CANNIBALISM AS A CUSTOM. 205 



CAI^NIBALISM AS A CUSTOM. 



Bt a. ST. JOHNSTON. 



THERE is a certain weird atti*activeness about the subject of can- 

 nibalism, a grim fascination in its grisly horrors, that is not 

 easily to be explained, but which, although few of us will admit it, 

 most of us have experienced. Perhaps it is in subjective cannibalism 

 alone that this uncanny attraction exists ; objective cannibalism may 

 not possess the same eerie charm. But the very fact that cannibalism 

 either exists now, or ever existed, is, however, denied by some skep- 

 tical persons — mostly strict and rigid vegetarians, one would think — 

 who argue that wild and natural races of men can not and do not lust 

 for flesh. The fact remains the same. 



It seems that this time-honored practice — crime, many unthinking 

 and unjudicial people would call it, whose opinions have been formed 

 without consideration of the relation of crime to custom — has, at dif- 

 ferent times, existed in almost every part of the earth. It seems to 

 have lingered longest in the most beautiful i-egions of it — in Polynesia, 

 namely, where the writer of this, but for a fortunate and timely warn- 

 ing, would himself have fallen a victim to the custom for which he has 

 a feeling of respect, if not exactly of affection. 



Our remote, possible forefathers themselves, the prehistoric cave- 

 men of Europe in the Quaternary period, were addicted to this habit, 

 which a pious feeling of respect for our ancestry should alone prevent 

 us from characterizing as a crime. Evidences of their occasional little 

 anthropophagistic failings, in the shape of scraped and chipped human 

 bones which, besides being cooked, are broken in a manner too scien- 

 tific and skillful to be the work of animals, are not infrequent, though 

 it is believed by paleontologists that the custom was more of an ex- 

 ception than a rule. Animal food being plentiful at that time in these 

 cold northern latitudes, the greatest incentive to cannibalism was want- 

 ing, and the very practice of it shows a tendency to epicurean indul- 

 gence and luxury that already (from a very long way off) pointed to 

 the future extinction of their race. The ancient Irish, too, in more 

 recent than Quaternary times, ate their own dead ; and our own Saxon 

 forefathers must have possessed a knowledge of the custom if they did 

 not in early times actually practice it, as is shown by the Saxon word 

 manceta, which occurs not infrequently in their literature. 



Tales of cannibalism have also come down to us from classic times, 

 which prove that the Greeks were at least not ignorant of it. Poly- 

 phemus in the " Odyssey " was a man-eater ; and Herodotus tells us 

 of a race of men, the Massagetse, who ate their aged parents, going 

 only a step further than the Feejeeans, who simply buried theirs alive. 

 The Padsei, the father of history also tells us, ate their relatives when 



