Yet, whatever absurdities our
Mandevylles may have obtruded on the public, the evidence of the fact is
not thereby wholly destroyed.
Mandevylles may have obtruded on the public, the evidence of the fact is
not thereby wholly destroyed.
Camoes - Lusiades
Porphyry (de Abstin.
i.
4 ?
21{*}) says that the Massagetae
and Derbices (people of north-eastern Asia), esteeming those most
miserable who died of sickness, when their parents and relations grew
old, killed and ate them, holding it more honourable thus to consume
them than that they should be destroyed by vermin. St. Jerome has
adopted this word for word, and has added to it an authority of his own:
"Quid loquar," says he, (Adv. Jov. l. 2, c. 6), "de caeteris nationibus;
cum ipse adolescentulus in Gallia viderim Scotos, gentem Britannicam,
humanis vesci carnibus, et cum per sylvas porcorum greges et armentorum,
pecudumque reperiant, pastorum nates, et faeminarum papillas solere
abscindere, et has solas ciborum delicias arbitrari? " Mandevylle ought
next to be cited. "Aftirwarde men gon be many yles be see unto a yle
that men clepen Milhe: there is a full cursed peple: thei delyten in ne
thing more than to fighten and to fie men, and to drynken gladlyest
mannes blood, which they clepen Dieu. "--P. 235. Yet, whatever absurdity
may appear on the face of these tales; and what can be more absurd than
to suppose that a few wild Scots or Irish (for the name was then proper
to Ireland), should so lord it in Gaul, as to eat the breasts of the
women and the hips of the shepherds?
Yet, whatever absurdities our
Mandevylles may have obtruded on the public, the evidence of the fact is
not thereby wholly destroyed. Though Dampier and other visitors of
barbarous nations have assured us that they never met with any
man-eaters, and though Voltaire has ridiculed the opinion, yet one may
venture the assertion of their existence, without partaking of a
credulity similar to that of those foreigners, who believed that the men
of Kent were born with tails like sheep (see Lambert's Peramb. ), the
punishment inflicted upon them for the murder of Thomas a Becket. Many
are the credible accounts, that different barbarous nations used to eat
their prisoners of war. According to the authentic testimony of the best
Portuguese writers, the natives of Brazil, on their high festivals,
brought forth their captives, and after many barbarous ceremonies, at
last roasted and greedily devoured their mangled limbs. During his
torture the unhappy victim prided himself in his manly courage,
upbraiding their want of skill in the art of tormenting, and telling his
murderers that his belly had been the grave of many of their relations.
Thus the fact was certain long before a late voyage discovered the
horrid practice in New Zealand. To drink human blood has been more
common. The Gauls and other ancient nations practised it. When
Magalhaens proposed Christianity to the King of Subo, a north-eastern
Asiatic island, and when Francis de Castro discovered Santigana and
other islands, a hundred leagues north of the Moluccas, the conversion
of their kings was confirmed by each party drinking of the blood of the
other. Our poet Spenser tells us, in his View of the State of Ireland,
that he has seen the Irish drink human blood, particularly, he adds, "at
the execution of a notable traitor at Limerick, called Murrogh O'Brien,
I saw an old woman, who was his foster-mother, take up his head whilst
he was quartering and suck up all the blood that run thereout, saying,
that the earth was not worthy to drink it, and therewith also steeped
her face and breast and tore her hair, crying out and shrieking most
terribly. " It is worthy of regard that the custom of marking themselves
with hot irons, and tattooing, is characteristic both of the Guios of
Camoens and of the present inhabitants of New Zealand. And if, as its
animals indicate, the island of Otaheite was first peopled by a
shipwreck, the friendship existing in a small society might easily
obliterate the memory of one custom, while the less unfriendly one of
tattooing was handed down, a memorial that they owed their origin to the
north-eastern parts of Asia, where that custom particularly prevails.
{*} ? ? ?
and Derbices (people of north-eastern Asia), esteeming those most
miserable who died of sickness, when their parents and relations grew
old, killed and ate them, holding it more honourable thus to consume
them than that they should be destroyed by vermin. St. Jerome has
adopted this word for word, and has added to it an authority of his own:
"Quid loquar," says he, (Adv. Jov. l. 2, c. 6), "de caeteris nationibus;
cum ipse adolescentulus in Gallia viderim Scotos, gentem Britannicam,
humanis vesci carnibus, et cum per sylvas porcorum greges et armentorum,
pecudumque reperiant, pastorum nates, et faeminarum papillas solere
abscindere, et has solas ciborum delicias arbitrari? " Mandevylle ought
next to be cited. "Aftirwarde men gon be many yles be see unto a yle
that men clepen Milhe: there is a full cursed peple: thei delyten in ne
thing more than to fighten and to fie men, and to drynken gladlyest
mannes blood, which they clepen Dieu. "--P. 235. Yet, whatever absurdity
may appear on the face of these tales; and what can be more absurd than
to suppose that a few wild Scots or Irish (for the name was then proper
to Ireland), should so lord it in Gaul, as to eat the breasts of the
women and the hips of the shepherds?
Yet, whatever absurdities our
Mandevylles may have obtruded on the public, the evidence of the fact is
not thereby wholly destroyed. Though Dampier and other visitors of
barbarous nations have assured us that they never met with any
man-eaters, and though Voltaire has ridiculed the opinion, yet one may
venture the assertion of their existence, without partaking of a
credulity similar to that of those foreigners, who believed that the men
of Kent were born with tails like sheep (see Lambert's Peramb. ), the
punishment inflicted upon them for the murder of Thomas a Becket. Many
are the credible accounts, that different barbarous nations used to eat
their prisoners of war. According to the authentic testimony of the best
Portuguese writers, the natives of Brazil, on their high festivals,
brought forth their captives, and after many barbarous ceremonies, at
last roasted and greedily devoured their mangled limbs. During his
torture the unhappy victim prided himself in his manly courage,
upbraiding their want of skill in the art of tormenting, and telling his
murderers that his belly had been the grave of many of their relations.
Thus the fact was certain long before a late voyage discovered the
horrid practice in New Zealand. To drink human blood has been more
common. The Gauls and other ancient nations practised it. When
Magalhaens proposed Christianity to the King of Subo, a north-eastern
Asiatic island, and when Francis de Castro discovered Santigana and
other islands, a hundred leagues north of the Moluccas, the conversion
of their kings was confirmed by each party drinking of the blood of the
other. Our poet Spenser tells us, in his View of the State of Ireland,
that he has seen the Irish drink human blood, particularly, he adds, "at
the execution of a notable traitor at Limerick, called Murrogh O'Brien,
I saw an old woman, who was his foster-mother, take up his head whilst
he was quartering and suck up all the blood that run thereout, saying,
that the earth was not worthy to drink it, and therewith also steeped
her face and breast and tore her hair, crying out and shrieking most
terribly. " It is worthy of regard that the custom of marking themselves
with hot irons, and tattooing, is characteristic both of the Guios of
Camoens and of the present inhabitants of New Zealand. And if, as its
animals indicate, the island of Otaheite was first peopled by a
shipwreck, the friendship existing in a small society might easily
obliterate the memory of one custom, while the less unfriendly one of
tattooing was handed down, a memorial that they owed their origin to the
north-eastern parts of Asia, where that custom particularly prevails.
{*} ? ? ?
