The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-04-15 00:00:00

ORDEALS AND OATHS.

The aboye was the subject of the "Friday evening Dis-
course '' at the Royal Institution, delivered by Dr. E, B.
Tylor, F.R.S. There was a large audience of mernb,rd and
visitors. 'I he Times gives the following report of the
lecture:—

a.° origin or ordeals and oaths
back to that stage of civilization when social order was
becoming more settled, and when the wise men were
trying to get over the want of truthfulness by devising
guarantees stronger than mere yes and no. They were
introduced that wrong-doing might not be backed by
false witness, and that covenants should not be broken.
The two intellectual orders of primitive times advised
in the matter, each after the manner of his own
profession. The magician undertook with his symbols
and charms to try the accused, and to bind the wit-
nees and the promieer. The priest said, I will call
upon lady spirits, and they shall find out the bidden
thing, and shall punish the lie and the broken vow.
Magic is 13ised on a delusive tendency, arising out of
the associaton of ideas, to believe that things ideally
connected in our minds must, therefore, be really con-
nected in the ?liter world. Religion is based on the
doctrine of spiritual beings, demons, and deities, who
take cognisance of men and mingle in their affairs. It
is necessary to keep in view this distinction between
magic and religion in their nature and origin, if we
are to thread our way through a set of complicated
proceedings in which magical and religions elerhents
have become mixed in the most intricate ways,
as well they might, considering how the professions
of sorcerer and priest have overlapped, and have been
often combined in the same persons. On the whOe,
the ordeal was the earlier and underlying eleitent,
while the religious factor was apt to spring up
later, often only taking tip and consecrating some obi
in gical process. The ordeal and the oath are not only
allied in their fundamental principles, but even run
into one another in their use. Oaths were made to act
as ordeals, and ordeals brought in as tests of oaths, yet
they are best considered separately. Ordeals were
proceedings for the discovery of wrongdoers, While
oaths were of the nature of declarations or under-
takings. Quite childish in its simplicity was the
rationale of the ordeal. Appeal is made to it to decide
which of two men has acted wrongfully. There
being no evidence of the real issue, a fanciful one, which

can be settled, is taken instead. Thus, in Borneo,
when two Dyaks have to decide which is in the right,
they have two equal lumps of salt given them to drop
into water, and he whose lump dissolves first is in the
wrong. Or they put two live shell fish on a plate—one
for each litigant, and, squeezing lime-juice over them, the
verdict is given according to which man's mollusc stirs
first. In the Sandwich Isles to detect a thief, he
priest hallows a dish of water, and the suspected per-
sons being brought near one by one, the water
trembles at the approach of the guilty man. This was
compared with the old European notion of the exe-
cutioner's sword trembling at the approach of a mur-
derer. It was then shown how the religious notion
_ .

was imparted into the magical ordeal, illustrations
being given from the Ilindoo ordeal of the balance.
The accused is weighed to a nicety, and the balance is
next invoked, and his sc&-1 may sink if he is guilty,
tho load on his conscience being here associated in idea
with material weight. Toe haiance is here a God. It
was shown that a sort of survival of this old Aryan
pTirp in England as late as 1759, when a
suspected witch at Aylesbury, Susanna Raynokes, was
weighed against the Church Bible. Other forms of ord cal
Were analogtinq ex.plained—es., the classic usage with
ae7srefeancliFeario, whichivas Christaniz.'d withthatof
the key and Bible. The ordeal of "swinging a witch"
by throwing the suspected person into a pond was
traced to an old Aryan theory—that the pure water
rejects the guilty, who comes up accordingly to the
surface; and our ancestors, ignorant of the distinction
between weight and specific gravity, used to wonder at
the supernatural power which the water would heave
up a thief or wizard, even if be weighed sixteen stone.
In no ordeal was the religious element so conspicuous
as when the innocent person was supposed by Divine
help to walk over nine red-hot plough shears, or to
carry the red-hot iron bar seven paces, or drink a
dose of deadly poison and be none the worse for it.
Explanation of the facts was not always easy
in these cases, but paint might have had something
to do with many such vindications of innocence and
stimulated poisons with others. Looking at the sub-
ject from the statesman's point of view, the survey of
the ordeals of all nations enables us to judge their prac-
tical effect for good or evil. Their basis being mere
delusive imagination, when honestly administered they
have decided, rightly or wrongly, by sheer accident.
If the key and Bible were set to work to pick out a
thief out of a dozen people, it would, of course, be 12
to 1 against a right decision. In trial by combat
it was 2to 1. It was a curious fact in the history of
ordeals that trial by battle, which is common to man
with the lower animals, should have Irld its ground
as a legal ordeal so far down into the civilised ages.
The abuse of ordeak, as,, a fearful engine of priestly
power in Calabai, throughout Afrca generally,
and more or less in the other continents, was next
largely illustrated, and the general conclusion was
reached that at best they were useful delusions or
pious frauds; at worst, the wickedest of human deeds.
The subject of oaths was next fully treated, especially
on the religious side, and considered as a riper deve-
lopment of the ordeal. Discussing the question as to
taking the evidence of children on oath,Dr. Tylor had
heard from the eminent jurist, Dr. Gneist, of Berlin,
that according to the new German Rules of Procedure,
expected to come shortly into force, children under
sixteen may give evidence without oath at the discre-
tion of the Judge. The lecturer added, amid much
applause that in these days there is a simple rule
which al :Englishman will do well to act up to,—Don't
be beaten by a German.

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