Food-taboo in the Underworld

Note: this text is extracted from Book XII, chapter 73

The belief that it is dangerous for mortals to eat and drink when in the underworld is widespread, and can in all probability be traced to primitive ideas connected with food-taboos. Among many savage races there exists a highly developed ritual connected with eating, the most common idea being that the taking of food with a stranger is a form of covenant and establishes kinship. The basis of the idea is sympathetic magic.

Frazer explains this clearly (Golden Bough (Taboo and the Perils of the Soul), p. 130):

“By participation in the same food two men give, as it were, hostages for their good behaviour; each guarantees the other that he will devise no mischief against him, since, being physically united with him by the common food in their stomachs, any harm he might do to his fellow would recoil on his own head with precisely the same force with which it fell on the head of his victim.”

See further W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, London, 1894, p. 269 et seq., and J. A. Macculloch, “Covenant,” Hastings’ Ency. Rel. Eth., vol. iv, p. 207 et seq.

The same rules which hold good in the land of the living also apply to the underworld. Hence when a mortal visits the Shades for one reason or another (usually either to visit or rescue a relation, to get some precious object, to obtain some boon, or merely out of curiosity) he should take great care to touch no food or drink offered him by the dwellers in that dreary land, or he will, ipso facto, become one of their countrymen and unable to return to the world above.

The most famous classical example of a person doomed to remain in Hades is undoubtedly that of Proserpine (Gr. Persephone), who was carried off by Pluto to be his queen. Demeter, her sorrowing mother, sought her in vain, and in her despair forbade the earth to yield its increase. For fear of a universal famine Zeus forced Pluto to give up Proserpine. Before doing so,, however, he gave her a pomegranate to eat, and by merely tasting of its seeds (some accounts mention a certain number—three or seven) she was bound to return to him periodically.

Thus the introduction of a recognised mythological law—the food-taboo in the underworld—served as an excellent peg on which to hang the poetical description of the gradual decay of vegetation in the autumn, and of its subsequent return to life in the spring. For the story of Proserpine see Homeric Hymn to Demeter, p. 371 et seq., p. 411 et seq.; and Apollodorus, Library, i, v. In his translation of the latter (vol. i, pp. 39-41) Frazer gives other references, and also several analogues to tales about eating in the underworld. Some of them will be referred to later in this note. For the significance of the pomegranate see Frazer, Pausanias’ Description of Greece, vol. iii, pp. 184, 185.

That the knowledge of the danger of eating in another world was fully recognised in the earliest times known to us is clear from a curious use made of it in a Babylonian myth. The motif occurs in the Adapa Legend, as described and translated by M. Jastrow, Religion oj Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, 1898, pp. 544-555. The beginning of the story is missing, but when the tablet becomes intelligible we find Adapa, a fisherman, engaged in a contest with the South wind, which is represented in the form of a bird. In anger Adapa breaks the wings of the South wind, and for seven days [ i.e. an indefinite period] the wind does not blow. Anu, the God of Heaven, inquires into this strange phenomenon, and on hearing the reason, summons the fisherman into his presence. The god Ea is told to yield him up. Before doing so, however, Ea gives him advice as to how he should behave before Anu. Among other injunctions he says:

“When thou comest before Anu they will offer thee food of death. Do not eat. They will offer thee waters of death. Do not drink. They will offer thee a garment. Put it on. They will offer thee oil. Anoint thyself. The order that I give thee do not neglect....”

Adapa follows his instructions carefully, but as he has now viewed the secrets of heaven, there is nothing left for the gods to do but to admit him to their circle. Accordingly they must make him immortal, and the story continues:

“Now what shall we grant him? Offer him food of life, that he may eat of it. They brought it to him, but he did not eat. Waters of life they brought him, but he did not drink. A garment they brought him. He put it on. Oil they brought him. He anointed himself.”

Adapa has followed his instructions too carefully, and has failed to notice the trick that Ea has played on him. It was food and waters of death he was not to touch, but Adapa was following the principle of taboo for personal safety. Ea, as the god of humanity, would not want his creatures to gain immortality, and so adopted a plan he knew would work.

It is interesting to compare the tree of life in Genesis iii and the precautions taken by God that mortals should not eat of it.

We also find our motif in Ancient Egypt, although in this case we are dealing with the dead. On his way to the spirit-land the soul of a dead person was met by a goddess who would offer him food, the taking of which would make his return difficult (not entirely impossible, as Frazer implies in Apollodorus, vol. i, p. 40). The words of Maspero, which Frazer quotes from Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient Classiques. Les Origines, Paris, 1895, p. 184 (see also note 4) are:

“Une déesse, Nouît, Hāthor or Nît, sortait du feuillage à mi-corps, lui tendant un plat couvert de fruits et de pains, un vase rempli d’eau: dès qu’il avait accepté ces dons, il devenait l’hôte de la déesse et ne pouvait plus revenir sur ses pas, à moins de permission spéciale.”

See also G. Maspero, Études égyptiennes, Paris, 1879, etc., vol. ii, pp. 224-227.

Similar beliefs are found among primitive races. For instance the New Caledonians say that when a man dies, messengers come from the other world to guide his soul through the air and over the sea to the spirit-land. There he is welcomed by the other souls and bidden to a banquet, where he is offered food, especially bananas. If he tastes them, his doom is sealed and he can never return to earth. (See Gagnière, Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, xxxii, Lyons, I860, p. 439 et seq.) In Melanesia such stories are common. In one tale (given by R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, Oxford, 1891, p. 277 et seq.) a woman descended to Panoi, or the underworld, to see her dead brother, after giving herself a death-like smell by using water in which a dead rat had been soaked. She pretended to be a ghost, and thus managed to converse with her brother, who warned her to touch no food, or else she would be permanently retained. (See further on p. 286 of Codrington.)

In New Zealand there is a beautiful story which tells of how Pané died for the love of Hutu. Hutu prayed to the gods for permission to visit her in Reiṅga. This was granted, but they warned him not to touch any food he might be offered there. See Clarke, Maori Tales, 1896, p. 1 et seq.; cf. also p. 126. For other similar New Zealand tales see E. Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, London, 1856, pp. 150-152; and R. Taylor, Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants, 2nd edition, London, 1870, p. 271.

Without aggregating further examples it will be seen that the motif under consideration was well known in antiquity and is widespread among savage races. It is then only natural that it is also found largely disseminated through epic romances and fairy tales of Europe. In some cases the taboo is put on drink. For instance, in the sixteenth rune of the great Finnish epic, Kalevala, we read:

“Wäinämöinen, old and trusty,
Gaz’d awhile upon the tankard;
Lo! within it frogs were spawning,
Worms about its sides were lying.
Words in this wise then he utter’d:
‘Not to drink have I come hither
From the tankard of Manala,
Not to empty Tuoni’s beaker;
They who drink of beer are drowned,
Those who drain the can are ruin’d.’”

See E. S. Hartland, Science of Fairy Tales, p. 45, and A. Lang, Custom and Myth, p. 171.

In the Danish Saxo Grammaticus we read of King Gorm who went with several companions to seek a treasure-land in the north ruled by King Geirröd in the underworld. After many adventures they reached the hall of Gudmund, Geirröd’s brother, where Thorkill, the guide and adviser to the expedition, warned them not to touch food or drink. In spite of the warning some were tempted and were unable to return. In chapter iii of his Science of Fairy Tales, Hartland gives Swabian, Lapp, Swedish, Manx, Scottish and Jewish versions. The chief Scottish analogue appears in connection with Thomas of Erceldoune, the Rhymer. See also J. G. Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, Glasgow, 1900, p. 17.

The Jewish version is apparently found in several forms, one of which is given by Keightley, Fairy Mythology, pp. 506-510. Another version, probably originating in Prague, was told me by Dr Gaster, as follows:—

“There lived in a town a pious man, famed as an expert Mohel (i.e. a man who performed the religious ceremony of circumcision). One night someone knocked at his window and asked him to come urgently to perform such a ceremony. Being dark, he did not see the face of the man who called him, but he followed him, and did not notice the way he went. Suddenly he found himself in a house, richly appointed, and in a room there lay a young woman with a new-born babe. He took the child and performed the ceremony, and brought the child back to the mother. She then whispered to him:

‘Take heed, you are here among demons. I am a young Jewess. They have stolen me away, and I am now living here with them. Beware now lest you eat or drink of anything they offer you, for then you will have to remain here. Find some excuse, and do not touch anything.’

He got very frightened, and when they pressed food and drink upon him, as is customary on such occasions, he steadfastly refused, and excused himself by saying that he always fasted whenever he had to perform such a ceremony. When he was on the point of leaving they said to him:

‘Take at least some of the coals that are lying about.’

These, not being food, he wrapped into his coat-tails, and was quickly deposited at the gate of the city, and running home, he dropped some of the coal on the road. In the morning, to his great astonishment, the coal had turned into lumps of gold. The same happened to the pieces he had dropped on the road. They also turned into gold, and hence the street in which they were found was named ‘the Golden Street.’”

The part about the coals turning to gold also occurs in the Swabian version.—n.m.p.