the devil,”[1] perhaps on account of the mirror’s supposed power of drawing out the soul in the reflection and so facilitating its capture.
As with shadows and reflections, so with portraits; they are often believed to contain the soul of the person portrayed. People who hold this belief are naturally loth to have their likenesses taken; for if the portrait is the soul, or at least a vital part of the person portrayed, whoever possesses the portrait will be able to exercise a fatal influence over the original of it. Thus the Canelos Indians of South America think that their soul is carried away in their picture. Two of them having been photographed were so alarmed that they came back next day on purpose to ask if it were really true that their souls had been taken away.[2] When Mr. Joseph Thomson tried to photograph some of the Wa-teita in Eastern Africa, they imagined that he was a magician trying to get possession of their souls, and that if he got their likenesses they themselves would be entirely at his mercy.[3] An Indian, whose portrait the Prince of Wied wished to get, refused to let himself be drawn, because he believed it would cause his death.[4] The Mandans also thought that they would soon die if their portrait was in the hands of another; they wished at least to have the artist’s picture as a kind of antidote or guarantee.[5] The same belief still lingers in various parts of Europe. Some old women in the Greek island of Carpathus were very angry a few years ago at having their likenesses drawn,
- ↑ Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 117. The objection, however, maybe merely Puritanical. Professor W. Robertson Smith informs me that the peculiarities of the Raskolniks are largely due to exaggerated Puritanism.
- ↑ A. Simson, “Notes on the Jivaros and Canelos Indians,” in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. ix. 392.
- ↑ J. Thomson, Through Masai Land, p. 86.
- ↑ Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das Innere Nord-Amerika, i. 417.
- ↑ Ib. ii. 166.
