The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1897-10-09
TABOOED AS FOODS.
THE PECULIAR CUSTOM AND BELIEF
CALLED "ToTEMIsM."
Almost Everything Worth Eating Has at
One Time or Another Been Under the
Ban-A Frequent Cause of Religious Dis
putes and the Display of bad Blood.

the writer noted some superstitions about
bread. Not less curious and Interesting is
the folklore which has clustered around
the various articles of food
From the days of Adam and Eve to the
| present time there has been not only for.
| bidden fruit, but forbidden meats and
vegetables. For one reason or another
people have resolutely refused to eat any
and all kinds of flesh, fish, fowl, fruits
and plants. Thus, the apple, the pear,
the strawberry, the ounce, the bean, the
onion, the leek the asparagus, the wood
| pecker, the pigeon, the goose, the deer, the
BEAR the turtle and the eel-these, to name
only few eatables, have been avoided rs
II unwholesome or positively injurious tc
health and digestion.
AS we all know, the Jews have long
had hereditary antipathy to pork. On
| the other hand swines flesh was highly
| esteemed by the ancient Greeks and Ro-
| mans. This fact is revealed by the many
| references to pig as u dainty bit of food
AT the great festival held annually in hon
or OF Demeter, roast pig was the piece de
resistance in tho bill of fare, because the
| pig was the sacred animal of Demeter.
Aristophanes, in THE Frogs" makes one
of the characters hint that some of the 9TH
ers smell of roast pig" These people I'M
| doubleday had been at the festival known
as the Thesmophoria) and had eaten freely
of roast pig Those who took part in an
other Greek mystery or festival (known as
tho Eleusinia) abstained from certain food,
and, above ALL from beans.
| Again, as we all know, mice are es-
teemed in China and in some parts of In
dia. But the ancient Egyptians, Greeks
and Jews abhorred mice and would not
touch mouse meat. Rats and field mice
were sacred in old Egypt, and were not to
DO eaten on this account. So, too, in some
parts of Greece, the mouse was the sacred
animal of Apollo, and mice were fed in
his temples The chosen people were for
hidden to eat 1.-THE weasel, and the mouse,
and the tortoise after his kind" These
came under the designation of unclean
animals, which were to be avoided
But people have abstained from eating
kinds of flesh which could not be called
uncean. For example, the people CT
| Thebes, as Herodotus tells us abstained
| from sheep. What is the matter with NUT
ton chops? Then, the ancionts used to alb
stain from certain vegetables. Indeed the
| Romans sneered at those Egyptians who
| did not dare to eat onions, leeks or garlic.
| And yet the Romans themselves were SUI
| perstitious about what they ate or what
they should avoid eating.
In his Roman Questions" Plutarch
asks, why do the Latins abstain strictly
from the flesh of the woodpecker?" In
order to answer Plutarch's question cor
! rectly it is necessary to have some idea of
the peculiar custom and belief called Ito
| temism.' There is u stage of society IN
which people claim descent from and
! kinship with beasts, BIRDS vegetables and
other objects. This object which is q
"totem," or family mark they religiously
| abstain from eating. The members of the
tribe are divided into clans or Stocks each
| of which takes the name of some animal
| plant or object, as the BEAR the buffalo,
the woodpecker, the asparagus, and so
forth. No member of the bear family
would dare to eat bear meat, but he has no
objection to eating buffalo steak. Even
the marriage law is based on this belief.
and no man whose family name is Wolf
may marry woman whose family name
. is also Wolf.
In a general way it may be said that al
most all our food prohibitions spring from
! the extraordinary custom generally called
totemism. Mr.. Swan, who was a mission
airy for many years in the Kongo Free
|
were to ask the Yeke people why they do
not eat zebra flesh, they would reply,
chijila-i. g., 1T is a thing to which we
have an antipathy," or, better, at is one
| of the things which our fathers taught us
not to eat" So it seems the word bash
( ilang' means "the people who have an
antipathy to the leopard" the "bashi-
LAMBDA, ~ "those who have an antipathy to
the dog" and the bashilanlanzefu, "
"those who have an antipathy to the ele-
phant" In other words, the members of
these stocks refuse to eat their totems, the
ZEBRA the leopard and the elephant, from
which they take their names.
The survival of antipathy to certain
foods was found among people as highly
civilized as the Egyptians, the Greeks and
the Romans. Quite "a list of animals whose
flesh was forbidden might be drawn up.
For example, in old Egypt the sheep
could not be eaten in Thebes, nor the goat
in Mendes, nor the cat in Bubastis, nor
the crocodile at Ombos, nor the rat, which
was sacred to Ra, the sun god However,
the people of one place had no scruples
about eating the forbidden food of another
place, and this often led to religious dis
putes and bad blood.
Among the vegetables tabooed as food
by the Egyptians may be mentioned the
onion, the garlic and the leek. Lucian
says that the inhabitants of Potassium
adored the onion. According to Pliny,
the Egyptians used to swear by the leek
and the onion. Juvenal pokes fun at those
who thought 1t sin to eat them. He ex-
claims, "Surely very religious nation
and blessed peace, where every garden
is overrun with gods"
The survivals of totemism among the
ancient Greeks are very interesting. Fam
lilies named after animals and plants were
not uncommon. One Athenian gems, the
Ioxida, had for its ancestral plant the
asparagus. We may be sure that this plant
was tabooed as food to every man, woman
and child of the Ioxide.-L. j. Vance In
New York Post.