MOTHERRIGHT 259 



or it is enough to rub the bleeding wounds together, 

 so that the blood of both parties is mixed and smeared 

 upon them both. Among certain tribes of Borneo the 

 drops are allowed to fall upon a leaf, which is then 

 made up into a cigar with tobacco and lighted and 

 smoked alternately by both parties. 1 But whatever 

 may be the exact form adopted, the essence of the rite 

 is the same, and its range is extraordinarily wide. It is 

 mentioned by classical writers as practised by the Arabs 

 the Scythians the Lydians and Iberians of Asia Minor 

 and apparently the Medes. Many passages of the 

 Bible, many of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, are 

 inexplicable apart from it. Ancient Arab historians 

 are full of allusions to it. Odin and Loki entered 

 into the bond, which means that it was customary 

 among the Norsemen as we know in fact from other 

 sources. It is recorded by Giraldus of the Irish of his 

 day ; and it still lingered as lately as two hundred 

 years ago among the western islanders of Scotland. 

 It is related of the Huns or Magyars and of the 

 mediaeval Roumanians. Joinville ascribes it to one of 

 the tribes of the Caucasus ; and the Rabbi Petachia 

 of Ratisbon, who travelled in Ukrainia in the twelfth 

 century, found it there. In modern times every African 

 traveller mentions it ; many of them have had to un- 

 dergo the ceremony. In the neighbouring island of 

 Madagascar it is well known. All over the Eastern 

 Archipelago, in the Malay peninsula, among the 

 Karens, the Siamese, the Dards on the northern 

 border of our Indian empire and many of the 

 aboriginal tribes of Bengal and Central India the 

 wild tribes of China, the Syrians of Lebanon and 

 1 Roth, Sarawak, ii. 206. 



