Worship of the Generative Powers: The 'Fig'

The 'Fig'

There was another, and less openly apparent, form of the phallus, which has lasted as an amulet during almost innumerable ages. The ancients had two forms of what antiquaries have named the phallic hand, one in which the middle finger was extended at length, and the thumb and other fingers doubled up, while in the other the whole hand was closed, but the thumb was passed between the first and middle

Dixerit, et digitum porrigito medium."
Martial, Ep. ii, 28.

Nevertheless, this gesture of the hand was looked upon at an early period as an amulet against magical influences, and, formed of different materials, it was carried on the person in the same manner as the phallus. It is not an uncommon object among Roman

57 The form, under this name, was preserved through the middle ages, especially in the South of Europe, where Roman traditions were strongest, both as an amulet and as an insulting gesture. The Italian called this gesture fare la fica, to make or do the fig to any one; the Spaniard, dar una higa, to give a fig; and the Frenchman, like the Italian, faire la figue. We can trace this phrase back to the thirteenth century at least. In the judicial proceedings against the Templars in Paris in 1309, one of the brethren of the Order was asked, jokingly, in his examination, because he was rather loose and flippant in his replies, "if he bad been ordered by the said receptor (the officer of the Templars who admitted the new candidate) to make with his fingers the fig at the crucifix." Here the word used is the correct Latin ficus; and it is the same in the plural, in a document of the year 1449, in which an individual is said to have made figs with both hands at another. This phrase appears to have been introduced into the English language in the time of Elizabeth and to have been taken from the Spaniards, with whom our relations were then intimate. This we

dar la higa), 58 and that the writers of the Elizabethan age call it "the fig of Spain." Thus, ancient "Pistol, in Shakespeare:--

----"A figo for thy friendship!--
The fig of Spain." Henry V, III. 6.

The phrase has been preserved in all these countries down to modern times and we still say in English, "a fig for anybody," or "for anything," not meaning that we estimate them at no more than the value of a fig, but that we throw at them that contempt which was intimated by showing them the phallic hand, and which the Greeks, as stated above, called σκιμαλίζειν. The form of showing contempt which was called the fig is still well known among the lower classes of society in England, and it is preserved in most of the countries of Western Europe. In Baretti's Spanish Dictionary, which belongs to the commencement of the present century, we find the word higa interpreted as "A manner of scoffing at people, which consists in showing the thumb between the first and second finger, closing the first, and pointing at the person to whom we want to give this hateful mark of contempt." Baretti also gives as still in use the original meaning of the word, "Higa, a little hand

fica is not present, an individual, who finds or believes himself in sudden danger, can make the amulet with his own fingers. So profound is the belief of its efficacy in Italy, that it is commonly believed and reported there that, at the battle of Solferino, the king of Italy held his hand in his pocket with this arrangement of the fingers as a protection against the shots of the enemy.

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Footnotes

65:56 Plate XII, Figs. 1 and 2.

70:57 See before, page 43. Among the Romans, the fig was considered as a fruit consecrated to Priapus, on account, it is said, of its productiveness.

71:58 "Behold next I see contempt, giving me the fico." Wit's Misery, quoted in Nares, v. Fico.