ORDEALS AND OATHS. 311 



Their basis being mere delusive imagination, when honestly adminis- 

 tered their being right or wrong has been matter of mere accident. 

 It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that fair-play ever gen- 

 erally prevailed in the administration of ordeals. As is well known, 

 they have always been engines of political power in the hands of un- 

 scrupulous priests and chiefs. Often it was unnecessary even to cheat, 

 when the arbiter had it at his pleasure to administer either a harmless 

 ordeal like drinking cursed water, or a deadly ordeal by a dose of 

 aconite or physostigma. When it comes to sheer cheating, nothing 

 can be more atrocious than this poison-ordeal. In West Africa, where 

 the Calabar bean is used, the administerers can give the accused a dose 

 which will make him sick, and so prove his innocence, or they can 

 give him enough to prove him guilty, and murder him in the very act 

 of proof; when we consider that over a great part of that great conti- 

 nent this and similar drugs usually determine the destiny of people in- 

 convenient to the fetich-man and the chief the constituted authorities 

 of church and state we see before us one efficient cause of the unpro- 

 gressive character of African society. The famed ordeal by red-hot 

 iron, also, has been a palpable swindle in the hands of the authorities. 

 In India and Arabia the test is to lick the iron, which will burn the 

 guilty tongue but not the innocent. Now, no doubt the judges know 

 the secret that innocent and guilty alike can lick a white-hot iron 

 with impunity, as any blacksmith will do, and as I have done myself, 

 the layer of vapor in a spheroidal state preventing any chemical con- 

 tact with the skin. As for the walking over red-hot ploughshares, or 

 carrying a red-hot iron bar three paces in the palm of the hand, its 

 fraudulent nature fits with the fact that the ecclesiastics who adminis- 

 tered it took their precautions against close approach of spectators 

 much more carefully than the jugglers do who handle the red-hot bars 

 and walk over the ploughshares nowadays ; and, moreover, any list of 

 cases will show how inevitably the friend of the Church got off, while 

 the man on the wrong side was sure to " lose his cause and burn his 

 fingers." Remembering how Queen Emma in the story, with uplifted 

 eyes, walked over the ploughshares without knowing it, and then 

 asked when the trial was to begin, and how, after this triumphant 

 issue, one-and-twenty manors were settled on the bishopric and church 

 of Winchester, it may be inferred with some probability that in such 

 cases the glowing ploughshares glowed with nothing more dangerous 

 than daubs of red paint. 



Almost the only effect of ordeals which can be looked upon as 

 beneficial to society is, that the belief in their efficacy has done some- 

 thing to deter the credulous from crime, and still more often has led 

 the guilty to betray himself by his own terrified imagination. Visitors 

 to Rome know the great round marble mask called the Bocca della 

 Verita. It is but the sink of an old drain ; but many a frightened 

 knave has shrunk from the test of putting his hand into its open 



