Superstitions of Sailors

Bibliography

Preface

What is the origin of the superstitious beliefs to which the seafaring man is even to-day still clinging? It may be attributed to three sources, viz.: Firstly, the interpretation and explanation of numerous phenomena actually observed, but the cause of which the early mariner was still ignorant of; secondly, the inclination of man to look for the causes of events in mystical depths and supernatural reasons; and thirdly, the love of travellers to exaggerate and to tell adventures which in reality they had never experienced.

Numerous stories told by early mariners were subsequently handed down from generation to generation and formed a portion, if not the bulk, of early mythologies. Such, for instance, is the journey of the Argonauts and the legend of the floating rocks which destroy ships. The entire Odyssey is practically nothing else than a collection of sea-stories current among the Greeks at the time of Homer and collected by the latter. The stories of Circe changing into swine the companions of Ulysses and of the sirens who allure men by their songs are either due to the imagination of some sailor, or are the account of happenings to some mariner in a distant land. The raging sea opening its mouth to swallow the craft will have given rise to the legend of the Scylla and Charybdis.

For the seaman the sea is not inanimate nature, but some living creature which breathes and feels and is conscious of its existence. In the noise of the waves the Icelander hears the groan of a dying man, while to the lively imaginative Scotsman the foam-crested waves are so many dogs running in front of their master. The Frenchman calls the shimmering crest on the greenish water—moutons.

The ignorance of natural phenomena resulted in exaggeration and gave rise to peculiar beliefs and superstitions. Anything strange has a hold on the imagination of man. The beliefs of pagan antiquity were of course modified according to the changes in religious creeds, but many illusions and delusions prevailed all through the Middle Ages. In our own age habits and customs, old beliefs and superstitions, are fast fading away and perishing, yet many of them still hold their ground, and sailors, naïve and childlike, tenaciously cling to them.

I have made an effort in the present work to introduce the reader to the numerous superstitions, past and present, of the seafaring community and have described the various beliefs still current. I have also included a number of folk-tales, drawn from numerous sources, dealing with the sea, wind and weather, mermen and mermaids. I have everywhere indicated the original sources of the legends and tales collected and have added a bibliography. I hope, therefore, that the reader will peruse the following chapters with interest and to some advantage, while the student of Folklore may also find therein points to interest him.

ANGELO S. RAPPOPORT.

The Creator of the Sea

Over all the face of Earth

Main ocean flowed, not idle, but, with warm

Prolific humour softening all her globe,

Fermented the great mother to conceive,

Satiate with genial moisture; when God said,

"Be gathered now, ye waters under heaven,

Into one place, and let dry land appear!"

Immediately the mountains huge appear

Emergent, and their broad bare backs up heave

Into the clouds; their tops ascend the sky.

So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low

Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and steep,

Capacious bed of waters. Thither they

Hasted with glad precipitance, uprolled,

As drops on dust englobing, from the dry:

Part rise in crystal wall, or ridge direct,

For haste; such flight the great commend impressed

On the swift floods. As armies at the call

Of trumpet (for of armies thou hast heard)

Troop to the standard, so the watery throng,

Wave rolling after wave, where way they found—

If steep, with torrent rapture, if through plain,

Soft-ebbing, nor withstood them rock or hill;

But they, or underground, or circuit wide

With serpent error wandering, found their way,

And on the washy ooze deep channels wore:

Easy, ere God had bid the ground be dry,

All but within those banks where rivers now

Stream, and perpetual draw their humid train.

The city land Earth, and the great receptacle

Of congregated Waters He called Seas.

MILTON.

CHAPTER I

The Origin of the Sea

The mystery of the sea—Appeals to the credulity of man—The wet origin of the Universe—The Laws of Manu—The story of Creation in the Mahabharata—The earliest cosmogonies—Homage paid to the sea—The origin of the Sea in the Mahabharata—The virgin Luonnatar—A Sumatra legend—The salty taste of sea-water—A Moslem legend—The arrogance of the sea—A Jewish legend—The sea and the sand—The magic mill grinding salt—The mill song—Menia and Fenia, the two female slaves—The legend of the two brothers—The flitch of bacon and the wonderful quern—The skipper and the sea—Virtues attributed to the saltiness of sea-water—A drenching with sea-water—Superstitions in Scotland—Folk-medicine—Sea-water as a purgative—Bathing when the tide is rising—healing virtues of sea-water—The waves—The keys of St. Peter—The cry of drowned men—The number of the waves—The three waves—The cabin-boy and the two witches—The waves and the unfleshed sword—The ninth wave—The mother-wave—The tide—Superstitions of early mariners—The traditions of Japan—Scandinavian Sagas—The princess who had one hundred children—The monster of the deep—The tide and childbirth—The influence of the tide in Scotland—Customs in Sweden and Scotland—Neck, Neck, needle-thief—Stones thrown into the water.

The sea, that marvel of creation, immense and mysterious, silent or stormy, smooth or agitated, troubled and treacherous, has from time immemorial appealed to the imagination of primitive man. Ignorance, irrational fear, and a desire to propitiate the occult and unknown powers are generally the cause of man’s superstitious beliefs. No wonder, therefore, that humanity in its early childhood should have been struck with fear and awe by that wide expanse hiding in its deep both dangers and treasures. The sea appealed to the credulity of man and exercised his imagination, and all those whose occupations compelled them to spend their lives upon the water wondered and thought about the origin of the sea and all the phenomena connected with it.

The capricious element, inspiring both horror and confidence, was peopled with imaginary beings, while the riddle of its very origin gave rise to numerous theories and superstitious beliefs. What is that wide expanse of water and whence has it come? asked not only the ancient cosmogonists but also the mariners who had to perform a sea-voyage.

The knowledge of meteorological principles and a better acquaintance with nautical science has, of course, done a great deal towards abolishing the many delusions prevailing with regard to the watery element, but the ignorance among sailors and fishermen is still very great, and seafaring men even to-day cling to numerous superstitions. Sailors generally believe that the sea existed from the beginning of time and that it had, in any case, been created before the earth. In this respect the belief of mariners coincides with the majority of theories expressed in ancient cosmogonies. The theory of the wet origin of the Universe is found in the cosmogonies of Egypt and India, of Assyria and Greece, and the Greek philosopher Thales taught that the sea was the origin of all things. The Avesta, or the sacred book of Zoroaster, and the Kalevala of the Finns, both relate that water was the first or one of the first elements.

In the elaborate story of Creation, found in the Laws of Manu, the eponymous ancestor of mankind and the first lawgiver, it is related that in the beginning the Self-Existent Being desired to create living creatures. He first created the waters, which he called Narah, and then a seed; he flung the seed into the waters, and it became a golden egg which had the splendour of the sun. From all egg came forth Brahma, Father of All. Because Brahma came forth from the waters, and they were his first home, he is called Narayana. In the Mahabharata the sage Markandeya is informed by the Lord of All that the waters called Nara were his home and therefore his name was Narayana. The Egyptian Sun God Ra similarly rose from the primordial waters as the sun-egg. According to the Aztecs the entire creation and even the gods themselves, the earth, the sun, and the stars, lay concealed in the fathomless abyss.¹

THE ODYSSEY by Ingres

We thus see that the earliest cosmogonics attributed priority to water. To primitive man the watery element appeared both as a friend and as an enemy, a devouring monster at one time and a god fighting on his side at another. No wonder that the ancient mariners who spent their lives on the sea should have looked upon the ocean with feelings of both awe and horror. They firmly believed, and this belief is still extant to-day among the seafaring community, that the primeval ocean had been rolling its waves through a timeless night.

The sea, according to the beliefs of many, is the daughter of the Gods. Hesiod relates that earth gave birth first to Uranus, crowned by the stars, and then to Pontus, and subsequently uniting itself to Uranus produced the bottomless ocean. In Oceania it is believed that Tane married to Taaroa gave birth to the sea and the wind, while the Polynesians say that all things created issued from their respective mothers, and the sea, too, had one. According to other traditions the sea is not the daughter of the Gods, but a divinity itself or a part of it, a belief which explains the reason why certain nations paid homage to and worshipped the sea. Macrobius² says that the heaven constituted the head of Serapis, while the sea was its belly. In Scandinavian tradition the origin of the sea is explained as follows : In the beginning there was neither sand nor sea, but only Guinunga-gap, the abyss of abysses. Thereupon the sons of Bur killed the giant Ymer, placed his body in the midst of Guinunga-gap and thus made earth. From his blood became the ocean and his bones constituted the mountains.³

In the Mahabharata the origin of the sea is related as follows: The sea having been dried up by the Saint Agastya, its bed remained empty for several thousands of years. At a certain moment, however, fixed by Brahma, the pious Bhahgirata obtained the favour of Civa and of the celestial river Ganga. The latter consented to descend from heaven and falling upon the luxurious hair of Civa, poured into the empty bed which it filled.

The sea, according to many ancient traditions contained the germs of everything, and the earth, submerged in the sea, awaited the moment when the creative fiat made it emerge above the waters. In the Kalevala the virgin Luonnotar came down from heaven and plunged into the sea, which made her fruitful. She swum in the waves for seven centuries, but one day she lifted her knee above the waters and the eagle deposited there his eggs. On the third day, Luonnota having lowered her knee, the eggs fell into the sea. From their lower portion came the earth and from the upper portion the sublime heaven. The white of the eggs constituted the moon and the yolk the sun.

In Sumatra the following legend is related: In the days when nothing but water existed, one of the most famous Sumatran gods, Batara Gourou, had a daughter, Puta Orla Boulang, who desired to come down from heaven. She came down upon a white owl and her father, so as to enable his daughter to find a firmer footing, sent down from heaven the mountain Bakarra to which the entire earth adhered. Batara Gourou also sent down his son Layand Mandi commanding him to bind the hands and feet of Nagapagoha, the serpent who carried the earth upon its head and had hurled it once into the sea, so as to prevent the monster from making the earth disappear again in the waters.

THE SALTY TASTE OF SEA-WATER

British sailors pretend that at the bottom of the sea the water is not at all salty, and when the fish is not catching it is because the water on that spot is not salty.⁴ Drummond-Hay relates a story current among the Berber tribes of Morocco, which explains the cause of the salty taste of sea-water. In the beginning God had created the sea and in His goodness had made the water sweet. In their arrogance, however, the waters flooded the earth so that men and all other creatures, except the fish, perished. To punish the sea God sent an insect which swallowed up the sea so that its bed became dry. The sea thereupon repented, and God commanded the insect to spit out the water it had swallowed. The tiny creature obeyed, but the water of the sea henceforth remained salty, having acquired this taste in the stomach of the insect.⁵

There is a similar legend of Moslem origin which accounts for the salty taste of the sea-water: In the first days of the world God created the sea, but remembering man, His masterwork of creation, He put a limit to the power of the watery element. I command thee, said the Creator to the sea, to respect that portion of the earth on which plants and flowers will grow to delight man. I have granted unto thee many privileges, for thy surface will reflect the azure of the skies and thy roaring waves will be the echo of my thundering voice. The sea promised to respect that portion of the earth which God had placed beyond its sway. Soon, however, the sea, proud and arrogant, forgot its promises and defied the Eternal. Discharging its roaring waves, it flooded the earth, and man was on the point of perishing. Then God interfered and decided to teach the arrogant waters a lesson in humility. He sent a swarm of insects who swallowed up the sea. From the inside of the tiny creatures the rebel loudly proclaimed the power of the Eternal and repented of its arrogance. The sea was forgiven, but its waters lost for ever their sweet taste.⁶

The arrogance of the sea is also the motif of a Jewish legend, although no reference is made there to the salty taste of the sea-water. On the third day of creation, runs the legend, the earth was as flat as a plain, the waters covering the entire surface of the earth. At the word of the Creator the waters gathered and were rolled into the valleys, and the hills and mountains appeared. The waters then became proud and arrogant, rose tumultuously to a great height, covered the face of the earth, and threatened to overrun and drown the terrestrial globe. But the Creator rebuked the arrogant waters, subduing them and placing them beneath the hollow of His feet, making the sand the boundary and fence of the sea. And when the mighty waters saw the sand-grains, how small and insignificant they were, they laughed at them and mocked them.

We are not afraid of you, they said, for the smallest wave will destroy you and swallow you up.

The sand-grains, appointed to fight against the waves of the sea, were frightened, but the biggest of the sand-grains said:

My brothers, do not be afraid. We are powerless and insignificant as long as we are separate, and the slightest breeze can blow us away. If, however, we stick together, we are a great power and able to oppose the inrush of the arrogant waters.

And ever since the waters recede and return to their place when they see the sand-grains united into one compact mass.⁷

A legend current among the sailors of the coast of Ille et Vilaine explains the salty taste of the sea-water as follows: Once upon a time there lived a sorcerer who had invented a mill that could grind anything that the sorcerer commanded it to. The mill would only stop when the inventor pronounced a certain formula. One day a mariner heard of this wonderful mill and stole it. When he reached the open seas, the mariner commanded the mill to grind a quantity of salt which he required for the codfish he was out to catch. Soon the vessel was full of salt, but, alas, the mariner, ignorant of the magic formula, had no power to stop the mill in its work. On and on the mill continued to grind large quantities of salt so that the vessel and the mill sank to the bottom of the sea under the heavy weight. The mill is still continuing to grind the salt, and hence the salty taste of sea-water.⁸

In Northern Mythology we read the following tale, which is called The Mill Song.

King Frodi once paid a visit to King Fiölnir in Sweden, and there bought two female slaves, called Fenia and Menia, who were both large and strong. At that time there were found in Denmark two millstones so large that no one was able to drag them. These millstones had the property that they produced whatever the grinder wished for. The mill was called Grótti. Hengi-Kiaptr was the name of him who gave the mill to Frodi. King Frodi caused the slaves to be led to the millstones, and ordered them to grind gold, and peace, and prosperity to Frodi, giving them no longer rest or sleep than while the cuckoo was silent or a song might be sung. It is said that they then sung the song called Gróttasavngr, and before they left off that they ground an army against Frodi; so that in the same night there came a sea-king called Mysing, who slew