ORDEALS AND OATHS. 309 



together into water, and the one whose lump is gone first is in the 

 wrong. Or they put two live shell-fish on a plate, one for each dis. 

 putant, and squeeze lime-juice over them, the verdict being given 

 according to which man's champion-mollusk moves first. This reason- 

 ing is such as any child can enter into. Among the Sandwich- 

 Islanders, again, when a thief had to be detected, the priest would 

 consecrate a dish of water, and the suspected persons, one by one, 

 held their hands over it, till the approach of the guilty was known by 

 the water trembling. Here the connection of ideas is plain. But we 

 may see it somewhat more fully thought out in Europe, where the old 

 notion remains on record that the executioner's sword will tremble 

 when a thief draws near, and even utter a dull clang at the approach 

 of a murderer. 



Starting with the magical ordeal, we have next to notice how the 

 religious element is imported into it. Take the ordeal of the balance, 

 well known to Hindoo law. A rude pair of scales is set up with its 

 wooden scale-beam supported on posts ; the accused is put in one 

 scale, and stones and sand in the other to counterpoise him ; then he 

 is taken out, to be put in again after the balance has been called upon 

 to show his guilt by letting him go down, or his innocence by raising 

 him up. This is pure magic, the ideal weight of guilt being by mere 

 absurd association of ideas transferred to material weight in a pair 

 of scales. In this process no religious act is essential, but in practice 

 it is introduced by prayers and sacrifices, and a sacred formula 

 appealing to the great gods who know the walk of men, so that it is 

 sonsidered to be by their divine aid that the accused rises or falls at 

 once in material fact and moral metaphor. If he either goes fairly up 

 or down the case is clear. But a difficulty arises if the accused hap- 

 pens to weigh the same as he did five minutes before, so nearly at 

 least as can be detected by a pair of heavy wooden scales which 

 would hardly turn within an ounce or two. This embarrassing pos- 

 sibility has in fact perplexed the Hindoo lawyers not a little. One 

 learned pundit says, " He is guilty, unless he goes right up ! " A 

 second suggests, " Weigh him again ! " A third distinguishes with 

 subtlety, "If he weighs the same he is guilty, but not so guilty as if 

 he had gone right down ! " The one only interpretation that never 

 occurs to any of them is, that sin may be an imponderable. We may 

 smile at the Hindoo way of striking a moral balance, but it should be 

 remembered that a similar practice, probably a survival from the same 

 original Aryan rite, was kept up in England within the last century. 

 In 1759, near Aylesbury, a woman who could not get her spinning- 

 wheel to go round, and naturally concluded that it had been be- 

 witched, charged one Susannah Haynokes with being the witch. At 

 this Susannah's husband was indignant, and demanded that his wife 

 should be allowed to clear herself by the customary ordeal of weigh- 

 ing. So they took her to the parish church, stripped her to her uuder 



