The Wheel and the Gallows.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 889, 15 March 1889, Page 10

The Wheel and the G allows.

Gentlemen’s Magazine.

Iu the West of England, iu numerous places are fields, situated in lonely spots, that go by the name of gallows-traps, and the popular saying concerning them is that whosoever setß foot in them is predestined to be hung. The probable origin of this superstition is that these were actual traps for the unwary, who, should they be found treading on this hallowed ground, were pounced on and strung up to the god of sun and gale. When it was found difficult to supply the god with prisoners and criminals in oertain districts a parcel of laDd was set apart to Odin, and it was thought that whosoever—of course a child or a stranger—incautiously entered this plot had been drawn thither by the deity, and chosen by him as his victim. All scruple was stifled, and the unfortunate was seized and devoted to the gibbet-god. We cannot say for certain that this is the origin of the galiows-traps, but it is the most probable explanation of their existence, and of the superstitious dread that still attaches to them ; it is, moreover, in accordance with similar institutions elsewhere. Mention is made in the Bible of Joshua hanging the kings of Canaan till the going down of the sun. Those of the Israelites before, who ‘were joined to Baalpeor,’ were treated by Moses in like manner. He was ordered to ‘ take the heads (i.e., princes) of the people and hang them up before tho Lord against the suu ;’ that is, because the princes of Israel had given themselves up to the worship of Baa!, the sun-god, therefore they were crucified or hung facing the sun, in the customary way in which victims were offered to him. It is probable that Joshua in like manner hung the kings with their faces to the sun to show his scorn of their god, Baal, who had been unable to help them, nay, who, as the suu, had been forced to stand still to assist in the rout of his votaries. It is interesting to see hanging associated with solar worship, but among the Norse and Teutonic nations it was in all probability connected with Odin rather as the God of the wind than as the sun, and that death on the wheel was the mode of sacrifice to him or to whatever other god was worshipped as the deity of the wheel. This god among the Teutonic peoples was Ero. In 1653, when the tomb of Childeric was opened at Tournai, a gold ox head was found in it with a wheel of nine spokes on the forehead, and such a wheel was used as an amulet very generally. Gaulish helmets represented on the arch at Orange are horned, with wheels between the horns. On a Merovingian funeral monument at Metz the nine-spoked wheel figures on the bieast, just as later did the cross. The wheel symbolised .rot the suu only, but also the lightning. It was used as a means of kindling a fire by turning it rapidly about on an axle. In the island of Mull, till the introduction of lucifer matches, this method of kindling a fire was customary. Considering the sacredness of the symbol of the wheel, it is rendered most probable that viotims to the sun were offered by entwining their limbs about tho nine spokes, and then erecting the wheel on a long pole, so aB to expose the victim’s face to the sky. We find this method of execution of criminals in Europe, and it i 3 probable, like hanging, a survival of a sacrifice to the sun. The Romans knew of fastening a criminal round the tire of a wheel and then rolling it; this was tho inligare in ourrus of Livy ; but among the German nations the other was the form of execution. Gallonius, in his book on martyrdoms of the saints, gives several plates representing the torture of the wheel, and in his text quotes his authorities. In the first a man bound to a wheel is rolled down a hill ; in the next we have the man bound to the wheel with limbs twisted in and out among the spokes, set up in the sun ; , n the third a martyr bound about a wheel is turned over flames, and another over spikes. That the Greeks and Romans did sometimes employ the mode of twining the limbs among the spokes and exposing to a lingering death in the sun is almost certain. In one of the doubtful epistles of Phalaris it is particularised, but it was not common ; and those acts of the martyrs which mention it are also not genuine. It is, however, spoken of by Gregory of Tours in the sixth century. In 1310 the Parliament at Toulouse ordered the execution of a robber captain by the wheel, and Francis 1., m 1535, decreed death on the wheel to all highwaymen. In 1226 Frederic, Count of Isenburg, the murderer of Engelbert, Bishop of Cologne, was thus executed, bub his limbs were broken before he was affixed to the wheel. This was a modification, a concession to humanity, that came in with Christianity. Originally the victims were allowed to linger for many days on their wheels, bound in the most torturing contortions, and deprived of food and water. But even when their limbs were broken they lived for many hours. A still further concession to humanity came in the seventeenth century, when the criminals were beaten on the cheat and neok with an iron bar. But this concession was not general, aud in the sentence of the .judges, order was given whether the execution waß to take place ‘ from below ’ or ‘from abo7e. If from below, that signified that the extremities were to be struck with the bar, and only the final blow to be dealt on the Curtius, a French writer of the sixteenth century, describes the penalty of the wheel. ‘ It is a mode of death more like that of the cross than of the gallows. In the first place the limbs are bound to four cross beams, then are broken with an iron bar; after that the shattered body is taken off the cross and fastened to a wheel which is set upright, so that still living and feeling, still writhing, the victim may die in the full glare of the sun, lying on his back face upwards/ The last case of the use of the wheel in Germany was about 1840. It disappeared before the guillotine, as already said from France, about fifty years earlier. Tacitus tells us that traitors and fugitives were hung among the Germans ; and in the Salio laws hanging is mentioned. Indeed all early Teutonic records of law and justice mention the gallows, and Snorro Sturlason, the Icelandic chronicler of the lives of the lungs of Norway, speaks of it. It was usual to strip

or half-strip the criminal who was hung, and sometimes to put a svoodeu hat filled with pitch on his head, which latter ran down over and closed his eyes. Gallows were wont to be erected on spots of laud running out into the sea, and by rivers and firths. It seems to have been the mode of death appropriated to thieves, and in the laws of the Ripuarian Franks it is thus specified, so also among the Norsemen. One remarkable fact remains to be noticed. In all religions the sacrifice becomes iu some manner identified with the god to whom offered, and partook of his virtue and power. Whether this is a mere confusion of ideas, or whether there is some logical sequence at bottom, we will not stop to inquire, but it remains a fact everywhere, that a feast follows a sacrifice, and that the partakers of the sacrifice believe themselves to be brought by participation into very close communion with the deity to whom the victim has been offered. The victim is supposed in sone mysterious way to become invested with the attributes of the god, and to be a vehicle of communication between the god and the recipient of the flesh of the sacrifice. Whether at any time a cannibal feast followed on an act of sacrifice on the wheel and the gallows we cannot say, but a whole series of superstitions exists connected with criminals who have suffered the extreme penalty of the law which points to something of tho sort. An executioner throughout the middle ages and to the present day derived and derives a revenue from the sale of pieoes of the cord and of other artioles connected with the criminal who has suffered, and these relics are purchased and preserved, not out of a morbid love of horrors, but out of a real belief that they are beneficial, that they bring with them protection against accidents and are preservatives against disease. Not ten years ago the writer was shown by a woman, by no means in the lower walks of life—in fact, a picture dealer —a small object in a frame.. This she said was a bit of the skin of a certain famous murderor who had been hung, for which she had paid a guinea. ‘And what on earth makes you preserve it V was the natural inquiry. ‘ Oh !' replied the woman, ‘ the house will never catch fire as long as that is in it, so wo are saved the insurance money.’ The multilation of bodies hung in chains was of frequent occurrence in former times, ou account of the same aud similar beliefs. Tho hands and the feet and hair of the dead were cut off. Tho former were constantly taken by thieves aud burglars, who believed that the hand of the man hung would enable him to open any lock and enter any house with impunity. The plunder of the gallows was sought in th 6 early days of Christianity by those who were pagans at heart, and who thought by obtaining relics of those offered to the ancient gods they put themselves in relation, brought themselves into communion, with these old deities. The idea of an execution being a sacrifice to the old gods was gone out of the minds of those who had become Christians, and they hold such executions to be infinitely disgraceful; not because they held the crimes in horror, but because the execution was in some way associated with that ancient heathenism which they had been taught to abhor ; but there always remained a substratum of the people who held to the ancient faith more or leas intelligently. At length, even the remembrance of tke gods to whom victims were offered on gallowß and wheel was lost, and then only a dim and stupid superstition lingered on that relics of those who were executed for their crimes possessed some mysterious virtues. The eagerness with which Christians iu the early and middle ages sought after the relics of martyrs derives from the Batne belief. These witnesses to the truth bad offered themselves as willing sacrifices to God, therefore their remains bad become • in a manner vehicles through which God operated miracles. The whole practice of the collection of relics and belief in their miraculous efficacy have no roots in Christianity, but derive entirely from heathen notions It was like a vine, whose roots are outside a house, brought within, and which, under the protection of its glass roof, luxuriates and fruits profusely. One word in conclusion on the word gallowe. The old word for the gibbet is galg, and gallow is the low or place for the gibbet. When we remember that the gallows on whioh Odin hung i 3 called Ogre’s horse, it is interesting to note a popular riddle asked children in Yorkshire : * What is the horse that never was foaled, That is rid by a rider below. With a bridle, bitless, of tow, Unshod with steal, silver, or gold ?’ The answer is—the gallows. A German designation of the gallows is-the raven stone, the raven being the bird of Odin.