The Golden Bough - The Original Classic Edition. Frazer Sir

gone all round the community, when it came back to the lad's father, and finally to the lad himself. But however it was thus conveyed from hand to hand, it might on no account be placed in a bag containing magical substances, for to do so would, they believed, put the owner of the tooth in great danger. The late Dr. Howitt

       once acted as custodian of the teeth which had been extracted from some novices at a ceremony of initiation, and the old men earnestly besought him not to carry them in a bag in which they knew that he had some quartz crystals. They declared that if he did so the magic of the crystals would pass into the teeth, and so injure the boys. Nearly a year after Dr. Howitt's return from the ceremony he was visited by one of the principal men of the Murring tribe, who had travelled some two hundred and fifty miles from his home

       to fetch back the teeth. This man explained that he had been sent for them because one of the boys had fallen into ill health, and it

       was believed that the teeth had received some injury which had affected him. He was assured that the teeth had been kept in a box

       apart from any substances, like quartz crystals, which could influence them; and he returned home bearing the teeth with him care-

       fully wrapt up and concealed.

       The Basutos are careful to conceal their extracted teeth, lest these should fall into the hands of certain mythical beings who haunt graves, and who could harm the owner of the tooth by working magic on it. In Sussex some fifty years ago a maidservant remonstrated strongly against the throwing away of children's cast teeth, affirming that should they be found and gnawed by any animal,

       the child's new tooth would be, for all the world, like the teeth of the animal that had bitten the old one. In proof of this she named old Master Simmons, who had a very large pig's tooth in his upper jaw, a personal defect that he always averred was caused by his mother, who threw away one of his cast teeth by accident into the hog's trough. A similar belief has led to practices intended, on

       the principles of homoeopathic magic, to replace old teeth by new and better ones. Thus in many parts of the world it is custom-

       ary to put extracted teeth in some place where they will be found by a mouse or a rat, in the hope that, through the sympathy which

       continues to subsist between them and their former owner, his other teeth may acquire the same firmness and excellence as the teeth

       of these rodents. For example, in Germany it is said to be an almost universal maxim among the people that when you have had a

       tooth taken out you should insert it in a mouse's hole. To do so with a child's milk-tooth which has fallen out will prevent the child

       from having toothache. Or you should go behind the stove and throw your tooth backwards over your head, saying "Mouse, give me

       your iron tooth; I will give you my bone tooth." After that your other teeth will remain good. Far away from Europe, at Raratonga, in

       the Pacific, when a child's tooth was extracted, the following prayer used to be recited:

       "Big rat! little rat!

       Here is my old tooth.

       Pray give me a new one."

       Then the tooth was thrown on the thatch of the house, because rats make their nests in the decayed thatch. The reason assigned for invoking the rats on these occasions was that rats' teeth were the strongest known to the natives.

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       Other parts which are commonly believed to remain in a sympathetic union with the body, after the physical connexion has been

       severed, are the navel-string and the afterbirth, including the placenta. So intimate, indeed, is the union conceived to be, that the

       fortunes of the individual for good or evil throughout life are often supposed to be bound up with one or other of these portions of

       his person, so that if his navel-string or afterbirth is preserved and properly treated, he will be prosperous; whereas if it be injured or

       lost, he will suffer accordingly. Thus certain tribes of Western Australia believe that a man swims well or ill, according as his mother

       at his birth threw the navel-string into water or not. Among the natives on the Pennefather River in Queensland it is believed that

       a part of the child's spirit (cho-i) stays in the afterbirth. Hence the grandmother takes the afterbirth away and buries it in the sand.

       She marks the spot by a number of twigs which she sticks in the ground in a circle, tying their tops together so that the structure

       resembles a cone. When Anjea, the being who causes conception in women by putting mud babies into their wombs, comes along

       and sees the place, he takes out the spirit and carries it away to one of his haunts, such as a tree, a hole in a rock, or a lagoon where

       it may remain for years. But sometime or other he will put the spirit again into a baby, and it will be born once more into the world.

       In Ponape, one of the Caroline Islands, the navel-string is placed in a shell and then disposed of in such a way as shall best adapt

       the child for the career which the parents have chosen for him; for example, if they wish to make him a good climber, they will hang

       the navel-string on a tree. The Kei islanders regard the navel-string as the brother or sister of the child, according to the sex of the

       infant. They put it in a pot with ashes, and set it in the branches of a tree, that it may keep a watchful eye on the fortunes of its

       comrade. Among the Bataks of Sumatra, as among many other peoples of the Indian Archipelago, the placenta passes for the child's younger brother or sister, the sex being determined by the sex of the child, and it is buried under the house. According to the Bataks

       it is bound up with the child's welfare, and seems, in fact, to be the seat of the transferable soul, of which we shall hear something

       later on. The Karo Bataks even affirm that of a man's two souls it is the true soul that lives with the placenta under the house; that is

       the soul, they say, which begets children.

       The Baganda believe that every person is born with a double, and this double they identify with the afterbirth, which they regard as

       a second child. The mother buries the afterbirth at the root of a plantain tree, which then becomes sacred until the fruit has ripened,

       when it is plucked to furnish a sacred feast for the family. Among the Cherokees the navel-string of a girl is buried under a corn-

       mortar, in order that the girl may grow up to be a good baker; but the navel-string of a boy is hung up on a tree in the woods, in

       order that he may be a hunter. The Incas of Peru preserved the navel-string with the greatest care, and gave it to the child to suck

       whenever it fell ill. In ancient Mexico they used to give a boy's navel-string to soldiers, to be buried by them on a field of battle, in

       order that the boy might thus acquire a passion for war. But the navel-string of a girl was buried beside the domestic hearth, because

       this was believed to inspire her with a love of home and taste for cooking and baking.

       Even in Europe many people still believe that a person's destiny is more or less bound up with that of his navel-string or afterbirth. Thus in Rhenish Bavaria the navel-string is kept for a while wrapt up in a piece of old linen, and then cut or pricked to pieces according as the child is a boy or a girl, in order that he or she may grow up to be a skilful workman or a good sempstress. In Berlin the midwife commonly delivers the dried navel-string to the father with a strict injunction to preserve it carefully, for so long as it is kept the child will live and thrive and be free from sickness. In Beauce and Perche the people are careful to throw the navel-string neither into water nor into fire, believing that if that were done the child would be drowned or burned.

       Thus in many parts of the world the navel-string, or more commonly the afterbirth, is regarded as a living being, the brother or sister of