An ancient Greek version of the story of Jason, telling of that hero’s treatment of the body of Apsyrtos--whom he had slain--says: “Thrice he tasted the blood, thrice [he] spat it out between his teeth;” and a modern collator informs us, that the scholiast here finds “the description of an archaic custom, popular among murderers.”[268] This certainly corresponds with the Semitic phrases lingering among the Fellâheen of Palestine.
In the old German epic, the Nibelungen Lied, it is told of the brave Burgundians, when they were fighting desperately in the burning hall of the Huns, that they were given new courage for the hopeless conflict, by drinking the blood of their fallen comrades; which “quenched their thirst, and made them fierce.”[269] With their added life, from the added blood of heroes, they battled as never before.
“It strung again their sinews, and failing strength renewed. This, in her lover’s person, many a fair lady rued.”[270]
Is there not, indeed, a trace of the primitive custom--thus recognized in all quarters of the globe--of absorbing the life of a slain one by drinking in his blood, in our common phrase, “blood-thirstiness,” as descriptive of a life-seeker? That phrase certainly gains added force and appropriateness, in the light of this universal idea.
It is evident that the wide-spread popular belief in nature-absorption through blood-appropriation, has included the idea of a _tribal_ absorption of new life in _vicarious_ blood. Alcedo, a Spanish-American writer, has illustrated this in his description of the native Araucanians of South America. When they have triumphed in war, they select a representative prisoner for official and vicarious execution. After due preparation, they “give him a handful of small sticks and a sharp stake, with which they oblige him to dig a hole in the ground; and in this they order him to cast the sticks one by one, repeating the names of the principal warriors of his country, while at the same time the surrounding soldiers load these abhorred names with the bitterest execrations. He is then ordered to cover the hole, as if to bury therein the reputation and valor of their enemies, whom he has named. After this ceremony, the toqui, or one of his bravest companions to whom he relinquishes the honor of the execution, dashes out the brains of the prisoner with a club. The _heart_ is immediately taken out, and presented palpitating to the general, who sucks a little of the _blood_, and passes it to his officers, who repeat in succession the same ceremony.”[271] And in this way the life of the conquered tribe passes, symbolically, into the tribal life of the conquerors.