarily from a revenant , but from any kind of evil spirit (Alp and Luren sagas). The presence of the sadistic feature in- creases the difficulty of distinguishing the elements of love and hate, of sexuality and hostility; a typical ex- ample of this would be the Apollonius-Menippus story which Keats has so beautifully elaborated in his Lamia poem. A further complexity is introduced by the beliefs in which the Vampire-like spirit emanates not from a dead but from a still living person. Stern 2 says, for in- stance, that the Thessalians, Epirotes and Wallachians still believe in such somnambulists who wander about at night and tear people to pieces with their teeth. The

1 See Ernest Jones, 'The Pathology of Morbid Anxiety', Journal of Abnormal Psychology, vol. vi. 1911, pp. 81-106. [Reprinted in my Papers on Psycho- Analysis, and also Part I. of the present volume.]

• Stern, op. cit. S. 360. See also B. Schmidt, Volksleben der Neugriechen,

1871, Bd. i. S. 166.

CH. IV

THE VAMPIRE I(>7

Portuguese Bi:uxsa may also be mentioned here: Andree 1 describes her as follows: 'Nachts erhebt sie sich von ihrem Lager und fliegt dann in der Gestalt irgend eines riesigen Nachtvogels weit von der Heimat weg. Die Bruxeri halten Zusammenkiinfte mit ihren teu- flischen Liebhabern, entfiihren, angstigen und peinigen die einsamen Wanderer; wenn sie von ihrer nachtlichen Lustfahrt heimkehren, saugen sie den eigenen Kindern das Blut aus.' ('At night she leaves her resting-place and flies far from home in the form of some kind of gigantic night-bird. The Bruxsas keep tryst with their diabolical lovers and seduce, terrify and torment lonely wanderers. On returning from their nocturnal journey of pleasure they suck the blood of their own children/)

The considerations brought forward in previous chapters on the transformation of incestuous revenants into animals makes it comprehensible that Vampires may appear in a variety of animal guises. 2 Some of these are specially frequent in different countries: thus female cats in Japan, 3 pigs in Servia, 4 etc. Of especial interest is the widespread belief that the Vampire can appear in the form of a snake, of a butterfly 5 or an owl, 6 for these were originally figurative symbols of departed souls, particularly of the parents. Creatures that fly by night will occupy us in a future chapter, but the theme has a number of connections with the Vampire belief. When, for instance, one has anything to do with the body of a Vampire, one has to take special care to w r atch whether a butterfly flies away from it; if so, it is important to catch and burn it. As to owls, there is the popular belief that they suck at the udders of cows and the breasts of children, just like a real Vampire. 7 Laistner 8 finds associ-

1 R. Andr6e, Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleichc, 1878, S. 87. See also H. B. Schindler, Aberglauben des Mittelalters, 1858, S. 30. Andrei, op. cit. S. 80, 89.

D. Brauns, Japanische Mdrchen und Sagen, 1885, S. 397. Krauss, op. cit. S. 128.

F. Kanitz, Donaubulgarien und der Balkan, 1875, Bd. i. S. 80. H. Freimark, Okkultismus und Sexualitdt, S. 326. L. Laistner, Das Rdtsel der Sphinx, 1889, Bd. ii. S. 258. Laistner, op. cit. S. 257.

108 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

ation between a butterfly and an owl on the one hand and the ghostly bird-like spirit that sucks goats' udders (Habergeiss) on the other. Henne am Rhyn 1 even re- garded the Roman fly-by-night Strigas as the ancestors of the European Vampires, though it is generally held that they were only to a small extent responsible for the belief in the latter.

So far we have been considering one manifestation of the love motif, the wish or the fear that the dead should return to the living. We have next to mention its expres- sion in the idea of the living joining the lost one in death, and in so doing we begin to pass into the realm of the definitely pathological. This motif of the living being drawn by his love into death, where the two parted ones are for ever united, occurs in a great number of narra- tives, dramas and poems as well as in actual beliefs. In the present context it is chiefly found in the form of pro- jection on to the dead person, for the Vampire almost always takes the life of the living person he visits. It is probable, however, that the motive here ascribed to the Vampire originates far more in hate than in love, so that we shall deal with it rather in that connection.

Grief for the loved person, however, explains only a part of the peculiar power of attraction that the idea of death exercises. This is evident from the fact that many feel this power who have never themselves experienced the loss of one dear to them. With some the idea is con- nected with that of a Beyond, the mysterious land of boundless possibilities where all phantasies are realized and all secrets revealed that land beside whose won- drous treasures even the highest attainable earthly bliss is without value. Shelley in his 'Adonais' expresses this feeling: Lif e> like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.

How much more attractive thesepossibilities of the future can be to those whose life contains little but misery is shown by the use religions have at all times made of them.

• O. Henne am Rhyn, Der Teufel- und Hexenglaube, 1892, S. 20.

CH.IV THE VAMPIRE 10$

Apart, however, from the attraction death offers as an escape into the promised happiness of another world, there is reason to think that with many people the act of dying itself exercises a curious fascination, one which psycho-analysis has shown to be closely akin to maso- chism. This is one of the reasons why the combination of the two motifs Love and Death have preoccupied poets like Heine, Shelley, Swinburne, Werner, etc., who have been so plunged in suffering.

We have next to mention a still more remarkable per- version of the love-instinct, namely, the wish to die to- gether with the person one loves. With some people, of which the poet Heinrich von Kleist was a notable ex- ample, this longing becomes a veritable passion and the whole of their love is concentrated in the idea. The sources of this wish are, as might perhaps be expected, very complicated, and I propose to say only a little about them here. 1 The clearest of them is the sure feeling of definiteness and permanence that death offers: what one has in death one has for ever. This ardently coveted de- sideratum of all lovers is nowhere more wonderfully expressed than in the numerous passages on the Liebes- tod in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, such as:

'So stiirben wir, um ungetrennt, ewig einig, ohne End 1 , ohn' Erwachen, ohn' Erbangen, namenlos in Lieb' umfangen, ganz uns selbst gegeben, der Liebe nur zu leben.'

('So should we die

that ne'er again

our souls might suffer

parting's pain,

that unawakened,

unforbidden,

for reach of name

too deeply hidden, our beings we might blend in love without an end/)

1 For further details see Ernest Jones, 'Zum Problem des gemeinsamen Sterbens', Zentralblatt ftir Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. i. S. 563 et seq. [Reprinted in Essays in Applied Psycho- Analysis, 1923, ch. ii.j

110 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

Psycho-analysis 1 has shown that this feature of in- satiability and of insistence on exclusive possession is particularly urgent with those who have not succeeded in emancipating themselves from the infantile desire to make a test case of their first love problem, that of in- cest with the mother and rivalry with the father. Death, which so often in infancy means little more than de- parture, 2 can then come to signify simply setting forth with the loved mother away from the disturbing influ- ence of the hated father.

This love motif can, however, especially when in a state of repression, regress to an earlier form of sexuality, particularly to the sadistic-masochistic phase of develop- ment. It was remarked above that the masochistic side of a personality tends to regard the idea of Death as an aggressive onslaught, and the same is even truer of the idea of a dead person. A dead person who loves will love for ever and will never be weary of giving and receiving caresses. This insatiability of the dead was well described by Heine in his dedication to Dr. Faust; the returning Helena says:

Du hast mich beschworen aus dem Grab Durch deinen Zauberwillen, Belebtest mich mit Wollustglut Jetzt kannst du die Glut nicht stillen.

Press deinen Mund an meinen Mund, Der Menschen Odem ist gottlich! Ich trinke deine Seele aus, Die Toten sind unersattlich.

(Thou hast called me from my grave By thy bewitching will; Made me alive, feel passionate love, A passion thou canst never still.

Press thy mouth close to my cold mouth; Man's breath is god-like created! I drink thy essence, I drink thy soul, The dead can never be sated.)

1 See, for example, J. Sadger, Heinrich von Kleist: Eine pathographisch- psychologische Stuaie, 1910, S. 60 et sea.

1 Sigm. Freud, Die Traumdeutung, Dritte Auflage, 1911, S. 184.

CH. iv THE VAMPIRE III

On the other hand the dead being allows everything, can offer no resistance, and the relationship has none of the inconvenient consequences that sexuality may bring in its train in life. The phantasy of loving such a being can therefore make a strong appeal to the sadistic side of the sexual instinct. Necrophilia, or love for the dead, occurs in two well-marked forms. The more normal of the two appears to be little more than an extension of the part played by love in mourning, the frantic aver- sion against accepting the event and parting for ever from the loved being. This form was well known to the ancients, both in fact and in legend. Herodotus narrates several examples of it, including that of the Tyrant Periander who continued to have sexual relations with his wife Melissa after her death. King Herod was said to have slept with the corpse of his wife Marianne for seven years after her death, and similar stories were told of King Waldemar IV 1 and Charlemagne. 2 The theme has been widely exploited in modern literature, e.g. in Heinrich von Kleist's Marquise von 0, Otto Ludwig's Maria, Heine's Beschworung, Zacharias Werner's Kreuzes- briidern, Brentano's Romanzen von Rosenkranz, Marquis de Sade's Justine, and, still more, in his Juliette, le Vylars Souvestre's Le Vampire, and Baudelaire's Le Vampire.

The other, more gruesome, form of necrophilia ranks as perhaps the most extreme imaginable perversion of the love instinct. In it the person obtains gratification with any corpse, not that of a loved object, and he does so either by performing some kind of sexual act on the corpse or, more characteristically, by biting, tearing and devouring its decaying flesh. It evidently signifies a re- version to the most primitive aspects of sadism, both of the oral and anal kind; the latter is indicated by the close association that is often found in the unconscious between the ideas of faeces (or the babies supposed to arise from them) and of any kind of decomposing material, particularly human corpses. In superstition

1 Singer, Bibliothek des literarischen Vereincs, clxxxv. Sect. xvi. 1 Conway, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 396. H. Steffens, Novellen, 1837, Bd. i. S. 19.

112 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

necrophilia is more correctly represented by the idea of the Arabian ghoul, but this is in many ways connected with that of the Vampire itself. Vampires are, for in- stance, commonly believed to devour the bodies of neighbouring corpses before they are driven to seek living flesh, and the person he drags into death then does the same. The admixture of the two ideas of Ghoul and Vampire is well illustrated by an Oriental tale where the being in question is a revenant, devours corpses, and sucks the blood of his wife. 1 It is not without significance that the expression 'Vampirism' was (inaccurately) used to describe the two best-known cases of necrophilia in the nineteenth century, namely, 'Le vampyre de Paris' forM. Bertrand 2 and'Le Vampyre du Muy' for Ardisson. 8 We divided the motives impelling to re-union with the dead into two, those concerned with Love and with Hate respectively, and we have now to turn our attention to the second of these two groups. Though it is at least as important as the other motive, there is less to be said about it for the simple reason that it is far less complex. The mechanism is the same as that of the terrors of childhood, i.e. the fear of retaliation for wrong-doing or for wicked thoughts. Someone who has a repressed hatred not an ordinary, conscious one is apt to have bad dreams, or even a dread of ghosts, indicating his fear of being appropriately punished by the person to whom he had wished ill. These evil wishes play an enor- mously important part in the unconscious mind and ultimately emanate from the hostile 'death- wishes 1 nourished by the child against the disturbing parent or other rival. The guilty conscience resulting from such wishes against those who are otherwise objects of affec- tion naturally brings the thought that if they really died, and the evil wishes were thus fulfilled, they would surely return from the grave to haunt and torture their 'mur- derer'. It is largely because such wishes are so common in

1 Gholes, Histoire des Vampires. 1820, p. 106.

1 L. Lunier, 'Examen m6dico-16gal d'un cas de monomanie instinctive: affaire du sergent Bertrand', Annales nUdico-psychologiques, 1849, p. 353.

• M. Belletrud et E, Mercier, L' Affaire Ardisson, 1903.

CH. iv THE VAMPIRE 113

the unconscious that the prevailing attitude towards the supernatural is one of fear or even terror. We have here another reason, in addition to the one formerly adduced, why a Vampire is so prone to visit his nearest relatives; in a celebrated case, for instance, that was reported by the Count de Cadreras in 1720, and which led to a Com- mission of Inquiry being instituted by the Emperor Charles VI, a man returned from the grave after sixteen years and caused the death of his two sons by sucking their blood.

As is intelligible from daily experience, traces are plainly to be found in this set of beliefs of endeavours to shift the sense of guilt arising from repressed hostility. The most typical method is to displace it by projection on to the dead person himself, who is supposed to be unable to rest in peace because of his uneasy conscience. A person who is cursed see above for examples is be- lieved to become a Vampire after death, the assumption being that he would not have been cursed had he not been a wicked person, so that the person cursing was fully justified in doing so. That is probably why the most effective curses and bans are those of a person of respect such as a father or godfather, above all those of a priest. In spite of these endeavours, however, the psychological fact remains and must be faced, that the person who dreads the Vampire is the person really afflicted by guilt. There is little doubt that we have here a^second motive, and probably much the more important one, for the bond described above between the living and the dead and for the numerous ritualistic performances that are intended to appease the dead and allow of peaceful decomposition. One of the most typical of these is the custom, common in all regions of the world, of lacerating one's body until blood flows copiously. It is often accompanied by shaving of the head (i.e. symbolic castration), so that the mourner obviates the need of the dead man to inflict the terrible punishment by doing it himself in a milder manner.

This theme of guiltiness leads us to the perception that the two fundamental motives of love and hate, i.e. the

114 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

sexual and hostile impulses, meet at this nodal point. To put the matter simply, love leads to hate and hate leads to guilt. This reproduces the primordial triangular situa- tion through which every individual has to pass in in- fancy, typically loving the parent of the opposite sex and hating that of the same sex. In the present context both of these emotional attitudes are projected on to the Vampire, whose sense of guilt is then supposed to impel him to allay it by glutting them in the way we have seen described.

Let us now listen to the popular beliefs on this subject. The common people hold that there are two reasons why a departed spirit is moved to leave the grave and to return to the living, according as he does this volun- tarily or involuntarily. In the former case his motives are supposed to be those already considered above: love, hate (desire to avenge an old wrong) or his conscience (de- sire to complete an unfinished task, to settle an unpaid debt, to right a wrong, etc.). The reasons why a spirit is prevented from resting in peace and forced to wander to and fro against his will may lie in his destiny, in his own misdeeds or in interference on the part of those left behind him. The Roman Catholic Church has elaborated this group into a complete dogma; masses are said for those in purgatory. The involuntary activity of the dead often wins the sympathy of the living, who abstain from all manner of things that might increase his unrest. 1

All these considerations apply to the Vampire belief itself, for, although someone may become a Vampire after death in a great many different ways, 2 still it is easy to distinguish two groups according as he is responsible for the event or not. Sometimes the two types carry different names. Stern 3 tells us: 'Die Vampire der Dal- matiner sind in zwei Art en eingeteilt, in schuldlose und schuldbeladene. Die eine Art heisst Denac, die andere Orko/ ('In Dalmatia Vampires are divided into two

1 See Wuttke, op. cit. S. 481, where a number of examples are given.

• Hock, op. cit. S. 21-23. Stern, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 351-369.

8 Stern, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 360.

CH. iv THE VAMPIRE 115

kinds, into innocent and guilty. The one is called Denac, the other Orko.') Hock 1 lists a number of sins that may lead to this fate after death; they include working on Sundays, smoking on holy days, and having sexual inter- course with one's grandmother.

There are several causes of Vampirism in the innocent. He may be predestined from birth to this fate by being born on an unlucky day or by coming of a family in which there is an hereditary tendency to Vampirism. These congenital causes, like the doctrine of 'original sin 1 , are, of course, connected with parental sin. A clear example of this is the belief in Greece one, incidentally, which contradicts the old English rhyme on the same topic that children born on Christmas Day are doomed to become Vampires in punishment of their mother's sin of being so presumptuous as to conceive on the same day as the Virgin Mary. During their lifetime such children are known as Callicantzaros, and in order, if possible, to obviate further developments it is customary to burn the soles of their feet until the nails are singed and so their claws clipped. The other congenital group concerns such features as red hair, blue eyes, pallid countenance, plentiful hair, and strong and precocious teeth: it is noteworthy that this description exactly corresponds with the popular conception of an over-sexual person, one which runs through a great deal of folklore. Even after death this fate may be brought about by an unclean bird or other animal (particularly dogs and cats) settling on his grave, leaping over his dead body, or creeping under his coffin, acts which are evidently connected with the idea of insufficient respect or care for the dead. The animal here is a symbol in the unconscious of the hating person, so that the custom, still prevalent in the North of England, of at once killing it has its psychological sense, as also is the belief that such an animal will blind the next person he caresses after leaving the corpse.

After the diagnosis of Vampirism has been made the treatment prescribed is of a very varied kind. The

i Hock, op. cit. S. 22.

Il6 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

simplest consists of measures calculated to afford the dead some comfort, rest, or at least a peaceful occupa- tion, 1 More active is the practice of drinking his blood 2 or eating his flesh, 3 one which again shows the reciprocal talion nature of the relationship bet ween dead and living. When matters get so far as this, however, it is customary to take even sterner measures. One begins by driving a stake through the heart, and it is important that this should be done with a single blow, for two or three would restore it to life a belief to be found in many allied fields of folklore. 4 It is then desirable to strike off the head again with a single stroke and to place it be- tween the feet, to boil the heart in oil, and to hack the body to pieces. It is noteworthy how closely these corre- spond with the punishment meted out, especially in the East, to peculiarly atrocious murderers. The one infal- lible measure, however, when all else fails, is to burn the corpse utterly and to scatter the ashes under appro- priate precautions.

• * * # #

We pass now to the second essential attribute of the Vampire, namely Bloodsucking. Here we find a great many predecessors of the Vampire proper. In general it may be said that the habit of sucking living blood is through- out connected with ideas of cannibalism on the one hand and the Incubat-Succubat, two facts which alone reveal the sexual origin of the belief. The Assyrian and Baby- lonian Lilats, 5 the Eastern Palukah, 6 the Finnish Lord of the Underworld, 7 the Bohemian Mora, 8 the German Alp: 9 all suck human blood. The Ludak of the Lap- landers appears in the form of a bug and sucks blood through an iron tube. 10 The Malayan Molong, as well as

Hock, op. cit. S. 27, 28. Stern, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 351-369. W. Mannhardt, Die praktischen Folgen des Aberglaubens, 1878, S. 13. W. J. A. Tettau und J. D. H. Temme, Volkssagen Ostpreussens, 1837, S. 275. E. S. Hartland, The Legend of Perseus, 1896, vol. iii. p. 23. C. Binet-Sangl^, La Folie de Jesus, t. ii. 1910, p. 91. Stern, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 359.

M. A. Castren, Vorlesungen uber die finnische Mythologie, 1853, S. 131. J. V. Grohmann, Sagen aus Bohmen und Mdhren, 1864, Bd. i. S. 24. Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 61. 10 J. C. Poestion, Lappldndische Mdrchen, 1886, S. 132.

CH. iv THE VAMPIRE 1 17

the Penangelam of Indo-China, visit women at night and live on the human blood they suck. 1

The sexual nature of the act is plainly indicated in the following examples. Heinrich von Wlislocki, 2 in his re- searches into Roumanian superstitions, tells us: 'Der Nosferat saugt nicht nur schlafender Menschen Blut, sondern stiftet auch als Inkubus-Succuba Unheil. Der Nosferat ist das totgeborene uneheliche Kind zweier Leute, die beide ebenfalls uneheliche Kinder sind. Kaum wird das von solcher Mutter und solchem Vater stam- mende uneheliche und totgeborene Kind in der Erde verscharrt, so erwacht es zum Leben, entsteigt seinem Grabe und kehrt nicht mehr dahin zuriick. Als schwarze Katze, als schwarzer Hund, als Kafer, Schmetterling oder auch bios als Strohhalm besucht es nachts die Men- schen; wenn es mannlichen Geschlechts ist: die Frauen; wenn es weiblichen Geschlechts ist: die Manner. Mit jungen Leuten treibt es geschlechtliche Vermischung, bis sie krank werden und an Auszehrung sterben. In diesem Falle kommt es auch als schoner Jiingling oder als schones Madchen, wahrend die Opfer halb wach liegen und widerstandlos sich ihm fiigen. Oft geschieht es, dass Weiber von ihnen geschwangert werden und Kinder gebaren, die durch ihre Hasslichkeit und dadurch erkennbar sind, dass sie am ganzen Leibe Haare haben. Die werden dann sicher wieder Hexen, gewohnlich Moroiu. Der Nosferat erscheint bei Brautigam und Braut und macht sie impotent und unfruchtbar.' (The Nos- ferat not only sucks the blood of sleeping people, but also does mischief as an Incubus or Succubus. The Nosferat is the still-born, illegitimate child of two people who are similarly illegitimate. It is hardly put under the earth before it awakes to life and leaves its grave never to return. It visits people by night in the form of a black cat, a black dog, a beetle, a butterfly or even a simple straw. When its sex is male, it visits women; when female, men. With young people it indulges in sexual

1 R. A, Davenport, Sketches of Imposture, Deception and Credulity, 1861 PP- 73. 75- * Quoted by Stern, op> cit> Bd. i. S. 357, 358.

Il8 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS w. n

orgies until they get ill and die of exhaustion. In this case it also appears in the form of a handsome youth or a pretty girl, while the victim lies half awake and submits unresistingly. It often happens that women are im- pregnated by the creature and bear children who can be recognized by their ugliness and by their having hair over the whole body. They then always become witches, usually Moroiu. The Nosferat appears to bridegrooms and brides and makes them impotent and sterile/) The Chaldeans believed in the existence of spirits who had intercourse with mortals in their sleep, devoured their flesh and sucked their blood; 1 a complete Jack the Ripper phantasy. The Vedic Gandharvas are blood- thirsty lewd demons who visit women in their sleep. 2 Similar to them are the Indian Pisachas, who lust after flesh and indulge their cruel pleasure on women when these are asleep, drunk or insane. 3 Other beings of the same kind devote their attention rather to men; thus the Ruthenian Upierzyca when the moon is full seeks youths in their bed 4 and consumes them in kisses and embraces. 5 Freimark 6 writes: 'Die griechisch-romischen Lamien sind zugleich Buhlteufelinnen und Vampire. Sie suchen schone, kfaftige Jiinglinge in sich verliebt zu machen und zur Verehelichung mit sich zu bringen. Haben sie sie so weit, so tot en sie den Jiinglmg, indem sie ihm das Blut aussaugen/ (The Greek and Roman Lamias are at the same time lewd demons and Vampires. They try to get handsome strong youths to fall in love with them and to marry them. Having succeeded in this, they kill them by sucking their blood/) Finally, one may remark that the present-day use of the word, particularly cur- rent since the War, speaks in the same direction: a film Vampire is a beautiful woman who uses her sexual charms for anal-sadistic purposes.

1 J. Menant, Ninive et Babylone, p. 271.

• E. W. A. Kuhn, Zeitschrift fur vergleichende Sprachforschung, Jahrg. xiii.

S. 118.

A. W. von Schlegel, Indische Bibliothek, 1823, Bd. i. S. 87.

4 Just like the Montenegrin Vampires, Stern, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 361.

5 F. von Hellwald, Die Welt der Slaven, Zweite Auflage, 1890, S. 367.

Freimark, op. cit. S. 278, 279.

CH. iv THE VAMPIRE 1 19

Blood is not the only vital fluid extracted from the victim, though the Vampire proper generally confines himself to it. The German Alp sucks the nipples of men 1 and children, 2 and withdraws milk from women 3 and cows 4 more often than blood. The Drud also sucks the breasts of children, 5 while the Southern Slav Mora sucks blood or milk indifferently. 6 In India, the Churel, after spending a night with a handsome young man sucks his very life' out. 7

The explanation of these phantasies is surely not hard. A nightly visit from a beautiful or frightful being, who first exhausts the sleeper with passionate embraces and then withdraws from him a vital fluid: all this can point only to a natural and common process, namely to noc- turnal emissions accompanied with dreams of a more or less erotic nature. In the unconscious mind blood is com- monly an equivalent for semen, and it is not necessary to have recourse, as Hock 8 does, to the possibility of 'selbst zugefiigten Kratzwunden wahrend eines wol- liistigen Traumes' ('wounds inflicted on oneself by scratching during a voluptuous dream').

Many myths and legends afford strongly confirmatory evidence of this conclusion. To begin with, the Accadian Gelal and Kiel Galal, the Assyrian Sil and Sileth, who are equivalent to the European Incubus and Succubus, are demons whose special function it was to bring about nocturnal emissions by nocturnal embraces. 9 According to Quedenfeldt, 10 south of the Atlas mountains there pre- vails the belief that there are old negresses who at night suck blood from the toes of those asleep. The Armenian mountain spirit Dachnavar similarly sucks blood from

1 Grohmann, loc. cit.

• H. Floss, Das Kind im Branch und Sitte der Vdlker, 1884, Bd. i. S. 298.

8 Laistncr, loc. cit. 4 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 82.

6 F. X. von Schonwerth, A us der OberpfalzSitten und Sagen, 1858, Bd. i. S. 201, 211.

1 Krauss, op. cit. S. 147, 148.

7 Compare Laurence Hope's poem 'Lalla Radha and the Churel 1 in Stars of the Desert, 1909.

8 Hock, op. cit. S. 5.

1 F. Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, English translation, 1877, p. 38. 10 M, Quedenfeldt, cited by Stern, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 359.

120 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIJEVAL SUPERSTITIONS *T. n

the feet of wanderers, 1 while Meyer 8 mentions ghostly mothers who suck out the eyes of their children. As is well known, 3 toes, feet and eyes are in folklore and mythology, as well as in dreams and psychoneurotic symptoms, frequently recurring phallic symbols. The nervous system, particularly the spinal cord, often has the same symbolic meaning as blood (vital substance), which is the reason why sufferers from excessive noc- turnal emissions so often develop the dread of softening of the spine with paralysis. The Roman Strigas, for instance, used to suck, not only the blood of children, but also their spinal marrow. 4 The idea that moral delin- quency, essentially masturbation, leads to weakness of the spine is extremely widespread. On the first page of Zschokke's Die Zauberin Sidonia, written in 1798, there occurs the following line: 'Die Faulheit saugt uns mit ihrem Vampyrenriissel Mark und Blut ab' ('Laziness with its vampire snout sucks away our marrow and blood'). This may be compared with Jaromir's speech in Grillparzer's Ahnfrau:

Und die Angst mit Vampirriissel Saugt das Blut aus meinen Adern, Aus dem Kopfe das Gehirn.

('And terror, with its vampire snout, sucks the blood from out my veins, the brain from out my head'.)

It is evident that in the Vampire superstition proper the simple idea of the vital fluid being withdrawn through an exhausting love embrace is complicated by more perverse forms of sexuality, as well as by the ad- mixture of sadism and hate. When the more normal aspects of sexuality are in a state of repression there is always a tendency to regress towards less developed forms. Sadism is one of the chief of these, and it is the earliest form of this known as oral sadism that plays such an important part in the Vampire belief. The still

1 A. von Haxthausen, Transkaukasien, 1856, Bd. i. S. 170.

• E. H. Meyer, Indogermanische Mythen, 1883, Bd. ii. S. 528.

• See Aigremont, Fuss- und Schuh-Symbolih und -Erotik, 1909; and S* Selig-

mann, Der base Blick und Verwandtes, 1910.

4 G. Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, 1869* Bd* is S^ 147.

earlier stage, the simple sucking that precedes biting, is more connected with the love side we have discussed earlier, the sadism more with the element of hate. The act of sucking has a sexual significance from earliest infancy 1 which is maintained throughout life in the form of kissing; in certain perversions it can actually replace the vagina itself.

From the earliest times myths and legends about Vampires have existed in Europe; a typical example is the Wallachian belief that red-haired men appear after death in the form of frogs, beetles, etc., and drink the blood of beautiful girls. 2 Further, there have come down to us from the earliest Middle Ages reports of the custom existing in most European countries of digging up, piercing with a stake or burning the corpse of those spirits who torment the living and suck their blood. 8 As has already been pointed out, this belief is spread over the whole world: for example, the modern Pontianaks of Java, who emanate from corpses, have the habit of suck- ing blood, 4 and the Assyrian Vampire, called Akakharu, has on the other hand the most ancient lineage. 5 Our fullest knowledge of the belief in Europe, however, we owe to the Balkan peninsula, where it has evidently been greatly influenced by Turkish superstitions. 6 In England we have several complete and typical accounts related by William of Newburgh 7 in the twelfth century, but since that date hardly a trace of the belief is to be found. In ancient Ireland the Vampire, under the name of the Dearg-dul, 'red blood-sucker', played a consider- able part among popular dreads, but he likewise seems to have vanished at an early date.

The epidemics of Vampirism, which had been frequent enough before, reached their highest point in the south-

1 Sigm. Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, Zweite Auflage, 1910, S. 40. [Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. v. S. 54.]

• Andre"e, op. cit. S. 87.

3 Hock, op. cit. S. 30-34. 4 Davenport, op. cit. p. 72.

5 Conway, loc. cit.

• Krauss, op. cit. S. 124.

7 William of Newburgh, Historic* Rerum Anglicarum, Book V. ch. xxii.- xxiv.

122 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS FT. n

east of Europe during the eighteenth century 1 and lasted well on into the nineteenth. 2 The most alarming took place in Chios in 1708,* in Hungary in 1726,* in Meduegya and Belgrade4n 1725 and 1732,*^ Servia in i825, 6 an( i in Hungary in i832. 7 In the year 1732 there appeared in Germany alone some fourteen books on the subject, 8 which evoked general horror and drew wide attention to the problem. It did not escape Voltaire's satire, who in his discussion of it in his Dictionnaire philosophique wrote: 'La difficulte etait de savoir si c'etait Fame ou le corps du mort qui mangeait: il fut decide que c'etait Tun et Fautre; les mets delicats et peu substantiels, comme les meringues, la creme fouettee et les fruits fondants, etaient pour Tame; les ros-bif etaient pour le corps/ We are not concerned here with the actual causes of these fatal epidemics, which is a purely medical pro- blem. Hock 9 remarks that they occurred chiefly when plague was rife, and it is certain that the association of stench is common to the two ideas. Bearing in mind the anal-erotic origin of necrophilia, commented on above, we are not surprised to observe what stress many writers on the subject lay on the horrible stink that invests the Vampire. One example of this will suffice: Allacci 10 de- scribes a Greek Vampire called the Burculacas, 'than whom no plague more terrible or more harmful to man can well be thought of or conceived. This name is given him from vile filth. For povpfca means bad black mud, not any kind of mud but feculent muck that is slimy and oozing with excrementitious sewerage so that it exhales a most noisome stench. Xa*/co9 is a ditch or a cloaca in

1 See especially A. Calmet, Dissertation sur les apparitions des anges, des demons et des esprits, et sur les revenants et vampires de Hongrie, de Boheme, de Moravie, et de Sittsie, 1746.

2 Compare Gartenlaube, 1873, Nr. 34, 'Der Vampir-Schrecken im neun- zehnten Jahrhundert'.

Sepp, op. cit. S. 269. * Sepp, loc. cit.

Horst, op. cit. Erster Teil, S. 251; Funfter Teil, S. 381. This is the epidemic that has been most often described.

Sepp, op. cit. S. 270. . 7 Sepp, loc. cit.

Horst, op. cit. Erster Teil, S. 265, 266; Fiinfter Teil, S. 383. Hock, op. cit. S. 31, 49. 10 L. Allacci, De quorundam Graecorum opinationibus t 1645, p. 142.

CH. iv THE VAMPIRE 123

which foulness of this kind collects and reeks amain. 1 Plagues, in their turn, have always been associated in the popular and to some extent in the medical mind with the notion of stench, particularly from decompos- ing sewage. The Vampire of Alnwick Castle, whose story is narrated by William of Newburgh, 1 was actually be- lieved to have caused an extensive plague through the evil odours he spread, and it ceased when his corpse was adequately dealt with. The association of ideas explicit in this story was doubtless implicit on countless other occasions. In the Middle Ages there was a close correla- tion between visitations of the Black Death and out- breaks of Vampirism, and even as late as 1855 the terrible cholera epidemic in Dantsic revived such a wide- spread belief in the dead returning as Vampires to claim the living that, according to medical opinion, the fears of the people greatly increased the mortality from the disease.

The Vampire superstition is still far from dead in many parts of Europe. In Norway, Sweden and Finland it lasted until quite recently. 2 Krauss 3 reports that at the present day the peasants in Bosnia believe in the existence of Vampires as firmly as in that of God, and the same is hardly less true of the Servian peasant. 4 The belief is still rife in Greece, and Lawson 6 in 1910 says: 'Even now a year seldom passes in which some village of Greece does not disembarrass itself of a vrykolakas by the traditional means, cremation.' In Bulgaria in 1837 a stranger, suspected of being a Vampire, was tortured and burned alive. 6 In 1874, in Rhode Island, U.S.A., a man exhumed the body of his own daughter and burned her heart in the belief that she was endangering the life of other members of the family, and about the same time in Chicago the body of a woman who had died of

1 Ibid.

a O. von Hovorka und A. Kronfeld, Vergleichende Volksmedizin, 1908, Bd. ii. S. 425. s Krauss, op. cit. S. 124.

4 Idem. 'Vampyre im siidslavischen Volksglauben', Globus, 1892, Bd. Ixi. S. 326.

8 J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folk Lore and Ancient Greek Religion, 1910, p. 374. 6 Stern, op. cit. Bd. i. S, 362.

124 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS FT. n

consumption was dug up and the lungs burned for the same reason. 1 In 1889 in Russia the corpse of an old man, suspected of being a Vampire, was dug up, at which many of those present stoutly maintained they saw a tail attached to his back. 2 In 1899 Roumanian peasants in Krassowa dug up no fewer than thirty corpses and tore them to pieces with the object of stop- ping an epidemic of diphtheria. 3 Two further instances occurred as recently as 1902, one in Hungary, 4 one in Bucharest, 5 and in 1909 a castle in South Transylvania was burned by the populace, who believed that a Vam- pire emanating from it was the cause of a sudden in- crease in the mortality of their children. 6 In 1912 a farmer in Hungary who had suffered from ghostly visi- tations went to the cemetery one night, stuffed three pieces of garlic note the homeopathic smell factor in the treatment and three stones into the mouth, and fixed the corpse to the ground by thrusting a stake through it in the approved fashion. 7

The word 'Vampire' itself, introduced into general European use towards the end of the first third of the eighteenth century, is a Southern Slav word. Its deriva- tion has been much disputed, but the greatest authority, H Miklosich, 8 considers the most likely one to be the North Turkish uber, a witch. The other Slavonic variants are: Bulgarian and Servian, vapir; Polish, upier; Russian, vopyr. The word has acquired various secondary mean- ings which are not without interest as showing what significations the conception has for the popular mind. The earliest extension first made by Buffon 9 was to designate certain bats which were thought to attack animals and even human beings in sleep. The old idea of a baleful night-flight is plain here. The two chief meta-

Conway, op. cit. p. 52.

A. A. Lowaaastimm, Aberglaube und Strafrecht, Deutsche Obersetz., 1897,

S.

101. 8 Neue Freie Presse, Nov. 8, 1899.

Stem, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 370. * Ibid.

Neues Wiener Journal, June 10, 1909. Daily Telegraph, February 15, 1912. F. Miklosich, Etymologisches Worterbuch der slavischen Sprachen, 1886,

374-

9 G. L. le Clerc de Buffon, Hist, natur. gen. et pa/t n 1762, t. x. p. 55.

CH.IV THE VAMPIRE 125

phorical connotations of the word are: (i) a social or political tyrant who sucks the life from his people; 1 this was used in English as early as 1741 ; 2 (2) an irresistible lover who sucks away energy, ambition or even life for selfish reasons; the latter may be of either sex, either male, as in Torresani's fascinating cavalry captain, 8 or female, as in Kipling's Vampire poem and in the daily speech of Hollywood.

The Vampire superstition is evidently closely allied to that of the Incubus and Succubus. Freimark 4 writes: 'Denn man kann, wenn auch nicht als Regel, so doch in den meisten iiberlieferten Fallen konstatieren, dass Frauen stets von einem mannlichen, Manner hingegen von einem weiblichen Vampir heimgesucht werden. . . . Das sexuelle Moment charakterisiert den Vampirglauben als eine andere, allerdings gefahrlichere Form des Inkubus- und Sukkubusglaubens/ (Though it is not an absolute rule, still it can be observed that in most cases women are constantly visited by male Vampires, and men by female ones. . . . The sexual features characterize the Vampire belief as another form of the Incubus-Succubus belief it is true, a more dangerous one/) Zimmermann 5 and Laurent and Nagour 6 are of the same opinion, and this is convincingly confirmed by our newly gained knowledge of the symbolism of such processes. Just as Incubi suck out vital fluids and thus exhaust the victim (see above), so do Vampires often lie on the breast and induce suffocation. The Hebrew Lilith, whom Johannes Weyer called the princess who presided over the Succubi, came from the Babylonian Lilitu, who was definitely a Vampire; incidentally, the name is now thought to be derived from lulti, 'lasciviousness', and not, as the Rabbis used to maintain, from the Hebrew Lailah, 'night '. The

See Hock for examples, op. cit. S. 56, 57, 61.

C. Forraan, Observations on the Revolution in 1688, 1741, p. n.

C. Torresani, A us der schdnen, wilden Leutnantzeit, 1894, Bd. ii. S. 141.

Freimark, op. cit. S. 331, 332.

Zimmermann, Die Wonne des Leids, 1885, S. 113.

Laurent und Nagour, op. cit. S. 146.

126 NIGHTMARE AND MEDLEVAL SUPERSTITIONS *T. u

similarity with the Alp belief, which in the popular mind takes the place of that in Incubi, is even more striking; just like the Vampire, the Alp, as also the Mara, is often the spirit of the recently deceased, 1 and can suck blood during sleep, with the same fatal conse- quences. 2 Among the Southern Slavs it is believed that when a Mara (there called Mora) once tastes a man's blood she falls in love with him and can never more leave him, plaguing him night after night; she is particu- larly found of sucking children's breasts, which then exude a thin fluid. 3 The most extensive connection, however, is that subsisting in the details of the two beliefs, particularly those concerning the causes and cure of the evil impulse that moves them to their ruthless deeds. By this I mean such details as the idea that both Alp and Vampire sometimes act on their own initiative, sometimes are compelled against their will the reasons being identical in the two cases; both attack wanderers who answer their questions, or who ask them where they come from, etc., etc. The methods of releasing those con- demned by spells are again similar, but to discuss these would be to embark on the complicated, though fasci- nating, theme of 'release' in folklore, and unfortunately that would take us too far from our topic: it must suffice here to say that of the long list of methods col- lected by Wuttke 4 by means of which returning or wandering souls, i.e. those prone to be Vampires, may be 'released' (or 'saved') the majority are identical with those efficacious in the 'release' of the Alp from his con- dition; Laistner, 5 for example, explains the belief men- tioned above that l^ie illegitimate children of illegitimate parents become Vampires as a variant of the 'releasing' motif, for when an illegitimate Mara begets an illegiti- mate chilc^she is herself 'released'. Further, the idea of travelling or flying by night is an important point of connection between the Vampire belief and the numerous

1 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 63. * Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 61.

3 Krauss, op. cit. S. 148. 4 Wuttke, op. cit. S. 480-481.

6 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 273.

CH. IV

THE VAMPIRE 127

Alp and Mahre myths in which it occurs; for instance, that of the Roman Striga or the Montenegrin Wjeschti- tza, 'ein weiblicher Geist mit feurigen Fliigeln, der den Schlafenden auf die Brust steigt, sie mit ihren Um- armungen erstickt oder wahnsinnig macht' ('a female spirit with fiery wings who mounts on to the breast of sleepers and stifles them with her embraces or drives them mad'). 1

The incest complex, which underlies the Incubus belief, shows itself equally in the Vampire one. We have shown above that the whole superstition is shot through with the theme of guilt, and we know from psycho- analysis that this is not only generated in the incest conflicts of infancy, but throughout life depends on them. The very fact that the Vampire is a revenant is decisive here, for we have already traced this conception to the in- cest complex. The appearance of the Vampire in animal form, particularly in that of a butterfly or snake 2 two of the commonest Oriental representatives of the father, is one of the many characteristic features of this origin, as again is the fact that his activities are altogether characterized by every possible infantile perversion.

We have finally to discuss the connections between the Vampire superstition and the experiences of anxiety dreams, particularly the Nightmare. Wundt 3 says on this point: 'Alsnachtliche Spuksgestalt, die den Schlafer um- klammert, um ihm das Blut auszusaugen, ist er sichtlich ein Produkt des Alptraumes.' ('As a nocturnal spirit who embraces a sleeper to suck his blood from him, he is evidently a product of the Nightmare/) He adds, how- ever, with justice that the idea of a spirit keeping alive by drinking blood comes from other and more general sources. Hock 4 distinguishes between the true blood- sucking Vampire and the hungry dead that tears his shroud and so draws his family to him merely through sympathy: 'Hat jene Tradition in der Traumvorstellung

1 Stern, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 356. * Krauss, op. cit. S. 129.

• W. Wundt, Volktrpsychologie, Bd. ii. Teil ii. 1906, S. 120.
• Hock, op. cit. S. 23.

E28 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT* n

ihre sichere Grundlage, so sind die Sagen von den "schmatzenden und kauenden" Toten offenbar im Hinblick auf tatsachlich erlebte Ereignisse nach dem ent- setzlichen Vorbilde eines im Grabe zu spat erwachten Scheintoten gebildet/ (The former tradition is firmly based on dream ideas, but the legends of the dead person "smacking his lips and chewing" are evidently constructed from actual experiences of people who awakened too late from a death-like trance/)

While Hock admits that the idea of the Vampire proper is derived from dream life, he adduces the ex- perience of finding people buried alive to explain one minor type of the species. Other writers, on the other hand, have used the dread of this experience to solve the whole riddle of the Vampire; this explanation is usually ascribed to Mayo, 1 though Weitenkampf 2 had already proffered it early in the eighteenth century. Medical opinion on the point would certainly be that the occurrence is too rare at all events when established with surety 4o account for any such widely held belief, but I mention the idea at this point because it gives me the opportunity of saying something about the respective parts played by phantasy and reality in the forming of superstitious beliefs. Oddly enough, this is the only psychological explanation of the Vampire superstition that has ever been put forward; other explanations have mostly regarded the belief as a true one and have merely tried to show why it is true. This paucity of psycho- logical explanation in itself shows that essential factors must have been overlooked hitherto, and it is hoped that the present study will contribute something to our understanding of them. There are two other facts of reality that have also been adduced to explain, or rather to justify, the Vampire belief: they are the occurrence of epidemic mortality, especially in association with the idea of foul smell, and the fact that in various circum-

1 H. Mayo, On the Truths contained in Popular Superstitions, 1851, p. 30. 8 Weitenkampf, Gedanken uber wichtige Wahrheiten aus der Vernunft und Religion, 1735, TheilL S. 108 et seq.

CH. iv THE VAMPIRE

stances decomposition after death can be very much delayed. Now a general popular tendency may readily be remarked to rationalize all superstitions by explain- ing them in terms of reality, though the slightest in- vestigation shows that such explanations always leave the essentials unexplained. For instance, to say that the notion of its being unlucky to walk under a ladder simply proceeds from the observation that something may be dropped on to one so doing neither accounts for the dis- tribution of the fear for it cannot be supposed that only those who have the fear are the only people who have made this observation; on the contrary, it is more often quoted by those who are free from the fear nor for the demonstrable association between this fear and that of passing through holes in general. And in the present case the three facts just mentioned burial alive, epidemic mortality and delayed decomposition in no way in themselves explain why a dead body should change into an animal, fly through the air and commit sexual ex- cesses with sleeping people. Other factors must obviously be at work, and these we maintain are the essential ones. Psycho-analysis, both of superstitious beliefs general or individual and of other similar mental processes, shows that the essential factors are much more dynamic than mere observation of external phenomena. The un- conscious tendencies at work in the construction of these beliefs simply fortify and justify them by any rational- istic means they can seize on. It is the capacity for im- mediate and intuitive insight into this way in which the mind functions that distinguishes a psychological men- tality from others.

The motives of love and hate discussed at length in this chapter show what extremely complex and what fundamental emotions are at work in the construction and maintenance of the Vampire superstition. It is one more product of the deepest conflicts that determine human development and fate those concerned with the earliest relationships to the parents. These come to their intensest expression in anxiety dreams, and in the present

130 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT.II

set of beliefs there is a number of features that point unequivocally to the conclusion that the terrible ex- periences there must have played an important part in moulding the beliefs in question. Such are: the occur- rence of the supposed events during sleep, the evident relation of the events to nocturnal emissions resulting from sexual particularly perversely sexual experi- ences, the Vampire's capacity for transformation, his flight by night, his appearance in animal form and, finally, the connection between the belief and that in the return of dead relatives. The belief is, in fact, only an elaboration of that in the Incubus, and the essential elements of both are the same repressed desires and hatreds derived from early incest conflicts. The main differences are that hate and guilt play a far larger part in the Vampire than in the Incubus belief, where the emotions are almost purely those of desire and fear.

[Since this chapter was written two works on the sub- ject have appeared in English. One, Vampires and Vampirism, by Dudley Wright, is a popular account of the matter; the other, two volumes entitled The Vampire, His Kith and Kin, and The Vampire in Europe, by Montague Summers, is a learned, though not compre- hensive, study which unfortunately is written from the point of view of occultism and so contributes nothing directly to the psychology of the belief.]

T

CHAPTER V

THE WEREWOLF

conception of the Werewolf is one of the most developed examples of the belief in the transfor- mation of men into animals, the sources of which were considered in the first chapter of this book. The other most important elements in this superstition are flight by night and cannibalism.

The wolf belongs to the group of savage animals which have been extensively employed in mythology and folk- lore for the portrayal of cruel and sadistic phantasies. To the same class as Werewolves belong the men-hyenas of Abyssinia, 1 the men-leopards of South Africa, 2 the men- tigers of Hindustan, 3 the men-bears of Scandinavia, 4 in whose existence, according to Mogk, 5 the Norwegian peasants still believe.

The allegorical significance of the wolf is easy to recog- nize. Hertz 6 writes: 'Betrachten wir nun speziell den Wolf, so erscheint er, das unersattlich mordgierige, bei Nacht und zur Winterszeit besonders gefahrliche Raub- tier, als das natiirliche Symbol der Nacht, des Winters und des Todes. . . . Der Wolf ist aber nicht allein das raubgierigste, er ist auch das schnellste, riistigste unserer grosseren vierfussigen Tiere. Diese seine Riistigkeit, seine wilde Kiihnheit, seine grausame Kampf- und Blut- gier verbunden mit seinem Hunger nach Leichenfleisch und seinen dadurch angeregten nachtlichen Besuchen der Totenfelder und Walstatten macht den Wolf zum Begleiter und Gefolgmann des Schlachtengottes/ ('If we now consider the wolf in particular, that insatiably

1 The Life and Adventures of Nathaniel Pierce, edited by Halls, 1831, vol. i. p. 287.

2 Marian Roalfe Cox, An Introduction to Folklore, 1904, p. 127.

8 Ed. Clodd, Myths and Dreams, 1891, p. 85. Marian Roalfe Cox, loc. cit.

4 Clodd, loc. cit. Marian Roalfe Cox, loc. cit.

6 E. Mogk, Germanische Mythologie, 1906, S. 34.

6 W. Hertz, Der Werwolf, Beitrag zur Sagengeschichte, 1862, S. 14, 15.

131

132 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

murderous beast of prey, especially dangerous at night and in winter, he would appear to be the natural symbol of night, of winter and of death. . . . But the wolf is not only the most bloodthirsty, he is also the swiftest and lustiest of our larger quadrupeds. This hardiness, his fierce boldness, his cruel lust for fight and blood, to- gether with his hunger for the flesh of corpses which makes him a night visitor of battlefields, make the wolf the companion of the God of Battles/)

The most prominent attributes which we may expect to have been used for the purposes of symbolism are thus swiftness of movement, insatiable lust for blood, cruelty, a way of attacking characterized by a combination of boldness and cunning craftiness, and further the associations with the ideas of night, death and corpse. As is easy to see, the savage and uncanny features char- acteristic of the wolf have made him specially suited to represent the dangerous and immoral side of nature in general and of human nature in particular. These features explain why the wolf has played a considerable part in different theologies. In Egypt the wolf was a sacred animal, and Osiris himself appeared in a wolf's shape when he returned from the dead to urge and help Horus take revenge on Set. 1 Two towns were named after the wolf, one in upper Egypt and one in lower Egypt. The wolf -god, Ap-uat, acted as a psychopomp, thus again illustrating the connection between the ideas of wolf and death, and opened the way to the gates of bliss, 2 a be- lief which psycho-analysts would associate with the in- fantile sadistic conception of coitus. In early times there were cannibalistic sacrifices to Ap-uat, 3 and in the Twelfth Dynasty he appears to have been regarded as the son of Osiris who defended him and walked in front of him at the ceremonial processions. 4

In Teutonic mythology the two wolves, Freki and

1 Diodor. Sic. Biblioth. i. 88.

2 E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, 1911, vol. ii.

pp. 159, 316-

8 Wallis Budge, op. cit. vol. i. p. 197. 4 Idem, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 5.

CH. v THE WEREWOLF 133

Geri, were the companions of Odin, 1 although Grimm's view that they could represent the god himself appears to be doubtful. 2 The wolf Fenrir, the offspring of Loki and brother of Hel, the goddess of death, plays a central part in numerous myths. 3 Still better known is the story of Sigmund's and Sinfjotli's lives as werewolves, as narrated in the Volsunga Saga, 4 where also the mother of King Siggeir masquerades as a She- wolf. 5 St. Patrick is said to have changed Vereticus, King of Wales, into a wolf. 6 In America also the wolf is a sacred animal, as is shown by the religious wolf-dances of the Tonkanays in Texas; 7 the Ahts believe that men who go into the mountains to seek their manitou are after a time changed into wolves. The Nez Perces tribe in America believe that the whole human race is descended from a wolf. 8

In Greece the wolf was sacred to the Sun God, who appeared in the form of a wolf as he slew the Telchines of Rhodes. 9 It has been keenly debated whether the title of the Lycaean Zeus was derived from Xwo? ( = wolf) or from \vtcr) (-light). Although many of the highest authorities have held the former view, the latest opinion would appear to favour the latter. 10 Nevertheless there is no question but that the wolf cult was closely associ- ated, through sacrifices, lycanthropic beliefs, etc., with the Lycaean Zeus, and Sir James Frazer 11 pertinently says: The connexion of Lycaean Zeus with wolves is too firmly established to allow us seriously to doubt that he is the wolf-god/

To the same confusion of words mentioned above has been ascribed also the oldest Werewolf legend that has

1 A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, Dritte Ausgabe, 1900, S. 279.

2 W. Mannhardt, Roggenwolf und Roggenhund, 1865, S. 50.

3 B. Thorpe, Northern Mythology, 1851, vol. i. pp. 49-52.

4 Volsunga Saga, translated by E. Magnusson and W. Morris, 1870 edition, p. 20.

5 Ibid. p. 14.

6 S. Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves, 1865, p. 58.

7 H. R. Schoolcraft, cited by Clodd, op. at. p. 92.

8 M. D. Conway, Demonology and Devil-Lore, 1879, vol. i. p. 141.

• Hertz, op. cit. pp. 31-33.

10 A. B. Cook, Zeus, 1914, vol. i. pp. 63, 64.

11 J. G. Frazer, Pausanias, vol. iv. p. 386.

134 NIGHTMARE AND MEDLBVAL SUPERSTITIONS *T. u

come clown to us, namely, the well-known one of Lycaon, of which different versions have been related by Apollo- dor, Eratosthenes, Hyginus, Lycophron, Ovid and Pau- sanias; in this connection it is of interest to note that the Werewolf belief has persisted in Greece into modern times. 1 Some writers have even derived the whole sub- sequent Werewolf superstition to this. Fiske 2 mildly comments on this view: To suppose that Jean Grenier imagined himself to be a wolf, because the Greek word for wolf sounded like the word for light, and thus gave rise to the story of a light-deity who became a wolf, seems to me quite inadmissible/ One may add that it is typical of the conclusions reached when psychology is neglected in mythological studies. As elsewhere with mental processes, a superficial association here probably covers an inner connection of ideas. Two such connec- tions between the ideas of wolf and light or sun may be briefly mentioned; they both belong to the strong forces operative in creation. Swiftness of movement a promi- nent attribute of the wolf is in mythology often brought into connection with fruitfulness on the one hand and wind and sun on the other. The idea of the ceaseless movement of the sun is one of the reasons for its frequent association with the horse in Indian, Greek and Teutonic mythology, a topic which is dealt with at length in Part III of this book. The association of fer- tility with the swift wind is similarly widespread; 3 we need merely point to the Greek and Roman beliefs that the west wind can impregnate horses 4 and women, a be- lief which survived until recently in Portugal, 5 and further to the German custom of sowing when the west wind blows. 6 This is perhaps the reason why it was over the

1 J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion , 1910, p. 240.

2 J. Fiske, Myths and Myth-Makers, 1872, p. 88.

8 [The reader is referred to a study of this association in the author's Essays in Applied Psycho- Analysis, 1923, pp. 275-282.]

4 E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity, 1909, vol. i. pp. 22, 35, 149, 150. M. jahns, -Ross und Reiter in Leben und Sprache, Glauben und Geschichte der Deutschen, 1872, Bd. i. S. 265.

6 Th. de Cauzons, La Magie et la sorcellerie en France, 1911, t. i. p. 161.

6 E. H. Meyer, Germanische Mythologie, 1891, S. 256.

CH.V THE WEREWOLF 135

west door of Gladheim, the Teutonic world of bliss, that a wolf hung. 1 The second connection springs from the contrast association between begetting and destruction, between the fertilizing and the destructive power of the sun, 2 further between its effective warmth by day and in the summer hence its phallic symbolism 3 on the one hand, and its powerlessness and its descent at night and in the winter on the other. It is doubtless significant that Apollo, the Sun-God who was identified both with Zeus and with the wolf, before he became identified with the former was above all the God of Death, and in this connection we may recall that in Etruscan tomb-paint- ings Hades himself is coifed in a wolf -skin. 4 His associa- tion with the wolf is still older, since before she bore him his mother, Leto, turned into a wolf to hide herself from Hera's wrath.

The wolf played a still more important part in Rome, as indeed the Romulus-Remus story itself indicates. There is reason to infer that in the original belief the founders of Rome were not only suckled by a wolf, but actually born of one: in other words, that the saga arose from a totemistic conception. 5 The priests of Soranus, the Sabine Death-God, who later became identified with Apollo, were called Hirpi ( = wolves), and a kind of robbery formed a part of their cult. In Rome the wolf was the sacred animal of Mars, who was also originally a Death-God. The God Lupercus probably represented a group of attributes split off from the personality of Mars and united to constitute a new Godhead. His wife Luperca stood for the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus. Their priests were called Crepi, an older form of Capri ( = goats). Lupercus was only a subsidiary name of the God Faunus, Februus or Innus (from inire, to have intercourse). According to Schwegler, 6 the title

Mogk, op. cit. S. 48.

See Karl Abraham, Traum und My thus, 1909, S. 53.

W. Schwartz, 'Der rothe Sonnenp hallos der Urzeit', Zeitschrift fur Ethno- logie, 1874, S. 167, 409. Cook, op. cit. p. 99.

See Otto Rank, Der My thus von der Geburt des Helden, 1909, S. 40-44. F. C. A. Schwegler, Rdmische Geschichte, 1853-58, Bd. i. S. 361.

136 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. u

Lupercus is derived from lupus and hircus, thus signify- ing wolf -goat: 'Bine Bezeichnung, welche die beiden Seiten der in Faunus sich darstellenden chthonischen Macht, die zerstorende lebenvernichtende und die her- vorbringende, lebenerzeugende als wesentliche Konnexe zumal ausspricht/ ('A designation which expresses at the same time both sides of the chthonic power repre- sented by Faunus, the life-destroying and the life-giv- ing/) The festival of the Lupercalia (February 15) seems to have represented purification through marriage. From the wordfebruare ( = inire), after which the month is named, comes Februata or Februaris, a subsidiary title of Juno the patron goddess of marriage. Werewolves were believed to exercise their baneful activities in February, 1 and, according to Andree, 2 most epidemics of Lycanthropy have in fact raged in this month. In re- ference to the sexual significance of the subject we may add a passage from Herman 3 : 'Auch im Italienischen bedeutete lupa sowohl Wolfin als auch Buhlerin (vulva) und aus den Tempeln der Luperca wurden die spateren Bordelle oder Lupanare/ ('In Italian lupa signifies both wolf and also wanton (or vulva) and the lupercal temples became the later brothels or Lupanars/)

The etymology of the term Werewolf has given rise to many curious attempts; 4 it was first properly solved in the year 1211 by Gervasius of Tilbury. 'Wer' signifies man (Latin vir, Sanskrit viras: compare Wergeld). 'Wolf 1 originally meant robber (Sanskrit Vricas); 6 in the Rig- Veda the wolf is called the robber, 6 and there was once the custom of hanging a wolf by the side ol every thief on the gallows. 7 The Romans used the generic term versi- pellis ( = skin-changer). The French word loup-garou (spelt by Bodin 8 loup-varou and by older writers loup-

1 Donat de Hautemer, quoted by Guolart, Thrtsor des histoires admirables et mjmorables de nostre temps, 1600, t. i. p. 336.

2 R. Andree, Revue de I'Orient, 1888.

• G. Herman, 'Genesis', Bd. iii., Bakchanalien und Eleusinien, Zweite

Auflage, S. 67.

4 See Hertz, op, cit. S. 3, 4. 5 Hertz, op. cit. S. 56.

• Con way, op. cit. p. 140.

7 Hertz, op. cit. S. 57. 8 J. Bodin, Dtmonomanie, 1593, p. 195.

CH.V THE WEREWOLF 137

warou 1 ) probably comes from the Norman garwolf 2 (Werewolf), and hence is tautological. In later French it got written waroul, from which comes the Scottish wroul and worlin?

The Werewolf superstition is exceedingly widespread; Hertz 4 has collected examples of it from the most diverse countries. The person concerned was generally believed to have been seized by an irresistible impulse, a ravenous craving, to have changed their appearance and roamed through the fields devouring sheep and other animals or even human beings, especially children. As a rule the state was a temporary one, recurring at night, and there could be long lucid intervals. Spontaneous transforma- tion into a wolf was as a rule achieved by the person either donning a wolf's skin 5 or by his merely turning his own skin inside out. 6 For he was supposed to wear a wolf's skin under his own, a belief which gave rise to horrible tortures in the Middle Ages, when suspected persons were hacked to pieces in the endeavour to find the hairy growth. 7 Hair and Werewolf were closely asso- ciated ideas, as is illustrated by the Russian name for Werewolf, Volkodlak' from volk = wolf, and dlak = hair. Werewolves could be recognized when in human form by having heavy eyebrows that met together, 8 or by having hair on the palms of their hands. The sexual association of hair is of course well known. It was believed that the wolf's skin could be discarded, and if it was burnt the particular subject lost the power of transforming himself into a wolf; 9 on the other hand, if one took away his human garment while he was in the wolf condition, he had to stay a wolf for ever. 10 This last point is a familiar motif in mythology, for example,

1 See J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, Vierte Ausgabe, 1876, S, 916.

2 Hertz, op. cit. S. 91.

3 G. W. Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, second edition, 1903, p. cxli.

4 See also J. Hansen, Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess im Mittel- alter, 1900, S. 19; and H. R. Schoolcraft, The Myth of Hiawatha, 1856, pp. 136, 339-

6 Meyer, op. cit. S. 69, 8 Fiske, op. cit. p. 89.

7 Clodd, op. cit. p. 84. 8 Grimm, op. cit. S. 918. 9 Marian Koalfe Cox, op. cit. p. 124. Grimm, op. cit. S. 917.

10 Grimm, loc cit.

138 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

in the fairy tales of swan-maidens. The wolf's skin could be donned only when the person was naked, 1 a feature that was worked up into an interesting incident in the celebrated old English tale of William and the Werewolf. 2 The transformation was complete except for the eyes; the explanation Hertz 3 gives for this is: 'Da die Seele unverandert bleibt, so erfahrt auch das Auge, der Seele Spiegel, keine Veranderung; am Auge werden die Ver- wandelten erkannt.' ('Since the soul remains unchanged, so also does the eye, the mirror of the soul, undergo no change; one recognizes the transformed person by his eye/) In mythology, however, the eye may symbolize an important part of the body as well as the soul, an interpretation which fits better to the following vari- ant related by Grimm 4 : 'Em Mann wurde durch eine Hexe verwandelt, er heulte vor ihrer Tiir, um erlost zu werden, und nach drei Jahren gab sie nach und schenkte ihm eine menschliche Haut, um ihn damit zu befreien; er zog sie iiber sich, aber sie bedeckte seinen Schweif nicht, so dass er zwar wieder Menschengestalt erlangte, aber den Wolfsschwanz behielt/ ('A man had been transformed by a witch. He howled outside her door for deliverance, and after three years she relented and gave him a human skin with which to release him- self. He drew this over himself, but it did not cover his tail, so that when he regained human form the wolf's tail remained/) The idea is the same as in the story of the Devil, who is to be recognized by his cloven hoof which he cannot conceal. In both cases the phallic sym- bol of the animal nature remains an unalterable con- stituent of their being.

The popular idea about the reasons why anyone became a Werewolf bears a remarkable resemblance to those concerning other mythological creatures, e.g. swan- maidens, etc., and it would lead us too far from our theme to enter on a full explanation of them here. The

1 Grimm, loc. cit.

8 The Ancient English Romance of William and the Werewolf, edited with an introduction and glossary by Sir Frederick Madden, 1832.

3 Hertz, op. cit, S. 49. * Grimm, loc. cit.

CH. v THE WEREWOLF 139

most prominent feature is the belief that such a trans- formation can come about in two quite different ways according as the person in question brought it about voluntarily or was forced into it against his will. In the latter contingency there were three causes: Fate, magic and sin; with the first two of these it was his misfortune, with the third his fault. A saint or ecclesiastic could condemn a wicked person to become a Werewolf, usually for a term of years, a sentence very like excommunica- tion; again a witch or devil could bring it about, with or without the person's consent. Thus, sinful women were turned into wolves for a space of years, usually seven. 1 To transmogrify someone into a Werewolf a hide or a girdle of human skin was necessary, but sometimes a plain ring would suffice. The spell, particularly when due to fate, could be broken in various ways, the usual methods being to call him by his baptismal name, 2 to tell him that he was a Werewolf, 3 i.e. to reproach him with being one, or merely to recognize him; 4 a peculiarly appropriate measure, which must remind us of the method of 'releasing' a Vampire by eating his flesh, was to make three sharp stabs at his forehead. 5

When the mediaeval scholastic theologians got to work on the problem they accepted the facts, but, whereas some were of opinion that the animal transformation really happened, others maintained that it was merely a deception of the devil's. 6 All agreed, however, that the proper treatment of the condition was to destroy, pre- ferably to burn, the unfortunate object. Bodin 7 defends the correctness of this procedure as follows: Tlusieurs medecins voyant une chose si estrange, et ne s^achant point la raison, pour ne sembler rien ignorer, ont diet et laisse par escript, que la Lycanthropie est une maladie d'hommes malades qui pensent estre loups, et vont

1 A. von Haxthausen, Transkaukasia, 1856, Bd. i, S. 322. B. Stern, Medizin, Aberglaube und Geschlechtsleben in der Turkei, 1903, Bd. ii. S. 359. a Grimm, loc. cit. Hertz, op. cit. S. 84. 8 Grimm, op. cit. S. 918. Thorpe, op. cit, vol. ii. p. 169.

• Fiske, op. cit. p. 92. Hertz, op. cit. S. 85.

6 Baring-Gould, op. cit. p. 107. 6 Hertz, op. cit. S, 7, 8. 7 Bodin, op. cit. pp 201, 202.

140 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

courans parmy les bois: Et de cet advis est Paul Aeginet: mais il faudroit beaucoup de raisons, et de tesmoings, pour dementir tous les peuples de la terre, et toutes les histoires, et mesmement Thistoire sacr6e, que Theo- phraste Paracelse, et Pomponace, et mesmement Fernel les premiers Medecins et Philosophes qui ont este de leur aage, et de plusieurs siecles, ont tenu la Lycanthropie pour chose tres-certaine, veritable et indubitable. Aussi est ce chose bien fort ridicule de mesurer les choses naturelles aux choses supernaturelles, et les actions des animaux, aux actions des esprits et Daemons. Encores est plus absurde d'alleguer la maladie, qui ne seroit sinon en la personne du Lycanthrope, et non pas de ceux qui voyent rhomme changer en beste, et puis retourner en sa figure/ The most important changes that the Church brought about in this superstitious idea related to the cause of the supposed events. Innocent Werewolves had been laid under a spell by the Devil or else by witches under his orders. The guilty ones had been affected on account of their sins, which usually consisted of heresy or of standing in relation with the Devil. A special variant of Werewolf was the Biixenwolf (Biixen is Low German for trousers), who possessed this privilege in return for making a pact with the Devil. 1 The heathen idea that the transformation could be brought about by decree of fate was not reinforced by the Church; but there is one example of Christian influence in this direc- tion, namely, the belief that a child born on Christmas Day was destined to become a Werewolf: the reason proffered for this was that its mother had dared to con- ceive on the same day as the Virgin Mary. 2

It is comprehensible that the belief in Werewolves played a great part during the era of witch persecutions. Hertz 3 writes: 'In der christlichen Zeit, wo man die Existenz der heidnischen Gotter zugab, um sie fur Teufel erklaren zu konnen . . . entstand mit dem Hexenglauben die Vorstellung von Menschen, die sich mit Hilfe des

1 Hertz, op. cit. S. 87. f Stern, op. cit. S. 363.

8 Hertz, op. cit. S. 134.

CH. v THE WEREWOLF 14!

Satans aus reiner Mordlust zu Wolfen verwandeln. So wurde der Werwolf in duster poetischer Symbolik das Bild des tierisch Damonischen in der Menschennatur, der unersattlichen gesamtfeindlichen Selbstsucht, 1 welche alten und modernen Pessimisten den harten Spruch in den Mund legte: Homo homini lupus/ ('In the Christian era, when one admitted the existence of heathen gods so as to explain them away as devils . . . there arose with the belief in witches the idea of men who from pure lust of murder used Satan's help to turn themselves into wolves. The Werewolf thus became in sinister poetical symbolism the image of the animal and demoniacal in human nature, of the insatiable egotism that is the enemy of the whole world, 1 which inspired old and modern pessimists to the hard saying: Homo homini lupus/) It was believed that Werewolves gathered to- gether just as witches did, that they travelled through the air, held a Sabbath, showed reverence to their Master who impressed his sign on them (stigma), and indulged in sexual orgies among themselves. 2 Many of these de- tails were made public at the trials, such as that of Verdun and Burgot in the year 1521, of which many reports have come down to us; 3 both were burned in Besan^on. According to de Lancre 4 these victims ad- mitted 'qu'ils prenoyent autant de plaisir lors qu'ils s'accouploient brutalement auec les louues, que lors qu'ils s'acointoyent humainement euec des femmes'. They further described how the Devil had transformed them into wolves by rubbing them with an ointment; those accused in a trial at Salzburg in the year 1717 made the same confession. The anointing evidently refers to the well-known witch's ointment. Werewolves, just as witches, had a special relation to

1 [This expression must remind one of Freud's recent conception of a 'Todestrieb'.]

2 H. Freimark, Okkultismus und Sexualitat, S. 319.

8 H. Boguet, Discours des sorciers, 1603, p. 370. L. F. Calmiel, De la folie, 1845, t. 1. p. 234. Remigius, Daemonolatria, 1698, vol. ii. p. 183. J. F. Wolfes- husius, De lycanthropia, 1591, p. 31.

4 Pierre de Lancre, Tableau de Vinconstance des mauvais anges et demons, 1612, p. 321.

142 NIGHTMARE AND MEDLEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

cats, and in many respects form a counterpart to them. The wolf was sacred to Odin, the cat to his wife Freya. 1 Male magicians transform themselves into wolves, female ones into cats 2 ; further, the details of the procedure are in both cases the same. 3 The two motifs are combined in an old Tartar heroic saga 4 : 'Buriih-Chan, ein Herrscher iiber sechshundert Wolfe, lebte bald als ein goldglan- zender Wolf, bald als Mensch. Der Knabe Altenkok fangt ihn in einer Schlinge und fordert von ihm auf den Rat eines Greises die Katze, welche er in seinem Zelte hege. Als sie der Knabe nach Hause gebracht, ver- wandelt sie sich in ein schones Weib; denn sie ist die Tochter des Wolfsfiirsten, der nun seinem Eidam reiche Mitgift schenkt/ ('Buriih-Khan, a ruler over six hundred wolves, passed part of his time as a wolf gleaming like gold, 5 part of it as a human being. The boy Altenkok caught him in a trap, and on the advice of an old man demanded of him the cat which he kept in his tent. When the boy brought her home she turned into a beautiful maiden, for she was the daughter of the wolf- chieftain, who now bestowed a rich dowry on his son-in- law/) Finally, according to Majolus, 6 the Werewolves in Courland actually hate witches and destroy them when- ever they can; this is evidently connected with the legend in which the ghostly legion indulges in a wild pursuit of pixies.

In consequence of the attention devoted to the sub- ject by the Church, Werewolf trials became pretty fre- quent towards the end of the sixteenth century; in some districts, for instance in the Jura, 7 the cases assumed an epidemic form. Most of the accused admitted their guilt, and described in detail their transmogrification, together with their nocturnal deeds of devouring animals and human beings. The most celebrated trials were those of

s.

Grimm, op. cit. S. 873. 2 Grimm, op. cit. S. 915.

Hertz, op. cit. S. 71-74.

M. A. Castren, Ethnologische Vorlesungen iiber die altalschen Volker, 1857,

233-

Compare the above reference to wolf and brightness or light. De Lancre, op. cit. p. 307. 7 Clodd, op. cit. p. 83.

CH.V THE WEREWOLF 143

four persons, Jaques Bocquet, Clauda Jamprost, Clauda Janguillaume and Thievenne Paget, in I538, 1 Gilles Gernier in I573, 2 of four members of the Gandillon fam- ily in I598 3 and of Jean Grenier in i6o3 4 ; three of the Gandillons were hanged and burned, the fourth was torn to pieces by the people. A Werewolf was executed in Salzburg as recently as 1720. 5 In France the belief was given its death-blow early in the eighteenth century by an anonymous satire, the author of which was the Abbe Bourdelot: 'Les aventures de Monsieur Oufle' (anagram for le fou). The belief in the real existence of Werewolves has by no means died out: Krauss 6 relates a fully de- veloped Werewolf story from the Balkans in the year 1888. I have myself spoken to people in France who firmly believed in their existence, and the belief is also still held in French-Canada. 7

The relationship between the beliefs in Werewolves and in Incubi is a somewhat indirect one, as will be pre- sently shown, but it is remarkable what a close connec- tion exists between the former and the popular equi- valent of the latter, namely, the belief in the male and female Nightmare bogies (German Alp and Mahre re- spectively) from which the Incubus concept was derived. The seventh son, for instance, is destined to become a Werewolf, 8 the seventh daughter a Night-hag. 9 Accord- ing to a Danish tradition, if a woman stretches a foal's caul over four sticks and creeps through it naked at midnight, she will bear her future children without pain, but every boy will be a Werewolf and every girl a Night- hag. 10 This may be compared with the following Scandi- navian superstition: 'When a woman procures an easy labour for herself by creeping through a horse's collar,

1 Boguet, op. cit. p. 363. * Bodin, op. cit. p. 192.

Boguet, loc. cit. * P. de Lancre, op. cit. p. 313.

Sigm. Riezler, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Bayern, 1896, S. 293. F. S. Krauss, Slavische Volksforschungen, 1908, S. 139. Beaugrand, La Chasse galerie. Legendes canadiennes, 1900, pp. 36-54. L. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogt. Oldenburg, 1867, Bd. i. S. 377.

• F. F. A. Kuhn und F. L. W. Schwarz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Marchen und

Gebrduche, 1848, S. 420. 10 Meyer, op. cit. S. 67. Thorpe, loc. cit.

144 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

the child becomes a night-bogey (an Alp).' 1 According to Meyer 2 : 'Die Katzen, die unter einen Sarg und von da unter das Bett eines Neugeborenen springen, konnen dasselbe in einen Werwolf oder eine Mahr verwandeln.' ('A cat that has climbed under a coffin and then under the bed of an infant can transform the latter into a Werewolf or a Night-hag according to its sex/) Witches possess the same power, and children that have not been protected against them by baptism are called heathen wolves. 8 The Werewolf gets into a house through the water vent, as a Night-hag enters through the key-hole. 4 One can recognize a Werewolf by his eyebrows meeting in the middle, just as one does a male 5 or a female 6 night-bogey (Alp or hag) that oppress people during sleep, as well as Indian magicians. 7 The wolf-shirt is as important to a Werewolf as her swan-shirt to a swan- maiden. The children of the rye-fiend (Roggenfrau) , whose function it is to oppress rye-workers during their siesta, become rye-wolves (Roggenwolfe) , who operate under the same conditions. 8 Finally, the release of the Were- wolf from his spell proceeds along almost identical lines as that of the Night-hag, the swan-maiden, etc.

Perhaps the most convincing proof of the connection is to be found in the fact that on the Danish island of Bornholm the name for a male night-fiend (Alp) is 'manil', a word compounded of 'mara' and Varul' - werewolf. 9

Like the Incubi, or rather their popular equivalent of night-bogey (Alp), Werewolves were regarded as con- nected with the souls of the deceased, i.e. revenant an- cestors. 10

The connections between the Werewolf and Vampire superstitions are even closer. To begin with, we have the

I. and O. von Duringsfeld, cited by Freimark, op. cit. S. 409. Meyer, op. cit. S. 68. 8 Meyer, loc. cit.

Meyer, op. cit. S. 69. * Wuttke, op. cit. S. 275.

T. W. Wolf, Zeitschrift fur deutsche Mythologie, 1853, Jahrgang. i. S. 198. Somadeva. 8 Mannhardt, op. cit. S. 31.

Wolf von Unwerth, 'Eine islandische Mahrensage', Worter und Sachen, Kulturhistorische Zeitschrift fur Sprach- und Sachforschung, 1910, Bd. ii. S. 182. 10 Fiske, op. cit. pp. 76, 77.

CH. v THE WEREWOLF 145

belief prevailing in the south-east of Europe that Were- wolves become Vampires after their death. A modern refinement of this belief, prevailing in Elis, is that even those who eat the flesh of a sheep that had been killed by a wolf may become Vampires after their death. 1 Naturally it is in this part of the world, where the belief in Vampires was most firmly rooted, that the two ideas are most closely associated, 2 although two of the best authorities, Andree 3 and Krauss, 4 maintain that they can always be distinguished. But the mere fact that the Slav word vukodlac (the Servian variant), which origin- ally meant Werewolf, is generally used in Bulgaria and Servia to designate a Vampire, 5 undoubtedly means that the people saw a close connection between the two ideas. In Russian the word was volkodlak, in Czech vilkodlak. In Greece the same word, there spelt vrykolakas, is also the general term for a Vampire, though it is of interest to note that it is still occasionally used in its original sense of Werewolf, 6 and that on the outlying islands, where the Slavonic influence penetrated less, the older Greek terms for Vampire still persist. 7 Under the Greek Church it was believed that a child born on Christmas Day was destined to become a Vampire, under the Roman that it would become a Werewolf.

The Werewolf, although not so regularly as the Vam- pire, has many associations with the idea of Death. The close connection between the wolf and the Death Gods of antiquity was indicated above. The ghost wolf in his role as psychopomp plays as important a part as the ghostly wild dog 8 ; even in later times the howling of a wolf or of a dog has been regarded as a death omen. He is connected with the ideas of travel by night and night- riding in general. The terrible night fiends of Northern folklore, who are among the ancestors of the mediaeval

1 Curtius Wachsmutt, Das alte Griechenland im Neuen, 1864, S. 117. Hertz, op. cit. S. 113. Wuttke, op. cit. S. 278. R. Andr6e, Ethnologische Parallelen und Vergleiche, 1878. Krauss, op. cit. S. 137. 5 Grimm, op. cit. S. 880-881.

C. Robert, Les Slaves de Turquie, 1844, t. i. p. 69. Lawson, op. cit. p. 384. W. W. Sikes, British Goblins, 1880, pp. 233-236,

K

NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. 11

witches, rode on wolves. 1 Many legends of Werewolves evidently spring from the related idea of the ghostly furious host and the wild hunt. Peucer's 2 description of the night march of thousands of Werewolves led by a huge man armed with a whip made of chains evidently the Devil is strikingly reminiscent of the numerous stories of this theme. 3 According to Mannhardt, 4 even the rye-wolf, like the hound of the wild hunt, was thought to be a psychopomp, i.e. to convey souls.

In this connection it is important to note that a Werewolf may be not only a transmogrified living man, but also a corpse which has arisen from the grave in the form of a wolf, a variety known as a ghost Werewolf. Hertz 6 relates the following case: 'Ein merkwiirdiges Beispiel ist der gefahrliche und grausame Wolf von Ansbach im Jahre 1685, welcher fur das Gespenst des verstorbenen Biirgermeisters gehalten wurde/ ('A curi- ous example was the dangerous and cruel wolf of. Ans- bach in the year 1685 which was taken to be the ghost of the deceased Mayor/) The wolf was finally killed. 'Darauf zog man ihm die Haut ab fur die fiirstliche Kunstkammer, machte ihm von Pappe ein Menschen- gesicht mit einem Schonbart lang und weissgraulich, ein Kleid von gewichster fleischfarbrotlicher Leinwand und eine kastanienbraune Pemicke; so wurde er auf dem "Niirnberger Berg vor Onolzbach" an einem eigens dazu errichteten Schnellgalgen aufgehangt/ ('Whereupon his skin was removed and preserved in the Royal Museum, while the body was decked with a human mask wearing a long grey beard, a garment of shining flesh-coloured linen and a chestnut wig. In this fashion he was hanged on a specially erected gallows on the Nuremberg "Berg vor Onolzbach." ') As a rule the transformed corpse was believed to be that of a damned soul who could find no rest in his grave, 6 this being again a point of contact with the Vampire belief. An historic example of this is

1 Grimm, loc. cit. a C. Peucer, Les Devins, 1584, p. 198.

8 Grimm, op. cit. ch. xxxi. * Mannhardt, op. cit. S. 31.

6 Hertz, op. cit. S. 88. 6 Hertz, op. cit. S. 109.

CH.V THE WEREWOLF 147

the case of King John 'Lackland' of England, whose dead body was believed to have been changed into a Werewolf as the result of the papal excommunication. Bosquet 1 writes concerning this: 'Ainsi se trouva com- pletement realise le funestre presage attache a son sur- nom Sans-Terre, puisqu'il perdit de son vivant presque tous les domaines soumis a sa suzerainete, et que, meme apres sa mort, il ne put conserver la paisible possession de son tombeau/

Over and over again the behaviour of the Werewolf closely resembles that of the Vampire. In Armenia sinful women are punished by having to pass seven years as female Werewolves; when the horrible wolfish lusts seize them they first devour their own children, then those of their relatives, and then strange children, in the same order as Vampires follow. 2 Another Armenian monster, the Dachnavar, that stands between the Werewolf and Vampire, sucks the blood from the soles of a passer-by. 3 According to Hertz 4 : 'Am auffallendsten die Vermischung der Vorstellungen von Werwolf und Vampir in Danziger Sagen, wo es heisst, man miisse den Werwolf verbrennen, nicht begraben; denn er habe in der Erde keine Ruhe und erwache wenige Tage nach der Bestattung; im Heiss- hunger fresse er sich dann das Fleisch von den eigenen Handen und Fiissen ab, und wenn er nichts mehr an seinem Korper zu verzehren habe, wiihle er sich um Mitternacht aus dem Grabe hervor, falle in die Herden und raube das Vieh oder steige gar in die Hauser, um sich zu den Schlafenden zu legen und ihnen das warme Herzblut auszusaugen; nachdem er sich daran gesattigt habe, kehre er wieder in sein Grab zuriick. Die Leichen der Getoteten findet man aber des anderen Tages in den Betten und nur eine kleine Bisswunde auf der linken Seite der Brust zeigt die Ursache ihres Todes an/ (The most striking admixture of the conceptions of Werewolf and Vampire occurs in the Dantsic legend,

1 A. Bosquet, La Normandie romanesque et merveilleuse, 1845, p. 238.

a Hertz, op. cit. S. 28.

8 Stern, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 359. 4 Hertz, op. cit. S. 89.

148 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS *T. n

which runs as follows. A Werewolf must be burnt not buried, for he has no rest in the earth and will awaken a few days after the burial. In his ravenous hunger he then devours the flesh of his own hands and feet, and when he can find nothing more in his own body to eat he burrows out of the grave at midnight, attacks the sheep and cattle, or even climbs into houses so as to lie on those asleep and suck the warm heart's blood out of them; after he has sated himself he returns to his grave. The bodies of the murdered people are found in their beds the next day with only a small bite on the left side of the breast to show the cause of their death/) Werewolves have even been confounded with ghouls: in France a special kind of Werewolves, called Loubins, visited the churchyards in hordes in order to devour the corpses. 1

We see, therefore, that the revenant motif is common to the Vampire and Werewolf superstitions, while from the blood-sucking of the former to the devouring lust of the latter is only a small step, corresponding as it evidently does to the development from the first to the second oral stage of infantile sexuality. The two concep- tions are thus throughout interwoven with each other.

We have now to consider the psychological meaning of the superstitious belief in Werewolves. The three essential constituents of the belief are, as we have seen, the ideas of animal transformation, of ravenous can- nibalism and of nocturnal wandering. I shall argue that the most important contributions to these three elements were furnished by the experiences of anxiety dreams of a kind that represent only a slight elaboration of the typical Nightmare. In this connection Wundt 2 cautiously remarks: 'Ebenso enthalt der Werwolf my thus moglicher- weise in der Umschniirung des Leibes mit dem Giirtel aus Wolfshaut, die die Umwandlung eines Menschen in den Wolf bewirken soil, sowie in den die Oberwaltigung

1 Donat de Hautemer, loc. cit. F. Pluquet, Contes populaires, 1834, P- *4 8 W. Wundt, Volkerpsychologie, Zweiter Band. Mythus und Religion, Zweiter Teil, 1906, S. 120.

CH. v THE WEREWOLF 149

des Opfers durch den Werwolf begleitenden Angstge- fiihlen, Wirkungen der Alp und verwandten Angst- traume, wie sich denn auch die Vampyr und die Wer- wolfsage an manchen Orten gemischt haben. Auch spielen hierbei ausserdem die teils im Traum, teils in der geisti- gen Stoning vorkommenden Vorstellungen der Tierver- wandlung ihre Rolle/ ('It is possible that the Werewolf myth similarly contains effects of Nightmares and allied anxiety dreams, notably in the idea that the trans- formation of a human being into a wolf was supposed to have been brought about by encircling the body with a girdle of wolf -skin, as also in the feelings of terror experienced by the victim who was overpowered by the Werewolf; it is to be noted further how the Werewolf and Vampire legends have intermingled in many parts of the world. The ideas of animal transformation, which occur both in dreams and in mental disturbances, also play their part here/)

In the first place, the very fact that the phenomena in question were supposed to occur at night, and during the sleep of the victims, should lead one to suspect an origin in dream experiences. In the second place, the extraordinary intermingling and interchangeability of the Werewolf with the Incubus and Vampire beliefs, both of which we have shown to have probably been derived in the main from dream experiences, would strongly suggest a similar origin here also. In the third place, the three elements enumerated above bear speci- ally close relations to the motifs of anxiety dreams.

It is interesting that any two of these three elements can occur together without the third: (i) Nocturnal wandering and animal transformation we are already familiar with in the case of the Vampire. (2) Animal transformation and cannibalistic lust are found together with the rye-wolf (Roggenwolf) . He does not wander by night, it is true, but it is to be noted that his depreda- tions take place during the (mid-day) sleep of the victims. (3) Nocturnal wandering and cannibalistic lust often occur together apart from the idea of animal transforma-

I5O NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

tion. Thus the Thessalians, Epirotes and Wallachians believe in somnambulists who wander about by night and tear human beings with their teeth. 1 From this idea of behaving like a wolf it is only a step to actual transformation into a wolf.

We have previously traced the belief in animal trans- formation largely to dream experiences.

The belief in night wandering, i.e. the belief that a given person can be in two places at the same time, certainly originates, as does actual somnambulism, also from dream experiences, for its development can still be observed among savages. It was believed that the real body of the Werewolf lay asleep in bed while his spirit roved the woods in the form of a wolf 2 ; further, when the wolf was wounded, corresponding wounds were to be found on the human body that remained at home. 8 The similarity with the ideas of savages on dreams, such as were pointed out in the first chapter, is plain enough. There are various sources for these travelling dreams, since they can symbolize a consider- able number of repressed wishes: the wish for freedom from compulsion, one which the idea of a wolf very well represents, 4 and especially for independence from the father; the wish for heightened potency, symbolized by swift movement, etc. The ultimate source of interest in movement is to be sought in the sexual component of agreeable sensations of this kind experienced by the infant. 5

The third element would in psycho-analytical termi- nology be described as an oral-sadistic or cannibalistic impulse. That the lust for tearing and devouring flesh is oral-sadistic in nature is evident to anyone acquainted with sexual pathology, and has, indeed, been pointed out

1 Stern, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 360. See also B. Schmidt, Volksleben der Neugriechen, 1871, Bd. i. S. 166.

• A good example of this is described by A. Lercheimer, Ein christliches

Bedenken und Erinnerung von Zauberei, Dritte Auflage, 1597, Kap. xii.

8 J. W. Wolf, Niederldndische Sagen, Nr. 242, 243, 501.

4 Conway, op. cit. p. 141.

5 Sigm. Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, Zweite Auflage, 1910, S. 53, 54. [Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. v. S. 76.]

CH. v THE WEREWOLF 15 1

by various other writers. 1 The wolf symbolism is speci- ally well suited to represent this, and the effect is heightened by the fact that Werewolves were supposed to be even more savage than other wolves. Sadistic tendencies prove in analysis to be derived from two sources. On the one hand we have the primary sadistic erotism of the young child, beginning with the oral- sadistic attitude towards the mother's breast in which connection we recall the essentially dental nature of the wolf sadism and revealing itself most typically in the classical belief in the sadistic conception of parental coitus. On the other hand there is the jealous hostility later sexualized against the parent of the same sex, so that both sources of sadism are rooted in the Oedipus complex. It is perhaps not a matter of chance that hatred of the father was a striking characteristic in the actual cases of Lycanthropy, 2 i.e. where people really imagined that they wandered about at night in the guise of wolves. The cannibalistic idea of devouring human flesh, so characteristic of the Werewolf superstition, is derived from both the sources just mentioned, i.e. the erotic and the hostile; in the unconscious, as we know well from psycho-analysis, there is for these different motives the wish to devour both the loved and the hated object. 3

These sadistic tendencies have, of course, many mani- festations in waking life, but the majority of them, e.g., those that lie behind certain neurotic symptoms, are veiled, and very seldom reach elsewhere the fierce intensity which is so frequently met with in certain types of anxiety dreams. This consideration would lead one to ascribe to such dreams a considerable part in generating beliefs founded on the sadistic tendency, though not such a predominant one as with the two other elements discussed above.

1 See, for example, Clodd, op. cit. p. 84. Dankmar, 'Curiosa aus der Teufels- periode des Mittelalters', Psychische Studien, 1899, Jahrg. xxvi. S. 27, 80, and, best of all, Baring-Gould, op. cit. ch. ix.

8 De Lancre, op. cit. p. 317.

3 [In his book on Totem und Tabu, 1913, Freud has, in connection with the totemistic banquet, shown the importance of cannibalism for the develop- ment of religious ideas.]

152 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS *T. n

From this point of view it is not surprising to hear that the group of unconscious ideas that lies behind the belief in, and fear of, Werewolves occasionally bursts through into consciousness in a positive form, with the result that the person afflicted with the delusion of being a wolf indulges in corresponding behaviour. As early as in the second century a medical work, by Marcellus Sidetes, 1 pointed out that Lycanthropy was a form of insanity. He says that men are most attacked with this madness in February, that they skulk in cemeteries and live alone like ravening wolves. Clinically they would be classified as cases of sadism, frequently combined with cannibalism and necrophilia; they may or may not be associated with an actual lycanthropic delusion, there being many authentic examples of both.

In this connection it is interesting to note that the ideas associated with that of wolves reveal how pro- foundly the people apprehend the essence of anti-social behaviour to be sadistic in nature. 2 For instance, the Norse word vargr meant both wolf and a godless man. It is cognate with the Anglo-Saxon wearg, a scoundrel, Gothic vargs, a fiend. The Ancient Norman laws said of criminals condemned to outlawry, Wargus esto: be an outlaw (or wolf); in the Lex Ripuaria the expression was 'Wargus sit, hoc est expulsus'. In the laws of Canute an outlaw was actually designated a verevulf. Among the Anglo-Saxons an outlaw was said to have the head of a wolf, and the legal form of sentence ran: 'He shall be driven away as a wolf, and chased so far as men chase wolves farthest/ 3 This is doubtless also the meaning of the following passage in the first chapter of the Volsunga Saga: Thus it is well seen that Sigi has slain the thrall and murdered him; so he is given forth to be a wolf in holy places, and may no more abide in the land with his father.'*

1 See W. H. Roscher, 'Das von der "Kynanthropie" handelnde Fragment des Marcellus von Side' in the Abhandlungen* der sdchsichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Classe, 1897, Bd. xvii. Teil 3, S. 1-92.

2 [Cp. Freud's Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, 1930.]

8 These data are all taken from Baring-Gould, op. cit. pp. 48, 49. 4 Italics not in original.

CH. v THE WEREWOLF 153

The psychological relationship between the Vampire and Werewolf superstitions may be shortly expressed. The former is much more closely connected with the revenant idea, though, as we have seen, the difference between the two in this respect is one of degree only. Further, whereas the Vampire belief is more concerned with sucking tendencies, both oral and vaginal, the Werewolf one is throughout sadistic in nature. The Incubus and Werewolf superstitions may be thus con- trasted: in the former belief the attention is more con- centrated on the emotions of the person who has been attacked in sleep by a monster, in the latter on the atti- tude of the attacking monster himself. It may be said that the masochistic component of the sexual instinct comes to expression in the Incubus belief, the sadistic in the Werewolf one; but it must be added that the former belief is constituted rather from the genital phase of libidinal development, the latter from a pregenital one, and this is the reason why the Incubus belief is more connected with the pure Nightmare experience and the Werewolf one with other, allied forms of anxiety dream.

CHAPTER VI

THE DEVIL

INTO the construction of the idea of the Devil, the re- presentative of the evil in man, there has entered an almost countless number of different factors. Analytic study of similar constructions of the human phantasy shows, however, that most of these factors are merely contributory, each phantasy being grouped around a central nucleus. It is not my purpose here, even if I had the capacity, to attempt to deal with these contributory factors in detail, and I propose to select out of the many problems contained in the subject the following three for discussion: (i) What is the central psychological meaning of the belief? (2) How did it come to be so prominent and sharply defined at a particular epoch? (3) In what relation does it stand to the experiences of the Nightmare?

In a psychological study we must start from the assumption that the Devil is a creation not of heaven, as the theologians still teach, but of the human mind. As Graf 1 says: 'Er wurde nicht vom Himmel herab- gestiirzt, sondern erhob sich aus den Abgriinden der menschlichenSeele/ ('He was not cast down from heaven, but arose out of the depths of the human soul.') And that these depths, when fully explored, will be found to be definitely susceptible of comprehension there can be as little doubt. Freud 2 writes: 'Der Teufel ist doch gewiss nichts anderes als die Personifikation des verdrangten unbewussten Trieblebens' ('For the Devil is certainly nothing else than the personification of the repressed, unconscious instinctual life 1 ), and Silberer 3 adds: 'Der

1 A. Graf, Geschichte des Teufelsglaubens, Zweite Auflage, tibersetzt von R. Teuscher, 1893, S. 2.

2 Sigm. Freud, 'Charakter und Analerotik', Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Zweite *Folge, 1909, S. 136. [Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. v. S. 265, Collected Papers, vol. ii. p. 49.]

8 H. Silberer, 'Phantasie und Mythos', Psychoanalytisches Jahrbuch, 1910, Bd. ii. S. 592.

154

PT. ii CH. vi THE DEVIL 155

Teufel und die finsteren damonischen Gestalten der Mythen sind, psychologisch genommen, funktionale Symbole, Personifikationen des unterdriickten, nicht sublimierten elementaren Trieblebens/ (The Devil and the sombre daemonic figures of the myths are psycho- logically regarded functional symbols, personifications of the suppressed and unsublimated elements of the in- stinctual life/) Our first problem, therefore, is to ascer- tain which components of the instinctual life constitute the source of the belief in the Devil.

This question evidently belongs to the series of those that have to do with anxiety emotions. The whole his- tory of the Devil is one of constant dread, and indeed so strongly was it impregnated with this emotion that the very presence of a Devil in disguise could be detected by the intense dread and terror he left behind, one which had the effect of making the bystanders paralysed, mute and ice-cold. 1 As a starting-point for our investigation may be taken a remark of Pfister's, 2 in which the belief in the Devil is traced back to 'infantile experiences of fear' in the life of the individual. Since the origin of infantile terror is now known, 3 it naturally suggests itself to one to investigate the descriptions of the belief in the Devil in the light of this new knowledge. This procedure has led me to formulate the following conclusions, the evi- dence for which will presently be brought forward: The belief in the Devil represents in the main an exteriorization of two sets of repressed wishes , both of which are ultimately derived from the infantile Oedipiis situation: (a) The wish to imitate certain attributes of the father, and (b) the wish to defy the father; in other words, an alternating emulation of and hostility against the father. Both sources contain repressed material: the latter obviously does, and even the former differs from the early piety which later ex- presses itself in the belief in God through being more

1 Graf, op. cit. S. 67-68.

2 O. Pfister, Die Frommigkeit des Grafen Ludwig von Zinzendorf, 1910, S. 94. 8 See Sigm. Freud, 'Analyse der Phobie eines funfjahrigen Knaben', Psycho-

analytisches Jahrbuch, 1909, Bd. i. S. i. [Gesammelte Schriflen, Bd. viii. S. 127. Collected Papers, vol. iii. p. 147.]

156 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS *x. n

directly concerned with admiration for the darker, 'evil 1 side of the father's nature and activities. In this respect the Devil personifies the Father, while in the other he personifies the Son; he thus represents unconscious aspects of the Son-Father complex, sometimes the one side being the more prominent, sometimes the other. The corresponding female Oedipus situation also contri- butes material of no less importance. For the reasons that this forms the subject of the next chapter and that it is largely the obverse of the male contribution, it will be simpler to confine ourselves for the present to the latter.

Before developing this theme further I shall pass next to consideration of the second problem mentioned above. We shall have at once to renounce a presentation of the purely historical aspects of the subject; for these the reader is referred to such books as those by Conway, Grimm, Roskoff and Gener, particularly to the last- named, which is perhaps the fullest and most objectively philosophical work on the subject. A brief abstract of the more important historical data, however, is essential for our general orientation. The first point to be insisted on here is that the Devil, in the strict sense of the word, is a purely Christian conception, the earlier data being merely material out of which the conception proper was formed. To attack our problem, therefore, we shall have briefly to consider the nature of this earlier material.

The idea of evil supernatural powers, although per- haps not absolutely universal, is exceedingly widely spread among ruder peoples, 1 and was so with the civil- ized peoples of antiquity. On investigating specific in- stances more closely, however, it is striking to note how very rarely these powers were purely evil in nature. With almost the sole exception of the Persian Ahriman, described in the Vedida section of the Zend-Avesta, one may say that before the advent of Christianity there was no definite conception of a supernatural being pro-

1 See a review of this in G. Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, 1869, Bd. i. S. I7-23-

CH. VI

THE DEVIL 157

fessionally devoted to evil. The Brahmanic Vritra, the Hindoo Siva, the Egyptian Set (or Typhon), the Greek Pan, the Teutonic Loki, were all decidedly Gods, to be not merely propitiated but worshipped, and they funda- mentally differed from the mediaeval Devil. Greece, as might have been expected from her other illustrious attributes, was distinguished for the subordinate part played in her theology by anxiety feelings. At first sight Judaism appears to resemble Hellenism in the slight de- velopment of evil beings in its theology, but the reasons were quite different in the two systems and the com- parison redounds to the credit of Hellenism. There is this significant fact to be noted: that, coincidently with the growth of the Satan idea in the later history of the Jews an idea that followed the Babylonian exile and which was derived from either the Persian Ahriman or, as Robertson 1 thinks more probable, from the Baby- lonian Goat-God the character of the Yahweh belief changed and approximated much more nearly to the modern one in a benevolent God. In the earlier history of the Jews Yahweh combined the attributes of both God and Devil; evil as well as good proceeded directly from him, so that, as Graf 2 truly says, 'man braucht nur einigermassen auf das Wesen Jehovas zu achten, um sogleich gewahr zu werden, dass neben einem solchen Gotte fiir einen Teufel wenig Platz iibrig ist' ('It needs little reflection on the nature of Jehovah to realize that by the side of such a God there was not much room left over for a Devil'). As Conway 3 remarks in the same sense: The Jews originally had no Devil, as indeed had no races at first; and this for the obvious reason that their so-called gods were quite equal to any moral evils that were to be accounted for, 1 and Gener 4 says of the Jewish God: 'II est dieu et diable a la fois; mais plus frequem- ment il est diable/

The Jewish example is especially interesting as con-

1 J. M. Robertson, Pagan Ckrists, 1903, p. 84. a Graf, op. cit. S. 18.

8 M. D. Conway, Demonology and Devil-Lore, 1879, vol. ii. p. 56. 4 P. Gener, La Mori et le Diable, 1880, p. 372.

158 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS FT. xi

tributing to the solution of the problem whether the Devil conception is of independent origin, as maintained by the theologians, or the result of that mythological process known as 'decomposition' in which different attributes of an originally unitary personality become invested with independent existence so that several different personalities come into being. Tlje fact that the distinction between the ideas of God and Devil represents a late stage in cultural development, succeed- ing to the primitive idea of supernatural beings that are at the same time good and evil, speaks strongly in favour of the view taken here, namely that God and Devil were originally one, 1 and this is definitely con- firmed by the Jewish example. After giving a detailed study of the matter, Gener 2 discusses whether Satan represents (i) one of the degraded gods of neighbouring tribes conquered by Yahweh, or (2) the Hazazel of Leviticus, or (3) simply a differentiated emanation of Yahweh himself, a 'dedoublement' to use Gener's own term. He definitely decides in favour of the last view, which evidently is the true one, not only from the whole history of the evolution of Yahweh, but also from Satan's own behaviour; in the book of Job, for instance, he ap- pears as a loyal servant of Yahweh, as a sort of intelli- gent detective who tests people and finds out their weak- nesses. Conway 3 is also of the same opinion, even in respect of the very differently constituted Devil of the New Testament: 'The descriptions of the Devil in the Bible are mainly borrowed from the early descriptions of the Elohim, and of Jehovah in his Elohistic character/ This conclusion of the original identity of God and Devil receives an interesting confirmation through etymological study of the word 'Devil'. Like the cognate French diable, German Teufel, Old High German Tuivel, as well as the Greek diabolos, it is ultimately derived

1 [This conclusion was accepted by Reik, Der eigene und der fremde Gott, 1923, S. 139, and Freud, 'Erne Teufelsneurose im siebzehnten Jahrhundert', Imago, Bd. ix. S. 14 (Gesammelte Schnften, Bd. x. S. 409, and Collected Papers, vol. iv. p. 450).]

2 Gener, op. cit. S. 389-391. 3 Conway, loc. cit.

CH.VI THE DEVIL 159

from a primeval root DV, which in Sanscrit is found in two forms, div and dyu, the original meaning of which was 'to kindle'. From the former come, in addition to our Devil, the Teutonic Tins (the god of Tuesday), Tiwas or Zio, the Greek theos, Latin deus ordivus, French dieu, Welsh diw, Lithuanian diewas, Gipsy dew el, all of which signify 'God'; further, the word deva or daeva, which to the Brahmin means God, but to the Persian and Parsee means Devil. From the second form come the Indian Djaus (the Brahman sky-god), the Greek Zeus (Z=Dj), and the Latin Jupiter (old Latin Diovis). The same remarkable polarity is shown by the non- personal words derived from the same root. On the one hand there is the Latin dies = day, the Keltic dis= day- star or day-god, Sanscrit dyaus = day, and on the other hand the Aryan dhvan (whence the Greek thanatos) = death, Teutonic devan=to die, Aryan dvi=to fear, and the Greek deos = dread. Still more remarkable is the fact that the polarity words par excellence are of similar origin. The Sanscrit dva, Latin duo, English two, Welsh deu, all mean 'two' (compare the English 'double' with the Old High German for devil, Deudel), while the Greek dys signifies both 'to separate into two' and 'evil'. 1 The primary identity of the ideas of God and Devil can thus be demonstrated quite independently of psychological considerations, though these would in themselves be decisive.

The growth of Christianity brought an increasing definition of the Devil conception as the only possible explanation of the evil raging in the world. This was indeed inevitable from its extreme renunciation of the

1 Of especial psychological interest is the following fact. The common English euphemism for devil is 'deuce' (Old English dewes), which one might at first sight expect to find derived from the sources just mentioned (cp. Zeus and St. Augustin's Dusius-Incubus). According to Skeat, however, it originated as follows: Its first meaning, still commonly used, was to denote the two in dice and card games, having been introduced for this purpose in Plantagenet times from the French deux. The 'losing two' in these games naturally signified ill- luck and hence got associated with the devil, first through the explanation 'Oh, the deuce 1 . As a result of this circuitous connection the word has now two meanings that are almost identical with those of the Greek dys, which it resembles in sound and with which it is etymologically cognate.

l6o NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

world as something essentially sinful. Such renunciation was carried by certain sects to even greater lengths than by the mother church. Many of the early Gnostics had believed in a Being with mixed good and evil attributes, Demiurgos, the creator of the world and foe of Christ, and when influenced by the degenerate form of Zoroas- trianism taught by the Persian Mani in the third century this idea was developed by the Manichseans into a formal system. In it all nature, all animals, and all worldly desires were the Devil's domain. About the eleventn century this sect and others merged into the conglomer- ate body known as the Cathari from the tom-cat in whose shape Lucifer was represented. The Albigenses and other heretics also laid great stress on the sinfulness of nature. The influence exerted on the Catholic Church by these happenings was a two-fold one. In the first place, these teachings penetrated into her very bosom and enor- mously strengthened the early beliefs in the essential wickedness of worldly desires, with the result that the conception of sin was developed to an extent never heard of before or since. In the second place, she deliberately exploited the Devil idea as a powerful weapon to fight all heresies, declaring that heresy came only from the Devil and, later on, that it was synonymous with Witch- craft. It took some time before the value of the Devil for this purpose was perceived. In earlier times he had been to a great extent neglected. The Council of Braza, for instance, in 563, had proclaimed: 'If anyone alleges, with Priscillian, that the Devil makes certain creations, and that by his own virtue he creates thunder and lightning, tempests and drought, let him be anathema/ Later, however, the heretics, by their insistence on the powers of evil, had unwittingly put into the hands of the Church a weapon that proved their undoing.

The use of tnis weapon was already to some extent familiar to the Church in her fight against non-Christian religions. St. Paul himself (i Corinthians, x. 20) had ex- pressly declared heathen gods to be merely demons/and the Church applied this doctrine in conscientious detail

CH. vi THE DEVIL l6l

to one god after another of the classical and other heathen theologies. It was soon found, however, im- possible to carry the matter through in this simple way, and it was decided for the first time officially by Pope Gregory I. in 601 to institute, on the basis of the famous Accommodation Theory, a thorough-going amal- gamation and absorption of other religions into Chris- tianity. The festivals, cults, and personal attributes of the foreign deities were pooled and redistributed among Christian ones, some falling to the lot of Christ, God the Father, Mary and the numerous saints, and others to the Devil and his subordinates. 1

As a result of this syncretizing procedure we find that a great number of the physical and mental character- istics of the mediaeval Devil are individually derived from a great variety of extra-Christian sources. Thus, to mention only a few examples 2 : Like Pan, the personi- fication of nature, the Devil combined human and animal attributes, particularly in his physical appearance, lived in caverns and lonely places, and suddenly startled people (Panic); his goat-like body, cloven hoofs and tail, he inherited from Pan and the other satyrs, from the German forest-sprites and from the he-goat that was sacred to Thor. From Thor also came his red beard, his habit of building bridges, and his evil odour; the last- named attribute is connected both with the goat and with the sulphurous odour left after a thunderstorm, and in fact one of his by-names was Hammer, 3 taken from Thor's thunder-hammer. Like Zeus and Odin he had special power over the weather, and to the latter he owed his horse's foot and the raven as his sacred animal. Like Odin he travelled by night and bore away people

1 It is, of course, impossible to describe here any of this interesting process. In relation to the Teutonic religions it has been most fully investigated by J. Grimm in his Deutsche Mythologie, 1876.

8 See Grimm, op. cit. 46 Ausgabe, 1876, Kap. xxxiii.; Roskoff, op. cit. Zweiter Abschnitt, Kap. i and 2, etc.; A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Aberglaube der Gegenwart, 1900, S. 35-37.

8 The phallic significance of this has been pointed out by G. W. Cox, Mytho- logy of the Aryan Nations, 1870, vol. ii. p. 115, and E. H. Meyer, Germanische Mythologie, 1891, S. 212.

L

l62 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

as the Wild Hunter; on such occasions he wore Odin's dress of either a grey mantle with a broad hat pressed down on the head or a green coat with a feather in his hat. Both the Devil and Odin discovered the game of dice, which was later replaced by cards, and to this day cards are known in puritanical circles in England as 'the devil's game'. Like Odin, too, he was a master-smith and builder, and his old German name was that of Smith Wieland or Voland (English Weyland, our modern St. Valentine), who was a descendant of Odin's, The Devil is often portrayed as limping, a characteristic curiously related to the one just mentioned. Not only did the German smith Wieland (Wotan) limp, but also the Greek one, Hephaestos (Vulcan) who was cast from Heaven by Zeus, just like the Persian devil Aeshma (the Biblical Asmodeus); one of the two he-goats that bore Thor's waggon also limped, as did the horse that carried Bal- dur. 1 Like Loki, the fire-god, the Devil was bound by the gods and had to await his day of deliverance when all hell would be let loose. His black colour was borrowed from Saturn, who, according to Simrock, 2 was identified with Loki, and from the Indian Vritra, the god of dark- ness. The torch under his tail came from the Roman Bacchanalia. 3 In early times the Devil used actually to appear to Christians in the guise of the classical gods; thus, in the fourth century he appeared to St. Martin sometimes in the form of Jupiter, sometimes in that of Venus or Minerva; he took such shapes even as late as the twelfth century.

If we now inquire why the belief in the Devil assumed the proportions it did in the Middle Ages, although it is obvious that the answer must be found in the peculiar social and moral conditions of that period, yet the factors leading up to these were so complex and involved that only the most generally acting ones can be mentioned here. As an example of this complexity we may cite the

1 Limping is a familiar unconscious symbol of castration.

8 K. Simrock, Handbuch der deutschen Mythologie, 1878, S. 346.

8 F. Hedelin, Des satyres, brutes, monstres et demons, 1627 (1888 ed.), p. 129.

CH. VI

THE DEVIL 163

modern demonstration that matters so apparently remote as the recent introduction of the banking system 1 and the improvement of town architecture 2 were indirectly factors of considerable importance. Still there can be no doubt that the main driving force came from the Church itself. The Church has always had three sets of dangers to cope with: unbelievers or pagans without; dissensions and scandals within; and, part within and part without, heresy. At the beginning of the Middle Ages the Church had in all of these three connections strong reasons for fortifying the belief in the Devil. The first of the three might be called a positive reason, the other two nega- tive. The conquering of paganism in Europe took much longer than is commonly supposed, but nevertheless by the twelfth century the main battles had been won, and there remained only detailed guerilla fighting. The Church could therefore afford to discard the more positive aspects of syncretism and to revert to the uncompromising attitude of the early Church, where there was no question of enriching Christian worship with Pagan borrowings and all non-Christian beliefs and rituals were appropria- ted only as fodder for the underworld. The military and political successes of the Church over Paganism ended in the growth and elaboration of the Devil idea because there was no longer the need to find any use for the remains of Paganism except to feed this idea with it in the ways we illustrated above. The other two reasons were of quite another kind, signs not of strength but of weakness. Discredited by the failure of its prophecies (the end of the world at 1000 A.D. and numerous other dates) and by moral and ecclesiastical scandals, 3 torn by internal political and religious dissensions, its very existence threatened by powerful heretical sects, 4 the condition of the Church in the twelfth century was such as called for the most desperate measures. To attribute

1 Gener, op. cit. p. 582.

8 J. Hansen, Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess im Mittelalter, 1900, S. 329.

8 See Roskoff, op. cit. Zweiter Abschnitt, Kap. vi. 4 Gener, op. cit. p. 566. Hansen, op. cit. p. 214.

164 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS FT. n

all its difficulties to the activity of the Devil, and in this way to distract the people from contemplating its weak- nesses by terrifying them with an external danger, one moreover with which the Church knew itself competent to deal, was a device at which it eagerly clutched; it is one to which Governments in embarrassment have seldom failed to have recourse. The people, in abject misery at their social condition, devastated with pesti- lence 1 and war, 2 and in consequence of their misfortunes saturated with the sense of sinfulness, fell an easy prey to the Church's teachings. Indeed, these teachings at moments overreached themselves, for the people, in despair at the obvious failure of God and the Church to relieve their misery, greedily absorbed the doctrine of the wonderful powers of the Devil, so that not a few took refuge with him; probably the definite nature of the bargain driven in the well-known pacts appealed to them more than the unending and often inefficacious prayers to the saints. The extent of the belief in the Devil's influence on even the most trivial everyday happenings was so colossal that one cannot read the records of the time without thinking that Europe was being visited by a mass psychoneurosis of an unusually malign type. His activities were so manifold that, accord- ing to Wier, they had to be divided among 44,435,556 subordinates, 3 while a single woman, Joanna Seiler, was said to have been exorcised of no fewer than a hundred million. 4

Most important of all, however, was the powerful sup- pressing influence exerted by the Church on all worldly desires, with the consequent outbreak of these in other directions. A good example of this is furnished by its attitude towards the desire for knowledge, which, as is well known, it condemned root and branch almost as

1 Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 113-117, makes an appalling list of these.

• Of these the Mongolian irruption, the Crusades, and, later on, the Hundred

Years' War between England and France seem to have exerted the greatest influence.

8 C. L. Louandre, Sorcellerie, p. 37. J. A, S. Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire infernal, 1818, t. i. p. 166.

4 J. Juhling, Die Inquisition, 1903, S. n.

CH. vi THE DEVIL 165

being the source of all evil a reversion to the first chapters of Genesis. The suppressed instinct for know- ledge, however, never took such bizarre forms as during the Middle Ages, with its passionate search for the philo- sopher's stone, the elixir of life, and the universal solvent, with its devotion to astrology and alchemy, and with its interest in all manner of magical procedures. This craving for knowledge became closely associated with the idea of the Devil, as indeed was formally taught by the Church, and the beginning of the witchcraft epidemic was the persecution of magicians. Unusual knowledge was at once ascribed to a pact with the Devil; it was, for instance, the reason why Pope Sylvester II, in the tenth century, was suspected of having concluded such a pact. This suppressing influence of the Church naturally bore above all on sexual impulses, the source of all sin. Sexual repression has assumed different forms in dif- ferent ages, a matter of considerable importance in the history of culture. In the nineteenth century, for in- stance, it seems to have been predominantly directed against exhibitionism, with a marked extension to ex- cremental functions; so that sexuality in the Victorian era tended to be called 'shameful 1 or 'disgusting' rather than 'sinful'. In the early Middle Ages repression was directed against sexual activities in general as being in- herently sinful, and particularly with all its force against incest; 1 this is very comprehensible, inasmuch as Christian theology is principally concerned with the sublimation and glorification of an incest myth. 2 At the same time, owing perhaps to the difficulty of marriage engendered by the peculiar social and economic conditions, 3 and the extent to which religious celibacy was practised, incest seems to have been unusually common during this period. 4 If, therefore, as is here maintained, the Devil

1 E. Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, 1891, p. 155, expresses the interesting view that all sexual repression originated in the reaction against incest, one which psycho-analytic investigation fully confirms.

• See, in this connection, Otto Rank, Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden ,

1909, S. 46-51. 8 Gener, op. cit. p. 617.

4 J. Michelet, La Sorciere, 36 ed., 1863, pp. 156-159.

166 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

idea essentially represented the guilty aspects of an in- cest symbolism, it must have been singularly well adapted to the needs of the time, and the fact that Devil worship constituted a detailed caricature of Christian worship receives a deeper significance. It is especially worthy of note that the principal crime committed at the Witches' Sabbath was incest: Michelet, 1 for instance, writes: 'Selon ces auteurs (De Lancre, etc.) . . . le but principal du sabbat, la legon, la doctrine expresse de

Satan, c'est 1'inceste/

• * * * *

After this very condensed discussion of the second of our initial problems we may now return to the first. The evidence in favour of the solution of it offered above may most conveniently be presented under four headings. Since the Devil may personify the 'evil' aspects of either son or father, and as the son's attitude towards the father may be either imitation or hostility, we find that he is portrayed in four different aspects, though these are never sharply separated from one another. He may thus personify:

(1) The Father towards whom is felt admiration.

(2) The Father against whom is felt hostility.

(3) The Son who imitates the father.

(4) The Son who defies the father.

These aspects will now be illustrated in this order; as will be seen, a given attribute may represent more than one of the primary tendencies.

(i) The Father towards whom is felt admiration

This aspect provides the largest component in the conception of the Devil. The reason for this is probably its double source, on the one hand in the son's admira- tion, and on the other in the daughter's repressed (libi- dinal) love. We see here the Devil as a rival to God, the love for whom is drawn from the same two sources.

1 Michelet, op. cit. p. 155.

CH. vi THE DEVIL 167

In the first place may be noted the Devil's wonderful powers, which far exceeded those of ordinary beings. Ac- cording to the Manichaean belief, which strongly influ- enced Christianity, he was actually the Creator of the mundane world and united in himself the most extra- ordinary capacities. He controlled the thunder and lightning, the wind and rain, powers previously ascribed to various gods. The infantile sexual symbolism of these beliefs need only be mentioned here. Abraham 1 has dealt fully with a part of it (lightning) , and the mytho- logical significance of rain (urine and semen) is well known, as is the flatus symbolism of thunder; 2 we have seen above that the Devil's evil odour was largely associ- ated with his capacity of making thunder. It is important to note that the Devil's power especially related to secret and magical affairs. He was the master of all for- bidden arts, the so-called 'black arts'. This was why he was the chief resort of magicians and other people who wanted either knowledge they were forbidden to have, or power to perform deeds beyond ordinary human capacity.

These powers would be put at the service of human beings in despair, usually on certain conditions, such as that they would henceforth belong to the Devil and do his bidding: just like the parents who do something for a child on condition that he is 'good', i.e. do what they want. In many legends he appears as a friendly helper of mankind who protects those in distress particularly widows and orphans! and aids them over their diffi- culties; Conway 3 and Wunsche 4 narrate a large number

1 K. Abraham, Traum und My thus, 1909, S. 29, 30 u.s.w.

8 'Le Tonnerre ce n'est qu'un pet; c'est Aristophane qui le dit' (Bibliotheca Scatologica, Art. 'Oratio pro Guano Humano'). J. Harington (The Metamorphosis of Ajax, 1596, p. 94) recalls the adventure of Socrates who, when Xantippe crowned him with a chamber-pot, carried it on his head and shoulders, saying to the laughing bystanders:

'It never yet was deem'd a wonder, To see that rain should follow thunder/

3 Conway, op. cit. ch. xxvii. 'Le bon diable'.

4 A. Wunsche, Der Sagenkreis vom geprellten Teufel, 1905, Cap. vii. 'Der geprellte Teufel als Heifer der Menschen in allerlei Notlagen und Anliegen.'

l68 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT, n

of such stories. We here see the Devil playing the part of the friendly father, and the correspondence between the two conceptions is at times extraordinarily close in detail. 1

Very striking is the circumstance that the mediaeval Devil absorbed all the legends previously told of giants, that mythological transformation of the child's concep- tion of its parents. 2 The three main ideas combined here are those of age, strength and size. One of the Devil's attributes was his extreme age; 3 and many of his by- names, e.g., Old Nick (Hnikar), Old Davy, etc., seem to hint at this. All the special interests and characteristics of the giants of old were transferred en bloc to the Devil; a number of them are fully related by Grimm, 4 so that the details need not be given here. Chief among them was his interest in building, 5 one that we would trace onto- genetically to one of the infantile conceptions of parental child-making; according to this babies and therefore other interesting objects are constructed out of in- testinal contents, an interest which later becomes trans- ferred to the idea of formations out of sand, mortar, etc. 6 Wunsche 7 writes: 'Bei naherer Betrachtung erweisen sich ferner alle die Sagen, nach denen der Teufel mach- tige Damme, die quer durch den See gehen, Mauern nach Art der Zyklopen und Briicken, die hoch in den Himmel hineinragen und iiber Abgriinde, Schluchten und Taler fiihren, errichtet, als christianisierte ortliche Riesen- sagen. Auch Hiinen- und Brunhildebetten beriihren sich mit Teufelsbetten/ ('On closer examination all the sagas in which the Devil erects mighty dams that run straight across lakes, cyclopean walls, and bridges that range high into the sky and lead over abysses, ravines and

1 [Compare in this connection Freud, 'Eine Teufelsneurose im siebzehnten Jahrhundert', op. cit."]

2 See Meyer, op. cit. S. 143, for a detailed account of the attributes of mythological giants.

8 Grimm, op. cit. S. 826.

4 Grimm, op. cit. S. 852-856, and Nachtrag, S. 301.

5 See Wunsche, op. cit. Cap. ii., 'Der geprellte Teufel als Baumeister'.

6 The primitive passion of children for building has been extensively studied by R. A. Acher, American Journal of Psychology, Jan. 1910, p. 116 et seq.

7 Wunsche, op. cit. S. 14.

CH. VI

THE DEVIL 169

valleys prove to be Christianized giant sagas of various localities. Cairns, barrows and "Brunhilda beds" also get connected with "Devil beds" '.) Nor did the Devil con- tent himself with copying the deeds of the giants, for on various occasions he used to appear in their actual shape; thus St. Anthony saw him as 'a monstrous giant whose head reached to the clouds', as did also St. Brigitta, and Dante depicted Lucifer as of giant size.

The theme of the 'returning dead' has been discussed above in the chapters on the Incubus and Vampire, and its connection with ancestor worship and incest pointed out. It is therefore of interest to note that it was a favourite practice on the part of the Devil to appear at night in the guise of some person who had died, 1 par- ticularly to appear to a woman in the form of her father. The explanation of this was hinted at more than three hundred years ago by Thomas Nashe, 2 who writes: 'It will bee demaunded why in the likenes of ones father or mother, or kinsfolks, he (the devil) oftentimes presents himselfe unto us? No other reason can bee guiven of it but this, that in those shapes which hee supposeth most familliar unto us, and that wee are inclined to with a naturall kind of love, we will sooner hearken to him than otherwise/

Psycho-analysis has shown that the primary source of the boy's envy of the father relates to his sexual potency. As will presently be illustrated, the visits and tempta- tions of the Devil were predominantly of a libidinous nature. In further accord with this link with the father idea is the close relation between the Devil and the Snake, for as was pointed out in a previous chapter the phallic significance of the snake is specifically con- nected with the father's member; this creature, with its mysterious and insinuating behaviour is admirably adapted to symbolize the secret activity of the father so envied by the boy. The tempter of the Old Testament

1 Graf, op. cit. S. 57, 58, 65-67. P. L. Jacob, CuriositSs infernales, pp. 35-37.

2 The Works of Thomas Nashe, 1904 edition, vol. i., 'The Terrors of the Night' (I594) P- 348.

170 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS *r. ii

was styled Leviathan (= insinuating serpent) in the Kabbalah, and his equivalent in other countries, such as Ahriman in Persia, Apep in Egypt, Midgard in Norway, Set in Egypt and Vritra in India, were also commonly portrayed in the form of a snake; we might also mention the evil snake or dragon crushed by Apollo, Bellerophon, Heracles, Krishna, Odin, St. George and other heroes. Indeed, in this respect the Devil was in excellent com- pany, for as was expounded earlier in connection with the practice of Incubation not only has the Snake-God been one of the most general objects of worship all over the world, but the gods of more civilized communities often assumed this guise, usually when engaged on love adventures. The circumstances of these disguises pro- vide in themselves a clue to the meaning of the snake beliefs, and the early fathers of the Jewish and Christian Churches held that the serpent of the Garden of Eden symbolized evil lust. 1 The Christian Devil frequently ap- peared in the form of a snake or fiery dragon; 2 St. Anthony testified to the former from his own experience, as did St. Coleta. 3 With the Devil the sexual nature of the symbolism is shown in a much grosser manner than with the classical gods, for not only was his tail com- posed of a snake, or else carried a snake's head at its tip, but his very arms were similarly constituted. As for his penis, this also was built to imitate the shape and move- ments of a snake; 4 probably that is why we read of such descriptions as the following: 5 'il a une virilite gigan- tesque, couverte d'ecailles, herissee de piquants.'

The directly libidinous character of the Devil and his temptations is emphasized by every writer on the sub- ject and is incorporated in innumerable stories. 6 It will suffice to select a single passage from Freimark, 7 of a kind that could be indefinitely multiplied: 'Den erst en

Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 195. a Grimm, op. cit. S. 833, 851.

Le Loyer, Discours et histoires des spectres, visions et apparitions, 1605,

P. 353-

Graf, op. cit. S. 50, 51.

R. Br^vannes, L'Orgie satanique a tr avers les sitcles, 1904, p, 115.

See/ for instance, Jacob, op. cit. pp. 85-96.

H. Freimark, Ohkultismus und Sexualitdt, S. 297.

CH. VI

THE DEVIL 171

Anstoss zum Teufelsbund geben fast ausschliesslich sexuelle Motive. ... In alien Berichten liber die Ver- fiihrung zur Hexerei und zum Teufelsbund nimmt un- verhiillt die sexuelle Verfiihrung die erste Stelle ein/ (The first impulse to the Devil's pact proceeded from almost exclusively sexual motives. ... In all reports on the seduction to witchcraft and the pact sexual seduc- tion openly takes the first place.') This was the sin above all else that the Church most warned against. Sinistrari, 1 for instance, says: 'ratione tantae enormitatis contra Religionem, quae praesuppositur coitu cum Diabolo, profecto Daemonialitas maximum est criminum car- nalium/ A favourite device for accomplishing his design was for the Devil to deceive a woman by impersonating her lover or husband, 2 just as the Incubus did. Bodin 3 relates cases where the Devil even solicited and seduced girls of six, 'qui est 1'aage de cognoissance aux filles'! The sexual temptations to which Buddha, Zoroaster and other divine Beings had been subjected were in Christian times transferred to various saints, most of whom, such as St. Anthony, St. Benedict, St. Elizabeth and St. Martin withstood them, whilst others, such as St. Vic- torinus, succumbed.

As is well known, the Devil's favourite metamorphosis was into a he-goat, the classical symbol of lasciviousness; it was its almost invariable guise at the Witches' Sabbath. Being ignorant of mythology, many Christian writers were much puzzled at this; Scaliger, 4 for instance, con- siders it simply a marvel. Bodin, 5 on the other hand, suspected the meaning of it, and writes: 'Mais c'est bien chose estrange, que Satan . . . prend la figure d'un Bouc, si ce n'est pour estre une beste puante et salace. ... Or la propriety des Daemons est d' avoir puissance sur la cupidite lascive et brutale.' Incidentally, one more proof

1 P. Sinistrari, Demoniality (seventeenth century), 1879 edition, p. 218.

2 J. G. Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland, 1835, p. 554. Hinkmar, quoted by J. Hansen, op. cit. S. 73.

8 J. Bodin, De la demonomanie des sorciers, 1593, p. 212. 4 Smith, Scaliger ana, 1669, Part ii. Article 'Azazael'.

• Bodin, op. cit. p. 190.

NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS FT. n

of the original identity of the Devil and God conceptions is the fact that not merely was the goat the symbol of numerous deities of antiquity, but also that Pan, the goat-god par excellence from whom the Devil derived so many of his attributes has been identified with the highest God of the Babylonians, Mithra/ with the Egyptian God Min 2 (the representative of the male principle) and even with Zeus himself. 3

The minutest attention was devoted in the Middle Ages to the sexual attributes of the Devil, and particu- larly to the organ concerned. 4 This was generally sinuous, pointed and snake-like, made sometimes of half-iron and half-flesh, at other times wholly of horn, and was com- monly forked like a serpent's tongue; he customarily performed both coitus and pederastia at once, while sometimes a third prong reached to his leman's mouth. 5

The mediaeval Devil was far from being the first one to be renowned for his lasciviousness. Not to speak of the deities of classical antiquity, we find the same trait recorded of most evil precursors of the Christian Devil. The reputation of Pan himself was such that he was known to the theologians of the Middle Ages as the Prince of Incubi. 6 In the Koran the Devil is known only as a seducer. 7 The worship of the Brahman Shiva, the evil creator and destroyer of the world, is a purely phallic one. 8 The Bedouin ghoul, the Buddhist Mara, the Persian Aeshma-Daeva (the ancestor of the Jewish Asmodai), the Syrian djinn all have the same lasci- vious reputation; even in far-off Australia the Iruntari-

1 J. M. Robertson, Pagan Christs, 1903, p. 315.

2 W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Religion of Ancient Egypt, 1908, p. 59.

8 R. P. Knight, The Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology , 1876 edition, p. 137.

4 See, for instance, Pierre de Lancre, Tableau de I'inconstance des mauvais anges et demons, 1612, pp. 224, 225.

6 [Miss M. A. Murray, in her book The Witch Cult in Western Europe, 1921, p. 178, makes the interesting suggestion that these descriptions are to be explained by the custom of the leader of the witch covens, the representative of the Devil, being compelled by the exigencies of his devotees to have recourse to the aid of artificial phalli, probably of leather.]

6 Collin de Plancy, op, cit. t. ii. p. 135.

7 Eickmann, Die Angelologie und Ddmonologie des Korans, 1908, S. 44.

8 E. Sellon, Annotations on the Sacred Writings of the Hindus, 1902, p. 9.

CH. vi THE DEVIL 173

via, or evil spirits, are addicted to the practice of carry- ing off women in the dark. 1 But the Devil's reputation surpassed all these to such an extent that Milton 2 could call one of his shapes:

Belial, the dissolutest spirit that fell, The sensualest, and, after Asmodai, The fleshliest Incubus.

In connection with the same Father aspect of the Devil is to be mentioned his close association with Nature, the personification of the Mother, and particularly with the hidden parts of Nature; it is characteristic of the incestuous significance of the Devil idea that, through this association, Nature herself just as women did in the early days of Christianity becomes conceived of as the evil side of the universe. The Devil dwells in remote places, being especially fond of dark forests and of treasure spots, such as gold mines. 3 He penetrates into caverns and into the very interior of Mother Earth, i.e. into places quite inaccessible to ordinary beings ( - children). Other association between the ideas of Devil and Mother will be mentioned in due course.

2. The Father against whom is felt hostility

Here the Devil presents himself not as a tempter and seducer, but as a pursuer, as the enemy of mankind. All the paternal arbitrariness, savage cruelty, unjustness, petty tyranny and general unreasonableness that dis- figures the Yahweh of the Old Testament 4 were inherited to the full by the Christian Devil. The resemblance of this picture to the one that many a child conceives of as accurately describing his father is only too striking. The Devil mocks at the endeavours and strivings of men, derides their ambitions and makes sport of their failures. He teases, annoys and harms them out of pure enjoy-

1 B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, 1899,

P- 5*7-

1 Milton, Paradise Regained, Book ii. line 150.

8 Le Loyer, op. cit. p. 340.

4 See Gener, op. cit. pp. 368-377, for an exposition of this.

174 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. if

ment at doing so, undoes their labour and baffles all their efforts. Mankind lives in one constant fight with him, in either the resisting of attractive temptations or the thwarting of his mischievous assaults. The Oedipus situation, both male and female, is thus reconstructed in its entirety.

The Devil's hostility to man is, characteristically enough, especially prominent in the legends he inherited from the giants ( = grown-ups). In these he performs all manner of deeds to hinder and injure; 1 he heaves huge blocks of stone at churches and nunneries, dams rivers so as to cause floodings, builds walls to keep out human beings from his domains, and so on. Men have to fight against him in his giant form, just as the young gods fought against the Titans of old.

In this fight human beings were by no means always defeated. Many are the tales in which the Devil is cir- cumvented and cheated, and it is noteworthy that these tales also are mostly taken from heathen ones in which the giants were the antagonists. 2 For instance, according to Wiinsche, 3 'Hinter dem Schmiede von Bielefeld, Apolda u.s.w. in den bekannten Marchen, der den Teufel im Sacke auf dem Amboss ganz windelweich hammert, so dass er ein Zetergeschrei erhebt und um seine Freilassung bittet, verbirgt sich, wie wir unten zeigen werden, sicherlich der seinen Hammer auf das Haupt des Riesen schwingende Thor. 1st doch "Meister Hammerlein" auch ein gebrauchlicher Beiname des Teufels/ ('Behind the Smith of Bielefeld, Apolda, etc., in the well-known folk-tales, who hammers the Devil in a sack on an anvil till he is limp as a rag, so that he shriekingly implores to be set free, is certainly concealed as we shall presently show Thor swinging his hammer on the head of the giant. After all, 'Master Hammerkin' is also a common nickname for the Devil/) Incidentally, the fact that the Devil can thus be identified both with

1 See Grimm, op. cit. S. 852-855, and Nachtrag, S. 301. WUnscbe, loc. cit. 1 See especially Wiinsche's book, in comparison with the chapter 46 on 'Der geblendete Riese' in L. Laistner's Das Rdtsel der Sphinx, 1889, Bd. ii. S. 109-151.

• Wiinsche, op. cit. S. 13, 14,

<?H. vi THE DEVIL 175

Thor and his hammer on the one hand, and on the other hand with the giant Thor overcomes is a good illustration of our thesis that the Devil can represent both elements in the Father-Son equation. A favourite device was to bargain with the Devil for the sale of a soul on condition that he carried out some work before cock-crow, and then at the last moment to make a cock-crow by pinching it or to imitate the sound so that wakened cocks in the neighbourhood really crowed. Even a horse could hood- wink the poor Devil. 1 It is significant for the present argument that in all these stories the Devil was circum- vented by guile, never by force; slyness and guile are notoriously the only weapons of the weak child against a parent's opposition.

A powerful person who is easily cheated by a weaker one is naturally conceived of as stupid, or at least as naive. This contemptuous view is one that children often entertain of their parents, partly for the reason just stated, and partly as an over-compensatory reaction to the other occasions when they feel their ignorance in contrast with the parents' knowledge. The tales in which the Devil, presenting at times an incredible naivete, is easily hoodwinked form an extensive chapter in the his- tory of demonolatry, 2 and have furnished an important source for the later conception of clowns, buffoons and stage-fools. 3 Psycho-analysis of the individual stories, which we must renounce here, shows clearly the infantile sources of the motives and definitely confirms the con- clusions here represented in brief.

The child-like contempt for the Devil also shows itself in many other ways, especially in denial of his potency. None of the buildings he erects can he complete, his plans and schemes are almost always thwarted at the last moment, and on one point in particular all writers

1 M. jahns, Ross und Reiter , 1872, Bd. i. S. 87.

2 See Wiinsche, op. cit. cap. viii. 'Der dumme, geprellte Teufel', and the section on 'Der dumme Teufel' in Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 394-399-

8 See the section on 'Der Teufel als Lustigmacher' in Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 399-404. [Reference may also be made to the analysis of Punch in my essay on 'Symbolism', Papers on Psycho- Analysis, 3rd ed. 1923, pp. 162-164, 166-167.]

176 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS FT. n

are unanimous his lack of semen and consequent ster- ility; as we shall see later, this last belief has a deeper source than mere contempt. To the same set of beliefs may also be ascribed the Devil's supposed detestation of salt, for this can be shown to be an ancient mytho- logical symbol for semen; 1 Bodin 2 was therefore in a sense right when he accounted for the Devil's aversion for it on the ground that it is a 'symbol of eternity'.

Even many of the devices employed to ward off the Devil's assaults originate in infantile and sexual sym- bolism. A renowned one, often effective when all else failed, was to expose one's buttocks and expel flatus at him; no less a person than Martin Luther had recourse to it. 3 Psycho-analysis has shown that the deepest source of the child's defiance of his parents is his refusal to control his sphincters at their bidding, and in conse- quence the acts just mentioned have been used the world over as a sign of defiance or contempt. Another more general device for opposing the Devil's might consisted" in waving in front of him the Holy Cross, or in simply making the sign of the cross. The unconscious phallic significance of this symbol has long been known, 4 so that to expose the cross of Christ (the Son) before the Devil would unconsciously be equivalent to the child's exhibi- tionistic defiance of paternal authority.

The most powerful refuge of the threatened human being, however, was to call on the Virgin Mary for help. Indeed, so universal was this that the whole matter largely resolved itself into a standing fight between the Devil and the Holy Mother. Roskoff , 6 who gives many examples of this, says: 'Die Thatigkeit des Teufels wird iiberdies vornehmlich entwickelt und hervorgerufen

1 See Ernest Jones, 'Die symbolische Bedeutung des Salzes in Folklore und Aberglaube', Imago, 1912, Bd. i. S. 361 and 454. [Reprinted as ch. iv. of Essays in Applied Psycho- Analysis, 1923.]

2 Bodin, op. cit. p. 278.

8 Freimark, op. cit. S. 84. The original references are given by J. G, Bourke, Scatologic Rites of all Nations, 1891, pp. 163, 444.

4 C. Howard, Sex Worship, 1902, cap. viii. 'The Serpent and the Cross'. T. Inman, Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism, 1874. S. Rocco, Sex Mythology, including an Account of the Masculine Cross, 1898.

6 Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 198-205.

CH. vi THE DEVIL 177

durch dessen Hass gegen die heilige Jungfrau, der um so mehr gesteigert wird, als diese, nach Frauenart, sich in alle Angelegenheiten hineinmengt und ihr, wie im ge- wohnlichen Leben, in allem willfahren wird, so dass sie ihrenWillen immer durchsetzt und ihre Schiitzlinge, die nun einmal ihre Gunst durch eifrigen Marienkultus er- langt haben, auch nie fallen lasst, wenn sie iibrigens auch die argsten Lumpen sein sollten/ ('Moreover, the activity of the Devil was especially developed and evoked by his hatred for the Holy Virgin. This hatred was all the more increased by her habit of meddling in all affairs, in the manner of women, and of always getting her own way, so that she never leaves her protegees in the lurch once they have won her favour by zealous worship at the Mary cult, even though they be the most scoundrelly rascals/) It is surely impossible to overlook the analogy between this situation and that of the child running to his mother for protection against an ill-tempered father, with the consequent marital bickering. 1

(3) The Son who imitates the Father

The Devil was not altogether the enemy of God; in certain respects he might almost be called His repre- sentative, or at least His agent. Not only did he mock and torture the people he had succeeded in tempting to sin, 2 but he apparently went out of his way to punish the wicked. 3 He was specially severe in respect of sexual indulgence; one of his persecutions was, to quote Graf, 4 'einen Mann und ein Weib bei fleischlicher Siinde in fla- granti zu ertappen und beide unaufloslich aneinander zu fesseln, more canino' ('to surprise inflagranti a man and woman in carnal sin and to bind them together insep- arably, more canino'). It is noteworthy that in the Old Testament, at the time when the conceptions of God and

1 [I have suggested that the same mechanism accounts for the present form assumed by the game of chess; see International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol. xii. 1931, p. 4.]

8 Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 270.

8 Jacob, op. cit. pp. 22-33. 4 Graf, op. cit. S. 136.

M

178 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. &

Devil were only beginning to get disengaged from each other, the association between the two was much closer than later, and the Devil appears really as the obedient servant of God the Father, differing from the good angels only in respect of the unpleasant nature of the tasks allotted him.

This 'identification' with God is at times very close in- deed, and it is interesting to note that it was deliberately striven for by the Devil, who copied God to a truly re- markable extent. As until the past half -century the worship of Christ has been on the whole more prominent than that of God the Father, it is not astonishing that the Devil's resemblance to the Son has been greater than that to the Father. His physical appearance was at first depicted as beautiful and majestic, 1 often closely re- sembling Christ's; indeed he sometimes actually ap- peared in the exact form of Christ. 2 It was only in the Middle Ages that he became invested with ugly and grotesque traits. 3 Like Jesus, the Devil had twelve dis- ciples, 4 descended into hell and was born again, 5 had his home in special churches, was worshipped at regularly recurring festivals, and had his followers baptized, while the details of the Devil's Sabbath caricatured the Holy Mass so closely that the resemblance greatly angered the theologians, who had of course no notion of the psycho- logical identity of the two. The Devil even had a special Bible of his own; it was written in Bohemia and is now in the Royal library in Stockholm. 6 Further, he copied the Trinitarian conception itself. 7 It is little wonder that this habit of caricaturing earned him the title of 'God's ape'.

1 Graf, op. cit. S. 52-54.

Graf, op. cit. S. 64. Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 194.

In the remarkable paintings by Wiertz we have a return to the earlier conception which Giotto was previously the last to depict.

Grimm, op. cit. Nachtrag, S. 292, 302.

A. Lehmann, Aberglaube und Zauberei, Deutsche Obersetzung, zweite Auflage, 1908, S. 114.

A. Nystrom, Christentum und freies Denken, 1909, S. 161.

Didron (in his Manuel d'icono graphic chrttienne, Iconograph H. p. 23) shows the French idea of the devil trinity in the fifteenth century. Dante's Satan was three-faced. Eusebius called the Devil Three-headed Beelzebub*.

CH. VI

THE DEVIL 179

Like Jesus also the Devil was provided with an earthly mother and no father, and characteristically enough she was a giantess, even larger than her son; 1 in some ver- sions she appears as his grandmother. The mother seems to have been composed of at least three figures. Both the death-goddess Hel 2 and the mother of the giant Grendel 3 contributed to the idea; one of the Devil's later by-names was Grendel, perhaps the same as the English fire-demon 'Grant' of whom Gervasius of Tilbury speaks. Then Wiinsche 4 points out that 'wahrscheinlich bildet auch die Sage von der Ellermutter, der neunhundertkopfigen Mutter Hymirs, die die beiden Gotter Thor und Tyr beim Besuch in ihrer Wohnung durch Verstecken vor ihrem grimmigen Sohn rettet, die Grundlage zu der volkstiimlichen Figur von des Teufels Grossmutter. Im Marchen vom Gliickskinde bei Grimm Nr. 29 heisst des Teufels Grossmutter geradezu noch Ellermutter' ('the basis for the popular figure of the Devil's Grandmother is probably laid also by the saga of Ellermutter, the nine-hundred-headed mother of Hymir, who saved the two gods Thor and Tyr from her ferocious son by hiding them when they visited her dwelling'). In most of these legends, as in the last one mentioned, the Devil really is again a mythological presentation of the hated father; hence the replacement of the mother by the grandmother. The same remark applies to the old saying that thunder or rain during sunshine comes from the Devil beating his mother. 6

The conception of the Devil as the Son is another, very natural ground for the belief that he has no semen, and the bisexual nature of the whole belief is shown in the idea that he can impregnate a woman only after having first obtained some semen by acting as a Succubus to a man, 6 which was the reason why it was always cold. 7 This curious procedure gave rise to the most hair-

1 Grimm, op. cit. S. 841. 2 Wuttke, op. cit. S. 37.

3 Roskoff, op. cit. Bel. i. S. 164. 4 Wunsche, op. cit. S. 15.

5 Grimm, op. cit. S. 842.

6 W. G. Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, 1880 edition, Bd. i. S. 181.

7 Jacob, op. cit. p. 86.

180 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

splitting controversies to decide whether the offspring in such circumstances legally belonged to the original owner of the semen or to the Devil, 1 and whether the same rule was to apply here as in the case when the Devil acquired the semen from a man's nocturnal pollution. 2 To this idea of the sexual incapacity of the child I would also relate the belief in the limping God or Devil, which as Tylor 8 has pointed out, is to be found in the most varied stages of cultural development; incapacity to walk is among neurotics a frequent symbol for sexual impotence. The belief is of course highly over-determined, and has to do with all sorts of ideas connected with the castration complex. Castration wishes against the Father (God) are contained in it, while on the other hand the fact that the limp is so 'often the result of being hurled from heaven points to the castration fears of the son, his dread that the father will punish him in this appropriate manner.

Finally, we may mention in connection with the aspect of the Devil here under discussion his extraordinary capacity for gratitude; on the rare occasions when he is honestly treated he shows the highest appreciation of the treatment. 4

(4) The Son who defies the Father

This is the prime aspect of the Devil, the Arch-rebel; his insubordinate disobedience and final insurrection against the authority of God the Father is the very para- digma of revolution. According to Origenes, 6 it was his arrogance and presumptuousness that constituted the reason for his being cast out of heaven, while, according to Irenaus, Tertullian and others, 6 the chief reason was his envy of God. The latter seems to be the earlier of the

1 J. Sprenger und H. Institoris, Der Hexenhammer, 1588. Deutsche t)ber- setzung, 1906, Erster Teil, S. 51.

2 Sprenger und Institoris, op. cit. Zweiter Teil, S. 64.

• E. B. Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind, 3rd ed., 1878,

PP- 365-37L

4 Conway, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 389, 395.

• Cited by Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 231. 8 Roskoff, loc. cit.

CH. vi THE DEVIL l8l

two; Roskoff 1 says: 'Das Motiv zur Feindschaft des Bosen gegen die Gottheit, der Ursprung des Bosen in der Welt ist sowohl nach der hebraischen Vorstellung vom nachexilischen Satan als auch in den Mythen anderer Volker, namentlich der Parsen, auf den Neid zuriickge- fiihrt, der in der Ich- und Selbstsucht wurzelt/ ('In the Hebrew idea of Satan as conceived after the exile as well as in the myths of other peoples, notably the Parsees, the reason for the enmity of the Evil One against the Godhead, and therefore the source of evil in the world, is to be traced to envy, which originates in selfishness/) What Nietzsche called the slave-morality of Christianity has always regarded pride as one of the deadly sins.

As is well known, a boy's insubordination against his father is not simply a matter of hostility; it is always accompanied by envy, which means admiration and desire to emulate. In his revolt, therefore, as a rule he in no sense frees himself from his fathers influence. Whether he copies him directly or proceeds to the oppo- site extreme of trying to be as unlike him as possible is psychologically irrelevant; both reactions are equally imitation. This mixed reaction precisely applies to the Devil. He either tries to imitate God exactly or else, as we shall presently see in some detail, he does everything in just the opposite way from God's. His behaviour is thus ultimately derived altogether from God's, whether positively or negatively another proof of the original identity of the two Beings. Further, the precise corre- spondence of the Devil's behaviour in this respect with that of earthly sons supports the thesis here sustained of the origin of the Devil idea in the relations between son and father.

The bond that unites him against his will to God also displays itself in his jealousy of anyone to whom God shows special favour, another trait typical of child- hood. In the legend of St. Coleta it runs: 2 'Der alte Feind habe die Eigentumlichkeit, je mehr er sehe, dass sich jemand Gott nahere, desto mehr suche er ihn zu ver-

1 Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 194. * Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 160.

182 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

folgen, zu beunruhigen und abzuhalten, grossere Ubel iiber ihn zu verhangen und sie zu vermehren/ (The old Enemy has this peculiarity, that the more he observes anyone approaching God the more he seeks to persecute him, to annoy him and thwart him, to hang misfortunes over him and to multiply them/)

The same motive of jealousy is probably also the ex- planation of his attitude towards Jesus, although of course this was partly determined also by the identifica- tion of God the Son with God the Father. Through God's action in sending Christ to redeem mankind, the struggle for the ownership of its members became primarily one between Christ and the Devil. The doctrine of Salvation was constructed out of it, 1 and, as Graf 2 ironically re- marks, 'Seltsam genug! Unter den Menschen war niemals die Rede soviel von Satanas, niemals wurde er so sehr gefiirchtet wie nach dem Siege Christi, nach dem Voll- zug der Erlosung.' ('How curious! There was never so much talk about Satan, never was he so much dreaded, until after the victory of Christ, after Salvation had been achieved/) The Devil, again imitating God, made desperate efforts to capture the world by providing a son of his own who would conquer Christ. Merlin and Robert the Devil represented two such attempts, 3 but the former was saved to God through his mother's re- pentance and the latter through his own. Nero, Moham- med and Luther, no less than several of the Popes, were similarly reputed to be sons of the Devil, begotten for this purpose. In the Middle Ages the fear of the threat- ened Antichrist was terrific, and the tension of anxious expectation of his birth was heightened to indescribable terror by recurrent rumours and prophecies of the event. 4

Finally, the Devil's passionate hatred of injustice and his custom of defending the innocent, particularly the poor and weak, against their persecutors accords with

1 Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 224-229, 273.

8 Graf, op. cit. S. 22.

• Graf, op. cit. S. 198-203. * Conway, op. cit. pp. 389, 390.

CH. VI

THE DEVIL 183

the aspect of the Devil idea as a representation of the feelings of the rebellious Son.

• He * # *

We may now turn to our third problem, namely the relation of the belief in the Devil to the experiences of the Nightmare. The considerations adduced in the first chapter would lead one to expect that in the creation of such an 'anxiety-idea' par excellence as the belief in the Devil, a considerable part must have been played by the most intense anxiety experience known to man, namely the Nightmare. This inference has been drawn by several previous writers. We have, for instance, already cited the opinions of Clodd and Hofler on this matter. 1 It is in full accord with this conclusion that the Devil is pre-eminently a demon of the night, for it is by night that he mostly appears, and it is at night that his powers are believed to reach their zenith. 2

It would be quite intelligible if this belief had in part originated in the manifest content of the Nightmare, with its terrifying visions, and this is evidently the view of previous writers, notably Laistner, but a careful com- parison of the belief with the latent content of the Nightmare shows such an extraordinary resemblance between the two as definitely to demonstrate an inherent relationship between them.

It was pointed out above that the two chief charac- teristics of the latent content of the Nightmare are that it is essentially sexual and predominantly incestuous. Of the sexual activities of the Devil no more need be said; it is sufficiently illustrated by the Abyssinian pro- verb: 'When a woman sleeps alone, the Devil sleeps with her/ It is especially noteworthy that the predecessors of the mediaeval Devil were all formal Incubi. Pan, from whom the Devil took over so many attributes, was the equivalent of Ephialtes, 3 the spirit who provided us with what was till recently the scientific name for the Night-

1 See Part II. p. 73 and Part II. p. 85 respectively. * Graf, op. cit. S. 108. 3 W. H. Roscher, Ephialtes, Eine pathologisch-mythologische Abhandlung ilber die Alptrdume und Alpddmonen des klassischen Altertums, 1900, S. 57-62.

184 NIGHTMARE AND MEDLEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. ir

mare; the fauns of Greece were also active Incubi. 1 Casting further back we find that the storm demons of Babylonia and of India, the alu 2 or marut 3 respectively, the precursors of Ares and Ephialtes, were called 'the crushers' from their habit of lying on the breast of sleepers; the Teutonic giant Grendel, of whom mention has also been made above, had the same custom. 4

The facts just cited indicate that the belief in the Devil is closely connected with ancestor worship; more than three hundred years ago Burton 5 expressed the view that devils were merely the souls of the departed, i.e. of ancestors. If the thesis here maintained is correct, namely that the Devil idea is the projection of repressed wishes connected with the father, it follows that inter- course with him symbolizes incest with the father. The fact that the snake, the symbol of the father's phallus, plays an equally prominent part in the Devil idea as in the rest of the Nightmare mythology illustrates the origin of both in incestuous thoughts.

In the various stories of the Devil we find many details strongly suggestive of the mental processes character- istic of dreams, and two of them may be briefly mentioned here. One of the most typical of these is the power of transformation. We have mentioned above the capacity of the Devil for assuming any human form he wished, 6 and also have called attention to the frequency with which he appeared in the shape of a serpent or he-goat. But there was no possible kind of animal whose form he did not assume at times, 7 and he even had the power of changing human beings into animals. 8 Another ex- ample is the psychological process known as 'reversal', the putting or doing things backwards or upside down, which Freud 9 has shown to be exceedingly character-

1 Roskoff, op. cit. S. 146.

2 T. G. Pinches, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, 1906, p. 108.

8 G. W. Cox, The Mythology of the Aryan Nations, 1870, vol. ii. pp. 222, 253. 4 Grimm, op. cit. S. 849.

6 R. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1826 ed. f vol. i. p. 5.

6 See Jacob, op. cit. pp. 33-43.

7 Graf, op^cit. S. 59, 138. 8 Roskoff, op. cit. S. 305.

9 Sigm. Freud, Die Traumdeutung, Dritte Auflage, 1911, S. 257.

CH. VI

THE DEVIL 185

istic of dream productions perhaps even more so. than of other unconscious processes. Most of the writers on the Devil have noted this feature, especially in regard to the Sabbath. Thus those present at this festival dance backwards 1 in a ring, in the reverse direction to the sun (widdershins) with their faces turned away from the centre, 2 they dip their left hand in the holy water 3 (the Devil's urine 4 ), make the sign of the cross in the reverse direction, 5 partake of black bread at the Mass 6 and while this is being performed make use of black candles. 7 The Devil himself had a second face on the buttocks, and this was often the face of a beautiful woman* his penis was often situate behind instead of in front, 9 his person emitted a hellish stink that contrasted with the heavenly fragrance of the Saviour, 10 and so on.

To the dream origin may also be largely attributed the circumstance that coitus with the Devil was as a rule extremely painful and disagreeable, 11 for this is often so in anxiety dreams in which coitus takes place.

A few words may now be said on the resemblances between the belief in the Devil and those discussed in the three preceding chapters. The first of these, the belief in the Incubus, was an essential constituent of the Devil idea, since according to the orthodox view the Incubi themselves were simply devils. Even with the immediate equivalent of the classical Incubi, the German Alp, the idea of the Devil stood in the closest association, 12 one, however, we cannot pursue further here, for the theme is purely a mythological one.

Grimm, op. cit. S. 895.

Lehmann, op. cit. S. 114.

BreVannes, op. cit. p. 123.

B. Picart, Coutumes et ceremonies religieuscs, 1729, vol. viii. p. 69.

Br6vannes, loc. cit.

De Lancre, op. cit. p. 460.

Th. de Cauzons, La Magie ct la sorcellcrie en France, t. i. p. 240.

Brdvannes, op. cit. p. 115.

De Lancre, op. cit. p. 217.

10 Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 156.

11 Delrio, Les Controverses et recherches magiques, 1611, p. 187. O. Henne am Rhyn, Der Teufels- und Hexenglaube, 1892, S. 68.

12 See Grimm, op. cit. S, 847, and Nachtrag, S. 298.

186 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

The relation between the belief in the Devil and that in the Werewolf and Vampire lies more in the latent con- tent common to them than in external similarities, but even in the latter respect many points of interest may be observed. Thus the Devil was commonly named 'the soul-robbing wolf by the Fathers of the Church, 1 and in the laws of Canute he is termed Vodfreca verewulf . 2 In the Middle Ages the Devil was known as the arch- wolf , Archil\ipus, and he often appeared in the guise of a wolf. 3 Grimm 4 traces the Slavonic names for the Devil (Polish wrog, Servian vrag, etc.) to the Old High German warg ( =wolf), and the Slavonic evil spirit Czernobog usually appeared in the form of a wolf. 5 The mediaeval Devil's descent from a wolf seems to have been mainly Teutonic, notably from Odin's two wolves. Wiinsche 6 writes: 'Neben Loki wird aber auch dem Fenrirwolf nach meh- reren missgliickten Versuchen mit einem von den Zwer- gen verfertigten unzerreissbaren Bande von den Gottern eine Fessel angelegt. In der Redensart: "Der Teufel ist los", haben wir sicher noch eine Erinnerung an Fenrirs wiederholtes Sichfreimachen von den starken Banden und Stricken, die ihm von den Gottern um den Hals geschlungen wurden/ (The Gods after several unsuccess- fuiattempts managed to bind the Fenrir wolf, as well as Loki, with an unbreakable girdle manufactured by the dwarves. In the saying "the Devil is loose" we certainly have a memory of the numerous occasions on which Fenrir broke loose from the strong chains and cords that the Gods had fastened round his neck/) In the Middle Ages the Devil was also called 'the wolf of heir, and Grimm 7 remarks: 'der Teufel hat seinen ungeheuren Rachen mit Wolf und Holle gemein' ('the Devil has a monstrous gorge in common with the wolf and with helF). Of historical interest is the case of Angela de

1 The association between Satan and a wolf is still current, as may be seen from Browning's poem, 'Ivan Ivanovitch'.

2 Grimm, op. cit. S. 32.

• J. Ennemoser, Geschichte der Magie, zweite Auflage, 1844, S. 791. W. Hertz,

Der Werwolf, 1862, S. 17.

4 Grimm, loc. cit. 5 Roskofl, op. cit. Bd. i, S. 174.

• Wiinsche, op. cit. S. 13. 7 Grimm, loc. cit.

CH. VI

THE DEVIL 187

Labarethe, who is remembered as the first woman to be burned for having sexual relations with the Devil in 1275 in Toulouse; the result of the intercourse was that she bore a monster with a wolf's head and a tail like a snake. 1

Of the two cardinal features of the Vampire, namely the belief that he is a revenant and his habit of sucking blood from a sleeper, the former is the more prominent in the Devil belief and was discussed above. The nearest indication I have found to the second feature concerns the old German devil Grendel, mentioned earlier: Grimm 2 writes of him 'er trinkt das Blut aus den Adern und gleicht Vampyren, deren Lippen von frischem Blut benetzt sind. In einer altnordischen Saga findet sich ein ahnlicher Damon, Grunr aegir genannt . . . er trinkt das Blut aus Menschenund Thieren' ('he drinks the blood out of the veins and thus resembles vampires, whose lips are sprinkled with fresh blood. In an Old Norse saga there is to be found a similar demon, by the name of Grunr aegir, ... he drinks the blood of human beings and of animals'). The reason I should give for the absence of the blood-sucking feature is that with the Devil there is no question of a corpse, and in our discussion of the psychology of Vampirism we saw how closely connected the idea of blood-sucking is with the problem of decom- position and re-vivification.

We may now conclude this chapter with a few general remarks on the belief in the Devil. We have seen that the infantile conflicts relating to the parents found one of its earliest expressions in peopling the universe with a number of powerful supernatural beings who were sometimes friendly, often ill-disposed, but always in need of propitiation. In the development of this set of beliefs dream experiences have probably played a pre- dominant part. Mainly as the result of a pronounced tribal or national spirit, some peoples, notably the Jews, gradually fused these beings and thus developed a kind

1 E. L. de Lamothe-Langon, Histoire de I' Inquisition en France, 1829, t. 2, p. 614. 2 Grimm, op. cit. S. 849, 850.

l88 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS *>*. n

of practical monotheism. This process, however, brought with it the necessity of allotting the good and evil attri- butes of the superior powers to two distinct Persons, and the more was good ascribed to the one the more did evil concentrate in the other. The exaggerated notion of sin characteristic of Christianity, and the sharper contrast between good and evil inculcated by its doctrine of salv- ation, resulted, it is true, in a loftier conception of God, but also in the creation of a Devil beside the horror of whom all earlier conceptions pale. In the past century or so, and especially during the last fifty years, the inten- sity of the Devil belief has largely faded, the belief in a benevolent Deity having proved the more tenacious of the two; the psychological explanation of this different fate with the two beliefs is in itself a matter of consider- able interest, the discussion of which, however, would lead us too far from the present theme. The change did not come about without considerable theological struggle, since it obviously increased the difficulty of re- conciling the existence of evil with the omnipotence of a benevolent Deity. The problem of evil, which has al- ways proved baffling to theologians because inherently insoluble on theological premises, has been mainly cir- cumvented by recourse, to the view, developed in the fifth century, 'dass die Ubel der Welt als Strafe oder als unbegreifliches Besserungsmittel. zum heilsamen Fort- schreiten in der Erkenntnis, zur Ubung in der Geduld im Hinblick auf eine bessere Zukunft zu betrachten seien' 1 ('that the evil in the world is to be regarded as a punish- ment or as an incomprehensible means of improvement towards wholesome progress in knowledge and as an exercise in patience with a view to a better future'). How long humanity will rest content with such sophisms it is hard to say; the continued success of Mrs. Eddy's teach- ing that evil does not exist objectively, but only subjec- tively, would seem -to point to a growing dissatisfaction with the orthodox explanations, though this considera- tion might have been a source of more encouragement

1 Roskoff, op. cit. S. 267.

CH. VI

THE DEVIL 189

had that lady herself found it possible to dispense with her elaborate system of demonic influences.

Still the Devil dies hard. As Freimark 1 puts it, 'Wer- wolf und Vampir hatten f iir den Kulturmenschen langst ihre Schrecken verloren, nicht einmal mehr die Kinder mochten sie fiirchten und auch das Alpdriicken des Hexenwahns hatte Europa von sich abgeschuttelt, nur Satan wich nicht/ ('Werewolf and Vampire have long since lost their terrors for educated people, they do not even frighten children any longer, and Europe has even shaken off the nightmare of the witchcraft delusion; only Satan does not yield/) We still occasionally read in the newspapers of a clerical exorcism of an hysteric pos- sessed by the Devil, 2 and the belief in an actual Devil is still officially held by the Catholic Church and by most clergy of other Churches. One of the scenes of the closing years of the enlightened nineteenth century that de- serves to live in history was the famous Miss Vaughan swindle, 3 in which Pope Leo XIII and several bishops officially blessed a lady who, though born of a union be- tween her mother and the Devil, had been triumphantly saved to the Church; in the next year, 1897, Taxil con- fessed that not only the whole story, but even the lady herself, was a product of his imagination.

1 Freimark, op. cit. S. 334.

2 It will hardly be believed, but when practising in Canada (in 1911) I had considerable difficulty in dealing with a physician (!) who wanted to treat a case of dementia praecox by reading to her passages from the Bible so as to drive out the devil which he was convinced was inside her.

[To bring the matter still more up to date, I may quote from the Sunday Times of March 30, 1930, the case of a Ruthenian who so fully accepted his fellow- villagers' belief that he was possessed by the Devil that, after failing to get relief from the local priest's endeavours at exorcism, he hanged himself. His family and neighbours refused to touch the body, and it had to be buried by the authorities.]

8 M. Kemmerich, Kitltur Kuriosa, S. 229-234.

CHAPTER VII

WITCHES

problems relating to Witches, although inti- mately allied to those of the belief in the Devil,

JL are still more complicated than these: for on the one hand there entered into the construction of the be- lief in Witchcraft even more factors than into the idea of the Devil, and on the other hand it concerned not imaginary beings, as the Incubus, Vampire, Werewolf and Devil beliefs did, but actual living and suffering human beings. It will never be known how many of these actually believed in the reality of the supposed occur- rences. It is certain that many did not, for after confess- ing them under the most gruesome torture they ad- mitted their innocence to their father-confessor, on the strict condition that he was to keep silent and thus allow them to be executed without being subjected to fresh and unendurable torture. Often, however, the mental state of the victims was such as to make them convinced that they had truly committed the 'crimes' of which they had been accused.

As in the previous chapter, we may distinguish several problems here, particularly:

(1) The fundamental psychological explanation of the

belief in the idea of Witches;

(2) The reason why the epidemic belief broke out at

a given period; and

(3) The relations between it and the experiences of

Nightmare.

The thesis that will be maintained here in regard to the first of these problems is that the Witch belief repre- sents in the main an exteriorization of the repressed sexual conflicts of women, especially those relating to the feminine counterpart of the infantile Oedipus situation. Just as the child's conception of the father becomes dissociated into

190

PT. n CH. vii WITCHES 191

its beneficent and its malevolent aspects, giving rise to the beliefs in a God and a Devil respectively, so does that of the mother divide into the corresponding two, which give rise to the beliefs in Goddesses (Mater Dei, etc.) and female fiends respectively. Riklin 1 has inci- dentally suggested that the conception of giantesses, witches and the like, represents the girl's attitude to- wards the mother as a sexual rival, and this view agrees with the one here put forward. But, just as both sexes contributed to the conception of the Devil, so we shall find that both contributed to that of the Witch.

Before considering the historical aspects of the Witch belief it will be well to discuss the essential features of it in its fully developed stage. These may broadly be divided into three groups, which were originally inde- pendent of one another and became fused only in the course of the thirteenth century. They are:

1. Those concerning the relation of the Witch to her

fellow creatures;

2. Those concerning her relation to the Devil; and

3. Those concerning her relation to God.

These three features may be briefly designated by the words Maleficium, Pact and Heresy respectively. In the Witch epidemic proper the Maleficium was the least characteristic, so that we may dismiss it first. Although it was the element that least sharply distinguished the Witch proper from the ancient magician and soothsayer, being indeed a direct continuation of the attributes of these, it was nevertheless of cardinal importance in the persecution of Witches. The reason for this was as fol- lows. The initiative for the persecution came, as is well known, mainly from the Church, which was greatly con- cerned to uproot heresy and to counteract the power of the Devil. The laity, however, was not primarily inter- ested in these theological undertakings, so the Church had to stimulate their zeal by combining the objects of its persecution with the primaeval notion of harmful

1 F. Riklin, Wunscherfiillung und Symbolik im Mdrchen, 1906, S. 74.

NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

magic (Maleficium) . Roused by the dread of this they joined forces with the Church to destroy, for different reasons, the hated sources of Maleficium, which the Church declared to be one with heresy and pacts with the Devil. Without this combination the antagonism to Witches could never have achieved the universal inten- sity it did, one which can only be described as constitut- ing an epidemic panic. We have therefore to inquire carefully into the nature of the dread in question.

The harmful activities of Witches extended from trivial annoyances to the gravest injuries, including even death itself. Careful consideration of them reveals, in my opinion, that the dread behind the belief in this Maleficium was the fundamental fear of mankind con- cerning incapacity or failure of the sexual functions. The reasons for this conclusion are that nearly all examples of bewitching relate either directly to the production of sexual impotence (including sterility) or to symbolic re- presentations of this.

In the first place, it is to be observed that the most frequent manifestation of Witchcraft was the direct in- terference with sexual functions, and particularly the bringing about of impotence. Hansen 1 remarks: 'Die Behexung trifft weitaus am haufigsten die geschlecht- lichen Beziehungen zwischen Mann und Weib.' (The act of bewitching affected the sexual relations between man and woman far more often than anything else/) In the celebrated Bull on Witchcraft 2 the subject of Male- ficium is treated under seven headings, of which six are concerned directly with the sexual functions and one with the transformation into animals. The well-known Malleus Malificarum 3 devotes four chapters to a de-

1 J. Hansen, Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenprozess im Mittelalter, 1900, S. 479.

2 Quoted in Der Hexenhammer, Deutsche Ubersetzung von Schmidt, 1906, Erster Teil, S. 107. [An English translation of this has recently been published for the first time.]

8 Der Hexenhammer, op. cit. Erster Teil, ch. 8, 9 and Zweiter Teil, ch. 6, 7. See S. 131, 143-145 for the differential diagnosis between impotence from coldness of nature and impotence from witchcraft, and J. Hansen, op. cit. S. 88-92, 1 66, on the significance of this difference for divorce.

CH. VII

WITCHES 193

tailed consideration of the question of the means where- by this impotence is brought about, and lays special stress on the fact that, in contrast with it, Witchcraft cannot interfere with any other natural human function, such as eating, walking, etc. 1 It fully discusses also the different ways in which the penis can be 'bewitched away', either in reality or through illusion. One favourite measure was by the use of the ligature de I'aiguillette, of which Brevannes 2 states that no less than fifty dif- ferent procedures for its employment have been de- scribed. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this was in such frequent vogue, and was so generally feared, that it became customary to carry out marriages in secret so as to avoid the evil spell. The Maleficium extended its influence further in the same direction. Through it the love between a given man and woman could be annihi- lated, barrenness of women and sterility of men induced, the intra-uterine embryo destroyed and miscarriages effected. 3 Even when all these perils were passed the re- sulting offspring was not safe, since Witches had a passion for devouring new-born children, unbaptized ones being especially exposed to this danger.

Most of the other instances of Maleficium symbolize the same fear. The next most frequent was the destruc- tion of crops, through rain or hailstones, or the render- ing infertile of the land belonging to a particular person; in all ages the association between the fertility of mail- kind and that of nature has been conceived to be very intimate, as is shown by the fact, among a thousand others, that the same Goddesses presided over both. Even the minor instances of Witchcraft allow of the same interpretation. Common ones of these, for ex- ample, were turning the milk sour (i.e. damaging the semen), hindering butter-making (the symbolic meaning of which has been elucidated by Abraham 4 ), and inter-

1 Der Hexenhammer, op. cit. Erster Teil, S. 127^

2 R. Brevannes, L'Orgie satanique a tr avers les sticks, 1904, p. 71.

8 These and many other details mentioned in the present chapter are taken from Hansen, op. cit.

4 K. Abraham, Traum und My thus. 1909, S. 66.

N

194 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT..II

faring with the action of the spindle, i.e. with the work- ings of the machine. 1 The only bodily function that Witches could harm apart from the sexual one was that of urinating, a function more closely allied to the sexual than is generally realized; 2 in France to inflict this injury was called cheviller*

The belief that Witchcraft could bring about illness and death 4 is connected with the same complex, for psycho-analysis has shown that an undue fear of these is conditioned by a deeper dread of impotence, with which the other ideas easily become associated. A further source for this belief is the association between it and the idea of a sadistic assault; folk thought mostly re- gards illness and death as the consequence of an attack on the part of an evil demon who violently overpowers one ultimately the antagonistic father. The action of Witchcraft in this respect was performed by means of poison, either material or incorporeal, and poison i.e. a fluid that produces serious effects on being taken into the body is a common unconscious symbol for semen, as we know from the delusions of depressed and anxious patients.

It is noteworthy that the charms by which Maleficium was warded off were, appropriately enough for the talion law, for the most part sexual symbols, as indeed have been most magical charms, amulets, etc., of all ages. The two most widely believed in as efficacious against Witchcraft seem to have been salt 5 and horseshoes. As was pointed out in the preceding chapter, salt is in folk- lore one of the most widely spread symbols for semen, and therefore fertility; salt and water is a common folk- lore equivalent of urine, 6 i.e. the infantile semen. 7 Salt

1 See Freud, Die Traumdeutung, Dritte Auflage, 1911, S. 211.

2 See J. Sadger, 'tJber Urethralerotik', Psychoanalytisches Jahrbuch, 1910, Bd. ii. S. 409.

5 J. A. S. Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire infernal, 1818, t. i. p. 7.

4 J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, Vierte Ausgabe, 1876, S. 965.

5 S. Seligmann, Der hose Blick und Verwandtes, 1910, Bd. ii. S. 34. A. Wuttke, Der deutsche V oik saber glaube der Gegenwart, 1900, S. 95, 258, 283.

6 J. G. Bourke, Scatologic Rites of all Nations, 1891.

7 See Sadger, op. cit.

CH. VII

WITCHES 195

and bread (symbol of faeces, another infantile sexual material 1 ) were also widely used against Witchcraft. The mixture of the two emphasized the idea of fertility; 2 the same mixture, by the way, was also used for bringing to a girl the picture of her future lover in a dream. 8 Horse- shoes, that universal talisman of good luck, were also extensively used to guard against Witches; 4 Lawrence, 5 who has discussed at length the folklore of the horseshoe, calls it the 'anti- witch charm par excellence . The vulval symbolism of this is pretty generally recognized by students of folklore and others. Other objects of allied shape and meaning have also been employed for the same purpose: thus stones with a hole bored through them, called from this connection 'hag-stones' or 'holy stones'. 6 Several of these objects are mentioned together in Butler' sHudibr as (ii. 3. 291), where it is said that the conjuror could

Chase evil spirits away by dint Of sickle, horseshoe, hollow flint.

Other anti- witch charms that may be just mentioned are: an upright knife, 7 a broomstick, 8 a horse's skull, 9 and the figure of a goblin's foot (a pentagram) 10 ; the first two are masculine symbols, the other two bisexual ones. The explanation of this mass belief in the Maleficium of Witches is not simple. It must have a very general basis, since something akin to it may be traced in vary- ing measure at all epochs. In general one may remark that there exists the closest connection between magic and sexuality, as Bloch, 11 Hansen 12 and others have de- monstrated, so that one is justified in suspecting the

1 See Sigm. Freud, Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Zweite Folge, 1909, S. 168. [Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. v. S. 178; Collected Papers, vol. ii. p. 68.]

8 Aigremont, Fuss- und Schuhsymbolik und Erotik, 1909, S. 55.

8 Wuttke, op. cit. S. 244.

4 J. Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, 1849, vol. Hi. pp. 16, 17.

5 R. M. Lawrence, The Magic of the Horseshoe, 1899, p. 88.

6 J. G. Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland, 1835, p. 140. E, H. Meyer, Germanische Mythologie, 1891, S. 119, 137.

7 Wuttke, op. cit. S. 259. 8 Wuttke, op. cit. S. 130.

9 Lawrence, op. cit. p. 87. 10 Grimm, op. cit. Nachtrag, S. 456, 459. 11 I. Bloch, Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit, Zweite Auflage, 1907, S. 128.

ia Hansen, op. cit. S. 12.

196 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS wvn

source of the Maleficium of Witches, which so largely turned on the question of impotence, to be similarly of a sexual nature.

The problem can be divided into the motives, real or supposed, activating the Witches' behaviour or inten- tions and, on the other side, the causes of the obviously exaggerated fear on the part of their victims. In respect of the former question Hansen 1 has suggested the follow- ing explanation. He traces it back to the Orient and says: 'Sie diirfte in der Vielweiberei, und zwar gleich- massig in der natiirlichen Eifersucht der Frauen eines Mannes und der physischen Entnervung dieses Mannes ihren Ursprung haben. Diese Art von Maleficium hat einen ausgesprochen weiblichen Charakter; sie hat viel dazu beigetragen, altere, auf die Liebeserfolge der jiin- geren, eiferslichtige Frauen in den Verdacht der Hexerei zu bringen/ ('It probably takes its origin in polygamy, both in the natural jealousy of women in these circum- stances and in the physical exhaustion of the men. This kind of Maleficium has a pronouncedly feminine char- acter; it greatly contributed to bringing older women, jealous of the success of their younger sisters, under the suspicion of Witchcraft/) This suggestion of Hansen's may be supported by the consideration that in the Middle Ages the loss of men in the numerous wars was so great as to make the social conditions approximate to those of the Orient; indeed polygamy was on this ac- count allowed in Germany by special laws passed for the purpose. The importance of the Crusades also in this respect has been pointed out by Buckle. 2 This would pro- bably account for a good deal of the inimical attitude of unsatisfied women towards more fortunate people, and not only towards other women, for on account of their tendency to blame their facultative partners for their lack of gratification, such women often vent their hos- tility on men as well.

1 J. Hansen, op. cit. S. 12.

2 H. T. Buckle, History of Civilisation in England, 1857, World's Classics Edition, vol. i. p. 129.

CH. vii WITCHES 197

More important, however, is the question of why the imaginary victims of this hostility should have been so terrified. The fears on the part of women, which appear to have related principally to conception and child-birth, one can understand as a continuation of the childhood fears of the same order which arise from the child's sense of guilt. To such women 'Witches' must have been per- sonifications of the hated and feared mother who is felt to be inimical to the private wishes of the girl. It has to be remembered that the human heart is always ready to fear harm, ill-luck, etc., as a punishment for its own buried hostile or criminal wishes, the idea of punishment being naturally projected on to the other person con- cerned, in this case the mother.

The corresponding problem in regard to men is more obscure, i.e. the question how it came that they devel- oped such a terror of certain women. We know, of course, that there is a deep-seated propensity on the part of men, as of women, to dread interference with their sexual functions and that this is always connected with the idea of punishment for their own guilt wishes ; and we may suppose that the inability of women to obtain sufficient gratification at this epoch for the reason advanced above would make the matter of masculine potency of unusual importance at such a time. But we are more accustomed in psycho-analysis to finding this idea of retaliatory pun- ishment associated with the thought of other men, primarily with the father, rather than with that of women. Perhaps we get a clue from the well-known fact that Witches on the whole tended to belong to one of two groups, either ugly, hateful old women, or beautiful and charming young ones. I would suggest that in the former case we have to do with a displacement me- chanism, the fear belonging to the father being trans- ferred to women. We should not forget that the essential source not only of the Witches' power, but also of their conduct, was derived from the Devil, under whose orders they acted: the Devil, however, as was shown in the previous chapter, is a personification of the wicked

198 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

father. Further, up to the thirteenth century, before the association with the Devil and with the idea of heresy was artificially forged, Maleficium was mostly exercised by men, by sorcerers; it was only after this date that the Church, to serve its own purposes, bodily transferred the primary attributes of the older male sorcerers to the new race of Witches. This was, after all, only a continuation of the Church's characteristic attitude towards women, a matter that will be commented on presently. Attrac- tive women, just for the reason of their attractiveness, were the principal source of 'evil', i.e. of guilt and danger, and thus had drawn on to them the hostility of all who were concerned with the problem of 'sin', most of all the celibate Church. With the other class of women another factor entered, namely their own masculinity; the homosexual attributes of a certain class of older women, notably those of a misanthropic nature, natur- ally made it easy to identify them with the idea of the hostile father.

The view that Witches (and sorcerers) were invested with attributes derived from the child's conception of its parents, principally of disliked and dreaded parents, is supported by the interesting fact that there were many traces of the other, more friendly aspects of parents to be observed in them. Their actions were by no means in- variably inimical to their fellow creatures. By means of various propitiatory approaches they could be persuaded, just like both God and the Devil, to exert their super- human powers on behalf of those in need of their help. Thus their ability to foretell future events and to see things that were happening at a distance was frequently called into requisition. Of most assistance, however, was their power of invoking love, by love-philtres, love- charms, etc., or of destroying it where a hated rival was concerned: Witches have been known to go so far on occasion as to carry a lover to his mistress through the air on their goat. 1 They could even be induced to cure

1 Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1826 edition, vol. i. p. 79 and vol. ii. p. 289.

CH. VII

WITCHES 199

the impotence caused by sorcery; in reference to this Seligmann 1 says: 'Eine Hexe heilte die Manner, indem sie mit ihnen wahrend einer Nacht im Ehebett schlief/ ('A Witch healed men by sleeping for a night in the marriage bed/)

We have next to consider the second group of charac- teristics, those to do with the Witch's relations to the Devil*, which was the distinctive feature of the witch- craft epidemic. The pact with the Devil was the chief accusation at Witch trials, perhaps because from the nature of the circumstances it could more easily be 'proved' than either Maleficium or heresy, possibly be- cause the Courts found it a more fascinating theme than these. Wuttke 2 states: 'Hauptgegenstande der Anklage waren der, meist auch geschlechtliche, Verkehr mit dem Teufel, die Hexenfahrt durch die Luft und der dort mit Tanz, Schmaus und oft auch mit Unzucht gefeierte Hexensabbat, wo dem Teufel gehuldigt und manchmal geopfert wurde; die Schadigung von Menschen und Vieh erscheint dagegen als Nebensache/ (The main counts in the charges were the usually sexual intercourse with the Devil, the flight through the air, and the Witches' Sabbath, celebrated with dances, carousals and often also with obscenities, at which adoration of the Devil and often sacrifices to him took place: besides these the injuring of men and cattle appeared as almost trivial/) Soldan 3 similarly designates the pact with the Devil as the 'kernel' of the Witch trials. Ennemoser 4 writes: 'Dem spateren Begriff der Hexen ist unziichtige Buhlschaft wesentlich, sie besiegelt das geschlossene Biindnis und verleiht dem Teufel freie Macht iiber die Zauberinnen, ohne diesen Greuel kommt iiberhaupt keine Hexe vor/ ('Lecherous amours were essential to the later concep- tion of Witches. They sealed the pact and conferred on the Devil complete power over the sorceress. No Witch

1 Seligmann, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 335.

2 Wuttke, op. cit. S. 153.

3 W. G. Soldan, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, bearbeitet von H. Heppe, 1880, Bd. ii. S. 397.

4 J. Ennemoser, Geschichte der Magie, Zweite Auflage, 1844, S. 844.

200 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

exists who has not passed through this horrible scene.') Roskoff 1 says: 'Das spezifische Hexenwesen der eigent- lichen Periode der Hexenprozesse beruht nicht mehr bloss auf der Abweichung von Glaubens-undLehrsatzen der Kirche, sondern, wie aus der Bulle Innozenz VIII und dem Hexenhammer ersichtlich ist, lautet die An- klage vornehmlich auf: "Biindnis mit dem Teufel und vertrautesten Umgang mit demselben." ' (The specific nature of Witches in the real period of the Witch trials no longer consisted of a mere departure from the doc- trines of the Church, but, as is evident from Innocent VIII. 's Bull and the Malleus Maleficarum, the principal charge was 'Tact with the Devil and the most intimate relations with him".')

There cannot be any doubt that the central feature of this bond with the Devil was the sexual relationship. Both the older authorities, such as Bodin, 2 De Lancre, 3 the authors of the Malleus* and the more recent ones, are quite unanimous on this point. Thus, to quote only a few passages of a kind that could be multiplied almost indefinitely, we may cite Freimark 5 : 'Den ersten Anstoss zum Teufelsbund gaben fast ausschliesslich sexuelle Motive. ... In alien Berichten iiber die Verfiihrung zur Hexerei und zum Teufelsbund nimmt unverhullt die sexuelle Verfiihrung die erste Stelle an/ (The first motive leading to the pact with the Devil was almost ex- clusively sexual in nature. ... In all reports on the attraction to witchcraft and compounding with the Devil sexual temptation frankly takes the first place/) Hansen 6 : 'Jede Hexe steht in geschlechtlichem Verkehr mit dem Teufel. . . . Gerade durch diesen Verkehr wird das dauernde Verhaltnis zwischen Hexe und Teufel un- terhalten/ ('Every Witch stood in a sexual relationship to the Devil. ... It was precisely through this relation-

• G. Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, 1869, Bd. ii. S. 213.

8 J. Bodin, De la dtmonomanie des soy der s, 1593, p. 208, etc. 8 P. de Lancre, Tableau de I'inconstance des mauvais anges et demons, 1612, livre iii. disc. v.

4 Der Hexenhammer, op. cit. Erster Teil, S. 108, etc.

5 H. Freimark, Okkultismus und Sexualitdt, S. 297.

6 Hansen, op. cit. S. 481.

CH. vn WITCHES 201

ship that the lasting association between the Witch and the Devil was maintained/) Bloch 1 : 'Der Begriff des Weibes als Hexe drehte sich fast nur um das Geschlecht- liche, das meist als "Teufelsbuhlschaft" vorgestellt wurde.' (The conception of woman as Witch revolved almost exclusively around the sexual theme, pictured mostly as licentiousness with the Devil himself.') Quanter 2 : 'Die sexuellen Exzesse mit dem Teufel waren das einzige, was mit breitem Behagen den Hexen nach- gesagt wurde.' ('Sexual excesses with the Devil was the sole thing that with general complacency was rumoured of Witches.') Nystrom 3 : 'Das Spezifische der Hexen- prozesse in ihrer eigentlichen Periode bestand in der Beschuldigung der Teufelsbiindelei und des Geschlechts- verkehrs mit dem Teufel.' (The specific feature of the Witch trials in their proper epoch consisted in the ac- cusation of pacts and sexual intercourse with the Devil.') It was indeed believed that only after sexual intercourse with the Devil did the Witch obtain her magical powers. 4

The notion of unlimited lechery with the Devil is evi- dently based on that of unsatisfied lasciviousness, an attribute that seems to have been commonly ascribed to women in the Middle Ages. As the Devil is the symbolic personification of the father, the source of the whole idea is plainly derived from unconscious incestuous longings, a subject that, as has been already pointed out, appears to have acquired special significance in the Middle Ages; further evidence in support of this view of the matter will presently be adduced. Just as many women, the mystics and saints, gratified their desires by attaching them to the idea of God, so did others, in a grosser way, by attaching them to the equivalent ideas of Incubus, Demon or Devil. The difference between the two processes is perhaps from this point of view,

1 Bloch, op. cit. S. 129.

• R. Quanter, 'Der Hexenglaube des Mitt clatters', Geschlecht und Gesellschaft,

1910, Bd. v. S. 367.

8 A. Nystrom, Christentum und freies Denken, 1909, S. 244. 4 J. J. Ritter von Alpenburg, My then und Sagen Tirols, 1857, S. 256.

202 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

as Maury 1 has well pointed out, less than might appear.

Considering now the relation of Witch to Devil in a little more detail, we may conveniently divide the sub- ject into a study of Witches:

1. At the Sabbath.

2. On the way to the Sabbath.

3. At home.

i. The Sabbath itself has been so vividly described by many writers that little need be said about it here. It is enough for our present purpose to emphasize the two cardinal features: its essentially sexual nature, and the parody it constitutes of religious ceremonies. The Sab- bath was far from being a disorderly gathering: it con- sisted in a series of ceremonies more or less regularly carried out. 2 These were, in order: the entrance and pro- cession, the acts of homage to Satan, the banquet, the Black Mass, the danse du sabbat, and finally the sexual orgy in which incestuous acts were performed between the nearest possible relatives. 3 The incestuous element is thus brought to the foreground both in the last-men- tioned fact and through the symbolism of union with the Devil. The parody of the Christian rites was complete to the last detail and is indignantly commented on by most of the older writers. 4 Grimm 5 traces it to the envious desire on the part of the Devil to ape God, but a fuller explanation of it is that the underlying psycho- logical significance of the two sets of ceremonies is in many respects identical, though the unconscious com- plexes at work are more directly indicated in the case of union with the Devil.

1 L. F. A. Maury, La Magie et I'astrologie, 1860, 2e partie, ch. iii., 'Les mystiques rapproches dcs sorciers'. See especially pp. 405, 406, 410, 411. See also F. Steingiesser, Das Geschlechtsleben der Heiligen, 1908.

a J. Michelet, La Sovcitre, 36 Edition, 1863, pp. 147-167.

8 P. de Lancre, op. cit. p. 223. C. Kiesewetter, Geschichte des Okkultismus, Bd. ii. S. 461.

4 For instance, de Lancre, op. cit. p. 460.

6 Grimm, op. cit. S. 895.

CH. VII

WITCHES 203

The central ceremony of the Black Mass 1 may be taken as in the highest degree, symbolic of this union, and therefore of the Sabbath itself. In it the youngest and most beautiful of the Witches, the Queen of the Sabbath, served as an altar, 2 after she had been baptized in the Devil's urine and the sign of the cross made back- wards with the left hand. As she lay prone the sacred host was prepared by kneading on her buttocks a mixture of the most repulsive material, faeces, menstrual blood, urine, and offal of various kinds; this represented the famous modern confarreatio , the food of infamous love. We need not here go into the detailed symbolism of the proceeding, which would render necessary a discussion of the meaning of theophagy, necrophilia and other matters that do not directly concern the present theme; suffice it to say that this symbolism, as Pfister 3 has pointed out in his analytic study of two mystics, is throughout a sexual one.

2. The mode of travel to the Sabbath (Hexenfahrt) was a problem that greatly exercised the mediaeval theo- logians. It was generally accepted that it was a flight through the air, but opinions were divided whether the body itself was transported or only the soul. It was ulti- mately decided that the former was the true view and that the sleeping body left behind was a counterfeit of the Devil's, arranged to deceive the husband or relative of the absent Witch. The sources of the belief in such travels by night are manifold, but they all stand in the closest relation to dreams and to sexuality. Even in the tenth century Regius von Prum, 4 and in the twelfth century John of Salisbury, 5 maintained that the belief was an illusion originating in dream experiences, and

1 Br6vannes, op. cit. pp. 120-135. E. Laurent und P. Nagour, Okkultismus und Liebe, Deutsche Ausgabe, 1903, S. 134, 135, 246.

2 G. W. Cox (The Mythology of the Aryan Nations, 1870, vol. ii. pp. 113-121), T. Inman (Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism, 2nd ed., 1874, p. 74), and others have pointed out the female symbolism of the altar. The female body has at various times been used as an altar, even, it is stated, by the early Christians (Brvannes, op. cit. p. 38).

3 O. Pfister, Die Frommigkeit des Grafen Ludwig von Zinzendorf, 1910, S. 76,

77 "3-

4 Quoted by Hansen, op. cit. S. 80. 5 Id. op. cit. S. 134.

204 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS *r. n

this view was held later by Weier and many other writers; it is indeed suggested by the very fact that the travel by night almost always took place when the woman was in a deep sleep. 1 The correspond- ence between the numerous descriptions of the Witches' flight and certain types of dreams is so absolute as to leave no doubt at all that this is the correct ex- planation. 2 It is just as certain that the meaning of such dreams is a sexual one, as will presently be shown.

In the belief in question three fairly distinct ideas are concerned, those of travelling, flying and riding re- spectively. Psycho-analysis has shown that dreams of travelling are almost constantly associated with sexual motives, such as exploration of inaccessible places, death wishes about hated rivals, escaping with the loved parent away from the competing one, 3 and so on; the subject has been already dealt with to some extent in previous chapters. Flying dreams similarly are individually de- termined and symbolize various wishes, but the ultimate source of these is always the same, namely, the sexual excitation of various movements (dandling, chasing, etc.) in early childhood; 4 the phenomenon of erection is in both sfexes the kernel of the whole conception of flying. In his experimental studies on dreams the Norwegian psychologist Hourly Void came to the conclusion that dreams in which the dreamer sees either himself or an- other flying or floating in the air are produced by gentle sexual excitation. The most obviously sexual idea, how- ever, is that contained in the symbolism of riding,

1 Bodin, op. cit. pp. 184, 185.

2 See Brand, op. cit. vol. iii. p. 9. Freimark, op. cit. S. 310. The resemblance was clearly pointed out in the seventeenth century by Oldham (Works, 6th ed,, p. 254):

As men in sleep, though motionless they lie Fledg'd by a dream, believe they mount and flye; So witches some enchanted wand bestride, And think they through the airy regions ride.

• This has been well illustrated by J. Sadger. Heinrich von Kleist, Eine

pathographisch-psychologische Studie, 1910, S. Go.

4 Sigm. Freud, Die Traumdeutung, Dritte Auflage, 1911, S. 201-203.

CH. vii WITCHES 205

which in dreams typically represents the act of coitus itself. 1 Sometimes this interpretation comes quite openly toexpression; thus Delassus 2 quotes the folio wing instance: 'Martin d' Aries raconte, dans son livre des superstitions, qu'une dame tres pieuse se voyait souvent, en songe, chevauchant a travers la campagne avec un homme, qui abusait d'elle, ce qui lui causait une tres grande volupt6/ Similarly Jahns 3 says: 'So kam es vor, dass ehrbare Matronen ihren Beichtvatern vertrauten: "sie fiihlten, dass sie unwillkiirlich Nachts iiber Feld und Aue ritten; ja, wenn sie mit dem Ross iiber ein Wasser setzten, so wohne irgend jemand ihnen mit dem vollen Lustgefiihl des Aktes bei". Da war denn der offenbare Hexenritt und die offenbare Vermischung mit dem Satan eingestan- den/ ('It thus happened that respectable matrons ad- mitted to their father confessors that "they felt as though they had involuntarily ridden by night over field and meadow, and that when their steed leaped over any water it was like someone having intercourse with them in the most voluptuous way". We have before us, there- fore, a direct admission of the Witch-ride and union with Satan/)

Sometimes Witches turned men into horses for the purpose of riding on them to the Sabbath 4 (a typical dream inversion), sometimes in company with the Devil, who rode in front on a staff while the Witch sat behind. 5 More often the Devil himself was the steed, in the form of either a horse 6 or a he-goat. The latter animal was the usual mode of riding, and its well-known lubricity (see the passage on goat-symbolism in the preceding chapter) made it admirably adapted to express the sexual idea

1 Compare the expression for night emissions, 'The Witches are riding him'. The resemblance between witch-riding and Nightmare was pointed out by Burton (op. cit. p. 134) over three hundred years ago: 'and in such as are troubled with incubus, or witch-ridden (as we call it); if they lie on their backs, they suppose an old woman rides and sits so hard upon them, that they are almost stifled for want of breath.'

8 J. Delassus, Les Incubes et les Succubes, 1897, p. 35.

8 M. Jahns, Ross und Reiter, 1872, Bd. i. S. 412.

• F. S. Krauss, Slavische Volksforschungen, 1906, S. 49.

6 Grimm, op. cit. S. 895.

8 Der Hexenhammer, op. cit. Zweiter Teil, S. 44.

206 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIJEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

thus represented. 1 On some occasions the Witch would stick a pole into the goat's back parts on which could be carried either her companions 2 or the children 3 she had to bring to the Sabbath. Frequently the pole alone, usually in the shape of a broomstick, would suffice as a steed. Jahns 4 has shown that this was a representative of a horse or other carrier (compare the hobby-horse series of ideas); the phallic significance is as evident here as with the numerous other forms of magic staffs. The Polish night-fiend, the Upierzyca, a winged or feathered creature, is thus named from the lightness with which she can rise in the air like a bird. The idea of human be- ings, or the Devil himself, being transformed into ani- mals is, as has several times been remarked, eminently characteristic of dreams, and in 1230 Guillaume of Paris in discussing the Witch question expressly declared that it has this origin. 5

A minor feature in connection with the flight through the air that is of some interest was the well-known Witch's salve that was necessary for the performance. This has to be rubbed well into the body, particularly over the abdomen, upper part of the thighs and the feet until a warm glow was experienced. 6 It had also to be rubbed into the broomstick 7 that conveyed the Witch to the Sabbath, and Grimm 8 relates an instance where it was rubbed into a calf used for this purpose. The favourite materials used in the composition of the ointment seem to have been the guts and fat of little babies, 9 murdered for the purpose, the blood of a bat, but many other sub-

1 The goat is the national animal emblem of Wales; in one of the Welsh legends a king chases his favourite she-goat over a precipice, and as she falls she turns into a beautiful maiden. W. Sikes, British Goblins, 1880, p. 54.

2 Jahns, op. cit. S. 415.

G. C. Horst, Zauber-Bibliothek, 1821, Erster Teil, S. 216. 4 Jahns, op. cit. S. 415, 416.

6 Quoted by Hansen, op. cit. S. 138.

8 Grimm, loc. cit. Laurent und Nagour, op. cit. S. 122. J. Wier, Histoives, disputes et discours des illusions et impostures des diables, traduction fran9aise,

1577* P- I( >5.

7 Hansen, op. cit. S. 449. Wier, loc. cit.

8 Grimm, loc. cit.

9 De Lancre, op. cit. pp. 1*2, 119. Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witch- craft, 1584, Book iii. p. 40. Wier, loc. cit.

CH. VII

WITCHES 207

stances were also used, particularly such drugs as acon- ite, hyosyamus, belladonna and opium. The explana- tion of this curious device is by no means obvious. De Lancre 1 says: 'Le Diable use d'ongaens graisses et onctions, pour imiter nostre Seigneur, qui nous a donne le sainct sacrement de Babtesme et celuy de la Saincte onction.' This, however, leaves unexplained, among other things, the special connection between the ideas of anointing and flight through the air.

The act of anointing has in all ages had a peculiar signi- ficance, and has generally been connected with the idea of conferring special powers on the person king or priest anointed; in various religious ceremonies it plays a similarly important role. A comparative study of the circumstances in which anointing is performed makes it highly probable that the act has some sexual symbolism, and the intimate relation of it to the Witches' flight and the Sabbath strongly confirms this view. Freimark 2 ad- duces evidence to show that actual ointments were used at various times for the purpose of producing voluptuous dreams, and mentions a number of substances with aphrodisiac, intoxicating and anaesthetizing properties that have been thus employed. Kiesewetter 3 instituted experiments on himself to investigate the matter, and says he experienced as a result various travelling and flying dreams. It is known nowadays that no drugs can do this directly, so that the belief in their potency must have been an important factor in the effect. It is note- worthy that there has always existed a connection be- tween the ideas of ointment and easy movement, one no doubt fostered by its physical qualities. The very word 'grease' itself comes from the Latin Gratiae ( = Greek Charites who used to wash Aphrodite with oil) and the Vedic equivalent of the Charities were the shining steeds who drew the chariot of Indra, the sun (=phallos) 4 ; to descend from the sublime to the comical, one is reminded

1 De Lancre, op. cit. p. 212. 2 Freimark, op. cit. S. 306-316.

8 Kiesewetter, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 579.

4 Cox, op. cit. vol. i. p. 426; vol. ii. pp. 2, 35.

208 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

of the modern American expression for rapid movement, 'greased lightning'. The idea of rapid movement was very naturally associated with cutaneous sensations, and it used to be believed that the magic salve could actually change the person's skin into that of an animal famous for swiftness. There is the classical story of Pamphile, in Apuleius' Golden Ass, using a salve to grow feathers over her body until she could fly away as a bird, and in the Middle Ages it was similarly used to procure the trans- formation into Werewolves and thus endow the person with the powers of rapid flight. 1 While all this is so it cannot provide the full explanation, for it does not ac- count for the deeper sexual symbolism. The evident re- lation of mucus and semen to the movements of coitus is probably the source of this symbolism, and I have shown elsewhere 2 that in early childhood the same associ- ation is formed between the ideas of movement and the excretory acts (considered as sexual performances). It is therefore intelligible that the phallic broomstick on which the Witch 'rode' had to be rubbed with ointment, and it is likely enough that the same accessory was at times employed in the actual gathering of Witches' covens where the leader who represented the Devil had a fulUnight's work in front of him.

This view is confirmed by the fact that there existed a close connection between the acts of anointing and of drinking magical liquids. The Witch, after rubbing in the ointment, partook of some magical fluid to enable her to travel. 3 Now, as Abraham 4 has shown in detail, magical drinks that confer wonderful powers regularly symbolize semen: thus the Vedic soma, the Greek ambrosia and nectar, the Teutonic odrerir, etc. In the Iliad (xiv. 170) Homer relates how the Goddess Hera anoints her whole body with ambrosia the scent of which fills heaven and earth.

1 S. Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves, 1865, pp. 71, 79, 92.

2 Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, 1911, Jahrgang i. Jahrbuch fur psycho- analytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, 1912, Bd. iv.

8 Freimark, op. cit. S. 306, 308. Laurent und Nagour, loc. cit. 4 See Abraham, op. cit. S. 63.

CH. VII

WITCHES 209

3. Apart from the Sabbath and the Travel by Night the Witch when at home maintained her relations with the Devil in several ways. In the first place he, or one of his subordinate demons, constantly accompanied her as her 'familiar', an idea resembling the totemistic beliefs so general in, for instance, Norwegian folklore. 1 The familiar was usually a tom-cat: at the meeting of the Catharist sect of heretics in the thirteenth century the. Devil used to appear as a tom-cat, and the sect has been supposed to have received its name from this. 2 Cats have played an extensive part in the mythology of female supernatural beings. The old German sorceresses used on occasion to change themselves into cats. 3 Cats are particularly associated with the idea of riding, and indeed served at times for this purpose in the Witches' flight. 4 This belief seems to have been mainly derived from Teutonic mythology. Roskoff 5 writes: 'Freyja fahrt auf einem mit zwei Katzen bespannten Wagen, den Sym- bolen des star ken Zeugungstriebes. . . . Die der Freyja geheiligte Katze macht das Mittelalter zum Tiere der Hexen und Nachtfrauen/ (Treya travels in a chariot spanned with two cats, symbols of a powerful procre- ative instinct. . . . The Middle Ages converted Freya's sacred cats into the animals of the Witches and Women of the Night/) So did the companions of Holda, 6 a proto- type of the night demon aspects of the Witches. In Southern countries cats were replaced for this purpose by their relatives, lions; for instance, the chariot of Heracles was drawn by two lions, and so on. Besides this symbolic way of accompanying Witches the Devil, as will be pointed out later, used at times to appear to them in the form of an Incubus.

The subject, however, that attracted most attention in this context was that of possession by the Devil. Graf 7

1 B. Thorpe, Northern Mythology, 1851, vol. i. p. 115.

8 Grimm, op. cit. S. 891. Hansen, op. cit. S. 229.

8 Grimm, op. cit. S. 915.

4 jSthns, op. cit. S. 415. 5 Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 159.

6 JSlhns, op. cit. S. 384.

7 A. Graf, Geschichte des Teufelsglaubens, Deutsche Ausgabe, 1893, S. 137.

O

210 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

defines this as follows: 'Der Teufel konnte sich damit begniigen, den Menschen nur ausserlichzu qualen, indem er die Angriffe und Bedrangungen vervielfachte, oder auch innerlich peinigen, indem er in ihn einfuhr. Im ersten Fall hatte man die eigentliche sogenannte Ob- sessio, im zweiten die Possessio.' (The Devil could con- tent himself with torturing from without, by multiply- ing assaults and afflictions, or he could also torment from within, by entering into the person. In the former case there is the properly called "obsession, in the latter "possession' ' .) In modern language the difference between the two would be indicated by the terms obsessional neurosis and hysteria respectively. As might have been expected, the latter predominantly affected women. The characteristics of demoniacal possession, and the epi- demics it has given rise to, are too well known to need relating here. 1 As the occurrence is still far from rare there has been opportunity of investigating it from a clinical point of view, and it has been shown that it may constitute a symptom of various mental affections. 2 Miiller 8 writes: 'Was sich in den Hexenprozessen durch- gangig wiederholt, sind Entwicklungskrankheiten der Jug^nd oder des Alters bei Weibern, die iiber die kli- makterischen Jahre hinaus sind, halb irre Zustande, Nervenkrankheiten, die so oft Gegenstand einer aber- glaubigen, dem Zeit alter angemessenen Auslegung waren, und endlich wirklich Buhlerei, und zwar, wie es scheint, oft mit verkappten Personen oder mit bekann- ten Personen, in deren Gestalt gerade jetzt einmal der Teufel erscheint/ ('What repeatedly took place through- out the Witch trials was the occurrence of developmental diseases of youth or else climacteric disturbances among women, half states of nervous or mental disorder, which were often presented in terms of the superstitions of the

1 See Maury, op. cit. Seconde Partie, ch. ii. 'Origine d6moniaque attribute aux maladies nerveuses et mentales', pp. 256-338, and E. Murisier, Les maladies du sentiment religieux, 1903, pp. 148-151.

• A. J. C. Kerner, Geschichten Besessener neuerer Zeit, 1835. J. L. Nevius,

Demon Possession and Allied Themes , 1894. Ch. Pezet, Contribution a I* etude de la Dtmonomanie, 1909.

8 Johannes Miiller, Vber die phantasti schen Gesichtserscheinungen, 1826, S. 67.

CH. vii WITCHES 211

age, and on the other side actual licentiousness, often apparently with persons, disguised or known, in whose form the Devil was supposed to appear/) Of the various disorders the one in which the condition occurs with special frequency is hysteria, and in view of our modern knowledge concerning the sexual aetiology of hysteria, 1 including the hysterical attacks which symbolize coitus, 2 it may be well briefly to quote the evidence of hysteria in the demoniacal possession of the Witches. Among the hysterical symptoms then observed 3 were: Bulimia, pica, anorexia nervosa, vomiting (frequently of foreign bodies, such as needles), globus hystericus, pseudocyesis, general tremblings and rapid tremors, coitus-like movements, mediumistic phenomena, narcolepsy, fainting spells, somnambulism, catalepsy, amnesia, 'lying', tedium vitae, negativism, double or multiple personality in short, all the symptoms that have recently (by Babinski, etc.) been declared never to occur except when artificially created through the dressage of physicians brought up in the Salpetriere traditions. The description of the con- vulsive seizures, with all the accompaniments of these, shown by the possessed nuns of Louviers 4 tallies in every detail with the accounts of hysterical seizures given in modern medical text-books; even the term arc en cercle is employed. Of especial interest in the light of modern knowledge is the fact that exorcism of the patients was followed by an outpouring flood of 'disgusting and ob- scene' talk, that in other words the treatment consisted in a form of abreacting.

Not only were the symptoms of hysteria present in Witches, but also the stigmata. Indeed so constant were these that they were relied upon as the most convenient

1 Sigm. Freud, 'Allgemeines iiber den hysterischen Anfall', Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Zweite Folge, 1909, Kap. vi, S. 146. [Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. v. S. 225; Collected Papers, vol. ii, p. 100.]

2 Sigm. Freud, op. cit. S. 150. [Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. v. S. 259; Collected Papers, vol. ii. p. 104.]

8 Graf, op. cit., S. 153-160. P. L. Jacob, Curiosit6s infernales, pp. 43-65, 90. Bodin, de Lancre, Laurent und Nagour, op. cit. S. 116. Wier, etc.

4 Jean le Breton, De la defense de la verite touchante la possession des reli- gieuses de Louviers, 1643. Ese, Traicte des marques des possedes et la preuve de la veritable possession des religieuses de Louviers, 1644.

212 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

and certain method of ascertaining whether a given woman was or was not a Witch. Reginald Scot 1 writes: 'If she have any privy mark under her armpit, under her hair, under her lip, or in the private parts, it is pre- sumption sufficient for the judge to proceed and give sentence of Death upon her/ The main test employed by the professional 'Witch-finders' was the so-called 6preuve du stylet for the discovery of anaesthetic areas. Sinistrari 2 tells us about the distribution and nature of these areas: 'It is imprinted on the most hidden parts of the body: with women, it is usually on the breasts or the privy parts. Now, the stamp which imprints these marks is none other but the Devil's claw/ As is commonly ob- served with hysterical stigmata, the anaesthetic areas did not bleed when pricked. 3 Freimark 4 has pointed out that such marks were also supposed to be characteristic of various heretical sects that preceded the full develop- ment of the Witch concept.

The psychological explanation of the phenomena of possession is not difficult to psycho-analysts. I will merely quote a passage from a non-analytical writer, Freimark, 6 who gives the outline of it in the following words: Tragen die Phanomene des Somnambulismus und "Mediumismus in der Regel nur ihren Entstehungs- ursachen nach sexuellen Charakter, so sind diejenigen der Besessenheit durch und durch sexueller Natur. . . . Das urteilende Ich, das alle nach der bestehenden Gesell- schaftsordnung, nach Religion, Moral und dem Milieu, in dem es sich entwickelt, als ungehorig betrachteten Gefiihle und Vorstellungen unterdriickte, in das Unter- bewusstsein zuriickschob, wo sie sozusagen ein eigenes Leben fiihrten, wird von dem dort im Laufe der Zeit sich ausbildenden Gefiihls- und Vorstellungskomplex iiber- rumpelt und die Bewusstseinsspaltung ist vollzogen.

Reginald Scot, op. cit. p. 15.

P. Sinistrari, Demoniality (ijth Century), English Translation, 1879, p. 27. Santerre, Histoire des diables de Loudun, 1694, p. 318. Freimark, op. cit. S. 280.

Freimark, op. cit. S. 54, 57. 'See also S. 62-69, 353 and Maury, op. cit. p. 258.

CH. vii WITCHES 213

. . . Einen ahnlichen Vorgang konnen wir im Traumleben beobachten; und der Somnambulismus und auch der Mediumismus zeigen das, was uns der Traum lehrt, in verstarktem Masse/ (' Whereas the phenomena of som- nambulism and mediumism generally betray their sexual character only in their causative factors, those of pos- session are through and through of a sexual nature. . . . The controlling Ego, which suppressed all feelings and ideas regarded as unseemly by the prevailing social order according to religion, morality, and the environment in which this has been developed, and which has driven them into the subconscious where they so to speak lead their own life, was overpowered by the complex of feel- ings and ideas that got built up there in the course of time, and the splitting of consciousness is then complete. . . . We may observe a similar process in dream life; and somnambulism and mediumism show in an intensified fashion what dreams teach us/)

• * * * *

We have now to take up the second problem, namely the question of why the Witch epidemic took place just when it did. The researches made on this problem in the middle of the last century by Ennemoser, 1 Michelet, 2 Roskoff, 3 Soldan 4 and Wachter 5 have of late years been extended and corrected by Hansen, 6 von Hoensbroech, 7 Langin, 8 Lea, 9 Lempens, 10 Riezler 11 and others, and most of the points have now been pretty fully elucidated. The three most important conclusions that emerge from these investigations are:

i. That the conception of Witchcraft in its strict sense

1 Ennemoser, op. cit. Vierte Abschnitt, Zweite Abteilung.

• Michelet, op. cit.

Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. ii. Dritter Abschnitt. * Soldan, op. cit.

5 Wachter, Die Hexenprozesse, ein kulturhistorischer Versuch, 1865.

6 Hansen, op. cit. and Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexen- wahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter, 1901.

7 von Hoensbroech, Das Papsttum in seiner sozialkulturellen Wirksamkeit, dritte Auflage, 1901, Bd. i. S. 380-600.

8 G. Langin, Religion und Hexenprozess, 1888.

9 H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, 1887. History of the Inquisition in Spain, 1907.

10 Lempens, Geschichte der Hexen und Hexenprozesse, 1880,

11 S. Riezler, Geschichte der Hexenprozesse in Bayern, 1896.

214 ' NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

was a totally new one in the Middle Ages, and that the Witch epidemic proper dates from the middle of the fifteenth century;

2. That the factors cooperative in the production of it were extraordinarily involved; and

3. That the essential responsibility for it unquestion- ably rests on the Roman Catholic Church.

The Church, for various motives, deliberately con- structed the belief in Witches, like that in the Devil, out of disparate material already present in folklore. Hansen 1 puts the matter clearly when he says : 'Der Begriff vom Hexenwesen . . . ist keineswegs aus dem Spiel der Volks- phantasie frei erwachsen, sondern wissenschaf tlich, wenn auch in teilweiser Anlehnung an Volksvorstellungen, konstruiert und fest umschrieben worden; er ist in seinen Elementen durch die systematische Theologie der mittel- alterlichen Kirche entwickelt, strafrechtlich in der Ge- setzgebung von Kirche und Staat fixiert, schliesslich auf dem Wege des kirchlichen und weltlichen Straf- prozesses, und zwar zuerst durch die Ketzerinquisition, zusammengefasst worden/ (The conception of Witches ... is in no way a free growth out of the play of popular phantasy, but was scientifically constructed and defined, although with the help of popular ideas. It was developed in its elements by the systematic theology of the Medi- aeval Church, legally established in the laws of Church and State, and finally built up into a whole by means of ecclesiastical and lay criminal trials, first of all by the Inquisition of Heretics/) Most of the folk elements of the conception were for centuries denied by the Church, who only gradually accepted them one by one. As she did so, she fused them more and more closely together, until early in the fifteenth century a totally new conception was formed and officially proclaimed. Hansen 2 says: ' Wie bereits angedeutet wurde, erweisen sich die Verfasser der literarischen Quellen des 15. Jahrhunderts, welche uns jenen Kpllektivbegriff der Hexe definieren, samtlich als von der Uberzeugung durchdrungen, dass es sich bei

1 Hansen, op. cit. Vorwort, S. 6. a Id., op. cit. S. 145.

CH. VII

WITCHES 215

der von ihnen geschilderten Art des Hexenwesens um eine neue Erscheinung . . . handelt. Die beteiligten In- quisitoren zeigen sich geradezu iiberrascht von der Exis- tenz dieser neuen Sekte.' ('As has already been indicated, the authors of the literary sources of the fifteenth cen- tury who have defined for us the collective idea of Witch show themselves to be one and all permeated by the con- viction that the kind of Witch being they describe was a new phenomenon. The Inquisitors concerned were ab- solutely surprised at the existence of this new sect/) Jiihling 1 just as emphatically observes: 'Es gab freilich schon im Altertum den Begriff der Zauberinnen, aber die Hexe an und flir sich ist eine Ausgeburt spezifisch christ- lichen Aberglaubens/ (The concept of sorceresses had, it is true, existed in olden times, but the Witch herself is a spawn of specifically Christian superstition/)

It is impossible here to attempt to unravel what Roskoff 2 calls the 'complicated network of multifarious threads' that constitutes the Witch belief, but a few words may be said about the history of its main features. The ideas concerning heresy, relations with the Devil, and the Sabbath are mainly, though not exclusively, of a religious nature; on the other hand the beliefs in Male- ficium, in animal transformation and in the travels through the air of night-fiends, which will now be dis- cussed, took their source from folk mythology. Male- ficium had always been a punishable offence among both the ancient Romans and Germans, but not the acts in- volved in the Striga or Incubus beliefs. The history of the origin of Witchcraft is the story of how the Church skilfully and gradually, during the course of two cen- turies, developed a new concept and forced it on to a whole civilization. The attitude of the early Church was entirely opposed to the rudimentary forms of this con- cept previously in existence. Lehmann 3 points out: 'Auf

1 J. Jiihling, Die Inquisition, 1903, S. 299. See also Ennemoser, op. cit. S. 780, 781, and Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 214-225.

• Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 315.

8 A. Lehmann, Aberglaube und Zauberei, Zweite deutsche Ausg., 1908, S. 105. See also J. N. Sepp, Orient und Occident, 1903, S. 140, 150.

215 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS FT. n

der Synode zu Paderborn 785 stellte man f olgenden Satz auf: "Derjenige, welcher, durch den Teufel verblendet, nach Art der Heiden glaubt, dass jemand eine Hexe sein kann und deshalb dieselbe verbrennt, wird mit dem Tode bestraft." Zu dieser Zeit wird also nicht die Hexe, sondern der Glaube an dieselbe verfolgt und bestraft. Diese Be- stimmung wurde von Karl dem Grossen bestatigt und war in den folgenden Jahrhunderten die Richtschnur fur die Stellung der Kirche gegeniiber alien Anklagen wegen Hexerei. Noch deutlicher tritt die Auffassung der Kirche von Hexerei im sogenannten Ancyranischen Kanon Episcopi hervor, welche um das Jahr 900 entstand. Hier wird den Bischofen befohlen, "in ihren Gemeinden den Glauben an die Moglichkeit damonischer Zauberei und nachtlicher Fahrten zu und mit Damonen als reine Il- lusion energisch zu bekampfen und alle diejenigen, welche einem solchen Glauben huldigen, aus der kirch- lichen Gemeinschaft auszustossen." ' (The following thesis was put forward at the Synod of Paderborn in 785: Whoever, deceived by the Devil, believes in the fashion of the heathen that anyone can be a Witch and burns her on this account is to undergo punishment by death. At this time, therefore, it was not the Witch, but the belief in Witches, that was persecuted and punished. This ordin- ance was confirmed by Charlemagne, and was for several centuries the principle that guided the Church in respect of accusations of Witchcraft. The views of the Church on Witchcraft were still more plainly expressed in the so- called Canon Episcopi of Ancyra which was composed in the ninth century. Here the Bishops were commanded energetically to combat in their dioceses the belief in the possibility of demoniacal magic and night journeys to or with demons as being pure illusion, and to expel from community with the Church all those who cherish such beliefs." ') This enlightened Canon (which, inci- dentally, was not composed at the Council of Ancyra, its actual date being uncertain) goes on to explain how dreams can deceive people and give rise to such beliefs; it maintains, in fact, the thesis of the present book. Even

CH. VII

WITCHES 217

before this the Council of Ireland in 466 had anathema- tized Christians who believed they were sorcerers and forbade them to be received in the Church until they had done penance.

By the thirteenth century, however, the alarming in- crease and power of the heretical sects 1 against the Mother Church led the latter, as was pointed out in the preceding chapter, to undertake the fiercest measures for the suppression of them, and she cleverly enlisted the lay arm by fusing the ideas of Witchcraft and heresy. The Papal Bull issued by Gregory IX in 1227 became the nucleus of the future Inquisition, and later in the same century Alexander IV formally declared Witch- craft to be one with heresy. The great influence of Thomas Aquinas at this time was also thrown in the scale and was an important factor in developing the con- cept of Witchcraft. 2 Relatively little advance was made in this direction after this until the fifteenth century.

At this point we may pause to consider historically the individual elements of the Witch belief in more detail and note how one by one they became fused with the idea of heresy. The first one to undergo this fate was that of Maleficium? and this was the principal one to win over the people to the support of the Church in its fight against heresy. The popular belief in Maleficium, which the Church had always been interested in from the point of view of idolatry, became linked with the Devil idea, 4 and therefore to that of heresy. 5 It was this first element that also proved the most lasting one in the whole con- stituent series. Hansen 6 says: 'Das Maleficium, mit Aus- nahme des Wettermachens, ist ohne alle Unterbrechung von der kirchlichen und bis in das 17. Jahrhundert auch von der staatlichen Autoritat als Realitat angenommen, seine Kraft ist nie ernstlich in Abrede gestellt worden; es zieht sich wie ein roter Faden auch durch die Ge-

1 See Hansen, op. cit. S. 212-216, 232.

2 Soldan, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 160. 3 See Hansen, op. cit. S. 9-14.

4 Hansen, op. cit. S. 451. W. Wundt, Vdlker psychologic, Zweiter Band, 'Mythus und Religion', Zweiter Teil, 1906, S, 400. 6 Hansen, op. cit. S. 23, 39, 239. 6 Id., op. cit. S. 13.

2l8 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS FT. n

schichte der strafrechtlichen Verfolgung.' (Maleficium, with the exception of the element in it concerning the belief in control over the weather, was continuously accepted as reality by the ecclesiastical authorities, and up to the seventeenth century also by state authorities. Its power was never seriously denied. The theme runs like a red thread through the history of criminal persecution/)

It is impossible to trace here the numerous legends relating to women who fly by night 1 since that would take us into the realms of mythology, although much con- firmatory evidence for our main thesis could be gained by so doing; for such beliefs are closely related to Night- mare experiences and to the belief in Succubi. It must suffice to remark that they evidently played a consider- able part in the elaboration of the Witch concept. Con- tributions came from the Greek Persephone (=strang- ler), 2 the Roman Striga (Italian Strighe, Swiss Strdg- geti}? the Teutonic elves, 4 the German Waldfrauen and Weisse Frauen (Bertha, Holda 6 ) the descendants of the Northern Frigg. It was believed, for instance, that a Witch became a Drude when she attained the age of forty, 6 while on the other hand a young Drude was likely to become an old Witch; 7 according to Grimm, 8 'Drute ist eins mit Mahre' ('a Drude is identical with the night-fiend of the Nightmare 1 ). The Church was for many centuries strongly opposed to believing in the pos- sibility of night flights. The idea was denied by the celebrated Canon Episcopi? it was again denied in 906 by Regino of Priim, in 1020 by Burkard of Worms, in the twelfth century by John of Salisbury, and in 1230 by Guillaume of Paris. 10 The subject was fiercely con- tested in great detail throughout the thirteenth century 11

1 See Grimm, op. cit. S. 907. Hansen, op. cit. S. 15-18. Roskorf, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 136. Hansen, op. cit. S. 14. Sepp, op. cit. S. 120, 231. Meyer, op. cit. S. 135. Graf, op. cit. S. 266, 277. Grimm, op. cit. S. 803-810. Roskoff, op. cit.

Bd

i. S. 157-159. Wuttke, op. cit. S. 29-31, 47.

Sepp, op. cit. S. 122. J.V. r ~

Grohmann, Aberglaube und Gebrduche aus Bohmen, 1864, Bd. i. S. 23. Grimm, op. cit. S. 1042. e Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 271.

10 Hansen, op. cit. S. 80, 83-85, 134, 136, ^ Id. t op. cit. S. 191-209.

CH. vii WITCHES 219

and the definite belief was not generally accepted by the Church authorities until 1450. l It then proved to be of decisive importance in firmly establishing the Witch delusion, principally through the connection between it and the Sabbath; it was indeed the stories of flights through the air ascertained by the Inquisition that settled the question for the Church and appeared to prove finally the identity of heretical meetings and Witch Sabbaths. 2

The allied theme of transformation of human beings into animals, similarly a primordial folk phantasy, ex- perienced a course parallel to that of the night flight idea. Energetically denied at first by the Church, 3 who punished believers in it as severely as they did those in the flight idea, it was for a time hotly contested 4 and finally accepted, though the acceptance was not general until I525. 5

The idea of the Sabbath was elaborated by the Church in connection with the naturally secret meetings of heretics, who were accused of carrying out at them all sorts of orgies and misdeeds just as the early Church itself had been in Roman times. 6 The first full account of it appears in a Witch-heresy trial at Toulouse in 1335. 7 It was probably strengthened by the Teutonic legends of the wild hunt and wild army. The memory of the Roman Bacchanalia 8 and Athenian Cotyttia 9 also no doubt played a part: indeed the very word 'Sabbath' in relation to Witches has been supposed to be a form, altered by Jewish Manichaeans, of the Sabos where Bacchus was worshipped, a name derived from o-a/Sd&w = to dance. 10 This memory was sustained in the Middle

1 Hansen, op, cit. S. 33-3<>6, 409, 455-458.

2 Id., op. cit. S. 235, 238,

8 Id., op. cit. S. 18, 83-87. 4 Id., op. cit. S. 189, 190.

6 Id., op. cit. S. 455.

8 Id., op. cit. S. 21, 226, 227. O. Henne am Rhyn, Der Teufels- und Hexenglaube, 1892, S. 68.

7 E. L. de Lamothe-Langon, Histoire de V inquisition en France, 1829, t. iii. p. 233. 8 Freimark, op. cit. S. 279.

9 F. Hedelin, Des Satyres, brutes, monstres et demons (1627), J 888 ed., p. 124.

10 Id., op. cit. p. 131. G. Herman, Genesis, Bd. iii. ' Bakchanalien und Eleusinien , Zweite Auflage, S. 103.

220 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

Ages by the well-known Feast of Fools, 1 though the true origin of this was pre-Christian. *

The Black Mass, the central point of the Sabbath, is of very ancient origin. Sexual union in public has, in both ancient 3 and modern 4 semi-religious cults, in both civilised 5 and savage 6 nations, been performed as a sacred ceremony. We need not trace the history of this, nor occupy ourselves here with unravelling the psycho- logical meaning of the well-recognized sexual perversion that characterizes it. What is noteworthy in the present context is that as either an open perversion or a super- stition the Black Mass has survived long after the Witch epidemic was at an end, 7 i.e. after the delusion of Witch- craft had again been resolved into its constituent elements, and that it persists even to the present day. 8

The belief in lustful indulgence between Witch and Devil is again a relatively late constituent of the Witch delusion. The idea of such intercourse between human and supernatural beings was of course always present among the people, as has been amply illustrated in earlier chapters of this book, but it was for long strenu- ously denied by the Church, e.g. in 900 by Burkard. 9 Until the twelfth century it was quite distinct from sorcery, 10 and became connected with it only through the linking of the Sabbath idea with heresy, about I250. 11 It was accepted by Gervasius of Tilbury in the year 12 14, 12 and by Thomas Aquinas in the same century. 18 The first instance of it being the accusation at a Witch trial was in 1275, when Angela de Labarethe was burned

1 Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 363. * Bourke, op. cit. ch. iii. pp. 11-23.

S. Rocco, Sex Mythology, 1898, p. 46.

W. H. Dixon, Seelenbrdute, Deutsche Ubersetz. 1868, Bd. i. S. 273-278. E. Sellon, Annotations on the Sacred Writings of the Hindus, 1902 ed., pp.

26

27.

J. Cook, An Account of a Voyage round the World, 1821, vol. ii. p. 127. Br^vannes, of. cit. pp. 180-233. Laurent und Nagour, op. cit. S. 137-142. G. Legue*, Medecins et empoissonneurs, p. 185.

8 J. Bois, Le Satanisme et la magie. Cp. the novels by J. K. Huysmans, Ld-bas, and R. Schwalb, Chez Satan.

9 Hansen, op. cit. S. 83. 10 Id., op. cit. S. 19. 11 Ennemoser, op. cit. S. 791, 845. Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 216. 11 Hansen, op. cit. S, 142.

M Soldan, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 181.

CH. vii WITCHES 221

for having sexual intercourse with the Devil. 1 Before this time the act was not treated as a sin, perhaps because of its being thought to occur, if at all, only against the will of the victim. 2 It was, however, hard to maintain this view in the face of the evident attachment of the victims to the Devil, as shown even by nuns. 3 After the second half of the thirteenth century the belief belonged, as Hansen 4 puts it, to the 'permanent store of theological science'.

Although the various elements of the Witch concept were for the greater part developed by the middle of the thirteenth century and were gradually becoming con- solidated into a definite system of beliefs, Witch trials proceeded rather languidly during the following two hundred years. It was, however, only a lull before the storm, and this broke out as a true epidemic towards the end of the fifteenth century. There were reasons for both the delay and for the occasion of the subsequent outbreak. In the interval theologians were busily occu- pied in discussing and elaborating the general concep- tion, which, as was remarked above, was not fused into a harmonious whole until the middle of the fifteenth century. The method of legal procedure had also to be perfected, and the attempt to transfer the necessary powers from the lay to the clerical arm met with con- siderable opposition. The Civil courts were concerned only with Maleficium, and it was not until 1400 that they were prepared to recognize fornication with the Devil as a criminal charge. 5 Soldan 6 is of opinion that the experiences gained in the Crusades exerted a consider- able influence in this respect by making the laity familiar with Oriental ideas of intercourse between human and supernatural beings.

A factor that cannot easily be over-estimated was the sex problem within religion itself, for it was only the concentration of the whole Witchcraft idea on women

1 Lamothe-Langon, op. cit. t. ii. p. 614. a Hansen, op. cit. S. 180. a Steingiesser, op. cit. S. 44. 4 Hansen, op. cit. S. 187.

6 Id., op. cit. S. 396. 8 Soldan, op. cit. Bd. i. S, 179.

222 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

that made it possible for the phobia to be generalized among the population at large. Probably all religions, and notably the Christian religion, represent solutions of the masculine Oedipus complex and are worked out by men with this unconscious end in view, the problems of women being a secondary matter. We have seen that the conflict between son and father is dealt with by dividing the figure of the latter into two, God the good father and the Devil the bad father. To diminish this conflict as far as possible it was important to diminish the significance of feminine charms and desires. The one thing that would be more intolerable than anything else would be indications of sexual desires on the part of women, and, as we have repeatedly pointed out, this is what fornication with the Devil really represented. It is only considerations such as these that render at all comprehensible the inhuman and barbaric attitude of the Christian Church towards women. What this atti- tude, often commented on by modern writers, 1 was in earlier days is hard to realize without reading the original discussions about women, particularly those that cul- minated in the Witchcraft period as represented by De Lancre, 2 Bodin, 3 and above all the Malleus Maleficamm* The behaviour of the Church in ascribing all manner of unworthy traits to women, and even debating whether she had a soul at all or was merely a beast, was without question due to its degrading attitude towards sexuality in general, and was a manifestation of a morbid miso- gynous revulsion produced by extreme repression. It is likely that this was intensified during the Middle Ages by the social conditions then prevailing, the depletion of the male population through wars leading to a state of widespread jealousy and dissatisfaction among the women. The upshot was the turning of fear and hate against a certain class of women, against those who were either strongly sexual or else filled with hate themselves

1 See, for instance, Jiihling, op. cit. S. 319, 320.

2 De Lancre, op. cit. pp. 57, 58.

8 Bodin, loc. cit. 4 Der Hexenhanmer, op. cit. Erster Teil, S. 92-106.

CH. VII

WITCHES 223

from dissatisfaction. The unusual or hysterical women of earlier times were magicians, soothsayers, prophetesses: in the Middle Ages they became Witches. As Michelet 1 epigrammatically puts it, 'La Sibylle predisait le sort et la Sorciere le fait. C'est la grande, la vraie difference'.

Towards the end of the fifteenth century two events took place that had the result of definitely inaugurating the Witch epidemic proper. They were the issuing of the famous Papal Bull by Innocent VIII in 1484, and the publishing of the Malleus Maleficarum by Sprenger and Institoris in 1487. In Innocent's Bull, a document that has been stigmatized as a 'product of heir, special stress is laid on the two ideas of fornication with the Devil and the production of impotence through Maleficium* i.e. the two ideas that, for the reasons expounded above, were absolutely intolerable and, if taken seriously, must infallibly result in an outbreak of savagery. In the Malleus these matters, as well as those of flight through the air and the Sabbath, are argued to the finest point of sophistry, and the rules laid down are of such a nature as to prevent the escape from horrible torture or death of any woman that might be accused by a spiteful neighbour. Without quoting the denunciatory language of such writers as Ennemoser, 3 Henne am Rhyn, 4 Mann- hardt 5 and Nystrom, 6 one may fairly describe this book as unique in the annals of bigotry and cruelty; we note it in passing as constituting a landmark of decisive im- portance for the subsequent epidemic. It was followed in the next hundred and fifty years by a number of books in a similar strain, of which the chief were those by Bodin, 7 Carpzov, 8 Delrio, 9 Glanvil, 10 King James I, 11

1 Michelet, op. cit. Introduction, p. ix.

2 The full text of the Bull is given by Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 222-225. Ennemoser, op. cit. S. 812.

Henne am Rhyn, op. cit. S. 87.

W. Mannhardt, Zauberglaube und Geheimwissen, Vierte Auflage, 1909, S. 240.

Nystrom, op. cit. S. 251.

Bodin, op. cit.

Benedict Carpzov, Practica nova rerum criminalium, 1635.

Delrio, Inquisitiones magicae, 1599.

10 J. Glanvil, Sadducismus triumphatus, 1681.

11 King James I, Daemonologia, 1615.

224 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. it

Remigius, 1 and Torreblanca, 2 and even by a newspaper, the notorious Hexen- or Druden-Zeitung (in 1627).

The epidemic was now unloosed that raged irregularly over Europe for well-nigh three centuries. The total number of victims will never now be known. Voigt's well-known estimate of nine and a half millions is cer- tainly an over-statement, although Soldan 3 thinks that the number ran well into the millions. Nystrom 4 calcu- lates that it is greater than that of those killed in all the European wars since the beginning of our era [till, of course, the recent Great War]. Largely because of the activity of the Inquisition directed in this case, it is true, more against heretics than against Witches the population of Spain fell within two centuries from twenty millions to six; one man alone, Torquemada, is said to have burned 10,220 in eighteen years and to have con- demned 97,371 to the galleys. 5 Nearly every country in Europe suffered. Those that came off best were the countries under the Greek Church, the Netherlands, and with the exception of the frightful Mora explosion in 1670 Sweden. Even distant America had its minor epi- demic. 7 And although the actual extent of the epidemic may have been exaggerated by some writers nothing can exaggerate the horror of the detailed cruelty, which it would be hard to parallel at any age in any other part of the world. Sepp 8 truly says: 'Nie haben die Menschen blinder gegen einander gewiitet, nie hat die Christ enheit sich angesichts aller Welt mehr blamiert als in den Hexenprozessen.' (' Never have human beings raged more blindly against one another, never has Christianity brought more discredit on itself in the face of all the world as in the Witch trials/)

1 Remigius, Daemonolatria, 1595. 2 Torreblanca, Daemonologia, 1615.

8 Soldan, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 452, 453. 4 Nystrom, op. cit. S. 273.

5 Nystrom, op. cit. S. 230, 232.

6 Ennemoser, op. cit. S. 814. Nystrom, op. cit. S. 279-281.

7 See M. D. Conway, Demonology and Devil-Lore, 1879, vol. ii. pp. 314-317, and Howard Williams, The Superstitions of Witchcraft, 1865, p. 264.

8 Sepp, op. cit. S. 130. See also E. Clodd, Myths and Dreams, 1891, p. 59. Hansen, op. cit. S. 3, 5. 0, Stoll, Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Volkerpsycho- logic, Zweite Auflage, 1904, S. 397, 398.

CH. VII

WITCHES 225

In seeking an explanation for this extraordinary state of affairs the chief point to bear in mind is that it was not due to a sudden and incomprehensible aberration of the human spirit, as might at first sight appear, but that it was entirely congruous with the prevailing views of the period. The Witch delusion was 'rationalized 1 to such an extent that it quite harmonized with the conceptions of the universe then current. 1 Indeed it might well be maintained that the most striking feature of such works as the Malleus and GlanviFs Sadducism is not the cruelty and stupidity so much as the remarkable intellectual subtlety with which they defend the most irrational theses. The factors entering into the mental state that paved the way for the delusion are extraordinarily in- volved, 2 but the most important were the abnormal atti- tude of the Church towards sexual matters and the social condition of the times. The critical period of all in the formation of the delusion was the fourteenth cen- tury. Of this Gener 3 well says: 'Ce n'est pas un siecle normal, c'est un siecle malade. . . . Son histoire est tout entiere contenue dans celle de la pathologic. II semble qu'il subisse les approches de Tagonie du monde feodal et Taurore d'une ere nouvelle. Dans ses souffrances il y a quelque chose du rale de la mort et des douleurs de Tenfantement. L'egarement de sa raison est celui de la sibylle avant la prophetie/ Some of the features were mentioned in the preceding chapter, and here we may confine our attention to summarizing the cardinal factors in the development of the Witch epidemic. Of these un- questionably the most important was the deliberate machination of the Catholic Church. The three funda- mental components of the Witch concept were Male- ficium, pact with the Devil, and Heresy, which may be described as the Witch's relation to Man, to the Devil and to God respectively. The Church's activity consisted

1 For an excellent presentation of this see Sir Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1829), fourth edition, 1898, p. 153.

a See on this matter Hansen, op. cit. S. 328-331. Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. ii.

s. 315-359.

8 P. Gener, La Mort et le D table, 1880, p. 595.

P

226 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

in exploiting the first of these so as to get the second punished with the aim of destroying the third. The al- ready present belief in Maleficium was employed to in- flame the persecution, the evidences of the Devil pact obtained through hysteria and torture were the readiest means of securing the victim, while the prime motive was the endeavour to stamp out heresy. Once the pro- cess was well under way there can be little doubt that it served also to excite and gratify certain human tenden- cies in their rudest and crudest forms. The two most obvious of these were sadism and sexual curiosity. Con- cerning the theoretical discussions on Witchcraft, Bloch 1 says: 'Es gibt keine sexuelle Frage, die nicht von den theologischen Kasuisten in subtilster Weise erortet wor- den ist, so dass ihre Schriften uns zugleich ein lehrreiches Bild der Phantasietatigkeit auf geschlechtlichem Gebiete geben/ (There is no sexual question that was not dis- cussed in the most subtle way by the theological casuists, so that their writings provide us with an instructive picture of the functioning of phantasy in the sexual sphere/) Jiihling 2 brings out this point even more sharply in connection with the lust of the celibate Inquisitors in stripping, examining and questioning their victims; chil- dren of seven 3 and women of eighty-five 4 were made to confess to fornication with the Devil, with all its accom- panying details. Further, the whole procedure was, as Roskoff 6 has plainly shown, extensively used by indi- viduals to wreak their malignity, hatred and envy in falsely accusing their rivals or enemies.

The end of the Witch epidemic needs almost as much explanation as its origin, though this has occupied students to a far less extent. The history of the wane is most fully detailed by Soldan. 6 Holland had the honour of being the first country to abolish legal Witch persecu-

1 Bloch, op. cit. S. 132.

2 Jiihling, op. cit. S. 321. See also Henne am Rhyn, op. cit. S. 97, and Williams, op. cit. p. 215.

8 Nystrom, op. cit. S. 245. 4 Jiihling, op. cit. S. 323.

6 Roskoff, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 331-343.

8 Soldan, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 263-339. gee also Henne am Rhyn, op. cit. S.

CH. VII

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tion, in 1610, Geneva followed in 1632, Sweden in 1649 and England in 1682. In other countries it lasted much longer. The last official execution in England took place in 1682, in Scotland in 1697, in France in 1726, in Saxony in 1746, in the rest of Germany in 1749, in Bavaria in 1775, in Spain in 1781, in Switzerland in 1782 and in Poland in 1793. The Inquisition itself lasted in Spain until 1834, i n Italy until 1859, but the last time it had put anyone to death was in 1826. Witches were lynched in England in 1751 and in 1863(1), in Germany in 1836 and in France in 1850; one was mobbed nearly to death in Italy, at Milan, in 1891. In Russia various Witch trials, persecutions and mobbings were by no means rare at the end of the last century, and the Witch belief is still current there. 1 In South America there was a regular epidemic between the years 1860 and 1877, a consider- able number of Witches being officially burned; one was officially burned in Peru as recently as 1888. At the be- ginning of the present century two Irish peasants tried to roast a Witch on her own fire. [In 1926 two cases called public attention to the survival of belief in Witch- craft in Western Europe. One was inTipton, in Stafford- shire, where two men were summoned for threatening a supposed Witch, and a number of witnesses testified that they were afraid to go near the woman on account of her evil spells. The other was at Bordeaux, near which place a certain Abbe Desnoyers, who was believed to be none other than Satan himself, was flogged for be- witching a Madame Mesmin and other people; he had despatched birds whose droppings gave rise to fungi of obscene shapes which emitted such appalling odours that those who breathed them were smitten with horrible diseases. 2 We note here again the characteristic combin- ation of anal and sadistic motives to which attention was called in the previous chapter. Finally, to bring the matter up to date, mention may be made of a case

1 B. Stern, Geschichte der offentlichen Sittlichkeit in Russland, 1908, Bd. i. S. 56, 81-92, Bd. ii. S. 288-290. 8 [R. Lowe Thompson, The History of the Devil, 1929, p. 154.]

228 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

reported in the Times in the present year of grace, 1930, where a Witch and her family were boycotted and threatened by their neighbours in Mecklenburg.]

It is very instructive to note that towards the end of the Witch epidemic the delusion once more dissolved into its constituent elements and did not fade as a whole. The first to disappear was the belief in fornication with the Devil and the orgies of the Sabbath, of which rela- tively little is heard after 1650. The belief in flight by night was the last part of this group to go, and it is indeed still held by some people. 1 The Inquisition per- secuted heresy long after it had ceased to do so via Witchcraft. The most refractory element was its oldest one, namely Maleficium, and for more than a century little has been heard of any other aspect of Witchcraft. 2 Officially, however, the Roman Catholic Church still holds to every element in the whole conception, from the influencing of weather by sorcery to pact with the Devil. 3

The disappearance of the Witch epidemic is custom- arily explained by invoking the change in the view of the universe brought about by the rise in science, but several considerations made it unlikely that this factor, important as it may have been, could have been the only one. In the first place, it cannot account for the rapid diminution in the Witch belief that took place in the second half of the seventeenth century, 4 for the new scientific discoveries had by this time penetrated into only a small circle. Then these discoveries in physics, e.g. by Kepler, Harvey, Newton, etc., concerned mat- ters only very indirectly connected with the subject of Witchcraft, while it cannot be maintained that a scien- tific way of thinking was at that time, or indeed is even

1 See, for example, W. W. Sikes, British Goblins, 1880, pp. 163, 164.

2 Wuttke, op. cit. S. 155.

8 F. A. Gopfert, Moraltheologie, 1897, Bd. i. S. 470. Hagen, Der Teufel im Lichte der Glaubensquellen, 1899, S. 8. A. Lehmkuhl, Theologia moralis, 1890, Bd. i. Nr. 335, 879. Marc, Institutions morales Alphonsianae, 1893, Bd. i, S. 543, J. E. Pruner, Lehrbuch der katholischen Moraltheologie, 1875, S. 263. Henne am Rhyn, op. cit. S. 153-157. Soldan, op. cit. S. 340-346.

4 In England, where I have studied the current opinions in most detail, most of the change took place within twenty years.

CH. vii WITCHES 229

now, at all generally diffused. The explanation strikes me as being altogether too intellectualistic, since both the origin and the disappearance of such beliefs as that in Witches are predominantly matters of emotion. [This scepticism was similarly expressed by an anonymous writer in the New Statesman, April 3, 1915: 'Men did not cease to believe in witchcraft because the evidence was against it, but because they gradually got a vague idea that such things did not happen. It is by faith rather than by reason that we have come to disbelieve in a world of witches. As Lecky has said, "if we considered witchcraft probable, a hundredth part of the evidence we possess would have placed it beyond the region of doubt. 11 ']

An important clue is perhaps furnished by the fact that the Witch delusion crumbled through its most im- portant element being eliminated, namely the belief in fornication with the Devil, and I would suggest the following explanation for this. In the seventeenth cen- tury, particularly about the middle of it, there was a notable increase in Puritanism, the political manifesta- tions of which in all European countries are well known, and partly as a development of this and partly as a reaction against it the general attitude towards both sex and sexuality underwent a very extensive change. 1 In- stead of its being loudly declaimed and stamped as a dangerous sin it became more and more suppressed as a topic of public discussion. A hypocritical compromise was reached, still maintained, 2 by which it was allowed to exist on condition that people were discreet about it. Now this change of attitude was quite inconsistent with a continuance of the Witch epidemic, for the Witch trials consisted largely of ventilating in great detail the most repellent aspects of sexuality. In short, the feeling

1 The change in the attitude towards sexuality which occurred in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries has been carefully studied by E. Fuchs in his valuable works: Illustrierte Sittengeschichte vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart; Renaissance (mit Erganzungsband), 1909; and Die Galante Zeit (mit Ergan- zungsband), 1910.

a [No longer true since the War.]

230 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

gradually increased that the performances of Witches were too improper a theme to be dwelt on: such things were simply not done. With this elimination of the sexual aspects, and its necessary concomitants, the pact with the Devil, the Sabbath and the Travel by Night, Witch trials became more and more impossible. The Witch conception therefore dissolved into its original elements.

Let us consider the fate of these in order. Intercourse with supernatural beings reverted first to folklore, as has been expounded in earlier chapters of this book, and finally to the sphere of erotic dreams. Heresy continued and does so still, but the power of the Church to perse- cute it diminished for two reasons. It could no longer be combined with the dread of Witchcraft, and then the political power of the Catholic Church was so broken by the wars of the seventeenth century that in ex- haustion the nations had to accept an attitude of greater religious tolerance, one which the State has gradually forced on the Church in all countries. There remained Maleficium, the original form of sorcery. The sting had been taken out of this, however, by the waning of the idea of feminine incest which had accounted for the greater part of the morbid dread. Left to itself Maleficium was inadequate to maintain official prosecutions, in spite of numerous agitated attempts 1 in this direction, and the belief was restored from the field of juris- prudence to that of folklore, where it has lingered on in an increasingly attenuated guise into our own days.

The very factor, therefore, namely excessive sexual repression, that had made the Witchcraft epidemic possible in the first place was, when developed to a more intense degree, an important one in destroying its own fruit. We are familiar with clinical parallels to this pro- cess: many neurotic manifestations of a given stage of repression become incompatible with a more intense one, the erotic source of them being intolerable, and so dis-

1 Soldan (op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 263) has remarked that in the period from 1690 to 1718, so critical in regard to the Witch belief, no fewer than twenty-six books were published in its defence, lamenting its decline and the insufficiently energetic measures taken against Witches.

CH. VII

WITCHES 231

appear. It is possible that an external observer might have foretold in the fourteenth century that the Witch- craft delusion then being formulated must for intrinsic reasons be as self -limited as a fever, carrying with it, just as this does, the seeds of its own cure.

• * * * *

We come now to the third problem, namely the relation of the Witch concept to the experiences of Nightmare. There is no direct connection between these experiences and the driving force behind the Witch persecutions the endeavour to uproot heresy, or between it and the folk belief that the Church exploited for its purpose the Maleficium of sorcery, although the topics of both heresy and sorcery are indirectly related to the ideas underlying the Nightmare experiences, i.e. the ideas belonging to the incest conflict. It is quite otherwise with the third constituent of Witchcraft, the belief in the pact with the Devil, which welded them all into a single entity and without which the Witch epidemic would have been impossible: for this constituent is inherently connected at every point with the Nightmare. This con- clusion has never been more clearly demonstrated than in the remarkable Roman de la Rose published anony- mously in 1280, the author being the ecclesiastical Jehan de Meung and it is nowadays no longer possible to deny. The essentially dream origin of the ideas centering around the Night flight has been expounded above in detail, and the idea of fornication with the Devil is evidently a form of Incubus belief which must have been largely determined by the Nightmare experiences so common in hysteria; 1 the prevailing theological views of the time lent them an appearance of reality, as they so often have with other hallucinatory experiences (visions, etc.). Miiller 2 says: Ihren sinnlichen Versuchun- gen und ihrer Furcht vor dem Versucher, vor dem sinn- lichen Teufel kann sie nicht entgehen. In den phan-

1 On the Nightmare experiences of Witches see Ennemoser, op. cit. S. 869, and Wuttke. op. cit. S. 151.

2 Johannes Muller, op. cit.

232 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

tasiereichen Zustanden des Halbwachens und Traums unterliegt sie der sinnlichen Erscheinung dessen, was ihre Sinne wiinschen und was die religiose Vorstellung fiirchtet. Das Phantasiebild hat fur sie Objektivitat, sie kann die Anklage des Teufelsumganges nicht von sich ablehnen/ (The "Witch" could not escape the tempta- tions of her senses and her fear of the seducer, of the sensual Devil. In dreams and when half-awake, mental states so rich in phantasy, she was overcome by the plastic vision of what her senses craved and what the religious teaching dreaded. The phantasy picture was for her objective and she could not deny the accusation of intercourse with the Devil/)

The Witch idea is an exteriorization of a woman's un- conscious thoughts about herself and her mother, and this is one of the reasons why Witches were for the most part either very old and ugly or very young and beauti- ful. As was pointed out in connection with the Sabbath, fornication with the Devil represents an unconscious in- cestuous phantasy.

The resemblances between the beliefs relating to Devil, Witch, Incubus and Night-bogey (Alp) are so inti- mate that they may be said to present merely different aspects of the same theme. Even in fine details the corre- spondence is very striking. Thus Witches, just like the Devil, the Night-bogey (Alp) and Night-hag (Mahre) had a cloven hoof (Drudenfuss) 1 and a hollow back. 2 Ex- actly the same amulets knife, horse-shoe, salt, etc. were used as protection against Witches, the Devil, and the Nightmare. Coitus in all these cases was mostly dis- agreeable and devoid of -pleasure. 3 The Night-bogey (Alp], just like the Witch, rode on horses and flew like a bird, 4 and so on. The Southern Slavs have many beliefs connecting the Mara and Witch. 5 Some hold that a Mara is a Witch who has rued her evil deeds and decides to

1 Wuttke, op, cit. S. 155.

8 Grimm, op. cit. S. 903. Henne am Rliyn, op, cit. S. 38, 68.

8 Gener, op. cit. p. 524. Henne am Rhyn, op. cit. S. 68.

4 L. Laistner, Das Rdtsel der Sphinx, 1889, Bd. ii. S. 82, 275.

5 Krauss, op. cit. S. 147, 148.

CH. vii WITCHES 233

confine herself to plaguing men during sleep. Others that a Mara is a maiden ripe for marriage who will become a Witch after it; in Herzogovina such a Mara is herself the daughter of a Witch.

The connections between the Witch belief and that in Vampires and Werewolves are less striking, but many indications of them are nevertheless present. The typi- cal blood-sucking of the Vampire is rarely met with among Witches, but closely allied themes occur. Witches were passionately fond of at least drinking blood, parti- cularly that of young people; 1 no doubt the main idea underlying this is that of sunamitism, 2 i.e. rejuvenation through contact with the young, an idea not far re- moved from that of the Vampire renewing his life through drinking the blood of the living. Milton refers to this belief in Paradise Lost (ii. 662):

Nor uglier follow the Night-hag, when call'd In secret riding through the air she comes, Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance With Lapland witches. . . .

Five Witches were burned in Lausanne in 1604 for having in the guise of wolves set upon a child. They took the child to the Devil, who sucked all its blood out through the big toe and then boiled the body down to obtain materials for the necessary ointment. 3 Witches were also addicted to the more harmless habit of milking cows, and they could even extract milk from a spindle, a hand-towel or the haft of a hatchet; 4 the meaning of this will appear when one recollects the unconscious equivalency of milk and semen. The German Alp used to suck milk as well as blood 5 and, according to Stoll, 6 the superstition still prevails in Germany that snakes suck the milk from cows by night; in Wales it was

1 J. J. von Goerres, Christliche Mystik, 1842, Bd. iv. S. 2, 216. Krauss, op. cit. S. 79. E. H. Meyer, Indogermanische Mythen, 1883, Bd. ii. S. 528. Laurent und Nagour, op. cit. S. 208-227. Nynauld, De la Lycanthropie, 1615, pp. 50, 52. Grimm, op. cit. S. 896, 897. Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 61, and Bd. ii. S. 82. Stoll, op. cit. S. 215.

234 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

believed that snakes would suck milk from the human breast. 1 In Scotland and Wales Witches were even until recently believed to transform themselves into hares for the purpose of obtaining milk by sucking cows' udders; 2 in Denmark and Sweden they get it by simply despatch- ing hares to the cattle, 3 In mythology hares are synony- mous with cats, and the word 'puss* is still used for both in the country districts of England; it is therefore intelli- gible that hares sometimes function, e.g. in Wales, as the 'familiars' of Witches 4 in place of the more usual cats. Even the revenant nature of the Vampire is indicated in the Danish belief that dead people in certain circum- stances change into hares. 5 Further curious associations are the Russian belief that future Vampires may be re- cognized during their life by their having a hare-lip, and the East European one that a dead person becomes a Vampire if a cat runs over his grave. 6 Still another Vam- pire trait is to be found in the Ghoul stories related at many trials in which the Witches exhumed and devoured the corpses of sorcerers. 7 Just like a Witch, the Dalma- tian Koslak, who is actually a Vampire, can predict the weather and can travel faster than anyone else. 8 We thus see that the Witch belief has endless points of con- tact with the phenomena discussed in earlier chapters. The same is true of the connection between Witches and Werewolves. The persecution and execution of Were- wolves in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were mainly possible through the prevailing belief in the power of Witches to transform themselves into animals. They could turn either themselves or others into Were- wolves. 9 Of special interest in regard to the association already discussed between the ideas of Witch ointment,

1 J. Rhys, Celtic Folklore, 1901, p. 690.

2 W. Hertz, Der Werwolf, 1862, S. 113 (several references).

3 Thorpe, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 192.

4 C. I. Elton, Origins of English History, 1890, p. 297.

5 Thorpe, loc. cit.

W. Mannhardt, Zeitschrift fur deutsche Mythologie, 1856, Jahrg. iv. S. 260.

7 De Lancre, op. cit. pp. 199, 402.

8 Krauss, op. cit. S. 125.

• Der Hexenhammer, op. cit. Erster Teil, S. 155-157. Nynauld, loc. cit.

CH. VII

WITCHES 235

night flights and animal-transformation, is the fact that this change into a Werewolf was believed to be brought about by means of a magic ointment. Thus in 1521 a man called Michel Verdun (or Verdung) was burned at Be- sancon for turning hiijiself and a companion into Were- wolves, 1 and in a Witch trial as late as 1717 the victims were accused of turning themselves into Werewolves in the same way. 2 The close association between Witches and cats was mentioned above, and Grimm 3 refers to the ancient sorcery belief that men can be transformed into wolves and women into cats, a wolf and cat evidently meaning Devil and Witch respectively. A similar associ- ation existed between the Mahre, the German precursor of Witches, and Werewolves: a seventh child became, if a boy, a Werewolf, if a girl, a Mahre*

We may conclude this chapter with the following quotation from Hansen, 5 one of the first authorities on the subject: 'Die Hexenverfolgung ist ein kultur- geschichtliches Problem, das, wenn es auch als tatsach- lich abgeschlossen gelten darf, doch mit unserer Zeit noch enger zusammenhangt, als man auf den ersten Blick zuzugeben geneigt sein durfte. Die Elemente des Wahns, auf denen sie sich aufgebaut hat, werden noch heute fast ausnahmslos in den Lehren der geltenden re- ligiosen Systeme weitergefiihrt. . . . Von der Verantwor- tung fur seine Entstehung wird die Menschheit sich aber doch erst dann ganz entlastet fiihlen konnen, wenn sie auch den klaglichen, noch nicht iiberwundenen Rest der ihm zu Grunde liegenden Wahnvorstellungen ausge- schieden haben wird, der trotz aller inneren Haltlosigkeit in den herrschenden religiosen Systemen noch heute sein Dasein fristet.' ('The persecution of Witches is a problem in the history of civilization which, even though it may count as being closed in fact, nevertheless has closer con- nections with our own time than might at first glance

1 H. Boguet, Discours des sorciers, 1608, p. 370. S. Leubuscher, Der Wahnsinn, 1848, S. 68.

2 Riezler, op. cit. S. 293. 8 Grimm, op. cit. S. 915, 4 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 354.

6 J. Hansen, op. cit. Vorwort vii. and S. 538.

236 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS *T. n

appear. The elements of the delusion on which it was founded still to-day continue almost without exception in the teachings of the prevailing religious systems. . . . Mankind will not be able to feel relieved from the re- sponsibility for its occurrence until it has extruded as well the miserable relics, still not overcome, of the de- lusional ideas at the basis of it, which in spite of their being intrinsically untenable still live on in the ruling religious systems/)

SUMMARY

IT would seem worth while now to review the charac- teristic features common to the five groups of pheno- mena considered above. In the first place and this is one of the main theses of this book they all represent constructions built out of numerous elements which not only had an independent existence previously among the beliefs of European peoples, but which are still to be found to-day in widely separated parts of the world. For the fusing of the constituents into a composite belief the Christian Church bears in every case the prime responsi- bility, in four cases the Roman Catholic and in one the Orthodox Greek Church. It is worthy of note that leading authorities of the Church had repeatedly, previous to the twelfth century, denied the truth of the popular beliefs in these constituents, particularly sorcery, lewd inter- course with Incubi, transformation of human beings into animals, night journeys with demons and witchcraft, and they insisted on the dream origin of these beliefs: it was reserved for the Middle Ages to plunge into an obscurantism that the so-called Dark Ages had rejected. The composite beliefs in question endured approxi- mately three hundred years; after their course was run they did not vanish, but dissolved once more into their original elements. Even the fully developed beliefs have lasted on among the uneducated portions of society, and that this is far from rare may be illustrated by the fact that the present writer has personally met with people who were as convinced of the truth of these beliefs as the general population was in the Middle Ages: belief in the constituent elements themselves is far more widely spread and may at times be encountered even among the educated. During the Middle Ages and later belief in these five superstitions tended to assume epidemic pro- portions and then gave rise to frightful suffering and an outbreak of persecutory mania almost without parallel.

237

238 NIGHTMARE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS PT. n

The five superstitions were closely interwoven to- gether, and in many respects even passed over ipto one another. The psychological meaning of them is even more closely connected than their outward appearance. All the elements out of which the five superstitious be- liefs were built were projections of unconscious and repressed sexual material. In this material two features are above all noteworthy, the prominence of incestuous wishes and of infantile forms of sexuality.

The actual formulation of the superstitions after they had been fully developed was influenced by a variety of factors, principally of a social and religious nature; the analysis of them is thus an historical problem. The most important were two features in the attitude of the Christian Church: the fear and hate it displayed towards unorthodox worship, which to it was equivalent to dis- obedience against God; and the abnormally exaggerated effort it expended in the service of sexual repression, particularly in its horror of incest. It cannot be chance that these two features, which evoked as savage emotions and conduct as human beings are capable of, represent the two sides of the fundamental Oedipus complex, revolt against the father and sexual love towards the mother.

The relations the five superstitions bear to the Night- mare are especially close. The superstitions themselves may psychologically be designated as phobias the latent content of which represents repressed incestuous wishes. In the intensity of the dread accompanying them they are surpassed by no other experience than that of the Nightmare and allied anxiety dreams. In many of their features they contain a symbolism highly characteristic of anxiety dreams. Other features common to both are: the sudden transformation of one person into another or into some animal; the occurrence of phantastic and im- possible animal forms; the alternation of the imagined object between extreme attractiveness and the most intense disgust; the apparently simultaneous existence of the same person in two different places; the idea of

SUMMARY 239

flying or riding through the air; and the apprehension of sexual acts as torturing assaults. The central point of the latent content both of the Nightmare and the five superstitions here examined is composed of repressed incestuous wishes relating to coitus. In four out of the five there are also present other sexual wishes, various perversions of infantile origin, just as there are with the anxiety dreams that do not belong to the classical Night- mare type. Nightmares have even shown at times the tendency, so prominent with the superstitions, to assume epidemic form. 1 The extensive accord obtaining between the Nightmare and these superstitions, not only in their essential psychological signification but also in many points in their manifest structure, makes it probable that actual dream experiences were of very considerable im- portance in making the elaboration of them possible.

1 See, for instance, Laurent, cited by Parent, Grand Dictionnaire de Mfdectne, t. xxxiv. Art. 'Incubi'.

PART III

THE MARE AND THE MARA:

A PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL CONTRIBUTION TO ETYMOLOGY

Q

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

i

"\HE word 'Nightmare' originally meant a 'night- fiend'. These night-fiends were held responsible for the experiences of terrifying dreams, and the word was then used to denote the dreams themselves, so that its original meaning is becoming forgotten. Chatter- ton could still write:

Hark! the death-owl loud doth sing To the nightmares as they go.

The word was more particularly used to denote a female night-fiend, night-hag, or, as she was also called, a 'nighte-wytche' .

The word Nightmare itself comes from the Anglo- Saxon neaht or nicht (= night) and mar a (= incubus or succubus). The Anglo-Saxon suffix a denotes an agent, so that mar a from the verb merran, literally means 'a crusher', and the connotation of a crushing weight on the breast is common to the corresponding words in allied languages (Icelandic mara, Danish mare, Low German moore, Polish mora, Bohemian mura, Swedish mar a, Old High German mar a}. They are ulti- mately derived from an Indo-Germanic root of great interest, MR, to which we shall later devote our atten- tion. From the earliest times the oppressing agency experienced during sleep was personified, more often in a female guise; it was depicted as being either extremely attractive or else extremely hideous. The earliest member of the spirit world of which we have any record is this 'oppression fiend' (Dmckgeist) , the generic name for which is mar a. Krauss 1 rightly re- marks that 'Wenn irgend ein Glaube alien Volkern der Erde zu alien Zeiten und unter alien Zonen gemeinsam

1 F. S. Krauss, Slavische Volkforschungen, 1908, S. 146.

243

244 THE MARE AND THE MARA *T. m

war und 1st, so 1st es der Marglaube'. ('If ever a belief was and is common to all peoples of the earth at all ages and in every zone, it is the belief in the Mara/)

Three hundred years ago the word mare alone was commonly used to designate the nightly visitor to whose agency was ascribed the terrifying nightmare dreams. 1 The Teutonic word from which it comes, mar a, is, how- ever, quite distinct from the word mare, a female horse. 2 The latter dates from the Anglo-Saxon mere, the female form of mearh, a horse. The same assimilation between the two words occurs in Dutch as well as in English, for the second half of the Dutch word for Nightmare, i.e. Nachtmerrie, also means a mare. 3 Let us pursue a little further the history of the word mare = a female horse. Jahns 4 cites twelve allied words with a corresponding number of feminine forms. Instances are: masculine, Ice- landic and Old High German mar, Middle High German march, Modern High German Mahr\ feminine, Old Norse merr, Finnish mar a, Middle High German meriche and mare, Modern High German Mar he. The last-named word is nowadays written incorrectly Mdhre. It may be mentioned that Vignoli 5 went so far as to derive the word mar a of our Nightmare from an Old High German word mar = horse, thus making the idea of horse the primary one in the whole group of Nightmare sagas to a quite unjustifiable extent. The root from which the word mare is derived is thought to be of Keltic origin, being recorded as such by Pausanias, and the word is cognate with the Irish marc and Welsh march = horse.

In both German and English these words vejy early

1 See Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, ed. 1665, p. 85.

2 It is true that Grimm, in his Deutsche Mythologie (46 Ausg. S. 1041), though not in his later Worterbuch, expresses the opinion that the latter word is derived directly from the former, which if true would at once clinch the argument of Part III. of this book, but the generally received opinion is as I have stated it in the text.

3 W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 1910, p. 401.

4 M. Jahns, Ross und Reiter in Leben und Sprache, Glauben und Geschichte der Deutschen, 1872, Bd. i, S. 12, 13.

6 T. Vignoli, Myth and Science, 1882, p. 77.

CH. i INTRODUCTION 245

obtained a predominantly feminine signification, very likely because of its similarity to the other word mara = night-hag, and in both, more completely so in Eng- lish, the corresponding masculine form has now fallen into disuse. In fact, this feminine signification is so strong that in various countries the word has been used to de- note several other female creatures; for instance, in Breton march means a cow. Jahns 1 gives this fact as the explanation of the flavour of contempt 2 that the word has acquired in German, for till late in the Middle Ages only the male horse was considered to be noble, the female passing as common. There is an old folk riddle in German that relates to this: 'Welcher Kaiser hat die schlechtesten Pferde? Der von Osterreich, denn er hat Mahren!' ('Which Emperor has the worst horses? The Emperor of Austria, for he has Moravia i.e. mares! 1 ) The masculine word of the same root actually came to signify in German a bad or decayed horse ('ein schlechtes, heruntergekommenes Pferd'), and it is still used in this sense in the Upper Adige district of South Tirol in the form march. Since the ninth century the word Mahre ( = mare) has been used in German to designate a harlot, a lecherous woman or occasionally an ugly old woman; current examples of this are the Bavarian march, the Carinthian merche, and the Low German mar.

The present point of interest is this. It might readily be supposed that the assimilation of the second half of the word Nightmare to the English word for a female horse, a mare, is a matter of no special significance. But psycho-analysis has with right become suspicious of manifestations of the human spirit that are easily dis- carded as meaningless, and in the present case our sus- picions are strengthened when we learn that in other countries the ideas of night-hag and female horse are closely associated, although there is not the linguistic

1 jahns, op. cit. S. 13, 14.

2 Compare the stress laid by Alfred Adler on the importance that contempt for feminine traits has in the development of the psychoneuroses, Zentralblatt

fur Psychoanalyse, 1911, Jahrg. i. S. 20 and elsewhere.

246 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. m

justification for it that exists in English. Forestalling the discussion that will presently follow, I would maintain the thesis that there are in the human mind deep reasons why the two ideas in question naturally become associ- ated, and that the linguistic assimilation in English of the two words is a simple consequence of this psycho- logical fact. The matter seems to me worth pursuing for two reasons. If we find, as we shall, that various folk be- liefs about the mare are closely parallel to those about the Nightmare, and further that the former have the same underlying meaning as we have attributed to the latter, then we shall have obtained a corroboration of no small value of the truth of our general conclusions re- garding the significance of the Nightmare and the part it has played in affecting human beliefs. In the second place, the evolution of the words denoting these two ideas should prove an interesting study in semantics in general and perhaps yield some conclusions of interest to the science of etymology.

Our present theme, therefore, is the association be- tween human beings and animals in the imagination. The general" psychological implications of this theme I have discussed elsewhere 1 at some length and need only repeat at this point the conclusions there reached. The most important for our present purposes are that the ideas unconsciously represented by the presence of an animal in a dream, neurotic symptom, myth or other product of the imagination are always derived from thoughts about a human being, so that the animal simply stands for this human being; that the human be- ing in question is in most cases specifically a parent; and that the ideas thus represented belong to the group of repressed wishes and fears that centre around infantile sexuality. In a word, therefore, the presence of an animal in such contexts always denotes the action of an incest complex. We shall now choose a particular example of this interchangeability, namely that of human beings into horses, and note the threads that connect such an

1 Part II. pp. 63, 64.

CH. i INTRODUCTION 247

idea with those we have already studied when consider- ing the part played by Nightmares in folklore and superstition.

I had originally intended to divide into two groups the material now to be presented, which should illustrate respectively the associations on the one hand between the ideas of mare and female fiend and those between horse and male fiend. This proved to be impossible for a reason which is in itself instructive. The sexes simply re- fused to be separated so neatly as this classification would pretend. Exactly as in anxiety dreams, the sex and the sexual attitude both of the dreamer and of the supposed nightly visitor are extraordinarily interchange- able, so to separate the material in the logical manner I had proposed would have been to do violence to the facts themselves. One cannot lay too much emphasis on the fact that sex inversion plays a highly characteristic and most important part, not only in anxiety dreams, but in all the products of the imagination derived from them or influenced by them.

CHAPTER II

THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND

IN the human imagination of all ages horses have been extensively connected with ideas of the supernatural. Not only evil demons and lecherous visitors of the night, but Divine beings themselves have frequently assumed an equine guise, and, as elsewhere, the ideas relating to good and evil supernatural beings pass in- sensibly into one another. In Hindu mythology it is taught that the first horse was created as a by-product when the gods and demons were jointly churning the Ocean of Milk to extract nectar from it.

There is also no sharp difference of sex in these various associations, but a study of extensive material inclines me to the conclusion that the female connotations are more often associated with the terrifying and the erotic, while the noble and divine connotations have more often male associations; it should be observed that these two statements are not counterparts.

Though we shall have to range somewhat beyond it, our particular concern is with the identification of mara with mare, and we may therefore begin with some remarks on the frequency with which the ideas of woman and mare have been brought together in the imagination. Jahns, 1 in giving many examples of this, writes: 'Ganz eigentiimlich und beispiellos ist die innige Zusammenstellung von Pferd und Frau in Dichtung, Spruchweisheit und Redensart. . . . Diese Zusammen- stellung von Frau und Pferd ist uralt/ ('Quite peculiar and without example is the intimate juxtaposition of horse and woman in poetry, proverbial wisdom and say- ings. . . . This juxtaposition is primeval/) Among the proverbs he quotes to illustrate this are the following:

1 M. Jahns, Ross und Reiter in Leben und Sprache, Glauben und Geschichte der Deutschen, Bd. i. 1872, S. 77.

248

PT.IIICH.II -THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND 249

'Dein Weib, dein Pferd, dein Schwert leih nicht her!' ('Lend not thy wife, thy horse, thy sword. 1 ) 'SeinemGaule und seinem Weibe soil man nie den Ziigel schieszen lassen!' ('One should never give a free rein to one's steed or one's wife.') Treien ist wie Pferdekauf; Freier tu' die Augen auf!' ('Courting is like buying a horse; suitor, keep your eyes open.') He calls attention to the specially fre- quent analogy between horse and rider on the one hand and a married couple on the other. In many countries the ideas of bride and horse are brought together. 1 'In Preussen sagt man: "Kommt der Braut igam zur Hoch- zeit geritten, so lose man ihm gleich nach dem Absteigen den Sattelgurt, 2 das sichert seiner klinftigen Frau eine leichte Entbindung". Bei den hannoverschen Wenden werden vor der Wohnung des jungen Paares die Rosse vom Hochzeitswagen abgcspannt und die Braut muss den Wagen in vollem Laufen vor dem Hause vorbei ziehen. Tut sie das recht geschickt und ohne anzu- stossen, so wird's auch wenig Anstoss in der Ehe geben.' ('They say in Prussia: "If the bridegroom comes on horseback to the wedding one should loosen the saddle- girth 2 as soon as he dismounts, for this ensures his future

1 jahns, op. cit. S. 377.

2 This symbolic equating of the horse's saddle-girth and harness with the human vulva is commonly met with in folklore. Von Diiringsfeld (quoted by H. Freimark, Okkultismus und Sexualitat, S. 409) relates: 'In einigen Gegcnden Skandinaviens nimmt die Braut dem Pferde, auf dem sic zur Trauung reitet, vor der Kirche den Zaum ab und lost ihm die Sattclgurte, um ein leichtes Kindbett zu haben. Sie errcicht diesen Zweck auch, weim sie durch ein Pferde- geschirr kriecht, aber dann wird nach dem Volksglauben das Kind ein Alp/ ('In some districts of Scandinavia the bride takes the reins off the horse on which she has ridden to the wedding in front of the church and loosens his saddle-girth so as to have an easy childbirth. She achieves this purpose also if she creeps through a horse's collar, but then, according to popular belief, the child will be a night-bogey/) An allied symbolism has given rise to a large number of practices of creeping through holes to avoid witchcraft, bad luck or illness. Some of these are quoted by S. Seligmann (Der Bose Blick und Verwandtes, 1910, Bd. i. S. 327-328): e.g., 'in Ostfriesland lasst man ein Kind, das unaufhorlich schreit, durch ein Pferdehalfter kriechen*. ('In East Frisia one makes a child that continually cries creep through a horse's halter'), a custom still in force also in the south of England. To cure impotence a man drinks wine that has been poured through his wedding-ring, and so on. An almost equally large number of beliefs maintain the exact contrary of this, asserting that to creep through a hole, e.g., to walk under a ladder, brings bad luck. Common to both sets, of course, is the conviction that the act in question is of magical significance. (For details concerning the symbolic significance of the girdle see O. Stoll, Das Geschlechtsleben in der Volkerpsychologie, 1908, S. 475-483.)

250 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. in

wife an easy childbirth". Among the Wends of Hanover the horses of the wedding carriage are taken out of the traces in front of the young couple's house and the bride has to pull the carriage past the house. If she does this skilfully and without running into anything 1 there will be little friction in the marriage/) An old Devon legend, an account of which was published in 1683, tells of a female ghost who appears as a mare, 2 whence Tom Pearce's grey mare of the popular ballad. In one of Boccaccio's stories (Ninth day, Tenth story) a woman is by magic turned into a mare. In the Middle Ages in France it was believed that the souls of priests' con- cubines were after their death changed into black mares (les juments au diable) and had carnal intercourse with the Devil. 3

The interchangeability of woman and mare is thus to be found in the most diverse fields, in literature, folk- lore, superstition, and so on. The following examples from the higher mythology will illustrate also the inter- changeability of the sexes here, a feature on which we often have occasion to remark. The god Loki, in order to cheat the giant out of Freija, turned himself into a mare and by neighing beguiled away the giant's chief stand- by, his stallion Svadilfari, by whom he conceived Odin's famous horse Sleipnir. Among the Ancient Kelts the worship was prevalent of Epona, a goddess in the form of a mare, the patroness of horses. 4 In the Icelandic Song of Hildebrand a brown horse saves an unhappy lady from her husband on the condition that she is not to speak while he carries her, and then turns into a hand- some prince, 5

If, now, one studies the various associations to the idea of 'horse' in mythology and folklore it becomes plain that the two attributes of the horse that have

1 There is here a play on the word Anstoss, to run into, to take offence at.

2 S. Baring-Gould, Devonshire Characters and Strange Events, 1906, p. 171. 8 P. S6billot, Le Folk-lore de France, 1906, t. iii. ' La faune et la flore', p. 149. 4 E. Anwyl, Celtic Religion, 1906, pp. 30, 31.

6 See a rather similar story in L. Laistner, Das Rdtsel der Sphinx, 1889, Bd. ii. S. 101.

CH.II THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND 251

especially caught the imagination are (i) his strong, swift movement, and (2) his magnificent shining appear- ance. In a subsequent chapter I shall consider the psy- chological significance of these attributes and the under- lying connection between them. In many spheres, e.g., in sun worship, it is hardly possible to distinguish between them.

The high significance that the idea of movement has in this connection is brought out in the following quota- tion from Jahns 1 : 'Es sind in der vorliegenden Liste dreiundsechzig verschiedene,selbststdndige deutscheNamen des Pferdes aufgefiihrt worden, ganz abgesehn von der Fulle lokaler oder historischer Variant en. Dreiund- zwanzig diser Benennungen, und unter ihnen die aller- hervorragendsten, sind von der Bewegung abstrahirt, einundzwanzig sind Geschlechtsbezeichnungen, zehn beziehn sich auf Jugend oder Kleinheit des Pferdes, zwei kniipf en an sein Gewiher an und sieben endlich an andere besondere Eigenschaften.' ('In the preceding list sixty - three different and independent German names for a horse are given, quite apart from the mass of local or historical variants. Twenty-three of these designations, and among them the most prominent, relate to movement, twenty- one denote the sex of the animal, ten refer to the youth or smallness of the horse, two have to do with neighing, and finally seven refer to special attributes/) In other words, fifteen times as many expressions for a horse (in German) are derived from the idea of movement as from any other single attribute except its sexedness. Examples of the names derived from the idea of move- ment are Pferd (cognate with the English palfrey), Ross (English horse), Hengst and Mahre (English mare) itself; this last is distantly cognate with the French marcher, to walk, the Scottish merk, to ride, the Wallachian merg, to go (from which the Wallachian murghe = horse), and the English to march.

Consideration of movement in connection with a horse brings us at once to the idea of riding. The very word

1 Jahns, op. cit. S. 39.

252 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. m

'ride' originally meant simply movement in general, 1 a trace of which movement is retained in such expressions as 'to ride in a train, carriage, etc/ Now in every lan- guage riding is one of the commonest euphemisms for coitus, the analogy in position and movement be- tween rider and horse and man and woman being sufficiently evident. Nocturnal emissions are known as 'witch-riding', and in German are indicated by the ex- pression 'es reiten ihn Hexen' ('witches are riding him'), a substitute for the older expression 'dich hat geriten der Mar' 2 ('the night-fiend has ridden you') from which we get the corresponding English phrase of 'mare-riding'. In German a tfian lacking in virility is called a 'Sonn- tagsreiter' ('Sunday rider') or a 'Bauerreiter' ('peasant rider'), 3 and a name for the honeymoon is 'Stutenwoche' ('mare week'). In his section on 'Reiten als Bezeichnung der Begattung' ('Riding as a designation for coitus') Jahns 4 writes: 'Das Mittelalter liebte der Art Vergleiche ganz auszerordentlich und konnte sich nicht satt horen an hiehergehorigen Anecdoten und Zotchen. Unmoglich konnen wir dise Ankniipfungen hier naher verfolgen wollen; einige Andeutungen mogen genugen, namentlich unter Hinzuftigung der Versicherung, dasz dis Feld reichlich bebaut ist. . . . Doch genug! Auf disem Gebiete taugt keine Theorie; da sehe jeder selbst zu.' ('The Middle Ages was quite extraordinarily fond of this par- ticular comparison and was never tired of listening to anecdotes and bawdy jokes on it. It is impossible for us to pursue this association indefinitely; a few illustrations must suffice, especially if we assure the reader that this ground is richly sown. . . . But enough! In this field no theory is of use. Everyone can see for himself.') A classical example of the same symbolism is to be found in Voltaire's La Pucelle (Chant XIII) in the scene where the English soldier attempts to rape Joan, a passage which some critics have thought to be borrowed from a

1 Jahns, op. cit, S. 150.

2 J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 40 Ausg., 1877, Bd. iii. S. 372. 8 Jahns, op. cit. S. 156-157. 4 Id., op. cit. S. 229-230.

CH. n THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND 253

similar one in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, where the prince discovers the dwarf in bed with his wife. Then there is the well-known passage from Chaucer; 1

... In principle, Mulier est hominis confusio. (Madame, the sentence of this Latyn is, Womman is mannes joy and mannes blis.) For when I fiele a-night your softe syde, Al be it that I may not on you ride, For that your perche is made so narrow, alias! I am so ful of joy and of solas, That I defye both vision and dreme.

When such an analogy is so striking as to force itself into literature and conversation one may be sure that its widespread use in the unconscious is even more firmly established, as is well known to every psycho-analyst. We may therefore expect to find many indications in mythology of the nightly visitor being associated with riding. Already in the Ynglingasaga we are told of King Vanlandi in Upsala being trodden to death by a mara. 2 The idea of treading or trampling is akin to that of riding, and indeed the French word for nightmare, cauchemar* is derived from the Latin calcar ( = a spur, from calx* a heel) and mar? the equivalents in Italian (pesaruole) and Spanish (pesadilla] come from pesar = press, weigh on. 6 In the Volsunga saga Swanhild is trampled to death by horses as a punishment, an appropriate 'talion' one, for having sexual intercourse with her bridegroom's son. 7

1 Canterbury Tales, 'Nonne Prestes Tale'.

2 B. Thorpe, Northern Mythology, 1851, vol. ii. p. 19.

8 Collin de Plancy (Dictionnaire infernal, 1818, t. i. p. 105) relates the dis- cussion in the Middle Ages as to the nature of this. Delrio decided that it was an imp of Beelzebub, called 'le dmon d^puccleur'.

4 It is perhaps not chance that this word was chosen, for there are many connections between the ideas of stone (calx) and horse. From calx comes the Scottish ca/& =- horse's spur, and also calculate, a mythical attribute oi horses. The close relation of horse, stone and mountain will be noted below, and Keltologists have explained the first syllable of the frequently met with 'Pferdeberge' as coming from the Gaelic per (Latin petra, French pierre)', the Christian representative of the Pferdegott (Horse-God) Psychopomp Odin is called Peter (petrus).

5 L. F. A. Maury, La Magie et I'astrologie, 1860, p. 254.

6 Grimm, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 384.

7 G. W. Cox, The Mythology of the Aryan Nations, 1870, vol. i, p. 284.

254 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT.III

After what has been said earlier about the significance of animals in the unconscious it is not surprising to learn that in legends in which the theme of riding occurs we often meet also with that of metamorphosis. The visitor appears, now as a human being, now as a horse, and one may change directly into the other. This interchange is all the more easily effected in that horse and rider are often identified as one in the imagination. Jahns 1 lays emphasis on this point in a special section devoted to it, where he states categorically 'Ross und Reiter sind ein Doppelwesen' ('Steed and rider constitute a double being'). The matter is, however, still further complicated by the fact that either the visitor or the visited may be conceived of as the rider and that this role may be inter- changed. Moreover, the belief is widely held that when a horse is attacked by sweating and shivering, resembling an anxiety attack, it is because it has had a nightly visitor in the form of a mara, 2 so that the night-fiend may visit a horse in the form of a human being, or a human being in the form of a horse; it is plain that these 'anxiety attacks' of the horse are equated to nocturnal emissions accompanied by fear, for the same explana- tion is given of both. I shall quote two tales that illus- trate several points in this group of beliefs: the first is from Denmark, the second from North Germany. There was once in Jutland a queen who was a great lover of horses; she had one in particular to which she was most attached, and which occupied her thoughts both waking and dreaming. It frequently happened, when the groom entered the stable at night, that he found this horse out of order, and thence concluded that it had been ridden by the Mara. Taking, therefore, a bucket of cold water, he cast it over the horse, and at the same moment saw that the queen was sitting on its back/ 3 'In Usedom there once lived a man, who had a horse that had always

1 Jahns, op. cit. S. 162.

1 W. Golther, Handbuch der germanischen Mythologie, 1895, S. 117. Grimm, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 880. Krainz, cited by Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 172. Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 82.

• Thorpe, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 170.

CH. n THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND 255

been vigorous and in good condition, but at once became meagre and lost strength; and notwithstanding that it was well fed, never could recover. This appeared very singular to the owner, and he thought the matter over and over, but could not satisfy himself. At length he sent for a cunning man, who, on seeing the horse, said that he would soon find a remedy. He remained there that night, and at midnight went to the stable, stopt a knot- hole in the door, then fetched the owner of the horse, and they both entered the stable. To his great astonish- ment he there saw a woman of his acquaintance sitting on the horse, and, although she strove with all her might, unable to descend from it. It was the Horse- mare that was so caught. She besought them most earnestly to set her free, which they did, but only after she had promised never to repeat her visits/ 1 This latter story is repeated in a Brandenburg saga from Mellentin, 2 with the interesting addition that the woman found on the horse the next morning was the prettiest girl in the village: it is one more example of the extraordinary way in which ugly old women and beautiful damsels constantly change places in all Night- mare themes.

We have repeatedly seen that the terror of the nightly visitor, i.e. of the Nightmare, is literally a deadly fear, i.e. it is amongst other things a fear of being done to death, castration and death being, as we know, closely allied ideas. This is as much as to say that night-fiends and death fiends are beings that cannot be sharply dis- tinguished. The same conclusion is true in connection with horses. Horses can be 'ridden' to death by a death fiend just as they can be exhausted by a mara. The deathly ride may take place in the stable or the horse may be carried away to participate in the 'wild hunt' we shall presently have to discuss. 3 Sometimes this simple idea has become displaced, or rather replaced, on to human beings. Thus in the Frickthal it is believed that

1 Thorpe, op. cit, vol. iii. pp. 75-76. 8 jahns, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 413. * Laistner, loc. cit.

256 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. m

the sweating of a horse in its stable betokens an early death in the neighbourhood. 1

Many Teutonic legends date from the old belief that the goddess Hel used to throw herself upon sleeping men in the form of a horse. 2 Hel was later identified with Death. In times of pestilence she rides on a three-legged horse and strangles people; when a sickness rages it was said that 'Hel is going about', or when in the night the dogs howled, 'Hel is among the dogs'. In Denmark in former days a living horse was interred in every church- yard before any human corpse was buried in it. This horse re-appears and is known by the name of the "Hel- horse' V It has only three legs, and if anyone meets it, it forebodes death. Hence is derived the saying when any- one has survived a dangerous illness: 'He gave death a peck of oats' (as an offering or bribe). 3

Returning now to the idea of the Nightmare visitor to a human being assuming the guise of a horse or mare we may consider the following evidence. Jahn 4 says: 'als Schimmel hockt die Mahrte auf in Pommern' ('in Pom- erania the Mara plays high cockalorum in a horse's guise), and Montanus 5 gives us a vivid picture of the performance: 'an der untern Wupper dringt die Mahrte in Rossgestalt durch die Schliissellocher in Schlafkam- mern, legt die Vorderhufe auf des Schlafers Brust und starrt ihn mit gliihenden Augen auf beangstigende Weise an' ('in the lower Wuppenau (in Switzerland) the mara penetrates through the key-hole into the bed- chamber in the guise of a steed, lays her fore-hoofs on the sleeper's breast, and with glowing eyes stares at him in the most alarming fashion') , a description which might well have been written in reference to one of the versions of the frontispiece by Fuseli in the present volume. There are many versions related of the following story with the typical metamorphosis theme. 'Eine Mullerin bei Bam-

1 B. Stern, Medizin, Aberglaube und Geschlechtsleben in der Turkei, 1903, Bd. i. S. 420.

a jahns, op. cit. S. 411. 8 Thorpe, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 209.

4 U. Jahn, cited by Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 172.

6 Montanus, Vorzeit, 2e Ausg. Bd, i. S. 128, cited by Laistner, loc. cit.

CH. ii THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND 257

berg trachtete ihren Knecht zu verfiihren; da es ihr nicht gelang, wollte sie ihn miirbe machen. Nachts kam sie als Ross zur Kammer herein, warf sich auf ihn und nahm ihm alle Kraft. Auf den Rat eines Monches warf er der Mahr, als sie wieder in Rossgestalt kam, einen bereitge- haltenen Zaum uber und liess das Ross beim Schmied beschlagen, am andern Morgen stand die Mtillerin blu- tend an Handen und Fiissen im Stalle. 1 In Oldenburg; ein Grossknecht wacht eines Nachts auf, und wie er einen grossen Schimmel vor seinem Bette sieht, springt er ihm auf den Riicken, reitet ihn nach der Schmiede und lasst ihn beschlagen. Des andern Morgens liegt die Frau krank; sie hat liber Nacht etwas an die Fusse gekriegt/ 2 ('A miller's wife at Bamberg wanted to seduce her servant. Not succeeding in this, however, she determined to break his spirit. She came by night to his room in the form of a horse, threw herself on to him and robbed him of all his strength. On a monk's advice he got ready a bridle and threw it over the Mara on her next visit. Having thus caught the horse he got the smith to shoe her, and on the next morning there stood the miller's wife in the stable with her hands and feet all bleeding. In Oldenburg a foreman woke up one night and, seeing a large horse by his bed, sprang on its back, rode it to the smith and got it shod. The next morning the mistress was laid up, having injured her feet in the night/) Krauss 3 tells of a man who was frightfully plagued by a Mara until one night, during her visit, a friend saw a white hair moving up and down over the man's body. He cut it off and in this way cured the patient, but next morning the patient's horse was found dead in the stable: the Mara was no other than the horse. This last story is evidently an inversion of the other; both contain themes, such as shoeing, hair, bridle, the rich mythological impli- cations of which we cannot pursue here. Another variant of the story is that in which two grooms slept together,

1 A. Schoppner, Sagenbuch der Bayerischen Lande, 1853, Bd. iii. S. 293.

2 L. Strackerjan, cited by Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 172. 8 F. S. Krauss, Slavische Volkforschungen, 1908, S. 152.

R

Ittii JYIAK1S AJNJLJ HIE, MAKA

one of whom was troubled by a Walriderske: she used to put a halter on him, thus turning him into a horse, and then ride on him the whole night in the most exhausting way. The companion watched, and one night as she came he seized the halter, threw it over her, turning her into a mare, and galloped on her to the smith to have her shod. Next morning the lady of the house lay ill in bed and had horseshoes on her feet. 1 This story is paral- leled by one related by Erasmus Franzisci, 2 where, how- ever, the nightly ride was to a witches' sabbath, and in wHich it was the sufferer himself who carried out the ruse.

Riding naturally leads to another aspect of the 'move- ment' theme, namely the innumerable beliefs to do with travel or flight by night. This connects also with the last subject of metamorphosis, since it is highly probable that both take their origin in dream experiences. It is gener- ally agreed that the various beliefs about flight by night are derived from the familiar 'flying dream' experiences. Jahns 3 writes: 'Die nachtfarenden Weiber treten also in zwei verschiedenen Hauptformen auf: entweder als Nachtmare, die als rossegestaltete Damonen zum driickenden Alb oder noch haufiger zum Trager desTrau- menden werden, oder als Nachtreiterinen, welche dann selbst, als Aufsizende, schlafende Menschen oder schlum- mernde Rosse reiten.' ('Women who fly by night 4 appear in two distinct main forms: either as night maras who as demons in the guise of horses become an oppressive bogey or, still oftener, carry the sleeper, or else as night- riders who then themselves ride on sleeping people or sleeping horses/) We note again here the feature with which we became familiar above of the interchange- ability of the ideas of 'riding on' and 'being ridden by'. Even in the sixteenth century the notorious 'witches' flight' was recognized (e.g., by Wierusin hisDe Praestigiis

1 Strackerjan, quoted by Laistner, loc. cit. A very similar story may be found in a Slavonic witch legend, Krauss, op. cit. S. 52-53.

• Quoted by Jahns, op. cit. S. 413.

8 Uhns, op. cit. S. 411. 4 Incidentally, a Cockney euphemism for prostitutes.

CH. n THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND 259

Daemonorum) as arising in a dream illusion, an opinion poetically handled by Oldham. 1

We have seen that in mythology it is impossible sharply to separate the stories of riding from those of be- ing ridden on. With the corresponding dreams, although the two themes are often interwoven, one may say that on the whole the former, typified in the familiar flying dream, is apt to be pleasurable, while the latter, more characteristic of the Nightmare itself, is nearly always unpleasant. But when one studies the latent content and dream sources of the two one finds a close similarity. Both of these kinds of dream represent a sexual act, usually conceived of in infantile and often sadistic- masochistic terms. It is thus comprehensible that the myths derived from them should be intimately related to each other, and also that the theme should be regu- larly connected with that of animal metamorphosis.

Night-fiends ride not only on horses, but also on any abbreviated representative of a horse. According to Grimm, 2 the oldest account of this is given by Guilielmus Alvernus, who describes them riding on reeds and rushes which turned into a live horse. He mentions also the Irish saga where rushes and blades of grass become horses as soon as the mara mounts them, and gives a number of similar examples. The Roman Strigas them- selves rode on broomsticks. 3 As is well known, the later witches' ride could be performed on a great variety of objects, notably pitchforks, cart-shafts and broomsticks, as well as on living objects such as horses, cats, goats, etc. When more than one witch had to be carried the companion, less refined than our modern pillion riders, rode on a pole stuck into the goat's hindquarters. 4 The name of the Horselberg itself, the favourite rendezvous of witches, and doubtless earlier for their predecessors the night-hags, is said to be derived from 'Horsa', a horse. 6 The modern ride on a broomstick is our chil-

1 See Part II. p. 204. * Grimm, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 907.

3 J. N. Sepp, Orient und Occident, 1903, S. 231.

• jahns, op. cit. S. 415. 6 Id., op. cit. S. 417.

260 THE MARE AND THE MARA FT. m

dren's 'hobby-horse', which we shall meet again later, and when one remembers the psychological significance of collecting manias the metaphor 'to ride his hobby to death' is seen to be not such a distant relative of the old Night-flight on a magic staff as might at first sight appear.

That animal-worship in general is a part of phallic re- ligion has often been pointed out, 1 and that the male horse is mythologically to be regarded as a phallic animal is also widely recognized. 2 Our psycho-analyses 3 fully explain this by disclosing how significant for the im- agination of children is this big aggressive animal, with his habit of biting and trampling; the earliest impression of sexual acts may date from witnessing the copulation of stallion and mare. 4 It is evident, therefore, that the magic staff, broomstick, etc., must be symbols of the most essential attribute of this phallic animal.

I propose now to mention one special example of this phallic significance because of the light it throws on the theme under consideration, namely, the significance of movement.

We have insensibly glided from the theme mara = mare to that of the horse as a phallic animal, but this illustrates the remarkable interchangeability of the sexes in this whole group of myths. Female night-fiends ride on horses, become horses, acquire masculine attri- butes, and so on. The same is equally true of their de- scendants, the mediaeval witches. The explanation of this state of affairs is that the forbidden wishes that furnish the driving force behind all thes6 beliefs and myths are the repressed sexual desires of incest, and one of the most characteristic defences against the becoming con-

1 See, for instance, C. Howard, Sex Worship, 1897. J. Wier, Religion and Lust.

2 See Aigremont, Fuss- und Schuh-Symbolik und -Erotik, 1909, S. 17. R. P, Knight, The Symbolical Language of Ancient Art, 1876, pp. 76-78.

8 See, for instance, Freud, 'Die Analyse der Phobie eines ftinfjahrigen Knaben'. Psychoanalytisches Jahrbuch, Bd. i. S. i, [Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. viii. S. 127; Collected Papers, vol. iii. p. 149.]

4 A. A. Brill, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, vol. v. p. 62, relates a striking instance of the part played by this observation in the development of a later neurosis.

CH, ii THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND 261

scious of such desires is to repudiate them and conceal them through the mechanism of identification with the , opposite sex. Hitherto we have been specially concerned with the female aspect of the relation between horses and human beings, but in order to understand the full meaning of it, and particularly to unravel the signifi- cance of the idea of movement in this connection, it will be necessary to consider other aspects as well.

The subject of Night Travel naturally leads us to those of the Night Hunt, the Wild Hunt, and the Furious Host. We have here to do with a large group of folk be- liefs which group round the idea of a storm at night, and which mythologists have often explained as being simply the product of this experience. Although it is true, how- ever, that stormy nights are associated with fear, it is not hard to show that the reason for this is that the con- ception of a storm is in the unconscious identified with other ideas which are the real source of the fears. We have, in fact, to do with much grimmer ideas even than that of a storm, with ideas that more nearly concern human interests, namely, ideas of death and castration. The connection between this group of beliefs and the experi- ence of the Nightmare is most simply revealed by the considerations that the Babylonian demon of the storm, the alu, had the custom of spreading himself over a man, overpowering him upon his bed and attacking his breast; 1 that the Hindu demons of the Nightmare, the alii and maruts, were gods of the storm; 2 and that the Greek name for the Nightmare, the term used by physicians until a century ago, was Ephialtes, which also meant 'hurricane'. 3

The association between storm and danger at night is thus widely spread, but the most extensive data we have in connection with it are to be obtained from Northern

1 T. G. Pinches, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, 1906, p. 108.

• Max Miiller, Physical Religion, 1891, p. 311. Eickmann, Die Angelologie

des Korans, 1908, S. 48.

8 Cox, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 254. W. H. Roscher, Ephialtes, eine patho- logisch-mythologische Abhandlung iiber die Alptrdume und Alpddmonen des klassischen Altertums, 1900.

262 THE MARE AND THE MARA w. W

Europe. Here its highest development took place as a part of the cult of Odin, so that it will be desirable first to interpolate a few words on those aspects of Odin that concern us here; further information can be obtained from the writings of Grimm, Meyer and others. The belief in Wotan (Odin) is itself probably secondary to that in the Furious Host, 1 with which it is through- out intimately connected. The very name is related to: (A) the Old High German wuot, wildness, bacchant ic pleasure, 2 and has thus come to signify 'the all-pene- trating Being'. 3 'Das althochdeutsche: wuoti bezeich- nete namlich nicht wie unser heutiges Wort Wut eine onmachtige Leidenschaft, sondern jedes unwidersteh- liche Vorwartsdringen, zunachst in der Welt der Korper, dann aber auch in der des Geistes.' 4 (The Old High German wuoti denoted, not as with the modern German word Wut an irresistible passion, but every kind of irresistible pressing forwards, in the first place in the world of material objects, then in that of the spirit/) (B) The still more ancient Old High German watan, meaning to go, to gush out, from which wuot itself is derived as well as wind? weather* the German Wade (calf of the leg), and the Bavarian Wuetelri* (to move, to swarm). From the same source come the old words for horse, Watte and Wos, and Jahns maintains that originally Wotan himself must have been conceived of in horse's form. 8 However this may be, he seems to have been almost inseparable from his famous white steed Sleipnir, and he may well be called the Horse-God par excellence] horses were sacred in his cult, a feature that generally means original identification, and were sacrificed to him. 9 His relations to death, to war, to wind, and to love were also very close. Many of his attributes were very evidently taken from the primitive conception of a stern and powerful father. Thus, his

1 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 413. 2 Id., op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 411.

3 Grimm, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 109. 4 Jahns, op. cit. S. 292.

6 Grimm, op. cit. Bd. iii. S. 49. 6 Id., loc. cit.

7 Jahns, loc. cit. 8 Id., op. cit. S 292, 347-348. 9 A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, 1900, S. 17.

CH. n THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND 263

capacity for outbursts of anger, 1 his custom of being seated in heaven from which he can look down on earth and see everything that happens there, 2 his all-embracing knowledge, his powers of magic. 3 He is 'Alprunen- kundig' 4 (versed in the magic formulas to ward off the Nightmare), and indeed this title is supposed to spring from an original identification of Wot an with the Alp. 5 He was the ancestor of many distinguished families, and the genealogical tree of the Anglo-Saxon kings and the Norse regents begin with Wotan, 6 an ancestry claimed even by Henry II of England. 7 His cult was especially developed in England, under the name of Odin, he being the Father of the English race. Kent was said to have been founded by Hengist and Horsa (i.e. Stallion and Horse), descendants of Odin; 8 Margate, one of its chief towns and supposedly the place of entry, derives its name from Marhe, from war=horse, and the county itself still bears on its coat-of-arms the emblem of a stallion rampant.

The close association between Odin atid the ideas of horse and father, both of which indicate virility, would lead one to expect other sexual attributes in him, and in fact we find many, both manifest and symbolic. Meyer 9 writes naively: 'Die Werbungen Odins um eine Jung- frau, die er in allerlei Umgestaltung und mit Trug auszu- fiihren pflegt, entsprechen dem gestaltwechselnden und luster nen Wesen der Winde. Der Riesin Rindr stellt er in verschiedenen Gestalten nach. . . . Zweimal wird er von ihr, die einer abweisenden Riesin des Wirbelwinds oder der Wetterwolke gleicht, ins Gesicht geschlagen, zum dritten Mai sogar zu Boden gestossen, bis er sie durch Beriihrung mit den Runenstab wahnsinnig macht, d.h. den Wirbelwind zum tollsten Treiben bringt, dann aber fesseln lasst und als heilkundige Dienerin Vecha

1 Grimm, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 114, 120. 2 Id., op. cit. Bd. i. S. 113.

3 E. Mogk, Germanische Mythologie, 1906, S. 45.

4 E. H. Meyer, Germanische Mythologie, 1891, S. 233.

6 Th. Puschmann, Handbuch der Geschichte der Medizin, 1902, Bd. i. S. 460, 464.

e Mogk, op. cit. S. 52, 7 Meyer, op. cit. S. 234.

8 jahns, op. cit. S. 424. 9 Meyer, op. cit. S. 248.

264 THE MARE AND THE MARA w. in

bewaltigt. Beider Sohn 1st Bous genannt/ ('Odin's courtships of a virgin, which he used to perform with guile and in all sorts of disguises, correspond to the changeful and wanton nature of the winds. He pursued the giantess Rindr in various guises. . . . Twice she slapped him in the face, as would an unrelenting giantess of the cyclone or of the storm-cloud. On the third occa- sion she even struck him to the ground, until he mad- dened her by touching her with his magic staff (!), i.e. brought the cyclone to the highest pitch of furious excitement; he then bound her and overpowered her. She became a priestess, called Vecha, with magic power in matters of health. Their son was named Bous/) Since this passage was written, however, it has been recognized that the human imagination is more concerned with other loves than with those of the winds. As we have repeatedly seen, the capacity for transformation is pre- dominantly an erotic motif. It was highly developed with Odin, as indeed is indicated by his by-names of Fjolnir, the many-guised one, and Svipall, the seducer in disguise. 1 There is a characteristic story telling how he obtained the famous drink Odrerir, the mead of life; incidentally, Abraham 2 has clearly demonstrated the seminal symbolism of the various divine drinks, Odrerir, Soma, Ambrosia, Nectar, etc. This life-sap belonged to a giant and was kept in a mountain (!) by his daughter Gunnlod. Odin, in the suitable form of a snake, slipped into the mountain through a hole, won Gunnlod's love, and ever after enjoyed the mead of life. 3 He was in general the god of fertility, and many agricultural customs of the present day date from his cult. 4 They usually relate to his aspects as a wind-god, which we shall have occasion to comment on from this point of view in a subsequent chapter.

The best-remembered attribute of Odin's is that of his leading the nightly procession of riding souls. This is

1 Mogk, op. cit. S. 44.

2 Karl Abraham, Traum und Mythus. (Schriften zur angewandten Seelen- kunde, Viertes Heft, 1909, Cap. xi.) 8 Mogk, op. cit. S. 46, 47.

4 Meyer, op. cit. S. 254-256. Wuttke, op. cit. S. 17.

CH. n THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND 265

represented sometimes as an army, sometimes as a hunt; the former was more prominent in South Germany, the latter in North Germany. The underlying idea is doubt- less that of death, Odin being the Psychopomp who bears away the soul. The original fear, as was pointed out earlier, 1 must have been that of being killed, i.e. castrated, by the dreaded nightly visitor, and every effort was made to convert this into less unacceptable terms. The conception of the deadly visitor as an enemy was softened in various ways. Either he was a chieftain whose army one joined, in which conception Teutonic races used to go to war under the leadership of Wotan and carrying a serpent-like pennon. Or the idea of death was sexualized, usually on rather sadistic lines; if the fearing person was a man this would be tantamount to the well-known homosexual solution of enmity. Perhaps one ought to call this a re-sexualizing of the situation, for the original sexual wish that led to the fear of re- taliatory castration or death reappears in a perverse form. Death has always been pictured as being due to a spirit who violently and against one's will robs one of life. 2 Cognate to our present theme is the fact that he is usually personified as riding on a horse. 3 Even the old Charon appears on horseback in modern Greek songs; 4 and among the people in Hungary the common name for the funeral stretcher is 'Michael lova', Michael's horse, while it is said of someone lying near to death: 'St. Michael's horse has already trodden on him'. 5

In this function Odin's method of obtaining his vic- tims was by thrusting a spear into them 6 or by throwing

1 Part III. p. 255.

2 I abstain here from opening up the vast subject of night-fiends who predict or bring about death, unless they are directly connected with the present theme of horse = fiend. In this country perhaps the best known would be the Gaelic fershee (feminine banshee): see P. W. Joyce, A Social History of Ancient Ireland, 1903, p. 265.

• Jahns (op. cit. S. 407) narrates some interesting legends of death being

connected with a horse's skull, e.g., by a snake crawling out from it, that we have no space here to detail.

4 G. Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, 1869, Bd. i. S. 163.

5 Ipolyi, Zeitschrift fur Mythologie, Bd. ii. S. 274.

Mogk, op. cit. S. 50.

266 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. m

a horse's leg at, them; 1 we may safely regard these weapons as phallic symbols, especially as we still meet with them in this sense in the interpretation of dreams. Odin's spear Gungnir was in later myths replaced by a bow and arrow, 2 just like that of Eros-Cupid, and it is interesting to note, as Laistner 3 pointed out, that origin- ally the conception of Eros was closely allied to that of Hermes, of whom, as we shall presently see, Wot an was the Northern equivalent. The chief English legendary descendant of Odin, Robin Hood, the 'King of the May 1 , 4 whose name 'Hood' is derived from that of Wotan, 5 is also famous for his bow and arrow and rides round the (phallic) May-pole. Finally in this connection it may be pointed out that the idea of Wunsch (cognate with Wonne), the Teutonic god of love, who personified the outpouring, creative power, was derived from that of Odin, of whom he represented one aspect. 6

Both as psychopomp and as wind-god Wotan is evidently related to Mercury and Hermes, 7 with whom Latin and other writers constantly identified him; 8 in- deed the identification is preserved to the present day, for the English name for Wotan's day, i.e. Wednesday, is in French merer edi, i.e. jour de Mereure. From a close study of its detailed characteristics Laistner 9 has been able to trace the idea of the psychopompic bearing away of souls to the 'angstvolle Traumfahrt' (the dreadful dream travel or flight) , and there can be little doubt that this experience is the chief source of all the various 'night travels', of which this is only one example. In accord with this conclusion is the fact that Hermes was the God of Dreams 10 and, according to Homer, slips

1 jahns, op. cit. S. 326. The phallic symbolism of the thigh has been pointed out by, among others, Aigremont, op. cit. S. 23.

2 Meyer, op. cit. S. 251. 3 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 210.

4 J. Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, 1849, vol. i. p. 261.

8 Meyer, op. cit. S. 230, 231.

6 Grimm, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 114-118, Bd. iii. S. 50-55.

7 It is interesting that the title Hermes should be cognate with the Hindu Saranyu ( = horse). G. W. Cox, op. cit. vol. i. p. 423.

8 Grimm, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 99, in, 124. Meyer, op. cit. S. 229.

Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 225. 10 ld. t op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 210.

CH. ii THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND 267

through a keyhole in the characteristic Mara fashion. Laistner 1 indeed calls the closely allied Eros the Greek 'Nachtalp' ('night bogey'), as Pan was their Tagalp' ('day bogey').

The most usual way in which this procession of scurry- ing souls was conceived of was as a Wild Hunt. This hunt was most often a pursuit after either an animal or a woman, 2 less often after a man; in some of them the woman when caught turned into a horse and was ridden on. 3 The chase after a mythical woman has been pre- served in a great number of legends and sagas. Grimm 4 points out here the mythological connection between the ideas of huntsman and giant, i.e. father, and Laistner 5 has traced the pursued woman of the sagas to the mara herself, thus showing again how interchangeable are the roles of pursuing and pursued. Odin's wild hunt gave rise to a whole series of legendary huntsmen, 6 some real, some fictitious, of which perhaps the best known are Hackelberg (or, better, Hackelberend) , Ruprecht, Die- trich von Bern and 'der alte Fritz' in Germany, Hellequin, King Hugo, and Charlemagne or simply Le Grand Veneur de Fontainebleau in France, King Waldemar in Denmark, Asgard in Norway, King Arthur (Arthur's chase), and Herne the Hunter of Windsor not to men- tion the late lamented John Peel in England, Ap Nudd 7 in Wales; the Wandering Jew legend itself is said to be related to it. 8 In Christian times various saints, 9 notably St. Hubert, St. Martin, St. Michael and St. Nicholas, have been endowed with certain attributes of Odin, above all with his function of leading the nightly pro- cession, and many customs dating from this are still kept up in several European countries; to some extent this

1 Laistner, loc. cit. 2 Meyer, op. cit. S. 244-248.

3 Id., op. cit. S. 247. 4 Grimm, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 791.

5 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 240.

6 Grimm, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 767-789. Meyer, op. cit. S. 237. Thorpe, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 195-201.

7 It has been thought that the name of London is derived from this King of the Fairies (C. Squire, The Mythology of the British Islands, 1905, pp. 255, 3?6, 392).

8 jahns, op. cit. S. 327. Meyer, op. cit. S. 237.

9 Jahns, op. cit. S. 299-332. Meyer, op. cit. S. 256-257.

268 THE MARE AND THE MARA *r. m

even applies to the persons of Christ and John the Baptist. 1 The tenacity with which the people have clung to these beliefs, so that the Church was compelled to compromise in regard to them, proves the significance that the underlying motives concerned must possess for the imagination.

An interesting heathen form of the procession in England was the 'hobby-horse' which was paraded at the time of Odin's festivals, i.e. at Christmas and on the first of May. 2 The root hob (Middle English and Old French hobin = horse) is a variant of Rob, from the French Robin. 3 In proper names in English an initial R is often replaced by H, cp. Hodge for Roger: similarly R is often replaced by D, as in Dick for Richard, hence the name Dobbin, the favourite modern name for a horse. The hobgoblin Puck (Welsh Pwca) was also called Robin Goodfellow, as in Shakespeare. Robin in turn is an abbreviation of Robert, a Prankish name from the Old High German Ruodperht 4 (Modern High German -berht, English bright}. We shall presently see that this epithet was frequently applied to steeds, and indeed Jahns 5 connects the allied words hobble and hop (German hupfen] with the old German word for horse, Hoppe, which is cognate with the Greek tWo? and has the connotation of movement. In the root hobby, there- fore, are contained indications of the two fundamental attributes of horses that have been significant for the myth-making imagination, their appearance and their movement. At the time of Odin's festivals, Christmas and the first of May, the hobby-horse used to be ridden by Odin's lineal descendant, Robin Hood, whose very name signifies 'Odin's swift, shining steed'. It seems a far cry from the Father of Heaven to a hobby-horse; a quaint recrudescence of the original meaning appears in the modern French word for hobby-horse, first used

1 Jahns, op. cit. S. 299, 317. a Brand, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 473, 492.

8 Sir J. A. H. Murray, A New English Dictionary, 1901, vol. v. pp. 314, 316. W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 1910, p. 522.

4 Murray, op. cit. p. 735. Skeat, op. cit. p. 522.

5 Jahns, op. cit. S. 38, 39.

CH, n THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND 269

towards the end of the eighteenth century, namely, dada. 1

A final confirmation of the phallic symbolism of the horse is afforded by consideration of the various 'magic horses' of mythology and folklore. 2 The two outstanding features of the series are the necessity of possessing this creature for the winning of wife and treasure and the theme of theft with which it is closely associated. This latter 'castration' theme is one that will occupy us more extensively in a subsequent chapter.

A typical example was the horse called 'Splendid Mane' 3 who belonged to the Gaelic 'God of Headlands' Manannan, who gave his name to the Isle of Man. Being the son of the Gaelic Neptune, Ler, a point the sig- nificance of which will appear later, he was the patron of sailors, and constantly travelled to and fro between Ireland and the Western Isles of the Blest. His horse was swifter than the spring wind, and travelled equally fast on land or over the waves of the sea. Ultimately Manannan lent him to the sun-god Lugh, who at a critical moment refused to return him. In one of the Vedic hymns 4 we read that Indra, the predecessor of Brahma, owed his powers to his two steeds: when he was separated from them he became like a weak mortal. The simplest form of the complete story is perhaps the Hindu one in which the thief makes a hole in the wall and steals both the daughter and the treasure of the king. 5 It is evidently one form of the large group of legends of the Brunhilda type in which the hero overcomes various difficulties and finally wins the beautiful princess. 6 He is usually aided by either some magical instrument, sword, etc., or some living agency, often an animal, like Sigurd's horse Gram, that advises and guides him, and in the form that interests us here it is a magic horse with exceptional powers of speed. A pretty example of this is the Moorish

1 Society for Pure English, Tract No. vii. p. 31.

2 jahns, op. cit. S. 354-360. 3 Squire, op. cit. pp. 60, 98.

4 Rigveda, Book x. Hymn 105, Strophe 3.

5 Cox, op. cit. vol. i. p. 115.

6 Id., op. cit. vol. i. pp. 149-156 gives a list of these.

270 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. m

tale of Prince Ahmed, whom a dove tells how to find a wonderful Arabian steed in an almost inaccessible cavern: after overcoming a number of obstacles with the help of the steed he finally carries away the princess. 1 In myths proper the fairy-tale motif of overcoming ob- stacles is replaced by the idea of releasing a damsel from the spell cast upon her; the knight has to prove his courage by spending a night with her, or his virility by performing the sexual act with her three times within an hour, and so on. 2

It is easy to see that the underlying theme with which these stories deal is the Oedipus one of overcoming the father and winning the forbidden mother. In many of them the magic weapon is torn from the father-imago before being put to its erotic use. In the Rigveda 3 the wonderful horse of the twin Acrins actually slays the serpent-monster himself, and among the seven adven- tures of Firdusi's hero Rustem is one in which the magic horse fights the monster and drives it away while his master sleeps. The phallic significance is shown by the fact that the horse's head or tail alone common phallic symbols can perform the same feats. Thus Indra annihilates his enemies, the ninety-nine monsters, with the head of a horse Dadhyanc, 4 just as Samson uses the jaw-bone of an ass for the same purpose. Another hymn praising him after his victories says: 'The tail of a horse wert Thou then, O Indra/ 5

In most of the German versions the magic horse is first won by a deed of valour and then used to win the maiden. A common type of this kind is the Glass Moun- tain fairy-tale in which the stupid youngest son is carried away to a cavern by a giant; when the giant is asleep the youth cuts his head off and finds in the stall three (!) steeds of wondrous beauty with whose help he wins the princess. 6 Another example is the 'Dummhans' tale 7 : 'In

1 Cox, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 151-154. a Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 144.

8 Rigveda, Book i. Hymn 117, Strophe 9,

4 Id., Book i. Hymn 84, Strophe 13, 14; Hymn 117, Strophe 22.

8 Id., Book i. Hymn 32, Strophe 12.

8 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 117. 7 Id., op. cit. Bd. ii, S. 51.

CH. n THE HORSE AND THE NIGHT-FIEND 27!

der Nacht kommt ein einaugiger Riese und will sich Korn stehlen, da springt ihm Dummhans auf die Schul- ter und reisst ihm das Auge aus. Der Riese verspricht ihm seinen Beistand, wenn er das Auge wieder erhalte. Hans gibt es ihm, erhalt Ross und Riistung, reitet den Glasberg hinauf und gewinnt die Princessin zur Frau.' ('A one-eyed giant comes in the night to steal corn, but stupid Hans springs on his shoulder and tears his eye out. The giant promises to help him if he will restore his eye. Hans gives it him back, receives a horse and armour, rides up the glass mountain and wins the princess/) In a Russian fairy-tale a pious son, Ivan Durak, keeps watch for three nights on his father's grave. The grateful father, or rather his spirit, promises him that whenever he shall sound a whistle in time of need a magic grey horse with flaming eyes would make its appearance for his assistance. By means of this horse Ivan is able to perform the feat of leaping three times to the height of the wall of the palace where there hangs a picture of the Czar's daughter, and thus wins the beautiful princess for his wife. 1 In another version the horse enables him to kiss the princess through twelve mirrors evidently a form of the glass mountain theme and thus to win her. 2 In the German counterpart the theme is presented in an even more Hamlet-like fashion. There it is a fiend who tears out the eye of an old man; the hero replaces it and the grateful old man rewards him with the gift of the necessary magic horse. 3

In other stories the Oedipus motif is quite unveiled. A young prince in a dream sees himself on the throne, and on hearing of this presumption his father promptly throws him out of the house. Later on the prince replaces the stolen eye of an old man, who in his gratitude gives him a chamber-key with which he can open all doors but the ninth. He opens them all, however, and in the ninth room finds a golden steed. After he wins the princess he

1 A. de Gubernatis, Die Thiere in dev indogermanischen Mythologie, Deutsche t)bersetzung, 1874, S. 229.

• Gubernatis, loc. cit. 8 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 143-145.

272 THE MARE AND THE MARA *r. m

discovers to his horror that he cannot marry her because she turns out to be his sister, the king being his own father. In one version he is consoled by finding in the forbidden chamber a 'maiden of gold' who becomes his wife. 1 An allied fairy-tale tells how 'der verstossene Jiingling kommt zu zwei blinden Alten und verschafft ihnen die Augen wieder; der dankbare Alte schenkt ihm die Gabe der Verwandlung, vermoge welcher er in un- scheinbarer Gestalt auszieht und zwei Fiirstentochter gewinnt'. 2 (The cast-out youth comes to two blind old men and restores their sight. The grateful men make him the gift of being able to transform himself, whereupon he assumes an invisible guise and wins two princesses/) One theme in mythology leads to many others, and it is time to call a halt. In the next chapter I shall consider the infantile sources of these various beliefs and hope to throw light there on the inner meaning of the horse symbolism.

1 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 144. z Id., op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 146-147.

CHAPTER III

THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY

THE attempts mythologists have at various times made to unravel the part that sexual themes have played in the elaboration of myths and folklore beliefs have not met with much success. Three considera- tions baulked them. In the first place, many undeniably sexual themes seemed in themselves to be so unintelligible or repellent that it seemed easier to regard them as being simply metaphors for other, non-sexual, themes. A striking example of this was the habit of castrating the father that was apparently an established custom in the Uranos-Chronos-Zeus dynasty. This seemed to be so meaningless or even unthinkable, if taken literally that there was nothing for it but to assume that the castration was a plastic circumscription of some astro- nomical phenomenon the waning of the moon, the seasonal diminution of the sun's strength, and so on; although it was never made clear why such simple phenomena had to be depicted in such an extraordinary disguise, or indeed in any disguise at all. In the second place, many of the interpretations of sexual symbolism gave the impression of being far-fetched and uncon- vincing, especially as no reason could be adduced why such symbolism should be employed at all. And in the third place a sexual theme would often culminate in some obscurity that was impenetrable, since the connection of it with the preceding sexual theme could not be fathomed. For all these reasons, not to mention the imperfect ac- quaintance that most mythologists displayed about the complexities of the sexual life, the progress made in this research, useful though the detailed work contained in it has often been, has not led to any valuable generaliza- tions being established.

273 s

274 THE MARE AND THE MARA FT. m

Freud's 1 work on infantile sexuality has completely changed this state of affairs. By unravelling the details of sexual development in the young child he has shown its complexity, and by discovering the unconscious conflicts between it and fear or guilt he has been able to explain why its manifestations are so often veiled in symbolic and other guises. Further, he and Abraham 2 have applied this clinical knowledge to the subject of mythology itself, and have made it probable that the creative impulse of myth-formation was in the main the endeavour to allay the disturbing emotions that take their ultimate origin in the only partly resolved conflicts of childhood, con- flicts the effects of which persist into adult life to a far greater extent than has ever hitherto been even sus- pected. It is not too much to say that the key to myth- ology is the knowledge we have gained through psycho- analysis of infantile sexual conflicts.

In the present context the evidence of such factors playing a central part in creating the various mythical beliefs about the horse is so extensive that one is em- barrassed to know how best to group and present them. Horses have evidently, for various reasons, been greatly admired and feared, and even deified. These exaggerated attitudes, and the corresponding beliefs, were derived only in small part from interest in the horse as such, far more from the opportunity its various attributes gave to presenting ideas of a purely human provenance. One has to imagine THE HORSE in a mythological sense, often a Horse-God, and to investigate its supposed attributes individually. One could, for instance, consider the rela- tions of this mythical Horse to water, fire and wind in turn, each of which would provide a considerable chap- ter; we should have the river or sea horse-gods, the sun horse-gods, and the nocturnal or death horse-gods re- spectively. I find it more expedient, however, to divide the material into two main parts according as it relates

1 See particularly his Drei A bhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, Zweite Ausgabe, 1910. [Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. v. S. 3.]

2 Karl Abraham, Traum und Mythus (Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, Viertes Heft, 1909).

CH. m THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 275

to one or the other of the two most prominent features that distinguish infantile from adult sexuality.

A. CASTRATION

Around this single word there centres in psycho- analytical work a complex series of ideas. It signifies there not so much castration in its biological sense as the simple idea of the penis being cut off. Such an idea is remote from the ordinary consciousness of adult life, as also from the facts of everyday reality, but it neverthe- less plays an exceedingly important part in the uncon- scious mind, especially in childhood. Around it are clustered all the emotions related to the fear, guilt and punishment that are responses to the Oedipus wishes as expressed in masturbation. The dread of castration , is essentially the fear of retaliation for the corresponding impulse directed against the rival parent, and it is the central starting-point of the sense of guilt that is later developed into conscience.

The whole matter is greatly complicated by the simple circumstance of the anatomical difference between the two sexes, for this is always interpreted in both sexes in terms of the castration fears. Both sexes tend at first to regard the female genital as merely a castrated genital, and this has fateful consequences for each in respect of their attitude towards the other. On the boy's side there is an attitude of contempt and a reinforcement of his fears, the justification for which he sees apparently con- firmed. On the giiTs side there is an attitude of envy and injustice, with a reinforcement of her sense of guilt at what she interprets as a punishment. [Freud has well named this phase in development the phallic stage, in which both sexes agree that the only positive expression of genitality is a phallus, so that all turns on the question of possessing or not possessing one. Traces of this stage are only too commonly preserved in adult life.]

A still further complication is added by more dynamic factors. It has been found that identification with the

m

276 THE MARE AND THE MARA

opposite sex is with both sexes one of the most powerful defences against the difficulties and dangers of the Oedipus situation. This is for certain reasons usually more manifest with the female than the male, though it is doubtful whether there is much difference between the two in the deeper layers of the mind.

With this knowledge in mind it becomes more possible to understand a number of facts in the folklore of the horse. Indicative of the phallic stage of development is, for instance, the alternation between attitudes of over- adulation and contempt for the creature according as it is used to symbolize the male or the female genital. We noted in the first chapter of this book 1 that the original Teutonic word for horse = masculine 'mar', feminine 'mare', came to be used almost entirely in its feminine form, and that the same word was used to designate a whore or contemptible woman. A female horse was in the Middle Ages a despised horse.

On the other hand, we have noted the wonderful powers attributed to the magic horse of legend and have seen how indispensable various heroes have found the possession of him to be. Even Indra himself became like a feeble mortal when deprived of his steeds. 2 Among the stories of the hero who can perform great deeds once he achieves possession of this magic creature, the explana- tion of which I gave in the preceding chapter, special interest attaches to those where the creature is at first a cripple or worthless and becomes valuable, noble or wonderful only after a further process. It is indeed rather the rule that the steed in question is born ugly, misshapen and deformed and only later becomes noble and handsome. Gubernatis 3 gives numerous examples of this from Indian, Russian and Teutonic legends. Thus the Hungarian magic horse Tatos was born with an ugly appearance, crippled and thin, as was the Indian Avuna, the chariot-horse of the sun. The horse of the sun-hero

1 See Part III. p. 245. a Part III. p. 269.

8 A. de Gubernatis, Die Thiere in der indogermanische Mythologie, Deutsche Ubersetzung, 1874, S. 222, 224, 229, 232, 1*33.

CH. m THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 277

is sometimes a worthless mare who later changes into a gallant steed. The change seems to be a mysterious one. In most cases it is a simple evolution, but sometimes one replaces the other; for instance, the Acrins, the Hindoo counterparts of the Greek Dioscuri, make a gift of a perfect steed to the hero who had only a weak horse. Occasionally the magic steed retains a trace of his pre- vious condition, such as in the Mahdbhdrata, where the King of Horses, Uddaihcrava, Indra's steed, who is as swift as thought, is shining white save for a black tail, a relic of black magic attempted on him by evil serpents. There can be little doubt that this whole theme relates to the attaining of virility, or the overcoming of the fear of castration, two equally valid descriptions of the successful emancipation from childhood, a feat com- pletely accomplished only by heroes.

I may incidentally remark that this group of legends once more exemplifies a point on which stress was laid in an earlier chapter, namely the extraordinary identi- fication or interchangeability of horse with rider. To cite one example only: The Acrins, the famous riders of Hindoo mythology, derive their name from acra = a horse, the word originally signifying 'swift'. 1 At the same time they are identical with the steeds that draw the sun's chariot, with Indra's steeds, with the rays of the sun, and with the sun-god Indra himself. In some accounts, by lending him a magic horse, they enable the hero or the sun-god to capture the princess, in other versions it is they who perform this feat themselves; sometimes it is the hero who captures his master's horse and elopes, sometimes the hero, helped by his master's daughter, changes into a horse and escapes with her. 8 In prefacing a number of examples that prove his state- ment, Gubernatis 3 writes: 'Die Sonne ist zu gleicher Zeit ein Held und ein Pferd; sie ist "der Schnelle", acva, ein Wort, das die beiden hervorragenden Eigenschaften ebensowohl des Helden wie des Sonnenrosses umfasst;

1 Gubernatis, op. cit. S. 220. * Id., op. cit. S. 234.

9 Id., op. cit. S. 256.

278 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. in

der Held stirbt, der Held wird verbrannt: das Pferd wird ebenfalls geopfert; der Held tritt aus dem Stall heraus; ebenso das Pferd; der Held entfiihrt das Pferd. Der Held entschliipft dem Damon: das Pferd rettet den fliehenden Helden; der Held stiirmt im Kampfe vor: das Pferd 1st es, das ihn andringen lasst.' (The sun is at the same time a hero and a horse. He is "the swift one", acra, a word that comprises the two most prominent attributes of both the hero and the sun-steed. The hero dies, the hero is burned; the horse also is sacrificed; the hero emerges from a stable; likewise the horse; the hero elopes with the horse. The hero evades the demon; the horse rescues the escaping hero; the hero throws him- self into the fight; it is by means of the horse that he can charge forwards/)

This last quotation beings us to one of the most interesting features of the horse in mythology, his associ- ation with the sun. The most important links connecting the two ideas are probably the notions of irresistible movement, luxuriant fertility and shining splendour, and we shall presently see that the roots of these are very far-reaching. At this point, however, we are con- cerned only with the ideas to do with the horse-sun theme that originate in the phallic stage of infantile development. The close association of fire- and sun- worship with phallicism has long been recognized, 1 the sun with its heat, its creative power, its daily erection and decline, and its diurnal plunge into water and night being one of the most widely spread phallic symbols of religious mythology.

Almost everywhere in religious mythology one finds the horse and the sun intimately connected. In the Rig- Veda of Ancient India, from which some examples were quoted above, the two were formally identified, 2 so that

1 See Abraham, op. cit. S. 30, 31, 41, 44, 52, etc., for a clear description of the symbolism, also G. W. Cox, The Mythology of the Aryan Nations, 1870, vol. ii. pp. 112-115, and W. Schwartz, 'Der rothe Sonnenphallos der Urzeit; cine mythologisch-anthropologische Untersuchung', Zeitschrift fur Ethnologic, 1874, S. 167, 409.

2 Gubernatis, op. cit. S. 220-276, etc. M. jahns, Ross und Reiter in Leben und Sprache, Glauben und Geschichte der Deutschen, 1872, Bd. i, S. 249. Max

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 279

it is sometimes hardly possible to draw a distinction between them or tell to which of the two a given passage refers. The Acrins themselves, the Hindoo twin horse- gods of whom mention has already been made, were the sons of a mare, Tvashtris, who was the spouse of Savitar (the sun, doubtless also pictured here in equine form). 1 Agni, Indra, Savitar, Krishna, the Dioscuri, Mithra, Zeus, Poseidon fa-mo?, Mars, Apollo, Pluto and the Teutonic Odin hardly ever appear except mounted, are often identified with horses, and owe much of their vic- torious career to their steeds. Among goddesses of whom the same is true may be mentioned the Vedic Aurora, Athene iWeta and Aphrodite tVTroSa/zeta. Throughout Oriental countries, in Babylonia, 2 Persia, 3 Syria, 4 etc., we find horses sacred to the sun-god, to whom they are regularly sacrificed and with whom they must have been originally identified.

That the conceptions of sun-god and goat-god should so often occur together in Babylonian, Persian and Greek mythology, as Robertson 5 has shown that they do, is from this point of view quite intelligible, the lecherous attributes of the goat being well known; as is also the fact that the Hindoo sun-god Arusha (from arushi = mare) can in detail be identified with the Greek love-god Eros, the son of the god Ares whom we shall presently have to consider further. The streaming, shining rays of the sun have always been specially identified with the horse's mane, and Jahns interestingly points out how in Sanskrit, Greek and German the terms for 'mane' and 'shining' are closely allied; 6 we have al- ready 7 referred to the magic horse of the Gaelic god

Miiller, Chips from a German Workshop, 1867, vol. ii. p. 132, etc. Lectures on Language, Second Series, p. 482. E. C. M. Senart, Essai sur la legcnde de Buddha, 1882, 2 e"d. p. 66.

1 Mahdbhdrata, i. 2599.

2 W. St. C. Boscawen in Religious Systems of the World, 1904, cap. 'The Religion of Babylonia', p. 20.

3 J. M. Robertson in Religious Systems of the World, 1904. Cap. 'Mithraism', p. 196. 4 2 Kings xxiii. n.

6 J. M. Robertson, Christianity and Mythology, 1910, pp. 343-356. 6 jahns, op. cit. S. 250. * Part III. p. 269.

280 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. nt

Manannan, whose name was actually 'Splendid Mane', and we may also mention in this connection the wonder- ful golden mane ascribed by the Egyptian Tryphiodoros to the famous horse of Troy. 1 The same analogy has also brought together the ideas of sun and lion, 2 and later astrologers replaced the picture of the horse in the old Indian zodiac by that of the lion. The horse becomes identified not only with the streaming rays of the sun, but with the updarting flames of fire, so that in the Veda we have the Robits of Agni, the fire-god, a,s well as the Hants ( = glisteners) of Indra, the Sun-god. 3 It is thus suitable that the Teutonic Sleipnir, who has all the attributes of a sun-steed, should be the offspring of the fire-god Loki. 4 The sexual significance of mane as of hair in general is familiar enough, whether from biological considerations or from the numerous legends of the Samson type.

Odin, the horse and wind god, has been in many respects identified with the Greek Ares and the Latin Mars; 5 his sun-god character, incidentally, is plain enough from the date of his festivals, Twelfth Night and the First of May. Now both these classical names are said to be derived from the Mar root in question, 6 from which also is derived the name of the Maruts, the storm winds of the Vedas. 7 These, as their name denotes, are called the crushers or grinders, and they were worship- ped as destroyers and reproducers two closely allied ideas; it is interesting that Ares has also been called the crusher or grinder, the name being in fact cognate with the Greek Moliones, the mill-men or crushers. In the earlier chapters of this volume we saw how central in the whole Nightmare conception is the idea of pressing, crushing, grinding. To grind, from classical myths to

Gubernatis, op. cit. S. 224.

See Abraham (op. cit. S. 53) on the symbolism of the lion. Cox, op. cit, vol. i. p. 426, vol. ii. p. 2. jahns, op. cit. S. 346, 348.

F. Y. Powell in Religious Systems of the World, 1904. Cap. 'Teutonic Heathendom*, p. 285.

Cox, op. cit. vol. i. p. 32. jahns, op. cit. S. 328. Cox, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 222.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 28l

modern slang, has always been a symbol for sexual inter- course, as may be illustrated from the following passages by Nork. 1 'In der symbolischen Sprache bedeutet aber Miihle das weibliche Glied (/ziAXo?, wo von mulier), und der Mann ist der Mulier, daher der Satyriker Petronius molere mulier em fur: Beischlaf gebraucht. Der durch die Buhlin der Kraft beraubte Samson muss in der Miihle mahlen (Richter xvi. 21), welche Stelle der Tal- mud (Sota fol. 10), wie folgt, commentirt: Unter dem Mahlen ist immer die Siinde des Beischlaf s zu verstehen. Darum standen am Feste der keuschen Vesta in Rom alle Miihlen still. . . . Wie Apollo war auch Zeus ein Mulier (/Kt/Aeik, Lykophron, 435), aber schwerlich ein Mulier von Profession, sondern insofern er als schaffen- des, Leben gebendes Prinzip der Fortpflanzung der Geschopfe vorsteht. ... Ist nun erwiesen, dass jeder Mann ein Mulier, und jede Frau eine Miihle, woraus allein sich begreifen liesse, dass jede Vermahlung eine Vermehlung/ ('In symbolic language a mill signifies the female genital ( /xuXXo?, from which comes mulier} and the husband is the miller, hence Petronius' use of molere mulierem (to grind a woman) to describe the sexual act. Samson when robbed of his strength by Delilah has to grind in the mill 2 (Judges, xvi. 21), on which passage the Talmud comments as follows: by the phrase "grinding corn" one has always to understand the sin of carnal intercourse. This is why all the mills had to stand still in Rome at the festival of the chaste Vesta. . . . Like Apollo, Zeus was also a miller (/^uXew, Lykophron 435), though scarcely one by profession only in so far as he represents the creative, life-giving principle of propagation. ... It is now clear that every husband is a miller and every wife a mill, from which it is intelligible that every marriage (Vermahlung} is a making of meal (Vermehlung}.'} In this connection one thinks also of the Roman confarreatio, where the

1 F. Nork, Mythologie der Volkssagen und Volksmdrchen, 1848, S. 301, 302.

3 A typical talion punishment.

282 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. xxi

espousal was signalized by the couple partaking of the same cake, and of our own wedding-cake customs.

Like Mars, Ares was originally a purely chthonic god 1 and only later acquired his evil significance of a storm god 2 . The ideas of reproduction and rapid travel are once more found in connection with 'Alp' beings, and we shall see that the horse-sun theme is equally well represented in the group. The Latin Mars was originally, as is well known, an agricultural deity, i.e. of reproduction. Cox adds: 3 'In his own character, as fostering the wealth of corn and cattle, he was worshipped at Praeneste, as Herodotus would have us believe that Scythian tribes worshipped Ares, with the symbol of a sword, one of the many forms assumed by the Hindu Linga. As such, he was pre-eminently the father of all living things, Mars- piter, the parent of the twin-born Romulus and Remus/ In this latter connection it is perhaps not irrelevant to say that the word mar in Persian signifies snake, and in Chaldean Lord or Master. As a title of a god the term Mar probably originates in the Scythian. In reference to this Wake writes; 4 'The primitive meaning of Ar was "fire", from which the lion, or the symbol of the Sun- god, was called ari, the Sun-god himself having a name Ra. Strictly, therefore, Mar would denote "fire-worship- pers", a title which, as is well known, was especially applicable to the ancient Medes. The Aryans generally appear to have been Sun- or Fire- worshippers, and prob- ably they have received their name from this fact; this would seem to be much more probable than the ordinary derivation of the name Aryan from the root ar, "to plough"/ Layard has made it highly probable that the rapid spread of Mithraism in Rome was due to its being connected with the worship of Mars, and indeed some figures of Mithra-Mars consist of a human body encircled

1 H. O. Miiller, Ares, 1848. O. Stoll, Die ursprungliche Bedeutung des Ares,

2 L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie, 1854, Bd. i. S. 226. Sauer, in A. Pauly's Real-Encyclopadie der klassischen Altertumwissenschaft, 1905, Bd. v. S. 657.

3 Cox, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 311.

4 G. Staniland Wake, Serpent Worship, i388, p. 112.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 283

by a serpent and having the head of a lion. The Persian name for the sun-god Mithra was Mihr, which may well be related to Mar (gleam); Mihr literally means both the sun and love, being, as Robertson remarks, the Persian equivalent of Eros. 1

A cognomen of Ares was Hippios, 2 and in the early period of the worship of Mars this god was called Mars Gradivas on account of the fruitfulness (vegetation and springs) that followed his steps. 3 It is of interest that, just as we have seen throughout in the mythology of the horse, Mithra himself was a hermaphrodite, being often represented as a divine couple. 4

An interesting side-issue of the 'brilliant horse-sun' theme is suggested by Jahns: 5 'Die Eigenschaft blen- denderUnnahbarkeit muste iibrigens dasBild des Rosses ganz besonders zum Granz- und Feldzeichen geeignet erscheinen lassen. Es war ja sehr natiirlich dass man grade an der Landesgranze die Neidstange errichtete, und moglicherweise stammt vom Aufrichten eines Granzbildes in Gestalt einer Marhe (March, Marke) iiberhaupt das Wort Marke im Sinne von "Granze" und damit zugleich das Zeitwort markiren oder merken. Leztere Bedeutung fiihrt dann zum Begriffe Mark als Gewichtseinheit. Und nun diirften sich auch leicht Worte wie markten, marche und marchand anschliessen.' ('The attribute of dazzling unapproachability must have made the image of a horse specially suited as a sign to mark off borders. It was very natural for people to erect a "pole of covetousness" at the very frontier of a country, and very possibly it is from erecting a frontier sign in the form of a mare (old German march, marke} that the word Marke in the sense of c 'border " is derived, and from that the time expression markiren (to mark time) or merken (to attend, to mark). This signification then leads to the idea of mark as a unit of weight. And we

1 J. M. Robertson, Pagan Christs, Studies in Comparative Hierology, 1903,

p. 33-

2 Jahns, op. cit. S. 328.

8 J. M. Robertson in Religious Systems of the World, 1904, op. cit. p. 199. Ibid. 5 jahns, op. cit. S. 256.

284 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. in

can easily add such words as markten (to deal), march6 (market) and marchand (tradesman)/) Jahns' semantics is certainly a little wild here, but I believe his etymological conclusions themselves to be ultimately correct. In this connection I might mention that the borders between England and Wales are still called the marches (march incidentally is the Welsh for 'horse'). Perhaps also the Greek Moira, the apportioner, belongs to this circle, and also the Middle English mere = boundary.

The phallic significance of the sun explains, amongst others, the two following matters. The sunset, with the plunge of the sun into the western sea, would be regarded as symbolizing an act of coitus, and actually in the re- ligion of India, where the sun and Linga are equally prominent, the male principle (Siva) is symbolized as fire, and the female (Vishnu) as water. Of the sun-steed god Surya it is written: 'I have beheld the permanent orb of the sun, your dwelling-place, concealed by water where (the hymns of the pious) liberate his steeds/ 1 Probably this is one reason for the association of fruitful- ness with the West, e.g. the West Wind, an association furthered by the fact that this is in Europe the rainy wind. The conception is further developed in Greek mythology, where the sun-god Heracles fights savagely with the centaurs. Such creatures, as we shall presently see, are specially closely connected with water and seem to haunt places having a female symbolism. A fight with them thus represents ultimately the infantile sadistic conception of coitus, together with the assault on the father's penis that is so closely associated with the maternal genitalia. Many legends are based on this sun- set theme: one, in the story of Perceval, 'relates how to that knight, when he was in the middle of a forest much distressed for the want of a horse, a lady brought a fine steed as black as a blackberry. He mounted and he found this beast marvellously swift, but on his making straight for a vast river the knight made the sign of the

1 Cox, op. cit. vol. i. p. 385.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 285

cross, whereupon he was left on the ground, and his horse plunged into the water, which his touch seemed to set ablaze/ 1 This is evidently a variant of the Arthurian legend, in which the Lady of the Lake brought the fam- ous sword Excalibur to the king; he wielded it loyally till the time of his death when he flung it back to the lake whence it came; this is a play on the motives of pro- creative power and impotence.

The themes of impotence and castration just hinted at play a most important part in sun mythology, and indeed probably furnish the main reason for the role of the sun in early religions. The identification of the waxing and waning sun with the phallus, and particularly with the father's phallus, brought with it the projection of re- pressed wishes and fears relating to this organ. All nations have taken a remarkable interest in the pheno- menon of the annual increase and decrease of the sun's activity. The vital interest that these phenomena often have for hunting and agricultural pursuits evidently stirred even more intimate emotional responses. Compli- cated rituals and festivals 2 have been instituted with the aim of establishing some stable relationship between man and these disturbing phenomena, of affording some reassurance that the threatened catastrophe would not befall them.

The decrease of the sun's power after midsummer was felt as a symbolic or portending castration, and indeed still is so in the unconscious. The sun's rays, i.e. the horse's mane, the hero's locks, visibly diminished, and the observation, as always, was given this symbolic meaning. Ancient Asiatic ideas actually depicted the change in the notion of the sun-hero, e.g. Heracles, be- coming a female, and believed that when he was robbed of the golden hair in which his strength resided he would, like Samson, be delivered helpless into the hands of his enemies.

1 J. Rhys, Celtic Folklore, 1901, vol. ii. p. 438.

2 Cox, op. cit. vol. ii. p, 113, clearly points out the phallic significance of these festivals.

286 THE MARE' AND THE MARA PT. in

The early Teutons expressed the same idea in an even more forcible and plastic way. According to them the sun-hero lost after midsummer not only his locks, but his very head. This is why a headless rider, or at most a rider who carries his head under his arm, appears in such a countless number of superstitious beliefs, legends and fairy-tales, especially those clustering around Mid- summer Night, St. John's Eve. 1 The centre of this Teu- tonic folklore is plainly Odin himself; it is he who is the beheaded (i.e. castrated) sun-rider. And just as Heracles in his passage through the zodiac becomes feminine on reaching the sign of Cancer, so, according to the Teutons, did the sun travel backwards like a crab after passing midsummer. So the horse on which the headless rider journeys usually has his shoes nailed on backwards, as have the male nixes (water horses) whom we shall meet later. 2

The Christian religion adopted here its usual syncretic attitude towards the older mythology. The famous story of John the Baptist's beheading, together with his name and the fact of his birth being six months earlier than that of Jesus, i.e. in midsummer, naturally destined him to be the carrier of the old beliefs. Even in the New Testament a suitable passage was found: 'He must in- crease, but I must decrease' (St. John iii. 30). Like Heracles and Samson, he was betrayed and castrated (beheaded) by the woman who loved him. In the numer- ous German stories connecting him with Odin 3 there is one interesting one that reveals the identification with the old Storm-god. It relates how when Herodias kissed the head on the charger a stormy wind from his mouth blew at her so violently that she is still floating about in the air.

Something might here be said about the old 'need- fire' customs of Midsummer Eve, but to keep to the present subject I will mention only one point, namely

1 The motif has even lingered in modern American romances: cp. Mayne Reid's The Headless Horseman.

8 jahns, op. cit. S. 277. ' 3 jd. t op. cit. S. 317.

CH. m THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 287

that in Russia, and probably also in Germany, horses played an important part in the ritual of this fire. 1

In connection with the motif of headlessness the reader is referred to earlier passages 2 in which it was shown how the head alone can possess all the wonderful properties of the magic steed, being indeed the quintessence of this phallic creature. The same symbolism applies, as was there pointed out, to other parts of the body, e.g. the ears and particularly the tail; in the Mahabharata, for in- stance, the name of the first horse to be created, the king of horses and Indra's own steed, Uddaihcrava, really means 'the erect-eared one'. Jahns 3 thinks that the sun, with its rays, was probably first identified with the head of the horse, with its mane, and he quotes from the Rig- Veda a hymn addressed to the horse:

Thee I recognized from afar,

The winged one darting from heaven;

On the beautiful dustless path

I saw the winged head hasten.

A special significance has been attached to the horse's head in practically all countries, and it has been used for the most diverse objects, to guard against enemies, to keep away evil demons, to bring good luck, fruit fulness, etc., etc. Lawrence 4 has collected a number of examples of these, which need not be referred to in detail. Many of the related customs are still in force at the present day, e.g. among the South Slavs, 5 in Wales, 6 in many parts of Germany, 7 etc. In many places, e.g. the last- mentioned, the customs are derivatives of the old Odin's procession; I well remember the chief bogey of my child- hood, the horse's head (Welsh 'pen-y-ceffyl') 8 carried

1 Jahns, op. cit. S. 318. 2 Part III. p. 270.

a jahns, op. cit. S. 250.

4 R. M. Lawrence, The Magic of the Horseshoe, 1899, ch. xii. 6 F. S. Krauss, Slavische Volkforschungen, 1908, S. 50.

6 W. W. Sikes, British Goblins, 1880, p. 256. Thomas, La Survivance du culte totemique des animaux dans le pays de Galles, 1898, p. 40.

7 S. Seligmann, Der Bose Blick und Verwandtes, 1910, Bd. ii. S. 129.

8 To this creature Past III. of the present book owes its existence, the writing of it being inspired ultimately by the desire to understand the relation- ship between that particular bogey and night terrors in general. As a con- tribution to the psycho-analysis of the unconscious motives impelling to research,

288 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. in

round on a pole at Christmas time. Of especial interest is the belief that a horse's head will guard against the nocturnal visits of the Nightmare. 1 This contains the same symbolism as the belief that the Nightmare can be averted by a broom, 2 or by a sharp knife. 3

The same significance has been extensively trans- ferred to the idea of the hat, the phallic symbolism of which has long been recognized. 4 A special broad hat was one of Odin's invariable personal attributes. So much did it attract the imagination that the name of St. Hubert, the Christian heir of Odin's interest for the chase and for riding, signifies 'the hat-carrier'. 5 There is a whole series of legends in which the hat of a night- fiend (Alp] has been stolen or lost and he gratefully rewards with treasure whoever restores it.

The stolen hat here is evidently equivalent to the stolen eye, of which several examples were given in the last chapter, 6 the connection between the theme and the castration wishes of the Oedipus complex being plain enough. There is also an intrinsic connection between the hat and eye in this context. When the fiend's hat is stolen he is no longer invisible and then loses his power of tormenting sleepers, i.e. copulating with them; the same result follows when he loses his eye. Thus if the fiend can be seen or cannot see he is impotent. 7

The theme of 'one-eyedness* plays an extensive part in the Nightmare (Alp] legends and superstitions: Laistner 8 has made a specially full study of it. As was just re- marked, the (sexual or tormenting) power of the night-

I may further mention that the psychological starting-point of the whole work was a childish dislike, on the grounds of supposedly effeminate associations, of my first name, Alfred. I discarded the name as soon as I could, but on discovering in later years that the meaning of it could be construed as 'learned in Night- mare' it occurred to me, at first unconsciously, that my childish dislike might be put to some practical use and the matter finally disposed of.

1 A, Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, 1900, S. 128.

2 L. Laistner, Das Rdtsel der Sphinx, 1889, Bd. ii. S. 321. Lawrence, op. cit.

P- 39-

3 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 108.' E. H. Meyer, Germanische Mythologie, 1891, S. 137.

4 Hargrave Jennings, vol. ii. pp. 56-60.

6 jahns, op. cit. S. 323. 8 Part III. p. 271.

7 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 57. 8 Id., op. cit. Bd. ii. Kap. 41, 46, etc.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 289

fiend resides in his eye, and the dread of the 'evil eye' constitutes such an extensive chapter among human superstitions that I shall refrain from opening it up here. 1 We have repeatedly observed the bridge between these malignant fiends on the one hand and the highest gods on the other, and the two are connected in this sym- bolism also. The Eye of God is one of the best known symbols for his creative power and for his pursuing and retributive tendencies. Surya, the Vedic Helios, was called 'the eye of Mithra, Varuna and Agni'. 2 As is well known, Odin was one-eyed, and Wuttke explains this by the fact that the sun is the eye of heaven, of which Odin was the God. 3 Mogk 4 goes deeper than this, how- ever, in pointing out that all 'menschenfressende Damo- nen, die Polypheme, fast bei alien Volkern einaugig erscheinen, so geht auch die Einaugigkeit Wotans auf eine Zeit zuriick, da die Menschen noch Angst vor seiner seelenraubenden Natur hatten/ ('All demons who devour human beings, the Polyphems, appear as one-eyed among almost all peoples, and Wot an' s one-eyedness itself goes back to a time when man still dreaded its capacity to rob him of his soul/)

Here and there one catches glimpses of material older than that derived from either the phallic phase of sexual development or even the excrementitial one that will be described in the next section, namely from the prim- ordial penis-womb phantasies of infancy. It is in the womb that the dreaded fight with the father's penis takes place, and so the idea of obtaining the magic weapon is often associated with places symbolizing the womb. The magic steed, for instance, is in many legends discovered in a cavern or valley. Odin obtained his magic sap of life from a cavern, and when he leads his Furious Host at night they emerge from a hole in a mountain. Great personages in whose death it is impossible to believe live on in the hollow of a mountain, like King Frederick

1 See S. Seligmann, Der Bose Blick und Verwandtes, 1910.

• Cox, op. cit. vol. i. p. 384. 8 Wuttke, op. cit. S. 17.

4 E. Mogk, Germanische Mythologie, 1906, S. 50.

T

THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. m

Barbarossa; for long the people of Bohemia refused to believe that the famous Taborites were exterminated in the battle of Lipany (1434) and maintained that they were merely hiding in a cave in the mountain Blanik. 1 We shall presently see that this theme of 'penis in a womb' is extensively connected with that of stealing, a matter that throws a fuller light on the infantile phan- tasies in question.

These selections from the vast material available should suffice to show how greatly the mythological beliefs about the Horse, and the corresponding Night- mare motifs about the night-fiend, have been influenced by the particular infantile phase of sexual development known as the phallic stage, with its accompanying castration wishes and fears.

B. EXCREMENTITIAL SEXUALITY

As startling as the psycho-analytical discovery of the extraordinary part played by castration thoughts in the course of the young child's development, and in the unconscious mind of the adult, was the further one of a still earlier phase, a pregenital one, in which the child's mind apprehends sexuality very largely in terms of ex- cremental processes. Nevertheless it is on reflection in- telligible that both the anatomical propinquity of the respective organs and their close physiological associa- tions should render this inevitable in the dawn of sexual development before this function has yet become ade- quately differentiated. In fact the adult emancipation of sexual from excremental processes is but rarely com- plete, and traces of the old association even apart from gross perversions are common enough; the very use of the word 'dirty* in reprehension of sexual indul- gence the stock phrase of our school authorities is in itself indicative of this. If, therefore, my main conten- tion is correct, that Nightmare experiences and the mythological beliefs about horses that are associated

1 F. Liitzow, Bohemia : an historical Sketch, 1895, p. 170.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 2QI

with this are the expression of infantile sexual conflicts that continue to operate in the adult unconscious be- cause they were not adequately resolved in childhood, we may expect to find both direct and, still more, in- direct signs of excremental activities among the constit- uents of these beliefs and of sexual potency being ex- pressed in terms of them. It is even possible that our investigation of the topic may have more than this confirmatory aim and will yield conclusions of genera] value on the deepest symbolism of the horse in myth- ology.

We shall consider the three main excretory processes those relating to urine, faeces and flatus, in this order With the first of these, urine, the phantasies are foi obvious reasons usually expressed in terms of water that of impregnation with urine the infantile equiva lent of semen being associated with the actual connec tion between water and fruitfulness in nature. On th< whole it may be said that when the idea of water is bein; used symbolically in mythology one natural source o water rain signifies urine, the other the gushing ou of subterranean water springs more often the uterin waters.

Let us return to our starting-point. The Celtic wor march, from which the word mare itself is probabl derived, is allied to the modern English words mars} mere and moor, which signify damp places, and to th Gaelic mara, all of which are cognate with the numei ous MR words for sea, French mer, Welsh mo\ Russian more, etc. Now it is very remarkable the night-fiends who assume the shape of horses are, as w shall presently see, almost always connected with ides of water. Laistner 1 remarks: 'Die Rossgestalt des Alpsi< hauptsachlich an dem irn Wasser hausenden Lur hafte geblieben/ (The horse guise of the night-fiend has bee retained from the Lure who dwells in water/)

In general the ideas of horse and water have alwa^ been closely associated, suggesting that something aboi

1 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 172.

THE MARE AND THE MARA *x. m

a horse instinctively brings to the mind the idea of water. Jahns 1 points out that even the names that denote horse spring from common roots for those that denote water: the Latin aqua and equus (Old High German ach and ech respectively) are derived from the old Indo-Ger- manic akrd (= water) and akva (== steed), both of which come from the root ak = to hasten. The same may apply to Ross itself, 'denn ur und or sind uralte, jeden t/rsprung bezeichnende Worter, welche vilen Sprachen zur <2^0//bezeichnung dienten. Das lateinische on> = "entstehen" gehort zu diser Wurzel, und es 1st nicht unwahrscheinlich, dasz auch das altdeutsche ors hier ankniipft in ser vilen Lokalitatsbezeichnungen auf Wasser deutet und somit als eine gemeinschaftliche Bezeichnung fur Quelle und Ross erscheint. . . . Dasz Worter wie Renner und rinnen zusammenhangen, ligt auf der Hand. In der antiken Dichtung ist von merk- wiirdiger Durchsichtigkeit in diser Beziehung der Name einer Nebengestalt des Poseidon, namlich des rosse- beriimten troischen Rhesos. Denn diser Name bedeutet gradezu den "Rinnenden" (von pew), und darum fiiren auch zwei Flusse disen Namen: einer in Troas, ein andrer in Bythinien/ (Tor ur and or are primitive words which many languages use to denote the idea of "source' '. The Latin or ire ( =to arise) belongs to this root, and it is not improbable that the Old German ors, which in many names of places indicates water and thus seems to be a common designation for "horse" and "spring", is also connected with it. ... That words like Renner (= race-horse) and rinnen (=to stream) are related is plain enough. A clear example in this connec- tion from classical writings is a guise of Poseidon, that of the Trojan Rhesos so famous for his glistening steeds. For this title simply means "the streamer" (from pea?}, and hence has given the name to two rivers, one in Troad, another in Bithynia.') Further than this, the place names formed from horse names generally contain a reference to water as well. Jahns, 2 after giving a list of

1 Jahns, op. cit. S. 279, 280. * * Id., op. cit. S. 215.

CH. m THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 2Q3

some six hundred and fifty such words, writes: 'Hier sei nur aufmerksam gemacht, wie sich iiberreich und fast ausnahmslos bei jeder der aufgefiirten Benennungen die Verbindung zwischen den Rossenamen und der Bezeich- nung des Wassers, der rinnenden Flut ergiebt. Uberall begegnen wir den Pferdenamen in fester Verschwisterung mit Silben wie: ach, bach, bore, brunn, bronn, quell, see, u.s.w/ ('Here one need only call attention to the fact of how extraordinarily rich with every one of these place names is the connection between the word for horse and that for running water. Everywhere we come across names for horses in close conjunction with syllables like: ach, bach, bore, brunn, bronn, quell, see, etc/)

This is perhaps the place to say something about the occurrence of creatures, half man and half horse, which have played a considerable part in mythology. Not only are they of general interest to us in confirming the views expressed above concerning the identification of human and animal interests and the important relation in which they stand to dream life, to which I am inclined to refer the origin of most mythical monsters, but they are par- ticularly closely connected with the present theme of Horse and Water, and thus form a counterpart to the interchangeability of Hero and Horse which we studied in the preceding chapter in connection with the Sun- God. Centaurs, to take the classical example of these creatures, have an essentially watery origin. Kronos, the Greek Saturn, begot one by Philyra, the daughter of the water, while the others were the offspring of Ixion and Nephele (cloud). From a careful study of various coins and engravings Knight 1 has proved the erotic signifi- cance of the Centaurs, who were indeed sometimes con- founded with Satyrs; various legends discussed by Cox 2 confirm this conclusion, which Laistner 3 also indepen- dently reached. The word itself, which signifies biting, reminds one of the sadistic conception of the horse, so often found in dreams. Other Grecian monsters show a

1 Knight, op. cit. pp. 77-78. a Cox, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 54, 67.

8 Laistner, op. cit., Bd. i. S. 309, 313.

2Q4 THE MARE AND THE MARA *T. in

similar fusion of two animals. Thus the Hippocampen were half horse and half fish (hermaphroditic). The Bucentaurs were half men and half ox or horse; Bucen- toro is the name of the state-galley of the Doge of Venice, used at the annual ceremony of marrying the Adriatic by throwing a ring into it. 1

Combined figures such as the centaurs rarely occur in Northern mythology, but allied ones are quite common. There are a number of water demons who appear either in equine form or as human beings who in some respects resemble horses (neighing, etc.). The generic name for them is Nixie. 2 In Bohemia the Nix is actually called Hastrmann (== horse-man). 3 Laistner traces analogies between Poseidon and the German Nix. 4 The belief in question has been extensively developed in Scotland, where it is still held in outlying parts; a great many legends and tales are related of the water-horses there, the colloquial name of which is 'kelpie'. 5 A female kelpie can be transferred into a woman, and vice versa. The main characteristic of the Nixies, 6 the Kelpie, 7 and the Manx Glashtyn 8 is that they attack people of the opposite sex and carry them off to their watery home. They even intermarry: a child was born in Shulista of such a union as recently as 1794, the father being a Sun God in exile. A Midas-like fusion of horse and man occurs in a Welsh legend, of King March ap Meirchion (March = Welsh for 'horse') who resembled a man in all except his ears, which were horse's.

One of the most prominent attributes for water is its movement, one we have seen also to be a central one of horse symbolism. The movement may be either flowing,

1 Jennings, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 41. O. Stoll, Das Geschlechtsleben in der Volker- psychologie, 1908, S. 435.

2 Wuttke, op, cit. S. 48-51. jahns, op. cit. S. 278. 4 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 445, 449.

6 J. F. Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, 1860, vol. ii. pp. 190- 193. J. Jamieson, Scottish Dictionary, 1880, vol. iii. p. 15. C. Mackay, A Dictionary of Lowland Scotch, 1888, p. 105.

Wuttke, op. cit. S. 49.

7 J. G. Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland, 1835, pp. 543-544. J. A. Macculloch, The Misty Isle of Sky e, 1905, pp. 235, 239.

8 J. Rhys, Celtic Folklore, Welsh and Manx, 1901, vol. i. p. 289.

CH.III THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 295

as with most of the examples Jahns cites, or undulatory. The latter has repeatedly led to 'sailing' and 'riding' being identified. 1 We still say 'the ship rides on the waves', and in English the white waves are commonly called sea horses. The Greek word for helmsman meant literally 'the rein-holder', and Odin, the Teutonic Horse-God, at times appears as a helmsman. 2 It is little wonder, there- fore, that the sailor, who 'rides on' his ship, should re- gard her as feminine.

We have seen the Horse-God in the form of a Wind- or Storm-God, and in that of a Sun-God: we have next to meet him in the form of a Water-God, principally a Sea-God or River-God. As illustrating this relation be- tween Horse and Water it is instructive that Poseidon- Neptunus, the creator of horses and discoverer of the riding art, was the Sea God. Odin himself often appeared as a Water God, under the name of Nikarr; 3 from this comes the modern English name for the deVil 'Old Nick', and also the fact that St. Nicholas was the patron of mariners. 4 It has been supposed that the extensive horse-worship in Greece arose as the result of a pun. 5 The deity Hippa, which signifies the Soul of Everything, was derived from the Phoenician Hip, 'the Parent of All'. According to Hesychius, hippon means the sexual parts of a man or woman, 6 and the deity Hippa was therefore represented by phallic symbols. Bryant 7 states that Hippa was the same as the Phrygian Cybele, the mother-goddess. The name Hippios was applied to several gods, e.g. Poseidon and Ares, and the name Hippia to several goddesses, e.g. Hera and Athena; in fact, at Colonos Poseidon and Athene shared a common altar. The confusion between the God Hippios and the horse Hippos, however, depended on more than a play

1 Jahns, op. cit. S. 222, 223; Bd. ii. S. 9.

2 Grimm, op. cit. Bd. iii. S. 57. 3 Id., op. cit. Bd. i. S. 123.

4 J. Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, 1849, vol. ii. p. 520.

6 A. Wilder, Editor of R. P. Knight, The Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology, 1876, pp. 79, 80.

6 It is very interesting that even here hermaphroditism, which is character- istic of the whole sexual mythology of the horse, is evident.

7 J. Bryant, Analysis of Ancient Mythology, 1774-76, vol. iii.

296 THE MARE AND THE MARA rr. in

of words, as did that between the Nightmare and the Nightmara, there being many other associations between the ideas of deity and horse.

Everything goes to show that, beyond this idea of movement, the actual link between the ideas of Horse and Water is the reproductive powers of both. This is illustrated in a very large number of legends and beliefs, of which a few examples must suffice.

Jahns 1 writes: 'Im Sanskrit heist das Pferd Sri- Bhratri, d.i. Bruder der Sri, der Gottin der Frucht- barkeit, weil es gleich ihr aus den Wellen des Meres emporgestiegen sei. Im Zend-Avesta der Perser er- scheint Anahita, die Gottin des uberirdischen befruch- tenden Wassers, mit vier weiszen Rossen/ ('In Sanscrit the horse is called "Sri-Bhratri", i.e. brother of Sri the Goddess of Fertility, because like her it was born of the sea waves. In the Zend-Avesta of the Persians, Anahita, the Goddess of the fructifying waters above, appears with four white steeds/) In Greece and Rome the horse was sacred to Neptune and the Rivers, to which it was sacrificed. According to Knight, 2 who regards the horse as a symbol of the reproductive powers, the reason why the horse appeared on Carthaginian coins was because of its association with water. As the figure on these coins was surmounted by a winged disc we have here a con- densed expression of the three main aspects of the Horse God, i.e. the Water God, Sun God and Storm God (flight through the air) . It is probably a representation of Saturn himself, the chief deity of the Carthaginians, who was believed to have appeared in equine guise when he paid his addresses to Philyra, the daughter of Oceanus. 3

Both in India and Greece it was believed that the horse's saliva had magic properties, particularly for the generating and saving of life two very similar ideas, as Rank 4 has well shown. The saliva of the magic Sun-

1 J^hns, op. cit. S. 272. 2 Knight, op. cit. p. 76. \

• Virgil, Georgics, iii. 92.

4 O. Rank, 'Belege zur Rettungsphantasie', Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, 1911, Jahrg. i. S. 331; 'Die "Geburts-Rettungsphantasie" in Traum und Dichtung', Zeitschriftfur Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. ii. S. 43.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 2Q7

horse was equivalent to ambrosia and was even identi- fied with it. 1 When he was robbed of this salivary ambrosia he lost - his strength and died. The Indian Acvins were known not only as wonderful riders, 2 but as exceptionally skilled physicians. The sons of Aescu- lapius, the Father of Medicine, are to be identified with the twin Dioscures, the Greek equivalents of the Acrins. Ovid, in the second book of the Metamorphoses, de- scribes how Ocyrhoe was appropriately transformed into a mare as a punishment for predicting that Aesculapius would through medical science save mankind from death. In short, the fluid issuing from the horse (saliva, urine, semen) was regarded as having magical properties in respect of life itself; it was the essence of life.

The f ruitf ulness of the horse itself is chiefly manifested by means of contact of his hoof with the earth, a theme that has many roots. In the first place, the leg and foot themselves symbolize in folklore, as Aigremont has amply shown, 3 the male generative organ; this is especi- ally likely with the aggressive leg of the horse. Secondly, the horse's hoof and shoe symbolize the female organ; the curved shape lends itself especially to this identifica- tion, which is already common with foot and shoe in general. 4 Aigremont traces this latter identification to a telluric origin, i.e. to the contact of the foot with the mother earth, 5 but there are probably anal-erotic elements also at work here. The horse's hoof is therefore especially well adapted to symbolize both the male and the female reproductive powers. From it may spring various forms of life, the two chief being vegetation and springs. Borek, Mahomet's silver-grey mare, possessed this quality in a high degree, for 'unter deren Fiissen empfing selbst der Wiistensand die Eigenschaft, Leben zu erzeugen, und verwandelte sich in Gold/ 6 ('Beneath its feet even the desert sand acquired the property of creating life, and was changed into gold/) This quality

1 Gubernatis, op. cit. S. 273, 274. a V.s.p.

a Aigremont, Fuss- und Schuh-Symbolik, 1909, S. 23, 24.

• Id., op. cit. S. 8, 9, 12, etc, B Id., op. cit. S. 21.

• J&hns, op. cit. S. 272. Evidently a cloacal motive.

298 THE MARE AND THE MARA *T. ni

belongs to human beings and to gods, as well as to horses. Aigremont 1 writes: 'Saaten, Blumen, Friichte entspros- sen unter den Schritten des segnenden Fusses der Gottin* Dieser alte Mythenzug kehrt in Sagen und Marchen gar vieler Volker wieder, ist fast Allgemeingut der Mensch- heit geworden. Nach der altagyptischen wie indischen, nach der romanischen wie deutschen, nach der japani- schen wie slavischen Volksanschauung spriessen Blu- men unter den Tritten edler Frauen, Koniginnen oder verkannter Aschenbrodels hervor/ ('Harvests, flowers, fruits sprout and ripen under the tread of the goddess's benign foot. This ancient mythological motif recurs in the legends and fairy tales of very many nations and has almost become the common property of mankind. In the popular view of the Old Egyptians as of the Indians, of the Romans as of the Germans, of the Japanese as of the Slavs, flowers spring forth under the tread of noble women, queens or misjudged Cinderellas.') Men, various legendary heroes and gods possess the quality equally with woman and goddesses, another proof of the herma- phroditic nature of foot symbolism. The horses of deities and heroes bring the same blessing as they ride over the land, and many legends and stories are still believed in which tell of the field mare that makes the corn grow. Even more frequently than by the growth of vegeta- tion is the trampling of horses followed by the issuing forth of springs. No better symbol of reproduction could be found, for this represents the pouring out of both the male principle (semen, urine) and the birth itself (uterine water). Both sources of water can be produced in this way, the one being on the whole a male process, the other a female. The mythical origin of the magical Hip- pocrene on Helicon is an instance of both forms. One sourceof ittherewasobtainedby astroke of the hoof given by the wonderful horse Pegasus (from 77-17777 = spring 2 ), the offspring of Poseidon and Medusa. The stroke let loose a heavy rainstorm, which gave rise to the spring; 8

1 Aigremont, op. cit. S. 17, 18. a jahns, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 9.

Id., op. cit. S. 274.

H.IH THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 299

the analogy may well be drawn between heavy rain and the forcible micturition of the horse, an association maintained in many bawdy jokes. It is interesting that just like the magic wand, the wishing-rod and other similar symbols, the (male) tread of the hoof can dis- close precious metals that are hidden in the earth, 1 once more a cloacal motif. At times ambrosia itself spurts out of the magic horse's hoof, and as we know ambrosia to be a symbol for semen this again shows how the leg and foot must have a phallic meaning. In the Rigveda 2 we read that the Agni, the magic horses, spurted out a divine fluid from their forefeet, and that the horse which the Acvins presented to the sun-hero filled a hundred beakers with intoxicating fluid from his hooves. 3 In this connection may also be mentioned the following facts: Mistletoe, which as a seminal symbol was sacred to the horse-worshipping Druids, is a valuable charm against the Nightmare. 4 Dew, which has the same signi- ficance, 5 dripped from the mane of the Teutonic Night- steed (Sleipnir, etc.), and indeed Jahns connects the Latin word for this ros with the German Ross* Hair itself has several sexual meanings, being indeed biologi- cally a secondary sexual characteristic. One that I do not remember having been pointed out, but which I have several times found during psycho-analysis, is an associ- ation with fseces. Indeed, even in connection with horses it may be mentioned that the manes of the sacred Teu- tonic horses were plaited with threads of gold, and the horses themselves were frequently named after this characteristic; 7 it was a general superstition in the Middle Ages that horse's hair, laid in manure water turned into poisonous snakes (cp. Medusa's snake-hair). One finds this indicated by Shakespeare: 8

Much is breeding,

Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life, And not a serpent's poison.

1 jahns, op. cit. S. 283. a Rigveda, vi. 75, 7. 3 Ib., i. 116, 7.

4 B. Thorpe, Northern Mythology, 1851, vol. ii. p. 30.

• Abraham, op. cit. S. 63. 6 Jahns, op. cit. S. 280.

7 Id.,op.cit.S.42i. B Antony and Cleopatra, Act i, Sc. 2.

300 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. m

The second source of the Helicon Hippocrene was through a female process, an underground spring pro- duced by Permessos, a River God. Hippocrene itself may be translated in German by the names Rossbach (Horse- brook), or better M^rbach, 1 two common place names. This more usual female process of producing springs is described in a number of Teutonic legends, 2 e.g. in re- gard to Baldur's steed, Charlemagne's (which gave rise to the famous sacred well at Aix), etc.

It is well known that the mysterious properties of the foot have repeatedly been transferred to the shoe, 3 so that it is to be expected that the horseshoe would ac- quire the significance of the water- and life-giving horse's hoof itself. This is so in fact. The wide-spread- ness of the belief in horseshoes is as remarkable as the manifoldness of its virtues. Aigremont says: 4 'Der Glaube an das Hufeisengliick ist liber die ganze Welt verbreitet. Alle Rassen und Volker, die den Gebrauch der Hufeisen kennen, haben ihn/ (The belief in the luck of horseshoes is widespread over the whole world. All races and peoples that know the use of horseshoes have it/) Horseshoes keep away evil spirits and witches, avert the Evil Eye, guard from illness, bring life, prosperity and happiness, in short are in every way lucky. It would be superfluous to relate any instances for this, 5 for it is still one of the most living of beliefs. The favourite places to nail a horseshoe are over doors, especially stable doors, and on the masts of ships; Lord Nelson had one nailed to the mast of the Victory at Trafalgar, and Lord Roberts carefully collected them on his South African campaign. The belief has been rationalized in the most curious ways, such as through its connection with the birth of Christ in a stable, etc., but it has many times been pointed out that it is the same symbol as

1 jahns, op. cit. S. 215.

8 Aigremont, op. cit. S. 16. Jahns, op. cit. S. 274-276.

• Aigremont, op. cit. S. 45, etc. * Id., op. cit. S. 70.

6 See Brand, op. cit. vol. iii. pp. 16-18, 25. S. Seligmann, Der Bose Blick, Bd. ii. S. 11-13, I2 9- B. Stern, Medizin, Aberglaube und Geschlechtsleben in der Ttirkei, 1903, Bd. ii. S. 288, 339. Wuttkje, op. cit. S. 130, and especially Lawrence, op. cit.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 301

appears in the form of the Christian vesica piscis, the Cestos of Aphrodite, the magic necklace of Hermania, the Nibelung ring, the ship of Isis and Athene, the Achaian Argos, Noah's ark, the chest of Osiris, the Holy Grail, King Arthur's Round Table, the girdle of Hip- polyte, the Order of the Garter (the highest Court honour in England), all kinds of magical cups and horns, the Egyptian mystical door of life, the religious altar, the Yoni of Vishnu, and a host of others; 1 the symbolism is quite simply revealed in the German expression for defloration, 'Sie hat ein Hufeisen verloren' ('She has lost a horseshoe'). It is therefore of especial interest that the horseshoe has always been one of the chief charms used against the Nightmare; 2 the mind of the people has seemed dimly to perceive that, in satisfactory circum- stances, the Yoni will better than anything else prevent the distressing night visits of the Mara. Of similar signi- ficance is the plan of placing the shoes at the side of the bed with the toes pointing towards the door; this is evi- dently intended for women, and indeed is especially efficacious in guarding against the Alp fiend. 3 The association between horse and sea is still kept up in Italian customs, where the evil eye is averted partly by the mano cornuta* and partly by the use of amulets representing a mermaid sitting on a centaur. 5 Another similar amulet is the hag stone or holy stone, the desig- nation holy denoting both its sacred nature and the fact that it has been bored (holey); they avert labour pains, 6 various elves, 7 but especially the Nightmare. 8 Of interest in this connection are the lucky snake-stones of various countries (Pliny's anguinum), glass rings formed by the hissing together of the breath of several serpents, and

1 See Cox, op. cit. T. Inman, Ancient Faiths embodied in Ancient Names, 1873. R. P. Knight, A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, 1863.

2 Lawrence, op. cit. pp. 90, 95.

8 Grimm, op. cit. Bd. iii. S. 449. 4 Lawrence, op. cit. p. 12.

• Seligmann, op. cit. Bd, ii. S. 310. 6 Dalyell, op. cit. p. 140.

7 Meyer, op. cit. S. 137.

8 B. Henderson, Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England, 1879, p. 166. Lawrence, op. cit. p. 75. Northumberland, Folk-Lore Series, 1903, P- 51.

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finally passed like an egg. 1 Without any symbolism at all the vulva of the mare itself is used in India to avert the Evil Eye, as it was in ancient Rome to make both love potions and poisons thus illustrating the characteristic ambivalence of the unconscious: it here formed the main ingredient of the deadly poison Hippoman. 2 Lastly, in this connection may be mentioned that the Irish word for vulva is maar, an interesting fact in view of the Celtic origin of Mdhre.

From these considerations it will be plain that the Horse's foot is singularly adapted to symbolize both the male and female principle, in other words the whole re- productive side, or what later ages have chosen to call the 'animal side' of our nature. It has therefore become a demoniacal attribute in general, and has become at- tached to a great number of mythical beings. Even in its naked form it has special significance attributed to it; thus in the Netherlands a horse's foot is hung up in a stable to prevent a Mara or witch from riding the horses. 3 We find already in Greece that not only were the cen- taurs provided with a horse's foot, but also the priests who served the oracle at Dodona, and who were called Hippodes. 4 Odin himself had a horse's foot, as had various other nightly visitors, such as the Pschezpolnica of the Wends, the mythical he-goat, and the Alp him- self. 5 The shape became influenced by that of the orien- tal pentagram; 6 in Croatia the Mora has feet in the form of a pentagram. 7 Hence arose the pentagram ('Druden- fuss') of Teutonic sorceresses. The mediaeval Devil never appeared without his horse's foot, 8 and the witches be- came endowed with the same attribute. In modern times the expression 'cloven hoof has passed into common usage in a metaphorical sense, the most usual connota- tion of it being animal or sexual. The fertility concept

1 J. B. Deane, The Worship of the Serpent, 1833, pp. 260-264.

F. von Schlichtegroll, Liebesleben im klassischen Altertum, S. 338. 8 Seligmann, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 129. Thorpe, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 328.

• jahns, op. cit. S. 271.

6 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 259. 6 Meyer, op. cit. S. 58.

7 Krauss, op. cit. S. 148. 8 Brand, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 517.

CH. m THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 303

of the horse's foot was ingeniously strengthened by the Greeks in the following fancy. In a later representation of the frightful Medusa (in Aristophanes) she appears, not with her usual ass's legs, but with one leg made of ore, the other of ass's dung. 1 This connection between the ass, the pre-eminently phallic animal, and dung, the fertilizing manure, represents a very condensed piece of symbolism.

So far we have been considering the urethral-erotic elements in the Horse-Nightmare mythology as ex- pressed by the connection between the ideas of water and fertility. There are several links that enable us to pass from this theme to that of the anal-erotic elements, since a number of the mythological ideas in question receive contributions from both sources. Let us take, for example, the ideas investing the sun's rays. We saw in the preceding chapter what an important attribute they are of the Horse-Sun God, and how the diminution in them after the summer solstice was dreaded as a re- minder of castration. Here the rays are regarded as a symbol of the phallus as well as of semen, and there is a considerable series of myths in which they play this part so openly as to lead to pregnancy in the virgin on whom they fall. 2 Similarly the sun's rays are regarded as^a form of fire, and since Abraham's 3 work we are familiar with the seminal symbolism of this in mytho- logical thought. On the other hand, there is ample evid- ence of pregenital factors being at work in the composi- tion of this group of ideas. Freud 4 some time ago hinted that the infantile and unconscious equivalent of fire is urine, and the truth of this has since been fully estab- lished. The usual description of the sun's rays as stream- ing or pouring rather than as being ejected naturally accords better with the analogy with the infantile, pre- seminal fluid; it is a parallel to the 'flowing' mane of the

1 Aigremont, op. cit. S. 25.

2 See, for instance, E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity, 1909, vol. i. pp. 25, 26. s Abraham, Traum und Mythus, 1909, Cap. 4.

4 Freud, Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, 1909, 2e Folge, S. 137. [Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. v. S. 267; Collected Papers, vol. ii. p. 50.]

302 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. in

finally passed like an egg. 1 Without any symbolism at all the vulva of the mare itself is used in India to avert the Evil Eye, as it was in ancient Rome to make both love potions and poisons thus illustrating the characteristic ambivalence of the unconscious: it here formed the main ingredient of the deadly poison Hippoman. 2 Lastly, in this connection may be mentioned that the Irish word for vulva is maar, an interesting fact in view of the Celtic origin of Mdhre.

From these considerations it will be plain that the Horse's foot is singularly adapted to symbolize both the male and female principle, in other words the whole re- productive side, or what later ages have chosen to call the 'animal side' of our nature. It has therefore become a demoniacal attribute in general, and has become at- tached to a great number of mythical beings. Even in its naked form it has special significance attributed to it; thus in the Netherlands a horse's foot is hung up in a stable to prevent a Mara or witch from riding the horses. 3 We find already in Greece that not only were the cen- ta.urs provided with a horse's foot, but also the priests who served the oracle at Dodona, and who were called Hippodes. 4 Odin himself had a horse's foot, as had various other nightly visitors, such as the Pschezpolnica of the Wends, the mythical he-goat, and the Alp him- self. 5 The shape became influenced by that of the orien- tal pentagram; 6 in Croatia the Mora has feet in the form of a pentagram. 7 Hence arose the pentagram ('Druden- fuss') of Teutonic sorceresses. The mediaeval Devil never appeared without his horse's foot, 8 and the witches be- came endowed with the same attribute. In modern times the expression 'cloven hoof has passed into common usage in a metaphorical sense, the most usual connota- tion of it being animal or sexual. The fertility concept

1 J. B. Deane, The Worship of the Serpent, 1833, pp. 260-264. C. F. von Schlichtegroll, Liebesleben im klassischen Altertum, S. 338. Seligmann, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 129. Thorpe, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 328. jahns, op. cit. S. 271.

Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 259. 6 Meyer, op. cit. S. 58.

Krauss, op. cit. S. 148. , 8 Brand, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 517.

CH. m THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 303

of the horse's foot was ingeniously strengthened by the Greeks in the following fancy. In a later representation of the frightful Medusa (in Aristophanes) she appears, not with her usual ass's legs, but with one leg made of ore, the other of ass's dung. 1 This connection between the ass, the pre-eminently phallic animal, and dung, the fertilizing manure, represents a very condensed piece of symbolism.

So far we have been considering the urethral-erotic elements in the Horse-Nightmare mythology as ex- pressed by the connection between the ideas of water and fertility. There are several links that enable us to pass from this theme to that of the anal-erotic elements, since a number of the mythological ideas in question receive contributions from both sources. Let us take, for example, the ideas investing the sun's rays. We saw in the preceding chapter what an important attribute they are of the Horse-Sun God, and how the diminution in them after the summer solstice was dreaded as a re- minder of castration. Here the rays are regarded as a symbol of the phallus as well as of semen, and there is a considerable series of myths in which they play this part so openly as to lead to pregnancy in the virgin on whom they fall. 2 Similarly the sun's rays are regarded as a form of fire, and since Abraham's 3 work we are familiar with the seminal symbolism of this in mytho- logical thought. On the other hand, there is ample evid- ence of pregenital factors being at work in the composi- tion of this group of ideas. Freud 4 some time ago hinted that the infantile and unconscious equivalent of fire is urine, and the truth of this has since been fully estab- lished. The usual description of the sun's rays as stream- ing or pouring rather than as being ejected naturally accords better with the analogy with the infantile, pre- seminal fluid; it is a parallel to the 'flowing' mane of the

1 Aigremont, op. cit. S. 25.

8 See, for instance, E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity, 1909, vol. i. pp. 25, 26. 8 Abraham, Traum und My thus, 1909, Cap. 4.

4 Freud, Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, 1909, 2e Folge, S. 137. [Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. v. S. 267; Collected Papers, vol. ii. p. 50.]

304 THE MARE AND THE MARA *T. m

Horse-God. Their colour and shining appearance are features that aid in this identification, but these features evidently have also another pregenital origin, the anal- erotic one. Much stress is laid in the'se myths on the like- ness of the sun's rays to gold, the most typical uncon- scious symbol of faeces, while many stories are related of the golden mane of the magic horse and of the night- fiend's long tresses being interwoven with gold. As I have elsewhere pointed out, 1 the idea of hair itself is very often associated in the unconscious with that of faeces, the notions of dirt and of perpetually shedding being com- mon to both. 2

Another theme connecting the two pregenital ele- ments in question is that of stealing. Stealing in myth- ology, as in unconscious phantasy in general, signifies an injury, a deprivation or even mutilation, and is ulti- mately a symbol for castration. To steal money is to perform a pederastic assault money = faeces with a castrating motive, hence the neurotic dread of being cheated or having even small sums stolen. It is interest- ing in connection with the present topic that one of the titles of Hermes, whom we have seen earlier to have been one of the Greek equivalents of the Horse-God Odin, was the Master Thief. Abraham 3 has clearly demon- strated the sexual significance of the myth about the stealing of fire from heaven, and Hermes himself was one of the gods who was supposed to have first brought fire to mankind. 4 In mythology we meet the stealing motif mainly in the three following connections: (i) Theft of a symbol for the genital organ, the most direct of the cas- tration themes. The chief examples of this in the present circle of ideas are fire, the eye, the hat and the magic steed. Several instances of these were recounted in the preceding chapter. (2) Theft of a woman. To be deprived of the sexual object is often the equivalent of being de-

1 'Einige Falle von Zwangsneurose', Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, 1912, Bd. iv. S. 580.

2 See O. Stoll, op. cit. S. 120-240, for ethnological material amply confirming this conclusion.

8 Abraham, op, cit, S. 31. ' 4 Cox, op. cit. vol. i. p. 120,

CH. m THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 305

prived of sexuality, i.e. of the genital organ itself. To be carried off oneself by the Psychopomp, i.e. parted from the loved one, is a variant of this that connects directly with the first motif \ as I pointed out earlier, 1 the dread of the Nightmare is at the same time dread of castration and dread of death. (3) Theft of treasure. This is a much over-determined motif. It is often to be equated to theft of wife, she being the greatest treasure. As we have just seen, however, this does not contradict the meaning of theft of penis, particularly as in the unconscious faeces ( = treasure) is often equated to the penis. And, because of the homosexual significance pointed out above, it is one of the worst forms of castration, and for this reason is an extremely frequent mythological theme. To the earlier instances we may add a couple more, which illus- trate several of the features to which attention has been called. 'Im Elendstale ist eine grosse Klippe, darin wohnt eine Jungfer, die zeigt sich zwischen elf und zwolf mit einem silbernen Schliissel; wem sie diesen hinhielt, der sollte ihn mit dem Stocke nehmen. Das tat ein Kohler, da off net en sich durch den Schliissel drei Tiiren, dann kam er in eine Hohle, da standen gesattelte Rosse, dahinter lag Pfer demist. Er musste sich da von mit- nehmen, als er aber iiber eine Briicke ging, schiittelte er ihn ins Wasser, da klingelte er und war Gold/ 2 ('In Elendstal is a high cliff where there dwells a maiden. She shows herself between eleven and twelve 3 with a silver key, and whoever she offers this to should take it with his stick. A certain charcoal-burner once did this and the key opened three (!) doors through which he came into a cavern (!) where there stood saddled horses with dung behind them. He had to take away with him as much of this as he could, and as he crossed a bridge he showered it into the water where it jingled and turned into gold. 1 ) 'Vor der verbotenen Kammer fand der Knabe eine Pfiitze voller Gold, tauchte den Finger darein und verband ihn mit einem Stiickchen

1 Part III. pp. 255, 265. 8 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 144. 8 The regular night-fiend time.

U

306 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. in

Zeug. Als der Drakos aufwachte und den Verband sail, musste jener ihn abnehmen, da war der Finger vergoldet; der Drakos packte ihn nun und tauchte ihn ganz in die Pfiitze, und davon ward er am ganzen Leibe golden/ 1 'In einer mahrischen Variante ist der Knabe zum Warter des Rosses bestellt, aber er soil sich vor einem gewissen Brunnen hiiten; als er dennoch den Finger eintaucht, entsteht plotzlich ein goldner Ring, den er nicht ab- machen kann; er verbindet den Finger, aber sein Herr bemerkt den Verband, nimmt ihn den Ring ab und wirft diesen in den Brunnen. Ehe er dann mit dem Rosse flieht, taucht er auf dessen Rat den Kopf in den Brun- nen, sein Haar wird golden, und er stiilpt eine Kappe dariiber/ 2 ('Before the forbidden door the youth found a puddle of gold; he dipped a finger into it and bandaged it over with a piece of cloth. When the dragon woke and caught sight of the bandage he made the youth take it off and, behold, the finger had changed into gold. Whereupon the dragon caught hold of him and dipped him into the puddle until his whole body was golden/ 'In a Moravian variant the youth has the post of watch- ing the horse, and he has to guard himself against a certain well. But he plunged his finger into it and found a ring appear, which he could not dislodge from his finger. He bandages his finger, but when his master sees it, he takes the ring away and throws it into the well. As he then bolts with the (magic) horse he follows his ad- vice and plunges his head into the well, whereupon his hair turns to gold and he claps his cap over it/) The Furious Host of Odin emerges from the hollow of a mountain; 3 those who care for the horses when they are within the mountain receive as a reward the horse- dung and hoof-clippings, both of which then turn to gold. 4

Another allied theme with condensed symbolism is that of the horse's ears. To begin with these can be phallic symbols, as with the magic U&aihcrava, Indra's

1 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 147. 2 Id., op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 147.

8 Meyer, op. cit. S. 241-244. 4 jahns, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 335.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 307

steed, whose name signifies simply 'erect ears 1 . 1 Then the orifice of the ear is an unconscious equivalent of the anus, hence the conception of a rich man with horse's or ass's ears (Midas, etc.). It is associated at this point with birth phantasies, as in the legend of the conception of Jesus through the ear. 2 In the following Russian tale there is a combination of incest and homosexual themes, whereby the youth wins the king's daughter. Ivan, the youngest and stupid brother, has the most worthless horse of the stable. He creeps into one ear and out by the other. On this two young riders ( = the Dioscori) appear and transform his horse into a wonderful steed with a mane and tail of gold. By its help he performs marvellous feats, and wins the Czar's daughter. 3

The Wind God was the first of the triad of divine guises in which we met the Horse God, and we have now to investigate the mundane origins of this concep- tion. The emanation of a gaseous fluid from the body is a process which has greatly influenced the imagination of mankind and has stimulated some of the most exalted ideas. On the physical plane it assumes various forms, although there are only two gases emitted from the body expired air and flatus. There is the breath, the voice and minor respiratory phenomena (sneezing, etc.). The act of speaking becomes identified in the unconscious with that of thinking, and the very invisibility of all these acts strengthens the idea of power with which for more reasons than one they are invested. Nor is the idea of fertility lacking. We need not recount the endless be- liefs, from the first chapter of Genesis onward, in which the idea of the Creative Breath or Divine Spirit plays a central part. Now in the course of my psycho-analytical work I have come across the curious phantasy that the act of procreation may consist in the passage of flatus

1 Gubernatis, op. cit. S. 223.

2 See Ernest Jones, 'Die Empf^ngnis der Jungfrau Maria durch das Ohr: Ein Beitrag zu der Beziehung zwischen Kunst und Religion'. Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, 1914, Bd. vi. S. 135. ['The Madonna's Conception through the Ear. A Contribution to the Relation between Aesthetics and Religion', Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis, 1923, ch. viii. p. 261.]

8 Gubernatis, op. cit. S. 229.

308 THE MARE AND THE MARA *r. m

from one body to another, 1 and I have elsewhere shown 2 that this notion unconsciously plays an important part in far loftier contexts. The intense repression to which early interest in flatus is later subjected makes it intel- ligible that it can manifest itself in later life principally in disguised forms, one of the chief being a transference upwards that goes to strengthen the natural interest in respiratory and allied processes. Particularly the notion of action at a distance, or of peculiar powers of searching and penetrating in the manner of a gas, receives much from this deep source.

It is of interest here to note that the Vedic equivalents of the Greek Centaurs were the cloud-maidens called Gandharvas, 3 and it has been thought that the two words are etymologically related. 4 The latter is cognate with gandha, which means 'evil smell'. Now evil smells were one of the means of protection against the Night- mare, and certain inferences are legitimately to be drawn from this. Charms against the Nightmare or night-fiend are characteristically symbols of the part of the body where the attack is feared. Most of these charms, therefore, are genital symbols, knife, broom, horseshoe, and the like. The following account has to be read in conjunction with this general law: 'Die Masuren empfehlen als Mittel wider die Mahrte, sich auf den Bauch zu legen: wenn dann die Zmora kommt, den Schlafer nach ihrer Gewohnheit zu kiissen und zu lecken, und merkt, dass sie nicht das Gesicht kiisst, wird sie argerlich und geht davon (Toeppen). Wer die Mura von sich abhalten will, lege sich ein mit Menschenkot be- st richenesTuch auf dieBrust, rat en die Tschechen (Groh- mann); oder auch, man esse vor Schlafengehen ange- rauchte Gerichte, am besten angerauchte Milch (Ebt). In diesen Angaben scheint sich der eigentliche Grund zu verraten, warum die Logik des Volksglaubens darauf

1 Ernest Jones, Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, Jahrg. i. S. 566.

2 Ernest Jones, 'Die Empfangnis der Jungfrau Maria durch das Ohr', loc. cit,

8 Cox, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 35.

4 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 314.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 309

verfiel, stark duftende Blumen oder Kummelbrot fiir ein Schutzmittel zu halten/ 1 (The Masurians recommend as a protection against the Nightmare to lie on one's belly. When the Mara comes to kiss or lick the sleeper according to her custom and notices that she is not kiss- ing the face, she gets angry and departs. To keep the Mara away one should lay on one's breast a towel streaked with human faeces, so the Czechs advise; or before going to sleep one may eat highly seasoned dishes, best of all milk with a stench of smoke. We seem to divine in these data the real reason why the logic of popular belief came to the idea that strongly smelling flowers or carraway bread were excellent means of protection/) In an Oldenburg legend the Alp, instead of sticking his tongue into the sleeper's mouth or creeping into it in the form of a snake two common enough habits blows into it. 2 The source of his blowing is seen in another, Hessian belief, according to which 'riihren die Sumpf- ausdiinstungen davon her, dass der Alp fistet' 3 ('the stenches of marshes come from the flatus of the night bogey'). We have remarked above on the association between water and generation, and also called attention to the connection between the words marsh, Welsh march, and German Mahre. It is therefore quite fit- ting that Odin and Poseidon, the Gods of Horses and Water, should also be specially Wind or Storm Gods. The importance of wind for fertility was briefly touched on above, and I suspect that the infantile theory here indicated has played a large part in this connection. The act of passing flatus is so evident with horses that it is not surprising to find how many beliefs there are about their being fertilized by the wind. We need only recall the classical instances of this belief being held in respect of the mares of Boetia, 4 Cappadocia 5 and Lusitania. 6 We may also mention that Aeolus, the West Wind who

Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 342, 343.

Strackerjan. Quoted by Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 42.

Wolf. Quoted by Laistner, op. cit. Bd. i. S. 314.

Virgil, Geovgics, iii. 266-276.

St. Augustine, Civ. Dei. t xxi. 5. 6 Pliny, Hist. Nat. viii. 67.

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impregnated Ocyrhoe, who was also called Hippe (=mare), had another title Hippodates. 1

It is well known how often the sexual act is conceived of as simply a 'finding out' process, and so becomes con- nected with knowledge and wisdom; one has only to re- call the regular Old Testament use of 'to know a woman' to denote sexual intercourse, and the fact that the snake is everywhere a symbol of wisdom and other things (cp. the tree of knowledge in Eden). An instance in connec- tion with horses well illustrates this: 'Nicht selten trifft das Hervorrufen der Quelle durch Rosseshuf mit dem Weissagen durch Rossestritt zusammen. Es ist gewisser- maszen, als beginne der Bronn der Weisheit zu flieszen. Auf dem Kirchhof zu Bergkirchen trafen einmal zwei Briider im feindlichen Kampfe zusammen. Der eine erkannte den andern und rief ihm zu: "Ich bin dein Bruder." Der andere glaubte ihm nicht. Aber sein Pferd traf, als der Zweifelnde zum Kampf ausprengen wollte, den Stein mit dem Hufe; siehe da sprang ein Quell empor. Die Warheit war erwiesen und die gliicklichen Briider bauten zum Andenken Bergkirchen/ 2 ('It is not rare for the evoking of springs by a horse's hoof to be accompanied by predicting through the horse's tread. It is as though knowledge began to flow from the foun- tain. In the churchyard at Bergkirchen two brothers once met in a deadly fight. The one recognized the other and called out to him "I am your brother". The other did not believe him. But as the doubter sprang forward once more into the fight his horse struck the stone with his hoof and, behold, a spring gushed forth. The truth was demonstrated, and in memory of the miracle the brothers built Bergkirchen/) Therefore a form of sexual act that denotes penetration at a distance can also be symbolized as knowing from afar. And in fact we read of Odin the Horse and Wind God that: 'er fahrt in Augenblicken in die fernsten Lander und weiss, was hier geschieht/ 3 ('In a moment he travels in the most distant

1 jahns, op. cit. S. 264-265. 8 Id., op. cit. S. 275-276. 3 Mogk, op. cit. S. 44.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 311

lands and knows what happens there/) This rapid pene- tration at a distance becomes transferred from the idea of space to the allied one of time; hence such gods, and especially horse gods, can read the future. Thus Odin 'besitzt prophetische Gaben und kann die Menschen Vorzeichen und Zukunft lehren'; 'als geheimnisvoll fliisternder und auf- und abrauschender Windgott weis- sagt er, ist runen-, zauber- und sangeskundig/ 1 ('pos- sesses prophetic gifts and can instruct mankind in auguries and in the future'; 'as the secret whispering and rustling Wind God he predicts, has a knowledge of runes, of magic and of song/) He could not only read thoughts, like the clever Hans, but could also solve riddles; in fact, 'der Ratselkundige' was one of his titles. 2

We shall confine our instances of the present topic to horses. The transference of the ideas connected with flatus to the subject of breath and voice is peculiarly easy in the case of the horse, whose neighing is evidently a sexual process and has hardly any other biological significance. Jahns remarks: 3 'Da der Hengst ganz vor- zugsweise dann wihert, wenn er den Trieb zur Begat tung empfindet, Zeugungskraft und Lebensfiille dem Lichte aber ebenso eng verbunden sind, wie Unfruchtbarkeit der Finsternis und dem Tode, so muste auch aus solchen Griinden das mutige Gewiher als gutes Omen gelten. In welcher bedeutungsvollen reichen Mannigfaltigkeit der Volksaberglaube dise Anschauungen weitergebildet, bis in die Neuzeit bewart und zumal um die heilige Zeit der *Z wolf ten gruppirt hat, werden wir ausfiirlich an anderen Stellen besprechen/ ('Since a stallion chiefly neighs when he feels the impulse to copulate, and since procreative capacity and the sense of life are as closely associated with the idea of light as barrenness with that of darkness and death, we have the reason why a lusty neigh counts as a good omen. In what rich and manifold significance the popular belief has elaborated this con-

1 Meyer, op. cit. S. 233. 8 Jahns, op. cit. S. 299. a Id., op. cit. S. 269.

312 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. m

elusion, how it has preserved it into modern times and especially connected it with the holy Twelfth Night, we shall presently show at length/) Though the horse as a whole and individual parts in particular has gener- ally been regarded as connected with good luck, 1 evi- dently on account of his sexual significance, this applies more to his neighing than to any other attribute. 2 The Teutonic races paid the greatest attention to it, divining future events from the different intonations; 3 and both the Persians 4 and the Irish decided the choice of their king from the omen thus obtained. The predicting function of neighing is referred to in numerous myths and folk-lore tales. 5 One instance may be given indicat- ing the sexual significance of the act: 'Madchen reiten wol auf einem Besen(!) bis an die Tiir des Pferdestalls und horchen. Wihert ein Ross, da kommt die Magd bis Johannis in die Ehe, hort sie dagegen die laute Blahung eines Pferdes, so musz sie im kommenden Jahre Kind- taufe geben one einen Mann zu haben/ 6 ('Girls ride on a broomstick to the door of the stable and listen. If a steed neighs it means she will be married before Midsummer Day, but if she hears only the flatus of a horse she will bear a child in the coming year without being married/) It is interesting that Brand derived the word 'witch' from the Dutch witchelen = neighing, on account of the foretelling capacity of both. 7 This is not strictly true, for witch comes from the Anglo-Saxon wicca* which is cognate with Middle Dutch wicker, 'a soothsayer', and Low German wikken, 'to predict' (allied to wissen), but it is possible that the two may ultimately have a com- mon origin.

From neighing it is only a step to speaking. And myth- ology and history are full of accounts of speaking horses,

1 Lawrence, op. cit. ch. xi.

Grimm, op. cit. Bd. iii. S. 442, Nr. 239.

Lawrence, op. cit. p. 73, quoting Tacitus.

Grimm, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 549.

Wuttke, op. cit. S. 219. Jahns, op. cit. S. 423.

jahns, op. cit. S. 295. 7 Brand, op. cit. vol. iii. p. 2. * Skeat, op. cit. p. 719.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 313

which need not here be detailed; 1 speaking is also closely connected with prophesying. According to Jahns, 2 'zunachst war es die wirkliche Stimme des Pferdes, die als weissagerisch gait. 6ffentlich lauschte der Priester dem Orakel der Pferde, die dem Volke als Vertraute und Mitwiszer der Gotter erschienen, warend er selbst nur ihr Diener war/ ('At first it was the actual voice of the horse that was regarded as foretelling. The priest pub- licly listened to the oracle of the horses, for they seemed to the people to be the initiates and confidants of the gods, whereas he himself was only their servant/) Speak- ing is obviously connected with declamation and oratory, the beginning of poetry, therefore the man with best and finest flow of words carried fame. We can now under- stand why one of the descendants of Odin was called Ruprecht (glittering with fame), and why Odin was the god of song and poetry, which he discovered. 'Daher heisst die Poesie die Gabe, der Trank Odins und der Dichter der Mettrager Odins. Denn ein Trunk von dem Dichtermete machte einen gewohnlichen Sterblichen zum Dichter, und dieser Dichtermet befand sich in Odins Bewahrung. Diese Auffassung vom Dichtermet ist relativ Jung: der Lebensmet Odrerir ist zum Dichter- met geworden/ 3 ('Hence poetry is known as the gift, the drink of Odin's, and the poet the mead-bearer of Odin's. For a drink from the poetic mead makes an ordinary mortal into a poet, and this drink was in Odin's keeping. This conception of poetic mead is relatively recent: the life-giving mead Odrerir has become the drink of poets/) This reminds us that it was a horse, Pegasos, who gave Hippocrene to the world on Helikon, the mountain of the Muses.

In connection with the words Mare and Mdrchen it might be added that the idea of bringing news is obviously connected with the ideas both of finding out knowledge and of passage through the air.

1 Cox, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 247, 391. W. Hertz, Der Werwolf, 1862, S. 67, etc. Jhns, op. cit. S. 264.

a Jahns, op. cit. S. 269. 8 Mogk, op. cit. S. 46.

314 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. in

Hermes, often regarded as an equivalent of Odin, was at once the Wind God and the God of messages, and it will be remembered that news was daily brought to Odin by two ravens, 1 birds 2 which Laistner has brought into the circle of the sexual Nightmare beliefs. 3 We may close this section by quoting the following interesting passage from Jahns, 4 which illustrates many of the points brought out above: 'Ebenso spiegelt sich bis heut die Bedeutung des Sonnenrosses in der Sprache. Nicht nur Schimmel zeigt genau denselben Stamm wie Schimmer, auch das Wort Mdhre diirftein lezter Instanz von dem altdeutschen Adjektive mar, d.i. "glanzend", abstammen, eine Herkunft, welche der friiher gegebenen Deutung durch Bewegungsbezeichnungen keineswegs widersprache, da auch "glanzen" ebenso wie z.B. "blizen" und "blinken" auf eine Bewegungserscheinung zuriickfiirt. Jene Etymologie empfilt sich iiberdis durch eine Parallele mit dem Sanskrit. Wie mar hat namlich die Sanskritwurzel har den Sinn von "glanzen". Zwei bekannte Derivata diser Wurzel, hdri und har it, sind aber die gebrauchlichsten Bezeichnungen der Sonnenrosse in den Veden, welche somit genau so gebildet sind wie unser Wort Schimmel. Endlich spricht fur jene Ab- leitung des Wortes Marhe auch noch der Umstand, dasz das gleichklingende deutsche Mare (Mdrchen), das islandische mdrd, d.i. "Loblied", das gothische merjan, d.i. "verkiindigen", ebenso von dem glanzbedeutenden mar zu stammen scheinen, wie z.B. aus der Sanskrit- wurzel ark, d.i. glanzen/' das Wort arkuh, d.h. "Licht," aber auch "Loblied", hervorgegangen ist. Auch das althochdeutsche Wort Hrosa bedeutet sowoldie "Stute" als die "Rumtragerin", die "Fama'Y (The significance of the Sun-Horse is still mirrored in our language. Not only does the word Schimmel ( = white horse) show just the same root as Schimmer (= gleam), but even the word Mdhre ( = mare) must ultimately be derived

1 Mogk, op. cit, S. 49. Wuttke, op. cit. S. 17.

8 For the sexual significance of birds that bring news, etc., see Abraham, op. cit. S. 29, 30.

8 Laistner, op. cit. Bd. ii. Kap. 51. ' * Jahns, op. cit. S. 248-249.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 315

from the Old German adjective mar, i.e. shining. This source in no way contradicts the interpretation we gave earlier in terms of movement, 1 since glanzen ( = to shine) itself, as well as blizen ( to glitter) and blinken ( = to dazzle) go back to the phenomenon of movement. This etymology is supported by a parallel with Sanscrit. Just as mar, so has the Sanscrit root har the sense of "shining". Now two well-known derivatives of this root, hari and harit, are the most usual designa- tions of the Sun steeds in the Vedas, so that these are formed in just the same way as the German word Schimmel. Finally, in favour of this derivation of the word Mdrhe speaks the further circumstance that the similarly sounding German Mare ( = tale), from which comes Marchen ( = fairy-tale) , the Icelandic mdrd ( = song of praise), the Gothic merjan ( =to foretell), all seem to come from the mar ( = shining), just as the word arkuh ( = light, and also song of praise) comes from the San- scrit root ark (=to shine). The Old High German word Hrosa meant "mare" as well as "the bearer of fame"/)

C. CONCLUSIONS

The data just brought forward should enable us to solve what is perhaps the most puzzling riddle in this whole group of mythical beliefs, and one which if solved should illuminate the general question of the connection between the Horse and the Nightmare mythology. I refer to the fact, for which ample evidence has been adduced above, that the two attributes of the horse which primarily appealed to the mythopoeic imagination are its glistening appearance and its capacity for swift movement. The latter is intelligible enough, for the movement of the horse is not only a striking, but also its most useful, attribute. But what is to be made of the other? The glossy appearance of a well-groomed charger is doubtless a pleasing feature, but that this should have been selected as one of the two most important

1 See Part III. p. 251.

3l6 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. m

attributes of the horse, the one that mainly enabled it to be identified with the sun itself, can hardly be called very comprehensible.

Let us first consider the movement attribute more closely. Although, as was remarked, the actual fact of movement is important enough in itself, it is easy to show that the idea has been extensively sexualized and that the part it plays in mythology is due to the way it has been exploited in this sense. It is not unnatural that swift movement is in a general way to be equated with the idea of potency; indeed a good part of the ambitions of modern civilization illustrates this truth. But psycho-analysis is able to show the specific manner in which this association is formed. As I have pointed out earlier in a clinical connection, 1 the potency in question is a pregenital one; it is based on a very early association between the ideas of movement and of ex- crementitial performances, one easily illustrated by the fact that movement" and motion" are even in adult years still the commonest phrases used to designate the act of defecation. This association, of which one gets ample proof in the course of psycho-analytical work, is perhaps most readily demonstrated in cases where the patient is one of those motorists that may be called speed-maniacs, i.e. where the act of fast driving is not so much a pleasure as an indispensable necessity the thwarting of which is unbearable.

I have the impression that, although this association is certainly forged with all the three acts of excretion, it is the urinary one that contributes the most charac- teristic elements. If we study the ideas surrounding the procreative powers of the horse, which we have seen to be the central source of the mythological interest in the animal, we note at once that they especially cluster around the association between Horse and Water, and this in spite of the fact that horse-dung so far surpasses its urine in fertility value as to be still a serious rival to the most elaborate form of artificial chemical fertilizers

1 Part II. p. 208.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 317

of soil. I am referring here not simply to the obvious features of the erotic centaurs and kelpies, but especially to the fact that the creation of growth, vegetation, etc., is plainly to be equated to the striking of springs; from the horse, particularly from his hoof, spurts forth am- brosial fluid with these magical powers. Now water is everywhere connected not only with fertility, but also with the idea of movement; that the Latin aqua and equus are both derived from the same Sanscrit root meaning movement is highly characteristic of this group of associations. The three movements of which water is capable are identified with three aspects of the sexual act: (i) undulation with riding and therefore with the movements of coitus, (2) spurting or issuing forth with the emission of semen, and (3) flowing with the pre- seminal, i.e. infantile, act of urination.

This dissection of the components of the sexual act may be used as a scheme for purposes of orientation in the mass of data I have presented above. First let us distinguish between the to-and-fro movements of coitus and the final act of emission. The former belong much more to the adult, genital level of development, and they are essentially represented in the horse mythology as has been expounded above at length by the act of riding, of course a bisexual act. The emission belongs to both the adult and the childhood stage of development, with the characteristic difference that in the former it is a spurting act (semen) and in the latter much more a flowing act (urine). Movement in general, and riding in particular, thus represent the sexual conception of the horse in mythology, the former more on the infantile, the latter on the adult plane. The former is mainly derived from interest in the horse's very visible and notable excretory performances, perhaps the urinary one most of all. To sum up these conclusions I would say that what attracted the unconscious, and therefore the mythopceic, imagination in the idea of the horse was the pleasure that could be obtained from riding him, and the interest in his procreative powers, especially as

3l8 THE MARE AND THE MARA FT. m

exemplified in infantile terms by his remarkable ex- cretory performances which became identified with the general idea of movement.

Let us now return to the other, more enigmatic attribute, that of shining. The etymological data already quoted 1 above suggest an equivalency between the ideas of shining and moving, dissimilar as these are in our consciousness, and in my opinion this is a clue that pro- vides an answer to the riddle. The solution I would propound is that the curiously excessive interest in the supposed shine or gleam of the horse is derived from the same source as that in movement, i.e. from interest in the horse's reproductive-excremental performances, par- ticularly that of urination. It is certainly striking that the whitish-yellow colour of horse's urine is paralleled by the colour of the symbolic objects to which the attribute of shining is ascribed: the milk-white magic steed, the golden mane, and the pale yellow rays of the sun, whose equivalency to flowing fire (in the uncon- scious: urine) was pointed out above. The equivalency of shining and moving is especially clear in the Horse- Sun group of beliefs; 'golden movement' sums up the essence of the conception. Lightning itself, the sexual symbolism of which Abraham has demonstrated, was always regarded mythologically as the rapid 'movement' of the gods. 2 What I regard as a decisively confirmatory piece of evidence in favour of the conclusion just reached is the fact that the same verb in German strahlen denotes both the staling of a horse and the process of shining; incidentally, the substantive Strahl also has the meaning of 'arrow', 'pike', 'lightning', 'glistening', 'glittering', 'radiating', 'gleaming', etc.; thus being an essentially masculine word. It is hardly possible that this could be so if there were not some instinctive, though unconscious, tendency in the popular mind to forge an association between the two ideas. 3 Both the

1 Part III. pp. 314, 315. * jahns, op. cit, S. 281!

8 It is curious how the word Strahl adheres to ideas connected with horses. Strahlkrankheiten means 'diseases of the horse's hoof, the word Strahl being applied to the radiating lines of the hoof.

CH. in THE HORSE AND INFANTILE SEXUALITY 319

glittering and the swift horse, therefore, fundamentally signify in mythology the potent urinating horse.

By pursuing the various ideas in horse mythology we have been able to establish the closest parallelism be- tween them and those belonging to the night-fiend. We have seen in the extraordinarily rich sexual sym- bolism of the horse not only that experiences derived from anxiety dreams transformation of human into animal, flight by night, etc. run through the whole of horse mythology, but that this mythology is connected point by point with the corresponding myths of the night-fiend. In the terror of the night attack, whether of fiend as such or fiend in equine guise, we find exten- sive evidence of the dread of castration and of death, the plainest indication of the sensations of coitus and emission, and the characteristic propensity to sex inver- sion. All the beliefs about the Nightmare, in whatever guise, proceed from the idea of a sexual assault which is both wished for and dreaded. We have seen, in short, that the expression Nightmare signifies something other than a mistake in spelling.

CHAPTER IV

THE HORSE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS

IN Part II. we investigated the relations between the Nightmare and certain mediaeval superstitions. In the present Part we have investigated those between it and the mythology of the Horse. If our reasoning is sound it should be possible to point out connections along the third line of the triangle, i.e. between the mythological beliefs about the Horse and those belong- ing to the superstitions considered in the preceding Part.

A. INCUBUS AND SUCCUBUS

The Incubus and Succubus represent simply one variety of night-fiend one modified by religious in- fluences. In essence they are the familiar Alp and Mara. To detail the resemblances between the beliefs about them and those of the Night Horse, therefore, would be merely to repeat the preceding chapters. The same features recur throughout both sets of beliefs: the agonizing terror, ultimately of castration and death, accompanied by the sensation of something pressing (or trampling) on the breast, the erotic ideas based on repressed incest wishes, the oscillation between the divine and the demonic; even the feature so character- istic of the Horse myths, the close association with water, is found with both, for Grimm 1 has pointed out the habitual way in which night-fiends, i.e. Incubi, frequent marshes and other watery loci; the name of the river Marne, for instance, is cognate with the Norwegian morn, one of the varieties of the mara words. 2

Perhaps the most interesting connection between the two is the following set of Scandinavian customs and beliefs. One of the recognized ways of guarding against

1 J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 1835, Bd. ii. S. 849, 850.

• Wolf von Unwerth, 'Eine isiandische Mahrensage', W drier und Sachen,

hulturhistorische Zeitschrift fur Sprach- und Sachforschung, 1910, Bd. ii. S. 182.

320

CH.IV THE HORSE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS 321

the mar a, in Mecklenburg, Tirol and elsewhere, was to put a horse's skull on the roof of the house or if horses were in danger of being 'ridden' by her in the manger. 1 Now in Jutland it is reported that when this was not effective a horse was buried alive to achieve the pur- pose, 2 and there is little doubt that this must be a relic of an old sacrificial custom. In olden times, therefore, horses were probably sacrificed both to the Horse-God 3 and to the female Night-Fiend, two beings the close con- nection between whom we have amply established. It is not long since a horse's penis used to be preserved by Norwegian peasants as a specially treasured heirloom, 4 and this also must belong to the same cult. An old Ice- landic legend relates how a particularly terrible mara, when exorcised by a bishop, turned into a horse's bone. 5 It is thus clear that originally the equation warn = mare was taken literally, so that to sacrifice a horse was to kill the fiend herself and at the same time to propitiate her along the typical totemistic lines.

The belief that the Mara was wont to change herself into a mare, usually a white one, when visiting men at night, i.e. the belief that the Nightmare was a mare, is to be found in various parts of Europe. 6

B. THE VAMPIRE AND WEREWOLF

In the respective chapters on these beliefs we expati- ated on the extensive interchangeability of the two, so that they may be considered here together. With them we have the motif of transformation into animal that is so prominent a feature of Horse mythology, but which is by definition excluded from the Incubus group. That of sucking, the hall-mark of the Vampire, is in the nature of things absent from the Horse group of beliefs and the

1 J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 46 Ausgabe, 1876, S. 550, 1041.

2 E. T. Kristensen, Danske Sagn, 1892, vol. ii. pp. 105, 251. a See Part III. p. 262.

4 A. Heusler, 'Die Geschichte vom Volsi, eine altnordische Bekehrungsanek- dote', Zeitschrift des Vereins fur Volkskunde, 1903, S. 24, 28.

5 Unwerth, op. cit. S. 163.

Cp., for instance, F. S. Krauss, Slavische Volkforschungen, 1908, S. 148.

X

322 THE MARE AND THE MARA FT. in

oral-sadistic one of biting, which is distinctive of the Werewolf, plays a less important part though it does occur than might perhaps have been expected; it is the horse's hoof, not his teeth, that is the feared weapon. Equally prominent with all these, however, is the part played by the idea of death. We have laid such stress on this in the respective chapters that we need here only bring to mind the psychopompic function of the ghostly Werewolf and the Hell horse in relation to the close con- nection between the Werewolf belief and the Wild Hunt more characteristic of the Horse. 1 The same is true of the Night-flight theme, on the importance of which in all Nightmare beliefs we have repeatedly laid stress. Then the beliefs enumerated earlier 2 which connect the Were- wolf with the wind and sun are throughout parallel to those of the Horse and Wind- or Sun-God.

Apart, however, from the fundamental underlying themes of incest and terror, it is noteworthy how the beliefs in question are connected even in minor super- ficial details. Thus, for example, the evil number seven partly connected with the fear of precocious birth, i.e. in the seventh month 3 keeps recurring in the various beliefs and stories. The mythical horse of the Hun- garians, Tatos, was born in the following curious way. 4 The hero carried a five-cornered black egg under his arm for seven summers and seven winters; on the appro- priate Ash Wednesday the steed came to the world, without a chin but with teeth. It will perhaps be remem- bered that a child born with teeth is prone to become a Werewolf.

If a Kelpie, i.e. a Scotch centaur, have intercourse with a woman, the seventh child will belong to the water, 6 presumably becoming a Kelpie himself. We have learnt earlier that a seventh child is likely to become a Nightmare an Alp if male, a Mara if female a Vam- pire or a Werewolf.

1 See Part II. p. 146. 2 Part II. p. 134. 3 Eight months' children are rare. 4 A. de Gubernatis, Die Thieve in der indogermanische Mythologie, 1874, S. 222.

6 A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, 1900, S. 50.

CH.IV THE HORSE AND MEDIEVAL SUPERSTITIONS 323

If a woman creeps through a horse-collar so as to secure an easy childbirth, the baby will be a Mara. 1 If for the same purpose she creeps through a mare's caul, her child will be if male a Werewolf, if female a Mara. 2 If a man creep through a girdle of skin he will become a Werewolf. 3

C. THE DEVIL

Being male, the Deyil is naturally the equivalent of the Horse God rather than of the Night Mare, and in the chapter concerned with him I have dealt fully with the themes of sexuality, incest and castration that we have just seen to underlie the beliefs about the Horse God. Not only so, however, for the mediaeval Devil was a direct descendant of the Teutonic Horse God, Odin, and inherited a number of his personal characteristics. Per- haps the best known of these was his horse's hoof, the presence of which betrayed him on so many occasions. In numerous legends and sagas he appears in actual horse guise. 4 Usually this is for the purpose of conveying someone, as, for instance, the famous Dietrich, to hell. Sometimes a troop of black horses carried off the souls of the damned to hell, 5 an idea which is an almost direct representative of the psychopompic Furious Host of Odin. An English demon known as Grant, doubtless a descendant of the Teutonic Grendel, used to appear in the form of a foal. 8

The Teutonic Wunschross, the magic steed who en- abled one to fulfil all one's wishes, also contributed a good deal to the mediaeval conception of the devil. This of course was in the form of temptation; Jahns 7 gives numerous examples of this, including stories of Charle- magne and Heinrich der Loewe. In a Norman legend there is a neat combination of this theme and the pre- ceding one: a black horse appeared to a priest, on New

1 Part III. p. 249. 2 B. Thorpe, Northern Mythology, 1851, vol. ii. p. 169. 8 Part II. p. 139. 4 Grimm, op. cit. Bd. ii. S. 831.

• Ibid. Ibid.

7 M. Jahns, Ross und Reiter in Leben und Sprache, Glauben und Geschichte der Deutschen, 1872, Bd. i. S. 355.

324 THE MARE AND THE MARA FT. m

Year's Day, 1091, and by offering him temptations induced him to mount on his back, whereupon he sprang with him straight to hell. 1

In these stories we note again the curious interchange- ability of horse and rider. Often the Devil is a horse, often he simply rides on a horse. The women he used to visit during sleep complained that they had been 'rid- ing', or else 'ridden on', the whole night long. In France the concubines of priests turned into mares after they died and were called 'les juments au diable'. 2

The last trace of the horse identification was the foot, which still remains as an attribute of the Devil. Numer- ous legends end by triumphantly asserting 'And there in the rock is the mark of the Devil's hoof left to this day'. Here again tfre same interchangeability is in play, for sometimes the mark is left by the Devil himself, some- times by his charger.

D. WITCH

Here also I need not recapitulate the fundamental themes common to the two sets of beliefs, for they are dealt with at length in the respective chapters, and will confine myself here to a few more external considera- tions. To begin with is the striking fact that sexual dreams, with emission, used to be referred to in English both as 'mare-riding' and as 'witch-riding', where the equivalency of Witch and Mara is expressed directly. It is implied also in some of the tests for Witches, which at the same time illustrate the transformation theme (human into animal). Thus when a Witch changes her- self into a mare, 3 and the mare is shod, the woman is found to have horseshoes on her hands and feet. 4 Again a Witch can be detected by burning the shoes of any horse she has bewitched, for this causes her great pain

1 Gubernatis, op. cit. S. 226.

8 Part III. p. 250.

• A belief still cherished in Baltic countries, notably Mecklenburg (jahns,

op. cit. Bd. i. S. 413).

4 E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebrduche aus Schwaben, 1852, S. 191.

CH. iv THE HORSE AND MEDIAEVAL SUPERSTITIONS 325

in the feet. 1 Here the Witch is identified with her victim (on whom she has ' ridden'), and one is reminded of the following interesting totemistic identification in the same context.

In ancient European times, particularly among the Teutonic races, it was customary to sacrifice horses, the sacred animals, to the gods, and hand in hand with this went, as is usual in such rites, the taboo of eating horse- flesh one which lingers in rationalized forms to this day. Now one of the horrible things of which Witches were accused was the eating of horse-flesh, thus violating this taboo. Boguet, 2 for example, in describing 'qu'il y avait une grande chaudiere sur le feu, dans laquelle chacun alloit prendre de la chair 1 , expressly adds, 'que la chair n'est autre que de cheval'. If one thinks of the extensive part played by horses in the same ceremonies, the pre- liminary rides (men being often converted into horses for the purpose), the making music on horses 1 heads, the appearance of the Devil in the form of a horse (often carrying the Witch thus), mounted on one, or at least with a horse's foot, the custom of drinking out of horse's hooves (hence harking back to the ancient Aryan source of ambrosia), one must conclude that we have to do here with relics of pagan beliefs of great antiquity in which there is a close association between horses and super- natural beings with alarming nocturnal activities.

One need not again insist on the extensive part played by the idea of riding in the whole Witch superstition, one derived exclusively from experiences with horses. Even the favourite day for the Witches' Sabbath, May i, was a day sacred to the Horse God, Odin, and one when the nocturnal procession of his army took place. In fact, the ghostly troops of Witches riding and hurtling through the air are plainly descendants, though with partly in- verted sex, of the old Wild Hunt and Furious Host.

1 J. G. Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland, 1835, pp, 323-324. 1 Henri Boguet, Discours des sorciers, 1603, pp. 82, 83.

CHAPTER V

THE MR ROOT

T

"^ HE mythological data brought forward in the pre- ceding chapters have shown the close parallelism between beliefs about the Horse and those about the Night Fiend, and psycho-analysis has enabled us to penetrate to the common origins of both in the re- pressed infantile sexuality that is the ultimate source of Nightmare experiences. In this chapter I propose to bring forward an extract of the extensive etymological data bearing on the two words 'mare' and 'mara', the psychological connections of which have been shown to be astonishingly close, and to attempt to show that psycho- analysis can also make contributions which may assist ety- mologists in the solution of some of their own problems. The problem I select to illustrate this thesis is as follows. The word ' mare ' is certainly the Anglo-Saxon mere, feminine of mearh = horse. In Old High German the corresponding words were respectively meriha or merha, and marah, mark or marcha. The oldest sources of this word actually known are the Teutonic marhja (feminine of mar ha) and the Celtic marka. The word was thus mar followed by either an aspirated or a guttural palatal, which, incidentally, is preserved in the corresponding modern word only in the valley of the upper Adige. Etymologists have, in accordance with known laws, to assume an origin in an Old Teutonic and general European mark-as. 1 This root, however, has not been demonstrated in these languages nor in the still earlier Indo-Germanic, and its further connections are therefore a matter for conjecture only. We have mentioned earlier two or three suppositions of Jahns on this point, though apparently etymologists have not

1 See, for instance, W. W. Skeat, Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 1910.

326

PT. HI CH. V

THE MR ROOT 327

taken them very seriously. I hope to give reason for thinking that, with certain modifications, his supposi- tions have a certain basis of truth, and also to show that psycho-analysis can help to solve problems of this order.

Before attempting this, however, I shall have to establish a basis on what appears to be quite different ground, and I propose to do so by turning attention to the etymology of the other word that interests us here, mara, the night-fiend who is responsible for the second half of 'Nightmare'. This word can be traced to an ex- tremely ancient Old Teutonic source, and there is no doubt about its being derived from a still older one. The primitive language which philologists have recon- structed under the name of Indo-Germanic (or, better, Indo-European) contains a large number of allied words the ultimate source of which is a primordial MR root. The study of the genealogical trees proceeding from this root is a most fascinating one, 1 but I shall here consider only a small extract which is cognate to our present theme.

The consonantal sound M was variously combined with five others, all linguo-palatal sounds, D y R,L, K, G, so as to create nine distinct roots. From these a very large number of individual words were formed, but we are con- cerned here only with the roots themselves; the accom- panying diagram will make it easier to grasp the various combinations.

K.G.

The primordial combination of them was in all pro- bability MR, usually as MAR, occasionally as MER.

1 The works most useful in this study are: H. Betchtold-Staubli, Hand- worterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 1927. P. Ehrenreich, Die allgemeine Mythologie und ihre ethnologischen Grundlagen, 1910. A. Pick, Vergleichendes Worterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen, 30. Aufl., 1874. Wolfgang Golther, H andbuch der germanischen Mythologie, 1895. J. Grimm, Etymologisches W drier - buch, 1854-1911. Merker, Reallexicon. A. Schrader, Reallexicpn der indogerman- ischen Altertumskunde, 1901. Skeat, op. cit. A. Walde, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch , 1910.

328 THE MARE AND THE MARA *x. m

This had three chief sets of meanings, here given in order of their antiquity: the first two are to be traced to the Indo-European, the third to the European Division only.

(1) A. To rub on, bray, gall, grind, crush, in- jure; B. to wear away, exhaust, consume; C. to weaken, soften, soak (e.g. to dip bread in a liquid).

From A come the following words. The 'mare' of Nightmare. This, which literally means 'a crusher', is cognate with the Anglo-Saxon verb merran (Old High German marrjari), to obstruct, impede, vex, and hence to dissipate, exhaust, waste; from it comes also 'to mar'. Its Middle Dutch equivalent man en signifies both to hinder, to injure and to bind, to fasten (whence our words 'to moor' and 'marline'), the latter meaning being also that of the Indo-Ger- manic root Mu. Anyone who has had to treat cases of Nightmare or what is much the same thing dread of nocturnal emissions will agree that the con- notations just mentioned are peculiarly appropriate. In Old Teutonic both the male and female night-fiend were designated by the word maran. Further, the words 'mortar' (what is ground or the object in which it is ground), the Greek ^dpvap.ai, to fight (literally 'to rub against'), and the Latin martulus (Teutonic marta, a hammer), whence the cognomen Charles Martel, all come from this MAR (i) A. root.

From B come, through the Greek, 'amaurotic' (blind) from marva=soit, and 'moron', of feeble intelligence (mar a = stupid).

From C come papal, to weaken, to wear out; the Anglo-Saxon mearu, tender, pliable (also from mar* va =soft); and the Latin mereo, I earn (literally, get a share), whence merenda and the German dialect Mahrte (Old High German meriod), both meaning an afternoon meal, and our 'merit', 'meritorious', 'meretricious' (harlot -like), etc.

(2) To die, to be ruined. Here we get through Ger-

CH. V

THE MR ROOT 32Q

manic the word 'murder'; through Latin 'mortal', 'mortify', etc.; through Greek 'ambrosia' (= im- mortal); and the Welsh maru, dead.

An interesting group here originates in the early designation particularly by peoples without ex- perience of tides of all water other than running water as 'dead'. Hence the Gothic marei, sea or lake (the Germans still employ one word, See, for both), Sanscrit mwa, ocean, Old Teutonic mari, sea, Latin mare, Welsh mor, and the modern words 'mere', 'marsh' ( = mere-ish), 'moor', 'marine', 'maritime', etc.

(3) To gleam, mar a, pure; Latin merus, clear, whence 'mere-ly'.

The meaning seems to have diverged in the one direction via the Let to-Slavonian mar a, connoting 'news' (whence the German Mdrchen = fairy-tale), and in another towards such ideas as 'celebrated', whence the title 'Waldemar', the town 'Weimar', etc. Perhaps the difference is simply that between 'known' and 'well known', both of which can for instance, in the German bekannt be designated by one word. The German mar, dear (like Mdr-chen, from the Middle High German maere), presumably comes from the closeness of the ideas of familiarity and loveable- ness.

MR was readily replaced by ML, more often as MEL, less often as MAL. The inter-changeability of R and L is very familiar to philologists; examples in the present context are: marva, malva, soft; mard-, maid-, to become soft; marg, malg, to stroke. An amusing ex- ample of the reverse process is furnished by the word 'marmalade'; the first part of this conies from mar via med and Latin met, the word itself signifying 'honey- apple' or quince, but the Portuguese, who first made the concoction (from quinces), changed it back again from mal to mar. One surmises that the change to L denotes a certain softening of the ideas thus conveyed, such as a change from 'grind' to 'pound', etc., but even though

33O THE MARE AND THE MARA *T. in

this conclusion may be generally correct there are cer- tainly exceptions to it. The words derived from this root may be roughly grouped according to the predominant meaning.

(1) To pound: 'mallet', (Pall) 'Mall' (Latin malleus).

(2) To grind: cp. Old Irish molim, I grind. 'Mould' (=*soil, not 'to mould'), 'mole', 'meal', 'millet', 'muller' (stone used for grinding powder). 'Mill', 'molar', from Latin.

(3) To dissolve: 'malt', 'melt', 'milt', Old Norse melta, to digest.

(4) To soften: 'mild', 'mauve' (the colour of mallow), 'mallow', 'mal-achite' 'mulch' (wet straw). Lithuanian melas, dear. Russian miliui, kind. 'Mildew', 'melli- fluous', 'molasses', from Latin mel (= honey) cp. Teutonic melitha and Old Irish mil = honey.

(5) (As mal.) To besmear, to blacken: 'melanotic' (also Christian name 'Melanie') from the Greek. 'Malice', 'malign', etc., from the Latin mains, evil. Cornish malan, the devil.

The combination with D appears also to exercise a certain softening influence. MAD (Sanscrit madliri), meant sweet or loveable, and from it (via medhu, honey) comes our honey-drink 'mead'. MELD corre- spondingly means 'to soften', 'to dissolve'. 'Mild', from ^/mel, may have been influenced by it, and we have 'mollify', 'mollusc', 'to moil', via the Latin mollis, soft. MARD, on the other hand, though it also meant to soften, had the harsher connotations of 'to grind/ 'to pound', 'to bite', 'to weary of '. 'Mordant', 'mordacity', and 'morsel', from the Latin mordere, 'to bite'. This root was also intensified by an initial s, which the Latin lost. Incidentally, the root mar was similarly intensified, e.g. Sanscrit smr = remember, long for; the initial 5 has been lost in our 'mourn' and 'martyr' derived from it, but retained in 'smart', in the German Schmerz pain, and in the Kashube Zmora * mara, night-hag. M ard

CH. V

THE MR ROOT 331

is almost certainly an earlier root than Meld- y which was probably formed from it by modification.

The fundamental root was also extended by adding one of the posterior linguo-palatals, K or G. MAK meant 'to pound', and via the Latin we have from it the word 'to macerate'. MARK proved to have a specially fruitful growth. It has three fairly well defined sets of meanings.

(1) To injure. 'Marcescent' from the Latin mar- cere, to wither.

(2) To grasp: then to stroke, to beat, to punish. From this we get diverse words as 'mulct' (cp. Lat. mulcere, 'to stroke'; mulcare, 'to punish by beating'), 'morphia', 'morphology', 'merchant', 'market', 'mer- cenary', and the French merci, English 'mercy'.

(3) To stroke, to soften, to soak. Cognate with the Gothic marka, border, we get 'margin', 'mark', (Welsh) 'marches' and the 'Merse' division of Berwick- shire. The 'softer' meaning changed the form of the root to malg, which we shall consider presently. The root MARG y or merg, closely allied to this group, signified to rub or stroke, and doubtless influenced the form of some of its derivatives, e.g. 'margin'.

In accord with a suggestion proffered earlier we find that the rootMELG, 'to stroke', has blander connotations than those of MARK or MARG. From it are derived, by very different routes, 'milk' and 'emulsion'.

This condensed extract will be enough to indicate how extraordinarily prolific the MR root has proved to be, a feature which in itself, as Sperber 1 has pointed out, is highly characteristic of roots having originally a sexual signification. In the present instance it would not seem too venturesome to divine what this must have been. If one reviews the various groups of meanings mentioned above it becomes fairly plain that the original meaning must have referred to two ideas, that of some act and

1 H. Sperber, 't)ber den Einfluss sexueller Momente auf Entstehung und Entwicklung der Sprache', Imago, 1912, Bd. i. S. 405-453.

332 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. in

that of the consequence of it. (i) The act was primarily to rub on, up or against, and this then diverged into a more and a less sadistic group. The former may be described by the words to pound, grind, crush, injure, bite, beat, gall, oppress; the latter by the words to/ bind together, grasp, stroke. (2) The consequence of the act is indicated by such words sometimes active, sometimes passive as to die, ruin, exhaust, weaken, make tender or pliant, soften, smear, dissolve, dissipate, consume. It would be fair to take as representative of these two ideas the words to rub hard and to be softened respec- tively, which is near to what Fick 1 considers to be the original meaning of the whole root, viz., to rub on, to exhaust, to wear oneself out. We have here an un- mistakable allusion to the act of masturbation, one the psychological significance of which is throughout identi- cal with that of the Nightmare experience: incest guilt, nocturnal experiences, sadism, dread of castration or death, and so on.

This conclusion would appear to be so irrefragable that one is tempted to inquire further into the very con- stituents of the roots in question. Very little work has been done on the psychological significance of individual sounds. The best-known point to be established is the sucking and maternal associations of the consonantal sound M. This is the least variable basis of what we may call the MR roots, for the only circumstance in which it is replaced by another labial, J5, is in the reversal of R and its vowel so irksome to philologists. I may cite two examples in the present context, one being the transfor- mation of the Indo-Germanic mar, 'to die', into the Greek /3poro9, a mortal (the earlier popros being still extant in dialect form), and that of the Indo-Germanic mardu, soft, into the Greek fipaSfa, slow, Latin bardus, stupid.

In the set of roots we have been considering the sound M then allies itself to one or another of the linguo- palatals R, L, D, K, G. Of these the most important is

i Op. cit. Bd. iii. S. 716.

CH. v THE MR ROOT 333

probably R, for on its presence or absence would appear to depend whether the signification arising belongs re- spectively to the more or to the less sadistic groups men- tioned above. That a psychological problem lies here has been perceived by a recent philologist: 1 'Was zunachst den Anlaut betrifft, so ware es interessant und wie e$ scheint, auch bedeutungsvoll, das Verhalten der Sprachen in Bezug auf den Liquida-Anlaut zu untersuchen. Eine grosse Anzahl von Sprachen konnen namlich entweder kein r oder kein /, oder keines von beiden im Anlaut halt en. . . . Jedoch scheint es fast sicher zu sein, dass derlei Beschrankungen des Anlautes nicht primarer, sondern sekundarer Natur sind, dass die Sprachen der alteren Kulturkreise sowohl r als / im Anlaut an- standslos gebrauchen.' ('As for the initial sound it would be interesting, and apparently also very important, to examine the behaviour of languages in respect of the liquid initial sounds. For a considerable number of languages are not able to use either r or /, or neither, as an initial sound. . . . Nevertheless it seems almost certain that such restrictions are of a secondary, not a primary, nature, and that the older languages un- reservedly employed both r and / as an initial sound/)

One of the Vedic strophes 2 designed to facilitate the flow of speech when recited has as its theme the ejacu- latory and fertilizing powers of Indra's twin steeds. The letter r appears in every word of the strophe, which largely consists of a play on the words varsh and vrish, signifying both 'to ejaculate' and 'to fertilize'. In Piedmont there exists, or did exist until lately, a drawing-room game at weddings in which each guest had to describe the gift he intended to make the bride; but in doing so he had to avoid all words containing the letter r, otherwise he paid a forfeit. 3 In other words,

1 P. W. Schmidt, Die Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde, 1912, S. 289.

8 Rigveda, v. 36, 5.

8 A. De Gubernatis, Die Thiere in der indogermanische Mythologie, 1874, S. 273.

334 THE MARE AND THE MARA PT. m

the r-sound connoted something which a guest did not give or do to a bride.

The two instances just quoted are broad hints of how the popular mind unconsciously conceives of the r- sound in a sexual sense, and this would seem to be borne out by the non-European meaning of the root ar fire and Ra = God. I would suggest, however, that the con- siderations adduced above, among others, indicate a still more specific original signification of the r-sound, namely, a sadistic one and particularly an oral-sadistic one. [Some support for this suggestion is afforded by JespersenV observation that the sound is connected with the rougher side of maleness, and that it becomes softened when submitted to the refining influence of femininity. He writes: There is one change character- istic of many languages in which it seems as if women have played an important part even if they are not solely responsible for it: I refer to the weakening of the old fully trilled tongue-point r. I have elsewhere (Fone- tik, p. 417 ff.) tried to show that this weakening, which results in various sounds and sometimes in a complete omission of the sound in some positions, is in the main a consequence of, or at any rate favoured by, a change in social life: the old loud trilled point sound is natural and justified when life is chiefly carried on out-of-doors, but indoor life prefers, on the whole, less noisy speech habits, and the more refined this domestic life is, the more all kinds of noises and even speech sounds will be toned down. One of the results is that this original r-sound, the rubadub in the orchestra of language, is no longer allowed to bombard the ears, but is softened down in various ways, as we see chiefly in the great cities and among the educated classes, while the rustic population in many countries keeps up the old sound with much greater conservatism. Now we find that women are not unfrequently mentioned in connection with this reduc- tion of the trilled r\ thus in the sixteenth century in France there was a tendency to leave off the trilling and

1 O. Jespersen, Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin, 1922, p. 244.

CH.V THE MR ROOT 335

even to go further than to the present English untrilled point r by pronouncing z instead, but some of the old grammarians mention this pronunciation as character- istic of women and a few men who imitate women (Erasmus/ 'mulierculae Parisinae"; Sylvius/ 'mulierculae . . . Parrhisinae, et earum modo quidam parum viri"; PiUot, "Parisinae mulierculae . . . adeodelicatulaesunt, ut pro pere dicant pese"). In the ordinary language there are a few remnants of this tendency; thus, when by the side of the original chaire we now have also the form chaise, and it is worthy of note that the latter form is reserved for the everyday signification (Engl. chair, seat) as belonging more naturally to the speech of women, while chair e has the more special signification of "pul- pit, professorial chair". Now the same tendency to substitute z or after a voiceless sound s for r is found in our own days among the ladies of Christiania, who will say gzuelig for gruelig andfsygtelig iorfrygtelig (Brekke, Bidrag til dansknorskens lydloere, 1881, p. 17; I have often heard the sound myself). And even in far-off Siberia we find that the Chuckchi women will say nidzak or nizak for the male nirak "two", zerka for rerka "walrus", etc/

There is almost within our own experience a set of considerations in English history which strongly con- firms Jespersen's argument about woman's influence on the r-sound. As has been well expounded recently by Wingfield-Stratford, 1 the outstanding cultural feature of the mid-nineteenth century was the refining influence that women, among whom the young Queen played a not inconsiderable part, exerted on the Englishman whose coarseness and brutality had been a by-word in Western Europe in the immediately preceding genera- tions. This influence often assumed forms that to us appear grotesque, and one of these. concerns the present theme. Some of us are old enough to recall traces of a dying fashion in speech which was admirably repre- sented on the stage in The Barretts of Wimpole Street.

1 E. Wingfield-Stratford, The Victorian Tragedy, 1930.

THE MARE AND THE MARA *x. m

I refer to the taboo that over-refined people put on the r-sound, which had to be replaced by w. 1 Those who witnessed that play will have no doubt about the ultra-feminine, and indeed effeminate, nature of this taboo, and those who were not so fortunate may be con- vinced by the following passage from the preface to J. M. Barrie's Dear Brutus: 2 'There remains Lady Caro- line Laney of the disdainful poise, lately from the enor- mously select school where they are taught to pronounce their r's as w's\ nothing else seems to be taught, but for matrimonial success nothing else is necessary. Every woman who pronounces r as w will find a mate; it appeals to all that is chivalrous in man/]

If we inquire further into the physiological associa- tions of the sound in question, it is not hard to see that they are characteristically those of anger and fear. Trill- ing was in all probability originally derived from the rumble of a growl, and one feels instinctively the onoma- topoeic appropriateness of the Teutonic marren, to growl like a dog, and the German murren, to grumble. Jespersen 3 remarks about palatal sounds, 'it is strange that among an infant's sounds one can often detect sounds for instance, k y g, h, and uvular r which the child will find difficulty in producing afterwards when they occur in real words, or which may be unknown to the language which it will some day speak', and one may very well ascribe this phenomenon to the influence of early repression. On the other hand, the snoring and choking rumbles so characteristic of deep sleep dis- turbed by anxiety dreams both in childhood and in adult life, and of Nightmare experiences in particular, origin- ate equally in anger (repressed sadism) and in fear.

• * * # #

After this excursion into the ultimate source of the linguistic expressions for the experience of Nightmare, we may return to the question raised at the beginning of

1 w is naturally the easiest substitute for r, employed, for instance, by children and by those adults usually women who never achieve a mastery of the harder sound.

1 Uniform edition, p. 7. 3 Jespersen, op. cit. p. 106.

CH. v THE MR ROOT 337

this chapter, namely, the etymology of the other 'mare'. The masculine form of this in Old Teutonic was marha, in Keltic marka, in Old High German mark, marcha. The feminine was in Old Teutonic marhja, in Old High German merhd, the subsequent vowel change to Modern German mdrhe and English 'mare' presumably indicating the feminine gender. A synonym of the mar root discussed above was in Old Teutonic marja, and the question is whether the word 'mare' ultimately be- longs to the Mar group or to a separate and entirely unknown root.

The word cannot actually be traced further back than what I have just stated. There is, however, a variety of ways in which philologists obtain help in these difficult problems. Their knowledge of the laws relating to sound change such as, for example, the well-known laws of Grimm on the shif tings that have taken place between English and German enables them to infer what form a given word must have taken in another language, even when there is no documentary proof of this. Often, again, comparison with allied or intermedi- ate languages will furnish data of value. An example of this may be quoted from the present context: the fact that the Lithuanian melzu means both 'to stroke' and 'to milk' shows the identity of the Old Teutonic malg, 'to milk', with the Indo-Germanic marg, 'to stroke'. Now the general probability is certainly in favour of the view that the 'mare' word is in some way related to the Mar group, i.e. that the Old Teutonic marhja and marja could not be entirely unconnected; the addition of an aspirate, palatal or guttural, to the mar stem is so fre- quent or manifold that one is very inclined to regard the marcha (male horse) as one more example of it.

Can psycho-analytical considerations throw any further light on this obscure problem: for instance, by suggesting the unknown point at which the horse word may have broken off from the main group? Jahns 1

1 M. Jhns, Ross und Reiter in Leben und Sprache, Glauben und Geschichte der Deutschen, 1872, S. 12.

Y

HI

338 THE MARE AND THE MARA

insists, from Celtic and Wallachian analogies, that the idea of movement was inherent in the early meaning of the word, and further, basing himself on Max Miiller's Sanscrit studies of the same conception, 1 that the idea of shining (sun = horse's head, rays = mane) was equally implicit, the latter connection going back directly to mar No. 3 =to gleam. Against the first argument may be brought forward the fact that, with a very few insigni- ficant exceptions (e.g., Greek pdpyos, wandering, and ftapyiTtis, a tramp), the vast number of words derived from the mar group can hardly be said to have much to do with movement in the ordinary sense: to grind or crush does, it is true, imply violent action, as does the trampling of horses, but hardly movement in the sense generally connoted in horse mythology, namely, of swift transit through space. And as to the second argu- ment it brings one against the difficulty, not mentioned above, of understanding how the mar No. 3 ('to shine') is connected with the other meanings of the root. It is thought to be the same word as the other mars, though this is not absolutely certain, but 'to shine and 'to rub' or 'grind' seem very disparate ideas.

At this point I would recall the detailed considera- tions adduced in Chapter III which indicated the very definite conclusion that the idea linking the two out- standing equine attributes in mythology, namely, movement and shining, must have been a primitive interest in the horse's urinary feats as signs of an ad- mirable potency. If this conclusion has any bearing on the etymological problem of the 'mare' word, it would be that the point of departure of the word from the mar group should be sought rather among those de- rivatives which denote what we called above 2 the conse- quences of an act rather than among those denoting the act itself. For urination could only be the consequence of a preceding act, i.e. the result of the infantile mastur- bation that lies behind the Nightmare experience; it is to be equated to the 'softening', 'dissolving' idea. And

1 Jahns, op. cit. S. 249. * Part III. p. 332.

CH. V

THE MR ROOT 339

it would follow that the mar No. 3 would itself also repre- sent a specialization of this second 'consequence' half of the total primary conception, as mar No. 2 (='to die 1 ) evidently did.

If future philological researches confirm the neces- sarily tentative hypothesis just mentioned, one might be able to consider a psychological suggestion on the whole importance of the horse mythology in its relation to Nightmare beliefs. This is that it ultimately represents a huge compensation for the fears of ' softening' and loss relating to the Nightmare emissions. For the attribute of exceptional potency is unmistakable in the horse mythology. And that ideas of fame, praise and admira- tion are among the chief derivatives of mar No. 3, a feature Jahns 1 illustrates in connection with the horse beliefs of both Europe and India, would be quite in accord with this general tendency.

1 See Part III. p. 313.

PART IV CONCLUSION

341

CONCLUSION

IF by 'scientific' materialism is meant the tendency to discount the significance of mental and spiritual experiences, to displace the psychical by the physical, then the history of the Nightmare affords one of the most impressive examples of its darkening counsel. Un- til this tendency manifested itself, in relatively recent times, no sharp distinction had been drawn between the voluptuous and the fearful experiences of sleep. Both were equally ascribed to the activity of supernatural beings, and even in medical circles the same names, In- cubus, Ephialtes, were used to designate both. Writers had repeatedly observed that the series of voluptuous voluptuous-fearful fearful in dream life was of an unbroken gradation, and daily clinical experience amply confirms this. The typical Nightmare is merely one ex- treme member of this series. It was Freud who first demonstrated the inherent connection between intra- psychic dread and repressed sexual impulses, and we can now understand the Nightmare as an event in which such impulses have been overwhelmed, and shrouded, by extreme fear. The intensity of the fear is proportionate to the guilt of the repressed incestuous wishes that are striving for imaginary gratification, the physical counter- part of which is an orgasm often provoked by involun- tary masturbation. If the wish were not in a state of repression, there would be no fear, and the result would be a simple erotic dream. The real cause of the Night- mare has thus two essential attributes: (i) it arises from within, (2) it is of mental origin, a sexual wish in a state of repression. Except for the repression this statement is true also of erotic dreams.

This formula, however, is accepted nowhere outside the circle of psycho-analysis, neither for the erotic nor for the Nightmare dream, i.e. the two extreme members of the series referred to above. The history of the

343

344 CONCLUSION PT. iv

explanations proffered for these two types of dream is in- structive. Until the advent of modern science the second feature mentioned above, the mental and sexual origin, was universally accepted as the explanation of both dreams, but the first feature, the endogenous origin, was denied. Since that advent this second feature has been discarded and the first feature installed as the full explanation. I suggest that both explanations are equally imperfect, though I shall give reasons to think that the older, popular 'superstitious ' one was nearer to the truth than the later 'scientific' one.

The account just given of the history* of the matter needs to be slightly amplified to make it more com- prehensible. In the popular view erotic dreams were supposed to be brought about by the sexual wishes of lewd demons: in the current 'scientific' or rather medical view they are supposed to be produced by excessive physical tensions in the sexual apparatus. In the popular view Nightmares were similarly sexual as- saults on the part of lewd demons, strongly resisted by the victim (an attitude corresponding to what we now term 'repression'): in the current medical view they are ascribed to physical disturbances in the ali- mentary, respiratory or circulatory system, disturbances of either an irritating nature, such as undigested food, or of a mechanical nature, such as a distended stomach. With erotic dreams the medical view dates from the twelfth century, and began to prevail over the popular view in the seventeenth. With the Nightmare it was foreshadowed by classical medical writers (Galen, etc.), but began to prevail over the popular view only in the eighteenth century. The view presented in this book, which fuses the two others, was hinted at by Thomas Nashe in 1594 and Splittgerber in 1860, but was scien- tifically established by Freud only at the beginning of this century. The sexual origin of the Nightmare, like that of Hysteria, both well known until the knowledge of it was blotted out by the 'scientific materialism' in its anti-psychological sense of the past two hundred years,

iv

CONCLUSION 345

had to be discovered afresh in the twentieth century and, appropriately enough, by the same man.

Both the old popular view and the current medical one agree in one fundamental respect, namely, in de- vising an explanation for erotic dreams as well as for the Nightmare that divests the subject of any personal responsibility for his nocturnal erotic experiences. Both invoke the mechanism of projection for their purpose: the one projects the agency on to the outside world of spirits, the other on to inanimate processes in the body. Of the two the popular view retained both the psycho- logical and the sexual elements, and was thus nearer to the truth, particularly in the case of the Nightmare, than is the present-day medical view. It was an advance to discard the belief in spirits and demons, but a retro- gression to discard the psychical and erotic, for the supernatural beings at least possessed these attributes. For thousands of years the forces of internal repression, i.e. fear, made use of the supernatural projection to guard man against too near an insight into his own nature. When this defence began to fail 'scientific' materialism came to the rescue, but this has delayed th advent of psychological truth only for a couple of centuries, and the obstacle it interposes will not be so formidable as the 'spiritual' one.

Turning now to the influence of these nocturnal experiences on various conscious beliefs, we note a similar dawning of truth which is at last emerging into light. Here, however, the institution that retarded the recognition of the truth was, not the medical pro- fession, but the Church. After broad hints from earlier times, suppressed by the obscurantism of the Middle Ages, extensive evidence has accumulated during the past century that goes to show how potent has been the influence of dreams, and particularly of terror dreams, in the elaboration of various beliefs. This is most easily recognized with suchj superstitions' as the idea of fabu- lous or disreputable supernatural beings, of human beings being transformed into animals, of night journeys

346 CONCLUSION PT. iv

through the air, of animals being identified with the spirits of the dead, i.e. of ancestors, and of the great revenant belief in the return of the departed. Psycho- analysis of dreams in which corresponding ideas occur has shown plainly that they originate in early mental conflicts relating to the parents notably repressed death wishes and guilt over incestuous impulses, in the primordial struggles between love and hate.

It is not so easy to admit the possibility that various higher beliefs, and among them our most cherished, may have the same origin. Psychologists and anthropologists have brought forward much evidence to show that the belief in a soul that survives death has been extensively influenced by the experience of dreams, the infantile source of which we now know, and have thus opened the possibility of this belief having an altogether subjective origin. Even the second great theological dogma, the belief in a Deity, is becoming accessible to psychological investigation. It is generally recognized that it is bound up with the whole problem of evil, with both the ex- planation of the evil in human nature and the practical issue of how best to cope with it, and this is in accord with the historical, semantic and psychological con- siderations adduced in this book which go to show that God and the Devil were originally one Being. The analysis of the belief in the Devil, which may nowadays be classed as a superstition almost as definitely as the four other superstitious beliefs here treated, reveals it to be a de- rivative of the infantile conflicts over sexual and hostile wishes concerning the parents. This must raise the question whether the other aspect of the same Being, the divine aspect, does not represent merely another line of development from the same source. The whole subject of religion, its meaning and function, is obviously too vast to enter on here, 1 but I would say that in my opinion evidence is rapidly accumulating to show that the con- cept of the Heavenly Father is a subjective projection of the child's feelings about the earthly Father, and that

• f>

1 [See my Zuv Psychoanalyse ier christlichen Religion, 1928.]

rr. iv CONCLUSION 347

the religious attitude has been evolved from the attempts to deal with the disturbing 'sinful' wishes concerning the parents. Psycho-analysis is showing more and more how the sense of sin with its corollary in the idea of salva- tion is born in the Oedipus complex, and that the struggle to deal with the unconscious derivatives of this continuously occupies mankind from the cradle to the grave.

If this view is true it would certainly go to explain the story of the superstitious beliefs treated in this book, and particularly the Witchcraft epidemic, in a way that nothing else does. The analysis here presented shows in my opinion conclusively the incestuous origin of the beliefs, and, as related above, the Church fully recog- nized that the Devil and Witch cult constituted a carica- ture, even to minute details, of the Christian faith. If, now, that cult was to Christianity as reverse to obverse, and if its signification was essentially incestuous, one can scarcely avoid the inference that its threat to Christianity lay in the risk of its exposing the incest origin of the Christian beliefs themselves. It is true that the process was throughout an unconscious and dis- guised one, but the threat was undoubtedly felt. The horrified and panic-stricken endeavours of the Church signified in essence a specially savage outburst of intoler- ance against anything that to it represented incest. One is led to the conclusion that Christianity must itself mean a sublimation of, and therefore at the same time a defence against, the primordial Oedipus wishes of man- kind, a solution of these fundamental conflicts which was felt to be vitally threatened by the danger they fought so desperately against; there is no other way of explain- ing the intensity of the emotion displayed and the lengths to which it was prepared to go to stamp out its enemy, even by pursuing a line of conduct so grossly at variance with its humane and ethical teachings. Devils and Witches simply caricatured Christian beliefs, and by so doing threatened to expose the repressed Oedipus wishes on which these are based.

348 CONCLUSION FT. iv

A close analogy can be shown to exist between the phenomena here investigated and psychoneurotic symp- toms; they are indeed to a large extent identical. Both originate in the repressed sexual wishes of early child- hood, which remain scarcely visible until external con- ditions compel certain sharply defined manifestations of them. The gradual disappearance of the superstitions took place in the same way as a spontaneous recovery does with neurotic symptoms, partly from an increase of the repression, partly from a fresh outlet being provided for the underlying trends. As has been shown in the preceding chapters, both these processes played a part in the disappearance of the five groups of super- stitions: increased acuity of scientific thought combined with even more intense sexual repression rendered them unsuitable forms of expression for the buried wishes. These considerations are suggestive in respect of the future development of the processes here treated. The experience accumulated with the neuroses shows that so long as the causative factors are not removed which has certainly not been done here the mere disappear- ance of the symptoms offers no assurance against future disturbances; the tendency of the underlying forces either to recreate the old symptoms or to seek satisfac- tion by other ways of expression remains intact. The possibility of a relapse into the old superstitions has to be rejected on many historical grounds and would in- deed be hard to imagine in our modern civilization, so that another group of outlets has to be found. There is much reason to think that the chief one of these has been the increase in individual psychoneuroses. In making the nice comparison between the amount of neurosis in modern and in ancient times respectively we may venture to guess that the main difference has been not in the actual quantity so much as in the different distribution of the manifestations. By this I mean that in former times in Europe, and still in savage races, neurotic manifestations appear to have been more com- munally organized and to have enjoyed a more general

PT. iv CONCLUSION 349

social acceptance than with us. What, for instance, are now called neurotic or psychotic patients are in a large measure the descendants of the old Witches, Lycan- thropes, and so on, together with the people who be- lieved in them. A further Consideration of importance, which is usually overlooked, is that the sufferings they endure are perhaps as oppressive and no less widely spread than those due to the analogous processes in the Middle Ages. One may seriously ask whether a patient afflicted with a morbid phobia, e.g., of thunder, suffers less than one who was afraid of the Devil. The latter was in many respects actually in a better position, since his fear was understood by his friends and recognized as being justified. He was not compelled to keep it secret in order to escape the shame and stigma of being so cowardly and weak as to 'give in to his imaginary fears'. A fear that is regarded by both the victim and his environment as reasonable and right is easier to bear than a quite senseless and irrational dread of something harmless, one which is not in accord with the other con- scious thoughts and even resists all conscious endeavours to cope with it.

From all this two main conclusions may be drawn, to do with the problems of psychological 'repression 1 , i.e. excessive fear of the unconscious mind, and of judgement. We can scarcely occupy ourselves here with the social side of the first of these; 1 I have only tried to show, by one set of examples, what frightful consequences may follow irrational 'repression' of human instincts, i.e. dread of them. We have also seen how hard it is, and for hundreds of years impossible, to exterminate these con- sequences when their real meaning has not been dis- covered.

The relation of the theme to the problem of judgement is equally important. For anyone who is convinced that his opinion on an emotionally coloured topic, e.g., a social or religious one, is without doubt the only right one there is no sounder exercise than to reflect on the fact

1 [See Social Aspects of Psycho-Analysis, 1924, edited by Ernest Jones.]

35 CONCLUSION PT. iv

that the most capable and keen thinkers of the Middle Ages, men who probably were by no means his inferior in mental gifts, unhesitatingly recognized the truth of propositions that now seem to us simply ridiculous. In discussing a group of minor errors in thinking, brought about by unconscious influences, Freud 1 made the weighty remark: 'Ich gebe aber zu bedenken, ob man nicht Grund hat, die gleichen Gesichtspunkte auch auf die Beurteilung der ungleich wichtigeren Urteilsirrtiimer der Menschen im Leben und in der Wissenschaft aus- zudehnen. Nur den auserlesensten und ausgeglichensten Geistern scheint es moglich zu sein, das Bild der wahr- genommenen ausseren Realitat vor der Verzerrung zu bewahren, die es sonst beim Durchgang durch die psychische Individuality des Wahrnehmenden erfahrt.' ('I leave it to your consideration whether there is not ground for extending the same points of view to the more important errors of judgement committed in science and in life in general. Only the choicest and most bal- anced minds seem able to guard the image they perceive of outer reality from the distortion to which it is usually subjected in its passage through the mental individuality of the perceiver/)

One of the principal aims of science is to achieve an objective view of the world, of civilization and life. The obstacles in the way of this aim that proceed from conscious inhibitions, for instance prejudices, have been overcome up to a certain point: we are now beginning the harder and more important work of dis- lodging the obstacles that proceed from the unconscious. The first step in this direction is the endeavour to il- luminate the nature and activity of these unconscious activities that mar and distort our conscious judgements. Freud has been the pioneer along a path that it is now possible to traverse; and when this is done mankind will have in the future less excuse for the dark pages that disgrace the book of its history as do the forms of super- stition we have here examined.

1 Freud, Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens, Dritte AufL, 1910, S. 121.

INDEX OF AUTHORS

Abraham, K., 65, 66, 135, 167,

• 93, 208, 264, 274, 278, 280,

299, 303, 34> 314 Acher, E. A., 168 Adler, Alfred, 76, 245 Adler, J. C. F., 14

Aegineta, Paulus, 13, 15, 31, 32,

33, 46, 50, MO Aephinius, G. F., 14 Agathias, 104 Aigremont, 120, 195, 260, 297,298,

300, 303

Albernus, Guilielmus, 259

Albers, 33

Allacci, L., 122

Alpenburg, J. J. Ritter von,

201

Andre"e, R., 107, 121, 136, 145 Anwyl, E., 250 Apollodor, 134 Apollonius, 1 06 Apuleius, 208 Aquinas, Thomas, 83, 220 Arbuthnot, J., 15 Ariosto, 253 Aristophanes, 167, 303 Ariidt, 40 Artemidoros, 97 Artiques, 13 Avicenna, 15

Babinski, J., 211

Bachtold, H., 327

Bailey, N., 30

Baillarger, J., 30

Barclay, J., 33

Baring-Gould, S., 133, 139, I5 1 * I 5 2 *

208, 250

Barrie, J. M., 336 Batoutah, d'Ibn., 92 Baudelaire, in Bayley, 77 Beaugrand, 143 Bell, Andrew, 13, 53 Binet-Sangle, C., 116 Binz, C., 32, 35 Blavatsky, H. P., 47 Bloch, I., 195, 201, 226 Boccaccio, 250

Bodin, J., 136, 139, 143. i? 1

200, 204, 211, 222, 223

Boerhaave, H., 15

Boerner, J., 14, 28, 35, 39, 46

Boguet, H., 141, 143, 235, 325

Bois, Jules, 83, 220

Bond, J., 14, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25, 28,

32, 34, 44, 45, 53 Boscawen, W. St. C., 279 Boschulte, 14, 30 Bosquet, A., 147 Bourke, J. G., 176, 194, 220 Brand, J., 195, 204, 266, 268, 295,

300, 302, 312 Brauns, D., 107 Brentano, K. M., in Breton, Jean le, 211 BreVannes, R., 170, 185, 193, 203,

220

Brill, A. A., 260 Brognoli, 86 Browning, Robert, 186 Bryant, J., 295 Buckle, H. T., 196 Budge, E. A. Wallis, 132 Buffon, G. L. le Clerc, 124 Burkard of Worms, 218, 220 Burton, Sir Richard, 70 Burton, Robert, 28, 32, 40, 50, 77,

184, 198, 204 Butler, S., 195

Caelius, 13

Calmet, A., 122

Calmiel, L. F., 141

Campbell, J. F., 294

Carpzov, Benedict, 223

Castellano, A., 14

Castren, M. A., 116, 142

Cauzons, Th. de. 134, 185

Caxton, 82

Century Dictionary, 98

Cesaresco, see Martinengo-Cesa-

resco

Chambers' s Encyclopedia, 31, 33 Charduillet, M., 14 Chaslin, P., 16, 49 Chatterton, T., 243 Chaucer, 253

35i

352

INDEX OF AUTHORS

Clodd, E.,6i, 73, 131, 133, 137, 142,

151, 224 Conway, M. D., 105, in, 121, 124,

133, 136, 150, 156, 157, 158, 167,

180, 182, 224 Cook, A. B., 133, 135 Cook, J., 220 Cox, G. W., 161, 184, 203, 207,

253, 261, 266, 269, 270, 278,

280, 282, 284, 285, 289, 293,

301, 304, 308, 313 Cox, M. R., 64, 131, 137 Crawley, A. E., 62 Cubasch, D., 16, 23, 26, 28, 35,

47. 52 Cullimore, 93

Dagonet, H., 91

Dalyell, J. G., 82, 90, 171, 195, 294,

301, 325 Dankmar, 151 Dante, 178

Darwin, Erasmus, 22, 23, 26 Dasent, G. W., 137 Davenport, R. A., 117, 121 Deane, J. B., 94, 302 De Guaita, S., 83 Delassus, J., 45, 47, 85, 86,90,205 Delrio, 185, 223, 253 De Saint- Andr6, 90 Des Mousseaux, 83 Deubner, L., 94 Didron, 178 Diodor, 132 Dixon, W. H., 220 Dony, F., 14 Du Bose, H. C., 94 Dubosquet, L., 14 Dulaure, J. A., 92, 93 Duringsfeld, I. and O. von, 144

Ehrenreich, P., 327

Eickmann, 172, 261

Elton, C. I., 234

Endriss, 51

Ennemoser, J., 58, 186, 199, 213,

215,220,223,224,231 Eratosthenes, 134 Ese, 2ii Eusebius, 178 Evans, E. P., 69

Fergusson, J., 94 Feuchtersleben, Ernst von, 33 Fick, A., 327, 332

Fischer, F., 58

Fiske, J., 61, 68, 81, 134, 137, 139,

144

Floyer, Sir James, 32 Forbes Winslow, 15 Forman, C., 125 Fosgate, B., 14, 25, 27, 28, 30 Foville, 15

Franzisci, Erasmus, 258 Frazer, J. G., 61, 93, 95. *33 Freimark, H., 82, 84, 86, 107, 118,

125, 141, 170, 176, 189, 200, 204,

207, 208, 212, 219, 249 Freud, Sigm., 29, 34, 41, 42, 43, 65,

67. 71. 73, 75. 7 8 > 8 4> 8 7> i 6 > no, 121, 141, 150, 151, 152, 154, 155, 158, 168, 184, 194, 195. 204, 211, 260, 274, 303, 343, 344, 350 Fuchs, E., 229

Galen, 31, 344

Garnett, David, 69

Gener, P., 82, 89, 156, 157, 158,

162, 165, 173, 225, 232 Gervasius of Tilbury, 89, 136, 179,

220

Gholes, 112 Gillen, F. J., 173 Glanvil, J., 223, 225 Gockel, C. L., 14

Goerres, J. J. von, 85, 86, 100, 233 Goethe, 101

Golther, W., 74, 254, 327 Gopfert, F. A., 228 Gould, C., 80 Graf, A., 154, 155, 157, 169, 17.

177, 178, 182, 183, 184, 209, 211, 218

Grey, Sir George, 92 Grillparzer, F., 120 Grimm, J., 95, 137, 138, 139, 142, 145, 146, 156, 161, 168, 170, 174,

178, 179, 184, 185, 186, 187, 194, 195, 202, 205, 206, 208, 218, 232, 233, 235. 244, 252, 253, 254, 259, 262, 263, 266, 267, 295, 301, 312, 320, 321, 323, 327

Grohmann, J. V., 116, 119, 218 Gubernatis, A. de, 271, 276, 277, 278, 279, 297, 307, 322, 323, 333 Guillaume de Paris, 64, 206, 218 Guolart, 136

Hagedorn, C. B., 14 Hagen, 228

INDEX OF AUTHORS

353

Hainlin, C. D. F., 14 Hamilton, Mary, 94 Hammond, W. A., 15, 16, 28, 32 Hansen, J., 64, 83, 89, 137, 163,

171, 192, 193, 196, 200, 203, 206, 209, 213, 214, 217, 2l8, 219, 220, 221, 224, 225, 235

Hanush, J. J., 102 Harington, J., 167 Hartland, E. S., 64, 68, 95, 116,

134, 303

Hautemer, Donat de, 136, 148 Haxthausen, A. von, 120, 139 Hebbel, F., 101 Hedelin, F., 162, 219 Heine, H., 109, no, in Heinrich von Kleist, 109 Hellwald, F. von, 118 Henderson, B., 301 Heppe, H., 199 Herman, G., 136, 219 Herodotus, 95, in, 282 Herrera, Antonio de, 92 Hertz, W., 70, 131, 133, 136, 137,

138, 139, 140, 142, 145, 146, 147,

186, 234, 313 Herzberg, G. S. S., 14 Hesychius, 295 Heusler, A., 321 Hexenhammer, Der, see Sprenger

and Institoris Hinkmar, 171 Hobbes, T., 59 Hock, S., 101, 102, 105, 114, 115,

Il6, 119, 121, 122, 125, 127, 128

Hodgkin, T., 14, 15, 22, 32 Hoensbroech, von, 213 Hoffmann, E. Th. 39 Hofler, M., 85 Hohnbaum, 30 Homer, 208, 266 Hope, Laurence, 119 Horst, G. C., 98, 102, 122, 206 Hovorka, O. von, 123 Howard, C., 94, 176, 260 Howitt, A. W., 63, 77 Huisinga, 14

Huysmans, J. K., 83, 220 Hyginus, 134

Imperial Dictionary, 31 Im Thurn, Sir E. F., 60 Inman, T., 176, 203, 301 Institoris, H., 84, 180, 192, 193, 200, 205, 222, 223

Ipolyi, 265 Irenaus, 180

Jaccoud, S., 15

Jacob, P. L., 85, 101, 169, 17. I 77 184, 211

Jahn, U., 256

Jahns, M., 134, 175, 205, 206, 209, 244, 245, 248, 249, 251, 252, 254, 255, 256, 258, 259, 262, 263, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 278, 279, 280, 284, 286, 287, 292, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 302, 306, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 318, 323, 324,

33 6 > 337* 33 8 > 339 James I., 90, 223 Jamieson, J., 294 ~anet, P., 16, 49

ennings, Hargrave, 288, 294

espersen, O., 334, 335, 336

ewell, J. R., 52

ohn of Salisbury, 203, 218 jOhns, C. H. W., 93 Jones, Ernest, 14, 58, 66, 75, 76, 97, 106, 109, 134, 175, 176, 177, 208, 304, 307, 308, 346, 349 Jorolis, J. P., 14 Joyce, P. W., 265 Judges, Book of, 281 Jiihling, J., 164, 215, 222, 226

Kanitz, F., 107

Kant, I., 34

Keats, J., 1 06

Kelle, G., 16, 22

Kemmerich, M., 189

Kerner, A. J. C., 210

Kiesewetter, C., 202, 207

King, Irving, 62

2 Kings, 279

Kipling, Rudyard, 125

Kirk, R., 83

Kleist, Heinrich von, in, 204

Knight, R. P., 172, 260, 293, 295,

296, 301 Kok, 14 Kornfeld, 15 Krafft-Ebing, R., 40 Krainz, 254 Krauss, F. S., 63, 102, 107, 119,

121, 123, 126, 127, 143, 145, 205,

232, 233, 234, 243, 257, 258, 287,

302, 321

Kristensen, E. T., 321 Kronfeld, A., 123

Z

354

Ktihn, C. G., 14 Kuhn, E. W. A., 118 Kuhn, F. F. A., 143 Kutsche, J., 14

Laistner, L., 73, 79, 97, 107, 116, 119, 126, 174, 232, 233, 235, 250, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 266, 267, 270, 271, 272, 288, 291, 294, 302, 305, 306, 308, 309, 314

Lamothe-Langon, E. L, de, 187, 219, 221

Lancre, Pierre de, 141, 142, 143, 151, 166, 172, 185, 200, 202, 203,

206, 207, 211, 222, 234

Lang, Andrew, 95

Lange, R., 57

Langin, G., 213

Latham, R. G., 32, 82

Laurent, E., 71, 86, 125, 203, 206,

208, 211, 220, 233, 239 Lawrence, R. M., 195, 287, 288,

3* 3 OI > 312

Lawson, J, C., 123, 134, 145 Layard, Sir Henry, 282 Lea, H. C., 213 Lecky, W. E. H., 229 Legu6, G., 220

Lehmann, A., 58, 61, 178, 185, 215 Lehmkuhl, A., 228 Le Loyer, 170, 173 Lempens, 213 Lenormant, F., 77, 119 Lerchheimer, A., 150 Leubuscher, S., 235 Leuret, F., 91 Lhomme, 16

Loewenfeld, L., 42, 46, 49 Louandre, C. L., 164 Lowenstimm, A. A., 124 Lower, R., 28, 30 Ludwig, Otto, in Lunier, L., 112 Liitzow, F., 290 Lycophron, 134

Macario, M. A., 13, 48, 91

Macculloch, J. A., 294

Mackay, C., 294

Mackenzie, Sir M., 51

McKerrow, R. B., 78

McLennan, 68

Macnish, R., 14, 15, 17, 21,22, 23,

26, 27, 28, 32, 39, 52, 74 MacWilliam, J. A., 15

INDEX OF AUTHORS

Madden, Sir Frederick, 138 Magntisson, E., 133 Mahdbhdrata, 277, 279, 287 Malleus Maleficarum, see Sprenger

and Institoris Mannhardt, W., 116, 133, 144, 146,

223, 234 Marc, 228 Marchand, 15 Marett, R. R., 62 Marggraf, 13 Martin, M., 95

Martinengo-Cesaresco, E., 69 Maudsley, H., 33 Maury, L. F. A., 34, 78, 95, 202,

2IO, 212, 253

Mayo, H., 128

Meier, E., 324

Meinicke, D. C., 14

Menant, J., 118

Menippus, 106

Mercier, E., 112

Merker, 327

Messteres, M. E. Escande de, 16

Meung, Jehan de, 231

Meunier, 16

Meyer, E. H., 61, 73, 80, 95, 120,

134, 137, 143, 144, 161, 168, 195,

218, 233, 263, 264, 266, 267, 288,

301, 302, 306, 311 Meynert, Th., 40

Michelet, J., 86, 165, 166, 213, 223 Miklosich, F., 124 Milton, John, 173, 233 Mitchell, Sir Arthur, 96 Mogk, E., 61, 131, 135. 263, 264,

265, 289, 310, 313, 314 Montanus, 256 Moreau, J. J., 36 Morel, 91 Morris, W., 133 Moses, J., 61, 70 Motet, 15, 19, 24, 27, 32, 35 Muller, H. O., 282 Muller, J. K 14

Miiller, Johannes, 58, 210, 231 Muller, Max, 261, 279, 338 Murisier, E., 84, 210 Murray, Sir J. A. H., 268 Murray, M. A., 172

Nachtigal, G., 92

Nagour, P., 71, 86, 125, 203, 206,

208, 211, 220, 233 Nashe, Thomas, 78, 169, 344

INDEX OF AUTHORS

355

Nevius, J. L., 210 Nietzsche, 181 Nork, F., 281 Northumberland, 301 Nynauld, 233, 234 Nystrom, A., 178, 201, 223, 224, 226

O'Curry, E., 96 Oldham, 204, 259 Origenes, 180 Ovid, 134, 297

Paracelsus, 45

Parent, 239

Pauly, A., 282

Pausanias, 93, 95, 134

Peixoto, 83

Pennant, Th., 95

Petrie, W. M. Flinders, 172

Petronius, 281

Peucer, C., 146

Pezet, Ch., 84, 91, 210

Pfaff, E. R., 27

Pfister, O., 155, 203

Picart, B., 185

Pierce, Nathaniel, 131

Pinches, T. G., 184, 261

Pinkerton, John, 95

Plancy, Collin de, 164, 172, 194,

253

Pliny, 301, 309 Ploss, H., 119 Pluquet, F., 148 Poestion, J. C., 116 Powell, F. Y., 280 Preller, L., 93, 282 Prout, 35 Pruner, J. E., 228 Psellus, M. C., 16 Puschmann, Th., 40, 93, 94, 95, 263

euanter, R., 201 uedenfeldt, M., 119

Radcliffe, A., 39

Radestock, P., 16, 21, 33, 35

Rank, Otto, 65, 96, 135, 165, 296

Rau, H., 58

Rauch, J. H., 29

Rees, Howell, 95

Regius von Prum, 203, 218

Reid, Mayne, 286

Reik, Th., 158

Remigius, 141, 224

Rhases, 13

Rhyn, O. Henneam, 108, 185, 219,

223, 226, 228, 232 Rhys, J., 234, 285, 294 Ribes, F., 53 Richardson, J., 95 Riezler, Sigm., 143, 213, 235 Rigveda, 269, 270, 278, 287, 299,

333

Riklin, F., 65, 70, 94, 191 Robert, C., 145 Robertson, J. M., 157, 172, 279,

283

Rocco, S., 176, 220 Rochholtz, C. L,, 95 Roller, 40

Roscher, W. H., 152, 183, 261 Roskoff, G., 120, 156, 161, 163,

164, 170, 175, 176, 177, 178,

179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185, 186,

188, 200, 209, 213, 215, 218, 220,

223, 225, 226, 265 Rosner, J. M., 14 Roth, H. Ling, 63, 77, 92 Rousset, Cesar, 26, 28, 31, 34, 35,

36, 5<>

Sade, Marquis de, in

Sadger, J., no, 194, 204

Sagar, 40

St. Augustin, 83, 159, 309

St. John, 286

St. Paul, 160

Sampson, W., 89

Sanctis, Sante de, 16

Santerre, 212

Sauer, 282

Sauvages de la Croix, F. Boissier

de, 40

Scaliger, 171 Schindler, H. B., 107 Schlegel, A. W. von, 118 Schlichtegroll, C. F. von, 302 Schmidt, B., 106, 150 Schmidt, P. W., 333 Schmidt, W., 14 Scholz, F., 32, 33, 35 Schonwerth, F. X. von, 119 Schoolcraft, H. R., 133, 137 Schoppner, A., 257 Schrader, A., 327 Schwalb6, R., 220 Schwartz, W., 135, 278 Schwarz, F. L. W., 143 Schwegler, F. C. A., 135

356

INDEX OF AUTHORS

Scot, Reginald, 84, 89, 206, 212,

244

Scott, Sir Walter, 225 Sbillot, P., 250 Seligmann, S., 120, 194, 199, 249,

287, 289, 300, 301, 302 Sellon, E., 172, 220 Senart, E. C. M., 279 Sepp, J. N., 102, 122, 215, 218,

224, 259

Shakespeare, 20, 299 Shelley, Percy B., 108, 109 Sidetes, Marcellus, 152 Sikes, W. W., 145, 206, 228, 287 Silberer, H., 154 Simon, M., 48, 85 Simpson, S., 14 Simrock, K., 162 Singer, in

Sinistrari, P., 82, 83, 171, 212 Skeat, W. W., 159, 244, 268, 312,

326, 327 Smith, 171 Soldan, W. G., 179, 199, 213, 217,

220, 221, 224, 226, 228, 230 Souvestre, le Vylars, 1 1 1 Spencer, B., 173 Spencer, Herbert, 32, 60, 61, 62,

63, 64, 68, 71 Sperber, H., 331 Spitta, H., 39, 5 1 Splittgerber, F., 28, 30, 33, 34, 36,

344 Sprenger, J., 84, 180, 192, 193, 200,

205, 222, 223

Squire, C., 267, 269

Steffens, H., in

Steingiesser, F., 202, 221

Stekel, W., 41

Stern, B., 102, 106, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 123, 124, 127, 139, 140, 147, 150, 227, 256, 300

Still, G. F., 27

Stoll, O., 92, 224, 249, 282, 304

Storfer, A. J., 94

Strackerjan, L., 143, 257, 258,

309

Strahl, 33 Strohmayer, W., 41 Strtimpell, L. H., 33 Summers, Montague, 104, 130 Swettenham, F. A., 77 Swinburne, 109

Tacitus, 312

Talmud, 281

Teichmeyer, 14

Temme, J. D. H., 116

Tertullian, 180

Tettau, W. J. A., 116

Teuscher, R., 154

Textoris, D., 14

Thomas, 287

Thompson, R. Lowe, 227

Thorpe, B., 95, 133, 139, 143, 209,

234, 253, 254, 255, 256, 267, 299,

302, 323

Torreblanca, 224 Torresani, C., 125 Tylor, E. B., 61, 180

Unthank, J., 14

Unwerth, Wolf von, 144, 320, 321

Valde, A., 327 Vaschide, N., 15, 16 Vignoli, T., 244 Virgil, 296, 309 Void, Hourly, 204 Voltaire, 122, 252

Wachsmutt, Curtius, 145 Wachter, 213 Waechter, J. F. E., 14 Wagner, Richard, 109 Wake, G. Staniland, 94, 282 Waller, J., 14, 16, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 39,

46, 52, 53, 74 Walton, Alice, 93, 94 Wanckel, 14 Warda, W., 41 Webster, N., 98 Weitenkampf, 128 Welsch, 14 Wenslovius, C. G., 14 Werner, Z., 101, 109, in West, J., 77 Westermarck, E., 165 Wier, J. 164, 204, 206, 211, 260 Wierus, 258 Wilder, A., 295 Wille, 40

William of Newburgh, 121, 123 Williams, Howard, 224, 226 Willis, T., 30

Wingfield-Stratford, E., 335 Wlislocki, H. von, 117 Wolf, J. W., 144, 150, 309 Wolfeshusius, J. F., 141

INDEX OF AUTHORS

357

Wolter, H, J., 14

Woodward, 33

Wright, Dudley, 130

Wundt, W., 62, 63, 64, 73, 79, 80,

92, 95. 96, 127, 148, 217 Wiinsche, A., 167, 168, 174, 175,

179, 186

Wuttke, A., 95, 97, IO 3> 105, 114, 126, 133, 144, 145, 161, 179, 195, 199, 218, 228, 231, 232, 262, 288, 289, 294, 300, 312, 314, 322

Zimmermann, 125 Zschokke, 120

GENERAL INDEX

Abbe Desnoyers, 227

Abyssinia, 131, 183

Accadian Gelal, 119

Accommodation Theory, 161

ach, 292

acrin, 270, 277, 279, 297

acva, 277, 278

Aeolus, 310

Aeschylus, 96

Aesculapius, 93, 94, 95, 297

Aeshma, 162, 172

Agni, 279, 280, 289, 299

Ahmed, 270

Ahriman, 156, 170

Ahts, 133

Aix, 300

ak, 292

akakharu, 121

akra, 292

akva, 292

Albania, 102

Albigenses, 160

alchemy, 165

alcohol, 51

Alexander IV., 217

Alexander the Great, 82, 94

algolagnia, 79

alii, 261

alligator pears (see pears)

Alnwick, 123

Alp, 47, 70, 77, 79, 82, 106, 116, 1 19, 126, 127, 143, 144, 185, 232, 233, 282,288,301,309,320,322

Alpschlange, 97

altar, 203, 301

alu, 184, 261

amaurotic, 328

ambrosia, 208, 264, 297, 299, 317,

325. 329

America, 83, 133 Ammon, 93, 95 amnesia, 211 Amphiarus, 95 amulet, 301 anal (see erotism) anal-sadistic (see sadism) ancestor worship, 63, 65, 71, 8 1, 95 Ancyra, Canon Episcopi of, 216 Andromache, 93

Angela de Labarethe, 187, 220 Anglo-Saxon, 152, 263 anguinum, 301 animals

equated with parents, 71, 8 1

and gods, 70, 71

and sexual associations, 70, 79

transformation into, 63, 64, 68, 69, 81, 91, 133, 138, 139, 142, 148, 149, 184, 219, 235, 259

worship of, 64, 71 anorexia nervosa, 211 Ansbach, 146 Antichrist, 182 anxiety (see dread) anxiety dreams (see dreams) anxiety neurosis, 40-41, 53 Apep, 170

Aphrodite, 207, 279, 301 Ap Nudd, 267

Apollo, 70, 94, 135, 170, 279, 281 Apollodor, 134 Apollonius, 106 Ap-uat, 132 aqua, 292, 317 Aquinas, Thomas, 217 -Arabia, 270 Aratus of Sicyon, 94 arc en cercle, 211 Archangel Michael, 95 Archilupus, 186 Ardat, 77 Ardennes, 95 Ardisson, 112

Ares, 184, 279, 280, 282, 283, 295 Argos, 301 Aristomenes, 94 ark, 315 Armenian, 119 arrow, 318 Arthur, 285 Arusha, 279 arushi, 279 Aryan, 159, 325 Asgard, 267 Ash Wednesday, 322 Asia, 285

Asmodeus, 162, 172, 173 ass, 303, 307

359

GENERAL INDEX

Assyria, 116, 119, 121 astrology, 165 Athene, 279, 295, 301 Athens, 219 Atlas Mountains, 119 Attica, 95 Atys, 70, 94 Augustus, 94 Aurora, 279 Australia, 92, 172 Autu, 77 Avuna, 276

Babylonia, 93 IJ 6, 125, 157, 172,

184, 261

Bacchanalia, 162, 219 Bacchus, 96, 219 Baldur, 162, 300 Balkans, 121, 143 Bamberg, 256 banshee, 265 baptism, 144 barrenness, 193 bats, 124 Bavaria, 227 Bedouin, 172 Beelzebub, 253 beetle, 117, 121 Bel, 93 Belgrade, 122 belladonna, 207 Bellerophon, 170 Bergkirchen, 310 Bertha, 218 Bertrand, 112 Besanson, 141, 235 bird, 115 bisexuality, 317 Bithynia, 292 black arts, 167, 277 Black Death, 123 Black Mass, 185, 202, 203, 220 Blanik, 290 blindness, 96

blood drinking, 116, 127, 187 blood pressure, 15 Bocquet, Jacques, 143 Boetia, 297

Bohemia, 116, 178, 243, 290, 294 Bordeaux, 227 border, 283, 331 Borek, 297 Borneo, 92 Bornholm, 144 Bosnia, 123

Bourdelot, Abb6, 143

Bous, 264

bow and arrow, 266

Brahma, 157, 159, 172, 269

Brandenburg, 255

Braza, Council of, 160

breath, 61, 307, 311 (see also Crea-

tive Breath) Bride of Corinth, 101 broomstick, 195, 206, 259, 288, 308,

312

brotos, 332 Brunhilda, 269 Brunhilda beds, 169 Bruxsa, 107 Bucentaur, 294 Bucentoro, 294 Bucharest, 124 buffoons, 175 Bulgaria, 123, 124 bulimia, 211 bull, 70

Burculacas, 122 Bureau d'adresse, go burial alive, 128 Buriih Khan, 142 butterfly, 107, 127 butter-making, 193 Buxenwolf, 140

Caesar, 82

calcar, 253

Callicantzaros, 115

calx, 253

Canada, 189

Cancer, 286

cannibalism, 1 1 6, 131, 148, 149, 150,

Canopaea, 93 Canute, 152, 186 Cappadocia, 309 Capri, 135 cards, 162 Carthaginia, 296

castration, 113, 180, 261, 269, 273, 275-290, 277, 285, 286, 290,

303, 304, 305> 3^3 332 catalepsy, 211 caterpillars, 69 Cathari, 160, 209 cats, 115, 117, 142, 144, 160, 209,

234> 235 cauchemar, 253 caverns, 289 celibacy, religious, 165

GENERAL INDEX

361

centaurs, 293, 301, 302, 308, 317, 322

Central America, 92

cerebral haemorrhage, 14

Cestos, 301

chaise, 335

chariot-horse, 276

Charites, 207

Charlemagne, 82, in, 216, 300, 323

Charles V M Emperor, 113

charms, 308

Charon, 265

cheviller, 194

Chicago, 123

China, 92

Chios, 94, 122

Christ (see Jesus)

Christmas Day, 115, 140, 145, 268

Chronos, 273

chthonic, 95, 136, 282

Church

Greek Orthodox, 103, 145, 163,

237

Roman Catholic, 64, 83, 84, 87, ^9, 91, 92, 103, 114, 140, 160-161, 188, 189, 191, 192, 198, 214-223, 225, 226, 228, 231, 237, 238, 345, 347

Churel, 119

Cinderella, 298

Ciuateteo, 77

Clarence, 20

cloisters, 84

cloven hoof, 138, 302

clowns, 175

cock, 69

Colonos, 295

confarreatio, 203, 281

conscience, 78, 112, 113, 275

corpse, 104, in, 112, 116, 121, 124, 132, 234

Cottytia, 219

Council of Braza, 160

Council of Ireland, 217

Count de Cadreras, 113

Courland, 142

covens, 208

crab, 286

Creative Breath, 307

Crepi, 135

Croatia, 302

Cross, Holy, 176, 285

Crusades, 196, 221

crushing, 184, 243, 280, 328, 332

cucumber, 38

curiosity, sexual, 226

curses, 104, 113 Cybele, 295 Cyprus, 82 Czech, 309 Czernebog, 186

Dachnavar, 119, 147 dada t 269 Dadhyanc, 270 Dalmatia, 115, 234 danse du sabbat, 202 Dante, 17, 169 Dantsic, 123, 147 Danube, 98 day-bogey, 266 Daymare, 27 dead, the

decomposition of, 103-105

fear of, 105-107

insatiability of, no

masochism of, no

reunion with, 99-102

sadism of, no

sexual love for, 110-112- Dearg-dul, 121 death, 109, no, 112, 132, 133

fiend, 255

-gods, 135, 145

identified with Hel, 256

and impotence, 194

and Werewolf, 145 decomposition

of body, 104, 113, 129, 187

mythological, 158 defloration, 301 Deity (see Devil-God) Delilah, 281 Demiurgos, 160 demons, lewd, 77, 78, 88, 91, 118,

344 storm, 184

Denac, 115

Denmark, 144, 234, 243, 254, 256

Deodand, 69

deos, 159

deu, 159

Deudel, 159

devan, 159

Devil- aversion to salt, 176 -beds, 169 and castration, 180 a Christian conception, 156 cloven hoof (Drudenfuss) , 232, 302

362

GENERAL INDEX

Devil (contd.)

and cockcrow, 175

contempt for, 175

Devil's claw, 212

and dyspareunia, 185

etymology of, 158, 159

evolution of, 157-162

and exorcism, 189

as father, 166-177, 222

and giants, 168-169

as goat, 171, 205

and God, 157-159, 166, 177-178, 180, 181, 188, 346

and horse, 205, 323-324

and Incubi, 172, 173, 185

and Jesus, 178, 179, 182

in Middle Ages, 162-166

in mythology, 161, 162

and Nightmare, 183-185

and Oedipus complex, 155

pacts with, 164, 171, 225, 228,230

phallic symbolism of, 170, 172

possession by, 210

as revenant, 169

and reversals, 184, 185, 203

and Sabbath, 171, 178, 185

and semen, 179, 180

as son, 177-183, 222

and temptation, 169-171

and Vampire, 187

and Werewolf, 141, 146, 160- 165, 186

and Witches, 197, 232

worship as caricature of Chris- tianity, 1 66, 178 Devon, 249 dew, 299 dewel, 159 dhvan, 159 diabolos, 158 Diana, 93 dice, 162

Dietrich von Bern, 267, 323 diewas, 159

Dioscuri, 277, 279, 297, 307 Diovis, 159 dis, 159 div, 159 divining, 312 diw, 159 djinn, 172 Dobbin, 268 Dodona, 302 Doge of Venice, 294 dogs, 115, 117

double, 159 dowry, 142 dragon, 170, 306 dread

and incest, 81

in Nightmare, 20-21

pathogenesis of, 40-41

and sexuality, 41, 106 dreams

animals in, 68, 70

anxiety dreams, 129

and belief in the soul, 61, 62

of the dead, 62, 63, 68

and flying by night, 64, 65, 204, 206, 258

folk dreams, 66

Freud's theory of, 42-43, 67

influence of, 67, 68

latent content of, 65, 68, 76

and myths, 65, 66, 73

resemblance to psychoneurotic symptoms, 66, 67

and riding, 204, 206

of savages, 60

sense of reality of, 58, 60

visual imagery of, 67

vividness of, 58, 60 Drud, 119 Drude, 218

Drudenfuss (see Devil, cloven hoof) Druden-Zeitung, 224 Druidism, 299 duendes, 82 Dummhans, 270 Durak, Ivan, 271 Dusius, 159 DV root, 159 dva, 159 dvi t 159 dwarves, 80, 82 dyaus, 159 dys, 159 dyu, 159

ech t 292 Eddy, Mrs, 188 Egmont, 59 ego-dystonic, 87 ego-syntonic, 87

Egypt, 93. 132, 157,

298, 301 Elendstal, 305 Elis, 145 elixir of life, 165 Ellermutter, 179

GENERAL INDEX

363

Elohim, 158 emission, 317, 319 emulsion, 331 England, 226 envy, 275 Ephesus, 93

Ephialtes, 77, 183, 184, 261, 343 Epidauros, 93

epidemics, 102, 121, 122, 123, 124, 136, 142, 213, 221, 226, 228, 229, 237, 347 Epirotes, 106, 150 Epirus, 93 Epona, 250 tpreuve du stylet, 212 equus, 292, 317 Eratosthenes, 134 Eros, 267, 279, 283 Eros-Cupid, 266 erotism anal, in, 112 oral, in

respiratory, 51, 311, 312 urethra!, 303

erotomania, 91

Etrusca, 135

Europa, 70

Europe, East, beliefs, 234

Eurydice, 100

evil, problem of, 188, 346

Excalibur, 285

excrementitial activities, 290-319

exorcism, 83, 211

exteriorization, 100

eye, 120, 139, 288, 304 (see also symbolism)

Eye, Evil, 301, 302

Eye of God (see symbolism)

eye of heaven, 289

faeces, in

familiar, 234

fauns, 184

Faunus, 135, 136

Faust, no

fear, 274, 275

February, 136, 152

Februus, 135

feet, 1 20

Fenrir, 133, 186

fertility, 278, 283, 287, 296, 297,

302, 303, 316, 317 Finland, 116 Firdusi, 270 fire, 284, 287, 304, 334

fire-worship, 278

First of May, 280

Fjolnir, 270

flatus, 307, 308, 311

flatus symbolism (see symbolism)

flesh-eating, 116

flight through the air (see nocturnal

travelling) foal's caul, 143 follets, 82 folletti, 82 forest sprites, 161 fornication with the Devil, 221,

223, 226, 228, 229, 232 France, 83, 143, 148, 194, 227,

334

Fratzentrdume, 79, 80 Freki, 132 French-Canada, 143 Freya, 142, 209 Frickthal, 255 Frigg, 218 Frisia, East, 249 frogs, 121 Furious Host, 146, 261, 262, 289,

306, 323, 325 Fuseli, 256

Gaelic, 279

gandha, 308

Gandharvas, 118, 308

Garden of Eden, 170

garlic, 124

Garter (see Order of)

garwolf, 137

Gelal, 119

Geneva, 227

Geri, 133

Germany, 122, 134, 215, 227, 233,

279, 287, 298, 312 ghosts, dread of, 112 ghoul, 99, 112, 148, 172, 234 giants, 190, 264, 270, 271 Gipsy, 159 Gladheim, 135 Glashtyn, 294 glass mountain, 270^ 271 globus hystericus, 211 gnostics, 1 60 goat, 70, 161, 171, 198, 205, 279,

302

goat-god, 157, 172, 279 God (see Devil) God of Death (see death) God of Headlands, 269

364

gold, 197, 299,

GENERAL INDEX

307,

Gorgon, 80

Gothic, 152

Grail (see Holy Grail)

Gram, 269

Grant, 179, 323

Gratiae, 207

Greece, 93, 104, 115, 118, 122, 123, 133, 134, 157, 159, 184, 265, 277, 280, 284, 293, 296, 297, 302, 308

Gregory IX., Pope, 217

Grendel, 179, 184, 187, 323

Grenier, Jean, 134, 143

grinding, 329, 332

guilt, 70, 78, 99, 102, 103, 112, 113, 114, 130, 197, 198, 274, 275

Hackelberg, 267

Hades, 135

haemorrhage, cerebral, 14

hag-stones, 195, 301

hair, 137, 285, 299

hallucinations, 48, 49, 85, 91

Hamlet, 271

hammer, thunder-, 161

Hammerkin, Master, 174

hand-towel, 233

hare, 234

hare-lip, 234

hari, 315

hant t 315

Hastvmann, 294

hat, 288-304

hatchet, 233

hate, 105, 112, 114, 120, 121, 129,

130

Hauchseele, 61 Hazazel, 158

headlessness, 286, 287-298 Hebrew, 181 Heinrich der Loewe, 323 Hel, 133, 179, 256 Helicon, 298, 300, 313 Helios, 289 hell, 323, 324 Helle, 157 Hellequin, 267 Hell horse, 322 helmsman, 295 Hengist, 263 Henry II., 263 Hephaestes, 162 Hera, 135, 208, 295 Heracles, 170, 209, 284, 285, 286

heretics, 103, 163, 191, 199, 209,

214, 225, 230 Hermania, 301

hermaphrodite, 283, 294, 298 Hermes, 266, 304, 314 Herne the Hunter, 267 Herodias, 286 Herzegovina, 233 Hessia, 309 Hexen-Zeitung, 224 Hildebrand, Song of, 250 Hindustan, 131, 248, 277, 282 Hip, 295 Hippa, 295 Hippe, 310 Hippios, 283, 295 Hippocampen, 294 Hippocrene, 298, 300, 313 Hippodates, 310 Hippodes, 302 Hippolyte, 301 Hippoman, 302 hippon, 295 Hippos, 295 Hirpi, 135 Hnikar, 168 hob, 268 hobble, 268

hobby-horse, 260, 268 /jofcgoblin, 268 Holda, 209, 218 Holland, 226 hollow back, 232 Hollywood, 125 Holy Cross, 176 Holy Grail, 301 Holy Inquisition, 214, 215, 224

226, 227 holy springs, 96 holy stones, 195, 301 holy wells, 96 homosexuality, 307 horse

collar, 143

as Devil, 205, 323-324

ears, 287, 306, 307

eating horse-flesh, 325

equated to lion, 280

and fertility, 297-304, 313, 316

, 317

foot, 302-303

Furious Host, 261, 262, 323

and gold, 271

halter, 249, 258

head, 286-288

GENERAL INDEX

365

horse (contd.) hobby-horse, 260, 268 hoof, 297-300, 324 Horse-Gods, 262, 263, 274 horse-shoe, 194, 195, 232, 258-

286, 297, 300-302, 308, 324 and Incubi, 320-321 magic steed, 269-271, 276-278,

279, 289, 299, 305, 306, 323 mane, 279, 280, 285, 287, 304 movement of, 251, 294-295, 316-

3i8, 338

neighing, 294, 3H> 3 phallic symbolism of, 260, 269-

271, 276

and prophecy, 310-312 ridden by horse-mare, 254-255 riding, 249, 251-258, 295, 323, 324 shining appearance of, 251, 283,

3I7-3I8, 338 skull, 195, 265 spur, 253

as sun-god, 277-286 and theft, 269

trampling, treading, 253, 298 and Vampire, 321 as water-god, 293-296, 309 and Werewolf, 321-323 Wild Hunt, 261, 262, 267, 268 as wind-god, 265, 266, 280, 282,

307-3H Horus, 132 Hrosa, 315

Hungary, 122, 124, 265, 276, 322 Huns, 82

Hunter, Wild, 161 Hyginus, 134 Hymir, 179 hyosyamus, 207 hyperaesthesia, 91 hypochondriasis, 53

Iceland, 243, 250, 315, 321

idolatry, 217

illegitimacy, 117

illusions, 74

impotence, 93, 96, 97, 118, 192,

223, 285, 288 incarnation, 94 incest, 127, 130, 230, 231, 232, 238,

260, 307, 332, 347 Incubation, 92-97

and divination, 96

and grave-sleep, 93, 95

and holy wells, 93, 96

Incubation (contd.)

and Nightmare, 96, 97

and prayer, 96

and serpent worship, 94

and sterility, 93, 96 Incubi, 77, 82

and angels, 71

and demons, 83

and Devil, 172, 185

due to seminal abundance, 90

and horse, 320-321

and Nightmare, 85, 86, 89, 97

in theology, 83, 84, 87, 89, 91, 92

and Vampire, 125-127

and Werewolf, 143

and Witches, 232 India, 92, 93, 119, 144, 157, 159, 162, 179, 181, 184, 276, 279, 280, 284, 296, 297, 298, 302 Indo-China, 117 Indra, 70, 207, 269, 270, 277, 279,

280, 287, 307, 333 injustice, 275 Innus, 135 insatiability, no Ireland, 95, 121, 227, 259, 312 Iruntarivia, 172 Isis, 93, 301 isopathic principle, 97 Italy, 136, 227, 301 Ixion, 17, 293

Jamprost, Clauda, 143

Janguillaume, Clauda, 143

Japan, 107, 298

Jaromir, 120

Java, 121

Jehovah, 158

Jesus, 268, 286, 300, 307

Jew, Wandering, 267

Jews, 158, 219

John the Baptist, 268, 286

Judaism, 157, 181

Juggernaut, 17

juments au diable, 250, 324

Juno, 136

Jupiter, 159

Jura, 142

Jutland, 254, 321

Kabbalah, 170 kelpie, 294, 317, 322 Kelts, 159 Kelts, Ancient, 250 keyholes, 81, 144

366

GENERAL INDEX

KielGelat, 119

Kiel-uddakarra, 77

Kikimara, 77

King Arthur, 267, 301

King Frederick Barbarossa, 289

King Herod, 1 1 1

King Hugo, 267

King John 'Lackland 1 , 147

King March ap Meirchon, 294

King of the May, 266

King Siggeir, 133

King Vanlandi, 253

King Waldemar, in, 267

kissing, 121

knife, 195, 232, 288, 308

Koch, 75

Koran, 172

Koslak, 234

Krassowa, 124

Krishna, 170, 279

Kronos, 293

ladder, under a, 129

Lady of the Lake, 285

Lailah, 125

lameness, 96, 162, 180

Lamia, 106, 118

Langsior, 77

Laocoon, 17

Lapland, 116

Lausanne, 233

Leamain Sith, 77

Leda, 70

Le Grand Veneur, 267

Lenore, 101

Lr, 269

Lerna, 17

Leto, 135

Leviathan, 170

Leviticus, 158

lewd demons (see demons)

Lex Ripuaria, 152

ligature de Vaiguillette, 193

lightning, 167, 318

Lilats, 116

Lilith, 90, 125

Lilitu, 125

Linga, 282, 284

lion, 280, 283

Lipany, 290

Lister, 75

Lithuania, 159

Loki, 133, 157, 162, 186, 250, 280

London, 267

Lord Nelson, 300

Lord Roberts, 300

loubins, 148

loup-varou, 136

Lourdes, 96

Louviers, 211

love, 100, 105, 108, 109, no, in,

112, 114, 120, 121, 129 love-charms, 198 love-philtres, 198 love-potions, 302 Lucifer, 160, 169 Ludak, 1 1 6, Lugh, 269 lulti, 125 Luperca, 135 Lupercalia, 136 Lupercus, 135, 136 Luren, 106 Lusitania, 309

lust, cannibalistic, 148, 150, 152 Luther, Martin, 82, 176, 182 lycanthropy, 133, 136, 140, 151,

152

Lycaon, 134 Lycophron, 134

maar, 302

macerate, 331

MAD, 330

magicians, 167

magic staff, 260

Mahdbhdrata, 277, 279

Mahre, 127, 143, 218, 235, 320

Mdhre, 309, 314, 244, 245, 251, 309,

314. 337 Mdhrte, 328 maiden of gold, 272 MAK, 331 malachite, 330 malan, 330 Malay, 116 maid, 329 Maleftcium, 190, 193, 194, 195* *96,

198, 199, 221, 223, 225, 228,

230, 231

<d%, 329, 33 * > 337

malice, 330

malign, 330

mallet, 330

malleus, 330

Malleus Maleficarum, 200, 223

mallow, 330

malt, 330

malus t 330

malva, 329

GENERAL INDEX

367

Manann&n, 269

mane, 279

Mani, 160

Manichaeans, 160, 167, 219

mano cornuta, 301

Manx, 294

mar, 244, 280, 315, 322, 326, 329,

330, 337, 33 8

mar, 245

mara, (see also Mahre and mare), 77, 126, 127, 143, 144, 172, 232, 233, 243, 244, 245, 254, 255, 256, 259, 301, 302, 309, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 327, 328, 329, 330

mara, 244

marah, 326

mar an, 328

Marat, 77

Marbach, 300

marc, 244

mar cere, 331

marcescent, 331

march, 244, 245, 251, 284, 291,

294, 3<>9, 33i marcha, 326, 337 marchand, 283 marche, 283 marcher, 251 mard, 329, 330 mardu, 332 mare

( = female horse) etymology of 244, 283, 284, 291, 3*4, 315, 326, 337. 338 identified with woman, 247-

250, 254-258 relation to mare == night-hag,

246, 248, 321 (= night-hag)

etymology of 243, 302, 327-

332, 337* 338

relation to mare = female horse, 246, 248, 321

and Witches, 232, 233, 324, 325 mare-riding, 324 marg, 329 MARG, 331 Margate, 263 margin, 331 marh, 327, 337 marha, 326, 337 Mdrhe, 244, 263, 337 marhja, 326, 337 man, 329

Marianne, in

marine, 329

maritime, 329

marja, 337

mark, 283, 331

MARK, 331

marka, 331, 337

market, 331

markiren, 283

mark-os, 326

markten, 283

marline, 328

marmalade, 329

Marne, 320

marren, 328, 336

Mars, 135, 279, 280, 282, 283

Mars Gradivas, 283

marsh, 291, 309, 329

Marspiter, 282

marta, 326

Martel, Charles, 328

Martin d'Arles, 205

martulus, 328

martyr, 331

maru, 329

marul, 144

maruts, 184, 261, 280

marva, 328, 329

masochism, 153

Mass, Black, 185, 202, 203, 220

master-builder, 162

Master of the Sabbath, 141

master-smith, 162

masturbation, 275, 343

Masuria, 309

Mater Dei, 190

materialistic attitude, 14, 75, 88,

343, 345 mauve, 330 May, 268, 280, 325 May-pole, 266 mead, 264, 313, 330 meal, 330 mearh, 244, 326 mearu, 328

Mecklenburg, 228, 321 med, 329 mediumism, 211 Meduegya, 102, 122, Medusa, 298, 299, 303 mel, 329, 330 Melanie, 330 melanotic, 330 melas, 330 meld, 331

368

GENERAL INDEX

MELG, 331 Melissa, in melitha, 330 Mellentin, 255 mellifluous, 330 melt, 330 melta, 330 melzu, 337 men-bears, 131 Mendes, 70 men-hyaenas, 131 Menippus, jo6 men-leopards, 131 mental conflicts, 43, 44, 53 mer, 291 mercenary, 331 merchant, 331 merche, 245 merci, 331 mercy, 331

mere, 244, 284, 291, 326, 329 mere-ly, 329 merenda, 328 mereo, 328 meretricious, 328 merg, 251, 331 merha, 326, 337 meriche, 244 meriod, 328 merit, 328 mer j an, 315 merk, 251 mer ken, 283 Merlin, 82, 182 mermaid, 301 merr, 244 merran t 328 Merse, 331 merus, 329

Mesmin, Madame, 227 messages, 314

metamorphosis (see animals) metempsychosis, 64, 68 s Midas, 294, 307 Midgard, 170 Midsummer Day, 312 Midsummer Night, 286 Mihr, 283 mil, 330 Milan, 227 mild, 330 mildew, 330 miliui, 330 milk, 193, 331 mill, 281

millet, 330

milt, 330

Min, 172

Minerva, 162

mira, 329

mistletoe, 299

Mithra, 172, 279, 283, 289

Mohammed, 182, 297

moil, 330

Moira, 284

molar, 330

Moliones, 280

mollify, 330

mollis, 330

mollusc, 330

molong, 116

Monmouthshire, 95

Montenegro, 127

moor, 291, 328, 329

Moor, 269

moore, 243

mor, 291, 329

Mora( = mara), 77, 116, 119, 126,

224, 302 Moravia, 306 mordacity, 330 mordant, 330 mordere, 330 more, 291 morn, 320 moroiu, 118 moron, 328 morphia, 331 morphology, 331 morsel, 330 mortal, 329 mortify, 329 mor to s, 332

Mother Earth, 104, 173 mould, 330

mountain, 289, 290, 306 mourn, 330 mourning, in, 113 movement, 294, 316, 318 MR root, 243, 326-339 mulcare, 331 mulcere, 331 mulch, 330 mulct, 331 muller, 330

multiple personality, 211 murder, 329 murghe, 251 murren, 336 muses, 313

GENERAL INDEX

369

mystics, 201, 203

mythology, 66, 73, 273, 274, 277, 279* 283, 284, 285, 286, 290, 291, 293, 294, 305, 312, 316, 317, 319, 320

Nahemah, 91

narcolepsy, 211

necrophilia, in, 112, 122, 152

nectar, 208, 248, 264

need-fire, 286

negativism, 211

neighing (see horse)

Nephele, 293

Neptune, 269, 295, 296

Nero, 182

Netherlands, 224, 302

New Year's Day, 324

Nez Perces, 133

Nibelung ring, 301

night, 132

night-bogey, 144, 266

night-fiend, 144, 206, 215, 255, 265,

291, 38, 319, 320, 321, 327 night flight (see nocturnal travel- ling)

night-hag, 143, 243, 245, 330 Night Hunt, 261 Nightmare

animals in, 46

and blood pressure, 15

cardinal features of, 20, 74, 75

and cerebral haemorrhage, 14

circulatory explanation of, 33-34

comparisons with hallucinations, 48, 49, 85, 91

description of, 16-19

and Devil, 183-185

and dread, 20-21

and erotic dreams, 46-48, 76-77

exhaustion from, 25

frequency of, 52

gastric explanation of, 31-33, 35,

38, 39, 51 guilt in, 78 and hysteria, 15 and incest, 44, 76 and Incubation, 96, 97 and Incubi, 85, 86, 89, 97 influence on waking phantasy,

73-74

and insanity, 15, 53 and lewd demons, 77, 78 and masochism, 53 and masturbation, 332, 343

Nightmare (contd.) and menstruation, 44-45 and mental conflict, 36, 44, 76,

77* 78

and myths, 73, 79 nervous explanation of, 30 and paralysis, 22-23 pathogenesis of, 22-41, 344, 345 and physical stimuli, 50-51, 81 and posture, 20, 28, 34, 38, 49 psycho-analytical theory of, 44 psychological explanation of, 36-

37 respiratory explanation of, 35,

39, 5i respiratory oppression in, 21-22,

25

and sadism, 332, 336 seminal emissions in, 46, 49, 328 and sexuality, 44-49, 76, 77 suspension of volition in, 22, 23 time of occurrence of, 27 toxic explanation of, 35, 38 and Vampire, 127-129 vividness of, 18, 20, 21, 74 and Werewolf, 148-151 and Witches, 231-232

night-riding (see nocturnal travel- ling)

Nikarr, 295

nixes, 286

Nixie, 294

Noah's Ark, 301

nocturnal emissions, 88, 89, 119, 120, 130, 328

nocturnal travelling, 125, 126, 130, 131, 145, 161, 199, 223, 228, 230, 231, 235, 237, 258, 260, 261, 322

Normandy, 152, 323

Norse, 152, 187, 263

North America, 92

Norway, 131, 170, 320, 321

Nosferat, 117, 118

nuns, 84, 221

Nuremberg, 146

nymphomania, 53

Ocean of Milk, 248

Oceanus, 296

Ocyrhoe", 297, 310

Odin, 133, 142, 161, 162, 170, 186, 250, 253, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 279, 280, 286, 287, 288, 289, 295, 302, 304,

2 A

370

GENERAL INDEX

Odin (contd.)

306, 309, 311, 313, 314, 323,

325 (see also Wotan) Odin Gunnlodh, 94 Odrerir, 208, 264, 313 Oedipus complex, 151, 154, 156, 190,

222, 270, 271, 276, 288, 347 ointment, 141, 207, 208, 234 Old Davy, 168 Oldenburg, 97, 257, 309 Old Nick, 168, 295 one-eyed, 283 (see also eye) oneiromancy (see Incubation) Onolzbach, 146 opium, 207 oppression fiend, 243 oral (see erotism) oral sadism (see sadism) Order of the Garter, 301 Orient, 196 orire, 292 Orko, 115 Orpheus, 100 Osiris, 132, 301 owl, 107

pact (see Devil)

paganism, 163

Paget, Thievenne, 143

palfrey, 251

Pall Mall, 330

palms, 137

Palukah, 116

Pamphile, 208

Pan, 157, 161, 172, 183, 267

panic, 161

panophobia, 40

Papal Bull, 217

Paracelsus, 140

paralysis, 96, 120

Farsees, (see India)

pavor diurnus, 27

Pearce, Tom, 250

pears, alligator, 29

pederastia, 304

Peel, John, 267

Pegasus, 298, 313

Penangulam, 117

penetration, 308, 310, 311

penis-womb-phantasies, 289, 290

pentagram, 195, 302

pen-y-ceffyl, 287

Perceval, 284

Periander, in

Permessos, 300

persecution, 140

Persephone, 70, 94, 218

Persia, 92, 156, 159, 160, 162, 170,

172, 279, 283, 312 Peru, 227 perversion, 130 pesadilla, 253 pesaruole, 253 pestilence, 256 petrus, 253

phallic stage, 275, 276, 290 phallic symbolism (see symbolism) philosopher's stone, 165 Philyra, 293, 296 Phoenicia, 295 Phrygia, 295 pica, 2ii Piedmont, 333 pilgrimages, 96 Pisichas, 118 pixies, 142 plague, 122, 123 Plato, 82 Pluto, 279 poetry, 313

Poland, 124, 186, 206, 227, 243 polarity, 159 polygamy, 196 Polyphemus, 289 Pomerania, 256 Pomponace, 140 Pontianak, 121 Portugal, 107, 134 Poseidon, 279, 292, 294, 295, 298,

309

possession, 212 Praeneste, 282 predictions, 311 Priscillian, 160 Procrustes, 17 projection, 100 Pschezpolnica, 302 pseudocyesis, 211 psychopomp, 132, 145, 146, 265,

266, 305, 323 Publius Scipio, 94 Puck, 268 purgatory, 114 Puritanism, 229 puss, 234 Pwca, 268

Queen of the Sabbath, 203 rain, 167, 298

GENERAL INDEX

371

raven, 161, 314

rebirth, 64

red hair, 121

release, 126

religion, phallic, 71

Remus, 135, 282

Renner, 292

repression, 41, 43, 44, 45, 49, 53,

75, 76, 77 8 7 Io6 !65 238,

348, 349

retaliation, fear of, 112 re-union, 100, 104, 108 revenant, 63, 106, 107, 112, 127,

148, 153, 169, 187, 234, 346 re-vivification, 187 Rhesos, 292 Rhode Island, 123 Rhodes, 133 riding, 204, 288, 295, 297, 302,

317, 324, 325 Rindr, 264 rinnen, 292 Robert, 268 Robert the Devil, 182 Robin, 268

Robin Goodfellow, 268 Robin Hood, 266, 268 Robit, 280

Roman de la Rose, 231 Rome, 93> Il8 > I2O > I2 7> I 35, 215,

281, 297, 298, 302 Romulus, 135, 282 ros, 299 Ross, 299 Rossbach, 300 Rou mania, 124 Round Table, 301 R sound, 333-336 runes, 311 Ruodperht, 268 Ruprecht, 267, 313 Russia, 124, 227, 234, 271, 276,

287

Rustem, 270 Ruthenia, 118, 189 rye-fiend, 144 rye-wolf (Roggenwolf) (see under

wolf)

Sabbath, 141, 223, 228, 230, 232, 2

• *--

Sabme, 135

Sabos, 219

sacrifice, 279, 321, 325

saddle-girth, 249

sadism, 106, no, 120, 121, 151, 152, 226, 332, 336

anal, in, 118, 227

and anti-social trends, 152

infantile, 81

oral, in, 120, 150 sailing, 295

St. Anthony, 169, 170, 171 St. Benedict, 171 St. Brigitta, 169 St. Coleta, 176, 181 St. Damien, 95 St. Elizabeth, 171 St. George, 170 St. Hubert, 95, 267, 288 St. John's Eve, 286 St. Martin, 162, 171, 267 St. Michael, 265, 267 St. Nicholas, 267, 295 St. Patrick, 133 St. Valentine, 162 St. Victorinus, 171 saints, 201 Salpetridre, 211 salt, 105, 176, 195, 232 Salzburg, 141, 143 Samson, 270, 280, 281, 285,

286

Sanscrit, 159, 279 Satan, 158, 181, 202 (see also

Devil)

Saturn, 162, 293, 296 satyriasis, 50, 53 satyrs, 293 Savitar, 279 Saxony, 227 Scandinavia, 131, 320 Schattenseele, 61 Schmerz, 330 Schmtteli, 77 Scipio Africanus, 82 Scotland, 83, 95, 96, 227, 234,

294

Scythian, 282 Seiler, Joanna, 164 Seraphis, 93 serpent (see snake) Servia, 107, 122, 123, 124, 186 Set, 132, 157, 170 seven, 143

sexuality, infantile, 274, 275 Shamash, 93 shaving, 113 sheep, 137

372

GENERAL INDEX

Shiva, 172

Shulista, 294

Sigi, 152

Sigmund, 133

Sigurd, 269

Sil, 119

Sileth, 119

sin, 84, 139, 198

Sinfjotli, 133

Sisyphus, 17

Siva, 157, 284

Slav, Southern, 119, 124, 126, 232,

287

Sleipnir, 250, 262, 280, 299 smart, 330

Smith of Bielefeld, 174 snake, 107, 127, 264, 277, 282, 283,

301, 309, 310 snake-stone, 301

snake symbolism (see symbolism) solstice, 303 solvent, universal, 165 Soma, 208, 264 somnambulism, 150, 211 Song of Hildebrand, 250 Soranus, 135 sorcerers, 198, 228, 230, 234,

237

soul, concepts of, 61, 62, 74 souttves, 82 South America, 227 Spain, 224, 227 Sparta, 93 spear, 265, 266 speed mania, 316 spine, 120 spiritism, 82 sprites, forest-, 161 Sri, 299

Sri-Bhratri, 296 Staffordshire, 227 stage-fools, 175 stealing, 304-306 stench, 122, 123 sterility, 93, 96, 118, 192, 194 Stockholm, 178 storm, 261 storm-cloud, 264 Strdggeli, 218

straw, 117 *

Striga, 91, 108, 120, 127, 215, 218,

259

Strighe, 218 Succubi, 82

and Witches, 87

sun

-God, 133, 135, 279-283 (see also horse as sun-god)

-hero, 276

as lion, 280, 282

phallic, significance of, 278, 284, 285, 286

rays, 280, 285, 303

-worship, 278, 285, 289 sunamitism, 233 Surya, 284 Svadilfari, 250 Svipall, 264 swan, 70 Swanhild, 253 swan-maidens, 138, 144 swan-shirt, 143 Sweden, 224, 227, 234, 243 Switzerland, 227 sword, 282 Sylvanus, 84 symbolism, eye, 288, 289

flatus, 307, 313

phallic, 94, 120, 135, 138, 161, 260, 278, 285, 288, 296, 303, 306, 308 (see also Devil)

seminal, 299, 303

sexual, 207, 273, 318

snake, 70, 94, 97, 169 syncretism, 161, 163, 286 Synod of Paderborn, 216 Syria, 172, 279

Table, Round (see Round Table)

Taborites, 290

tail, 287

talion, 253

Tartar, 142

Tatos, 276, 322

Taxil, 189

tedium vitae, 211

Telchines, 133

telepathy, 100

Teutonic, 97, 157, 159, 184, 209,

218, 276, 302 Texas, 133 thanatos, 159 Thebes, 93, 95 theft, 304

of eye, 288, 289

of fire, 304

of hat, 288

of horse, 269

of treasure, 305 Thessalia, 106, 150

GENERAL INDEX

373

Thor, 161, 162, 179

thunder-hammer, 161

Tipton, 227

Tifol, 321

Tirol, South, 245

Titans, 174

Tius, 159

Tiwas, 159

toes, 119

tom-cat, (see cat)

Tonkanays, 133

Torquemada, 224

totemism, 71, 81, 135, 321

Toulouse, 187

trance, 128

Transylvania, 124

treasure, 305

Troad, 292

Troy, 292

Tryphiodoros, 280

Tuesday, 159

Tuivel, 158

Turkey, 121, 124

Tvashtris, 279

Twelfth Night, 280, 312

Typhon, 157

Tyr, 179

uber, 124

Uccaihcrava, 277, 287, 306

Ugolino, 17

upier, 124

Upierzyca, 118, 206

Upsala, 253

Uranos, 273

urethral (see erotism)

urination, 291, 298, 299, 317, 318,

319, 338 uvula, 29

Vampire

and blood-sucking, 98, 99, 116-

120

connotations of, 124, 125 and Devil, 187 epidemics of, 121, 122 etymology of, 124 and guilt, 112, 113 and Horse, 321 and incest, 127 and Incubi, 125-127 and Nightmare, 127-129 and plague, 122, 123 present-day beliefs in, 123, 124 treatment of, 116, 124, 126

Vampire (contd.)

and Werewolf, 144-148

and Witches, 233, 234 vapir, 124 vargr, 152 vargs, 152 varsh, 333 varul, 144 Varuna, 289 Vecha, 264 Vedas, 280, 315 vedic, 207, 289, 308, 333 Vedida, 156 Venus, 51, 162 Verdun, Michel, 235 Vereticus, 133 verevulf, 152 versipellis, 136 vesica piscis, 301 Vesta, 281

Virgin Mary, 115, 140, 176, 177 virgins, 87 Vishnu, 93, 284, 301 Voland, 162 volkodlak, 137, 145 Volsunga, 253 vopyr, 124 vrag, 1 86 Vricas, 136 wish, 333

Vritra, 157, 162, 170 vrykolakas, 123, 145

Waldemar, 329

Waldfrau, 218

Wales, 233, 234, 284, 287, 294,

309

Wallachia, 106, 121, 150 Walriderske, 258

wandering, nocturnal (see noctur- nal travelling) waroul, 137 water, 291-293, 296 Watte, 262 ivearg, 152 weather, 262 Wednesday, 266 Weimar, 329 Weisse Frau, 218 Wojjids, 249, 302 Werewolf

and death, 145

and Devil, 141, 146, 186

etymology of, 136

ghost Werewolf, 146

374

GENERAL INDEX

Werewolf (contd.) and ghouls, 148 and hare, 137 and Horse, 321-323 and Incubi, 143 in mythology, 133-136 and Nightmare, 148-151 psychological significance of , 148 transformation of, 133 treatment of, 148 and Vampire, 144-148 and Witches, 140-143, 208, 234-

235

wolfskin, 138, 139, 149

wergeld, 136

Weyer, Johannes, 125

Weyland, 162

widdershins, 185

widows, 102

Wieland, 162

Wild Hunt, 146, 255, 261, 322, 325

Wild Hunter, 161, 162

Wind-god, 307 (see also horse)

wind, west, 134, 284, 310

winter, 132, 135

Witches

charms against, 194, 195

and Church, 214-223

covens, 208

and Devil, 197, 199-210, 232

and Devil pact, 191, 199-201

disappearance of, 225-230

epidemics of, 213, 223-224

and father-incest, 201, 202

and heresy, 191, 215, 217

and hysteria, 211-212

and Incubi, 232

and maleficium, 191-198, 215-

218, 221

and night-hag, 232, 233, 324, 325 and Nightmare, 231-232 and night travel, 203-208, 218 and possession, 211 and Sabbath, 199, 202-208, 219,

220

salve, 206-208

and sexual impotence, 192-194, 199

Witches (contd.)

stigmata of, 211, 212

terror of, 197

trials of, 223-228

and Vampires, 233, 234

and Werewolves, 208, 234-235

and Wild Hunt, 325 witch-finders, 212 witch-riding, 324 Wjeschtitza, 127 wolf

association with corpses, 132

-dances, 133

Devil as arch-wolf, 186

as emblem of craftiness, 132

as emblem of death, 132

as emblem of night, 132

as emblem of winter, 132

-goat, 136

-god, 132, 133, 135

-god as psychopomp, 132

rye-wolf (Roggenwolf) , 149

-skin, 135, 137, 138

wolf of hell, 1 86

women, attitude of Church to- wards, 221, 222 worlin, 137 Wos, 262 Wotan, 162, 262, 263, 265, 266,

289 (see also Odin) wrog, 1 86 wroul, 137 Wunsch, 266 Wunschross (see horse, as magic

steed) wuot, 262

Yahweh, 157, 158, 173 Ynglingasaga, 253 yoni, 301

Zend-Avesta, 156, 296

Zeus, 70, 94, 133, 135, 159, 161,

162, 172, 273, 279, 281 Zio, 159 Zmora, 330 Zodiac, 280, 286 Zoroastrianism, 82, 160