Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1885 — The Origin of Oaths. [ARTICLE]

The Origin of Oaths.

Mr. Shannon, in his hook "with the punning title, “A Cursory History of Swearing.” finds the origin of swearing in the early dread of falsehood, against which laws were as yet powerless to guard. Hesiod fables-that the god of oaths was the son of Discord. We have profited by centuries of nntruthfulness, and “learned the preponderating advantages of an intelligible code of truth.” Thus the oath, which once meant the seal of truth, has dwindled down till “it has come to be a common catch word, or the fustian ornament of somewhat spirited talk.” Many will now perjure themselves on the Bible, a form of oath which is a relic of barbarism, when a solemn affirmation would seem to them all powerful in its restraint. It was charged against Thomas a’ Becket that he swore on a book of old songs, and the chroniclers mention, among objects ehosen, swords and javelins, love tokens and heathen gods, sepulchers of debtors, abbey churches, and even the price of the potter’s field. A recent traveler in the East relates how on emerging from the Arabian desert she was met by an elderly sheikh, a man with a beard worthy of Abraham, who gravely bowed to the ground, and, with a solemn pride in his linguistic accomplishments, proceeded to mingle sonorous British oaths in his courteous salutation.