FOOTNOTES
1 "The Scapegoat," pp. 89-90.
2 This is true, alas, even in Christendom. But outside its pale,
"Superstition has sacrificed countless lives, wasted untold treasures,
embroiled nations, severed friends, parted husbands and wives, parents
and children, putting swords and worse than swords between them; it
has filled jails and mad-houses with innocent or deluded victims; it
has broken many hearts, embittered the whole of many a life, and not
content with persecuting the living it has pursued the dead into the
grave and beyond it, gloating over the horrors which its foul imagination
has conjured up to appall and torture the survivors. How numerous
its ramifications and products have been is merely hinted in the
following list of subjects given as cross-references in a public library
catalogue card: Alchemy, apparitions, astrology, charms, delusions,
demonology, devil-worship, divination, evil eye, fetishism, folk-lore,
legends, magic, mythology, occult sciences, oracles, palmistry, relics,
second sight, sorcery, spiritualism, supernatural, totems and witchcraft.
This force has pervaded all provinces of life from the cradle to
the grave, and, as Frazer says, beyond. It establishes customs as binding
as taboo, dictates forms of worship and perpetuates them, obsesses
the imagination and leads it to create a world of demons and hosts
of lesser spirits and ghosts and ghouls, and inspires fear and even
worship of them." (The New Schaff Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge," Vol. XI, p. 169.)
Professor F. B. Dresslar of the University of California prepared a
list of those things with which superstition was connected in that
State. He secured the list through questions to grown-up people in the
present century. It was as follows: Salt, bread and butter, tea and
coffee, plants and fruit; fire, lightning, rainbow, the moon, the stars;
babies, birds, owls, peacocks and their feathers, chickens, cats, dogs,
cows, swine, horses, rabbits, rats, frogs and toads, fish, sheep, crickets,
snakes, lizards, turtles, wolves, bees, dragon flies; chairs and tables,
clocks, mirrors, spoons, knives and forks, pointed instruments, pins,
hairpins, combs, umbrellas (mostly unlucky), candles, matches,
teakettle, brooms, dishcloths, handkerchiefs, gardening tools, ladders,
horseshoes, hay; days of the week and various festivals or fasts,
especially Halloween, birthdays; various numbers, counting, laughing,
singing, crying; starting on a journey and turning back, two persons
simultaneously saying the same thing, passing in at one door and out
at another, walking on opposite sides of a post, stepping on cracks,
sneezing, crossing hands while shaking hands, use of windows as exits,
stumbling; itching of palm, eye, nose, ear, or foot; warts, moles;
various articles of dress, shoes, precious stones, amulets and charms, rings,
money; wish-bones; death and funerals, dreams, spiritisms, weddings,
and initials.
3 Skeat's "Malay Magic," pp. 43-45.
4 "Taboo and the Perils of the Soul," pp. 274-275.
5 Skeat's "Malay Magic," p. 355.
6 "The Ban of the Bori," p. 57.
7 "O Satan, this is a safe deposit from us as God is our
witness."
8 Correspondence in a magazine called Central Asia for December, 1916.
9 There are traditions in Bukhari and Muslim to show' the sacred
power of Mohammed's blood, spittle, etc. It is also taught that
even the exereta of the prophet of Arabia were free from all
defilement. Cf. "Insan al Ayun al Halebi " Vol.11, p. 222.
10 Margin of Sirat at Halabi, Cairo Edition, 1308 A.H., vol. iii, pp. 238-9.
11 Der Christliche Orient, Sept., 1911.
12 "The Moslem World" Vol. I, p. 306.
13 Hamilton's "Hedaya," Vol. II, p. 439.
14 Letter from Miss S.Y. Holliday of Tabriz.
15 "The Achenese, p. 296.
16 Dr. B. J. Esser, Poerbolinggo, Java, in a letter.
17 "Malay Beliefs," p. 53.
18 Regarding the hair of Mohammed, a legend is told among the
Malays that on his journey to heaven on the monster Al-burak, they
cleft the moon and when Mohammed was shaved by Gabriel the houris
of heaven fought for the falling locks so that not a single hair was
allowed to reach the ground. "Malay Beliefs," p. 43.
19 "Fetishism in West Africa," p. 83. "Malay Beliefs," p. 72.
20 "Superstition and Education," p. 72.
21 "Jewish Encyclopedia," Art. Nails.
22 "Jewish Encyclopedia," Art. Nails.
23 Minhaj et Talibin Nawawi p. 120.
24 Burton's "Pilgrimage," Vol.II, p. 205.
25 "Bulletin da la Societe de Geographie d'Alger et de l'Afrique du Nord," 1907, No. 4.
26 Dresslar remarks concerning similar beliefs in the United States,
"Experiments upon school children show that there is more disparity
between the right and left sides of the body of the brighter pupils than
there is between the right and left of the duller ones. Doubtless this
same augmented difference holds throughout life, or at least to the
period of senescence. It is nothing more nor less than the result of
specialization which increases as growing thought-life calls upon the
right members of the body for finer adjustment and more varied and
perfect execution. Hence, the right members become more the special
organs of the will than the left, induce a greater proportion of emotional
reaction, and altogether become more closely bound up with the
mental life. That this specialization gives an advantage in accuracy,
strength, control, and endurance of the right side there can be no
doubt. But it seems equally certain that it introduces mental
partialities not at all times consistent with well-balanced judgment, or
the most trustworthy emotional promptings. Indeed this difference
is recorded in the meaning and use of the two words, dextrous and
sinister. The thought that relates itself to the stronger side is more
rational than that which deals with the weaker and less easily
controlled half.
"In addition to this fundamental basis for psychic differentiation
with respect to the left and right, it is probable that the beating of
the heart, strange and wonderful to the primitive mind, had some
influence in connecting the left side with the awful and mysterious."
("Superstition and Education," pp. 208-207.)