“Ah! Durendal, most holy, fair indeed! Relics enough thy golden hilt conceals: Saint Peter’s Tooth, the Blood of Saint Basile, Some of the Hairs of my lord, Saint Denise, Some of the Robe, was worn by Saint Mary.”[132]
I cannot call it fair fighting, and wonder that, thus armed, he should ever have been mortally wounded by the miscreant hordes of Mahum and Tervagant, however numerous.
An influential outgrowth of primitive Magic is the taboo. Taboo is the dangerousness of a person, or thing, or action, or word, conceived of as a motive for not touching or uttering or meddling therewith. The dangerousness may either lie in the nature of a person or thing, or be imposed upon it. A chief, for example, and everything belonging to him, is generally taboo by inherent sacredness: he is, like Mr. Weeks’s Congolese, full of evil magic. The idea of the talisman has thus been extended to include certain men. In many tribes it includes all women; but since to make them always taboo is too much for human nature, they are treated as such only periodically, or when a man is about to be exposed to some further danger, which will be the more likely to injure him when already contaminated by evil magic.[133] This is very clear in a case reported by Prof. Seligman:[134] at Yam warriors were forbidden to sleep with their wives before battle; else “bow and arrow belong other fellow he smell you, he shoot you, you no got luck.” Still, physical consequences (which may explain the superstition) are also considered: a diver for pearl-shell must similarly abstain; because, else, “man he sleepy.” The continence required of women to ensure the safety of their husbands when away at war or hunting may be due to a belief in a “sympathy” or “participation,” as if husband and wife were in some mysterious _rapport_; but, deeper, there may have been a fetch of policy. When magical taboos are generally recognised and feared, it becomes possible to use them for social purposes: one cannot be sure that every magical observance had its origin in magical belief. Thus the food-rules of Australian tribes consist of taboos upon the enjoyment of certain foods by women and young men, and are plainly devised in the interests of the gerontocracy: so why should not a fiction be founded on Magic in the interest of absent husbands?