124 



SALUTATIONS 



value. The ceremonious politenem of modern 

 Europe lias descended in great measure from the 

 unworthy regime of the Lower Roman Empire, 

 ami it- traditions, now OH well as then, are in- 

 capable of being taken literally, its metaphors 

 translated into fact. It is a complete mistake to 

 Huppoxe that savages are at all informal or extem- 

 porary in their salutations and ceremonies. Salu- 

 tations tend to become leas elaborate in pro- 

 gressive civilisation, the tendency being toward 

 the preservation only of those which help to 

 soften the asperities of social intercourse. Savages 

 are much more given to gesticulation than 

 civilised men. Yet it is unsafe to say that 

 this depends solely upon degrees of culture, for 

 there is a wide difference at the present day 

 between the Neapolitan or Tarasconese and the 

 German or Scotchman. No race has neglected the 

 use of gesture more than the English only among 

 our deaf-mutes do we see what the capability of 

 gesture is. and of what a wealth of expression we 

 nave deprived ourselves. .Many of the natural 

 gesture-signs, used as occasion arises, do not fall 

 under the head of salutations, as involving nothing 

 ceremonial, such as beckoning with the hand, 

 thrusting out the tongue, snapping the finders, 

 or such vulgarisms as ' taking a sight ' itself a 

 mark of respect among the Todas and the like ; 

 nor yet such natural but significant outward ex- 

 pressions of inward emotion as weeping or trem- 

 bling for fear, grief or joy, or yet blushing, which 

 Darwin calls ' the most peculiar and the most 

 human of all expressions.' 



One of the most ancient and wide-spread, as well 

 as natural, forms of salutation by gesture is the 

 embrace in testimony of affection, as we find it in 

 the Old Testament and in Homer. The kiss 

 was at no time universal, being unknown among 

 Fnegians, New Zealanders, Papuans, Australians, 

 and Eskimos. It was used by the ancient 

 Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, and among the 

 early Christians was adopted as a sign of fellow- 

 ship, survivals of which are the Eastern kiss of 

 peace at the Eucharist and the Western modified 

 use of the osciilotorium or /". In England it 

 was formerly the custom to kiss at the beginning 

 and end of a dance, as well as on meeting a lady or 

 taking leave of her ; and the favourite game among 

 the lower orders of ' kiss-in-the-ring ' is the last sur- 

 vivor among many similar old English pastimes. 

 As a general form of salutation, however, it 

 appears to have been a custom peculiarly English ; 

 .'Eneas Sylvius describes the Scottish women of his 

 day as 'giving their kisses more readily than 

 Italian women their hands ; ' Erasmus, in a letter 

 to a friend, describes it as a custom never suffici- 

 ently to be praised, and Bulstrode Whitelocke 

 describes his satisfaction in teaching the English 

 mode to Queen Christina's ladies at the court of 

 Sweden. The Puritans objected strongly to it, but 

 its disuse was really the result of the I 1 reiich airs 

 that came in with Charles II., and it lingered 

 unong honest country-folk till the times of the 

 fififi'tntiir. It is still used ceremoniously between 

 royal personages, mid still on the Continent even 

 '!. ween men at parting or meeting again after an 

 atmence, as well as in the more servile forms of 

 kissing the hand of a royal personage or the foot 

 of the pope. The custom of grasping or shaking 

 hands in now widely spread over the world, either 

 in the English mctliod, with its many gradations 

 of heartiness, or the Moslem variety of pressing 

 the thumbs against one another as well ; but it 

 in not really a primitive custom even-where, and 

 is by no means, as Dr Tylor has shown, to be 

 explained with Herbert Spencer as a compromise 

 Iwtween a simultaneous effort of two persons to 

 kin each others' hands in token of submission. 



Ito real origin lies deeper in the universal gesture- 

 language Hi mankind, tlir e*ential m-t Wing a 

 joining of handa to express compact, union, peace, 

 or friendship. The Roman autrarum jniirlio, 

 in making a contract of marriage, preserved by 

 ourselves, and the early ('Ini-ti.-in 'right hand of 

 fellowship,' point to the real origin of what has 

 )>ecome a mere salutation with us as with the 

 Romans themselves. Other hums of salutation 

 that ret-all tin- civilities <ihsrivcd anion^ dogs, 

 cats, and other animals are forms of bodily con- 

 tact, as the rubbing of Hours of the Laplanders 

 and New Zealanderx ; the patting of each oil 

 arms, breast*, or stomachs, by North American 

 Indians; the Polynesian stroking of one's own 

 face with another's hand or foot ; the clapping 

 of hands and leaping backwards and forwards in 

 Loango ; the snapping the fingers in Dahomey : 

 the Batongan rolling on the bock along the ground, 

 slapping the thighs the while; the blowing with 

 the breath upon another, descrilied by I)u Chaillu, 

 in Africa ; or Sir Samuel Baker's description of the 

 Abyssinian custom of holding another s hand and 

 pretending to spit upon it. The Polynesians and 

 Malays always sit down when speaking to a supe- 

 rior ; a Chinaman puts on his hat instead of taking 

 it off; on the Congo and elsewhere in Central 

 Africa it shows respect to turn the back upon a 

 superior in addressing him. The Tongans reserve 

 the use of certain words for the king alone, and 

 they employ the third person in token of respect. 

 Still more markrd is the difference between cere- 

 monial and common speech in Samoa, and here 

 also they use the plural in speaking to a superior. 

 In Fiji if a great man slips or falls every one of 

 inferior rank must at once do the same 



Other groups of ceremonial salutations are the 

 prostrations before a superior of ancient Egypt and 

 Assyria, as well as of modern Dahomey, and of 

 regular Moslem divine worship ; the lying with the 

 face in the dust of China and Siam ; the ancient 

 Malagasy custom of a wife crawling on all fours 

 before a husband and licking his feet ; the Arab 

 refinement of putting the hand upon the ground 

 and then lifting it to the lips and forehead ; the 

 kneeling on one knee to express homage to a 

 European sovereign, as on Imili in divine worship ; 

 t he turning toward the east, the genuflection before 

 the host, or bowing at the pronouncing of the name 

 of Jesus in Christian churches. Ihese are all 

 originally signs of submission or of inability to re- 

 sist, meant to deprecate the majesty or the wrath of 

 superior power. We find falling on the face before 

 a potentate in the Old Testament, ami in China at 

 the present time among the eight kinds of obei- 

 sances, increasing in humility, the first is putting 

 the hands together and raising them before the 

 breast ; the second, l>owing low with the hands 

 joined; the third, bending the knee; the fourth, 

 actual kneeling ; the fifth is kneeling and striking 

 the head on the ground ; the sixth, kneeling and 

 thrice knocking the head, which again doubled 

 makes the seventh, and trebled, the eighth the 

 famous kotmr which Lord Amherst refused in 1816: 

 this last being due to the en>|K?ror and to heaven. 

 Among the Hebrews repetition had a kindred 

 meaning 'Jacob bowed himself to the ground 

 seven times, until he came near to his brother.' 

 Survivals amongst ourselves of ancient more abject 

 forms are the curtsy in the one sex, and in the 

 other the sent/it till lately accompanying the bow, 

 mode by a backward sweep of the riglit foot. From 

 the profound bow, expressive of great respect, our 

 usage shades away to the mojiern curt nod, in 

 which respect has degenerated into mere recogni- 

 tion. 



Uncovering, again, is a characteristic ijrmbo] of 

 submission in presence of a superior (Isa. xx. 2-4), 



