thinking that in consequence they would pine and die.[1] Some people in Russia object to having their silhouettes taken, fearing that if this is done they will die before the year is out.[2] There are persons in the West of Scotland “who refuse to have their likeness taken lest it prove unlucky; and give as instances the cases of several of their friends who never had a day’s health after being photographed.”[3]
§ 3.—Royal and priestly taboos (continued)
So much for the primitive conceptions of the soul and the dangers to which it is exposed. These conceptions are not limited to one people or country; with variations of detail they are found all over the world, and survive, as we have seen, in modern Europe. Beliefs so deep-seated and so widespread must necessarily have contributed to shape the mould in which the early kingship was cast. For if every individual was at such pains to save his own soul from the perils which threatened it from so many sides, how much more carefully must he have been guarded upon whose life hung the welfare and even the existence of the whole people, and whom therefore it was the common interest of all to preserve? Therefore we should expect to find the king’s life protected by a system of precautions or safeguards still more numerous and minute than those which in primitive society every man adopts
- ↑ “A far-off Greek Island,” Blackwood’s Magazine, February 1886, p. 235.
- ↑ Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 117.
- ↑ James Napier, Folk-lore: or, Superstitions Beliefs in the West of Scotland, p. 142. For more examples of the same sort, see R. Andree, Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche, Neue Folge (Leipzig, 1889), p. 18 sqq.
