When a superstition or belief is widely spread in Europe, as the faith in the divining rod certainly is (in Germany rods are hidden under babies’ clothes when they are baptized), we naturally expect to find traces of it in ancient times and among savages all over the modern world.  We have already examined, in ‘The Bull-Roarer,’ a very similar example.  We saw that there is a magical instrument—­a small fish-shaped piece of thin flat wood tied to a thong—­which, when whirled in the air, produces a strange noise, a compound of roar and buzz.  This instrument is sacred among the natives of Australia, where it is used to call together the men, and to frighten away the women from the religious mysteries of the males.  The same instrument is employed for similar purposes in New Mexico, and in South Africa and New Zealand—­parts of the world very widely distant from each other, and inhabited by very diverse races.  It has also been lately discovered that the Greeks used this toy, which they called [Greek], in the Mysteries of Dionysus, and possibly it may be identical with the mystica vannus Iacchi (Virgil, ‘Georgics,’ i. 166).  The conclusion drawn by the ethnologist is that this object, called turndun by the Australians, is a very early savage invention, probably discovered and applied to religious purposes in various separate centres, and retained from the age of savagery in the mystic rites of Greeks and perhaps of Romans.  Well, do we find anything analogous in the case of the divining rod?

Future researches may increase our knowledge, but at present little or nothing is known of the divining rod in classical ages, and not very much (though that little is significant) among uncivilised races.  It is true that in all countries rods or wands, the Latin virga, have a magical power.  Virgil obtained his mediaeval repute as a wizard because his name was erroneously connected with virgula, the magic wand.  But we do not actually know that the ancient wand of the enchantress Circe, in Homer, or the wand of Hermes, was used, like the divining rod, to indicate the whereabouts of hidden wealth or water.  In the Homeric hymn to Hermes (line 529), Apollo thus describes the caduceus, or wand of Hermes:  ’Thereafter will I give thee a lovely wand of wealth and riches, a golden wand with three leaves, which shall keep thee ever unharmed.’  In later art this wand, or caduceus, is usually entwined with serpents; but on one vase, at least, the wand of Hermes is simply the forked twig of our rustic miners and water-finders.  The same form is found on an engraved Etruscan mirror. {183}