In a legend of the Indians of the
northwest coast of America, recorded by Boas, a woman gives her
lover some of her urine and says: "You can wake the dead if you
drop some of my urine in their ears and nose." (_Zeitschrift fuer
Ethnologie_, 1894, Heft IV, p. 293.) Among the same Indians there
is a legend of a woman with a beautiful white skin who found on
bathing every morning in the river that the fish were attracted
to her skin and could not be driven off even by magical
solutions. At last she said to herself: "I will make water on
them and then they will leave me alone." She did so, and
henceforth the fish left her. But shortly after fire came from
Heaven and killed her. (Ib., 1891, Heft V, p. 640.) Among both
Christians and Mohammedans a wife can attach an unfaithful
husband by privately putting some of her urine in his drink. (B.
Stern, _Medizin in der Tuerkei_, vol. ii, p. 11.) This practice is
world-wide; thus among the aborigines of Brazil, according to
Martius, the urine and other excretions and secretions are potent
for aphrodisiacal objects. (Bourke's _Scatalogic Rites of All
Nations_ contains many references to the folk-lore practices in
this matter; a study of popular beliefs in the magic power of
urine, published in Bombay by Professor Eugen Wilhelm in 1889, I
have not seen.
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