The Golden Bough
A Study in Magic and Religion

by Sir James George Frazer




CONTENTS
Preface
Subject Index
Chapter  1. The King of the Wood
      1. Diana and Virbius
      2. Artemis and Hippolytus
      3. Recapitulation
Chapter  2. Priestly Kings
Chapter  3. Sympathetic Magic
      1. The Principles of  Magic
      2. Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic
      3. Contagious Magic
      4. The Magicians Progress
Chapter  4. Magic and Religion
Chapter  5. The Magical Control of the Weather
      1. The Public Magician
      2. The Magical Control of Rain
      3. The Magical Control of the Sun
      4. The Magical Control of the Wind
Chapter  6. Magicians as Kings
Chapter  7. Incarnate Human Gods
Chapter  8. Departmental Kings of Nature
Chapter  9. The Worship of Trees
      1. Tree-spirits
      2. Beneficent Powers of Tree-Spirits
Chapter  10. Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe
Chapter  11. The Influence of the Sexes on Vegetation
Chapter  12. The Sacred Marriage
      1. Diana as a Goddess of Fertility
      2. The Marriage of the Gods
Chapter  13. The Kings of Rome and Alba
      1. Numa and Egeria
      2. The King as Jupiter
Chapter  14. Succession to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium
Chapter  15. The Worship of the Oak
Chapter  16. Dianus and Diana
Chapter  17. The Burden of Royalty
      1. Royal and Priestly Taboos
      2. Divorce of the Spiritual from the Temporal Power
Chapter  18. The Perils of the Soul
      1. The Soul as a Mannikin
      2. Absence and Recall of the Soul
      3. The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection
Chapter  19. Tabooed Acts
      1. Taboos on Intercourse with Strangers
      2. Taboos on Eating and Drinking
      3. Taboos on Showing the Face
      4. Taboos on Quitting the House
      5. Taboos on Leaving Food over
Chapter  20. Tabooed Persons
      1. Chiefs and Kings tabooed
      2. Mourners tabooed
      3. Women tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth
      4. Warriors tabooed
      5. Manslayers tabooed
      6. Hunters and Fishers tabooed
Chapter  21. Tabooed Things
      1. The Meaning of  Taboo
      2. Iron tabooed
      3. Sharp Weapons tabooed
      4. Blood tabooed
      5. The Head tabooed
      6. Hair tabooed
      7. Ceremonies at Hair-cutting
      8. Disposal of Cut Hair and Nails
      9. Spittle tabooed
      10. Foods tabooed
      11. Knots and Rings tabooed
Chapter  22. Tabooed Words
      1. Personal Names tabooed
      2. Names of Relations tabooed
      3. Names of the Dead tabooed
      4. Names of Kings and other Sacred Persons tabooed
      5. Names of Gods tabooed
Chapter  23. Our Debt to the Savage
Chapter  24. The Killing of the Divine King
      1. The Mortality of the Gods
      2. Kings killed when their Strength fails
      3. Kings killed at the End of a Fixed Term
Chapter  25. Temporary Kings
Chapter  26. Sacrifice of the Kings Son
Chapter  27. Succession to the Soul
Chapter  28. The Killing of the Tree-Spirit
      1. The Whitsuntide Mummers
      2. Burying the Carnival
      3. Carrying out Death
      4. Bringing in Summer
      5. Battle of Summer and Winter
      6. Death and Resurrection of Kostrubonko
      7. Death and Revival of Vegetation
      8. Analogous Rites in India
      9. The Magic Spring
Chapter  29. The Myth of Adonis
Chapter  30. Adonis in Syria
Chapter  31. Adonis in Cyprus
Chapter  32. The Ritual of Adonis
Chapter  33. The Gardens of Adonis
Chapter  34. The Myth and Ritual of Attis
Chapter  35. Attis as a God of Vegetation
Chapter  36. Human Representatives of Attis
Chapter  37. Oriental Religions in the West
Chapter  38. The Myth of Osiris
Chapter  39. The Ritual of Osiris
      1. The Popular Rites
      2. The Official Rites
Chapter  40. The Nature of Osiris
      1. Osiris a Corn-god
      2. Osiris a Tree-spirit
      3. Osiris a God of Fertility
      4. Osiris a God of the Dead
Chapter  41. Isis
Chapter  42. Osiris and the Sun
Chapter  43. Dionysus
Chapter  44. Demeter and Persephone
Chapter  45. Corn-Mother and Corn-Maiden in N. Europe
Chapter  46. Corn-Mother in Many Lands
      1. The Corn-mother in America
      2. The Rice-mother in the East Indies
      3. The Spirit of the Corn embodied in Human Beings
      4. The Double Personification of the Corn as Mother and Daughter
Chapter  47. Lityerses
      1. Songs of the Corn Reapers
      2. Killing the Corn-spirit
      3. Human Sacrifices for the Crops
      4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives
Chapter  48. The Corn-Spirit as an Animal
      1. Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit
      2. The Corn-spirit as a Wolf or a Dog
      3. The Corn-spirit as a Cock
      4. The Corn-spirit as a Hare
      5. The Corn-spirit as a Cat
      6. The Corn-spirit as a Goat
      7. The Corn-spirit as a Bull, Cow, or Ox
      8. The Corn-spirit  as a Horse or Mare
      9. The Corn-spirit  as a Pig (Boar or Sow)
      10. On the Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit
Chapter  49. Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals
      1. Dionysus, the Goat and the Bull
      2. Demeter, the Pig and the Horse
      3. Attis, Adonis, and the Pig
      4. Osiris, the Pig and the Bull
      5. Virbius and the Horse
Chapter  50. Eating the God
      1. The Sacrament of First-Fruits
      2. Eating the God among the Aztecs
      3. Many Manii at Aricia
Chapter  51. Homeopathic Magic of a Flesh Diet
Chapter  52. Killing the Divine Animal
      1. Killing the Sacred Buzzard
      2. Killing the Sacred Ram
      3. Killing the Sacred Serpent
      4. Killing the Sacred Turtles
      5. Killing the Sacred Bear
Chapter  53. The Propitiation of Wild Animals By Hunters
Chapter  54. Types of Animal Sacrament
      1. The Egyptian and the Aino Types of Sacrament
      2. Processions with Sacred Animals
Chapter  55. The Transference of Evil
      1. The Transference to Inanimate Objects
      2. The Transference to Animals
      3. TheTransference to Men
      4. TheTransference of Evil in Europe
Chapter  56. The Public Expulsion of Evils
      1. The Omnipresence of Demons
      2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils
      3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils
Chapter  57. Public Scapegoats
      1. The Expulsion of Embodied Evils
      2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle
      3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle
      4. On Scapegoats in General
Chapter  58. Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity
      1. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Rome
      2. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece
      3. The Roman Saturnalia
Chapter  59. Killing the God in Mexico
Chapter  60. Between Heaven and Earth
      1. Not to touch the Earth
      2. Not to see the Sun
      3. The Seclusion of Girls at Puberty
      4. Reasons for the Seclusion of Girls at Puberty
Chapter  61. The Myth of Balder
Chapter  62. The Fire-Festivals of Europe
      1. The Fire-festivals in general
      2. The Lenten Fires
      3. The Easter Fires
      4. The Beltane Fires
      5. The Midsummer Fires
      6. The Halloween Fires
      7. The Midwinter Fires
      8. The Need-fire
Chapter  63. The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals
      1. On the Fire-festivals in general
      2. The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals
      3. The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals
Chapter  64. The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires
      1. The Burning of Effigies in the Fires
      2. The Burning of Men and Animals in the Fires
Chapter  65. Balder and the Mistletoe
Chapter  66. The External Soul in Folk-Tales
Chapter  67. The External Soul in Folk-Custom
      1. The External Soul in Inanimate Things
      2. The External Soul in Plants
      3. The External Soul in Animals
      4. The Ritual of Death and Resurrection
Chapter  68. The Golden Bough
Chapter  69. Farewell to Nemi

The Golden Bough
 Sir James George Frazer

Preface.

THE PRIMARY aim of this book is to explain the remarkable rule which
regulated the succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia. When I first
set myself to solve the problem more than thirty years ago, I thought that the
solution could be propounded very briefly, but I soon found that to render it
probable or even intelligible it was necessary to discuss certain more general
questions, some of which had hardly been broached before. In successive
editions the discussion of these and kindred topics has occupied more and more
space, the enquiry has branched out in more and more directions, until the two
volumes of the original work have expanded into twelve. Meantime a wish has
often been expressed that the book should be issued in a more compendious
form. This abridgment is an attempt to meet the wish and thereby to bring the
work within the range of a wider circle of readers. While the bulk of the book
has been greatly reduced, I have endeavoured to retain its leading principles,
together with an amount of evidence sufficient to illustrate them clearly. The
language of the original has also for the most part been preserved, though
here and there the exposition has been somewhat condensed. In order to keep as
much of the text as possible I have sacrificed all the notes, and with them
all exact references to my authorities. Readers who desire to ascertain the
source of any particular statement must therefore consult the larger work,
which is fully documented and provided with a complete bibliography.

In the abridgment I have neither added new matter nor altered the views
expressed in the last edition; for the evidence which has come to my knowledge
in the meantime has on the whole served either to confirm my former
conclusions or to furnish fresh illustrations of old principles. Thus, for
example, on the crucial question of the practice of putting kings to death
either at the end of a fixed period or whenever their health and strength
began to fail, the body of evidence which points to the wide prevalence of
such a custom has been considerably augmented in the interval. A striking
instance of a limited monarchy of this sort is furnished by the powerful
mediaeval kingdom of the Khazars in Southern Russia, where the kings were
liable to be put to death either on the expiry of a set term or whenever
some public calamity, such as drought, dearth, or defeat in war, seemed to
indicate a failure of their natural powers. The evidence for the systematic
killing of the Khazar kings, drawn from the accounts of old Arab travellers,
has been collected by me elsewhere. 1 Africa, again, has supplied several
fresh examples of a similar practice of regicide. Among them the most
notable perhaps is the custom formerly observed in Bunyoro of choosing every
year from a particular clan a mock king, who was supposed to incarnate the
late king, cohabited with his widows at his temple-tomb, and after reigning
for a week was strangled. 2 The custom presents a close parallel to the
ancient Babylonian festival of the Sacaea, at which a mock king was dressed
in the royal robes, allowed to enjoy the real king's concubines, and after
reigning for five days was stripped, scourged, and put to death. That festival
in its turn has lately received fresh light from certain Assyrian inscriptions, 3
which seem to confirm the interpretation which I formerly gave of the
festival as a New Year celebration and the parent of the Jewish festival of
Purim. 4 Other recently discovered parallels to the priestly kings of Aricia
are African priests and kings who used to be put to death at the end of seven
or of two years, after being liable in the interval to be attacked and killed by
a strong man, who thereupon succeeded to the priesthood or the kingdom. 5

With these and other instances of like customs before us it is no longer
possible to regard the rule of succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia
as exceptional; it clearly exemplifies a widespread institution, of which the
most numerous and the most similar cases have thus far been found in Africa.
How far the facts point to an early influence of Africa on Italy, or even to
the existence of an African population in Southern Europe, I do not presume to
say. The pre-historic  historic relations between the two continents are still
obscure and still under investigation.

Whether the explanation which I have offered of the institution is correct
or not must be left to the future to determine. I shall always be ready to
abandon it if a better can be suggested. Meantime in committing the book in
its new form to the judgment of the public I desire to guard against a
misapprehension of its scope which appears to be still rife, though I have
sought to correct it before now. If in the present work I have dwelt at some
length on the worship of trees, it is not, I trust, because I exaggerate its
importance in the history of religion, still less because I would deduce from
it a whole system of mythology; it is simply because I could not ignore the
subject in attempting to explain the significance of a priest who bore the
title of King of the Wood, and one of whose titles to office was the plucking
of a boughthe Golden Boughfrom a tree in the sacred grove. But I am so far
from regarding the reverence for trees as of supreme importance for the
evolution of religion that I consider it to have been altogether subordinate
to other factors, and in particular to the fear of the human dead, which, on
the whole, I believe to have been probably the most powerful force in the
making of primitive religion. I hope that after this explicit disclaimer I
shall no longer be taxed with embracing a system of mythology which I look
upon not merely as false but as preposterous and absurd. But I am too familiar
with the hydra of error to expect that by lopping off one of the monster's
heads I can prevent another, or even the same, from sprouting again. I can
only trust to the candour and intelligence of my readers to rectify this
serious misconception of my views by a comparison with my own express
declaration.

J. G. FRAZER.
1 BRICK COURT, TEMPLE, LONDON, June 1922.

Note 1.   J. G. Frazer, The Killing of the Khazar Kings, Folk-lore,
xxviii. (1917), pp. 382-407.

Note 2.   Rev. J. Roscoe, The Soul of Central Africa (London, 1922), p.
200. Compare J. G. Frazer, The Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central
Africa, Man, xx. (1920), p. 181.

Note 3.   H. Zimmern, Zum babylonischen Neujahrsfest (Leipzig, 1918).
Compare A. H. Sayce, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, July 1921, pp.
440-442.

Note 4.   The Golden Bough, Part VI. The Scapegoat, pp. 354 sqq., 412
sqq.

Note 5.   P. Amaury Talbot in Journal of the African Society, July 1916,
pp. 309 sq.; id., in Folk-lore, xxvi. (1916), pp. 79 sq.; H. R. Palmer,
in Journal of the African Society, July 1912, pp. 403, 407 sq.

Chapter 1. The King of the Wood.

1. Diana and Virbius

WHO does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough? The scene, suffused
with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of Turner steeped
and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of
the little woodland lake of Nemi Diana's Mirror, as it was called by the
ancients. No one who has seen that calm water, lapped in a green hollow of the
Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which
slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palace whose terraced gardens
descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the
solitariness of the scene. Diana herself might still linger by this lonely
shore, still haunt these woodlands wild.

In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and
recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake, right under the
precipitous cliffs on which the modern village of Nemi is perched, stood the
sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the Wood. The lake
and the grove were sometimes known as the lake and grove of Aricia. But the
town of Aricia (the modern La Riccia) was situated about three miles off, at
the foot of the Alban Mount, and separated by a steep descent from the lake,
which lies in a small crater-like hollow on the mountain side. In this sacred
grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and
probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand
he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every
instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a
murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and
hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A
candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the
priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by
a stronger or a craftier.

The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the title
of king; but surely no crowned head ever lay uneasier, or was visited by more
evil dreams, than his. For year in, year out, in summer and winter, in fair
weather and in foul, he had to keep his lonely watch, and whenever he snatched
a troubled slumber it was at the peril of his life. The least relaxation of
his vigilance, the smallest abatement of his strength of limb or skill of
fence, put him in jeopardy; grey hairs might seal his death-warrant. To gentle
and pious pilgrims at the shrine the sight of him might well seem to darken
the fair landscape, as when a cloud suddenly blots the sun on a bright day.
The dreamy blue of Italian skies, the dappled shade of summer woods, and the
sparkle of waves in the sun, can have accorded but ill with that stern and
sinister figure. Rather we picture to ourselves the scene as it may have been
witnessed by a belated wayfarer on one of those wild autumn nights when the
dead leaves are falling thick, and the winds seem to sing the dirge of the
dying year. It is a sombre picture, set to melancholy musicthe background of
forest showing black and jagged against a lowering and stormy sky, the sighing
of the wind in the branches, the rustle of the withered leaves under foot, the
lapping of the cold water on the shore, and in the foreground, pacing to and
fro, now in twilight and now in gloom, a dark figure with a glitter of steel
at the shoulder whenever the pale moon, riding clear of the cloud-rack, peers
down at him through the matted boughs.

The strange rule of this priesthood has no parallel in classical
antiquity, and cannot be explained from it. To find an explanation we must go
farther afield. No one will probably deny that such a custom savours of a
barbarous age, and, surviving into imperial times, stands out in striking
isolation from the polished Italian society of the day, like a primaeval rock
rising from a smooth-shaven lawn. It is the very rudeness and barbarity of the
custom which allow us a hope of explaining it. For recent researches into the
early history of man have revealed the essential similarity with which, under
many superficial differences, the human mind has elaborated its first crude
philosophy of life. Accordingly, if we can show that a barbarous custom, like
that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the
motives which led to its institution; if we can prove that these motives have
operated widely, perhaps universally, in human society, producing in varied
circumstances a variety of institutions specifically different but generically
alike; if we can show, lastly, that these very motives, with some of their
derivative institutions, were actually at work in classical antiquity; then we
may fairly infer that at a remoter age the same motives gave birth to the
priesthood of Nemi. Such an inference, in default of direct evidence as to how
the priesthood did actually arise, can never amount to demonstration. But it
will be more or less probable according to the degree of completeness with
which it fulfils the conditions I have indicated. The object of this book is,
by meeting these conditions, to offer a fairly probable explanation of the
priesthood of Nemi.

I begin by setting forth the few facts and legends which have come down to
us on the subject. According to one story the worship of Diana at Nemi was
instituted by Orestes, who, after killing Thoas, King of the Tauric Chersonese
(the Crimea), fled with his sister to Italy, bringing with him the image of
the Tauric Diana hidden in a faggot of sticks. After his death his bones were
transported from Aricia to Rome and buried in front of the temple of Saturn,
on the Capitoline slope, beside the temple of Concord. The bloody ritual which
legend ascribed to the Tauric Diana is familiar to classical readers; it is
said that every stranger who landed on the shore was sacrificed on her altar.
But transported to Italy, the rite assumed a milder form. Within the sanctuary
at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be broken. Only a runaway
slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the
attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him
he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis).
According to the public opinion of the ancients the fateful branch was that
Golden Bough which, at the Sibyl's bidding, Aeneas plucked before he essayed
the perilous journey to the world of the dead. The flight of the slave
represented, it was said, the flight of Orestes; his combat with the priest
was a reminiscence of the human sacrifices once offered to the Tauric Diana.
This rule of succession by the sword was observed down to imperial times; for
amongst his other freaks Caligula, thinking that the priest of Nemi had held
office too long, hired a more stalwart ruffian to slay him; and a Greek
traveller, who visited Italy in the age of the Antonines, remarks that down to
his time the priesthood was still the prize of victory in a single combat.

Of the worship of Diana at Nemi some leading features can still be made
out. From the votive offerings which have been found on the site, it appears
that she was conceived of especially as a huntress, and further as blessing
men and women with offspring, and granting expectant mothers an easy delivery.
Again, fire seems to have played a foremost part in her ritual. For during her
annual festival, held on the thirteenth of August, at the hottest time of the
year, her grove shone with a multitude of torches, whose ruddy glare was
reflected by the lake; and throughout the length and breadth of Italy the day
was kept with holy rites at every domestic hearth. Bronze statuettes found in
her precinct represent the goddess herself holding a torch in her raised right
hand; and women whose prayers had been heard by her came crowned with wreaths
and bearing lighted torches to the sanctuary in fulfilment of their vows. Some
one unknown dedicated a perpetually burning lamp in a little shrine at Nemi
for the safety of the Emperor Claudius and his family. The terra-cotta lamps
which have been discovered in the grove may perhaps have served a like purpose
for humbler persons. If so, the analogy of the custom to the Catholic practice
of dedicating holy candles in churches would be obvious. Further, the title of
Vesta borne by Diana at Nemi points clearly to the maintenance of a perpetual
holy fire in her sanctuary. A large circular basement at the north-east corner
of the temple, raised on three steps and bearing traces of a mosaic pavement,
probably supported a round temple of Diana in her character of Vesta, like the
round temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum. Here the sacred fire would seem to
have been tended by Vestal Virgins, for the head of a Vestal in terra-cotta
was found on the spot, and the worship of a perpetual fire, cared for by holy
maidens, appears to have been common in Latium from the earliest to the latest
times. Further, at the annual festival of the goddess, hunting dogs were
crowned and wild beasts were not molested; young people went through a
purificatory ceremony in her honour; wine was brought forth, and the feast
consisted of a kid cakes served piping hot on plates of leaves, and apples
still hanging in clusters on the boughs.

But Diana did not reign alone in her grove at Nemi. Two lesser divinities
shared her forest sanctuary. One was Egeria, the nymph of the clear water
which, bubbling from the basaltic rocks, used to fall in graceful cascades
into the lake at the place called Le Mole, because here were established the
mills of the modern village of Nemi. The purling of the stream as it ran over
the pebbles is mentioned by Ovid, who tells us that he had often drunk of its
water. Women with child used to sacrifice to Egeria, because she was believed,
like Diana, to be able to grant them an easy delivery. Tradition ran that the
nymph had been the wife or mistress of the wise king Numa, that he had
consorted with her in the secrecy of the sacred grove, and that the laws which
he gave the Romans had been inspired by communion with her divinity. Plutarch
compares the legend with other tales of the loves of goddesses for mortal men,
such as the love of Cybele and the Moon for the fair youths Attis and
Endymion. According to some, the trysting-place of the lovers was not in the
woods of Nemi but in a grove outside the dripping Porta Capena at Rome, where
another sacred spring of Egeria gushed from a dark cavern. Every day the Roman
Vestals fetched water from this spring to wash the temple of Vesta, carrying
it in earthenware pitchers on their heads. In Juvenal's time the natural rock
had been encased in marble, and the hallowed spot was profaned by gangs of
poor Jews, who were suffered to squat, like gypsies, in the grove. We may
suppose that the spring which fell into the lake of Nemi was the true original
Egeria, and that when the first settlers moved down from the Alban hills to
the banks of the Tiber they brought the nymph with them and found a new home
for her in a grove outside the gates. The remains of baths which have been
discovered within the sacred precinct, together with many terra-cotta models
of various parts of the human body, suggest that the waters of Egeria were
used to heal the sick, who may have signified their hopes or testified their
gratitude by dedicating likenesses of the diseased members to the goddess, in
accordance with a custom which is still observed in many parts of Europe. To
this day it would seem that the spring retains medicinal virtues.

The other of the minor deities at Nemi was Virbius. Legend had it that
Virbius was the young Greek hero Hippolytus, chaste and fair, who learned the
art of venery from the centaur Chiron, and spent all his days in the greenwood
chasing wild beasts with the virgin huntress Artemis (the Greek counterpart of
Diana) for his only comrade. Proud of her divine society, he spurned the love
of women, and this proved his bane. For Aphrodite, stung by his scorn,
inspired his stepmother Phaedra with love of him; and when he disdained her
wicked advances she falsely accused him to his father Theseus. The slander was
believed, and Theseus prayed to his sire Poseidon to avenge the imagined
wrong. So while Hippolytus drove in a chariot by the shore of the Saronic
Gulf, the sea-god sent a fierce bull forth from the waves. The terrified
horses bolted, threw Hippolytus from the chariot, and dragged him at their
hoofs to death. But Diana, for the love she bore Hippolytus, persuaded the
leech Aesculapius to bring her fair young hunter back to life by his simples.
Jupiter, indignant that a mortal man should return from the gates of death,
thrust down the meddling leech himself to Hades. But Diana hid her favourite
from the angry god in a thick cloud, disguised his features by adding years to
his life, and then bore him far away to the dells of Nemi, where she entrusted
him to the nymph Egeria, to live there, unknown and solitary, under the name
of Virbius, in the depth of the Italian forest. There he reigned a king, and
there he dedicated a precinct to Diana. He had a comely son, Virbius, who,
undaunted by his father's fate, drove a team of fiery steeds to join the
Latins in the war against Aeneas and the Trojans. Virbius was worshipped as a
god not only at Nemi but elsewhere; for in Campania we hear of a special
priest devoted to his service. Horses were excluded from the Arician grove and
sanctuary because horses had killed Hippolytus. It was unlawful to touch his
image. Some thought that he was the sun. But the truth is, says Servius,
that he is a deity associated with Diana, as Attis is associated with the
Mother of the Gods, and Erichthonius with Minerva, and Adonis with Venus.
What the nature of that association was we shall enquire presently. Here it is
worth observing that in his long and chequered career this mythical personage
has displayed a remarkable tenacity of life. For we can hardly doubt that the
Saint Hippolytus of the Roman calendar, who was dragged by horses to death on
the thirteenth of August, Diana's own day, is no other than the Greek hero of
the same name, who, after dying twice over as a heathen sinner, has been
happily resuscitated as a Christian saint.

It needs no elaborate demonstration to convince us that the stories told
to account for Diana's worship at Nemi are unhistorical. Clearly they belong
to that large class of myths which are made up to explain the origin of a
religious ritual and have no other foundation than the resemblance, real or
imaginary, which may be traced between it and some foreign ritual. The
incongruity of these Nemi myths is indeed transparent, since the foundation of
the worship is traced now to Orestes and now to Hippolytus, according as this
or that feature of the ritual has to be accounted for. The real value of such
tales is that they serve to illustrate the nature of the worship by providing
a standard with which to compare it; and further, that they bear witness
indirectly to its venerable age by showing that the true origin was lost in
the mists of a fabulous antiquity. In the latter respect these Nemi legends
are probably more to be trusted than the apparently historical tradition,
vouched for by Cato the Elder, that the sacred grove was dedicated to Diana by
a certain Egerius Baebius or Laevius of Tusculum, a Latin dictator, on behalf
of the peoples of Tusculum, Aricia, Lanuvium, Laurentum, Cora, Tibur, Pometia,
and Ardea. This tradition indeed speaks for the great age of the sanctuary,
since it seems to date its foundation sometime before 495 B.C., the year in
which Pometia was sacked by the Romans and disappears from history. But we
cannot suppose that so barbarous a rule as that of the Arician priesthood was
deliberately instituted by a league of civilised communities, such as the
Latin cities undoubtedly were. It must have been handed down from a time
beyond the memory of man, when Italy was still in a far ruder state than any
known to us in the historical period. The credit of the tradition is rather
shaken than confirmed by another story which ascribes the foundation of the
sanctuary to a certain Manius Egerius, who gave rise to the saying, There are
many Manii at Aricia. This proverb some explained by alleging that Manius
Egerius was the ancestor of a long and distinguished line, whereas others
thought it meant that there were many ugly and deformed people at Aricia, and
they derived the name Manius from Mania, a bogey or bugbear to frighten
children. A Roman satirist uses the name Manius as typical of the beggars who
lay in wait for pilgrims on the Arician slopes. These differences of opinion,
together with the discrepancy between Manius Egerius of Aricia and Egerius
Laevius of Tusculum, as well as the resemblance of both names to the mythical
Egeria, excite our suspicion. Yet the tradition recorded by Cato seems too
circumstantial, and its sponsor too respectable, to allow us to dismiss it as
an idle fiction. Rather we may suppose that it refers to some ancient
restoration or reconstruction of the sanctuary, which was actually carried out
by the confederate states. At any rate it testifies to a belief that the grove
had been from early times a common place of worship for many of the oldest
cities of the country, if not for the whole Latin confederacy.

2. Artemis and Hippolytus

I HAVE said that the Arician legends of Orestes and Hippolytus, though
worthless as history, have a certain value in so far as they may help us to
understand the worship at Nemi better by comparing it with the ritual and
myths of other sanctuaries. We must ask ourselves, Why did the author of these
legends pitch upon Orestes and Hippolytus in order to explain Virbius and the
King of the Wood? In regard to Orestes, the answer is obvious. He and the
image of the Tauric Diana, which could only be appeased with human blood, were
dragged in to render intelligible the murderous rule of succession to the
Arician priesthood. In regard to Hippolytus the case is not so plain. The
manner of his death suggests readily enough a reason for the exclusion of
horses from the grove; but this by itself seems hardly enough to account for
the identification. We must try to probe deeper by examining the worship as
well as the legend or myth of Hippolytus.

He had a famous sanctuary at his ancestral home of Troezen, situated on
that beautiful, almost landlocked bay, where groves of oranges and lemons,
with tall cypresses soaring like dark spires above the garden of Hesperides,
now clothe the strip of fertile shore at the foot of the rugged mountains.
Across the blue water of the tranquil bay, which it shelters from the open
sea, rises Poseidon's sacred island, its peaks veiled in the sombre green of
the pines. On this fair coast Hippolytus was worshipped. Within his sanctuary
stood a temple with an ancient image. His service was performed by a priest
who held office for life; every year a sacrificial festival was held in his
honour; and his untimely fate was yearly mourned, with weeping and doleful
chants, by unwedded maids. Youths and maidens dedicated locks of their hair in
his temple before marriage. His grave existed at Troezen, though the people
would not show it. It has been suggested, with great plausibility, that in the
handsome Hippolytus, beloved of Artemis, cut off in his youthful prime, and
yearly mourned by damsels, we have one of those mortal lovers of a goddess who
appear so often in ancient religion, and of whom Adonis is the most familiar
type. The rivalry of Artemis and Phaedra for the affection of Hippolytus
reproduces, it is said, under different names, the rivalry of Aphrodite and
Proserpine for the love of Adonis, for Phaedra is merely a double of
Aphrodite. The theory probably does no injustice either to Hippolytus or to
Artemis. For Artemis was originally a great goddess of fertility, and, on the
principles of early religion, she who fertilises nature must herself be
fertile, and to be that she must necessarily have a male consort. On this
view, Hippolytus was the consort of Artemis at Troezen, and the shorn tresses
offered to him by the Troezenian youths and maidens before marriage were
designed to strengthen his union with the goddess, and so to promote the
fruitfulness of the earth, of cattle, and of mankind. It is some confirmation
of this view that within the precinct of Hippolytus at Troezen there were
worshipped two female powers named Damia and Auxesia, whose connexion with the
fertility of the ground is unquestionable. When Epidaurus suffered from a
dearth, the people, in obedience to an oracle, carved images of Damia and
Auxesia out of sacred olive wood, and no sooner had they done so and set them
up than the earth bore fruit again. Moreover, at Troezen itself, and
apparently within the precinct of Hippolytus, a curious festival of
stone-throwing was held in honour of these maidens, as the Troezenians called
them; and it is easy to show that similar customs have been practised in many
lands for the express purpose of ensuring good crops. In the story of the
tragic death of the youthful Hippolytus we may discern an analogy with similar
tales of other fair but mortal youths who paid with their lives for the brief
rapture of the love of an immortal goddess. These hapless lovers were probably
not always mere myths, and the legends which traced their spilt blood in the
purple bloom of the violet, the scarlet stain of the anemone, or the crimson
flush of the rose were no idle poetic emblems of youth and beauty fleeting as
the summer flowers. Such fables contain a deeper philosophy of the relation of
the life of man to the life of naturea sad philosophy which gave birth to a
tragic practice. What that philosophy and that practice were, we shall learn
later on.

3. Recapitulation

WE can now perhaps understand why the ancients identified Hippolytus, the
consort of Artemis, with Virbius, who, according to Servius, stood to Diana as
Adonis to Venus, or Attis to the Mother of the Gods. For Diana, like Artemis,
was a goddess of fertility in general, and of childbirth in particular. As
such she, like her Greek counterpart, needed a male partner. That partner, if
Servius is right, was Virbius. In his character of the founder of the sacred
grove and first king of Nemi, Virbius is clearly the mythical predecessor or
archetype of the line of priests who served Diana under the title of Kings of
the Wood, and who came, like him, one after the other, to a violent end. It is
natural, therefore, to conjecture that they stood to the goddess of the grove
in the same relation in which Virbius stood to her; in short, that the mortal
King of the Wood had for his queen the woodland Diana herself. If the sacred
tree which he guarded with his life was supposed, as seems probable, to be her
special embodiment, her priest may not only have worshipped it as his goddess
but embraced it as his wife. There is at least nothing absurd in the
supposition, since even in the time of Pliny a noble Roman used thus to treat
a beautiful beech-tree in another sacred grove of Diana on the Alban hills. He
embraced it, he kissed it, he lay under its shadow, he poured wine on its
trunk. Apparently he took the tree for the goddess. The custom of physically
marrying men and women to trees is still practised in India and other parts of
the East. Why should it not have obtained in ancient Latium?

Reviewing the evidence as a whole, we may conclude that the worship of
Diana in her sacred grove at Nemi was of great importance and immemorial
antiquity; that she was revered as the goddess of woodlands and of wild
creatures, probably also of domestic cattle and of the fruits of the earth;
that she was believed to bless men and women with offspring and to aid mothers
in childbed; that her holy fire, tended by chaste virgins, burned perpetually
in a round temple within the precinct; that associated with her was a
water-nymph Egeria who discharged one of Diana's own functions by succouring
women in travail, and who was popularly supposed to have mated with an old
Roman king in the sacred grove; further, that Diana of the Wood herself had a
male companion Virbius by name, who was to her what Adonis was to Venus, or
Attis to Cybele; and, lastly, that this mythical Virbius was represented in
historical times by a line of priests known as Kings of the Wood, who
regularly perished by the swords of their successors, and whose lives were in
a manner bound up with a certain tree in the grove, because so long as that
tree was uninjured they were safe from attack.

Clearly these conclusions do not of themselves suffice to explain the
peculiar rule of succession to the priesthood. But perhaps the survey of a
wider field may lead us to think that they contain in germ the solution of the
problem. To that wider survey we must now address ourselves. It will be long
and laborious, but may possess something of the interest and charm of a voyage
of discovery, in which we shall visit many strange foreign lands, with strange
foreign peoples, and still stranger customs. The wind is in the shrouds: we
shake out our sails to it, and leave the coast of Italy behind us for a time.

Chapter 2. Priestly Kings
THE questions which we have set ourselves to answer are mainly two: first,
why had Diana's priest at Nemi, the King of the Wood, to slay his predecessor?
second, why before doing so had he to pluck the branch of a certain tree which
the public opinion of the ancients identified with Virgil's Golden Bough?

The first point on which we fasten is the priest's title. Why was he
called the King of the Wood? Why was his office spoken of as a kingdom?

The union of a royal title with priestly duties was common in ancient
Italy and Greece. At Rome and in other cities of Latium there was a priest
called the Sacrificial King or King of the Sacred Rites, and his wife bore the
title of Queen of the Sacred Rites. In republican Athens the second annual
magistrate of the state was called the King, and his wife the Queen; the
functions of both were religious. Many other Greek democracies had titular
kings, whose duties, so far as they are known, seem to have been priestly, and
to have centered round the Common Hearth of the state. Some Greek states had
several of these titular kings, who held office simultaneously. At Rome the
tradition was that the Sacrificial King had been appointed after the abolition
of the monarchy in order to offer the sacrifices which before had been offered
by the kings. A similar view as to the origin of the priestly kings appears to
have prevailed in Greece. In itself the opinion is not improbable, and it is
borne out by the example of Sparta, almost the only purely Greek state which
retained the kingly form of government in historical times. For in Sparta all
state sacrifices were offered by the kings as descendants of the god. One of
the two Spartan kings held the priesthood of Zeus Lacedaemon, the other the
priesthood of Heavenly Zeus.

This combination of priestly functions with royal authority is familiar to
every one. Asia Minor, for example, was the seat of various great religious
capitals peopled by thousands of sacred slaves, and ruled by pontiffs who
wielded at once temporal and spiritual authority, like the popes of mediaeval
Rome. Such priest-ridden cities were Zela and Pessinus. Teutonic kings, again,
in the old heathen days seem to have stood in the position, and to have
exercised the powers, of high priests. The Emperors of China offered public
sacrifices, the details of which were regulated by the ritual books. The King
of Madagascar was high-priest of the realm. At the great festival of the new
year, when a bullock was sacrificed for the good of the kingdom, the king
stood over the sacrifice to offer prayer and thanksgiving, while his
attendants slaughtered the animal. In the monarchical states which still
maintain their independence among the Gallas of Eastern Africa, the king
sacrifices on the mountain tops and regulates the immolation of human victims;
and the dim light of tradition reveals a similar union of temporal and
spiritual power, of royal and priestly duties, in the kings of that delightful
region of Central America whose ancient capital, now buried under the rank
growth of the tropical forest, is marked by the stately and mysterious ruins
of Palenque.

When we have said that the ancient kings were commonly priests also, we
are far from having exhausted the religious aspect of their office. In those
days the divinity that hedges a king was no empty form of speech, but the
expression of a sober belief. Kings were revered, in many cases not merely as
priests, that is, as intercessors between man and god, but as themselves gods,
able to bestow upon their subjects and worshippers those blessings which are
commonly supposed to be beyond the reach of mortals, and are sought, if at
all, only by prayer and sacrifice offered to superhuman and invisible beings.
Thus kings are often expected to give rain and sunshine in due season, to make
the crops grow, and so on. Strange as this expectation appears to us, it is
quite of a piece with early modes of thought. A savage hardly conceives the
distinction commonly drawn by more advanced peoples between the natural and
the supernatural. To him the world is to a great extent worked by supernatural
agents, that is, by personal beings acting on impulses and motives like his
own, liable like him to be moved by appeals to their pity, their hopes, and
their fears. In a world so conceived he sees no limit to his power of
influencing the course of nature to his own advantage. Prayers, promises, or
threats may secure him fine weather and an abundant crop from the gods; and if
a god should happen, as he sometimes believes, to become incarnate in his own
person, then he need appeal to no higher being; he, the savage, possesses in
himself all the powers necessary to further his own well-being and that of his
fellow-men.

This is one way in which the idea of a man-god is reached. But there is
another. Along with the view of the world as pervaded by spiritual forces,
savage man has a different, and probably still older, conception in which we
may detect a germ of the modern notion of natural law or the view of nature as
a series of events occurring in an invariable order without the intervention
of personal agency. The germ of which I speak is involved in that sympathetic
magic, as it may be called, which plays a large part in most systems of
superstition. In early society the king is frequently a magician as well as a
priest; indeed he appears to have often attained to power by virtue of his
supposed proficiency in the black or white art. Hence in order to understand
the evolution of the kingship and the sacred character with which the office
has commonly been invested in the eyes of savage or barbarous peoples, it is
essential to have some acquaintance with the principles of magic and to form
some conception of the extraordinary hold which that ancient system of
superstition has had on the human mind in all ages and all countries.
Accordingly I propose to consider the subject in some detail.

Chapter 3. Sympathetic Magic.

1. The Principles of Magic

IF we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is based, they will
probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces
like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that things which
have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a
distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former principle may
be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion.
From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician
infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from
the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect
equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed
part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity may be called
Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or
Contagion may be called Contagious Magic. To denote the first of these
branches of magic the term Homoeopathic is perhaps preferable, for the
alternative term Imitative or Mimetic suggests, if it does not imply, a
conscious agent who imitates, thereby limiting the scope of magic too
narrowly. For the same principles which the magician applies in the practice
of his art are implicitly believed by him to regulate the operations of
inanimate nature; in other words, he tacitly assumes that the Laws of
Similarity and Contact are of universal application and are not limited to
human actions. In short, magic is a spurious system of natural law as well as
a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a false science as well as an abortive
art. Regarded as a system of natural law, that is, as a statement of the rules
which determine the sequence of events throughout the world, it may be called
Theoretical Magic: regarded as a set of precepts which human beings observe in
order to compass their ends, it may be called Practical Magic. At the same
time it is to be borne in mind that the primitive magician knows magic only on
its practical side; he never analyses the mental processes on which his
practice is based, never reflects on the abstract principles involved in his
actions. With him, as with the vast majority of men, logic is implicit, not
explicit: he reasons just as he digests his food in complete ignorance of the
intellectual and physiological processes which are essential to the one
operation and to the other. In short, to him magic is always an art, never a
science; the very idea of science is lacking in his undeveloped mind. It is
for the philosophic student to trace the train of thought which underlies the
magician's practice; to draw out the few simple threads of which the tangled
skein is composed; to disengage the abstract principles from their concrete
applications; in short, to discern the spurious science behind the bastard
art.

If my analysis of the magician's logic is correct, its two great
principles turn out to be merely two different misapplications of the
association of ideas. Homoeopathic magic is founded on the association of
ideas by similarity: contagious magic is founded on the association of ideas
by contiguity. Homoeopathic magic commits the mistake of assuming that things
which resemble each other are the same: contagious magic commits the mistake
of assuming that things which have once been in contact with each other are
always in contact. But in practice the two branches are often combined; or, to
be more exact, while homoeopathic or imitative magic may be practised by
itself, contagious magic will generally be found to involve an application of
the homoeopathic or imitative principle. Thus generally stated the two things
may be a little difficult to grasp, but they will readily become intelligible
when they are illustrated by particular examples. Both trains of thought are
in fact extremely simple and elementary. It could hardly be otherwise, since
they are familiar in the concrete, though certainly not in the abstract, to
the crude intelligence not only of the savage, but of ignorant and dull-witted
people everywhere. Both branches of magic, the homoeopathic and the
contagious, may conveniently be comprehended under the general name of
Sympathetic Magic, since both assume that things act on each other at a
distance through a secret sympathy, the impulse being transmitted from one to
the other by means of what we may conceive as a kind of invisible ether, not
unlike that which is postulated by modern science for a precisely similar
purpose, namely, to explain how things can physically affect each other
through a space which appears to be empty.

It may be convenient to tabulate as follows the branches of magic
according to the laws of thought which underlie them:

I will now illustrate these two great branches of sympathetic magic by
examples, beginning with homoeopathic magic.

2. Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic

PERHAPS the most familiar application of the principle that like produces
like is the attempt which has been made by many peoples in many ages to injure
or destroy an enemy by injuring or destroying an image of him, in the belief
that, just as the image suffers, so does the man, and that when it perishes he
must die. A few instances out of many may be given to prove at once the wide
diffusion of the practice over the world and its remarkable persistence
through the ages. For thousands of years ago it was known to the sorcerers of
ancient India, Babylon, and Egypt, as well as of Greece and Rome, and at this
day it is still resorted to by cunning and malignant savages in Australia,
Africa, and Scotland. Thus the North American Indians, we are told, believe
that by drawing the figure of a person in sand, ashes, or clay, or by
considering any object as his body, and then pricking it with a sharp stick or
doing it any other injury, they inflict a corresponding injury on the person
represented. For example, when an Ojebway Indian desires to work evil on any
one, he makes a little wooden image of his enemy and runs a needle into its
head or heart, or he shoots an arrow into it, believing that wherever the
needle pierces or the arrow strikes the image, his foe will the same instant
be seized with a sharp pain in the corresponding part of his body; but if he
intends to kill the person outright, he burns or buries the puppet, uttering
certain magic words as he does so. The Peruvian Indians moulded images of fat
mixed with grain to imitate the persons whom they disliked or feared, and then
burned the effigy on the road where the intended victim was to pass. This they
called burning his soul.

A Malay charm of the same sort is as follows. Take parings of nails, hair,
eyebrows, spittle, and so forth of your intended victim, enough to represent
every part of his person, and then make them up into his likeness with wax
from a deserted bees' comb. Scorch the figure slowly by holding it over a lamp
every night for seven nights, and say:

It is not wax that I am scorching,
It is the liver, heart, and spleen of So-and-so that I scorch.

After the seventh time burn the figure, and your victim will die. This charm
obviously combines the principles of homoeopathic and contagious magic; since
the image which is made in the likeness of an enemy contains things which once
were in contact with him, namely, his nails, hair, and spittle. Another form
of the Malay charm, which resembles the Ojebway practice still more closely,
is to make a corpse of wax from an empty bees' comb and of the length of a
footstep; then pierce the eye of the image, and your enemy is blind; pierce
the stomach, and he is sick; pierce the head, and his head aches; pierce the
breast, and his breast will suffer. If you would kill him outright, transfix
the image from the head downwards; enshroud it as you would a corpse; pray
over it as if you were praying over the dead; then bury it in the middle of a
path where your victim will be sure to step over it. In order that his blood
may not be on your head, you should say:

It is not I who am burying him,
It is Gabriel who is burying him.

Thus the guilt of the murder will be laid on the shoulders of the archangel
Gabriel, who is a great deal better able to bear it than you are.

If homoeopathic or imitative magic, working by means of images, has
commonly been practised for the spiteful purpose of putting obnoxious people
out of the world, it has also, though far more rarely, been employed with the
benevolent intention of helping others into it. In other words, it has been
used to facilitate childbirth and to procure offspring for barren women. Thus
among the Bataks of Sumatra a barren woman, who would become a mother, will
make a wooden image of a child and hold it in her lap, believing that this
will lead to the fulfilment of her wish. In the Babar Archipelago, when a
woman desires to have a child, she invites a man who is himself the father of
a large family to pray on her behalf to Upulero, the spirit of the sun. A doll
is made of red cotton, which the woman clasps in her arms, as if she would
suckle it. Then the father of many children takes a fowl and holds it by the
legs to the woman's head, saying, O Upulero, make use of the fowl; let fall,
let descend a child, I beseech you, I entreat you, let a child fall and
descend into my hands and on my lap. Then he asks the woman, Has the child
come? and she answers, Yes, it is sucking already. After that the man holds
the fowl on the husband's head, and mumbles some form of words. Lastly, the
bird is killed and laid, together with some betel, on the domestic place of
sacrifice. When the ceremony is over, word goes about in the village that the
woman has been brought to bed, and her friends come and congratulate her. Here
the pretence that a child has been born is a purely magical rite designed to
secure, by means of imitation or mimicry, that a child really shall be born;
but an attempt is made to add to the efficacy of the rite by means of prayer
and sacrifice. To put it otherwise, magic is here blent with and reinforced by
religion.

Among some of the Dyaks of Borneo, when a woman is in hard labour, a
wizard is called in, who essays to facilitate the delivery in a rational
manner by manipulating the body of the sufferer. Meantime another wizard
outside the room exerts himself to attain the same end by means which we
should regard as wholly irrational. He, in fact, pretends to be the expectant
mother; a large stone attached to his stomach by a cloth wrapt round his body
represents the child in the womb, and, following the directions shouted to him
by his colleague on the real scene of operations, he moves this make-believe
baby about on his body in exact imitation of the movements of the real baby
till the infant is born.

The same principle of make-believe, so dear to children, has led other
peoples to employ a simulation of birth as a form of adoption, and even as a
mode of restoring a supposed dead person to life. If you pretend to give birth
to a boy, or even to a great bearded man who has not a drop of your blood in
his veins, then, in the eyes of primitive law and philosophy, that boy or man
is really your son to all intents and purposes. Thus Diodorus tells us that
when Zeus persuaded his jealous wife Hera to adopt Hercules, the goddess got
into bed, and clasping the burly hero to her bosom, pushed him through her
robes and let him fall to the ground in imitation of a real birth; and the
historian adds that in his own day the same mode of adopting children was
practised by the barbarians. At the present time it is said to be still in use
in Bulgaria and among the Bosnian Turks. A woman will take a boy whom she
intends to adopt and push or pull him through her clothes; ever afterwards he
is regarded as her very son, and inherits the whole property of his adoptive
parents. Among the Berawans of Sarawak, when a woman desires to adopt a
grownup man or woman, a great many people assemble and have a feast. The
adopting mother, seated in public on a raised and covered seat, allows the
adopted person to crawl from behind between her legs. As soon as he appears in
front he is stroked with the sweet-scented blossoms of the areca palm and tied
to a woman. Then the adopting mother and the adopted son or daughter, thus
bound together, waddle to the end of the house and back again in front of all
the spectators. The tie established between the two by this graphic imitation
of childbirth is very strict; an offence committed against an adopted child is
reckoned more heinous than one committed against a real child. In ancient
Greece any man who had been supposed erroneously to be dead, and for whom in
his absence funeral rites had been performed, was treated as dead to society
till he had gone through the form of being born again. He was passed through a
woman's lap, then washed, dressed in swaddling-clothes, and put out to nurse.
Not until this ceremony had been punctually performed might he mix freely with
living folk. In ancient India, under similar circumstances, the supposed dead
man had to pass the first night after his return in a tub filled with a
mixture of fat and water; there he sat with doubled-up fists and without
uttering a syllable, like a child in the womb, while over him were performed
all the sacraments that were wont to be celebrated over a pregnant woman. Next
morning he got out of the tub and went through once more all the other
sacraments he had formerly partaken of from his youth up; in particular, he
married a wife or espoused his old one over again with due solemnity.

Another beneficent use of homoeopathic magic is to heal or prevent
sickness. The ancient Hindoos performed an elaborate ceremony, based on
homoeopathic magic, for the cure of jaundice. Its main drift was to banish the
yellow colour to yellow creatures and yellow things, such as the sun, to which
it properly belongs, and to procure for the patient a healthy red colour from
a living, vigorous source, namely, a red bull. With this intention, a priest
recited the following spell: Up to the sun shall go thy heart-ache and thy
jaundice: in the colour of the red bull do we envelop thee! We envelop thee in
red tints, unto long life. May this person go unscathed and be free of yellow
colour! The cows whose divinity is Rohini, they who, moreover, are themselves
red (rohinih)in their every form and every strength we do envelop thee.
Into the parrots, into the thrush, do we put thy jaundice, and, furthermore,
into the yellow wagtail do we put thy jaundice. While he uttered these words,
the priest, in order to infuse the rosy hue of health into the sallow patient,
gave him water to sip which was mixed with the hair of a red bull; he poured
water over the animal's back and made the sick man drink it; he seated him on
the skin of a red bull and tied a piece of the skin to him. Then in order to
improve his colour by thoroughly eradicating the yellow taint, he proceeded
thus. He first daubed him from head to foot with a yellow porridge made of
tumeric or curcuma (a yellow plant), set him on a bed, tied three yellow
birds, to wit, a parrot, a thrush, and a yellow wagtail, by means of a yellow
string to the foot of the bed; then pouring water over the patient, he washed
off the yellow porridge, and with it no doubt the jaundice, from him to the
birds. After that, by way of giving a final bloom to his complexion, he took
some hairs of a red bull, wrapt them in gold leaf, and glued them to the
patient's skin. The ancients held that if a person suffering from jaundice
looked sharply at a stone-curlew, and the bird looked steadily at him, he was
cured of the disease. Such is the nature, says Plutarch, and such the
temperament of the creature that it draws out and receives the malady which
issues, like a stream, through the eyesight. So well recognised among
birdfanciers was this valuable property of the stone-curlew that when they had
one of these birds for sale they kept it carefully covered, lest a jaundiced
person should look at it and be cured for nothing. The virtue of the bird lay
not in its colour but in its large golden eye, which naturally drew out the
yellow jaundice. Pliny tells of another, or perhaps the same, bird, to which
the Greeks gave their name for jaundice, because if a jaundiced man saw it,
the disease left him and slew the bird. He mentions also a stone which was
supposed to cure jaundice because its hue resembled that of a jaundiced skin.

One of the great merits of homoeopathic magic is that it enables the cure
to be performed on the person of the doctor instead of on that of his victim,
who is thus relieved of all trouble and inconvenience, while he sees his
medical man writhe in anguish before him. For example, the peasants of Perche,
in France, labour under the impression that a prolonged fit of vomiting is
brought about by the patient's stomach becoming unhooked, as they call it, and
so falling down. Accordingly, a practitioner is called in to restore the organ
to its proper place. After hearing the symptoms he at once throws himself into
the most horrible contortions, for the purpose of unhooking his own stomach.
Having succeeded in the effort, he next hooks it up again in another series of
contortions and grimaces, while the patient experiences a corresponding
relief. Fee five francs. In like manner a Dyak medicine-man, who has been
fetched in a case of illness, will lie down and pretend to be dead. He is
accordingly treated like a corpse, is bound up in mats, taken out of the
house, and deposited on the ground. After about an hour the other medicine-men
loose the pretended dead man and bring him to life; and as he recovers, the
sick person is supposed to recover too. A cure for a tumour, based on the
principle of homoeopathic magic, is prescribed by Marcellus of Bordeaux, court
physician to Theodosius the First, in his curious work on medicine. It is as
follows. Take a root of vervain, cut it across, and hang one end of it round
the patient's neck, and the other in the smoke of the fire. As the vervain
dries up in the smoke, so the tumour will also dry up and disappear. If the
patient should afterwards prove ungrateful to the good physician, the man of
skill can avenge himself very easily by throwing the vervain into water; for
as the root absorbs the moisture once more, the tumour will return. The same
sapient writer recommends you, if you are troubled with pimples, to watch for
a falling star, and then instantly, while the star is still shooting from the
sky, to wipe the pimples with a cloth or anything that comes to hand. Just as
the star falls from the sky, so the pimples will fall from your body; only you
must be very careful not to wipe them with your bare hand, or the pimples will
be transferred to it.

Further, homoeopathic and in general sympathetic magic plays a great part
in the measures taken by the rude hunter or fisherman to secure an abundant
supply of food. On the principle that like produces like, many things are done
by him and his friends in deliberate imitation of the result which he seeks to
attain; and, on the other hand, many things are scrupulously avoided because
they bear some more or less fanciful resemblance to others which would really
be disastrous.

Nowhere is the theory of sympathetic magic more systematically carried
into practice for the maintenance of the food supply than in the barren
regions of Central Australia. Here the tribes are divided into a number of
totem clans, each of which is charged with the duty of multiplying their totem
for the good of the community by means of magical ceremonies. Most of the
totems are edible animals and plants, and the general result supposed to be
accomplished by these ceremonies is that of supplying the tribe with food and
other necessaries. Often the rites consist of an imitation of the effect which
the people desire to produce; in other words, their magic is homoeopathic or
imitative. Thus among the Warramunga the headman of the white cockatoo totem
seeks to multiply white cockatoos by holding an effigy of the bird and
mimicking its harsh cry. Among the Arunta the men of the witchetty grub totem
perform ceremonies for multiplying the grub which the other members of the
tribe use as food. One of the ceremonies is a pantomime representing the
fully-developed insect in the act of emerging from the chrysalis. A long
narrow structure of branches is set up to imitate the chrysalis case of the
grub. In this structure a number of men, who have the grub for their totem,
sit and sing of the creature in its various stages. Then they shuffle out of
it in a squatting posture, and as they do so they sing of the insect emerging
from the chrysalis. This is supposed to multiply the numbers of the grubs.
Again, in order to multiply emus, which are an important article of food, the
men of the emu totem paint on the ground the sacred design of their totem,
especially the parts of the emu which they like best to eat, namely, the fat
and the eggs. Round this painting the men sit and sing. Afterwards performers,
wearing head-dresses to represent the long neck and small head of the emu,
mimic the appearance of the bird as it stands aimlessly peering about in all
directions.

The Indians of British Columbia live largely upon the fish which abound in
their seas and rivers. If the fish do not come in due season, and the Indians
are hungry, a Nootka wizard will make an image of a swimming fish and put it
into the water in the direction from which the fish generally appear. This
ceremony, accompanied by a prayer to the fish to come, will cause them to
arrive at once. The islanders of Torres Straits use models of dugong and
turtles to charm dugong and turtle to their destruction. The Toradjas of
Central Celebes believe that things of the same sort attract each other by
means of their indwelling spirits or vital ether. Hence they hang up the
jawbones of deer and wild pigs in their houses, in order that the spirits
which animate these bones may draw the living creatures of the same kind into
the path of the hunter. In the island of Nias, when a wild pig has fallen into
the pit prepared for it, the animal is taken out and its back is rubbed with
nine fallen leaves, in the belief that this will make nine more wild pigs fall
into the pit, just as the nine leaves fell from the tree. In the East Indian
islands of Saparoea, Haroekoe, and Noessa Laut, when a fisherman is about to
set a trap for fish in the sea, he looks out for a tree, of which the fruit
has been much pecked at by birds. From such a tree he cuts a stout branch and
makes of it the principal post in his fish-trap; for he believes that, just as
the tree lured many birds to its fruit, so the branch cut from that tree will
lure many fish to the trap.

The western tribes of British New Guinea employ a charm to aid the hunter
in spearing dugong or turtle. A small beetle, which haunts coco-nut trees, is
placed in the hole of the spear-haft into which the spear-head fits. This is
supposed to make the spear-head stick fast in the dugong or turtle, just as
the beetle sticks fast to a man's skin when it bites him. When a Cambodian
hunter has set his nets and taken nothing, he strips himself naked, goes some
way off, then strolls up to the net as if he did not see it, lets himself be
caught in it, and cries, Hillo! what's this? I'm afraid I'm caught. After
that the net is sure to catch game. A pantomime of the same sort has been
acted within the living memory in our Scottish Highlands. The Rev. James
Macdonald, now of Reay in Caithness, tells us that in his boyhood when he was
fishing with companions about Loch Aline and they had had no bites for a long
time, they used to make a pretence of throwing one of their fellows overboard
and hauling him out of the water, as if he were a fish; after that the trout
or silloch would begin to nibble, according as the boat was on fresh or salt
water. Before a Carrier Indian goes out to snare martens, he sleeps by himself
for about ten nights beside the fire with a little stick pressed down on his
neck. This naturally causes the fall-stick of his trap to drop down on the
neck of the marten. Among the Galelareese, who inhabit a district in the
northern part of Halmahera, a large island to the west of New Guinea, it is a
maxim that when you are loading your gun to go out shooting, you should always
put the bullet in your mouth before you insert it in the gun; for by so doing
you practically eat the game that is to be hit by the bullet, which therefore
cannot possibly miss the mark. A Malay who has baited a trap for crocodiles,
and is awaiting results, is careful in eating his curry always to begin by
swallowing three lumps of rice successively; for this helps the bait to slide
more easily down the crocodile's throat. He is equally scrupulous not to take
any bones out of his curry; for, if he did, it seems clear that the
sharp-pointed stick on which the bait is skewered would similarly work itself
loose, and the crocodile would get off with the bait. Hence in these
circumstances it is prudent for the hunter, before he begins his meal, to get
somebody else to take the bones out of his curry, otherwise he may at any
moment have to choose between swallowing a bone and losing the crocodile.

This last rule is an instance of the things which the hunter abstains from
doing lest, on the principle that like produces like, they should spoil his
luck. For it is to be observed that the system of sympathetic magic is not
merely composed of positive precepts; it comprises a very large number of
negative precepts, that is, prohibitions. It tells you not merely what to do,
but also what to leave undone. The positive precepts are charms: the negative
precepts are taboos. In fact the whole doctrine of taboo, or at all events a
large part of it, would seem to be only a special application of sympathetic
magic, with its two great laws of similarity and contact. Though these laws
are certainly not formulated in so many words nor even conceived in the
abstract by the savage, they are nevertheless implicitly believed by him to
regulate the course of nature quite independently of human will. He thinks
that if he acts in a certain way, certain consequences will inevitably follow
in virtue of one or other of these laws; and if the consequences of a
particular act appear to him likely to prove disagreeable or dangerous, he is
naturally careful not to act in that way lest he should incur them. In other
words, he abstains from doing that which, in accordance with his mistaken
notions of cause and effect, he falsely believes would injure him; in short,
he subjects himself to a taboo. Thus taboo is so far a negative application of
practical magic. Positive magic or sorcery says, Do this in order that so and
so may happen. Negative magic or taboo says, Do not do this, lest so and so
should happen. The aim of positive magic or sorcery is to produce a desired
event; the aim of negative magic or taboo is to avoid an undesirable one. But
both consequences, the desirable and the undesirable, are supposed to be
brought about in accordance with the laws of similarity and contact. And just
as the desired consequence is not really effected by the observance of a
magical ceremony, so the dreaded consequence does not really result from the
violation of a taboo. If the supposed evil necessarily followed a breach of
taboo, the taboo would not be a taboo but a precept of morality or common
sense. It is not a taboo to say, Do not put your hand in the fire; it is a
rule of common sense, because the forbidden action entails a real, not an
imaginary evil. In short, those negative precepts which we call taboo are just
as vain and futile as those positive precepts which we call sorcery. The two
things are merely opposite sides or poles of one great disastrous fallacy, a
mistaken conception of the association of ideas. Of that fallacy, sorcery is
the positive, and taboo the negative pole. If we give the general name of
magic to the whole erroneous system, both theoretical and practical, then
taboo may be defined as the negative side of practical magic. To put this in
tabular form:

I have made these remarks on taboo and its relations to magic because I am
about to give some instances of taboos observed by hunters, fishermen, and
others, and I wished to show that they fall under the head of Sympathetic
Magic, being only particular applications of that general theory. Thus, among
the Esquimaux boys are forbidden to play cat's cradle, because if they did so
their fingers might in later life become entangled in the harpoon-line. Here
the taboo is obviously an application of the law of similarity, which is the
basis of homoeopathic magic: as the child's fingers are entangled by the
string in playing cat's cradle, so they will be entangled by the harpoonline
when he is a man and hunts whales. Again, among the Huzuls of the Carpathian
Mountains the wife of a hunter may not spin while her husband is eating, or
the game will turn and wind like the spindle, and the hunter will be unable to
hit it. Here again the taboo is clearly derived from the law of similarity.
So, too, in most parts of ancient Italy women were forbidden by law to spin on
the highroads as they walked, or even to carry their spindles openly, because
any such action was believed to injure the crops. Probably the notion was that
the twirling of the spindle would twirl the corn-stalks and prevent them from
growing straight. So, too, among the Ainos of Saghalien a pregnant woman may
not spin nor twist ropes for two months before her delivery, because they
think that if she did so the child's guts might be entangled like the thread.
For a like reason in Bilaspore, a district of India, when the chief men of a
village meet in council, no one present should twirl a spindle; for they think
that if such a thing were to happen, the discussion, like the spindle, would
move in a circle and never be wound up. In some of the East Indian islands any
one who comes to the house of a hunter must walk straight in; he may not
loiter at the door, for were he to do so, the game would in like manner stop
in front of the hunter's snares and then turn back, instead of being caught in
the trap. For a similar reason it is a rule with the Toradjas of Central
Celebes that no one may stand or loiter on the ladder of a house where there
is a pregnant woman, for such delay would retard the birth of the child; and
in various parts of Sumatra the woman herself in these circumstances is
forbidden to stand at the door or on the top rung of the house-ladder under
pain of suffering hard labour for her imprudence in neglecting so elementary a
precaution. Malays engaged in the search for camphor eat their food dry and
take care not to pound their salt fine. The reason is that the camphor occurs
in the form of small grains deposited in the cracks of the trunk of the
camphor tree. Accordingly it seems plain to the Malay that if, while seeking
for camphor, he were to eat his salt finely ground, the camphor would be found
also in fine grains; whereas by eating his salt coarse he ensures that the
grains of the camphor will also be large. Camphor hunters in Borneo use the
leathery sheath of the leaf-stalk of the Penang palm as a plate for food, and
during the whole of the expedition they will never wash the plate, for fear
that the camphor might dissolve and disappear from the crevices of the tree.
Apparently they think that to wash their plates would be to wash out the
camphor crystals from the trees in which they are imbedded. The chief product
of some parts of Laos, a province of Siam, is lac. This is a resinous gum
exuded by a red insect on the young branches of trees, to which the little
creatures have to be attached by hand. All who engage in the business of
gathering the gum abstain from washing themselves and especially from
cleansing their heads, lest by removing the parasites from their hair they
should detach the other insects from the boughs. Again, a Blackfoot Indian who
has set a trap for eagles, and is watching it, would not eat rosebuds on any
account; for he argues that if he did so, and an eagle alighted near the trap,
the rosebuds in his own stomach would make the bird itch, with the result that
instead of swallowing the bait the eagle would merely sit and scratch himself.
Following this train of thought the eagle hunter also refrains from using an
awl when he is looking after his snares; for surely if he were to scratch with
an awl, the eagles would scratch him. The same disastrous consequence would
follow if his wives and children at home used an awl while he is out after
eagles, and accordingly they are forbidden to handle the tool in his absence
for fear of putting him in bodily danger.

Among the taboos observed by savages none perhaps are more numerous or
important than the prohibitions to eat certain foods, and of such prohibitions
many are demonstrably derived from the law of similarity and are accordingly
examples of negative magic. Just as the savage eats many animals or plants in
order to acquire certain desirable qualities with which he believes them to be
endowed, so he avoids eating many other animals and plants lest he should
acquire certain undesirable qualities with which he believes them to be
infected. In eating the former he practises positive magic; in abstaining from
the latter he practises negative magic. Many examples of such positive magic
will meet us later on; here I will give a few instances of such negative magic
or taboo. For example, in Madagascar soldiers are forbidden to eat a number of
foods lest on the principle of homoeopathic magic they should be tainted by
certain dangerous or undesirable properties which are supposed to inhere in
these particular viands. Thus they may not taste hedgehog, as it is feared
that this animal, from its propensity of coiling up into a ball when alarmed,
will impart a timid shrinking disposition to those who partake of it. Again,
no soldier should eat an ox's knee, lest like an ox he should become weak in
the knees and unable to march. Further, the warrior should be careful to avoid
partaking of a cock that has died fighting or anything that has been speared
to death; and no male animal may on any account be killed in his house while
he is away at the wars. For it seems obvious that if he were to eat a cock
that had died fighting, he would himself be slain on the field of battle; if
he were to partake of an animal that had been speared, he would be speared
himself; if a male animal were killed in his house during his absence, he
would himself be killed in like manner and perhaps at the same instant.
Further, the Malagasy soldier must eschew kidneys, because in the Malagasy
language the word for kidney is the same as that for shot; so shot he would
certainly be if he ate a kidney.

The reader may have observed that in some of the foregoing examples of
taboos the magical influence is supposed to operate at considerable distances;
thus among the Blackfeet Indians the wives and children of an eagle hunter are
forbidden to use an awl during his absence, lest the eagles should scratch the
distant husband and father; and again no male animal may be killed in the
house of a Malagasy soldier while he is away at the wars, lest the killing of
the animal should entail the killing of the man. This belief in the
sympathetic influence exerted on each other by persons or things at a distance
is of the essence of magic. Whatever doubts science may entertain as to the
possibility of action at a distance, magic has none; faith in telepathy is one
of its first principles. A modern advocate of the influence of mind upon mind
at a distance would have no difficulty in convincing a savage; the savage
believed in it long ago, and what is more, he acted on his belief with a
logical consistency such as his civilised brother in the faith has not yet, so
far as I am aware, exhibited in his conduct. For the savage is convinced not
only that magical ceremonies affect persons and things afar off, but that the
simplest acts of daily life may do so too. Hence on important occasions the
behaviour of friends and relations at a distance is often regulated by a more
or less elaborate code of rules, the neglect of which by the one set of
persons would, it is supposed, entail misfortune or even death on the absent
ones. In particular when a party of men are out hunting or fighting, their
kinsfolk at home are often expected to do certain things or to abstain from
doing certain others, for the sake of ensuring the safety and success of the
distant hunters or warriors. I will now give some instances of this magical
telepathy both in its positive and in its negative aspect.

In Laos when an elephant hunter is starting for the chase, he warns his
wife not to cut her hair or oil her body in his absence; for if she cut her
hair the elephant would burst the toils, if she oiled herself it would slip
through them. When a Dyak village has turned out to hunt wild pigs in the
jungle, the people who stay at home may not touch oil or water with their
hands during the absence of their friends; for if they did so, the hunters
would all be butter-fingered and the prey would slip through their hands.

Elephant-hunters in East Africa believe that, if their wives prove
unfaithful in their absence, this gives the elephant power over his pursuer,
who will accordingly be killed or severely wounded. Hence if a hunter hears of
his wife's misconduct, he abandons the chase and returns home. If a Wagogo
hunter is unsuccessful, or is attacked by a lion, he attributes it to his
wife's misbehaviour at home, and returns to her in great wrath. While he is
away hunting, she may not let any one pass behind her or stand in front of her
as she sits; and she must lie on her face in bed. The Moxos Indians of Bolivia
thought that if a hunter's wife was unfaithful to him in his absence he would
be bitten by a serpent or a jaguar. Accordingly, if such an accident happened
to him, it was sure to entail the punishment, and often the death, of the
woman, whether she was innocent or guilty. An Aleutian hunter of sea-otters
thinks that he cannot kill a single animal if during his absence from home his
wife should be unfaithful or his sister unchaste.

The Huichol Indians of Mexico treat as a demi-god a species of cactus
which throws the eater into a state of ecstasy. The plant does not grow in
their country, and has to be fetched every year by men who make a journey of
forty-three days for the purpose. Meanwhile the wives at home contribute to
the safety of their absent husbands by never walking fast, much less running,
while the men are on the road. They also do their best to ensure the benefits
which, in the shape of rain, good crops, and so forth, are expected to flow
from the sacred mission. With this intention they subject themselves to severe
restrictions like those imposed upon their husbands. During the whole of the
time which elapses till the festival of the cactus is held, neither party
washes except on certain occasions, and then only with water brought from the
distant country where the holy plant grows. They also fast much, eat no salt,
and are bound to strict continence. Any one who breaks this law is punished
with illness, and, moreover, jeopardises the result which all are striving
for. Health, luck, and life are to be gained by gathering the cactus, the
gourd of the God of Fire; but inasmuch as the pure fire cannot benefit the
impure, men and women must not only remain chaste for the time being, but must
also purge themselves from the taint of past sin. Hence four days after the
men have started the women gather and confess to Grandfather Fire with what
men they have been in love from childhood till now. They may not omit a single
one, for if they did so the men would not find a single cactus. So to refresh
their memories each one prepares a string with as many knots as she has had
lovers. This she brings to the temple, and, standing before the fire, she
mentions aloud all the men she has scored on her string, name after name.
Having ended her confession, she throws the string into the fire, and when the
god has consumed it in his pure flame, her sins are forgiven her and she
departs in peace. From now on the women are averse even to letting men pass
near them. The cactus-seekers themselves make in like manner a clean breast of
all their frailties. For every peccadillo they tie a knot on a string, and
after they have talked to all the five winds they deliver the rosary of
their sins to the leader, who burns it in the fire.

Many of the indigenous tribes of Sarawak are firmly persuaded that were
the wives to commit adultery while their husbands are searching for camphor in
the jungle, the camphor obtained by the men would evaporate. Husbands can
discover, by certain knots in the tree, when the wives are unfaithful; and it
is said that in former days many women were killed by jealous husbands on no
better evidence than that of these knots. Further, the wives dare not touch a
comb while their husbands are away collecting the camphor; for if they did so,
the interstices between the fibres of the tree, instead of being filled with
the precious crystals, would be empty like the spaces between the teeth of a
comb. In the Kei Islands, to the southwest of New Guinea, as soon as a vessel
that is about to sail for a distant port has been launched, the part of the
beach on which it lay is covered as speedily as possible with palm branches,
and becomes sacred. No one may thenceforth cross that spot till the ship comes
home. To cross it sooner would cause the vessel to perish. Moreover, all the
time that the voyage lasts three or four young girls, specially chosen for the
duty, are supposed to remain in sympathetic connexion with the mariners and to
contribute by their behaviour to the safety and success of the voyage. On no
account, except for the most necessary purpose, may they quit the room that
has been assigned to them. More than that, so long as the vessel is believed
to be at sea they must remain absolutely motionless, crouched on their mats
with their hands clasped between their knees. They may not turn their heads to
the left or to the right or make any other movement whatsoever. If they did,
it would cause the boat to pitch and toss; and they may not eat any sticky
stuff, such as rice boiled in coco-nut milk, for the stickiness of the food
would clog the passage of the boat through the water. When the sailors are
supposed to have reached their destination, the strictness of these rules is
somewhat relaxed; but during the whole time that the voyage lasts the girls
are forbidden to eat fish which have sharp bones or stings, such as the
sting-ray, lest their friends at sea should be involved in sharp, stinging
trouble.

Where beliefs like these prevail as to the sympathetic connexion between
friends at a distance, we need not wonder that above everything else war, with
its stern yet stirring appeal to some of the deepest and tenderest of human
emotions, should quicken in the anxious relations left behind a desire to turn
the sympathetic bond to the utmost account for the benefit of the dear ones
who may at any moment be fighting and dying far away. Hence, to secure an end
so natural and laudable, friends at home are apt to resort to devices which
will strike us as pathetic or ludicrous, according as we consider their object
or the means adopted to effect it. Thus in some districts of Borneo, when a
Dyak is out head-hunting, his wife or, if he is unmarried, his sister must
wear a sword day and night in order that he may always be thinking of his
weapons; and she may not sleep during the day nor go to bed before two in the
morning, lest her husband or brother should thereby be surprised in his sleep
by an enemy. Among the Sea Dyaks of Banting in Sarawak the women strictly
observe an elaborate code of rules while the men are away fighting. Some of
the rules are negative and some are positive, but all alike are based on the
principles of magical homoeopathy and telepathy. Amongst them are the
following. The women must wake very early in the morning and open the windows
as soon as it is light; otherwise their absent husbands will oversleep
themselves. The women may not oil their hair, or the men will slip. The women
may neither sleep nor doze by day, or the men will be drowsy on the march. The
women must cook and scatter popcorn on the verandah every morning; so will the
men be agile in their movements. The rooms must be kept very tidy, all boxes
being placed near the walls; for if any one were to stumble over them, the
absent husbands would fall and be at the mercy of the foe. At every meal a
little rice must be left in the pot and put aside; so will the men far away
always have something to eat and need never go hungry. On no account may the
women sit at the loom till their legs grow cramped, otherwise their husbands
will likewise be stiff in their joints and unable to rise up quickly or to run
away from the foe. So in order to keep their husbands' joints supple the women
often vary their labours at the loom by walking up and down the verandah.
Further, they may not cover up their faces, or the men would not to be able to
find their way through the tall grass or jungle. Again, the women may not sew
with a needle, or the men will tread on the sharp spikes set by the enemy in
the path. Should a wife prove unfaithful while her husband is away, he will
lose his life in the enemy's country. Some years ago all these rules and more
were observed by the women of Banting, while their husbands were fighting for
the English against rebels. But alas! these tender precautions availed them
little; for many a man, whose faithful wife was keeping watch and ward for him
at home, found a soldier's grave.

In the island of Timor, while war is being waged, the high-priest never
quits the temple; his food is brought to him or cooked inside; day and night
he must keep the fire burning, for if he were to let it die out, disaster
would be fall the warriors and would continue so long as the hearth was cold.
Moreover, he must drink only hot water during the time the army is absent; for
every draught of cold water would damp the spirits of the people, so that they
could not vanquish the enemy. In the Kei Islands, when the warriors have
departed, the women return indoors and bring out certain baskets containing
fruits and stones. These fruits and stones they anoint and place on a board,
murmuring as they do so, O lord sun, moon, let the bullets rebound from our
husbands, brothers, betrothed, and other relations, just as raindrops rebound
from these objects which are smeared with oil. As soon as the first shot is
heard, the baskets are put aside, and the women, seizing their fans, rush out
of the houses. Then, waving their fans in the direction of the enemy, they run
through the village, while they sing, O golden fans! let our bullets hit, and
those of the enemy miss. In this custom the ceremony of anointing stones, in
order that the bullets may recoil from the men like raindrops from the stones,
is a piece of pure homoeopathic or imitative magic; but the prayer to the sun,
that he will be pleased to give effect to the charm, is a religious and
perhaps later addition. The waving of the fans seems to be a charm to direct
the bullets towards or away from their mark, according as they are discharged
from the guns of friends or foes.

An old historian of Madagascar informs us that while the men are at the
wars, and until their return, the women and girls cease not day and night to
dance, and neither lie down nor take food in their own houses. And although
they are very voluptuously inclined, they would not for anything in the world
have an intrigue with another man while their husband is at the war, believing
firmly that if that happened, their husband would be either killed or wounded.
They believe that by dancing they impart strength, courage, and good fortune
to their husbands; accordingly during such times they give themselves no rest,
and this custom they observe very religiously.

Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast the wives of men who are
away with the army paint themselves white, and adorn their persons with beads
and charms. On the day when a battle is expected to take place, they run about
armed with guns, or sticks carved to look like guns, and taking green paw-paws
(fruits shaped somewhat like a melon), they hack them with knives, as if they
were chopping off the heads of the foe. The pantomime is no doubt merely an
imitative charm, to enable the men to do to the enemy as the women do to the
paw-paws. In the West African town of Framin, while the Ashantee war was
raging some years ago, Mr. Fitzgerald Marriott saw a dance performed by women
whose husbands had gone as carriers to the war. They were painted white and
wore nothing but a short petticoat. At their head was a shrivelled old
sorceress in a very short white petticoat, her black hair arranged in a sort
of long projecting horn, and her black face, breasts, arms, and legs profusely
adorned with white circles and crescents. All carried long white brushes made
of buffalo or horse tails, and as they danced they sang, Our husbands have
gone to Ashanteeland; may they sweep their enemies off the face of the earth!

Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia, when the men were on the
war-path, the women performed dances at frequent intervals. These dances were
believed to ensure the success of the expedition. The dancers flourished their
knives, threw long sharp-pointed sticks forward, or drew sticks with hooked
ends repeatedly backward and forward. Throwing the sticks forward was symbolic
of piercing or warding off the enemy, and drawing them back was symbolic of
drawing their own men from danger. The hook at the end of the stick was
particularly well adapted to serve the purpose of a life-saving apparatus. The
women always pointed their weapons towards the enemy's country. They painted
their faces red and sang as they danced, and they prayed to the weapons to
preserve their husbands and help them to kill many foes. Some had eagle-down
stuck on the points of their sticks. When the dance was over, these weapons
were hidden. If a woman whose husband was at the war thought she saw hair or a
piece of a scalp on the weapon when she took it out, she knew that her husband
had killed an enemy. But if she saw a stain of blood on it, she knew he was
wounded or dead. When the men of the Yuki tribe in California were away
fighting, the women at home did not sleep; they danced continually in a
circle, chanting and waving leafy wands. For they said that if they danced all
the time, their husbands would not grow tired. Among the Haida Indians of the
Queen Charlotte Islands, when the men had gone to war, the women at home would
get up very early in the morning and pretend to make war by falling upon their
children and feigning to take them for slaves. This was supposed to help their
husbands to go and do likewise. If a wife were unfaithful to her husband while
he was away on the war-path, he would probably be killed. For ten nights all
the women at home lay with their heads towards the point of the compass to
which the war-canoes had paddled away. Then they changed about, for the
warriors were supposed to be coming home across the sea. At Masset the Haida
women danced and sang war-songs all the time their husbands were away at the
wars, and they had to keep everything about them in a certain order. It was
thought that a wife might kill her husband by not observing these customs.
When a band of Carib Indians of the Orinoco had gone on the war-path, their
friends left in the village used to calculate as nearly as they could the
exact moment when the absent warriors would be advancing to attack the enemy.
Then they took two lads, laid them down on a bench, and inflicted a most
severe scourging on their bare backs. This the youths submitted to without a
murmur, supported in their sufferings by the firm conviction, in which they
had been bred from childhood, that on the constancy and fortitude with which
they bore the cruel ordeal depended the valour and success of their comrades
in the battle.

Among the many beneficent uses to which a mistaken ingenuity has applied
the principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic, is that of causing trees and
plants to bear fruit in due season. In Thringen the man who sows flax carries
the seed in a long bag which reaches from his shoulders to his knees, and he
walks with long strides, so that the bag sways to and fro on his back. It is
believed that this will cause the flax to wave in the wind. In the interior of
Sumatra rice is sown by women who, in sowing, let their hair hang loose down
their back, in order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and have long stalks.
Similarly, in ancient Mexico a festival was held in honour of the goddess of
maize, or the long-haired mother, as she was called. It began at the time
when the plant had attained its full growth, and fibres shooting forth from
the top of the green ear indicated that the grain was fully formed. During
this festival the women wore their long hair unbound, shaking and tossing it
in the dances which were the chief feature in the ceremonial, in order that
the tassel of the maize might grow in like profusion, that the grain might be
correspondingly large and flat, and that the people might have abundance. In
many parts of Europe dancing or leaping high in the air are approved
homoeopathic modes of making the crops grow high. Thus in Franche-Comt they
say that you should dance at the Carnival in order to make the hemp grow tall.

The notion that a person can influence a plant homoeopathically by his act
or condition comes out clearly in a remark made by a Malay woman. Being asked
why she stripped the upper part of her body naked in reaping the rice, she
explained that she did it to make the rice-husks thinner, as she was tired of
pounding thick-husked rice. Clearly, she thought that the less clothing she
wore the less husk there would be on the rice. The magic virtue of a pregnant
woman to communicate fertility is known to Bavarian and Austrian peasants, who
think that if you give the first fruit of a tree to a woman with child to eat,
the tree will bring forth abundantly next year. On the other hand, the Baganda
believe that a barren wife infects her husband's garden with her own sterility
and prevents the trees from bearing fruit; hence a childless woman is
generally divorced. The Greeks and Romans sacrificed pregnant victims to the
goddesses of the corn and of the earth, doubtless in order that the earth
might teem and the corn swell in the ear. When a Catholic priest remonstrated
with the Indians of the Orinoco on allowing their women to sow the fields in
the blazing sun, with infants at their breasts, the men answered, Father, you
don't understand these things, and that is why they vex you. You know that
women are accustomed to bear children, and that we men are not. When the women
sow, the stalk of the maize bears two or three ears, the root of the yucca
yields two or three basketfuls, and everything multiplies in proportion. Now
why is that? Simply because the women know how to bring forth, and know how to
make the seed which they sow bring forth also. Let them sow, then; we men
don't know as much about it as they do.

Thus on the theory of homoeopathic magic a person can influence vegetation
either for good or for evil according to the good or the bad character of his
acts or states: for example, a fruitful woman makes plants fruitful, a barren
woman makes them barren. Hence this belief in the noxious and infectious
nature of certain personal qualities or accidents has given rise to a number
of prohibitions or rules of avoidance: people abstain from doing certain
things lest they should homoeopathically infect the fruits of the earth with
their own undesirable state or condition. All such customs of abstention or
rules of avoidance are examples of negative magic or taboo. Thus, for example,
arguing from what may be called the infectiousness of personal acts or states,
the Galelareese say that you ought not to shoot with a bow and arrows under a
fruit-tree, or the tree will cast its fruit even as the arrows fall to the
ground; and that when you are eating water-melon you ought not to mix the pips
which you spit out of your mouth with the pips which you have put aside to
serve as seed; for if you do, though the pips you spat out may certainly
spring up and blossom, yet the blossoms will keep falling off just as the pips
fell from your mouth, and thus these pips will never bear fruit. Precisely the
same train of thought leads the Bavarian peasant to believe that if he allows
the graft of a fruit-tree to fall on the ground, the tree that springs from
that graft will let its fruit fall untimely. When the Chams of Cochinchina are
sowing their dry rice fields and desire that no shower should fall, they eat
their rice dry in order to prevent rain from spoiling the crop.

In the foregoing cases a person is supposed to influence vegetation
homoeopathically. He infects trees or plants with qualities or accidents, good
or bad, resembling and derived from his own. But on the principle of
homoeopathic magic the influence is mutual: the plant can infect the man just
as much as the man can infect the plant. In magic, as I believe in physics,
action and reaction are equal and opposite. The Cherokee Indians are adepts in
practical botany of the homoeopathic sort. Thus wiry roots of the catgut plant
are so tough that they can almost stop a plowshare in the furrow. Hence
Cherokee women wash their heads with a decoction of the roots to make the hair
strong, and Cherokee ball-players wash themselves with it to toughen their
muscles. It is a Galelareese belief that if you eat a fruit which has fallen
to the ground, you will yourself contract a disposition to stumble and fall;
and that if you partake of something which has been forgotten (such as a sweet
potato left in the pot or a banana in the fire), you will become forgetful.
The Galelareese are also of opinion that if a woman were to consume two
bananas growing from a single head she would give birth to twins. The Guarani
Indians of South America thought that a woman would become a mother of twins
if she ate a double grain of millet. In Vedic times a curious application of
this principle supplied a charm by which a banished prince might be restored
to his kingdom. He had to eat food cooked on a fire which was fed with wood
which had grown out of the stump of a tree which had been cut down. The
recuperative power manifested by such a tree would in due course be
communicated through the fire to the food, and so to the prince, who ate the
food which was cooked on the fire which was fed with the wood which grew out
of the tree. The Sudanese think that if a house is built of the wood of thorny
trees, the life of the people who dwell in that house will likewise be thorny
and full of trouble.

There is a fruitful branch of homoeopathic magic which works by means of
the dead; for just as the dead can neither see nor hear nor speak, so you may
on homoeopathic principles render people blind, deaf and dumb by the use of
dead men's bones or anything else that is tainted by the infection of death.
Thus among the Galelareese, when a young man goes a-wooing at night, he takes
a little earth from a grave and strews it on the roof of his sweetheart's
house just above the place where her parents sleep. This, he fancies, will
prevent them from waking while he converses with his beloved, since the earth
from the grave will make them sleep as sound as the dead. Burglars in all ages
and many lands have been patrons of this species of magic, which is very
useful to them in the exercise of their profession. Thus a South Slavonian
housebreaker sometimes begins operations by throwing a dead man's bone over
the house, saying, with pungent sarcasm, As this bone may waken, so may these
people waken; after that not a soul in the house can keep his or her eyes
open. Similarly, in Java the burglar takes earth from a grave and sprinkles it
round the house which he intends to rob; this throws the inmates into a deep
sleep. With the same intention a Hindoo will strew ashes from a pyre at the
door of the house; Indians of Peru scatter the dust of dead men's bones; and
Ruthenian burglars remove the marrow from a human shin-bone, pour tallow into
it, and having kindled the tallow, march thrice round the house with this
candle burning, which causes the inmates to sleep a death-like sleep. Or the
Ruthenian will make a flute out of a human leg-bone and play upon it;
whereupon all persons within hearing are overcome with drowsiness. The Indians
of Mexico employed for this maleficent purpose the left fore-arm of a woman
who had died in giving birth to her first child; but the arm had to be stolen.
With it they beat the ground before they entered the house which they designed
to plunder; this caused every one in the house to lose all power of speech and
motion; they were as dead, hearing and seeing everything, but perfectly
powerless; some of them, however, really slept and even snored. In Europe
similar properties were ascribed to the Hand of Glory, which was the dried and
pickled hand of a man who had been hanged. If a candle made of the fat of a
malefactor who had also died on the gallows was lighted and placed in the Hand
of Glory as in a candlestick, it rendered motionless all persons to whom it
was presented; they could not stir a finger any more than if they were dead.
Sometimes the dead man's hand is itself the candle, or rather bunch of
candles, all its withered fingers being set on fire; but should any member of
the household be awake, one of the fingers will not kindle. Such nefarious
lights can only be extinguished with milk. Often it is prescribed that the
thief's candle should be made of the finger of a new-born or, still better,
unborn child; sometimes it is thought needful that the thief should have one
such candle for every person in the house, for if he has one candle too little
somebody in the house will wake and catch him. Once these tapers begin to
burn, there is nothing but milk that will put them out. In the seventeenth
century robbers used to murder pregnant women in order thus to extract candles
from their wombs. An ancient Greek robber or burglar thought he could silence
and put to flight the fiercest watchdogs by carrying with him a brand plucked
from a funeral pyre. Again, Servian and Bulgarian women who chafe at the
restraints of domestic life will take the copper coins from the eyes of a
corpse, wash them in wine or water, and give the liquid to their husbands to
drink. After swallowing it, the husband will be as blind to his wife's
peccadilloes as the dead man was on whose eyes the coins were laid.

Further, animals are often conceived to possess qualities of properties
which might be useful to man, and homoeopathic or imitative magic seeks to
communicate these properties to human beings in various ways. Thus some
Bechuanas wear a ferret as a charm, because, being very tenacious of life, it
will make them difficult to kill. Others wear a certain insect, mutilated, but
living, for a similar purpose. Yet other Bechuana warriors wear the hair of a
hornless ox among their own hair, and the skin of a frog on their mantle,
because a frog is slippery, and the ox, having no horns, is hard to catch; so
the man who is provided with these charms believes that he will be as hard to
hold as the ox and the frog. Again, it seems plain that a South African
warrior who twists tufts of rat's hair among his own curly black locks will
have just as many chances of avoiding the enemy's spear as the nimble rat has
of avoiding things thrown at it; hence in these regions rats' hair is in great
demand when war is expected. One of the ancient books of India prescribes that
when a sacrifice is offered for victory, the earth out of which the altar is
to be made should be taken from a place where a boar has been wallowing, since
the strength of the boar will be in that earth. When you are playing the
one-stringed lute, and your fingers are stiff, the thing to do is to catch
some long-legged field spiders and roast them, and then rub your fingers with
the ashes; that will make your fingers as lithe and nimble as the spiders'
legsat least so think the Galelareese. To bring back a runaway slave an Arab
will trace a magic circle on the ground, stick a nail in the middle of it, and
attach a beetle by a thread to the nail, taking care that the sex of the
beetle is that of the fugitive. As the beetle crawls round and round, it will
coil the thread about the nail, thus shortening its tether and drawing nearer
to the centre at every circuit. So by virtue of homoeopathic magic the runaway
slave will be drawn back to his master.

Among the western tribes of British New Guinea, a man who has killed a
snake will burn it and smear his legs with the ashes when he goes into the
forest; for no snake will bite him for some days afterwards. If a South
Slavonian has a mind to pilfer and steal at market, he has nothing to do but
to burn a blind cat, and then throw a pinch of its ashes over the person with
whom he is higgling; after that he can take what he likes from the booth, and
the owner will not be a bit the wiser, having become as blind as the deceased
cat with whose ashes he has been sprinkled. The thief may even ask boldly,
Did I pay for it? and the deluded huckster will reply, Why, certainly.
Equally simple and effectual is the expedient adopted by natives of Central
Australia who desire to cultivate their beards. They prick the chin all over
with a pointed bone, and then stroke it carefully with a magic stick or stone,
which represents a kind of rat that has very long whiskers. The virtue of
these whiskers naturally passes into the representative stick or stone, and
thence by an easy transition to the chin, which, consequently, is soon adorned
with a rich growth of beard. The ancient Greeks thought that to eat the flesh
of the wakeful nightingale would prevent a man from sleeping; that to smear
the eyes of a blear-sighted person with the gall of an eagle would give him
the eagle's vision; and that a raven's eggs would restore the blackness of the
raven to silvery hair. Only the person who adopted this last mode of
concealing the ravages of time had to be most careful to keep his mouth full
of oil all the time he applied the eggs to his venerable locks, else his teeth
as well as his hair would be dyed raven black, and no amount of scrubbing and
scouring would avail to whiten them again. The hair-restorer was in fact a
shade too powerful, and in applying it you might get more than you bargained
for.

The Huichol Indians admire the beautiful markings on the backs of
serpents. Hence when a Huichol woman is about to weave or embroider, her
husband catches a large serpent and holds it in a cleft stick, while the woman
strokes the reptile with one hand down the whole length of its back; then she
passes the same hand over her forehead and eyes, that she may be able to work
as beautiful patterns in the web as the markings on the back of the serpent.

On the principle of homoeopathic magic, inanimate things, as well as
plants and animals, may diffuse blessing or bane around them, according to
their own intrinsic nature and the skill of the wizard to tap or dam, as the
case may be, the stream of weal or woe. In Samaracand women give a baby sugar
candy to suck and put glue in the palm of its hand, in order that, when the
child grows up, his words may be sweet and precious things may stick to his
hands as if they were glued. The Greeks thought that a garment made from the
fleece of a sheep that had been torn by a wolf would hurt the wearer, setting
up an itch or irritation in his skin. They were also of opinion that if a
stone which had been bitten by a dog were dropped in wine, it would make all
who drank of that wine to fall out among themselves. Among the Arabs of Moab a
childless woman often borrows the robe of a woman who has had many children,
hoping with the robe to acquire the fruitfulness of its owner. The Caffres of
Sofala, in East Africa, had a great dread of being struck with anything
hollow, such as a reed or a straw, and greatly preferred being thrashed with a
good thick cudgel or an iron bar, even though it hurt very much. For they
thought that if a man were beaten with anything hollow, his inside would waste
away till he died. In eastern seas there is a large shell which the Buginese
of Celebes call the old man (kadjwo). On Fridays they turn these old
men upside down and place them on the thresholds of their houses, believing
that whoever then steps over the threshold of the house will live to be old.
At initiation a Brahman boy is made to tread with his right foot on a stone,
while the words are repeated, Tread on this stone; like a stone be firm; and
the same ceremony is performed, with the same words, by a Brahman bride at her
marriage. In Madagascar a mode of counteracting the levity of fortune is to
bury a stone at the foot of the heavy house-post. The common custom of
swearing upon a stone may be based partly on a belief that the strength and
stability of the stone lend confirmation to an oath. Thus the old Danish
historian Saxo Grammaticus tells us that the ancients, when they were to
choose a king, were wont to stand on stones planted in the ground, and to
proclaim their votes, in order to foreshadow from the steadfastness of the
stones that the deed would be lasting.

But while a general magical efficacy may be supposed to reside in all
stones by reason of their common properties of weight and solidity, special
magical virtues are attributed to particular stones, or kinds of stone, in
accordance with their individual or specific qualities of shape and colour.
For example, the Indians of Peru employed certain stones for the increase of
maize, others for the increase of potatoes, and others again for the increase
of cattle. The stones used to make maize grow were fashioned in the likeness
of cobs of maize, and the stones destined to multiply cattle had the shape of
sheep.

In some parts of Melanesia a like belief prevails that certain sacred
stones are endowed with miraculous powers which correspond in their nature to
the shape of the stone. Thus a piece of water-worn coral on the beach often
bears a surprising likeness to a bread-fruit. Hence in the Banks Islands a man
who finds such a coral will lay it at the root of one of his bread-fruit trees
in the expectation that it will make the tree bear well. If the result answers
his expectation, he will then, for a proper remuneration, take stones of
less-marked character from other men and let them lie near his, in order to
imbue them with the magic virtue which resides in it. Similarly, a stone with
little discs upon it is good to bring in money; and if a man found a large
stone with a number of small ones under it, like a sow among her litter, he
was sure that to offer money upon it would bring him pigs. In these and
similar cases the Melanesians ascribe the marvellous power, not to the stone
itself, but to its indwelling spirit; and sometimes, as we have just seen, a
man endeavours to propitiate the spirit by laying down offerings on the stone.
But the conception of spirits that must be propitiated lies outside the sphere
of magic, and within that of religion. Where such a conception is found, as
here, in conjunction with purely magical ideas and practices, the latter may
generally be assumed to be the original stock on which the religious
conception has been at some later time engrafted. For there are strong grounds
for thinking that, in the evolution of thought, magic has preceded religion.
But to this point we shall return presently.

The ancients set great store on the magical qualities of precious stones;
indeed it has been maintained, with great show of reason, that such stones
were used as amulets long before they were worn as mere ornaments. Thus the
Greeks gave the name of tree-agate to a stone which exhibits tree-like
markings, and they thought that if two of these gems were tied to the horns or
necks of oxen at the plough, the crop would be sure to be plentiful. Again,
they recognised a milkstone which produced an abundant supply of milk in women
if only they drank it dissolved in honey-mead. Milk-stones are used for the
same purpose by Greek women in Crete and Melos at the present day; in Albania
nursing mothers wear the stones in order to ensure an abundant flow of milk.
Again, the Greeks believed in a stone which cured snake-bites, and hence was
named the snake-stone; to test its efficacy you had only to grind the stone to
powder and sprinkle the powder on the wound. The wine-coloured amethyst
received its name, which means not drunken, because it was supposed to keep
the wearer of it sober; and two brothers who desired to live at unity were
advised to carry magnets about with them, which, by drawing the twain
together, would clearly prevent them from falling out.

The ancient books of the Hindoos lay down a rule that after sunset on his
marriage night a man should sit silent with his wife till the stars begin to
twinkle in the sky. When the pole-star appears, he should point it out to her,
and, addressing the star, say, Firm art thou; I see thee, the firm one. Firm
be thou with me, O thriving one! Then, turning to his wife, he should say,
To me Brihaspati has given thee; obtaining offspring through me, thy husband,
live with me a hundred autumns. The intention of the ceremony is plainly to
guard against the fickleness of fortune and the instability of earthly bliss
by the steadfast influence of the constant star. It is the wish expressed in
Keats's last sonnet:

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night.

Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its
ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the principles of that rude philosophy
of sympathy and resemblance which here engages our attention, to trace a
subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man, of
animals, and of plants. In the flowing tide they see not merely a symbol, but
a cause of exuberance, of prosperity, and of life, while in the ebbing tide
they discern a real agent as well as a melancholy emblem of failure, of
weakness, and of death. The Breton peasant fancies that clover sown when the
tide is coming in will grow well, but that if the plant be sown at low water
or when the tide is going out, it will never reach maturity, and that the cows
which feed on it will burst. His wife believes that the best butter is made
when the tide has just turned and is beginning to flow, that milk which foams
in the churn will go on foaming till the hour of high water is past, and that
water drawn from the well or milk extracted from the cow while the tide is
rising will boil up in the pot or saucepan and overflow into the fire.
According to some of the ancients, the skins of seals, even after they had
been parted from their bodies, remained in secret sympathy with the sea, and
were observed to ruffle when the tide was on the ebb. Another ancient belief,
attributed to Aristotle, was that no creature can die except at ebb tide. The
belief, if we can trust Pliny, was confirmed by experience, so far as regards
human beings, on the coast of France. Philostratus also assures us that at
Cadiz dying people never yielded up the ghost while the water was high. A like
fancy still lingers in some parts of Europe. On the Cantabrian coast they
think that persons who die of chronic or acute disease expire at the moment
when the tide begins to recede. In Portugal, all along the coast of Wales, and
on some parts of the coast of Brittany, a belief is said to prevail that
people are born when the tide comes in, and die when it goes out. Dickens
attests the existence of the same superstition in England. People can't die,
along the coast, said Mr. Pegotty, except when the tide's pretty nigh out.
They can't be born, unless it's pretty nigh innot properly born till flood.
The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the
east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent. Shakespeare must have been
familiar with it, for he makes Falstaff die even just between twelve and one,
e'en at the turning o' the tide. We meet the belief again on the Pacific
coast of North America among the Haidas. Whenever a good Haida is about to die
he sees a canoe manned by some of his dead friends, who come with the tide to
bid him welcome to the spirit land. Come with us now, they say, for the
tide is about to ebb and we must depart. At Port Stephens, in New South
Wales, the natives always buried their dead at flood tide, never at ebb, lest
the retiring water should bear the soul of the departed to some distant
country.

To ensure a long life the Chinese have recourse to certain complicated
charms, which concentrate in themselves the magical essence emanating, on
homoeopathic principles, from times and seasons, from persons and from things.
The vehicles employed to transmit these happy influences are no other than
grave-clothes. These are provided by many Chinese in their lifetime, and most
people have them cut out and sewn by an unmarried girl or a very young woman,
wisely calculating that, since such a person is likely to live a great many
years to come, a part of her capacity to live long must surely pass into the
clothes, and thus stave off for many years the time when they shall be put to
their proper use. Further, the garments are made by preference in a year which
has an intercalary month; for to the Chinese mind it seems plain that
grave-clothes made in a year which is unusually long will possess the capacity
of prolonging life in an unusually high degree. Amongst the clothes there is
one robe in particular on which special pains have been lavished to imbue it
with this priceless quality. It is a long silken gown of the deepest blue
colour, with the word longevity embroidered all over it in thread of gold.
To present an aged parent with one of these costly and splendid mantles, known
as longevity garments, is esteemed by the Chinese an act of filial piety and
a delicate mark of attention. As the garment purports to prolong the life of
its owner, he often wears it, especially on festive occasions, in order to
allow the influence of longevity, created by the many golden letters with
which it is bespangled, to work their full effect upon his person. On his
birthday, above all, he hardly ever fails to don it, for in China common sense
bids a man lay in a large stock of vital energy on his birthday, to be
expended in the form of health and vigour during the rest of the year. Attired
in the gorgeous pall, and absorbing its blessed influence at every pore, the
happy owner receives complacently the congratulations of friends and
relations, who warmly express their admiration of these magnificent cerements,
and of the filial piety which prompted the children to bestow so beautiful and
useful a present on the author of their being.

Another application of the maxim that like produces like is seen in the
Chinese belief that the fortunes of a town are deeply affected by its shape,
and that they must vary according to the character of the thing which that
shape most nearly resembles. Thus it is related that long ago the town of
Tsuen-cheu-fu, the outlines of which are like those of a carp, frequently fell
a prey to the depredations of the neighbouring city of Yung-chun, which is
shaped like a fishing-net, until the inhabitants of the former town conceived
the plan of erecting two tall pagodas in their midst. These pagodas, which
still tower above the city of Tsuen-cheu-fu, have ever since exercised the
happiest influence over its destiny by intercepting the imaginary net before
it could descend and entangle in its meshes the imaginary carp. Some forty
years ago the wise men of Shanghai were much exercised to discover the cause
of a local rebellion. On careful enquiry they ascertained that the rebellion
was due to the shape of a large new temple which had most unfortunately been
built in the shape of a tortoise, an animal of the very worst character. The
difficulty was serious, the danger was pressing; for to pull down the temple
would have been impious, and to let it stand as it was would be to court a
succession of similar or worse disasters. However, the genius of the local
professors of geomancy, rising to the occasion, triumphantly surmounted the
difficulty and obviated the danger. By filling up two wells, which represented
the eyes of the tortoise, they at once blinded that disreputable animal and
rendered him incapable of doing further mischief.

Sometimes homoeopathic or imitative magic is called in to annul an evil
omen by accomplishing it in mimicry. The effect is to circumvent destiny by
substituting a mock calamity for a real one. In Madagascar this mode of
cheating the fates is reduced to a regular system. Here every man's fortune is
determined by the day or hour of his birth, and if that happens to be an
unlucky one his fate is sealed, unless the mischief can be extracted, as the
phrase goes, by means of a substitute. The ways of extracting the mischief are
various. For example, if a man is born on the first day of the second month
(February), his house will be burnt down when he comes of age. To take time by
the forelock and avoid this catastrophe, the friends of the infant will set up
a shed in a field or in the cattle-fold and burn it. If the ceremony is to be
really effective, the child and his mother should be placed in the shed and
only plucked, like brands, from the burning hut before it is too late. Again,
dripping November is the month of tears, and he who is born in it is born to
sorrow. But in order to disperse the clouds that thus gather over his future,
he has nothing to do but to take the lid off a boiling pot and wave it about.
The drops that fall from it will accomplish his destiny and so prevent the
tears from trickling from his eyes. Again, if fate has decreed that a young
girl, still unwed, should see her children, still unborn, descend before her
with sorrow to the grave, she can avert the calamity as follows. She kills a
grasshopper, wraps it in a rag to represent a shroud, and mourns over it like
Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted. Moreover, she
takes a dozen or more other grasshoppers, and having removed some of their
superfluous legs and wings she lays them about their dead and shrouded fellow.
The buzz of the tortured insects and the agitated motions of their mutilated
limbs represent the shrieks and contortions of the mourners at a funeral.
After burying the deceased grasshopper she leaves the rest to continue their
mourning till death releases them from their pain; and having bound up her
dishevelled hair she retires from the grave with the step and carriage of a
person plunged in grief. Thenceforth she looks cheerfully forward to seeing
her children survive her; for it cannot be that she should mourn and bury them
twice over. Once more, if fortune has frowned on a man at his birth and penury
has marked him for her own, he can easily erase the mark in question by
purchasing a couple of cheap pearls, price three halfpence, and burying them.
For who but the rich of this world can thus afford to fling pearls away?

3. Contagious Magic

THUS far we have been considering chiefly that branch of sympathetic magic
which may be called homoeopathic or imitative. Its leading principle, as we
have seen, is that like produces like, or, in other words, that an effect
resembles its cause. The other great branch of sympathetic magic, which I have
called Contagious Magic, proceeds upon the notion that things which have once
been conjoined must remain ever afterwards, even when quite dissevered from
each other, in such a sympathetic relation that whatever is done to the one
must similarly affect the other. Thus the logical basis of Contagious Magic,
like that of Homoeopathic Magic, is a mistaken association of ideas; its
physical basis, if we may speak of such a thing, like the physical basis of
Homoeopathic Magic, is a material medium of some sort which, like the ether of
modern physics, is assumed to unite distant objects and to convey impressions
from one to the other. The most familiar example of Contagious Magic is the
magical sympathy which is supposed to exist between a man and any severed
portion of his person, as his hair or nails; so that whoever gets possession
of human hair or nails may work his will, at any distance, upon the person
from whom they were cut. This superstition is world-wide; instances of it in
regard to hair and nails will be noticed later on in this work.

Among the Australian tribes it was a common practice to knock out one or
more of a boy's front teeth at those ceremonies of initiation to which every
male member had to submit before he could enjoy the rights and privileges of a
full-grown man. The reason of the practice is obscure; all that concerns us
here is the belief that a sympathetic relation continued to exist between the
lad and his teeth after the latter had been extracted from his gums. Thus
among some of the tribes about the river Darling, in New South Wales, the
extracted tooth was placed under the bark of a tree near a river or
water-hole; if the bark grew over the tooth, or if the tooth fell into the
water, all was well; but if it were exposed and the ants ran over it, the
natives believed that the boy would suffer from a disease of the mouth. Among
the Murring and other tribes of New South Wales the extracted tooth was at
first taken care of by an old man, and then passed from one headman to
another, until it had gone all round the community, when it came back to the
lad's father, and finally to the lad himself. But however it was thus conveyed
from hand to hand, it might on no account be placed in a bag containing
magical substances, for to do so would, they believed, put the owner of the
tooth in great danger. The late Dr. Howitt once acted as custodian of the
teeth which had been extracted from some novices at a ceremony of initiation,
and the old men earnestly besought him not to carry them in a bag in which
they knew that he had some quartz crystals. They declared that if he did so
the magic of the crystals would pass into the teeth, and so injure the boys.
Nearly a year after Dr. Howitt's return from the ceremony he was visited by
one of the principal men of the Murring tribe, who had travelled some two
hundred and fifty miles from his home to fetch back the teeth. This man
explained that he had been sent for them because one of the boys had fallen
into ill health, and it was believed that the teeth had received some injury
which had affected him. He was assured that the teeth had been kept in a box
apart from any substances, like quartz crystals, which could influence them;
and he returned home bearing the teeth with him carefully wrapt up and
concealed.

The Basutos are careful to conceal their extracted teeth, lest these
should fall into the hands of certain mythical beings who haunt graves, and
who could harm the owner of the tooth by working magic on it. In Sussex some
fifty years ago a maid-servant remonstrated strongly against the throwing away
of children's cast teeth, affirming that should they be found and gnawed by
any animal, the child's new tooth would be, for all the world, like the teeth
of the animal that had bitten the old one. In proof of this she named old
Master Simmons, who had a very large pig's tooth in his upper jaw, a personal
defect that he always averred was caused by his mother, who threw away one of
his cast teeth by accident into the hog's trough. A similar belief has led to
practices intended, on the principles of homoeopathic magic, to replace old
teeth by new and better ones. Thus in many parts of the world it is customary
to put extracted teeth in some place where they will be found by a mouse or a
rat, in the hope that, through the sympathy which continues to subsist between
them and their former owner, his other teeth may acquire the same firmness and
excellence as the teeth of these rodents. For example, in Germany it is said
to be an almost universal maxim among the people that when you have had a
tooth taken out you should insert it in a mouse's hole. To do so with a
child's milk-tooth which has fallen out will prevent the child from having
toothache. Or you should go behind the stove and throw your tooth backwards
over your head, saying Mouse, give me your iron tooth; I will give you my
bone tooth. After that your other teeth will remain good. Far away from
Europe, at Raratonga, in the Pacific, when a child's tooth was extracted, the
following prayer used to be recited:

Big rat! little rat!
Here is my old tooth.
Pray give me a new one.

Then the tooth was thrown on the thatch of the house, because rats make their
nests in the decayed thatch. The reason assigned for invoking the rats on
these occasions was that rats' teeth were the strongest known to the natives.

Other parts which are commonly believed to remain in a sympathetic union
with the body, after the physical connexion has been severed, are the
navel-string and the afterbirth, including the placenta. So intimate, indeed,
is the union conceived to be, that the fortunes of the individual for good or
evil throughout life are often supposed to be bound up with one or other of
these portions of his person, so that if his navel-string or afterbirth is
preserved and properly treated, he will be prosperous; whereas if it be
injured or lost, he will suffer accordingly. Thus certain tribes of Western
Australia believe that a man swims well or ill, according as his mother at his
birth threw the navel-string into water or not. Among the natives on the
Pennefather River in Queensland it is believed that a part of the child's
spirit (cho-i) stays in the afterbirth. Hence the grandmother takes the
afterbirth away and buries it in the sand. She marks the spot by a number of
twigs which she sticks in the ground in a circle, tying their tops together so
that the structure resembles a cone. When Anjea, the being who causes
conception in women by putting mud babies into their wombs, comes along and
sees the place, he takes out the spirit and carries it away to one of his
haunts, such as a tree, a hole in a rock, or a lagoon where it may remain for
years. But sometime or other he will put the spirit again into a baby, and it
will be born once more into the world. In Ponape, one of the Caroline Islands,
the navel-string is placed in a shell and then disposed of in such a way as
shall best adapt the child for the career which the parents have chosen for
him; for example, if they wish to make him a good climber, they will hang the
navel-string on a tree. The Kei islanders regard the navel-string as the
brother or sister of the child, according to the sex of the infant. They put
it in a pot with ashes, and set it in the branches of a tree, that it may keep
a watchful eye on the fortunes of its comrade. Among the Bataks of Sumatra, as
among many other peoples of the Indian Archipelago, the placenta passes for
the child's younger brother or sister, the sex being determined by the sex of
the child, and it is buried under the house. According to the Bataks it is
bound up with the child's welfare, and seems, in fact, to be the seat of the
transferable soul, of which we shall hear something later on. The Karo Bataks
even affirm that of a man's two souls it is the true soul that lives with the
placenta under the house; that is the soul, they say, which begets children.

The Baganda believe that every person is born with a double, and this
double they identify with the afterbirth, which they regard as a second child.
The mother buries the afterbirth at the root of a plantain tree, which then
becomes sacred until the fruit has ripened, when it is plucked to furnish a
sacred feast for the family. Among the Cherokees the navel-string of a girl is
buried under a corn-mortar, in order that the girl may grow up to be a good
baker; but the navel-string of a boy is hung up on a tree in the woods, in
order that he may be a hunter. The Incas of Peru preserved the navel-string
with the greatest care, and gave it to the child to suck whenever it fell ill.
In ancient Mexico they used to give a boy's navel-string to soldiers, to be
buried by them on a field of battle, in order that the boy might thus acquire
a passion for war. But the navel-string of a girl was buried beside the
domestic hearth, because this was believed to inspire her with a love of home
and taste for cooking and baking.

Even in Europe many people still believe that a person's destiny is more
or less bound up with that of his navel-string or afterbirth. Thus in Rhenish
Bavaria the navel-string is kept for a while wrapt up in a piece of old linen,
and then cut or pricked to pieces according as the child is a boy or a girl,
in order that he or she may grow up to be a skilful workman or a good
sempstress. In Berlin the midwife commonly delivers the dried navel-string to
the father with a strict injunction to preserve it carefully, for so long as
it is kept the child will live and thrive and be free from sickness. In Beauce
and Perche the people are careful to throw the navel-string neither into water
nor into fire, believing that if that were done the child would be drowned or
burned.

Thus in many parts of the world the navel-string, or more commonly the
afterbirth, is regarded as a living being, the brother or sister of the
infant, or as the material object in which the guardian spirit of the child or
part of its soul resides. Further, the sympathetic connexion supposed to exist
between a person and his afterbirth or navel-string comes out very clearly in
the widespread custom of treating the afterbirth or navel-string in ways which
are supposed to influence for life the character and career of the person,
making him, if it is a man, a nimble climber, a strong swimmer, a skilful
hunter, or a brave soldier, and making her, if it is a woman, a cunning
sempstress, a good baker, and so forth. Thus the beliefs and usages concerned
with the afterbirth or placenta, and to a less extent with the navel-string,
present a remarkable parallel to the widespread doctrine of the transferable
or external soul and the customs founded on it. Hence it is hardly rash to
conjecture that the resemblance is no mere chance coincidence, but that in the
afterbirth or placenta we have a physical basis (not necessarily the only one)
for the theory and practice of the external soul. The consideration of that
subject is reserved for a later part of this work.

A curious application of the doctrine of contagious magic is the relation
commonly believed to exist between a wounded man and the agent of the wound,
so that whatever is subsequently done by or to the agent must correspondingly
affect the patient either for good or evil. Thus Pliny tells us that if you
have wounded a man and are sorry for it, you have only to spit on the hand
that gave the wound, and the pain of the sufferer will be instantly
alleviated. In Melanesia, if a man's friends get possession of the arrow which
wounded him, they keep it in a damp place or in cool leaves, for then the
inflammation will be trifling and will soon subside. Meantime the enemy who
shot the arrow is hard at work to aggravate the wound by all the means in his
power. For this purpose he and his friends drink hot and burning juices and
chew irritating leaves, for this will clearly inflame and irritate the wound.
Further, they keep the bow near the fire to make the wound which it has
inflicted hot; and for the same reason they put the arrow-head, if it has been
recovered, into the fire. Moreover, they are careful to keep the bow-string
taut and to twang it occasionally, for this will cause the wounded man to
suffer from tension of the nerves and spasms of tetanus. It is constantly
received and avouched, says Bacon, that the anointing of the weapon that
maketh the wound will heal the wound itself. In this experiment, upon the
relation of men of credit (though myself, as yet, am not fully inclined to
believe it), you shall note the points following: first, the ointment
wherewith this is done is made of divers ingredients, whereof the strangest
and hardest to come by are the moss upon the skull of a dead man unburied, and
the fats of a boar and a bear killed in the act of generation. The precious
ointment compounded out of these and other ingredients was applied, as the
philosopher explains, not to the wound but to the weapon, and that even though
the injured man was at a great distance and knew nothing about it. The
experiment, he tells us, had been tried of wiping the ointment off the weapon
without the knowledge of the person hurt, with the result that he was
presently in a great rage of pain until the weapon was anointed again.
Moreover, it is affirmed that if you cannot get the weapon, yet if you put an
instrument of iron or wood resembling the weapon into the wound, whereby it
bleedeth, the anointing of that instrument will serve and work the effect.
Remedies of the sort which Bacon deemed worthy of his attention are still in
vogue in the eastern counties of England. Thus in Suffolk if a man cuts
himself with a bill-hook or a scythe he always takes care to keep the weapon
bright, and oils it to prevent the wound from festering. If he runs a thorn
or, as he calls it, a bush into his hand, he oils or greases the extracted
thorn. A man came to a doctor with an inflamed hand, having run a thorn into
it while he was hedging. On being told that the hand was festering, he
remarked, That didn't ought to, for I greased the bush well after I pulled it
out. If a horse wounds its foot by treading on a nail, a Suffolk groom will
invariably preserve the nail, clean it, and grease it every day, to prevent
the foot from festering. Similarly Cambridgeshire labourers think that if a
horse has run a nail into its foot, it is necessary to grease the nail with
lard or oil and put it away in some safe place, or the horse will not recover.
A few years ago a veterinary surgeon was sent for to attend a horse which had
ripped its side open on the hinge of a farm gatepost. On arriving at the farm
he found that nothing had been done for the wounded horse, but that a man was
busy trying to pry the hinge out of the gatepost in order that it might be
greased and put away, which, in the opinion of the Cambridge wiseacres, would
conduce to the recovery of the animal. Similarly Essex rustics opine that, if
a man has been stabbed with a knife, it is essential to his recovery that the
knife should be greased and laid across the bed on which the sufferer is
lying. So in Bavaria you are directed to anoint a linen rag with grease and
tie it on the edge of the axe that cut you, taking care to keep the sharp edge
upwards. As the grease on the axe dries, your wound heals. Similarly in the
Harz Mountains they say that if you cut yourself, you ought to smear the knife
or the scissors with fat and put the instrument away in a dry place in the
name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. As the knife dries, the
wound heals. Other people, however, in Germany say that you should stick the
knife in some damp place in the ground, and that your hurt will heal as the
knife rusts. Others again, in Bavaria, recommend you to smear the axe or
whatever it is with blood and put it under the eaves.

The train of reasoning which thus commends itself to English and German
rustics, in common with the savages of Melanesia and America, is carried a
step further by the aborigines of Central Australia, who conceive that under
certain circumstances the near relations of a wounded man must grease
themselves, restrict their diet, and regulate their behaviour in other ways in
order to ensure his recovery. Thus when a lad has been circumcised and the
wound is not yet healed, his mother may not eat opossum, or a certain kind of
lizard, or carpet snake, or any kind of fat, for otherwise she would retard
the healing of the boy's wound. Every day she greases her digging-sticks and
never lets them out of her sight; at night she sleeps with them close to her
head. No one is allowed to touch them. Every day also she rubs her body all
over with grease, as in some way this is believed to help her son's recovery.
Another refinement of the same principle is due to the ingenuity of the German
peasant. It is said that when one of his pigs or sheep breaks its leg, a
farmer of Rhenish Bavaria or Hesse will bind up the leg of a chair with
bandages and splints in due form. For some days thereafter no one may sit on
that chair, move it, or knock up against it; for to do so would pain the
injured pig or sheep and hinder the cure. In this last case it is clear that
we have passed wholly out of the region of contagious magic and into the
region of homoeopathic or imitative magic; the chair-leg, which is treated
instead of the beast's leg, in no sense belongs to the animal, and the
application of bandages to it is a mere simulation of the treatment which a
more rational surgery would bestow on the real patient.

The sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between a man and the weapon
which has wounded him is probably founded on the notion that the blood on the
weapon continues to feel with the blood in his body. For a like reason the
Papuans of Tumleo, an island off New Guinea, are careful to throw into the sea
the bloody bandages with which their wounds have been dressed, for they fear
that if these rags fell into the hands of an enemy he might injure them
magically thereby. Once when a man with a wound in his mouth, which bled
constantly, came to the missionaries to be treated, his faithful wife took
great pains to collect all the blood and cast it into the sea. Strained and
unnatural as this idea may seem to us, it is perhaps less so than the belief
that magic sympathy is maintained between a person and his clothes, so that
whatever is done to the clothes will be felt by the man himself, even though
he may be far away at the time. In the Wotjobaluk tribe of Victoria a wizard
would sometimes get hold of a man's opossum rug and roast it slowly in the
fire, and as he did so the owner of the rug would fall sick. If the wizard
consented to undo the charm, he would give the rug back to the sick man's
friends, bidding them put it in water, so as to wash the fire out. When that
happened, the sufferer would feel a refreshing coolness and probably recover.
In Tanna, one of the New Hebrides, a man who had a grudge at another and
desired his death would try to get possession of a cloth which had touched the
sweat of his enemy's body. If he succeeded, he rubbed the cloth carefully over
with the leaves and twigs of a certain tree, rolled and bound cloth, twigs,
and leaves into a long sausage-shaped bundle, and burned it slowly in the
fire. As the bundle was consumed, the victim fell ill, and when it was reduced
to ashes, he died. In this last form of enchantment, however, the magical
sympathy may be supposed to exist not so much between the man and the cloth as
between the man and the sweat which issued from his body. But in other cases
of the same sort it seems that the garment by itself is enough to give the
sorcerer a hold upon his victim. The witch in Theocritus, while she melted an
image or lump of wax in order that her faithless lover might melt with love of
her, did not forget to throw into the fire a shred of his cloak which he had
dropped in her house. In Prussia they say that if you cannot catch a thief,
the next best thing you can do is to get hold of a garment which he may have
shed in his flight; for if you beat it soundly, the thief will fall sick. This
belief is firmly rooted in the popular mind. Some eighty or ninety years ago,
in the neighbourhood of Berend, a man was detected trying to steal honey, and
fled, leaving his coat behind him. When he heard that the enraged owner of the
honey was mauling his lost coat, he was so alarmed that he took to his bed and
died.

Again, magic may be wrought on a man sympathetically, not only through his
clothes and severed parts of himself, but also through the impressions left by
his body in sand or earth. In particular, it is a world-wide superstition that
by injuring footprints you injure the feet that made them. Thus the natives of
South-eastern Australia think that they can lame a man by placing sharp pieces
of quartz, glass, bone, or charcoal in his footprints. Rheumatic pains are
often attributed by them to this cause. Seeing a Tatungolung man very lame,
Mr. Howitt asked him what was the matter. He said, some fellow has put
bottle in my foot. He was suffering from rheumatism, but believed that an
enemy had found his foot-track and had buried it in a piece of broken bottle,
the magical influence of which had entered his foot.

Similar practices prevail in various parts of Europe. Thus in Mecklenburg
it is thought that if you drive a nail into a man's footprint he will fall
lame; sometimes it is required that the nail should be taken from a coffin. A
like mode of injuring an enemy is resorted to in some parts of France. It is
said that there was an old woman who used to frequent Stow in Suffolk, and she
was a witch. If, while she walked, any one went after her and stuck a nail or
a knife into her footprint in the dust, the dame could not stir a step till it
was withdrawn. Among the South Slavs a girl will dig up the earth from the
footprints of the man she loves and put it in a flower-pot. Then she plants in
the pot a marigold, a flower that is thought to be fadeless. And as its golden
blossom grows and blooms and never fades, so shall her sweetheart's love grow
and bloom, and never, never fade. Thus the love-spell acts on the man through
the earth he trod on. An old Danish mode of concluding a treaty was based on
the same idea of the sympathetic connexion between a man and his footprints:
the covenanting parties sprinkled each other's footprints with their own
blood, thus giving a pledge of fidelity. In ancient Greece superstitions of
the same sort seem to have been current, for it was thought that if a horse
stepped on the track of a wolf he was seized with numbness; and a maxim
ascribed to Pythagoras forbade people to pierce a man's footprints with a nail
or a knife.

The same superstition is turned to account by hunters in many parts of the
world for the purpose of running down the game. Thus a German huntsman will
stick a nail taken from a coffin into the fresh spoor of the quarry, believing
that this will hinder the animal from escaping. The aborigines of Victoria put
hot embers in the tracks of the animals they were pursuing. Hottentot hunters
throw into the air a handful of sand taken from the footprints of the game,
believing that this will bring the animal down. Thompson Indians used to lay
charms on the tracks of wounded deer; after that they deemed it superfluous to
pursue the animal any further that day, for being thus charmed it could not
travel far and would soon die. Similarly, Ojebway Indians placed medicine on
the track of the first deer or bear they met with, supposing that this would
soon bring the animal into sight, even if it were two or three days' journey
off; for this charm had power to compress a journey of several days into a few
hours. Ewe hunters of West Africa stab the footprints of game with a
sharp-pointed stick in order to maim the quarry and allow them to come up with
it.

But though the footprint is the most obvious it is not the only impression
made by the body through which magic may be wrought on a man. The aborigines
of South-eastern Australia believe that a man may be injured by burying sharp
fragments of quartz, glass, and so forth in the mark made by his reclining
body; the magical virtue of these sharp things enters his body and causes
those acute pains which the ignorant European puts down to rheumatism. We can
now understand why it was a maxim with the Pythagoreans that in rising from
bed you should smooth away the impression left by your body on the
bed-clothes. The rule was simply an old precaution against magic, forming part
of a whole code of superstitious maxims which antiquity fathered on
Pythagoras, though doubtless they were familiar to the barbarous forefathers
of the Greeks long before the time of that philosopher.

4. The Magician's Progress

WE have now concluded our examination of the general principles of
sympathetic magic. The examples by which I have illustrated them have been
drawn for the most part from what may be called private magic, that is from
magical rites and incantations practised for the benefit or the injury of
individuals. But in savage society there is commonly to be found in addition
what we may call public magic, that is, sorcery practised for the benefit of
the whole community. Wherever ceremonies of this sort are observed for the
common good, it is obvious that the magician ceases to be merely a private
practitioner and becomes to some extent a public functionary. The development
of such a class of functionaries is of great importance for the political as
well as the religious evolution of society. For when the welfare of the tribe
is supposed to depend on the performance of these magical rites, the magician
rises into a position of much influence and repute, and may readily acquire
the rank and authority of a chief or king. The profession accordingly draws
into its ranks some of the ablest and most ambitious men of the tribe, because
it holds out to them a prospect of honour, wealth, and power such as hardly
any other career could offer. The acuter minds perceive how easy it is to dupe
their weaker brother and to play on his superstition for their own advantage.
Not that the sorcerer is always a knave and impostor; he is often sincerely
convinced that he really possesses those wonderful powers which the credulity
of his fellows ascribes to him. But the more sagacious he is, the more likely
he is to see through the fallacies which impose on duller wits. Thus the
ablest members of the profession must tend to be more or less conscious
deceivers; and it is just these men who in virtue of their superior ability
will generally come to the top and win for themselves positions of the highest
dignity and the most commanding authority. The pitfalls which beset the path
of the professional sorcerer are many, and as a rule only the man of coolest
head and sharpest wit will be able to steer his way through them safely. For
it must always be remembered that every single profession and claim put
forward by the magician as such is false; not one of them can be maintained
without deception, conscious or unconscious. Accordingly the sorcerer who
sincerely believes in his own extravagant pretensions is in far greater peril
and is much more likely to be cut short in his career than the deliberate
impostor. The honest wizard always expects that his charms and incantations
will produce their supposed effect; and when they fail, not only really, as
they always do, but conspicuously and disastrously, as they often do, he is
taken aback: he is not, like his knavish colleague, ready with a plausible
excuse to account for the failure, and before he can find one he may be
knocked on the head by his disappointed and angry employers.

The general result is that at this stage of social evolution the supreme
power tends to fall into the hands of men of the keenest intelligence and the
most unscrupulous character. If we could balance the harm they do by their
knavery against the benefits they confer by their superior sagacity, it might
well be found that the good greatly outweighed the evil. For more mischief has
probably been wrought in the world by honest fools in high places than by
intelligent rascals. Once your shrewd rogue has attained the height of his
ambition, and has no longer any selfish end to further, he may, and often
does, turn his talents, his experience, his resources, to the service of the
public. Many men who have been least scrupulous in the acquisition of power
have been most beneficent in the use of it, whether the power they aimed at
and won was that of wealth, political authority, or what not. In the field of
politics the wily intriguer, the ruthless victor, may end by being a wise and
magnanimous ruler, blessed in his lifetime, lamented at his death, admired and
applauded by posterity. Such men, to take two of the most conspicuous
instances, were Julius Caesar and Augustus. But once a fool always a fool, and
the greater the power in his hands the more disastrous is likely to be the use
he makes of it. The heaviest calamity in English history, the breach with
America, might never have occurred if George the Third had not been an honest
dullard.

Thus, so far as the public profession of magic affected the constitution
of savage society, it tended to place the control of affairs in the hands of
the ablest man: it shifted the balance of power from the many to the one: it
substituted a monarchy for a democracy, or rather for an oligarchy of old men;
for in general the savage community is ruled, not by the whole body of adult
males, but by a council of elders. The change, by whatever causes produced,
and whatever the character of the early rulers, was on the whole very
beneficial. For the rise of monarchy appears to be an essential condition of
the emergence of mankind from savagery. No human being is so hide-bound by
custom and tradition as your democratic savage; in no state of society
consequently is progress so slow and difficult. The old notion that the savage
is the freest of mankind is the reverse of the truth. He is a slave, not
indeed to a visible master, but to the past, to the spirits of his dead
forefathers, who haunt his steps from birth to death, and rule him with a rod
of iron. What they did is the pattern of right, the unwritten law to which he
yields a blind unquestioning obedience. The least possible scope is thus
afforded to superior talent to change old customs for the better. The ablest
man is dragged down by the weakest and dullest, who necessarily sets the
standard, since he cannot rise, while the other can fall. The surface of such
a society presents a uniform dead level, so far as it is humanly possible to
reduce the natural inequalities, the immeasurable real differences of inborn
capacity and temper, to a false superficial appearance of equality. From this
low and stagnant condition of affairs, which demagogues and dreamers in later
times have lauded as the ideal state, the Golden Age, of humanity, everything
that helps to raise society by opening a career to talent and proportioning
the degrees of authority to men's natural abilities, deserves to be welcomed
by all who have the real good of their fellows at heart. Once these elevating
influences have begun to operateand they cannot be for ever suppressedthe
progress of civilisation becomes comparatively rapid. The rise of one man to
supreme power enables him to carry through changes in a single lifetime which
previously many generations might not have sufficed to effect; and if, as will
often happen, he is a man of intellect and energy above the common, he will
readily avail himself of the opportunity. Even the whims and caprices of a
tyrant may be of service in breaking the chain of custom which lies so heavy
on the savage. And as soon as the tribe ceases to be swayed by the timid and
divided counsels of the elders, and yields to the direction of a single strong
and resolute mind, it becomes formidable to its neighbours and enters on a
career of aggrandisement, which at an early stage of history is often highly
favourable to social, industrial, and intellectual progress. For extending its
sway, partly by force of arms, partly by the voluntary submission of weaker
tribes, the community soon acquires wealth and slaves, both of which, by
relieving some classes from the perpetual struggle for a bare subsistence,
afford them an opportunity of devoting themselves to that disinterested
pursuit of knowledge which is the noblest and most powerful instrument to
ameliorate the lot of man.

Intellectual progress, which reveals itself in the growth of art and
science and the spread of more liberal views, cannot be dissociated from
industrial or economic progress, and that in its turn receives an immense
impulse from conquest and empire. It is no mere accident that the most
vehement outbursts of activity of the human mind have followed close on the
heels of victory, and that the great conquering races of the world have
commonly done most to advance and spread civilisation, thus healing in peace
the wounds they inflicted in war. The Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the
Arabs are our witnesses in the past: we may yet live to see a similar outburst
in Japan. Nor, to remount the stream of history to its sources, is it an
accident that all the first great strides towards civilisation have been made
under despotic and theocratic governments, like those of Egypt, Babylon, and
Peru, where the supreme ruler claimed and received the servile allegiance of
his subjects in the double character of a king and a god. It is hardly too
much to say that at this early epoch despotism is the best friend of humanity
and, paradoxical as it may sound, of liberty. For after all there is more
liberty in the best senseliberty to think our own thoughts and to fashion our
own destiniesunder the most absolute despotism, the most grinding tyranny,
than under the apparent freedom of savage life, where the individual's lot is
cast from the cradle to the grave in the iron mould of hereditary custom.

So far, therefore, as the public profession of magic has been one of the
roads by which the ablest men have passed to supreme power, it has contributed
to emancipate mankind from the thraldom of tradition and to elevate them into
a larger, freer life, with a broader outlook on the world. This is no small
service rendered to humanity. And when we remember further that in another
direction magic has paved the way for science, we are forced to admit that if
the black art has done much evil, it has also been the source of much good;
that if it is the child of error, it has yet been the mother of freedom and
truth.

Chapter 4. Magic and Religion

THE examples collected in the last chapter may suffice to illustrate the
general principles of sympathetic magic in its two branches, to which we have
given the names of Homoeopathic and Contagious respectively. In some cases of
magic which have come before us we have seen that the operation of spirits is
assumed, and that an attempt is made to win their favour by prayer and
sacrifice. But these cases are on the whole exceptional; they exhibit magic
tinged and alloyed with religion. Wherever sympathetic magic occurs in its
pure unadulterated form, it assumes that in nature one event follows another
necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or
personal agency. Thus its fundamental conception is identical with that of
modern science; underlying the whole system is a faith, implicit but real and
firm, in the order and uniformity of nature. The magician does not doubt that
the same causes will always produce the same effects, that the performance of
the proper ceremony, accompanied by the appropriate spell, will inevitably be
attended by the desired result, unless, indeed, his incantations should chance
to be thwarted and foiled by the more potent charms of another sorcerer. He
supplicates no higher power: he sues the favour of no fickle and wayward
being: he abases himself before no awful deity. Yet his power, great as he
believes it to be, is by no means arbitrary and unlimited. He can wield it
only so long as he strictly conforms to the rules of his art, or to what may
be called the laws of nature as conceived by him. To neglect these rules, to
break these laws in the smallest particular, is to incur failure, and may even
expose the unskilful practitioner himself to the utmost peril. If he claims a
sovereignty over nature, it is a constitutional sovereignty rigorously limited
in its scope and exercised in exact conformity with ancient usage. Thus the
analogy between the magical and the scientific conceptions of the world is
close. In both of them the succession of events is assumed to be perfectly
regular and certain, being determined by immutable laws, the operation of
which can be foreseen and calculated precisely; the elements of caprice, of
chance, and of accident are banished from the course of nature. Both of them
open up a seemingly boundless vista of possibilities to him who knows the
causes of things and can touch the secret springs that set in motion the vast
and intricate mechanism of the world. Hence the strong attraction which magic
and science alike have exercised on the human mind; hence the powerful
stimulus that both have given to the pursuit of knowledge. They lure the weary
enquirer, the footsore seeker, on through the wilderness of disappointment in
the present by their endless promises of the future: they take him up to the
top of an exceeding high mountain and show him, beyond the dark clouds and
rolling mists at his feet, a vision of the celestial city, far off, it may be,
but radiant with unearthly splendour, bathed in the light of dreams.

The fatal flaw of magic lies not in its general assumption of a sequence
of events determined by law, but in its total misconception of the nature of
the particular laws which govern that sequence. If we analyse the various
cases of sympathetic magic which have been passed in review in the preceding
pages, and which may be taken as fair samples of the bulk, we shall find, as I
have already indicated, that they are all mistaken applications of one or
other of two great fundamental laws of thought, namely, the association of
ideas by similarity and the association of ideas by contiguity in space or
time. A mistaken association of similar ideas produces homoeopathic or
imitative magic: a mistaken association of contiguous ideas produces
contagious magic. The principles of association are excellent in themselves,
and indeed absolutely essential to the working of the human mind. Legitimately
applied they yield science; illegitimately applied they yield magic, the
bastard sister of science. It is therefore a truism, almost a tautology, to
say that all magic is necessarily false and barren; for were it ever to become
true and fruitful, it would no longer be magic but science. From the earliest
times man has been engaged in a search for general rules whereby to turn the
order of natural phenomena to his own advantage, and in the long search he has
scraped together a great hoard of such maxims, some of them golden and some of
them mere dross. The true or golden rules constitute the body of applied
science which we call the arts; the false are magic.

If magic is thus next of kin to science, we have still to enquire how it
stands related to religion. But the view we take of that relation will
necessarily be coloured by the idea which we have formed of the nature of
religion itself; hence a writer may reasonably be expected to define his
conception of religion before he proceeds to investigate its relation to
magic. There is probably no subject in the world about which opinions differ
so much as the nature of religion, and to frame a definition of it which would
satisfy every one must obviously be impossible. All that a writer can do is,
first, to say clearly what he means by religion, and afterwards to employ the
word consistently in that sense throughout his work. By religion, then, I
understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are
believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus
defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical,
namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or
please them. Of the two, belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in
the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him. But
unless the belief leads to a corresponding practice, it is not a religion but
merely a theology; in the language of St. James, faith, if it hath not works,
is dead, being alone. In other words, no man is religious who does not govern
his conduct in some measure by the fear or love of God. On the other hand,
mere practice, divested of all religious belief, is also not religion. Two men
may behave in exactly the same way, and yet one of them may be religious and
the other not. If the one acts from the love or fear of God, he is religious;
if the other acts from the love or fear of man, he is moral or immoral
according as his behaviour comports or conflicts with the general good. Hence
belief and practice or, in theological language, faith and works are equally
essential to religion, which cannot exist without both of them. But it is not
necessary that religious practice should always take the form of a ritual;
that is, it need not consist in the offering of sacrifice, the recitation of
prayers, and other outward ceremonies. Its aim is to please the deity, and if
the deity is one who delights in charity and mercy and purity more than in
oblations of blood, the chanting of hymns, and the fumes of incense, his
worshippers will best please him, not by prostrating themselves before him, by
intoning his praises, and by filling his temples with costly gifts, but by
being pure and merciful and charitable towards men, for in so doing they will
imitate, so far as human infirmity allows, the perfections of the divine
nature. It was this ethical side of religion which the Hebrew prophets,
inspired with a noble ideal of God's goodness and holiness, were never weary
of inculcating. Thus Micah says: He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good;
and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God? And at a later time much of the force by
which Christianity conquered the world was drawn from the same high conception
of God's moral nature and the duty laid on men of conforming themselves to it.
Pure religion and undefiled, says St. James, before God and the Father is
this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep
himself unspotted from the world.

But if religion involves, first, a belief in superhuman beings who rule
the world, and, second, an attempt to win their favour, it clearly assumes
that the course of nature is to some extent elastic or variable, and that we
can persuade or induce the mighty beings who control it to deflect, for our
benefit, the current of events from the channel in which they would otherwise
flow. Now this implied elasticity or variability of nature is directly opposed
to the principles of magic as well as of science, both of which assume that
the processes of nature are rigid and invariable in their operation, and that
they can as little be turned from their course by persuasion and entreaty as
by threats and intimidation. The distinction between the two conflicting views
of the universe turns on their answer to the crucial question, Are the forces
which govern the world conscious and personal, or unconscious and impersonal?
Religion, as a conciliation of the superhuman powers, assumes the former
member of the alternative. For all conciliation implies that the being
conciliated is a conscious or personal agent, that his conduct is in some
measure uncertain, and that he can be prevailed upon to vary it in the desired
direction by a judicious appeal to his interests, his appetites, or his
emotions. Conciliation is never employed towards things which are regarded as
inanimate, nor towards persons whose behaviour in the particular circumstances
is known to be determined with absolute certainty. Thus in so far as religion
assumes the world to be directed by conscious agents who may be turned from
their purpose by persuasion, it stands in fundamental antagonism to magic as
well as to science, both of which take for granted that the course of nature
is determined, not by the passions or caprice of personal beings, but by the
operation of immutable laws acting mechanically. In magic, indeed, the
assumption is only implicit, but in science it is explicit. It is true that
magic often deals with spirits, which are personal agents of the kind assumed
by religion; but whenever it does so in its proper form, it treats them
exactly in the same fashion as it treats inanimate agents, that is, it
constrains or coerces instead of conciliating or propitiating them as religion
would do. Thus it assumes that all personal beings, whether human or divine,
are in the last resort subject to those impersonal forces which control all
things, but which nevertheless can be turned to account by any one who knows
how to manipulate them by the appropriate ceremonies and spells. In ancient
Egypt, for example, the magicians claimed the power of compelling even the
highest gods to do their bidding, and actually threatened them with
destruction in case of disobedience. Sometimes, without going quite so far as
that, the wizard declared that he would scatter the bones of Osiris or reveal
his sacred legend, if the god proved contumacious. Similarly in India at the
present day the great Hindoo trinity itself of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva is
subject to the sorcerers, who, by means of their spells, exercise such an
ascendency over the mightiest deities, that these are bound submissively to
execute on earth below, or in heaven above, whatever commands their masters
the magicians may please to issue. There is a saying everywhere current in
India: The whole universe is subject to the gods; the gods are subject to the
spells (mantras); the spells to the Brahmans; therefore the Brahmans are our
gods.

This radical conflict of principle between magic and religion sufficiently
explains the relentless hostility with which in history the priest has often
pursued the magician. The haughty self-sufficiency of the magician, his
arrogant demeanour towards the higher powers, and his unabashed claim to
exercise a sway like theirs could not but revolt the priest, to whom, with his
awful sense of the divine majesty, and his humble prostration in presence of
it, such claims and such a demeanour must have appeared an impious and
blasphemous usurpation of prerogatives that belong to God alone. And
sometimes, we may suspect, lower motives concurred to whet the edge of the
priest's hostility. He professed to be the proper medium, the true intercessor
between God and man, and no doubt his interests as well as his feelings were
often injured by a rival practitioner, who preached a surer and smoother road
to fortune than the rugged and slippery path of divine favour.

Yet this antagonism, familiar as it is to us, seems to have made its
appearance comparatively late in the history of religion. At an earlier stage
the functions of priest and sorcerer were often combined or, to speak perhaps
more correctly, were not yet differentiated from each other. To serve his
purpose man wooed the good-will of gods or spirits by prayer and sacrifice,
while at the same time he had recourse to ceremonies and forms of words which
he hoped would of themselves bring about the desired result without the help
of god or devil. In short, he performed religious and magical rites
simultaneously; he uttered prayers and incantations almost in the same breath,
knowing or recking little of the theoretical inconsistency of his behaviour,
so long as by hook or crook he contrived to get what he wanted. Instances of
this fusion or confusion of magic with religion have already met us in the
practices of Melanesians and of other peoples.

The same confusion of magic and religion has survived among peoples that
have risen to higher levels of culture. It was rife in ancient India and
ancient Egypt; it is by no means extinct among European peasantry at the
present day. With regard to ancient India we are told by an eminent Sanscrit
scholar that the sacrificial ritual at the earliest period of which we have
detailed information is pervaded with practices that breathe the spirit of the
most primitive magic. Speaking of the importance of magic in the East, and
especially in Egypt, Professor Maspero remarks that we ought not to attach to
the word magic the degrading idea which it almost inevitably calls up in the
mind of a modern. Ancient magic was the very foundation of religion. The
faithful who desired to obtain some favour from a god had no chance of
succeeding except by laying hands on the deity, and this arrest could only be
effected by means of a certain number of rites, sacrifices, prayers, and
chants, which the god himself had revealed, and which obliged him to do what
was demanded of him.

Among the ignorant classes of modern Europe the same confusion of ideas,
the same mixture of religion and magic, crops up in various forms. Thus we are
told that in France the majority of the peasants still believe that the
priest possesses a secret and irresistible power over the elements. By
reciting certain prayers which he alone knows and has the right to utter, yet
for the utterance of which he must afterwards demand absolution, he can, on an
occasion of pressing danger, arrest or reverse for a moment the action of the
eternal laws of the physical world. The winds, the storms, the hail, and the
rain are at his command and obey his will. The fire also is subject to him,
and the flames of a conflagration are extinguished at his word. For example,
French peasants used to be, perhaps are still, persuaded that the priests
could celebrate, with certain special rites, a Mass of the Holy Spirit, of
which the efficacy was so miraculous that it never met with any opposition
from the divine will; God was forced to grant whatever was asked of Him in
this form, however rash and importunate might be the petition. No idea of
impiety or irreverence attached to the rite in the minds of those who, in some
of the great extremities of life, sought by this singular means to take the
kingdom of heaven by storm. The secular priests generally refused to say the
Mass of the Holy Spirit; but the monks, especially the Capuchin friars, had
the reputation of yielding with less scruple to the entreaties of the anxious
and distressed. In the constraint thus supposed by Catholic peasantry to be
laid by the priest upon the deity we seem to have an exact counterpart of the
power which the ancient Egyptians ascribed to their magicians. Again, to take
another example, in many villages of Provence the priest is still reputed to
possess the faculty of averting storms. It is not every priest who enjoys this
reputation; and in some villages, when a change of pastors takes place, the
parishioners are eager to learn whether the new incumbent has the power
(pouder), as they call it. At the first sign of a heavy storm they put him
to the proof by inviting him to exorcise the threatening clouds; and if the
result answers to their hopes, the new shepherd is assured of the sympathy and
respect of his flock. In some parishes, where the reputation of the curate in
this respect stood higher than that of his rector, the relations between the
two have been so strained in consequence that the bishop has had to translate
the rector to another benefice. Again, Gascon peasants believe that to revenge
themselves on their enemies bad men will sometimes induce a priest to say a
mass called the Mass of Saint Scaire. Very few priests know this mass, and
three-fourths of those who do know it would not say it for love or money. None
but wicked priests dare to perform the gruesome ceremony, and you may be quite
sure that they will have a very heavy account to render for it at the last
day. No curate or bishop, not even the archbishop of Auch, can pardon them;
that right belongs to the pope of Rome alone. The Mass of Saint Scaire may be
said only in a ruined or deserted church, where owls mope and hoot, where bats
flit in the gloaming, where gypsies lodge of nights, and where toads squat
under the desecrated altar. Thither the bad priest comes by night with his
light o' love, and at the first stroke of eleven he begins to mumble the mass
backwards, and ends just as the clocks are knelling the midnight hour. His
leman acts as clerk. The host he blesses is black and has three points; he
consecrates no wine, but instead he drinks the water of a well into which the
body of an unbaptized infant has been flung. He makes the sign of the cross,
but it is on the ground and with his left foot. And many other things he does
which no good Christian could look upon without being struck blind and deaf
and dumb for the rest of his life. But the man for whom the mass is said
withers away little by little, and nobody can say what is the matter with him;
even the doctors can make nothing of it. They do not know that he is slowly
dying of the Mass of Saint Scaire.

Yet though magic is thus found to fuse and amalgamate with religion in
many ages and in many lands, there are some grounds for thinking that this
fusion is not primitive, and that there was a time when man trusted to magic
alone for the satisfaction of such wants as transcended his immediate animal
cravings. In the first place a consideration of the fundamental notions of
magic and religion may incline us to surmise that magic is older than religion
in the history of humanity. We have seen that on the one hand magic is nothing
but a mistaken application of the very simplest and most elementary processes
of the mind, namely the association of ideas by virtue of resemblance or
contiguity; and that on the other hand religion assumes the operation of
conscious or personal agents, superior to man, behind the visible screen of
nature. Obviously the conception of personal agents is more complex than a
simple recognition of the similarity or contiguity of ideas; and a theory
which assumes that the course of nature is determined by conscious agents is
more abstruse and recondite, and requires for its apprehension a far higher
degree of intelligence and reflection, than the view that things succeed each
other simply by reason of their contiguity or resemblance. The very beasts
associate the ideas of things that are like each other or that have been found
together in their experience; and they could hardly survive for a day if they
ceased to do so. But who attributes to the animals a belief that the phenomena
of nature are worked by a multitude of invisible animals or by one enormous
and prodigiously strong animal behind the scenes? It is probably no injustice
to the brutes to assume that the honour of devising a theory of this latter
sort must be reserved for human reason. Thus, if magic be deduced immediately
from elementary processes of reasoning, and be, in fact, an error into which
the mind falls almost spontaneously, while religion rests on conceptions which
the merely animal intelligence can hardly be supposed to have yet attained to,
it becomes probable that magic arose before religion in the evolution of our
race, and that man essayed to bend nature to his wishes by the sheer force of
spells and enchantments before he strove to coax and mollify a coy,
capricious, or irascible deity by the soft insinuation of prayer and
sacrifice.

The conclusion which we have thus reached deductively from a consideration
of the fundamental ideas of magic and religion is confirmed inductively by the
observation that among the aborigines of Australia, the rudest savages as to
whom we possess accurate information, magic is universally practised, whereas
religion in the sense of a propitiation or conciliation of the higher powers
seems to be nearly unknown. Roughly speaking, all men in Australia are
magicians, but not one is a priest; everybody fancies he can influence his
fellows or the course of nature by sympathetic magic, but nobody dreams of
propitiating gods by prayer and sacrifice.

But if in the most backward state of human society now known to us we find
magic thus conspicuously present and religion conspicuously absent, may we not
reasonably conjecture that the civilised races of the world have also at some
period of their history passed through a similar intellectual phase, that they
attempted to force the great powers of nature to do their pleasure before they
thought of courting their favour by offerings and prayerin short that, just
as on the material side of human culture there has everywhere been an Age of
Stone, so on the intellectual side there has everywhere been an Age of Magic?
There are reasons for answering this question in the affirmative. When we
survey the existing races of mankind from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego, or
from Scotland to Singapore, we observe that they are distinguished one from
the other by a great variety of religions, and that these distinctions are
not, so to speak, merely coterminous with the broad distinctions of race, but
descend into the minuter subdivisions of states and commonwealths, nay, that
they honeycomb the town, the village, and even the family, so that the surface
of society all over the world is cracked and seamed, sapped and mined with
rents and fissures and yawning crevasses opened up by the disintegrating
influence of religious dissension. Yet when we have penetrated through these
differences, which affect mainly the intelligent and thoughtful part of the
community, we shall find underlying them all a solid stratum of intellectual
agreement among the dull, the weak, the ignorant, and the superstitious, who
constitute, unfortunately, the vast majority of mankind. One of the great
achievements of the nineteenth century was to run shafts down into this low
mental stratum in many parts of the world, and thus to discover its
substantial identity everywhere. It is beneath our feetand not very far
beneath themhere in Europe at the present day, and it crops up on the surface
in the heart of the Australian wilderness and wherever the advent of a higher
civilisation has not crushed it under ground. This universal faith, this truly
Catholic creed, is a belief in the efficacy of magic. While religious systems
differ not only in different countries, but in the same country in different
ages, the system of sympathetic magic remains everywhere and at all times
substantially alike in its principles and practice. Among the ignorant and
superstitious classes of modern Europe it is very much what it was thousands
of years ago in Egypt and India, and what it now is among the lowest savages
surviving in the remotest corners of the world. If the test of truth lay in a
show of hands or a counting of heads, the system of magic might appeal, with
far more reason than the Catholic Church, to the proud motto, Quod semper,
quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, as the sure and certain credential of its own
infallibility.

It is not our business here to consider what bearing the permanent
existence of such a solid layer of savagery beneath the surface of society,
and unaffected by the superficial changes of religion and culture, has upon
the future of humanity. The dispassionate observer, whose studies have led him
to plumb its depths, can hardly regard it otherwise than as a standing menace
to civilisation. We seem to move on a thin crust which may at any moment be
rent by the subterranean forces slumbering below. From time to time a hollow
murmur underground or a sudden spirt of flame into the air tells of what is
going on beneath our feet. Now and then the polite world is startled by a
paragraph in a newspaper which tells how in Scotland an image has been found
stuck full of pins for the purpose of killing an obnoxious laird or minister,
how a woman has been slowly roasted to death as a witch in Ireland, or how a
girl has been murdered and chopped up in Russia to make those candles of human
tallow by whose light thieves hope to pursue their midnight trade unseen. But
whether the influences that make for further progress, or those that threaten
to undo what has already been accomplished, will ultimately prevail; whether
the impulsive energy of the minority or the dead weight of the majority of
mankind will prove the stronger force to carry us up to higher heights or to
sink us into lower depths, are questions rather for the sage, the moralist,
and the statesman, whose eagle vision scans the future, than for the humble
student of the present and the past. Here we are only concerned to ask how far
the uniformity, the universality, and the permanence of a belief in magic,
compared with the endless variety and the shifting character of religious
creeds, raises a presumption that the former represents a ruder and earlier
phase of the human mind, through which all the races of mankind have passed or
are passing on their way to religion and science.

If an Age of Religion has thus everywhere, as I venture to surmise, been
preceded by an Age of Magic, it is natural that we should enquire what causes
have led mankind, or rather a portion of them, to abandon magic as a principle
of faith and practice and to betake themselves to religion instead. When we
reflect upon the multitude, the variety, and the complexity of the facts to be
explained, and the scantiness of our information regarding them, we shall be
ready to acknowledge that a full and satisfactory solution of so profound a
problem is hardly to be hoped for, and that the most we can do in the present
state of our knowledge is to hazard a more or less plausible conjecture. With
all due diffidence, then, I would suggest that a tardy recognition of the
inherent falsehood and barrenness of magic set the more thoughtful part of
mankind to cast about for a truer theory of nature and a more fruitful method
of turning her resources to account. The shrewder intelligences must in time
have come to perceive that magical ceremonies and incantations did not really
effect the results which they were designed to produce, and which the majority
of their simpler fellows still believed that they did actually produce. This
great discovery of the inefficacy of magic must have wrought a radical though
probably slow revolution in the minds of those who had the sagacity to make
it. The discovery amounted to this, that men for the first time recognised
their inability to manipulate at pleasure certain natural forces which
hitherto they had believed to be completely within their control. It was a
confession of human ignorance and weakness. Man saw that he had taken for
causes what were no causes, and that all his efforts to work by means of these
imaginary causes had been vain. His painful toil had been wasted, his curious
ingenuity had been squandered to no purpose. He had been pulling at strings to
which nothing was attached; he had been marching, as he thought, straight to
the goal, while in reality he had only been treading in a narrow circle. Not
that the effects which he had striven so hard to produce did not continue to
manifest themselves. They were still produced, but not by him. The rain still
fell on the thirsty ground: the sun still pursued his daily, and the moon her
nightly journey across the sky: the silent procession of the seasons still
moved in light and shadow, in cloud and sunshine across the earth: men were
still born to labour and sorrow, and still, after a brief sojourn here, were
gathered to their fathers in the long home hereafter. All things indeed went
on as before, yet all seemed different to him from whose eyes the old scales
had fallen. For he could no longer cherish the pleasing illusion that it was
he who guided the earth and the heaven in their courses, and that they would
cease to perform their great revolutions were he to take his feeble hand from
the wheel. In the death of his enemies and his friends he no longer saw a
proof of the resistless potency of his own or of hostile enchantments; he now
knew that friends and foes alike had succumbed to a force stronger than any
that he could wield, and in obedience to a destiny which he was powerless to
control.

Thus cut adrift from his ancient moorings and left to toss on a troubled
sea of doubt and uncertainty, his old happy confidence in himself and his
powers rudely shaken, our primitive philosopher must have been sadly perplexed
and agitated till he came to rest, as in a quiet haven after a tempestuous
voyage, in a new system of faith and practice, which seemed to offer a
solution of his harassing doubts and a substitute, however precarious, for
that sovereignty over nature which he had reluctantly abdicated. If the great
world went on its way without the help of him or his fellows, it must surely
be because there were other beings, like himself, but far stronger, who,
unseen themselves, directed its course and brought about all the varied series
of events which he had hitherto believed to be dependent on his own magic. It
was they, as he now believed, and not he himself, who made the stormy wind to
blow, the lightning to flash, and the thunder to roll; who had laid the
foundations of the solid earth and set bounds to the restless sea that it
might not pass; who caused all the glorious lights of heaven to shine; who
gave the fowls of the air their meat and the wild beasts of the desert their
prey; who bade the fruitful land to bring forth in abundance, the high hills
to be clothed with forests, the bubbling springs to rise under the rocks in
the valleys, and green pastures to grow by still waters; who breathed into
man's nostrils and made him live, or turned him to destruction by famine and
pestilence and war. To these mighty beings, whose handiwork he traced in all
the gorgeous and varied pageantry of nature, man now addressed himself, humbly
confessing his dependence on their invisible power, and beseeching them of
their mercy to furnish him with all good things, to defend him from the perils
and dangers by which our mortal life is compassed about on every hand, and
finally to bring his immortal spirit, freed from the burden of the body, to
some happier world, beyond the reach of pain and sorrow, where he might rest
with them and with the spirits of good men in joy and felicity for ever.

In this, or some such way as this, the deeper minds may be conceived to
have made the great transition from magic to religion. But even in them the
change can hardly ever have been sudden; probably it proceeded very slowly,
and required long ages for its more or less perfect accomplishment. For the
recognition of man's powerlessness to influence the course of nature on a
grand scale must have been gradual; he cannot have been shorn of the whole of
his fancied dominion at a blow. Step by step he must have been driven back
from his proud position; foot by foot he must have yielded, with a sigh, the
ground which he had once viewed as his own. Now it would be the wind, now the
rain, now the sunshine, now the thunder, that he confessed himself unable to
wield at will; and as province after province of nature thus fell from his
grasp, till what had once seemed a kingdom threatened to shrink into a prison,
man must have been more and more profoundly impressed with a sense of his own
helplessness and the might of the invisible beings by whom he believed himself
to be surrounded. Thus religion, beginning as a slight and partial
acknowledgment of powers superior to man, tends with the growth of knowledge
to deepen into a confession of man's entire and absolute dependence on the
divine; his old free bearing is exchanged for an attitude of lowliest
prostration before the mysterious powers of the unseen, and his highest virtue
is to submit his will to theirs: In la sua volontade  nostra pace. But this
deepening sense of religion, this more perfect submission to the divine will
in all things, affects only those higher intelligences who have breadth of
view enough to comprehend the vastness of the universe and the littleness of
man. Small minds cannot grasp great ideas; to their narrow comprehension,
their purblind vision, nothing seems really great and important but
themselves. Such minds hardly rise into religion at all. They are, indeed,
drilled by their betters into an outward conformity with its precepts and a
verbal profession of its tenets; but at heart they cling to their old magical
superstitions, which may be discountenanced and forbidden, but cannot be
eradicated by religion, so long as they have their roots deep down in the
mental framework and constitution of the great majority of mankind.

The reader may well be tempted to ask, How was it that intelligent men did
not sooner detect the fallacy of magic? How could they continue to cherish
expectations that were invariably doomed to disappointment? With what heart
persist in playing venerable antics that led to nothing, and mumbling solemn
balderdash that remained without effect? Why cling to beliefs which were so
flatly contradicted by experience? How dare to repeat experiments that had
failed so often? The answer seems to be that the fallacy was far from easy to
detect, the failure by no means obvious, since in many, perhaps in most cases,
the desired event did actually follow, at a longer or shorter interval, the
performance of the rite which was designed to bring it about; and a mind of
more than common acuteness was needed to perceive that, even in these cases,
the rite was not necessarily the cause of the event. A ceremony intended to
make the wind blow or the rain fall, or to work the death of an enemy, will
always be followed, sooner or later, by the occurrence it is meant to bring to
pass; and primitive man may be excused for regarding the occurrence as a
direct result of the ceremony, and the best possible proof of its efficacy.
Similarly, rites observed in the morning to help the sun to rise, and in
spring to wake the dreaming earth from her winter sleep, will invariably
appear to be crowned with success, at least within the temperate zones; for in
these regions the sun lights his golden lamp in the east every morning, and
year by year the vernal earth decks herself afresh with a rich mantle of
green. Hence the practical savage, with his conservative instincts, might well
turn a deaf ear to the subtleties of the theoretical doubter, the philosophic
radical, who presumed to hint that sunrise and spring might not, after all, be
direct consequences of the punctual performance of certain daily or yearly
ceremonies, and that the sun might perhaps continue to rise and trees to
blossom though the ceremonies were occasionally intermitted, or even
discontinued altogether. These sceptical doubts would naturally be repelled by
the other with scorn and indignation as airy reveries subversive of the faith
and manifestly contradicted by experience. Can anything be plainer, he might
say, than that I light my twopenny candle on earth and that the sun then
kindles his great fire in heaven? I should be glad to know whether, when I
have put on my green robe in spring, the trees do not afterwards do the same?
These are facts patent to everybody, and on them I take my stand. I am a plain
practical man, not one of your theorists and splitters of hairs and choppers
of logic. Theories and speculation and all that may be very well in their way,
and I have not the least objection to your indulging in them, provided, of
course, you do not put them in practice. But give me leave to stick to facts;
then I know where I am. The fallacy of this reasoning is obvious to us,
because it happens to deal with facts about which we have long made up our
minds. But let an argument of precisely the same calibre be applied to matters
which are still under debate, and it may be questioned whether a British
audience would not applaud it as sound, and esteem the speaker who used it a
safe mannot brilliant or showy, perhaps, but thoroughly sensible and
hard-headed. If such reasonings could pass muster among ourselves, need we
wonder that they long escaped detection by the savage?

Chapter V. The Magical Control of the Weather

1. The Public Magician

THE READER may remember that we were led to plunge into the
labyrinth of magic by a consideration of two different types of
man-god. This is the clue which has guided our devious steps
through the maze, and brought us out at last on higher ground,
whence, resting a little by the way, we can look back over the path
we have already traversed and forward to the longer and steeper
road we have still to climb.

As a result of the foregoing discussion, the two types of human
gods may conveniently be distinguished as the religious and the
magical man-god respectively. In the former, a being of an order
different from and superior to man is supposed to become
incarnate, for a longer or a shorter time, in a human body,
manifesting his super-human power and knowledge by miracles
wrought and prophecies uttered through the medium of the fleshly
tabernacle in which he has deigned to take up his abode. This may
also appropriately be called the inspired or incarnate type of
man-god. In it the human body is merely a frail earthly vessel
filled with a divine and immortal spirit. On the other hand, a
man-god of the magical sort is nothing but a man who possesses in
an unusually high degree powers which most of his fellows
arrogate to themselves on a smaller scale; for in rude society there
is hardly a person who does not dabble in magic. Thus, whereas a
man-god of the former or inspired type derives his divinity from a
deity who has stooped to hide his heavenly radiance behind a dull
mask of earthly mould, a man-god of the latter type draws his
extraordinary power from a certain physical sympathy with nature.
He is not merely the receptacle of a divine spirit. His whole being,
body and soul, is so delicately attuned to the harmony of the world
that a touch of his hand or a turn of his head may send a thrill
vibrating through the universal framework of things; and
conversely his divine organism is acutely sensitive to such slight
changes of environment as would leave ordinary mortals wholly
unaffected. But the line between these two types of man-god,
however sharply we may draw it in theory, is seldom to be traced
with precision in practice, and in what follows I shall not insist on
it.
We have seen that in practice the magic art may be employed for
the benefit either of individuals or of the whole community, and
that according as it is directed to one or other of these two objects
it may be called private or public magic. Further, I pointed out that
the public magician occupies a position of great influence, from
which, if he is a prudent and able man, he may advance step by
step to the rank of a chief or king. Thus an examination of public
magic conduces to an understanding of the early kingship, since in
savage and barbarous society many chiefs and kings appear to owe
their authority in great measure to their reputation as magicians.

Among the objects of public utility which magic may be employed
to secure, the most essential is an adequate supply of food. The
examples cited in preceding pages prove that the purveyors of food
the hunter, the fisher, the farmer all resort to magical practices in
the pursuit of their various callings; but they do so as private
individuals for the benefit of themselves and their families, rather
than as public functionaries acting in the interest of the whole
people. It is otherwise when the rites are performed, not by the
hunters, the fishers, the farmers themselves, but by professional
magicians on their behalf. In primitive society, where uniformity
of occupation is the rule, and the distribution of the community
into various classes of workers has hardly begun, every man is
more or less his own magician; he practises charms and
incantations for his own good and the injury of his enemies. But a
great step in advance has been taken when a special class of
magicians has been instituted; when, in other words, a number of
men have been set apart for the express purpose of benefiting the
whole community by their skill, whether that skill be directed to
the healing of diseases, the forecasting of the future, the regulation
of the weather, or any other object of general utility. The
impotence of the means adopted by most of these practitioners to
accomplish their ends ought not to blind us to the immense
importance of the institution itself. Here is a body of men relieved,
at least in the higher stages of savagery, from the need of earning
their livelihood by hard manual toil, and allowed, nay, expected
and encouraged, to prosecute researches into the secret ways of
nature. It was at once their duty and their interest to know more
than their fellows, to acquaint themselves with everything that
could aid man in his arduous struggle with nature, everything that
could mitigate his sufferings and prolong his life. The properties of
drugs and minerals, the causes of rain and drought, of thunder and
lightning, the changes of the seasons, the phases of the moon, the
daily and yearly journeys of the sun, the motions of the stars, the
mystery of life, and the mystery of death, all these things must
have excited the wonder of these early philosophers, and
stimulated them to find solutions of problems that were doubtless
often thrust on their attention in the most practical form by the
importunate demands of their clients, who expected them not
merely to understand but to regulate the great processes of nature
for the good of man. That their first shots fell very far wide of the
mark could hardly be helped. The slow, the never-ending approach
to truth consists in perpetually forming and testing hypotheses,
accepting those which at the time seem to fit the facts and
rejecting the others. The views of natural causation embraced by
the savage magician no doubt appear to us manifestly false and
absurd; yet in their day they were legitimate hypotheses, though
they have not stood the test of experience. Ridicule and blame are
the just meed, not of those who devised these crude theories, but of
those who obstinately adhered to them after better had been
propounded. Certainly no men ever had stronger incentives in the
pursuit of truth than these savage sorcerers. To maintain at least a
show of knowledge was absolutely necessary; a single mistake
detected might cost them their life. This no doubt led them to
practise imposture for the purpose of concealing their ignorance;
but it also supplied them with the most powerful motive for
substituting a real for a sham knowledge, since, if you would
appear to know anything, by far the best way is actually to know it.
Thus, however justly we may reject the extravagant pretensions of
magicians and condemn the deceptions which they have practised
on mankind, the original institution of this class of men has, take it
all in all, been productive of incalculable good to humanity. They
were the direct predecessors, not merely of our physicians and
surgeons, but of our investigators and discoverers in every branch
of natural science. They began the work which has since been
carried to such glorious and beneficent issues by their successors
in after ages; and if the beginning was poor and feeble, this is to be
imputed to the inevitable difficulties which beset the path of
knowledge rather than to the natural incapacity or wilful fraud of
the men themselves.

2. The Magical Control ofRain

OF THE THINGS which the public magician sets himself to do for the good of
the tribe, one of the chief is to control the weather and especially to ensure
an adequate fall of rain. Water is an essential of life, and in most countries
the supply of it depends upon showers. Without rain vegetation withers,
animals and men languish and die. Hence in savage communities the rain-maker
is a very important personage; and often a special class of magicians exists
for the purpose of regulating the heavenly water-supply. The methods by which
they attempt to discharge the duties of their office are commonly, though not
always, based on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic. If they
wish to make rain they simulate it by sprinkling water or mimicking clouds: if
their object is to stop rain and cause drought, they avoid water and resort to
warmth and fire for the sake of drying up the too abundant moisture. Such
attempts are by no means confined, as the cultivated reader might imagine, to
the naked inhabitants of those sultry lands like Central Australia and some
parts of Eastern and Southern Africa, where often for months together the
pitiless sun beats down out of a blue and cloudless sky on the parched and
gaping earth. They are, or used to be, common enough among outwardly civilised
folk in the moister climate of Europe. I will now illustrate them by instances
drawn from the practice both of public and private magic.

Thus, for example, in a village near Dorpat, in Russia, when rain was much
wanted, three men used to climb up the fir-trees of an old sacred grove. One
of them drummed with a hammer on a kettle or small cask to imitate thunder;
the second knocked two fire-brands together and made the sparks fly, to
imitate lightning; and the third, who was called the rain-maker, had a bunch
of twigs with which he sprinkled water from a vessel on all sides. To put an
end to drought and bring down rain, women and girls of the village of Ploska
are wont to go naked by night to the boundaries of the village and there pour
water on the ground. In Halmahera, or Gilolo, a large island to the west of
New Guinea, a wizard makes rain by dipping a branch of a particular kind of
tree in water and then scattering the moisture from the dripping bough over
the ground. In New Britain the rain-maker wraps some leaves of a red and green
striped creeper in a banana-leaf, moistens the bundle with water, and buries
it in the ground; then he imitates with his mouth the plashing of rain.
Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America, when the corn is withering for
want of rain, the members of the sacred Buffalo Society fill a large vessel
with water and dance four times round it. One of them drinks some of the water
and spirts it into the air, making a fine spray in imitation of a mist or
drizzling rain. Then he upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground;
whereupon the dancers fall down and drink up the water, getting mud all over
their faces. Lastly, they squirt the water into the air, making a fine mist.
This saves the corn. In spring-time the Natchez of North America used to club
together to purchase favourable weather for their crops from the wizards. If
rain was needed, the wizards fasted and danced with pipes full of water in
their mouths. The pipes were perforated like the nozzle of a watering-can, and
through the holes the rain-maker blew the water towards that part of the sky
where the clouds hung heaviest. But if fine weather was wanted, he mounted the
roof of his hut, and with extended arms, blowing with all his might, he
beckoned to the clouds to pass by. When the rains do not come in due season
the people of Central Angoniland repair to what is called the rain-temple.
Here they clear away the grass, and the leader pours beer into a pot which is
buried in the ground, while he says, Master Chauta, you have hardened your
heart towards us, what would you have us do? We must perish indeed. Give your
children the rains, there is the beer we have given you. Then they all
partake of the beer that is left over, even the children being made to sip it.
Next they take branches of trees and dance and sing for rain. When they return
to the village they find a vessel of water set at the doorway by an old woman;
so they dip their branches in it and wave them aloft, so as to scatter the
drops. After that the rain is sure to come driving up in heavy clouds. In
these practices we see a combination of religion with magic; for while the
scattering of the water-drops by means of branches is a purely magical
ceremony, the prayer for rain and the offering of beer are purely religious
rites. In the Mara tribe of Northern Australia the rain-maker goes to a pool
and sings over it his magic song. Then he takes some of the water in his
hands, drinks it, and spits it out in various directions. After that he throws
water all over himself, scatters it about, and returns quietly to the camp.
Rain is supposed to follow. The Arab historian Makrizi describes a method of
stopping rain which is said to have been resorted to by a tribe of nomads
called Alqamar in Hadramaut. They cut a branch from a certain tree in the
desert, set it on fire, and then sprinkled the burning brand with water. After
that the vehemence of the rain abated, just as the water vanished when it fell
on the glowing brand. Some of the Eastern Angamis of Manipur are said to
perform a some-what similar ceremony for the opposite purpose, in order,
namely, to produce rain. The head of the village puts a burning brand on the
grave of a man who has died of burns, and quenches the brand with water, while
he prays that rain may fall. Here the putting out the fire with water, which
is an imitation of rain, is reinforced by the influence of the dead man, who,
having been burnt to death, will naturally be anxious for the descent of rain
to cool his scorched body and assuage his pangs.

Other people besides the Arabs have used fire as a means of stopping rain.
Thus the Sulka of New Britain heat stones red hot in the fire and then put
them out in the rain, or they throw hot ashes in the air. They think that the
rain will soon cease to fall, for it does not like to be burned by the hot
stones or ashes. The Telugus send a little girl out naked into the rain with a
burning piece of wood in her hand, which she has to show to the rain. That is
supposed to stop the downpour. At Port Stevens in New South Wales the
medicine-men used to drive away rain by throwing fire-sticks into the air,
while at the same time they puffed and shouted. Any man of the Anula tribe in
Northern Australia can stop rain by simply warming a green stick in the fire,
and then striking it against the wind.

In time of severe drought the Dieri of Central Australia, loudly lamenting
the impoverished state of the country and their own half-starved condition,
call upon the spirits of their remote predecessors, whom they call Mura-muras,
to grant them power to make a heavy rain-fall. For they believe that the
clouds are bodies in which rain is generated by their own ceremonies or those
of neighbouring tribes, through the influence of the Mura-muras. The way in
which they set about drawing rain from the clouds is this. A hole is dug about
twelve feet long and eight or ten broad, and over this hole a conical hut of
logs and branches is made. Two wizards, supposed to have received a special
inspiration from the Mura-muras, are bled by an old and influential man with a
sharp flint; and the blood, drawn from their arms below the elbow, is made to
flow on the other men of the tribe, who sit huddled together in the hut. At
the same time the two bleeding men throw handfuls of down about, some of which
adheres to the blood-stained bodies of their comrades, while the rest floats
in the air. The blood is thought to represent the rain, and the down the
clouds. During the ceremony two large stones are placed in the middle of the
hut; they stand for gathering clouds and presage rain. Then the wizards who
were bled carry away the two stones for about ten or fifteen miles, and place
them as high as they can in the tallest tree. Meanwhile the other men gather
gypsum, pound it fine, and throw it into a water-hole. This the Mura-muras
see, and at once they cause clouds to appear in the sky. Lastly, the men,
young and old, surround the hut, and, stooping down, butt at it with their
heads, like so many rams. Thus they force their way through it and reappear on
the other side, repeating the process till the hut is wrecked. In doing this
they are forbidden to use their hands or arms; but when the heavy logs alone
remain, they are allowed to pull them out with their hands. The piercing of
the hut with their heads symbolises the piercing of the clouds; the fall of
the hut, the fall of the rain. Obviously, too, the act of placing high up in
trees the two stones, which stand for clouds, is a way of making the real
clouds to mount up in the sky. The Dieri also imagine that the foreskins taken
from lads at circumcision have a great power of producing rain. Hence the
Great Council of the tribe always keeps a small stock of foreskins ready for
use. They are carefully concealed, being wrapt up in feathers with the fat of
the wild dog and of the carpet snake. A woman may not see such a parcel opened
on any account. When the ceremony is over, the foreskin is buried, its virtue
being exhausted. After the rains have fallen, some of the tribe always undergo
a surgical operation, which consists in cutting the skin of their chest and
arms with a sharp flint. The wound is then tapped with a flat stick to
increase the flow of blood, and red ochre is rubbed into it. Raised scars are
thus produced. The reason alleged by the natives for this practice is that
they are pleased with the rain, and that there is a connexion between the rain
and the scars. Apparently the operation is not very painful, for the patient
laughs and jokes while it is going on. Indeed, little children have been seen
to crowd round the operator and patiently take their turn; then after being
operated on, they ran away, expanding their little chests and singing for the
rain to beat upon them. However, they were not so well pleased next day, when
they felt their wounds stiff and sore. In Java, when rain is wanted, two men
will sometimes thrash each other with supple rods till the blood flows down
their backs; the streaming blood represents the rain, and no doubt is supposed
to make it fall on the ground. The people of Egghiou, a district of Abyssinia,
used to engage in sanguinary conflicts with each other, village against
village, for a week together every January for the purpose of procuring rain.
Some years ago the emperor Menelik forbade the custom. However, the following
year the rain was deficient, and the popular outcry so great that the emperor
yielded to it, and allowed the murderous fights to be resumed, but for two
days a year only. The writer who mentions the custom regards the blood shed on
these occasions as a propitiatory sacrifice offered to spirits who control the
showers; but perhaps, as in the Australian and Javanese ceremonies, it is an
imitation of rain. The prophets of Baal, who sought to procure rain by cutting
themselves with knives till the blood gushed out, may have acted on the same
principle.

There is a widespread belief that twin children possess magical powers
over nature, especially over rain and the weather. This curious superstition
prevails among some of the Indian tribes of British Columbia, and has led them
often to impose certain singular restrictions or taboos on the parents of
twins, though the exact meaning of these restrictions is generally obscure.
Thus the Tsimshian Indians of British Columbia believe that twins control the
weather; therefore they pray to wind and rain, Calm down, breath of the
twins. Further, they think that the wishes of twins are always fulfilled;
hence twins are feared, because they can harm the man they hate. They can also
call the salmon and the olachen or candle-fish, and so they are known by a
name which means making plentiful. In the opinion of the Kwakiutl Indians of
British Columbia twins are transformed salmon; hence they may not go near
water, lest they should be changed back again into the fish. In their
childhood they can summon any wind by motions of their hands, and they can
make fair or foul weather, and also cure diseases by swinging a large wooden
rattle. The Nootka Indians of British Columbia also believe that twins are
somehow related to salmon. Hence among them twins may not catch salmon, and
they may not eat or even handle the fresh fish. They can make fair or foul
weather, and can cause rain to fall by painting their faces black and then
washing them, which may represent the rain dripping from the dark clouds. The
Shuswap Indians, like the Thompson Indians, associate twins with the grizzly
bear, for they call them young grizzly bears. According to them, twins
remain throughout life endowed with supernatural powers. In particular they
can make good or bad weather. They produce rain by spilling water from a
basket in the air; they make fine weather by shaking a small flat piece of
wood attached to a stick by a string; they raise storms by strewing down on
the ends of spruce branches.

The same power of influencing the weather is attributed to twins by the
Baronga, a tribe of Bantu negroes who, inhabit the shores of Delagoa Bay in
South-eastern Africa. They bestow the name of Tilothat is, the skyon a
woman who has given birth to twins, and the infants themselves are called the
children of the sky. Now when the storms which generally burst in the months
of September and October have been looked for in vain, when a drought with its
prospect of famine is threatening, and all nature, scorched and burnt up by a
sun that has shone for six months from a cloudless sky, is panting for the
beneficent showers of the South African spring, the women perform ceremonies
to bring down the longed-for rain on the parched earth. Stripping themselves
of all their garments, they assume in their stead girdles and head-dresses of
grass, or short petticoats made of the leaves of a particular sort of creeper.
Thus attired, uttering peculiar cries and singing ribald songs, they go about
from well to well, cleansing them of the mud and impurities which have
accumulated in them. The wells, it may be said, are merely holes in the sand
where a little turbid unwholesome water stagnates. Further, the women must
repair to the house of one of their gossips who has given birth to twins, and
must drench her with water, which they carry in little pitchers. Having done
so they go on their way, shrieking out their loose songs and dancing immodest
dances. No man may see these leaf-clad women going their rounds. If they meet
a man, they maul him and thrust him aside. When they have cleansed the wells,
they must go and pour water on the graves of their ancestors in the sacred
grove. It often happens, too, that at the bidding of the wizard they go and
pour water on the graves of twins. For they think that the grave of a twin
ought always to be moist, for which reason twins are regularly buried near a
lake. If all their efforts to procure rain prove abortive, they will remember
that such and such a twin was buried in a dry place on the side of a hill. No
wonder, says the wizard in such a case, that the sky is fiery. Take up his
body and dig him a grave on the shore of the lake. His orders are at once
obeyed, for this is supposed to be the only means of bringing down the rain.

Some of the foregoing facts strongly support an interpretation which
Professor Oldenberg has given of the rules to be observed by a Brahman who
would learn a particular hymn of the ancient Indian collection known as the
Samaveda. The hymn, which bears the name of the Sakvari song, was believed to
embody the might of Indra's weapon, the thunderbolt; and hence, on account of
the dreadful and dangerous potency with which it was thus charged, the bold
student who essayed to master it had to be isolated from his fellow-men, and
to retire from the village into the forest. Here for a space of time, which
might vary, according to different doctors of the law, from one to twelve
years, he had to observe certain rules of life, among which were the
following. Thrice a day he had to touch water; he must wear black garments and
eat black food; when it rained, he might not seek the shelter of a roof, but
had to sit in the rain and say, Water is the Sakvari song; when the
lightning flashed, he said, That is like the Sakvari song; when the thunder
pealed, he said, The Great One is making a great noise. He might never cross
a running stream without touching water; he might never set foot on a ship
unless his life were in danger, and even then he must be sure to touch water
when he went on board; for in water, so ran the saying, lies the virtue of
the Sakvari song. When at last he was allowed to learn the song itself, he
had to dip his hands in a vessel of water in which plants of all sorts had
been placed. If a man walked in the way of all these precepts, the rain-god
Parjanya, it was said, would send rain at the wish of that man. It is clear,
as Professor Oldenberg well points out, that all these rules are intended to
bring the Brahman into union with water, to make him, as it were, an ally of
the water powers, and to guard him against their hostility. The black garments
and the black food have the same significance; no one will doubt that they
refer to the rain-clouds when he remembers that a black victim is sacrificed
to procure rain; 'it is black, for such is the nature of rain.' In respect of
another rain-charm it is said plainly, 'He puts on a black garment edged with
black, for such is the nature of rain.' We may therefore assume that here in
the circle of ideas and ordinances of the Vedic schools there have been
preserved magical practices of the most remote antiquity, which were intended
to prepare the rain-maker for his office and dedicate him to it.

It is interesting to observe that where an opposite result is desired,
primitive logic enjoins the weather-doctor to observe precisely opposite rules
of conduct. In the tropical island of Java, where the rich vegetation attests
the abundance of the rainfall, ceremonies for the making of rain are rare, but
ceremonies for the prevention of it are not uncommon. When a man is about to
give a great feast in the rainy season and has invited many people, he goes to
a weather-doctor and asks him to prop up the clouds that may be lowering. If
the doctor consents to exert his professional powers, he begins to regulate
his behaviour by certain rules as soon as his customer has departed. He must
observe a fast, and may neither drink nor bathe; what little he eats must be
eaten dry, and in no case may he touch water. The host, on his side, and his
servants, both male and female, must neither wash clothes nor bathe so long as
the feast lasts, and they have all during its continuance to observe strict
chastity. The doctor seats himself on a new mat in his bedroom, and before a
small oil-lamp he murmurs, shortly before the feast takes place, the following
prayer or incantation: Grandfather and Grandmother Sroekoel (the name seems
to be taken at random; others are sometimes used), return to your country.
Akkemat is your country. Put down your water-cask, close it properly, that not
a drop may fall out. While he utters this prayer the sorcerer looks upwards,
burning incense the while. So among the Toradjas the rain-doctor, whose
special business it is to drive away rain, takes care not to touch water
before, during, or after the discharge of his professional duties. He does not
bathe, he eats with unwashed hands, he drinks nothing but palm wine, and if he
has to cross a stream he is careful not to step in the water. Having thus
prepared himself for his task he has a small hut built for himself outside of
the village in a rice-field, and in this hut he keeps up a little fire, which
on no account may be suffered to go out. In the fire he burns various kinds of
wood, which are supposed to possess the property of driving off rain; and he
puffs in the direction from which the rain threatens to come, holding in his
hand a packet of leaves and bark which derive a similar cloud-compelling
virtue, not from their chemical composition, but from their names, which
happen to signify something dry or volatile. If clouds should appear in the
sky while he is at work, he takes lime in the hollow of his hand and blows it
towards them. The lime, being so very dry, is obviously well adapted to
disperse the damp clouds. Should rain afterwards be wanted, he has only to
pour water on his fire, and immediately the rain will descend in sheets.

The reader will observe how exactly the Javanese and Toradja observances,
which are intended to prevent rain, form the antithesis of the Indian
observances, which aim at producing it. The Indian sage is commanded to touch
water thrice a day regularly as well as on various special occasions; the
Javanese and Toradja wizards may not touch it at all. The Indian lives out in
the forest, and even when it rains he may not take shelter; the Javanese and
the Toradja sit in a house or a hut. The one signifies his sympathy with water
by receiving the rain on his person and speaking of it respectfully; the
others light a lamp or a fire and do their best to drive the rain away. Yet
the principle on which all three act is the same; each of them, by a sort of
childish make-believe, identifies himself with the phenomenon which he desires
to produce. It is the old fallacy that the effect resembles its cause: if you
would make wet weather, you must be wet; if you would make dry weather, you
must be dry.

In South-eastern Europe at the present day ceremonies are observed for the
purpose of making rain which not only rest on the same general train of
thought as the preceding, but even in their details resemble the ceremonies
practised with the same intention by the Baronga of Delagoa Bay. Among the
Greeks of Thessaly and Macedonia, when a drought has lasted a long time, it is
customary to send a procession of children round to all the wells and springs
of the neighbourhood. At the head of the procession walks a girl adorned with
flowers, whom her companions drench with water at every halting-place, while
they sing an invocation, of which the following is part:

Perperia all fresh bedewed,
Freshen all the neighbourhood;
By the woods, on the highway,
As thou goest, to God now pray:
O my God, upon the plain,
Send thou us a still, small rain;
That the fields may fruitful be,
And vines in blossom we may see;
That the grain be full and sound,
And wealthy grow the folks around.

In time of drought the Serbians strip a girl to her skin and clothe her
from head to foot in grass, herbs, and flowers, even her face being hidden
behind a veil of living green. Thus disguised she is called the Dodola, and
goes through the village with a troop of girls. They stop before every house;
the Dodola keeps turning herself round and dancing, while the other girls form
a ring about her singing one of the Dodola songs, and the housewife pours a
pail of water over her. One of the songs they sing runs thus:

We go through the village;
The clouds go in the sky;
We go faster,
Faster go the clouds;
They have overtaken us,
And wetted the corn and the vine.

At Poona in India, when rain is needed, the boys dress up one of their
number in nothing but leaves and call him King of Rain. Then they go round to
every house in the village, where the house-holder or his wife sprinkles the
Rain King with water, and gives the party food of various kinds. When they
have thus visited all the houses, they strip the Rain King of his leafy robes
and feast upon what they have gathered.

Bathing is practised as a rain-charm in some parts of Southern and Western
Russia. Sometimes after service in church the priest in his robes has been
thrown down on the ground and drenched with water by his parishioners.
Sometimes it is the women who, without stripping off their clothes, bathe in
crowds on the day of St. John the Baptist, while they dip in the water a
figure made of branches, grass, and herbs, which is supposed to represent the
saint. In Kursk, a province of Southern Russia, when rain is much wanted, the
women seize a passing stranger and throw him into the river, or souse him from
head to foot. Later on we shall see that a passing stranger is often taken for
a deity or the personification of some natural power. It is recorded in
official documents that during a drought in 1790 the peasants of Scheroutz and
Werboutz collected all the women and compelled them to bathe, in order that
rain might fall. An Armenian rain-charm is to throw the wife of a priest into
the water and drench her. The Arabs of North Africa fling a holy man,
willy-nilly, into a spring as a remedy for drought. In Minahassa, a province
of North Celebes, the priest bathes as a rain-charm. In Central Celebes when
there has been no rain for a long time and the rice-stalks begin to shrivel
up, many of the villagers, especially the young folk, go to a neighbouring
brook and splash each other with water, shouting noisily, or squirt water on
one another through bamboo tubes. Sometimes they imitate the plump of rain by
smacking the surface of the water with their hands, or by placing an inverted
gourd on it and drumming on the gourd with their fingers.

Women are sometimes supposed to be able to make rain by ploughing, or
pretending to plough. Thus the Pshaws and Chewsurs of the Caucasus have a
ceremony called ploughing the rain, which they observe in time of drought.
Girls yoke themselves to a plough and drag it into a river, wading in the
water up to their girdles. In the same circumstances Armenian girls and women
do the same. The oldest woman, or the priest's wife, wears the priest's dress,
while the others, dressed as men, drag the plough through the water against
the stream. In the Caucasian province of Georgia, when a drought has lasted
long, marriageable girls are yoked in couples with an ox-yoke on their
shoulders, a priest holds the reins, and thus harnessed they wade through
rivers, puddles, and marshes, praying, screaming, weeping, and laughing. In a
district of Transylvania when the ground is parched with drought, some girls
strip themselves naked, and, led by an older woman, who is also naked, they
steal a harrow and carry it across the fields to a brook, where they set it
afloat. Next they sit on the harrow and keep a tiny flame burning on each
corner of it for an hour. Then they leave the harrow in the water and go home.
A similar rain-charm is resorted to in some parts of India; naked women drag a
plough across a field by night, while the men keep carefully out of the way,
for their presence would break the spell.

Sometimes the rain-charm operates through the dead. Thus in New Caledonia
the rain-makers blackened themselves all over, dug up a dead body, took the
bones to a cave, jointed them, and hung the skeleton over some taro leaves.
Water was poured over the skeleton to run down on the leaves. They believed
that the soul of the deceased took up the water, converted it into rain, and
showered it down again. In Russia, if common report may be believed, it is not
long since the peasants of any district that chanced to be afflicted with
drought used to dig up the corpse of some one who had drunk himself to death
and sink it in the nearest swamp or lake, fully persuaded that this would
ensure the fall of the needed rain. In 1868 the prospect of a bad harvest,
caused by a prolonged drought, induced the inhabitants of a village in the
Tarashchansk district to dig up the body of a Raskolnik, or Dissenter, who had
died in the preceding December. Some of the party beat the corpse, or what was
left of it, about the head, exclaiming, Give us rain! while others poured
water on it through a sieve. Here the pouring of water through a sieve seems
plainly an imitation of a shower, and reminds us of the manner in which
Strepsiades in Aristophanes imagined that rain was made by Zeus. Sometimes, in
order to procure rain, the Toradjas make an appeal to the pity of the dead.
Thus, in the village of Kalingooa, there is the grave of a famous chief, the
grandfather of the present ruler. When the land suffers from unseasonable
drought, the people go to this grave, pour water on it, and say, O
grandfather, have pity on us; if it is your will that this year we should eat,
then give rain. After that they hang a bamboo full of water over the grave;
there is a small hole in the lower end of the bamboo, so that the water drips
from it continually. The bamboo is always refilled with water until rain
drenches the ground. Here, as in New Caledonia, we find religion blent with
magic, for the prayer to the dead chief, which is purely religious, is eked
out with a magical imitation of rain at his grave. We have seen that the
Baronga of Delagoa Bay drench the tombs of their ancestors, especially the
tombs of twins, as a raincharm. Among some of the Indian tribes in the region
of the Orinoco it was customary for the relations of a deceased person to
disinter his bones a year after burial, burn them, and scatter the ashes to
the winds, because they believed that the ashes were changed into rain, which
the dead man sent in return for his obsequies. The Chinese are convinced that
when human bodies remain unburied, the souls of their late owners feel the
discomfort of rain, just as living men would do if they were exposed without
shelter to the inclemency of the weather. These wretched souls, therefore, do
all in their power to prevent the rain from falling, and often their efforts
are only too successful. Then drought ensues, the most dreaded of all
calamities in China, because bad harvests, dearth, and famine follow in its
train. Hence it has been a common practice of the Chinese authorities in time
of drought to inter the dry bones of the unburied dead for the purpose of
putting an end to the scourge and conjuring down the rain.

Animals, again, often play an important part in these weather-charms. The
Anula tribe of Northern Australia associate the dollar-bird with rain, and
call it the rain-bird. A man who has the bird for his totem can make rain at a
certain pool. He catches a snake, puts it alive into the pool, and after
holding it under water for a time takes it out, kills it, and lays it down by
the side of the creek. Then he makes an arched bundle of grass stalks in
imitation of a rainbow, and sets it up over the snake. After that all he does
is to sing over the snake and the mimic rainbow; sooner or later the rain will
fall. They explain this procedure by saying that long ago the dollar-bird had
as a mate at this spot a snake, who lived in the pool and used to make rain by
spitting up into the sky till a rainbow and clouds appeared and rain fell. A
common way of making rain in many parts of Java is to bathe a cat or two cats,
a male and a female; sometimes the animals are carried in procession with
music. Even in Batavia you may from time to time see children going about with
a cat for this purpose; when they have ducked it in a pool, they let it go.

Among the Wambugwe of East Africa, when the sorcerer desires to make rain,
he takes a black sheep and a black calf in bright sunshine, and has them
placed on the roof of the common hut in which the people live together. Then
he slits the stomachs of the animals and scatters their contents in all
directions. After that he pours water and medicine into a vessel; if the charm
has succeeded, the water boils up and rain follows. On the other hand, if the
sorcerer wishes to prevent rain from falling, he withdraws into the interior
of the hut, and there heats a rock-crystal in a calabash. In order to procure
rain the Wagogo sacrifice black fowls, black sheep, and black cattle at the
graves of dead ancestors, and the rain-maker wears black clothes during the
rainy season. Among the Matabele the rain-charm employed by sorcerers was made
from the blood and gall of a black ox. In a district of Sumatra, in order to
procure rain, all the women of the village, scantily clad, go to the river,
wade into it, and splash each other with the water. A black cat is thrown into
the stream and made to swim about for a while, then allowed to escape to the
bank, pursued by the splashing of the women. The Garos of Assam offer a black
goat on the top of a very high mountain in time of drought. In all these cases
the colour of the animal is part of the charm; being black, it will darken the
sky with rain-clouds. So the Bechuanas burn the stomach of an ox at evening,
because they say, The black smoke will gather the clouds and cause the rain
to come. The Timorese sacrifice a black pig to the Earth-goddess for rain, a
white or red one to the Sun-god for sunshine. The Angoni sacrifice a black ox
for rain and a white one for fine weather. Among the high mountains of Japan
there is a district in which, if rain has not fallen for a long time, a party
of villagers goes in procession to the bed of a mountain torrent, headed by a
priest, who leads a black dog. At the chosen spot they tether the beast to a
stone, and make it a target for their bullets and arrows. When its life-blood
bespatters the rocks, the peasants throw down their weapons and lift up their
voices in supplication to the dragon divinity of the stream, exhorting him to
send down forthwith a shower to cleanse the spot from its defilement. Custom
has prescribed that on these occasions the colour of the victim shall be
black, as an emblem of the wished-for rain-clouds. But if fine weather is
wanted, the victim must be white, without a spot.

The intimate association of frogs and toads with water has earned for
these creatures a widespread reputation as custodians of rain; and hence they
often play a part in charms designed to draw needed showers from the sky. Some
of the Indians of the Orinoco held the toad to be the god or lord of the
waters, and for that reason feared to kill the creature. They have been known
to keep frogs under a pot and to beat them with rods when there was a drought.
It is said that the Aymara Indians often make little images of frogs and other
aquatic animals and place them on the tops of the hills as a means of bringing
down rain. The Thompson Indians of British Columbia and some people in Europe
think that to kill a frog will cause rain to fall. In order to procure rain
people of low caste in the Central Provinces of India will tie a frog to a rod
covered with green leaves and branches of the nm tree (Azadirachta
Indica) and carry it from door to door singing:

Send soon, O frog, the jewel of water!
And ripen the wheat and millet in the field.

The Kapus or Reddis are a large caste of cultivators and landowners in the
Madras Presidency. When rain fails, women of the caste will catch a frog and
tie it alive to a new winnowing fan made of bamboo. On this fan they spread a
few margosa leaves and go from door to door singing, Lady frog must have her
bath. Oh! rain-god, give a little water for her at least. While the Kapu
women sing this song, the woman of the house pours water over the frog and
gives an alms, convinced that by so doing she will soon bring rain down in
torrents.

Sometimes, when a drought has lasted a long time, people drop the usual
hocus-pocus of imitative magic altogether, and being far too angry to waste
their breath in prayer they seek by threats and curses or even downright
physical force to extort the waters of heaven from the supernatural being who
has, so to say, cut them off at the main. In a Japanese village, when the
guardian divinity had long been deaf to the peasants' prayers for rain, they
at last threw down his image and, with curses loud and long, hurled it head
foremost into a stinking rice-field. There, they said, you may stay
yourself for a while, to see how you will feel after a few days' scorching
in this broiling sun that is burning the life from our cracking fields. In
the like circumstances the Feloupes of Senegambia cast down their fetishes and
drag them about the fields, cursing them till rain falls.

The Chinese are adepts in the art of taking the kingdom of heaven by
storm. Thus, when rain is wanted they make a huge dragon of paper or wood to
represent the rain-god, and carry it about in procession; but if no rain
follows, the mock-dragon is execrated and torn to pieces. At other times they
threaten and beat the god if he does not give rain; sometimes they publicly
depose him from the rank of deity. On the other hand, if the wished-for rain
falls, the god is promoted to a higher rank by an imperial decree. In April
1888 the mandarins of Canton prayed to the god Lung-wong to stop the incessant
downpour of rain; and when he turned a deaf ear to their petitions they put
him in a lock-up for five days. This had a salutary effect. The rain ceased
and the god was restored to liberty. Some years before, in time of drought,
the same deity had been chained and exposed to the sun for days in the
courtyard of his temple in order that he might feel for himself the urgent
need of rain. So when the Siamese need rain, they set out their idols in the
blazing sun; but if they want dry weather, they unroof the temples and let the
rain pour down on the idols. They think that the inconvenience to which the
gods are thus subjected will induce them to grant the wishes of their
worshippers.

The reader may smile at the meteorology of the Far East; but precisely
similar modes of procuring rain have been resorted to in Christian Europe
within our own lifetime. By the end of April 1893 there was great distress in
Sicily for lack of water. The drought had lasted six months. Every day the sun
rose and set in a sky of cloudless blue. The gardens of the Conca d'Oro, which
surround Palermo with a magnificent belt of verdure, were withering. Food was
becoming scarce. The people were in great alarm. All the most approved methods
of procuring rain had been tried without effect. Processions had traversed the
streets and the fields. Men, women, and children, telling their beads, had
lain whole nights before the holy images. Consecrated candles had burned day
and night in the churches. Palm branches, blessed on Palm Sunday, had been
hung on the trees. At Solaparuta, in accordance with a very old custom, the
dust swept from the churches on Palm Sunday had been spread on the fields. In
ordinary years these holy sweepings preserve the crops; but that year, if you
will believe me, they had no effect whatever. At Nicosia the inhabitants,
bare-headed and bare-foot, carried the crucifixes through all the wards of the
town and scourged each other with iron whips. It was all in vain. Even the
great St. Francis of Paolo himself, who annually performs the miracle of rain
and is carried every spring through the market-gardens, either could not or
would not help. Masses, vespers, concerts, illuminations, fire-worksnothing
could move him. At last the peasants began to lose patience. Most of the
saints were banished. At Palermo they dumped St. Joseph in a garden to see the
state of things for himself, and they swore to leave him there in the sun till
rain fell. Other saints were turned, like naughty children, with their faces
to the wall. Others again, stripped of their beautiful robes, were exiled far
from their parishes, threatened, grossly insulted, ducked in horse-ponds. At
Caltanisetta the golden wings of St. Michael the Archangel were torn from his
shoulders and replaced with wings of pasteboard; his purple mantle was taken
away and a clout wrapt about him instead. At Licata the patron saint, St.
Angelo, fared even worse, for he was left without any garments at all; he was
reviled, he was put in irons, he was threatened with drowning or hanging.
Rain or the rope! roared the angry people at him, as they shook their fists
in his face.

Sometimes an appeal is made to the pity of the gods. When their corn is
being burnt up by the sun, the Zulus look out for a heaven bird, kill it,
and throw it into a pool. Then the heaven melts with tenderness for the death
of the bird; it wails for it by raining, wailing a funeral wail. In Zululand
women sometimes bury their children up to the neck in the ground, and then
retiring to a distance keep up a dismal howl for a long time. The sky is
supposed to melt with pity at the sight. Then the women dig the children out
and feel sure that rain will soon follow. They say that they call to the lord
above and ask him to send rain. If it comes they declare that Usondo rains.
In times of drought the Guanches of Teneriffe led their sheep to sacred
ground, and there they separated the lambs from their dams, that their
plaintive bleating might touch the heart of the god. In Kumaon a way of
stopping rain is to pour hot oil in the left ear of a dog. The animal howls
with pain, his howls are heard by Indra, and out of pity for the beast's
sufferings the god stops the rain. Sometimes the Toradjas attempt to procure
rain as follows. They place the stalks of certain plants in water, saying, Go
and ask for rain, and so long as no rain falls I will not plant you again, but
there shall you die. Also they string some fresh-water snails on a cord, and
hang the cord on a tree, and say to the snails, Go and ask for rain, and so
long as no rain comes, I will not take you back to the water. Then the snails
go and weep, and the gods take pity and send rain. However, the foregoing
ceremonies are religious rather than magical, since they involve an appeal to
the compassion of higher powers.

Stones are often supposed to possess the property of bringing on rain,
provided they be dipped in water or sprinkled with it, or treated in some
other appropriate manner. In a Samoan village a certain stone was carefully
housed as the representative of the rain-making god, and in time of drought
his priests carried the stone in procession and dipped it in a stream. Among
the Ta-ta-thi tribe of New South Wales, the rain-maker breaks off a piece of
quartz-crystal and spits it towards the sky; the rest of the crystal he wraps
in emu feathers, soaks both crystal and feathers in water, and carefully hides
them. In the Keramin tribe of New South Wales the wizard retires to the bed of
a creek, drops water on a round flat stone, then covers up and conceals it.
Among some tribes of North-western Australia the rain-maker repairs to a piece
of ground which is set apart for the purpose of rain-making. There he builds a
heap of stones or sand, places on the top of it his magic stone, and walks or
dances round the pile chanting his incantations for hours, till sheer
exhaustion obliges him to desist, when his place is taken by his assistant.
Water is sprinkled on the stone and huge fires are kindled. No layman may
approach the sacred spot while the mystic ceremony is being performed. When
the Sulka of New Britain wish to procure rain they blacken stones with the
ashes of certain fruits and set them out, along with certain other plants and
buds, in the sun. Then a handful of twigs is dipped in water and weighted with
stones, while a spell is chanted. After that rain should follow. In Manipur,
on a lofty hill to the east of the capital, there is a stone which the popular
imagination likens to an umbrella. When rain is wanted, the rajah fetches
water from a spring below and sprinkles it on the stone. At Sagami in Japan
there is a stone which draws down rain whenever water is poured on it. When
the Wakondyo, a tribe of Central Africa, desire rain, they send to the
Wawamba, who dwell at the foot of snowy mountains, and are the happy
possessors of a rain-stone. In consideration of a proper payment, the
Wawamba wash the precious stone, anoint it with oil, and put it in a pot full
of water. After that the rain cannot fail to come. In the arid wastes of
Arizona and New Mexico the Apaches sought to make rain by carrying water from
a certain spring and throwing it on a particular point high up on a rock;
after that they imagined that the clouds would soon gather, and that rain
would begin to fall.

But customs of this sort are not confined to the wilds of Africa and Asia
or the torrid deserts of Australia and the New World. They have been practised
in the cool air and under the grey skies of Europe. There is a fountain called
Barenton, of romantic fame, in those wild woods of Broceliande, where, if
legend be true, the wizard Merlin still sleeps his magic slumber in the
hawthorn shade. Thither the Breton peasants used to resort when they needed
rain. They caught some of the water in a tankard and threw it on a slab near
the spring. On Snowdon there is a lonely tarn called Dulyn, or the Black Lake,
lying in a dismal dingle surrounded by high and dangerous rocks. A row of
stepping-stones runs out into the lake, and if any one steps on the stones and
throws water so as to wet the farthest stone, which is called the Red Altar,
it is but a chance that you do not get rain before night, even when it is hot
weather. In these cases it appears probable that, as in Samoa, the stone is
regarded as more or less divine. This appears from the custom sometimes
observed of dipping a cross in the Fountain of Barenton to procure rain, for
this is plainly a Christian substitute for the old pagan way of throwing water
on the stone. At various places in France it is, or used till lately to be,
the practice to dip the image of a saint in water as a means of procuring
rain. Thus, beside the old priory of Commagny, there is a spring of St.
Gervais, whither the inhabitants go in procession to obtain rain or fine
weather according to the needs of the crops. In times of great drought they
throw into the basin of the fountain an ancient stone image of the saint that
stands in a sort of niche from which the fountain flows. At Collobrires and
Carpentras a similar practice was observed with the images of St. Pons and St.
Gens respectively. In several villages of Navarre prayers for rain used to be
offered to St. Peter, and by way of enforcing them the villagers carried the
image of the saint in procession to the river, where they thrice invited him
to reconsider his resolution and to grant their prayers; then, if he was still
obstinate, they plunged him in the water, despite the remonstrances of the
clergy, who pleaded with as much truth as piety that a simple caution or
admonition administered to the image would produce an equally good effect.
After this the rain was sure to fall within twenty-four hours. Catholic
countries do not enjoy a monopoly of making rain by ducking holy images in
water. In Mingrelia, when the crops are suffering from want of rain, they take
a particularly holy image and dip it in water every day till a shower falls;
and in the Far East the Shans drench the images of Buddha with water when the
rice is perishing of drought. In all such cases the practice is probably at
bottom a sympathetic charm, however it may be disguised under the appearance
of a punishment or a threat.

Like other peoples, the Greeks and Romans sought to obtain rain by magic,
when prayers and processions had proved ineffectual. For example, in Arcadia,
when the corn and trees were parched with drought, the priest of Zeus dipped
an oak branch into a certain spring on Mount Lycaeus. Thus troubled, the water
sent up a misty cloud, from which rain soon fell upon the land. A similar mode
of making rain is still practised, as we have seen, in Halmahera near New
Guinea. The people of Crannon in Thessaly had a bronze chariot which they kept
in a temple. When they desired a shower they shook the chariot and the shower
fell. Probably the rattling of the chariot was meant to imitate thunder; we
have already seen that mock thunder and lightning form part of a rain-charm in
Russia and Japan. The legendary Salmoneus, King of Elis, made mock thunder by
dragging bronze kettles behind his chariot, or by driving over a bronze
bridge, while he hurled blazing torches in imitation of lightning. It was his
impious wish to mimic the thundering car of Zeus as it rolled across the vault
of heaven. Indeed he declared that he was actually Zeus, and caused sacrifices
to be offered to himself as such. Near a temple of Mars, outside the walls of
Rome, there was kept a certain stone known as the lapis manalis. In time of
drought the stone was dragged into Rome, and this was supposed to bring down
rain immediately.

3. The Magical Control of the Sun

AS THE MAGICIAN thinks he can make rain, so he fancies he can cause the sun
to shine, and can hasten or stay its going down. At an eclipse the Ojebways
used to imagine that the sun was being extinguished. So they shot fire-tipped
arrows in the air, hoping thus to rekindle his expiring light. The Sencis of
Peru also shot burning arrows at the sun during an eclipse, but apparently
they did this not so much to relight his lamp as to drive away a savage beast
with which they supposed him to be struggling. Conversely during an eclipse of
the moon some tribes of the Orinoco used to bury lighted brands in the ground;
because, said they, if the moon were to be extinguished, all fire on earth
would be extinguished with her, except such as was hidden from her sight.
During an eclipse of the sun the Kamtchatkans were wont to bring out fire from
their huts and pray the great luminary to shine as before. But the prayer
addressed to the sun shows that this ceremony was religious rather than
magical. Purely magical, on the other hand, was the ceremony observed on
similar occasions by the Chilcotin Indians. Men and women tucked up their
robes, as they do in travelling, and then leaning on staves, as if they were
heavy laden, they continued to walk in a circle till the eclipse was over.
Apparently they thought thus to support the failing steps of the sun as he
trod his weary round in the sky. Similarly in ancient Egypt the king, as the
representative of the sun, walked solemnly round the walls of a temple in
order to ensure that the sun should perform his daily journey round the sky
without the interruption of an eclipse or other mishap. And after the autumnal
equinox the ancient Egyptians held a festival called the nativity of the
sun's walking-stick, because, as the luminary declined daily in the sky, and
his light and heat diminished, he was supposed to need a staff on which to
lean. In New Caledonia when a wizard desires to make sunshine, he takes some
plants and corals to the burial-ground, and fashions them into a bundle,
adding two locks of hair cut from a living child of his family, also two teeth
or an entire jawbone from the skeleton of an ancestor. He then climbs a
mountain whose top catches the first rays of the morning sun. Here he deposits
three sorts of plants on a flat stone, places a branch of dry coral beside
them, and hangs the bundle of charms over the stone. Next morning he returns
to the spot and sets fire to the bundle at the moment when the sun rises from
the sea. As the smoke curls up, he rubs the stone with the dry coral, invokes
his ancestors and says: Sun! I do this that you may be burning hot, and eat
up all the clouds in the sky. The same ceremony is repeated at sunset. The
New Caledonians also make a drought by means of a disc-shaped stone with a
hole in it. At the moment when the sun rises, the wizard holds the stone in
his hand and passes a burning brand repeatedly into the hole, while he says:
I kindle the sun, in order that he may eat up the clouds and dry up our land,
so that it may produce nothing. The Banks Islanders make sunshine by means of
a mock sun. They take a very round stone, called a vat loa or sunstone, wind
red braid about it, and stick it with owls' feathers to represent rays,
singing the proper spell in a low voice. Then they hang it on some high tree,
such as a banyan or a casuarina, in a sacred place.

The offering made by the Brahman in the morning is supposed to produce the
sun, and we are told that assuredly it would not rise, were he not to make
that offering. The ancient Mexicans conceived the sun as the source of all
vital force; hence they named him Ipalnemohuani, He by whom men live. But if
he bestowed life on the world, he needed also to receive life from it. And as
the heart is the seat and symbol of life, bleeding hearts of men and animals
were presented to the sun to maintain him in vigour and enable him to run his
course across the sky. Thus the Mexican sacrifices to the sun were magical
rather than religious, being designed, not so much to please and propitiate
him, as physically to renew his energies of heat, light, and motion. The
constant demand for human victims to feed the solar fire was met by waging war
every year on the neighbouring tribes and bringing back troops of captives to
be sacrificed on the altar. Thus the ceaseless wars of the Mexicans and their
cruel system of human sacrifices, the most monstrous on record, sprang in
great measure from a mistaken theory of the solar system. No more striking
illustration could be given of the disastrous consequences that may flow in
practice from a purely speculative error. The ancient Greeks believed that the
sun drove in a chariot across the sky; hence the Rhodians, who worshipped the
sun as their chief deity, annually dedicated a chariot and four horses to him,
and flung them into the sea for his use. Doubtless they thought that after a
year's work his old horses and chariot would be worn out. From a like motive,
probably, the idolatrous kings of Judah dedicated chariots and horses to the
sun, and the Spartans, Persians, and Massagetae sacrificed horses to him. The
Spartans performed the sacrifice on the top of Mount Taygetus, the beautiful
range behind which they saw the great luminary set every night. It was as
natural for the inhabitants of the valley of Sparta to do this as it was for
the islanders of Rhodes to throw the chariot and horses into the sea, into
which the sun seemed to them to sink at evening. For thus, whether on the
mountain or in the sea, the fresh horses stood ready for the weary god where
they would be most welcome, at the end of his day's journey.

As some people think they can light up the sun or speed him on his way, so
others fancy they can retard or stop him. In a pass of the Peruvian Andes
stand two ruined towers on opposite hills. Iron hooks are clamped into their
walls for the purpose of stretching a net from one tower to the other. The net
is intended to catch the sun. Stories of men who have caught the sun in a
noose are widely spread. When the sun is going southward in the autumn, and
sinking lower and lower in the Arctic sky, the Esquimaux of Iglulik play the
game of cat's cradle in order to catch him in the meshes of the string and so
prevent his disappearance. On the contrary, when the sun is moving northward
in the spring, they play the game of cup-and-ball to hasten his return. When
an Australian blackfellow wishes to stay the sun from going down till he gets
home, he puts a sod in the fork of a tree, exactly facing the setting sun. On
the other hand, to make it go down faster, the Australians throw sand into the
air and blow with their mouths towards the sun, perhaps to waft the lingering
orb westward and bury it under the sands into which it appears to sink at
night.

As some people imagine they can hasten the sun, so others fancy they can
jog the tardy moon. The natives of New Guinea reckon months by the moon, and
some of them have been known to throw stones and spears at the moon, in order
to accelerate its progress and so to hasten the return of their friends, who
were away from home for twelve months working on a tobacco plantation. The
Malays think that a bright glow at sunset may throw a weak person into a
fever. Hence they attempt to extinguish the glow by spitting out water and
throwing ashes at it. The Shuswap Indians believe that they can bring on cold
weather by burning the wood of a tree that has been struck by lightning. The
belief may be based on the observation that in their country cold follows a
thunder-storm. Hence in spring, when these Indians are travelling over the
snow on high ground, they burn splinters of such wood in the fire in order
that the crust of the snow may not melt.

4. The Magical Control of the Wind

ONCE more, the savage thinks he can make the wind to blow or to be still.
When the day is hot and a Yakut has a long way to go, he takes a stone which
he has chanced to find in an animal or fish, winds a horse-hair several times
round it, and ties it to a stick. He then waves the stick about, uttering a
spell. Soon a cool breeze begins to blow. In order to procure a cool wind for
nine days the stone should first be dipped in the blood of a bird or beast and
then presented to the sun, while the sorcerer makes three turns contrary to
the course of the luminary. If a Hottentot desires the wind to drop, he takes
one of his fattest skins and hangs it on the end of a pole, in the belief that
by blowing the skin down the wind will lose all its force and must itself
fall. Fuegian wizards throw shells against the wind to make it drop. The
natives of the island of Bibili, off New Guinea, are reputed to make wind by
blowing with their mouths. In stormy weather the Bogadjim people say, The
Bibili folk are at it again, blowing away. Another way of making wind which
is practised in New Guinea is to strike a wind-stone lightly with a stick;
to strike it hard would bring on a hurricane. So in Scotland witches used to
raise the wind by dipping a rag in water and beating it thrice on a stone,
saying:

I knok this rag upone this stane
To raise the wind in the divellis name,
It sall not lye till I please againe.

In Greenland a woman in child-bed and for some time after delivery is
supposed to possess the power of laying a storm. She has only to go out of
doors, fill her mouth with air, and coming back into the house blow it out
again. In antiquity there was a family at Corinth which enjoyed the reputation
of being able to still the raging wind; but we do not know in what manner its
members exercised a useful function, which probably earned for them a more
solid recompense than mere repute among the seafaring population of the
isthmus. Even in Christian times, under the reign of Constantine, a certain
Sopater suffered death at Constantinople on a charge of binding the winds by
magic, because it happened that the corn-ships of Egypt and Syria were
detained afar off by calms or head-winds, to the rage and disappointment of
the hungry Byzantine rabble. Finnish wizards used to sell wind to storm-stayed
mariners. The wind was enclosed in three knots; if they undid the first knot,
a moderate wind sprang up; if the second, it blew half a gale; if the third, a
hurricane. Indeed the Esthonians, whose country is divided from Finland only
by an arm of the sea, still believe in the magical powers of their northern
neighbours. The bitter winds that blow in spring from the north and
north-east, bringing ague and rheumatic inflammations in their train, are set
down by the simple Esthonian peasantry to the machinations of the Finnish
wizards and witches. In particular they regard with special dread three days
in spring to which they give the name of Days of the Cross; one of them falls
on the Eve of Ascension Day. The people in the neighbourhood of Fellin fear to
go out on these days lest the cruel winds from Lappland should smite them
dead. A popular Esthonian song runs:

Wind of the Cross! rushing and mighty!
Heavy the blow of thy wings sweeping past!
Wild wailing wind of misfortune and sorrow,
Wizards of Finland ride by on the blast.

It is said, too, that sailors, beating up against the wind in the Gulf of
Finland, sometimes see a strange sail heave in sight astern and overhaul them
hand over hand. On she comes with a cloud of canvasall her studding-sails
outright in the teeth of the wind, forging her way through the foaming
billows, dashing back the spray in sheets from her cutwater, every sail
swollen to bursting, every rope strained to cracking. Then the sailors know
that she hails from Finland.

The art of tying up the wind in three knots, so that the more knots are
loosed the stronger will blow the wind, has been attributed to wizards in
Lappland and to witches in Shetland, Lewis, and the Isle of Man. Shetland
seamen still buy winds in the shape of knotted handkerchiefs or threads from
old women who claim to rule the storms. There are said to be ancient crones in
Lerwick now who live by selling wind. Ulysses received the winds in a leathern
bag from Aeolus, King of the Winds. The Motumotu in New Guinea think that
storms are sent by an Oiabu sorcerer; for each wind he has a bamboo which he
opens at pleasure. On the top of Mount Agu in Togo, a district of West Africa,
resides a fetish called Bagba, who is supposed to control the wind and the
rain. His priest is said to keep the winds shut up in great pots.

Often the stormy wind is regarded as an evil being who may be intimidated,
driven away, or killed. When storms and bad weather have lasted long and food
is scarce with the Central Esquimaux, they endeavour to conjure the tempest by
making a long whip of seaweed, armed with which they go down to the beach and
strike out in the direction of the wind, crying Taba (it is enough)! Once
when north-westerly winds had kept the ice long on the coast and food was
becoming scarce, the Esquimaux performed a ceremony to make a calm. A fire was
kindled on the shore, and the men gathered round it and chanted. An old man
then stepped up to the fire and in a coaxing voice invited the demon of the
wind to come under the fire and warm himself. When he was supposed to have
arrived, a vessel of water, to which each man present had contributed, was
thrown on the flames by an old man, and immediately a flight of arrows sped
towards the spot where the fire had been. They thought that the demon would
not stay where he had been so badly treated. To complete the effect, guns were
discharged in various directions, and the captain of a European vessel was
invited to fire on the wind with cannon. On the twenty-first of February 1883
a similar ceremony was performed by the Esquimaux of Point Barrow, Alaska,
with the intention of killing the spirit of the wind. Women drove the demon
from their houses with clubs and knives, with which they made passes in the
air; and the men, gathering round a fire, shot him with their rifles and
crushed him under a heavy stone the moment that steam rose in a cloud from the
smouldering embers, on which a tub of water had just been thrown.

The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco ascribe the rush of a whirl-wind to
the passage of a spirit and they fling sticks at it to frighten it away. When
the wind blows down their huts, the Payaguas of South America snatch up
firebrands and run against the wind, menacing it with the blazing brands,
while others beat the air with their fists to frighten the storm. When the
Guaycurus are threatened by a severe storm, the men go out armed, and the
women and children scream their loudest to intimidate the demon. During a
tempest the inhabitants of a Batak village in Sumatra have been seen to rush
from their houses armed with sword and lance. The rajah placed himself at
their head, and with shouts and yells they hewed and hacked at the invisible
foe. An old woman was observed to be specially active in the defence of her
house, slashing the air right and left with a long sabre. In a violent
thunderstorm, the peals sounding very near, the Kayans of Borneo have been
seen to draw their swords threateningly half out of their scabbards, as if to
frighten away the demons of the storm. In Australia the huge columns of red
sand that move rapidly across a desert tract are thought by the natives to be
spirits passing along. Once an athletic young black ran after one of these
moving columns to kill it with boomerangs. He was away two or three hours, and
came back very weary, saying he had killed Koochee (the demon), but that
Koochee had growled at him and he must die. Of the Bedouins of Eastern Africa
it is said that no whirl-wind ever sweeps across the path without being
pursued by a dozen savages with drawn creeses, who stab into the centre of the
dusty column in order to drive away the evil spirit that is believed to be
riding on the blast.

In the light of these examples a story told by Herodotus, which his modern
critics have treated as a fable, is perfectly credible. He says, without
however vouching for the truth of the tale, that once in the land of the
Psylli, the modern Tripoli, the wind blowing from the Sahara had dried up all
the water-tanks. So the people took counsel and marched in a body to make war
on the south wind. But when they entered the desert the simoon swept down on
them and buried them to a man. The story may well have been told by one who
watched them disappearing, in battle array, with drums and cymbals beating,
into the red cloud of whirling sand.

Chapter 6. Magicians as Kings

THE FOREGOING evidence may satisfy us that in many lands and many races
magic has claimed to control the great forces of nature for the good of man.
If that has been so, the practitioners of the art must necessarily be
personages of importance and influence in any society which puts faith in
their extravagant pretensions, and it would be no matter for surprise if, by
virtue of the reputation which they enjoy and of the awe which they inspire,
some of them should attain to the highest position of authority over their
credulous fellows. In point of fact magicians appear to have often developed
into chiefs and kings.

Let us begin by looking at the lowest race of men as to whom we possess
comparatively full and accurate information, the aborigines of Australia.
These savages are ruled neither by chiefs nor kings. So far as their tribes
can be said to have a political constitution, it is a democracy or rather an
oligarchy of old and influential men, who meet in council and decide on all
measures of importance to the practical exclusion of the younger men. Their
deliberative assembly answers to the senate of later times: if we had to coin
a word for such a government of elders we might call it a gerontocracy. The
elders who in aboriginal Australia thus meet and direct the affairs of their
tribe appear to be for the most part the headmen of their respective totem
clans. Now in Central Australia, where the desert nature of the country and
the almost complete isolation from foreign influences have retarded progress
and preserved the natives on the whole in their most primitive state, the
headmen of the various totem clans are charged with the important task of
performing magical ceremonies for the multiplication of the totems, and as the
great majority of the totems are edible animals or plants, it follows that
these men are commonly expected to provide the people with food by means of
magic. Others have to make the rain to fall or to render other services to the
community. In short, among the tribes of Central Australia the headmen are
public magicians. Further, their most important function is to take charge of
the sacred storehouse, usually a cleft in the rocks or a hole in the ground,
where are kept the holy stones and sticks (churinga) with which the souls of
all the people, both living and dead, are apparently supposed to be in a
manner bound up. Thus while the headmen have certainly to perform what we
should call civil duties, such as to inflict punishment for breaches of tribal
custom, their principal functions are sacred or magical.

When we pass from Australia to New Guinea we find that, though the natives
stand at a far higher level of culture than the Australian aborigines, the
constitution of society among them is still essentially democratic or
oligarchic, and chieftainship exists only in embryo. Thus Sir William
MacGregor tells us that in British New Guinea no one has ever arisen wise
enough, bold enough, and strong enough to become the despot even of a single
district. The nearest approach to this has been the very distant one of some
person becoming a renowned wizard; but that has only resulted in levying a
certain amount of blackmail.

According to a native account, the origin of the power of Melanesian
chiefs lies entirely in the belief that they have communication with mighty
ghosts, and wield that supernatural power whereby they can bring the influence
of the ghosts to bear. If a chief imposed a fine, it was paid because the
people universally dreaded his ghostly power, and firmly believed that he
could inflict calamity and sickness upon such as resisted him. As soon as any
considerable number of his people began to disbelieve in his influence with
the ghosts, his power to levy fines was shaken. Again, Dr. George Brown tells
us that in New Britain a ruling chief was always supposed to exercise
priestly functions, that is, he professed to be in constant communication with
the tebarans (spirits), and through their influence he was enabled to bring
rain or sunshine, fair winds or foul ones, sickness or health, success or
disaster in war, and generally to procure any blessing or curse for which the
applicant was willing to pay a sufficient price.

Still rising in the scale of culture we come to Africa, where both the
chieftainship and the kingship are fully developed; and here the evidence for
the evolution of the chief out of the magician, and especially out of the
rain-maker, is comparatively plentiful. Thus among the Wambugwe, a Bantu
people of East Africa, the original form of government was a family republic,
but the enormous power of the sorcerers, transmitted by inheritance, soon
raised them to the rank of petty lords or chiefs. Of the three chiefs living
in the country in 1894 two were much dreaded as magicians, and the wealth of
cattle they possessed came to them almost wholly in the shape of presents
bestowed for their services in that capacity. Their principal art was that of
rain-making. The chiefs of the Wataturu, another people of East Africa, are
said to be nothing but sorcerers destitute of any direct political influence.
Again, among the Wagogo of East Africa the main power of the chiefs, we are
told, is derived from their art of rain-making. If a chief cannot make rain
himself, he must procure it from some one who can.

Again, among the tribes of the Upper Nile the medicine-men are generally
the chiefs. Their authority rests above all upon their supposed power of
making rain, for rain is the one thing which matters to the people in those
districts, as if it does not come down at the right time it means untold
hardships for the community. It is therefore small wonder that men more
cunning than their fellows should arrogate to themselves the power of
producing it, or that having gained such a reputation, they should trade on
the credulity of their simpler neighbours. Hence most of the chiefs of these
tribes are rain-makers, and enjoy a popularity in proportion to their powers
to give rain to their people at the proper season . Rain-making chiefs always
build their villages on the slopes of a fairly high hill, as they no doubt
know that the hills attract the clouds, and that they are, therefore, fairly
safe in their weather forecasts. Each of these rain-makers has a number of
rain-stones, such as rock-crystal, aventurine, and amethyst, which he keeps in
a pot. When he wishes to produce rain he plunges the stones in water, and
taking in his hand a peeled cane, which is split at the top, he beckons with
it to the clouds to come or waves them away in the way they should go,
muttering an incantation the while. Or he pours water and the entrails of a
sheep or goat into a hollow in a stone and then sprinkles the water towards
the sky. Though the chief acquires wealth by the exercise of his supposed
magical powers, he often, perhaps generally, comes to a violent end; for in
time of drought the angry people assemble and kill him, believing that it is
he who prevents the rain from falling. Yet the office is usually hereditary
and passes from father to son. Among the tribes which cherish these beliefs
and observe these customs are the Latuka, Bari, Laluba, and Lokoiya.


In Central Africa, again, the Lendu tribe, to the west of Lake Albert,
firmly believe that certain people possess the power of making rain. Among
them the rain-maker either is a chief or almost invariably becomes one. The
Banyoro also have a great respect for the dispensers of rain, whom they load
with a profusion of gifts. The great dispenser, he who has absolute and
uncontrollable power over the rain, is the king; but he can depute his power
to other persons, so that the benefit may be distributed and the heavenly
water laid on over the various parts of the kingdom.

In Western as well as in Eastern and Central Africa we meet with the same
union of chiefly with magical functions. Thus in the Fan tribe the strict
distinction between chief and medicine-man does not exist. The chief is also a
medicine-man and a smith to boot; for the Fans esteem the smith's craft
sacred, and none but chiefs may meddle with it.

As to the relation between the offices of chief and rain-maker in South
Africa a well-informed writer observes: In very old days the chief was the
great Rain-maker of the tribe. Some chiefs allowed no one else to compete with
them, lest a successful Rain-maker should be chosen as chief. There was also
another reason: the Rain-maker was sure to become a rich man if he gained a
great reputation, and it would manifestly never do for the chief to allow any
one to be too rich. The Rain-maker exerts tremendous control over the people,
and so it would be most important to keep this function connected with
royalty. Tradition always places the power of making rain as the fundamental
glory of ancient chiefs and heroes, and it seems probable that it may have
been the origin of chieftainship. The man who made the rain would naturally
become the chief. In the same way Chaka [the famous Zulu despot] used to
declare that he was the only diviner in the country, for if he allowed rivals
his life would be insecure. Similarly speaking of the South African tribes in
general, Dr. Moffat says that the rain-maker is in the estimation of the
people no mean personage, possessing an influence over the minds of the people
superior even to that of the king, who is likewise compelled to yield to the
dictates of this arch-official.

The foregoing evidence renders it probable that in Africa the king has
often been developed out of the public magician, and especially out of the
rain-maker. The unbounded fear which the magician inspires and the wealth
which he amasses in the exercise of his profession may both be supposed to
have contributed to his promotion. But if the career of a magician and
especially of a rain-maker offers great rewards to the successful practitioner
of the art, it is beset with many pitfalls into which the unskilful or unlucky
artist may fall. The position of the public sorcerer is indeed a very
precarious one; for where the people firmly believe that he has it in his
power to make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, and the fruits of the earth
to grow, they naturally impute drought and dearth to his culpable negligence
or wilful obstinacy, and they punish him accordingly. Hence in Africa the
chief who fails to procure rain is often exiled or killed. Thus, in some parts
of West Africa, when prayers and offerings presented to the king have failed
to procure rain, his subjects bind him with ropes and take him by force to the
grave of his forefathers that he may obtain from them the needed rain. The
Banjars in West Africa ascribe to their king the power of causing rain or fine
weather. So long as the weather is fine they load him with presents of grain
and cattle. But if long drought or rain threatens to spoil the crops, they
insult and beat him till the weather changes. When the harvest fails or the
surf on the coast is too heavy to allow of fishing, the people of Loango
accuse their king of a bad heart and depose him. On the Grain Coast the high
priest or fetish king, who bears the title of Bodio, is responsible for the
health of the community, the fertility of the earth, and the abundance of fish
in the sea and rivers; and if the country suffers in any of these respects the
Bodio is deposed from his office. In Ussukuma, a great district on the
southern bank of the Victoria Nyanza, the rain and locust question is part
and parcel of the Sultan's government. He, too, must know how to make rain and
drive away the locusts. If he and his medicine-men are unable to accomplish
this, his whole existence is at stake in times of distress. On a certain
occasion, when the rain so greatly desired by the people did not come, the
Sultan was simply driven out (in Ututwa, near Nassa). The people, in fact,
hold that rulers must have power over Nature and her phenomena. Again, we are
told of the natives of the Nyanaza region generally that they are persuaded
that rain only falls as a result of magic, and the important duty of causing
it to descend devolves on the chief of the tribe. If rain does not come at the
proper time, everybody complains. More than one petty king has been banished
his country because of drought. Among the Latuka of the Upper Nile, when the
crops are withering, and all the efforts of the chief to draw down rain have
proved fruitless, the people commonly attack him by night, rob him of all he
possesses, and drive him away. But often they kill him.

In many other parts of the world kings have been expected to regulate the
course of nature for the good of their people and have been punished if they
failed to do so. It appears that the Scythians, when food was scarce, used to
put their king in bonds. In ancient Egypt the sacred kings were blamed for the
failure of the crops, but the sacred beasts were also held responsible for the
course of nature. When pestilence and other calamities had fallen on the land,
in consequence of a long and severe drought, the priests took the animals by
night and threatened them, but if the evil did not abate they slew the beasts.
On the coral island of Niue or Savage Island, in the South Pacific, there
formerly reigned a line of kings. But as the kings were also high priests, and
were supposed to make the food grow, the people became angry with them in
times of scarcity and killed them; till at last, as one after another was
killed, no one would be king, and the monarchy came to an end. Ancient Chinese
writers inform us that in Corea the blame was laid on the king whenever too
much or too little rain fell and the crops did not ripen. Some said that he
must be deposed, others that he must be slain.

Among the American Indians the furthest advance towards civilisation was
made under the monarchical and theocratic governments of Mexico and Peru; but
we know too little of the early history of these countries to say whether the
predecessors of their deified kings were medicine-men or not. Perhaps a trace
of such a succession may be detected in the oath which the Mexican kings, when
they mounted the throne, swore that they would make the sun to shine, the
clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to bring forth fruits
in abundance. Certainly, in aboriginal America the sorcerer or medicine-man,
surrounded by a halo of mystery and an atmosphere of awe, was a personage of
great influence and importance, and he may well have developed into a chief or
king in many tribes, though positive evidence of such a development appears to
be lacking. Thus Catlin tells us that in North America the medicine-men are
valued as dignitaries in the tribe, and the greatest respect is paid to them
by the whole community; not only for their skill in their materia medica,
but more especially for their tact in magic and mysteries, in which they all
deal to a very great extent . In all tribes their doctors are conjurersare
magiciansare sooth-sayers, and I had like to have said high-priests, inasmuch
as they superintend and conduct all their religious ceremonies; they are
looked upon by all as oracles of the nation. In all councils of war and peace,
they have a seat with the chiefs, are regularly consulted before any public
step is taken, and the greatest deference and respect is paid to their
opinions. Similarly in California the shaman was, and still is, perhaps the
most important individual among the Maidu. In the absence of any definite
system of government, the word of a shaman has great weight: as a class they
are regarded with much awe, and as a rule are obeyed much more than the
chief.

In South America also the magicians or medicine-men seem to have been on
the highroad to chieftainship or kingship. One of the earliest settlers on the
coast of Brazil, the Frenchman Thevet, reports that the Indians hold these
pages (or medicine-men) in such honour and reverence that they adore, or
rather idolise them. You may see the common folk go to meet them, prostrate
themselves, and pray to them, saying, 'Grant that I be not ill, that I do not
die, neither I nor my children,' or some such request. And he answers, 'You
shall not die, you shall not be ill,' and such like replies. But sometimes if
it happens that these pages do not tell the truth, and things turn out
otherwise than they predicted, the people make no scruple of killing them as
unworthy of the title and dignity of pages. Among the Lengua Indians of the
Gran Chaco every clan has its cazique or chief, but he possesses little
authority. In virtue of his office he has to make many presents, so he seldom
grows rich and is generally more shabbily clad than any of his subjects. As a
matter of fact the magician is the man who has most power in his hands, and he
is accustomed to receive presents instead of to give them. It is the
magician's duty to bring down misfortune and plagues on the enemies of his
tribe, and to guard his own people against hostile magic. For these services
he is well paid, and by them he acquires a position of great influence and
authority.

Throughout the Malay region the rajah or king is commonly regarded with
superstitious veneration as the possessor of supernatural powers, and there
are grounds for thinking that he too, like apparently so many African chiefs,
has been developed out of a simple magician. At the present day the Malays
firmly believe that the king possesses a personal influence over the works of
nature, such as the growth of the crops and the bearing of fruit-trees. The
same prolific virtue is supposed to reside, though in a lesser degree, in his
delegates, and even in the persons of Europeans who chance to have charge of
districts. Thus in Selangor, one of the native states of the Malay Peninsula,
the success or failure of the rice-crops is often attributed to a change of
district officers. The Toorateyas of Southern Celebes hold that the prosperity
of the rice depends on the behaviour of their princes, and that bad
government, by which they mean a government which does not conform to ancient
custom, will result in a failure of the crops.

The Dyaks of Sarawak believed that their famous English ruler, Rajah
Brooke, was endowed with a certain magical virtue which, if properly applied,
could render the rice-crops abundant. Hence when he visited a tribe, they used
to bring him the seed which they intended to sow next year, and he fertilised
it by shaking over it the women's necklaces, which had been previously dipped
in a special mixture. And when he entered a village, the women would wash and
bathe his feet, first with water, and then with the milk of a young coco-nut,
and lastly with water again, and all this water which had touched his person
they preserved for the purpose of distributing it on their farms, believing
that it ensured an abundant harvest. Tribes which were too far off for him to
visit used to send him a small piece of white cloth and a little gold or
silver, and when these things had been impregnated by his generative virtue
they buried them in their fields, and confidently expected a heavy crop. Once
when a European remarked that the rice-crops of the Samban tribe were thin,
the chief immediately replied that they could not be otherwise, since Rajah
Brooke had never visited them, and he begged that Mr. Brooke might be induced
to visit his tribe and remove the sterility of their land.

The belief that kings possess magical or supernatural powers by virtue of
which they can fertilise the earth and confer other benefits on their subjects
would seem to have been shared by the ancestors of all the Aryan races from
India to Ireland, and it has left clear traces of itself in our own country
down to modern times. Thus the ancient Hindoo law-book called The Laws of
Manu describes as follows the effects of a good king's reign: In that
country where the king avoids taking the property of mortal sinners, men are
born in due time and are long-lived. And the crops of the husbandmen spring
up, each as it was sown, and the children die not, and no misshaped offspring
is born. In Homeric Greece kings and chiefs were spoken of as sacred or
divine; their houses, too, were divine and their chariots sacred; and it was
thought that the reign of a good king caused the black earth to bring forth
wheat and barley, the trees to be loaded with fruit, the flocks to multiply,
and the sea to yield fish. In the Middle Ages, when Waldemar I., King of
Denmark, travelled in Germany, mothers brought their infants and husbandmen
their seed for him to lay his hands on, thinking that children would both
thrive the better for the royal touch, and for a like reason farmers asked him
to throw the seed for them. It was the belief of the ancient Irish that when
their kings observed the customs of their ancestors, the seasons were mild,
the crops plentiful, the cattle fruitful, the waters abounded with fish, and
the fruit trees had to be propped up on account of the weight of their
produce. A canon attributed to St. Patrick enumerates among the blessings that
attend the reign of a just king fine weather, calm seas, crops abundant, and
trees laden with fruit. On the other hand, dearth, dryness of cows, blight of
fruit, and scarcity of corn were regarded as infallible proofs that the
reigning king was bad.

Perhaps the last relic of such superstitions which lingered about our
English kings was the notion that they could heal scrofula by their touch. The
disease was accordingly known as the King's Evil. Queen Elizabeth often
exercised this miraculous gift of healing. On Midsummer Day 1633, Charles the
First cured a hundred patients at one swoop in the chapel royal at Holyrood.
But it was under his son Charles the Second that the practice seems to have
attained its highest vogue. It is said that in the course of his reign Charles
the Second touched near a hundred thousand persons for scrofula. The press to
get near him was sometimes terrific. On one occasion six or seven of those who
came to be healed were trampled to death. The cool-headed William the Third
contemptuously refused to lend himself to the hocuspocus; and when his palace
was besieged by the usual unsavoury crowd, he ordered them to be turned away
with a dole. On the only occasion when he was importuned into laying his hand
on a patient, he said to him, God give you better health and more sense.
However, the practice was continued, as might have been expected, by the dull
bigot James the Second and his dull daughter Queen Anne.

The kings of France also claimed to possess the same gift of healing by
touch, which they are said to have derived from Clovis or from St. Louis,
while our English kings inherited it from Edward the Confessor. Similarly the
savage chiefs of Tonga were believed to heal scrofula and cases of indurated
liver by the touch of their feet; and the cure was strictly homoeopathic, for
the disease as well as the cure was thought to be caused by contact with the
royal person or with anything that belonged to it.

On the whole, then, we seem to be justified in inferring that in many
parts of the world the king is the lineal successor of the old magician or
medicine-man. When once a special class of sorcerers has been segregated from
the community and entrusted by it with the discharge of duties on which the
public safety and welfare are believed to depend, these men gradually rise to
wealth and power, till their leaders blossom out into sacred kings. But the
great social revolution which thus begins with democracy and ends in despotism
is attended by an intellectual revolution which affects both the conception
and the functions of royalty. For as time goes on, the fallacy of magic
becomes more and more apparent to the acuter minds and is slowly displaced by
religion; in other words, the magician gives way to the priest, who,
renouncing the attempt to control directly the processes of nature for the
good of man, seeks to attain the same end indirectly by appealing to the gods
to do for him what he no longer fancies he can do for himself. Hence the king,
starting as a magician, tends gradually to exchange the practice of magic for
the priestly functions of prayer and sacrifice. And while the distinction
between the human and the divine is still imperfectly drawn, it is often
imagined that men may themselves attain to godhead, not merely after their
death, but in their lifetime, through the temporary or permanent possession of
their whole nature by a great and powerful spirit. No class of the community
has benefited so much as kings by this belief in the possible incarnation of a
god in human form. The doctrine of that incarnation, and with it the theory of
the divinity of kings in the strict sense of the word, will form the subject
of the following chapter.

Chapter 7. Incarnate Human Gods

THE INSTANCES which in the preceding chapters I have drawn from the beliefs
and practices of rude peoples all over the world, may suffice to prove that
the savage fails to recognise those limitations to his power over nature which
seem so obvious to us. In a society where every man is supposed to be endowed
more or less with powers which we should call supernatural, it is plain that
the distinction between gods and men is somewhat blurred, or rather has
scarcely emerged. The conception of gods as superhuman beings endowed with
powers to which man possesses nothing comparable in degree and hardly even in
kind, has been slowly evolved in the course of history. By primitive peoples
the supernatural agents are not regarded as greatly, if at all, superior to
man; for they may be frightened and coerced by him into doing his will. At
this stage of thought the world is viewed as a great democracy; all beings in
it, whether natural or supernatural, are supposed to stand on a footing of
tolerable equality. But with the growth of his knowledge man learns to realise
more clearly the vastness of nature and his own littleness and feebleness in
presence of it. The recognition of his helplessness does not, however, carry
with it a corresponding belief in the impotence of those supernatural beings
with which his imagination peoples the universe. On the contrary, it enhances
his conception of their power. For the idea of the world as a system of
impersonal forces acting in accordance with fixed and invariable laws has not
yet fully dawned or darkened upon him. The germ of the idea he certainly has,
and he acts upon it, not only in magic art, but in much of the business of
daily life. But the idea remains undeveloped, and so far as he attempts to
explain the world he lives in, he pictures it as the manifestation of
conscious will and personal agency. If then he feels himself to be so frail
and slight, how vast and powerful must he deem the beings who control the
gigantic machinery of nature! Thus as his old sense of equality with the gods
slowly vanishes, he resigns at the same time the hope of directing the course
of nature by his own unaided resources, that is, by magic, and looks more and
more to the gods as the sole repositories of those supernatural powers which
he once claimed to share with them. With the advance of knowledge, therefore,
prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and magic,
which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal, is gradually relegated to
the background and sinks to the level of a black art. It is not regarded as an
encroachment, at once vain and impious, on the domain of the gods, and as such
encounters the steady opposition of the priests, whose reputation and
influence rise or fall with those of their gods. Hence, when at a late period
the distinction between religion and superstition has emerged, we find that
sacrifice and prayer are the resource of the pious and enlightened portion of
the community, while magic is the refuge of the superstitious and ignorant.
But when, still later, the conception of the elemental forces as personal
agents is giving way to the recognition of natural law; then magic, based as
it implicitly is on the idea of a necessary and invariable sequence of cause
and effect, independent of personal will, reappears from the obscurity and
discredit into which it had fallen, and by investigating the causal sequences
in nature, directly prepares the way for science. Alchemy leads up to
chemistry.

The notion of a man-god, or of a human being endowed with divine or
supernatural powers, belongs essentially to that earlier period of religious
history in which gods and men are still viewed as beings of much the same
order, and before they are divided by the impassable gulf which, to later
thought, opens out between them. Strange, therefore, as may seem to us the
idea of a god incarnate in human form, it has nothing very startling for early
man, who sees in a man-god or a god-man only a higher degree of the same
supernatural powers which he arrogates in perfect good faith to himself. Nor
does he draw any very sharp distinction between a god and a powerful sorcerer.
His gods are often merely invisible magicians who behind the veil of nature
work the same sort of charms and incantations which the human magician works
in a visible and bodily form among his fellows. And as the gods are commonly
believed to exhibit themselves in the likeness of men to their worshippers, it
is easy for the magician, with his supposed miraculous powers, to acquire the
reputation of being an incarnate deity. Thus beginning as little more than a
simple conjurer, the medicine-man or magician tends to blossom out into a
full-blown god and king in one. Only in speaking of him as a god we must
beware of importing into the savage conception of deity those very abstract
and complex ideas which we attach to the term. Our ideas on this profound
subject are the fruit of a long intellectual and moral evolution, and they are
so far from being shared by the savage that he cannot even understand them
when they are explained to him. Much of the controversy which has raged as to
the religion of the lower races has sprung merely from a mutual
misunderstanding. The savage does not understand the thoughts of the civilised
man, and few civilised men understand the thoughts of the savage. When the
savage uses his word for god, he has in his mind a being of a certain sort:
when the civilised man uses his word for god, he has in his mind a being of a
very different sort; and if, as commonly happens, the two men are equally
unable to place themselves at the other's point of view, nothing but confusion
and mistakes can result from their discussions. If we civilised men insist on
limiting the name of God to that particular conception of the divine nature
which we ourselves have formed, then we must confess that the savage has no
god at all. But we shall adhere more closely to the facts of history if we
allow most of the higher savages at least to possess a rudimentary notion of
certain supernatural beings who may fittingly be called gods, though not in
the full sense in which we use the word. That rudimentary notion represents in
all probability the germ out of which the civilised peoples have gradually
evolved their own high conceptions of deity; and if we could trace the whole
course of religious development, we might find that the chain which links our
idea of the Godhead with that of the savage is one and unbroken.

With these explanations and cautions I will now adduce some examples of
gods who have been believed by their worshippers to be incarnate in living
human beings, whether men or women. The persons in whom a deity is thought to
reveal himself are by no means always kings or descendants of kings; the
supposed incarnation may take place even in men of the humblest rank. In
India, for example, one human god started in life as a cotton-bleacher and
another as the son of a carpenter. I shall therefore not draw my examples
exclusively from royal personages, as I wish to illustrate the general
principle of the deification of living men, in other words, the incarnation of
a deity in human form. Such incarnate gods are common in rude society. The
incarnation may be temporary or permanent. In the former case, the
incarnationcommonly known as inspiration or possessionreveals itself in
supernatural knowledge rather than in supernatural power. In other words, its
usual manifestations are divination and prophecy rather than miracles. On the
other hand, when the incarnation is not merely temporary, when the divine
spirit has permanently taken up its abode in a human body, the god-man is
usually expected to vindicate his character by working miracles. Only we have
to remember that by men at this stage of thought miracles are not considered
as breaches of natural law. Not conceiving the existence of natural law,
primitive man cannot conceive a breach of it. A miracle is to him merely an
unusually striking manifestation of a common power.

The belief in temporary incarnation or inspiration is world-wide. Certain
persons are supposed to be possessed from time to time by a spirit or deity;
while the possession lasts, their own personality lies in abeyance, the
presence of the spirit is revealed by convulsive shiverings and shakings of
the man's whole body, by wild gestures and excited looks, all of which are
referred, not to the man himself, but to the spirit which has entered into
him; and in this abnormal state all his utterances are accepted as the voice
of the god or spirit dwelling in him and speaking through him. Thus, for
example, in the Sandwich Islands, the king, personating the god, uttered the
responses of the oracle from his concealment in a frame of wicker-work. But in
the southern islands of the Pacific the god frequently entered the priest,
who, inflated as it were with the divinity, ceased to act or speak as a
voluntary agent, but moved and spoke as entirely under supernatural influence.
In this respect there was a striking resemblance between the rude oracles of
the Polynesians, and those of the celebrated nations of ancient Greece. As
soon as the god was supposed to have entered the priest, the latter became
violently agitated, and worked himself up to the highest pitch of apparent
frenzy, the muscles of the limbs seemed convulsed, the body swelled, the
countenance became terrific, the features distorted, and the eyes wild and
strained. In this state he often rolled on the earth, foaming at the mouth, as
if labouring under the influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed,
and, in shrill cries, and violent and often indistinct sounds, revealed the
will of the god. The priests, who were attending, and versed in the mysteries,
received, and reported to the people, the declarations which had been thus
received. When the priest had uttered the response of the oracle, the violent
paroxysm gradually subsided, and comparative composure ensued. The god did
not, however, always leave him as soon as the communication had been made.
Sometimes the same taura, or priest, continued for two or three days
possessed by the spirit or deity; a piece of a native cloth, of a peculiar
kind, worn round one arm, was an indication of inspiration, or of the
indwelling of the god with the individual who wore it. The acts of the man
during this period were considered as those of the god, and hence the greatest
attention was paid to his expressions, and the whole of his deportment . When
uruhia (under the inspiration of the spirit), the priest was always
considered as sacred as the god, and was called, during this period, atua,
god, though at other times only denominated taura or priest.

But examples of such temporary inspiration are so common in every part of
the world and are now so familiar through books on ethnology that it is
needless to multiply illustrations of the general principle. It may be well,
however, to refer to two particular modes of producing temporary inspiration,
because they are perhaps less known than some others, and because we shall
have occasion to refer to them later on. One of these modes of producing
inspiration is by sucking the fresh blood of a sacrificed victim. In the
temple of Apollo Diradiotes at Argos, a lamb was sacrificed by night once a
month; a woman, who had to observe a rule of chastity, tasted the blood of the
lamb, and thus being inspired by the god she prophesied or divined. At Aegira
in Achaia the priestess of Earth drank the fresh blood of a bull before she
descended into the cave to prophesy. Similarly among the Kuruvikkarans, a
class of bird-catchers and beggars in Southern India, the goddess Kali is
believed to descend upon the priest, and he gives oracular replies after
sucking the blood which streams from the cut throat of a goat. At a festival
of the Alfoors of Minahassa, in Northern Celebes, after a pig has been killed,
the priest rushes furiously at it, thrusts his head into the carcase, and
drinks of the blood. Then he is dragged away from it by force and set on a
chair, whereupon he begins to prophesy how the rice-crop will turn out that
year. A second time he runs at the carcase and drinks of the blood; a second
time he is forced into the chair and continues his predictions. It is thought
that there is a spirit in him which possesses the power of prophecy.

The other mode of producing temporary inspiration, to which I shall here
refer, consists in the use of a sacred tree or plant. Thus in the Hindoo Koosh
a fire is kindled with twigs of the sacred cedar; and the Dainyal or sibyl,
with a cloth over her head, inhales the thick pungent smoke till she is seized
with convulsions and falls senseless to the ground. Soon she rises and raises
a shrill chant, which is caught up and loudly repeated by her audience. So
Apollo's prophetess ate the sacred laurel and was fumigated with it before she
prophesied. The Bacchanals ate ivy, and their inspired fury was by some
believed to be due to the exciting and intoxicating properties of the plant.
In Uganda the priest, in order to be inspired by his god, smokes a pipe of
tobacco fiercely till he works himself into a frenzy; the loud excited tones
in which he then talks are recognised as the voice of the god speaking through
him. In Madura, an island off the north coast of Java, each spirit has its
regular medium, who is oftener a woman than a man. To prepare herself for the
reception of the spirit she inhales the fumes of incense, sitting with her
head over a smoking censer. Gradually she falls into a sort of trance
accompanied by shrieks, grimaces, and violent spasms. The spirit is now
supposed to have entered into her, and when she grows calmer her words are
regarded as oracular, being the utterances of the indwelling spirit, while her
own soul is temporarily absent.

The person temporarily inspired is believed to acquire, not merely divine
knowledge, but also, at least occasionally, divine power. In Cambodia, when an
epidemic breaks out, the inhabitants of several villages unite and go with a
band of music at their head to look for the man whom the local god is supposed
to have chosen for his temporary incarnation. When found, the man is conducted
to the altar of the god, where the mystery of incarnation takes place. Then
the man becomes an object of veneration to his fellows, who implore him to
protect the village against the plague. A certain image of Apollo, which stood
in a sacred cave at Hylae near Magnesia, was thought to impart superhuman
strength. Sacred men, inspired by it, leaped down precipices, tore up huge
trees by the roots, and carried them on their backs along the narrowest
defiles. The feats performed by inspired dervishes belong to the same class.

Thus far we have seen that the savage, failing to discern the limits of
his ability to control nature, ascribes to himself and to all men certain
powers which we should now call supernatural. Further, we have seen that, over
and above this general supernaturalism, some persons are supposed to be
inspired for short periods by a divine spirit, and thus temporarily to enjoy
the knowledge and power of the indwelling deity. From beliefs like these it is
an easy step to the conviction that certain men are permanently possessed by a
deity, or in some other undefined way are endued with so high a degree of
supernatural power as to be ranked as gods and to receive the homage of prayer
and sacrifice. Sometimes these human gods are restricted to purely
supernatural or spiritual functions. Sometimes they exercise supreme political
power in addition. In the latter case they are kings as well as gods, and the
government is a theocracy. Thus in the Marquesas or Washington Islands there
was a class of men who were deified in their lifetime. They were supposed to
wield a supernatural power over the elements: they could give abundant
harvests or smite the ground with barrenness; and they could inflict disease
or death. Human sacrifices were offered to them to avert their wrath. There
were not many of them, at the most one or two in each island. They lived in
mystic seclusion. Their powers were sometimes, but not always, hereditary. A
missionary has described one of these human gods from personal observation.
The god was a very old man who lived in a large house within an enclosure. In
the house was a kind of altar, and on the beams of the house and on the trees
round it were hung human skeletons, head down. No one entered the enclosure
except the persons dedicated to the service of the god; only on days when
human victims were sacrificed might ordinary people penetrate into the
precinct. This human god received more sacrifices than all the other gods;
often he would sit on a sort of scaffold in front of his house and call for
two or three human victims at a time. They were always brought, for the terror
he inspired was extreme. He was invoked all over the island, and offerings
were sent to him from every side. Again, of the South Sea Islands in general
we are told that each island had a man who represented or personified the
divinity. Such men were called gods, and their substance was confounded with
that of the deity. The man-god was sometimes the king himself; oftener he was
a priest or subordinate chief.

The ancient Egyptians, far from restricting their adoration to cats and
dogs and such small deer, very liberally extended it to men. One of these
human deities resided at the village of Anabis, and burnt sacrifices were
offered to him on the altars; after which, says Porphyry, he would eat his
dinner just as if he were an ordinary mortal. In classical antiquity the
Sicilian philosopher Empedocles gave himself out to be not merely a wizard but
a god. Addressing his fellow-citizens in verse he said:

O friends, in this great city that climbs the yellow slope
Of Agrigentum's citadel, who make good works your scope,
Who offer to the stranger a haven quiet and fair,
All hail! Among you honoured I walk with lofty air.
With garlands, blooming garlands you crown my noble brow,
A mortal man no longer, a deathless godhead now.
Where e'er I go, the people crowd round and worship pay,
And thousands follow seeking to learn the better way.
Some crave prophetic visions, some smit with anguish sore
Would fain hear words of comfort and suffer pain no more.

He asserted that he could teach his disciples how to make the wind to blow or
be still, the rain to fall and the sun to shine, how to banish sickness and
old age and to raise the dead. When Demetrius Poliorcetes restored the
Athenian democracy in 307 B.C., the Athenians decreed divine honours to him
and his father Antigonus, both of them being then alive, under the title of
the Saviour Gods. Altars were set up to the Saviours, and a priest appointed
to attend to their worship. The people went forth to meet their deliverer with
hymns and dances, with garlands and incense and libations; they lined the
streets and sang that he was the only true god, for the other gods slept, or
dwelt far away, or were not. In the words of a contemporary poet, which were
chanted in public and sung in private:

Of all the gods the greatest and the dearest
To the city are come.
For Demeter and Demetrius
Together time has brought.
She comes to hold the Maiden's awful rites,
And he joyous and fair and laughing,
As befits a god.
A glorious sight, with all his friends about him,
He in their midst,
They like to stars, and he the sun.
Son of Poseidon the mighty, Aphrodite's son,
All hail!
The other gods dwell far away,
Or have no ears,
Or are not, or pay us no heed.
But thee we present see,
No god of wood or stone, but godhead true.
Therefore to thee we pray.

The ancient Germans believed that there was something holy in women, and
accordingly consulted them as oracles. Their sacred women, we are told, looked
on the eddying rivers and listened to the murmur or the roar of the water, and
from the sight and sound foretold what would come to pass. But often the
veneration of the men went further, and they worshipped women as true and
living goddesses. For example, in the reign of Vespasian a certain Veleda, of
the tribe of the Bructeri, was commonly held to be a deity, and in that
character reigned over her people, her sway being acknowledged far and wide.
She lived in a tower on the river Lippe, a tributary of the Rhine. When the
people of Cologne sent to make a treaty with her, the ambassadors were not
admitted to her presence; the negotiations were conducted through a minister,
who acted as the mouthpiece of her divinity and reported her oracular
utterances. The example shows how easily among our rude forefathers the ideas
of divinity and royalty coalesced. It is said that among the Getae down to the
beginning of our era there was always a man who personified a god and was
called God by the people. He dwelt on a sacred mountain and acted as adviser
to the king.

According to the early Portuguese historian, Dos Santos, the Zimbas, or
Muzimbas, a people of South-eastern Africa, do not adore idols or recognize
any god, but instead they venerate and honour their king, whom they regard as
a divinity, and they say he is the greatest and best in the world. And the
said king says of himself that he alone is god of the earth, for which reason
if it rains when he does not wish it to do so, or is too hot, he shoots arrows
at the sky for not obeying him. The Mashona of Southern Africa informed their
bishop that they had once had a god, but that the Matabeles had driven him
away. This last was in reference to a curious custom in some villages of
keeping a man they called their god. He seemed to be consulted by the people
and had presents given to him. There was one at a village belonging to a chief
Magondi, in the old days. We were asked not to fire off any guns near the
village, or we should frighten him away. This Mashona god was formerly bound
to render an annual tribute to the king of the Matabele in the shape of four
black oxen and one dance. A missionary has seen and described the deity
discharging the latter part of his duty in front of the royal hut. For three
mortal hours, without a break, to the banging of a tambourine, the click of
castanettes, and the drone of a monotonous song, the swarthy god engaged in a
frenzied dance, crouching on his hams like a tailor, sweating like a pig, and
bounding about with an agility which testified to the strength and elasticity
of his divine legs.

The Baganda of Central Africa believed in a god of Lake Nyanza, who
sometimes took up his abode in a man or woman. The incarnate god was much
feared by all the people, including the king and the chiefs. When the mystery
of incarnation had taken place, the man, or rather the god, removed about a
mile and a half from the margin of the lake, and there awaited the appearance
of the new moon before he engaged in his sacred duties. From the moment that
the crescent moon appeared faintly in the sky, the king and all his subjects
were at the command of the divine man, or Lubare (god), as he was called,
who reigned supreme not only in matters of faith and ritual, but also in
questions of war and state policy. He was consulted as an oracle; by his word
he could inflict or heal sickness, withhold rain, and cause famine. Large
presents were made him when his advice was sought. The chief of Urua, a large
region to the west of Lake Tanganyika, arrogates to himself divine honours
and power and pretends to abstain from food for days without feeling its
necessity; and, indeed, declares that as a god he is altogether above
requiring food and only eats, drinks, and smokes for the pleasure it affords
him. Among the Gallas, when a woman grows tired of the cares of housekeeping,
she begins to talk incoherently and to demean herself extravagantly. This is a
sign of the descent of the holy spirit Callo upon her. Immediately her husband
prostrates himself and adores her; she ceases to bear the humble title of wife
and is called Lord; domestic duties have no further claim on her, and her
will is a divine law.

The king of Loango is honoured by his people as though he were a god; and
he is called Sambee and Pango, which mean god. They believe that he can let
them have rain when he likes; and once a year, in December, which is the time
they want rain, the people come to beg of him to grant it to them. On this
occasion the king, standing on his throne, shoots an arrow into the air, which
is supposed to bring on rain. Much the same is said of the king of Mombasa.
Down to a few years ago, when his spiritual reign on earth was brought to an
abrupt end by the carnal weapons of English marines and bluejackets, the king
of Benin was the chief object of worship in his dominions. He occupies a
higher post here than the Pope does in Catholic Europe; for he is not only
God's vicegerent upon earth, but a god himself, whose subjects both obey and
adore him as such, although I believe their adoration to arise rather from
fear than love. The king of Iddah told the English officers of the Niger
Expedition, God made me after his own image; I am all the same as God; and he
appointed me a king.

A peculiarly bloodthirsty monarch of Burma, by name Badonsachen, whose
very countenance reflected the inbred ferocity of his nature, and under whose
reign more victims perished by the executioner than by the common enemy,
conceived the notion that he was something more than mortal, and that this
high distinction had been granted him as a reward for his numerous good works.
Accordingly he laid aside the title of king and aimed at making himself a god.
With this view, and in imitation of Buddha, who, before being advanced to the
rank of a divinity, had quitted his royal palace and seraglio and retired from
the world, Badonsachen withdrew from his palace to an immense pagoda, the
largest in the empire, which he had been engaged in constructing for many
years. Here he held conferences with the most learned monks, in which he
sought to persuade them that the five thousand years assigned for the
observance of the law of Buddha were now elapsed, and that he himself was the
god who was destined to appear after that period, and to abolish the old law
by substituting his own. But to his great mortification many of the monks
undertook to demonstrate the contrary; and this disappointment, combined with
his love of power and his impatience under the restraints of an ascetic life,
quickly disabused him of his imaginary godhead, and drove him back to his
palace and his harem. The king of Siam is venerated equally with a divinity.
His subjects ought not to look him in the face; they prostrate themselves
before him when he passes, and appear before him on their knees, their elbows
resting on the ground. There is a special language devoted to his sacred
person and attributes, and it must be used by all who speak to or of him. Even
the natives have difficulty in mastering this peculiar vocabulary. The hairs
of the monarch's head, the soles of his feet, the breath of his body, indeed
every single detail of his person, both outward and inward, have particular
names. When he eats or drinks, sleeps or walks, a special word indicates that
these acts are being performed by the sovereign, and such words cannot
possibly be applied to the acts of any other person whatever. There is no word
in the Siamese language by which any creature of higher rank or greater
dignity than a monarch can be described; and the missionaries, when they speak
of God, are forced to use the native word for king.

But perhaps no country in the world has been so prolific of human gods as
India; nowhere has the divine grace been poured out in a more liberal measure
on all classes of society from kings down to milkmen. Thus amongst the Todas,
a pastoral people of the Neilgherry Hills of Southern India, the dairy is a
sanctuary, and the milkman who attends to it has been described as a god. On
being asked whether the Todas salute the sun, one of these divine milkmen
replied, Those poor fellows do so, but I, tapping his chest, I, a god! why
should I salute the sun? Every one, even his own father, prostrates himself
before the milkman, and no one would dare to refuse him anything. No human
being, except another milkman, may touch him; and he gives oracles to all who
consult him, speaking with the voice of a god.

Further, in India every king is regarded as little short of a present
god. The Hindoo law-book of Manu goes farther and says that even an infant
king must not be despised from an idea that he is a mere mortal; for he is a
great deity in human form. There is said to have been a sect in Orissa some
years ago who worshipped the late Queen Victoria in her lifetime as their
chief divinity. And to this day in India all living persons remarkable for
great strength or valour or for supposed miraculous powers run the risk of
being worshipped as gods. Thus, a sect in the Punjaub worshipped a deity whom
they called Nikkal Sen. This Nikkal Sen was no other than the redoubted
General Nicholson, and nothing that the general could do or say damped the
ardour of his adorers. The more he punished them, the greater grew the
religious awe with which they worshipped him. At Benares not many years ago a
celebrated deity was incarnate in the person of a Hindoo gentleman who
rejoiced in the euphonious name of Swami Bhaskaranandaji Saraswati, and looked
uncommonly like the late Cardinal Manning, only more ingenuous. His eyes
beamed with kindly human interest, and he took what is described as an
innocent pleasure in the divine honours paid him by his confiding worshippers.

At Chinchvad, a small town about ten miles from Poona in Western India,
there lives a family of whom one in each generation is believed by a large
proportion of the Mahrattas to be an incarnation of the elephant-headed god
Gunputty. That celebrated deity was first made flesh about the year 1640 in
the person of a Brahman of Poona, by name Mooraba Gosseyn, who sought to work
out his salvation by abstinence, mortification, and prayer. His piety had its
reward. The god himself appeared to him in a vision of the night and promised
that a portion of his, that is, of Gunputty's holy spirit should abide with
him and with his seed after him even to the seventh generation. The divine
promise was fulfilled. Seven successive incarnations, transmitted from father
to son, manifested the light of Gunputty to a dark world. The last of the
direct line, a heavy-looking god with very weak eyes, died in the year 1810.
But the cause of truth was too sacred, and the value of the church property
too considerable, to allow the Brahmans to contemplate with equanimity the
unspeakable loss that would be sustained by a world which knew not Gunputty.
Accordingly they sought and found a holy vessel in whom the divine spirit of
the master had revealed itself anew, and the revelation has been happily
continued in an unbroken succession of vessels from that time to this. But a
mysterious law of spiritual economy, whose operation in the history of
religion we may deplore though we cannot alter, has decreed that the miracles
wrought by the god-man in these degenerate days cannot compare with those
which were wrought by his predecessors in days gone by; and it is even
reported that the only sign vouchsafed by him to the present generation of
vipers is the miracle of feeding the multitude whom he annually entertains to
dinner at Chinchvad.

A Hindoo sect, which has many representatives in Bombay and Central India,
holds that its spiritual chiefs or Maharajas, as they are called, are
representatives or even actual incarnations on earth of the god Krishna. And
as Krishna looks down from heaven with most favour on such as minister to the
wants of his successors and vicars on earth, a peculiar rite called
Self-devotion has been instituted, whereby his faithful worshippers make over
their bodies, their souls, and, what is perhaps still more important, their
worldly substance to his adorable incarnations; and women are taught to
believe that the highest bliss for themselves and their families is to be
attained by yielding themselves to the embraces of those beings in whom the
divine nature mysteriously coexists with the form and even the appetites of
true humanity.

Christianity itself has not uniformly escaped the taint of these unhappy
delusions; indeed it has often been sullied by the extravagances of vain
pretenders to a divinity equal to or even surpassing that of its great
Founder. In the second century Montanus the Phrygian claimed to be the
incarnate Trinity, uniting in his single person God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Ghost. Nor is this an isolated case, the exorbitant
pretension of a single ill-balanced mind. From the earliest times down to the
present day many sects have believed that Christ, nay God himself, is
incarnate in every fully initiated Christian, and they have carried this
belief to its logical conclusion by adoring each other. Tertullian records
that this was done by his fellow-Christians at Carthage in the second century;
the disciples of St. Columba worshipped him as an embodiment of Christ; and in
the eighth century Elipandus of Toledo spoke of Christ as a god among gods,
meaning that all believers were gods just as truly as Jesus himself. The
adoration of each other was customary among the Albigenses, and is noticed
hundreds of times in the records of the Inquisition at Toulouse in the early
part of the fourteenth century.

In the thirteenth century there arose a sect called the Brethren and
Sisters of the Free Spirit, who held that by long and assiduous contemplation
any man might be united to the deity in an ineffable manner and become one
with the source and parent of all things, and that he who had thus ascended to
God and been absorbed in his beatific essence, actually formed part of the
Godhead, was the Son of God in the same sense and manner with Christ himself,
and enjoyed thereby a glorious immunity from the trammels of all laws human
and divine. Inwardly transported by this blissful persuasion, though outwardly
presenting in their aspect and manners a shocking air of lunacy and
distraction, the sectaries roamed from place to place, attired in the most
fantastic apparel and begging their bread with wild shouts and clamour,
spurning indignantly every kind of honest labour and industry as an obstacle
to divine contemplation and to the ascent of the soul towards the Father of
spirits. In all their excursions they were followed by women with whom they
lived on terms of the closest familiarity. Those of them who conceived they
had made the greatest proficiency in the higher spiritual life dispensed with
the use of clothes altogether in their assemblies, looking upon decency and
modesty as marks of inward corruption, characteristics of a soul that still
grovelled under the dominion of the flesh and had not yet been elevated into
communion with the divine spirit, its centre and source. Sometimes their
progress towards this mystic communion was accelerated by the Inquisition, and
they expired in the flames, not merely with unclouded serenity, but with the
most triumphant feelings of cheerfulness and joy.

About the year 1830 there appeared, in one of the States of the American
Union bordering on Kentucky, an impostor who declared that he was the Son of
God, the Saviour of mankind, and that he had reappeared on earth to recall the
impious, the unbelieving, and sinners to their duty. He protested that if they
did not mend their ways within a certain time, he would give the signal, and
in a moment the world would crumble to ruins. These extravagant pretensions
were received with favour even by persons of wealth and position in society.
At last a German humbly besought the new Messiah to announce the dreadful
catastrophe to his fellow-countrymen in the German language, as they did not
understand English, and it seemed a pity that they should be damned merely on
that account. The would-be Saviour in reply confessed with great candour that
he did not know German. What! retorted the German, you the Son of God, and
don't speak all languages, and don't even know German? Come, come, you are a
knave, a hypocrite, and a madman. Bedlam is the place for you. The spectators
laughed, and went away ashamed of their credulity.

Sometimes, at the death of the human incarnation, the divine spirit
transmigrates into another man. The Buddhist Tartars believe in a great number
of living Buddhas, who officiate as Grand Lamas at the head of the most
important monasteries. When one of these Grand Lamas dies his disciples do not
sorrow, for they know that he will soon reappear, being born in the form of an
infant. Their only anxiety is to discover the place of his birth. If at this
time they see a rainbow they take it as a sign sent them by the departed Lama
to guide them to his cradle. Sometimes the divine infant himself reveals his
identity. I am the Grand Lama, he says, the living Buddha of such and such
a temple. Take me to my old monastery. I am its immortal head. In whatever
way the birthplace of the Buddha is revealed, whether by the Buddha's own
avowal or by the sign in the sky, tents are struck, and the joyful pilgrims,
often headed by the king or one of the most illustrious of the royal family,
set forth to find and bring home the infant god. Generally he is born in
Tibet, the holy land, and to reach him the caravan has often to traverse the
most frightful deserts. When at last they find the child they fall down and
worship him. Before, however, he is acknowledged as the Grand Lama whom they
seek he must satisfy them of his identity. He is asked the name of the
monastery of which he claims to be the head, how far off it is, and how many
monks live in it; he must also describe the habits of the deceased Grand Lama
and the manner of his death. Then various articles, as prayer-books, tea-pots,
and cups, are placed before him, and he has to point out those used by himself
in his previous life. If he does so without a mistake his claims are admitted,
and he is conducted in triumph to the monastery. At the head of all the Lamas
is the Dalai Lama of Lhasa, the Rome of Tibet. He is regarded as a living god,
and at death his divine and immortal spirit is born again in a child.
According to some accounts the mode of discovering the Dalai Lama is similar
to the method, already described, of discovering an ordinary Grand Lama. Other
accounts speak of an election by drawing lots from a golden jar. Wherever he
is born, the trees and plants put forth green leaves; at his bidding flowers
bloom and springs of water rise; and his presence diffuses heavenly blessings.

But he is by no means the only man who poses as a god in these regions. A
register of all the incarnate gods in the Chinese empire is kept in the Li
fan yiian or Colonial Office at Peking. The number of gods who have thus
taken out a license is one hundred and sixty. Tibet is blessed with thirty of
them, Northern Mongolia rejoices in nineteen, and Southern Mongolia basks in
the sunshine of no less than fifty-seven. The Chinese government, with a
paternal solicitude for the welfare of its subjects, forbids the gods on the
register to be reborn anywhere but in Tibet. They fear lest the birth of a god
in Mongolia should have serious political consequences by stirring the dormant
patriotism and warlike spirit of the Mongols, who might rally round an
ambitious native deity of royal lineage and seek to win for him, at the point
of the sword, a temporal as well as a spiritual kingdom. But besides these
public or licensed gods there are a great many little private gods, or
unlicensed practitioners of divinity, who work miracles and bless their people
in holes and corners; and of late years the Chinese government has winked at
the rebirth of these pettifogging deities outside of Tibet. However, once they
are born, the government keeps its eye on them as well as on the regular
practitioners, and if any of them misbehaves he is promptly degraded, banished
to a distant monastery, and strictly forbidden ever to be born again in the
flesh.

From our survey of the religious position occupied by the king in rude
societies we may infer that the claim to divine and supernatural powers put
forward by the monarchs of great historical empires like those of Egypt,
Mexico, and Peru, was not the simple outcome of inflated vanity or the empty
expression of a grovelling adulation; it was merely a survival and extension
of the old savage apotheosis of living kings. Thus, for example, as children
of the Sun the Incas of Peru were revered like gods; they could do no wrong,
and no one dreamed of offending against the person, honour, or property of the
monarch or of any of the royal race. Hence, too, the Incas did not, like most
people, look on sickness as an evil. They considered it a messenger sent from
their father the Sun to call them to come and rest with him in heaven.
Therefore the usual words in which an Inca announced his approaching end were
these: My father calls me to come and rest with him. They would not oppose
their father's will by offering sacrifice for recovery, but openly declared
that he had called them to his rest. Issuing from the sultry valleys upon the
lofty tableland of the Colombian Andes, the Spanish conquerors were astonished
to find, in contrast to the savage hordes they had left in the sweltering
jungles below, a people enjoying a fair degree of civilisation, practising
agriculture, and living under a government which Humboldt has compared to the
theocracies of Tibet and Japan. These were the Chibchas, Muyscas, or Mozcas,
divided into two kingdoms, with capitals at Bogota and Tunja, but united
apparently in spiritual allegiance to the high pontiff of Sogamozo or Iraca.
By a long and ascetic novitiate, this ghostly ruler was reputed to have
acquired such sanctity that the waters and the rain obeyed him, and the
weather depended on his will. The Mexican kings at their accession, as we have
seen, took an oath that they would make the sun to shine, the clouds to give
rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to bring forth fruits in abundance. We
are told that Montezuma, the last king of Mexico, was worshipped by his people
as a god.

The early Babylonian kings, from the time of Sargon I. till the fourth
dynasty of Ur or later, claimed to be gods in their lifetime. The monarchs of
the fourth dynasty of Ur in particular had temples built in their honour; they
set up their statues in various sanctuaries and commanded the people to
sacrifice to them; the eighth month was especially dedicated to the kings, and
sacrifices were offered to them at the new moon and on the fifteenth of each
month. Again, the Parthian monarchs of the Arsacid house styled themselves
brothers of the sun and moon and were worshipped as deities. It was esteemed
sacrilege to strike even a private member of the Arsacid family in a brawl.

The kings of Egypt were deified in their lifetime, sacrifices were offered
to them, and their worship was celebrated in special temples and by special
priests. Indeed the worship of the kings sometimes cast that of the gods into
the shade. Thus in the reign of Merenra a high official declared that he had
built many holy places in order that the spirits of the king, the ever-living
Merenra, might be invoked more than all the gods. It has never been doubted
that the king claimed actual divinity; he was the 'great god,' the'golden
Horus,' and son of Ra. He claimed authority not only over Egypt, but over'all
lands and nations,''the whole world in its length and its breadth, the east
and the west,''the entire compass of the great circuit of the sun,''the sky
and what is in it, the earth and all that is upon it,''every creature that
walks upon two or upon four legs, all that fly or flutter, the whole world
offers her productions to him.' Whatever in fact might be asserted of the
Sun-god, was dogmatically predicable of the king of Egypt. His titles were
directly derived from those of the Sun-god. In the course of his existence,
we are told, the king of Egypt exhausted all the possible conceptions of
divinity which the Egyptians had framed for themselves. A superhuman god by
his birth and by his royal office, he became the deified man after his death.
Thus all that was known of the divine was summed up in him.

We have now completed our sketch, for it is no more than a sketch, of the
evolution of that sacred kingship which attained its highest form, its most
absolute expression, in the monarchies of Peru and Egypt. Historically, the
institution appears to have originated in the order of public magicians or
medicine-men; logically it rests on a mistaken deduction from the association
of ideas. Men mistook the order of their ideas for the order of nature, and
hence imagined that the control which they have, or seem to have, over their
thoughts, permitted them to exercise a corresponding control over things. The
men who for one reason or another, because of the strength or the weakness of
their natural parts, were supposed to possess these magical powers in the
highest degree, were gradually marked off from their fellows and became a
separate class, who were destined to exercise a most far-reaching influence on
the political, religious, and intellectual evolution of mankind. Social
progress, as we know, consists mainly in a successive differentiation of
functions, or, in simpler language, a division of labour. The work which in
primitive society is done by all alike and by all equally ill, or nearly so,
is gradually distributed among different classes of workers and executed more
and more perfectly; and so far as the products, material or immaterial, of
this specialised labour are shared by all, the whole community benefits by the
increasing specialisation. Now magicians or medicine-men appear to constitute
the oldest artificial or professional class in the evolution of society. For
sorcerers are found in every savage tribe known to us; and among the lowest
savages, such as the Australian aborigines, they are the only professional
class that exists. As time goes on, and the process of differentiation
continues, the order of medicine-men is itself subdivided into such classes as
the healers of disease, the makers of rain, and so forth; while the most
powerful member of the order wins for himself a position as chief and
gradually develops into a sacred king, his old magical functions falling more
and more into the background and being exchanged for priestly or even divine
duties, in proportion as magic is slowly ousted by religion. Still later, a
partition is effected between the civil and the religious aspect of the
kingship, the temporal power being committed to one man and the spiritual to
another. Meanwhile the magicians, who may be repressed but cannot be
extirpated by the predominance of religion, still addict themselves to their
old occult arts in preference to the newer ritual of sacrifice and prayer; and
in time the more sagacious of their number perceive the fallacy of magic and
hit upon a more effectual mode of manipulating the forces of nature for the
good of man; in short, they abandon sorcery for science. I am far from
affirming that the course of development has everywhere rigidly followed these
lines: it has doubtless varied greatly in different societies. I merely mean
to indicate in the broadest outline what I conceive to have been its general
trend. Regarded from the industrial point of view the evolution has been from
uniformity to diversity of function: regarded from the political point of
view, it has been from democracy to despotism. With the later history of
monarchy, especially with the decay of despotism and its displacement by forms
of government better adapted to the higher needs of humanity, we are not
concerned in this enquiry: our theme is the growth, not the decay, of a great
and, in its time, beneficent institution.

Chapter 8. Departmental Kings of Nature

THE PRECEDING investigation has proved that the same union of sacred
functions with a royal title which meets us in the King of the Wood at Nemi,
the Sacrificial King at Rome, and the magistrate called the King at Athens,
occurs frequently outside the limits of classical antiquity and is a common
feature of societies at all stages from barbarism to civilisation. Further, it
appears that the royal priest is often a king, not only in name but in fact,
swaying the sceptre as well as the crosier. All this confirms the traditional
view of the origin of the titular and priestly kings in the republics of
ancient Greece and Italy. At least by showing that the combination of
spiritual and temporal power, of which Graeco-Italian tradition preserved the
memory, has actually existed in many places, we have obviated any suspicion of
improbability that might have attached to the tradition. Therefore we may now
fairly ask, May not the King of the Wood have had an origin like that which a
probable tradition assigns to the Sacrificial King of Rome and the titular
King of Athens? In other words, may not his predecessors in office have been a
line of kings whom a republican revolution stripped of their political power,
leaving them only their religious functions and the shadow of a crown? There
are at least two reasons for answering this question in the negative. One
reason is drawn from the abode of the priest of Nemi; the other from his
title, the King of the Wood. If his predecessors had been kings in the
ordinary sense, he would surely have been found residing, like the fallen
kings of Rome and Athens, in the city of which the sceptre had passed from
him. This city must have been Aricia, for there was none nearer. But Aricia
was three miles off from his forest sanctuary by the lake shore. If he
reigned, it was not in the city, but in the greenwood. Again his title, King
of the Wood, hardly allows us to suppose that he had ever been a king in the
common sense of the word. More likely he was a king of nature, and of a
special side of nature, namely, the woods from which he took his title. If we
could find instances of what we may call departmental kings of nature, that is
of persons supposed to rule over particular elements or aspects of nature,
they would probably present a closer analogy to the King of the Wood than the
divine kings we have been hitherto considering, whose control of nature is
general rather than special. Instances of such departmental kings are not
wanting.

On a hill at Bomma near the mouth of the Congo dwells Namvulu Vumu, King
of the Rain and Storm. Of some of the tribes on the Upper Nile we are told
that they have no kings in the common sense; the only persons whom they
acknowledge as such are the Kings of the Rain, Mata Kodou, who are credited
with the power of giving rain at the proper time, that is, the rainy season.
Before the rains begin to fall at the end of March the country is a parched
and arid desert; and the cattle, which form the people's chief wealth, perish
for lack of grass. So, when the end of March draws on, each householder
betakes himself to the King of the Rain and offers him a cow that he may make
the blessed waters of heaven to drip on the brown and withered pastures. If no
shower falls, the people assemble and demand that the king shall give them
rain; and if the sky still continues cloudless, they rip up his belly, in
which he is believed to keep the storms. Amongst the Bari tribe one of these
Rain Kings made rain by sprinkling water on the ground out of a handbell.

Among tribes on the outskirts of Abyssinia a similar office exists and has
been thus described by an observer: The priesthood of the Alfai, as he is
called by the Barea and Kunama, is a remarkable one; he is believed to be able
to make rain. This office formerly existed among the Algeds and appears to be
still common to the Nuba negroes. The Alfai of the Barea, who is also
consulted by the northern Kunama, lives near Tembadere on a mountain alone
with his family. The people bring him tribute in the form of clothes and
fruits, and cultivate for him a large field of his own. He is a kind of king,
and his office passes by inheritance to his brother or sister's son. He is
supposed to conjure down rain and to drive away the locusts. But if he
disappoints the people's expectation and a great drought arises in the land,
the Alfai is stoned to death, and his nearest relations are obliged to cast
the first stone at him. When we passed through the country, the office of
Alfai was still held by an old man; but I heard that rain-making had proved
too dangerous for him and that he had renounced his office.

In the backwoods of Cambodia live two mysterious sovereigns known as the
King of the Fire and the King of the Water. Their fame is spread all over the
south of the great Indo-Chinese peninsula; but only a faint echo of it has
reached the West. Down to a few years ago no European, so far as is known, had
ever seen either of them; and their very existence might have passed for a
fable, were it not that till lately communications were regularly maintained
between them and the King of Cambodia, who year by year exchanged presents
with them. Their royal functions are of a purely mystic or spiritual order;
they have no political authority; they are simple peasants, living by the
sweat of their brow and the offerings of the faithful. According to one
account they live in absolute solitude, never meeting each other and never
seeing a human face. They inhabit successively seven towers perched upon seven
mountains, and every year they pass from one tower to another. People come
furtively and cast within their reach what is needful for their subsistence.
The kingship lasts seven years, the time necessary to inhabit all the towers
successively; but many die before their time is out. The offices are
hereditary in one or (according to others) two royal families, who enjoy high
consideration, have revenues assigned to them, and are exempt from the
necessity of tilling the ground. But naturally the dignity is not coveted, and
when a vacancy occurs, all eligible men (they must be strong and have
children) flee and hide themselves. Another account, admitting the reluctance
of the hereditary candidates to accept the crown, does not countenance the
report of their hermit-like seclusion in the seven towers. For it represents
the people as prostrating themselves before the mystic kings whenever they
appear in public, it being thought that a terrible hurricane would burst over
the country if this mark of homage were omitted. Like many other sacred kings,
of whom we shall read in the sequel, the Kings of Fire and Water are not
allowed to die a natural death, for that would lower their reputation.
Accordingly when one of them is seriously ill, the elders hold a consultation
and if they think he cannot recover they stab him to death. His body is burned
and the ashes are piously collected and publicly honoured for five years. Part
of them is given to the widow, and she keeps them in an urn, which she must
carry on her back when she goes to weep on her husband's grave.

We are told that the Fire King, the more important of the two, whose
supernatural powers have never been questioned, officiates at marriages,
festivals, and sacrifices in honour of the Yan or spirit. On these occasions
a special place is set apart for him; and the path by which he approaches is
spread with white cotton cloths. A reason for confining the royal dignity to
the same family is that this family is in possession of certain famous
talismans which would lose their virtue or disappear if they passed out of the
family. These talismans are three: the fruit of a creeper called Cui,
gathered ages ago at the time of the last deluge, but still fresh and green; a
rattan, also very old but bearing flowers that never fade; and lastly, a sword
containing a Yan or spirit, who guards it constantly and works miracles with
it. The spirit is said to be that of a slave, whose blood chanced to fall upon
the blade while it was being forged, and who died a voluntary death to expiate
his involuntary offence. By means of the two former talismans the Water King
can raise a flood that would drown the whole earth. If the Fire King draws the
magic sword a few inches from its sheath, the sun is hidden and men and beasts
fall into a profound sleep; were he to draw it quite out of the scabbard, the
world would come to an end. To this wondrous brand sacrifices of buffaloes,
pigs, fowls, and ducks are offered for rain. It is kept swathed in cotton and
silk; and amongst the annual presents sent by the King of Cambodia were rich
stuffs to wrap the sacred sword.

Contrary to the common usage of the country, which is to bury the dead,
the bodies of both these mystic monarchs are burnt, but their nails and some
of their teeth and bones are religiously preserved as amulets. It is while the
corpse is being consumed on the pyre that the kinsmen of the deceased magician
flee to the forest and hide themselves, for fear of being elevated to the
invidious dignity which he has just vacated. The people go and search for
them, and the first whose lurking place they discover is made King of Fire or
Water.

These, then, are examples of what I have called departmental kings of
nature. But it is a far cry to Italy from the forests of Cambodia and the
sources of the Nile. And though Kings of Rain, Water, and Fire have been
found, we have still to discover a King of the Wood to match the Arician
priest who bore that title. Perhaps we shall find him nearer home.

Chapter 9. The Worship of Trees.

1. Tree-spirits.

IN THE RELIGIOUS history of the Aryan race in Europe the worship of trees
has played an important part. Nothing could be more natural. For at the dawn
of history Europe was covered with immense primaeval forests, in which the
scattered clearings must have appeared like islets in an ocean of green. Down
to the first century before our era the Hercynian forest stretched eastward
from the Rhine for a distance at once vast and unknown; Germans whom Caesar
questioned had travelled for two months through it without reaching the end.
Four centuries later it was visited by the Emperor Julian, and the solitude,
the gloom, the silence of the forest appear to have made a deep impression on
his sensitive nature. He declared that he knew nothing like it in the Roman
empire. In our own country the wealds of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex are remnants
of the great forest of Anderida, which once clothed the whole of the
south-eastern portion of the island. Westward it seems to have stretched till
it joined another forest that extended from Hampshire to Devon. In the reign
of Henry II. the citizens of London still hunted the wild bull and the boar in
the woods of Hampstead. Even under the later Plantagenets the royal forests
were sixty-eight in number. In the forest of Arden it was said that down to
modern times a squirrel might leap from tree to tree for nearly the whole
length of Warwickshire. The excavation of ancient pile-villages in the valley
of the Po has shown that long before the rise and probably the foundation of
Rome the north of Italy was covered with dense woods of elms, chestnuts, and
especially of oaks. Archaeology is here confirmed by history; for classical
writers contain many references to Italian forests which have now disappeared.
As late as the fourth century before our era Rome was divided from central
Etruria by the dreaded Ciminian forest, which Livy compares to the woods of
Germany. No merchant, if we may trust the Roman historian, had ever penetrated
its pathless solitudes; and it was deemed a most daring feat when a Roman
general, after sending two scouts to explore its intricacies, led his army
into the forest and, making his way to a ridge of the wooded mountains, looked
down on the rich Etrurian fields spread out below. In Greece beautiful woods
of pine, oak, and other trees still linger on the slopes of the high Arcadian
mountains, still adorn with their verdure the deep gorge through which the
Ladon hurries to join the sacred Alpheus, and were still, down to a few years
ago, mirrored in the dark blue waters of the lonely lake of Pheneus; but they
are mere fragments of the forests which clothed great tracts in antiquity, and
which at a more remote epoch may have spanned the Greek peninsula from sea to
sea.

From an examination of the Teutonic words for temple Grimm has made it
probable that amongst the Germans the oldest sanctuaries were natural woods.
However that may be, tree-worship is well attested for all the great European
families of the Aryan stock. Amongst the Celts the oak-worship of the Druids
is familiar to every one, and their old word for sanctuary seems to be
identical in origin and meaning with the Latin nemus, a grove or woodland
glade, which still survives in the name of Nemi. Sacred groves were common
among the ancient Germans, and tree-worship is hardly extinct amongst their
descendants at the present day. How serious that worship was in former times
may be gathered from the ferocious penalty appointed by the old German laws
for such as dared to peel the bark of a standing tree. The culprit's navel was
to be cut out and nailed to the part of the tree which he had peeled, and he
was to be driven round and round the tree till all his guts were wound about
its trunk. The intention of the punishment clearly was to replace the dead
bark by a living substitute taken from the culprit; it was a life for a life,
the life of a man for the life of a tree. At Upsala, the old religious capital
of Sweden, there was a sacred grove in which every tree was regarded as
divine. The heathen Slavs worshipped trees and groves. The Lithuanians were
not converted to Christianity till towards the close of the fourteenth
century, and amongst them at the date of their conversion the worship of trees
was prominent. Some of them revered remarkable oaks and other great shady
trees, from which they received oracular responses. Some maintained holy
groves about their villages or houses, where even to break a twig would have
been a sin. They thought that he who cut a bough in such a grove either died
suddenly or was crippled in one of his limbs. Proofs of the prevalence of
tree-worship in ancient Greece and Italy are abundant. In the sanctuary of
Aesculapius at Cos, for example, it was forbidden to cut down the
cypress-trees under a penalty of a thousand drachms. But nowhere, perhaps, in
the ancient world was this antique form of religion better preserved than in
the heart of the great metropolis itself. In the Forum, the busy centre of
Roman life, the sacred fig-tree of Romulus was worshipped down to the days of
the empire, and the withering of its trunk was enough to spread consternation
through the city. Again, on the slope of the Palatine Hill grew a cornel-tree
which was esteemed one of the most sacred objects in Rome. Whenever the tree
appeared to a passer-by to be drooping, he set up a hue and cry which was
echoed by the people in the street, and soon a crowd might be seen running
helter-skelter from all sides with buckets of water, as if (says Plutarch)
they were hastening to put out a fire.

Among the tribes of the Finnish-Ugrian stock in Europe the heathen worship
was performed for the most part in sacred groves, which were always enclosed
with a fence. Such a grove often consisted merely of a glade or clearing with
a few trees dotted about, upon which in former times the skins of the
sacrificial victims were hung. The central point of the grove, at least among
the tribes of the Volga, was the sacred tree, beside which everything else
sank into insignificance. Before it the worshippers assembled and the priest
offered his prayers, at its roots the victim was sacrificed, and its boughs
sometimes served as a pulpit. No wood might be hewn and no branch broken in
the grove, and women were generally forbidden to enter it.

But it is necessary to examine in some detail the notions on which the
worship of trees and plants is based. To the savage the world in general is
animate, and trees and plants are no exception to the rule. He thinks that
they have souls like his own, and he treats them accordingly. They say,
writes the ancient vegetarian Porphyry, that primitive men led an unhappy
life, for their superstition did not stop at animals but extended even to
plants. For why should the slaughter of an ox or a sheep be a greater wrong
than the felling of a fir or an oak, seeing that a soul is implanted in these
trees also? Similarly, the Hidatsa Indians of North America believe that
every natural object has its spirit, or to speak more properly, its shade. To
these shades some consideration or respect is due, but not equally to all. For
example, the shade of the cottonwood, the greatest tree in the valley of the
Upper Missouri, is supposed to possess an intelligence which, if properly
approached, may help the Indians in certain undertakings; but the shades of
shrubs and grasses are of little account. When the Missouri, swollen by a
freshet in spring, carries away part of its banks and sweeps some tall tree
into its current, it is said that the spirit of the tree cries, while the
roots still cling to the land and until the trunk falls with a splash into the
stream. Formerly the Indians considered it wrong to fell one of these giants,
and when large logs were needed they made use only of trees which had fallen
of themselves. Till lately some of the more credulous old men declared that
many of the misfortunes of their people were caused by this modern disregard
for the rights of the living cottonwood. The Iroquois believed that each
species of tree, shrub, plant, and herb had its own spirit, and to these
spirits it was their custom to return thanks. The Wanika of Eastern Africa
fancy that every tree, and especially every coco-nut tree, has its spirit;
the destruction of a cocoa-nut tree is regarded as equivalent to matricide,
because that tree gives them life and nourishment, as a mother does her
child. Siamese monks, believing that there are souls everywhere, and that to
destroy anything whatever is forcibly to dispossess a soul, will not break a
branch of a tree, as they will not break the arm of an innocent person.
These monks, of course, are Buddhists. But Buddhist animism is not a
philosophical theory. It is simply a common savage dogma incorporated in the
system of an historical religion. To suppose, with Benfey and others, that the
theories of animism and transmigration current among rude peoples of Asia are
derived from Buddhism, is to reverse the facts.

Sometimes it is only particular sorts of trees that are supposed to be
tenanted by spirits. At Grbalj in Dalmatia it is said that among great
beeches, oaks, and other trees there are some that are endowed with shades or
souls, and whoever fells one of them must die on the spot, or at least live an
invalid for the rest of his days. If a woodman fears that a tree which he has
felled is one of this sort, he must cut off the head of a live hen on the
stump of the tree with the very same axe with which he cut down the tree. This
will protect him from all harm, even if the tree be one of the animated kind.
The silk-cotton trees, which rear their enormous trunks to a stupendous
height, far out-topping all the other trees of the forest, are regarded with
reverence throughout West Africa, from the Senegal to the Niger, and are
believed to be the abode of a god or spirit. Among the Ewespeaking peoples of
the Slave Coast the indwelling god of this giant of the forest goes by the
name of Huntin. Trees in which he specially dwellsfor it is not every
silk-cotton tree that he thus honoursare surrounded by a girdle of
palm-leaves; and sacrifices of fowls, and occasionally of human beings, are
fastened to the trunk or laid against the foot of the tree. A tree
distinguished by a girdle of palm-leaves may not be cut down or injured in any
way; and even silk-cotton trees which are not supposed to be animated by
Huntin may not be felled unless the woodman first offers a sacrifice of fowls
and palm-oil to purge himself of the proposed sacrilege. To omit the sacrifice
is an offence which may be punished with death. Among the Kangra mountains of
the Punjaub a girl used to be annually sacrificed to an old cedar-tree, the
families of the village taking it in turn to supply the victim. The tree was
cut down not very many years ago.

If trees are animate, they are necessarily sensitive and the cutting of
them down becomes a delicate surgical operation, which must be performed with
as tender a regard as possible for the feelings of the sufferers, who
otherwise may turn and rend the careless or bungling operator. When an oak is
being felled it gives a kind of shriekes or groanes, that may be heard a mile
off, as if it were the genius of the oake lamenting. E. Wyld, Esq., hath heard
it severall times. The Ojebways very seldom cut down green or living trees,
from the idea that it puts them to pain, and some of their medicine-men
profess to have heard the wailing of the trees under the axe. Trees that
bleed and utter cries of pain or indignation when they are hacked or burned
occur very often in Chinese books, even in Standard Histories. Old peasants in
some parts of Austria still believe that forest-trees are animate, and will
not allow an incision to be made in the bark without special cause; they have
heard from their fathers that the tree feels the cut not less than a wounded
man his hurt. In felling a tree they beg its pardon. It is said that in the
Upper Palatinate also old woodmen still secretly ask a fine, sound tree to
forgive them before they cut it down. So in Jarkino the woodman craves pardon
of the tree he fells. Before the Ilocanes of Luzon cut down trees in the
virgin forest or on the mountains, they recite some verses to the following
effect: Be not uneasy, my friend, though we fell what we have been ordered to
fell. This they do in order not to draw down on themselves the hatred of the
spirits who live in the trees, and who are apt to avenge themselves by
visiting with grievous sickness such as injure them wantonly. The Basoga of
Central Africa think that, when a tree is cut down, the angry spirit which
inhabits it may cause the death of the chief and his family. To prevent this
disaster they consult a medicine-man before they fell a tree. If the man of
skill gives leave to proceed, the woodman first offers a fowl and a goat to
the tree; then as soon as he has given the first blow with the axe, he applies
his mouth to the cut and sucks some of the sap. In this way he forms a
brotherhood with the tree, just as two men become blood-brothers by sucking
each other's blood. After that he can cut down his tree-brother with impunity.

But the spirits of vegetation are not always treated with deference and
respect. If fair words and kind treatment do not move them, stronger measures
are sometimes resorted to. The durian-tree of the East Indies, whose smooth
stem often shoots up to a height of eighty or ninety feet without sending out
a branch, bears a fruit of the most delicious flavour and the most disgusting
stench. The Malays cultivate the tree for the sake of its fruit, and have been
known to resort to a peculiar ceremony for the purpose of stimulating its
fertility. Near Jugra in Selangor there is a small grove of durian-trees, and
on a specially chosen day the villagers used to assemble in it. Thereupon one
of the local sorcerers would take a hatchet and deliver several shrewd blows
on the trunk of the most barren of the trees, saying, Will you now bear fruit
or not? If you do not, I shall fell you. To this the tree replied through the
mouth of another man who had climbed a mangostin-tree hard by (the durian-tree
being unclimbable), Yes, I will now bear fruit; I beg of you not to fell me.
So in Japan to make trees bear fruit two men go into an orchard. One of them
climbs up a tree and the other stands at the foot with an axe. The man with
the axe asks the tree whether it will yield a good crop next year and
threatens to cut it down if it does not. To this the man among the branches
replies on behalf of the tree that it will bear abundantly. Odd as this mode
of horticulture may seem to us, it has its exact parallels in Europe. On
Christmas Eve many a South Slavonian and Bulgarian peasant swings an axe
threateningly against a barren fruit-tree, while another man standing by
intercedes for the menaced tree, saying, Do not cut it down; it will soon
bear fruit. Thrice the axe is swung, and thrice the impending blow is
arrested at the entreaty of the intercessor. After that the frightened tree
will certainly bear fruit next year.

The conception of trees and plants as animated beings naturally results in
treating them as male and female, who can be married to each other in a real,
and not merely a figurative or poetical, sense of the word. The notion is not
purely fanciful, for plants like animals have their sexes and reproduce their
kind by the union of the male and female elements. But whereas in all the
higher animals the organs of the two sexes are regularly separated between
different individuals, in most plants they exist together in every individual
of the species. This rule, however, is by no means universal, and in many
species the male plant is distinct from the female. The distinction appears to
have been observed by some savages, for we are told that the Maoris are
acquainted with the sex of trees, etc., and have distinct names for the male
and female of some trees. The ancients knew the difference between the male
and the female date-palm, and fertilised them artificially by shaking the
pollen of the male tree over the flowers of the female. The fertilisation took
place in spring. Among the heathen of Harran the month during which the palms
were fertilised bore the name of the Date Month, and at this time they
celebrated the marriage festival of all the gods and goddesses. Different from
this true and fruitful marriage of the palm are the false and barren marriages
of plants which play a part in Hindoo superstition. For example, if a Hindoo
has planted a grove of mangos, neither he nor his wife may taste of the fruit
until he has formally married one of the trees, as a bridegroom, to a tree of
a different sort, commonly a tamarind-tree, which grows near it in the grove.
If there is no tamarind to act as bride, a jasmine will serve the turn. The
expenses of such a marriage are often considerable, for the more Brahmans are
feasted at it, the greater the glory of the owner of the grove. A family has
been known to sell its golden and silver trinkets, and to borrow all the money
they could in order to marry a mango-tree to a jasmine with due pomp and
ceremony. On Christmas Eve German peasants used to tie fruit-trees together
with straw ropes to make them bear fruit, saying that the trees were thus
married.

In the Moluccas, when the clove-trees are in blossom, they are treated
like pregnant women. No noise may be made near them; no light or fire may be
carried past them at night; no one may approach them with his hat on, all must
uncover in their presence. These precautions are observed lest the tree should
be alarmed and bear no fruit, or should drop its fruit too soon, like the
untimely delivery of a woman who has been frightened in her pregnancy. So in
the East the growing rice-crop is often treated with the same considerate
regard as a breeding woman. Thus in Amboyna, when the rice is in bloom, the
people say that it is pregnant and fire no guns and make no other noises near
the field, for fear lest, if the rice were thus disturbed, it would miscarry,
and the crop would be all straw and no grain.

Sometimes it is the souls of the dead which are believed to animate trees.
The Dieri tribe of Central Australia regard as very sacred certain trees which
are supposed to be their fathers transformed; hence they speak with reverence
of these trees, and are careful that they shall not be cut down or burned. If
the settlers require them to hew down the trees, they earnestly protest
against it, asserting that were they to do so they would have no luck, and
might be punished for not protecting their ancestors. Some of the Philippine
Islanders believe that the souls of their ancestors are in certain trees,
which they therefore spare. If they are obliged to fell one of these trees,
they excuse themselves to it by saying that it was the priest who made them do
it. The spirits take up their abode, by preference, in tall and stately trees
with great spreading branches. When the wind rustles the leaves, the natives
fancy it is the voice of the spirit; and they never pass near one of these
trees without bowing respectfully, and asking pardon of the spirit for
disturbing his repose. Among the Ignorrotes, every village has its sacred
tree, in which the souls of the dead forefathers of the hamlet reside.
Offerings are made to the tree, and any injury done to it is believed to
entail some misfortune on the village. Were the tree cut down, the village and
all its inhabitants would inevitably perish.

In Corea the souls of people who die of the plague or by the roadside, and
of women who expire in childbirth, invariably take up their abode in trees. To
such spirits offerings of cake, wine, and pork are made on heaps of stones
piled under the trees. In China it has been customary from time immemorial to
plant trees on graves in order thereby to strengthen the soul of the deceased
and thus to save his body from corruption; and as the evergreen cypress and
pine are deemed to be fuller of vitality than other trees, they have been
chosen by preference for this purpose. Hence the trees that grow on graves are
sometimes identified with the souls of the departed. Among the Miao-Kia, an
aboriginal race of Southern and Western China, a sacred tree stands at the
entrance of every village, and the inhabitants believe that it is tenanted by
the soul of their first ancestor and that it rules their destiny. Sometimes
there is a sacred grove near a village, where the trees are suffered to rot
and die on the spot. Their fallen branches cumber the ground, and no one may
remove them unless he has first asked leave of the spirit of the tree and
offered him a sacrifice. Among the Maraves of Southern Africa the
burial-ground is always regarded as a holy place where neither a tree may be
felled nor a beast killed, because everything there is supposed to be tenanted
by the souls of the dead.

In most, if not all, of these cases the spirit is viewed as incorporate in
the tree; it animates the tree and must suffer and die with it. But, according
to another and probably later opinion, the tree is not the body, but merely
the abode of the tree-spirit, which can quit it and return to it at pleasure.
The inhabitants of Siaoo, an East Indian island, believe in certain sylvan
spirits who dwell in forests or in great solitary trees. At full moon the
spirit comes forth from his lurking-place and roams about. He has a big head,
very long arms and legs, and a ponderous body. In order to propitiate the
wood-spirits people bring offerings of food, fowls, goats, and so forth to the
places which they are supposed to haunt. The people of Nias think that, when a
tree dies, its liberated spirit becomes a demon, which can kill a coco-nut
palm by merely lighting on its branches, and can cause the death of all the
children in a house by perching on one of the posts that support it. Further,
they are of opinion that certain trees are at all times inhabited by roving
demons who, if the trees were damaged, would be set free to go about on
errands of mischief. Hence the people respect these trees, and are careful not
to cut them down.

Not a few ceremonies observed at cutting down haunted trees are based on
the belief that the spirits have it in their power to quit the trees at
pleasure or in case of need. Thus when the Pelew Islanders are felling a tree,
they conjure the spirit of the tree to leave it and settle on another. The
wily negro of the Slave Coast, who wishes to fell an ashorin tree, but knows
that he cannot do it so long as the spirit remains in the tree, places a
little palm-oil on the ground as a bait, and then, when the unsuspecting
spirit has quitted the tree to partake of this dainty, hastens to cut down its
late abode. When the Toboongkoos of Celebes are about to clear a piece of
forest in order to plant rice, they build a tiny house and furnish it with
tiny clothes and some food and gold. Then they call together all the spirits
of the wood, offer them the little house with its contents, and beseech them
to quit the spot. After that they may safely cut down the wood without fearing
to wound themselves in so doing. Before the Tomori, another tribe of Celebes,
fell a tall tree they lay a quid of betel at its foot, and invite the spirit
who dwells in the tree to change his lodging; moreover, they set a little
ladder against the trunk to enable him to descend with safety and comfort. The
Mandelings of Sumatra endeavour to lay the blame of all such misdeeds at the
door of the Dutch authorities. Thus when a man is cutting a road through a
forest and has to fell a tall tree which blocks the way, he will not begin to
ply his axe until he has said: Spirit who lodgest in this tree, take it not
ill that I cut down thy dwelling, for it is done at no wish of mine but by
order of the Controller. And when he wishes to clear a piece of forest-land
for cultivation, it is necessary that he should come to a satisfactory
understanding with the woodland spirits who live there before he lays low
their leafy dwellings. For this purpose he goes to the middle of the plot of
ground, stoops down, and pretends to pick up a letter. Then unfolding a bit of
paper he reads aloud an imaginary letter from the Dutch Government, in which
he is strictly enjoined to set about clearing the land without delay. Having
done so, he says: You hear that, spirits. I must begin clearing at once, or I
shall be hanged.

Even when a tree has been felled, sawn into planks, and used to build a
house, it is possible that the woodland spirit may still be lurking in the
timber, and accordingly some people seek to propitiate him before or after
they occupy the new house. Hence, when a new dwelling is ready the Toradjas of
Celebes kill a goat, a pig, or a buffalo, and smear all the woodwork with its
blood. If the building is a lobo or spirit-house, a fowl or a dog is killed
on the ridge of the roof, and its blood allowed to flow down on both sides.
The ruder Tonapoo in such a case sacrifice a human being on the roof. This
sacrifice on the roof of a lobo or temple serves the same purpose as the
smearing of blood on the woodwork of an ordinary house. The intention is to
propitiate the forest-spirits who may still be in the timber; they are thus
put in good humour and will do the inmates of the house no harm. For a like
reason people in Celebes and the Moluccas are much afraid of planting a post
upside down at the building of a house; for the forest-spirit, who might still
be in the timber, would very naturally resent the indignity and visit the
inmates with sickness. The Kayans of Borneo are of opinion that tree-spirits
stand very stiffly on the point of honour and visit men with their displeasure
for any injury done to them. Hence after building a house, whereby they have
been forced to ill-treat many trees, these people observe a period of penance
for a year during which they must abstain from many things, such as the
killing of bears, tiger-cats, and serpents.

2. Beneficent Powers of Tree-Spirits

WHEN a tree comes to be viewed, no longer as the body of the tree-spirit,
but simply as its abode which it can quit at pleasure, an important advance
has been made in religious thought. Animism is passing into polytheism. In
other words, instead of regarding each tree as a living and conscious being,
man now sees in it merely a lifeless, inert mass, tenanted for a longer or
shorter time by a supernatural being who, as he can pass freely from tree to
tree, thereby enjoys a certain right of possession or lordship over the trees,
and, ceasing to be a tree-soul, becomes a forest god. As soon as the
tree-spirit is thus in a measure disengaged from each particular tree, he
begins to change his shape and assume the body of a man, in virtue of a
general tendency of early thought to clothe all abstract spiritual beings in
concrete human form. Hence in classical art the sylvan deities are depicted in
human shape, their woodland character being denoted by a branch or some
equally obvious symbol. But this change of shape does not affect the essential
character of the tree-spirit. The powers which he exercised as a tree-soul
incorporate in a tree, he still continues to wield as a god of trees. This I
shall now attempt to prove in detail. I shall show, first, that trees
considered as animate beings are credited with the power of making the rain to
fall, the sun to shine, flocks and herds to multiply, and women to bring forth
easily; and, second, that the very same powers are attributed to tree-gods
conceived as anthropomorphic beings or as actually incarnate in living men.

First, then, trees or tree-spirits are believed to give rain and sunshine.
When the missionary Jerome of Prague was persuading the heathen Lithuanians to
fell their sacred groves, a multitude of women besought the Prince of
Lithuania to stop him, saying that with the woods he was destroying the house
of god from which they had been wont to get rain and sunshine. The Mundaris in
Assam think that if a tree in the sacred grove is felled the sylvan gods
evince their displeasure by withholding rain. In order to procure rain the
inhabitants of Monyo, a village in the Sagaing district of Upper Burma, chose
the largest tamarind-tree near the village and named it the haunt of the
spirit (nat) who controls the rain. Then they offered bread, coco-nuts,
plantains, and fowls to the guardian spirit of the village and to the spirit
who gives rain, and they prayed, O Lord nat have pity on us poor mortals,
and stay not the rain. Inasmuch as our offering is given ungrudgingly, let the
rain fall day and night. Afterwards libations were made in honour of the
spirit of the tamarind-tree; and still later three elderly women, dressed in
fine clothes and wearing necklaces and earrings, sang the Rain Song.

Again, tree-spirits make the crops to grow. Amongst the Mundaris every
village has its sacred grove, and the grove deities are held responsible for
the crops, and are especially honoured at all the great agricultural
festivals. The negroes of the Gold Coast are in the habit of sacrificing at
the foot of certain tall trees, and they think that if one of these were
felled all the fruits of the earth would perish. The Gallas dance in couples
round sacred trees, praying for a good harvest. Every couple consists of a man
and woman, who are linked together by a stick, of which each holds one end.
Under their arms they carry green corn or grass. Swedish peasants stick a
leafy branch in each furrow of their corn-fields, believing that this will
ensure an abundant crop. The same idea comes out in the German and French
custom of the Harvest-May. This is a large branch or a whole tree, which is
decked with ears of corn, brought home on the last waggon from the
harvest-field, and fastened on the roof of the farmhouse or of the barn, where
it remains for a year. Mannhardt has proved that this branch or tree embodies
the tree-spirit conceived as the spirit of vegetation in general, whose
vivifying and fructifying influence is thus brought to bear upon the corn in
particular. Hence in Swabia the Harvest-May is fastened amongst the last
stalks of corn left standing on the field; in other places it is planted on
the corn-field and the last sheaf cut is attached to its trunk.

Again, the tree-spirit makes the herds to multiply and blesses women with
offspring. In Northern India the Emblica officinalis is a sacred tree. On
the eleventh of the month Phalgun (February) libations are poured at the foot
of the tree, a red or yellow string is bound about the trunk, and prayers are
offered to it for the fruitfulness of women, animals, and crops. Again, in
Northern India the coco-nut is esteemed one of the most sacred fruits, and is
called Sriphala, or the fruit of Sri, the goddess of prosperity. It is the
symbol of fertility, and all through Upper India is kept in shrines and
presented by the priests to women who desire to become mothers. In the town of
Qua, near Old Calabar, there used to grow a palm-tree which ensured conception
to any barren woman who ate a nut from its branches. In Europe the May-tree or
May-pole is apparently supposed to possess similar powers over both women and
cattle. Thus in some parts of Germany on the first of May the peasants set up
May-trees or May-bushes at the doors of stables and byres, one for each horse
and cow; this is thought to make the cows yield much milk. Of the Irish we are
told that they fancy a green bough of a tree, fastened on May-day against the
house, will produce plenty of milk that summer.

On the second of July some of the Wends used to set up an oak-tree in the
middle of the village with an iron cock fastened to its top; then they danced
round it, and drove the cattle round it to make them thrive. The Circassians
regard the pear-tree as the protector of cattle. So they cut down a young
pear-tree in the forest, branch it, and carry it home, where it is adored as a
divinity. Almost every house has one such pear-tree. In autumn, on the day of
the festival, the tree is carried into the house with great ceremony to the
sound of music and amid the joyous cries of all the inmates, who compliment it
on its fortunate arrival. It is covered with candles, and a cheese is fastened
to its top. Round about it they eat, drink, and sing. Then they bid the tree
good-bye and take it back to the courtyard, where it remains for the rest of
the year, set up against the wall, without receiving any mark of respect.

In the Tuhoe tribe of Maoris the power of making women fruitful is
ascribed to trees. These trees are associated with the navel-strings of
definite mythical ancestors, as indeed the navel-strings of all children used
to be hung upon them down to quite recent times. A barren woman had to embrace
such a tree with her arms, and she received a male or a female child according
as she embraced the east or the west side. The common European custom of
placing a green bush on May Day before or on the house of a beloved maiden
probably originated in the belief of the fertilising power of the tree-spirit.
In some parts of Bavaria such bushes are set up also at the houses of
newly-married pairs, and the practice is only omitted if the wife is near her
confinement; for in that case they say that the husband has set up a May-bush
for himself. Among the South Slavonians a barren woman, who desires to have a
child, places a new chemise upon a fruitful tree on the eve of St. George's
Day. Next morning before sunrise she examines the garment, and if she finds
that some living creature has crept on it, she hopes that her wish will be
fulfilled within the year. Then she puts on the chemise, confident that she
will be as fruitful as the tree on which the garment has passed the night.
Among the Kara-Kirghiz barren women roll themselves on the ground under a
solitary apple-tree, in order to obtain offspring. Lastly, the power of
granting to women an easy delivery at child-birth is ascribed to trees both in
Sweden and Africa. In some districts of Sweden there was formerly a bardtrd
or guardian-tree (lime, ash, or elm) in the neighbourhood of every farm. No
one would pluck a single leaf of the sacred tree, any injury to which was
punished by ill-luck or sickness. Pregnant women used to clasp the tree in
their arms in order to ensure an easy delivery. In some negro tribes of the
Congo region pregnant women make themselves garments out of the bark of a
certain sacred tree, because they believe that this tree delivers them from
the dangers that attend child-bearing. The story that Leto clasped a palm-tree
and an olive-tree or two laurel-trees, when she was about to give birth to the
divine twins Apollo and Artemis, perhaps points to a similar Greek belief in
the efficacy of certain trees to facilitate delivery.

Chapter 10. Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe

FROM THE FOREGOING review of the beneficent qualities commonly ascribed to
tree-spirits, it is easy to understand why customs like the May-tree or
May-pole have prevailed so widely and figured so prominently in the popular
festivals of European peasants. In spring or early summer or even on Midsummer
Day, it was and still is in many parts of Europe the custom to go out to the
woods, cut down a tree and bring it into the village, where it is set up amid
general rejoicings; or the people cut branches in the woods, and fasten them
on every house. The intention of these customs is to bring home to the
village, and to each house, the blessings which the tree-spirit has in its
power to bestow. Hence the custom in some places of planting a May-tree before
every house, or of carrying the village May-tree from door to door, that every
household may receive its share of the blessing. Out of the mass of evidence
on this subject a few examples may be selected.

Sir Henry Piers, in his Description of Westmeath, writing in 1682 says:
On May-eve, every family sets up before their door a green bush, strewed over
with yellow flowers, which the meadows yield plentifully. In countries where
timber is plentiful, they erect tall slender trees, which stand high, and they
continue almost the whole year; so as a stranger would go nigh to imagine that
they were all signs of ale-sellers, and that all houses were ale-houses. In
Northamptonshire a young tree ten or twelve feet high used to be planted
before each house on May Day so as to appear growing; flowers were thrown over
it and strewn about the door. Among ancient customs still retained by the
Cornish, may be reckoned that of decking their doors and porches on the first
of May with green boughs of sycamore and hawthorn, and of planting trees, or
rather stumps of trees, before their houses. In the north of England it was
formerly the custom for young people to rise a little after midnight on the
morning of the first of May, and go out with music and the blowing of horns
into the woods, where they broke branches and adorned them with nosegays and
crowns of flowers. This done, they returned about sunrise and fastened the
flower-decked branches over the doors and windows of their houses. At Abingdon
in Berkshire young people formerly went about in groups on May morning,
singing a carol of which the following are two of the verses:

We've been rambling all the night,
And sometime of this day;
And now returning back again,
We bring a garland gay.
A garland gay we bring you here;
And at your door we stand;
It is a sprout well budded out,
The work of our Lord's hand.

At the towns of Saffron Walden and Debden in Essex on the first of May
little girls go about in parties from door to door singing a song almost
identical with the above and carrying garlands; a doll dressed in white is
usually placed in the middle of each garland. Similar customs have been and
indeed are still observed in various parts of England. The garlands are
generally in the form of hoops intersecting each other at right angles. It
appears that a hoop wreathed with rowan and marsh marigold, and bearing
suspended within it two balls, is still carried on May Day by villagers in
some parts of Ireland. The balls, which are sometimes covered with gold and
silver paper, are said to have originally represented the sun and moon.

In some villages of the Vosges Mountains on the first Sunday of May young
girls go in bands from house to house, singing a song in praise of May, in
which mention is made of the bread and meal that come in May. If money is
given them, they fasten a green bough to the door; if it is refused, they wish
the family many children and no bread to feed them. In the French department
of Mayenne, boys who bore the name of Maillotins used to go about from farm
to farm on the first of May singing carols, for which they received money or a
drink; they planted a small tree or a branch of a tree. Near Saverne in Alsace
bands of people go about carrying May-trees. Amongst them is a man dressed in
a white shirt with his face blackened; in front of him is carried a large
May-tree, but each member of the band also carries a smaller one. One of the
company bears a huge basket, in which he collects eggs, bacon, and so forth.

On the Thursday before Whitsunday the Russian villagers go out into the
woods, sing songs, weave garlands, and cut down a young birch-tree, which they
dress up in woman's clothes, or adorn with many-coloured shreds and ribbons.
After that comes a feast, at the end of which they take the dressed-up
birch-tree, carry it home to their village with joyful dance and song, and set
it up in one of the houses, where it remains as an honoured guest till
Whitsunday. On the two intervening days they pay visits to the house where
their 'guest' is; but on the third day, Whitsunday, they take her to a stream
and fling her into its waters, throwing their garlands after her. In this
Russian custom the dressing of the birch in woman's clothes shows how clearly
the tree is personified; and the throwing it into a stream is most probably a
raincharm.

In some parts of Sweden on the eve of May Day lads go about carrying each
a bunch of fresh birch twigs wholly or partly in leaf. With the village
fiddler at their head, they make the round of the houses singing May songs;
the burden of their songs is a prayer for fine weather, a plentiful harvest,
and worldly and spiritual blessings. One of them carries a basket in which he
collects gifts of eggs and the like. If they are well received, they stick a
leafy twig in the roof over the cottage door. But in Sweden midsummer is the
season when these ceremonies are chiefly observed. On the Eve of St. John (the
twenty-third of June) the houses are thoroughly cleansed and garnished with
green boughs and flowers. Young fir-trees are raised at the doorway and
elsewhere about the homestead; and very often small umbrageous arbours are
constructed in the garden. In Stockholm on this day a leaf-market is held at
which thousands of May-poles (Maj Stanger), from six inches to twelve feet
high, decorated with leaves, flowers, slips of coloured paper, gilt egg-shells
strung on reeds, and so on, are exposed for sale. Bonfires are lit on the
hills, and the people dance round them and jump over them. But the chief event
of the day is setting up the May-pole. This consists of a straight and tall
sprucepine tree, stripped of its branches. At times hoops and at others
pieces of wood, placed crosswise, are attached to it at intervals; whilst at
others it is provided with bows, representing, so to say, a man with his arms
akimbo. From top to bottom not only the 'Maj Stang' (May-pole) itself, but the
hoops, bows, etc., are ornamented with leaves, flowers, slips of various
cloth, gilt egg-shells, etc.; and on the top of it is a large vane, or it may
be a flag. The raising of the May-pole, the decoration of which is done by
the village maidens, is an affair of much ceremony; the people flock to it
from all quarters, and dance round it in a great ring. Midsummer customs of
the same sort used to be observed in some parts of Germany. Thus in the towns
of the Upper Harz Mountains tall fir-trees, with the bark peeled off their
lower trunks, were set up in open places and decked with flowers and eggs,
which were painted yellow and red. Round these trees the young folk danced by
day and the old folk in the evening. In some parts of Bohemia also a May-pole
or midsummer-tree is erected on St. John's Eve. The lads fetch a tall fir or
pine from the wood and set it up on a height, where the girls deck it with
nosegays, garlands, and red ribbons. It is afterwards burned.

It would be needless to illustrate at length the custom, which has
prevailed in various parts of Europe, such as England, France, and Germany, of
setting up a village May-tree or May-pole on May Day. A few examples will
suffice. The puritanical writer Phillip Stubbes in his Anatomie of Abuses,
first published at London in 1583, has described with manifest disgust how
they used to bring in the May-pole in the days of good Queen Bess. His
description affords us a vivid glimpse of merry England in the olden time.
Against May, Whitsonday, or other time, all the yung men and maides, olde men
and wives, run gadding over night to the woods, groves, hils, and mountains,
where they spend all the night in plesant pastimes; and in the morning they
return, bringing with them birch and branches of trees, to deck their
assemblies withall. And no mervaile, for there is a great Lord present amongst
them, as superintendent and Lord over their pastimes and sportes, namely,
Sathan, prince of hel. But the chiefest jewel they bring from thence is their
May-pole, which they bring home with great veneration, as thus. They have
twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe having a sweet nose-gay of flouers
placed on the tip of his hornes, and these oxen drawe home this May-pole (this
stinkyng ydol, rather), which is covered all over with floures and hearbs,
bound round about with strings, from the top to the bottome, and sometime
painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, women and
children following it with great devotion. And thus beeing reared up, with
handkercheefs and flags hovering on the top, they straw the ground rounde
about, binde green boughes about it, set up sommer haules, bowers, and arbors
hard by it. And then fall they to daunce about it, like as the heathen people
did at the dedication of the Idols, whereof this is a perfect pattern, or
rather the thing itself. I have heard it credibly reported (and that viva
voce) by men of great gravitie and reputation, that of fortie, threescore, or
a hundred maides going to the wood over night, there have scaresly the third
part of them returned home againe undefiled.

In Swabia on the first of May a tall fir-tree used to be fetched into the
village, where it was decked with ribbons and set up; then the people danced
round it merrily to music. The tree stood on the village green the whole year
through, until a fresh tree was brought in next May Day. In Saxony people
were not content with bringing the summer symbolically (as king or queen) into
the village; they brought the fresh green itself from the woods even into the
houses: that is the May or Whitsuntide trees, which are mentioned in documents
from the thirteenth century onwards. The fetching in of the May-tree was also
a festival. The people went out into the woods to seek the May (majum
quaerere), brought young trees, especially firs and birches, to the village
and set them up before the doors of the houses or of the cattle-stalls or in
the rooms. Young fellows erected such May-trees, as we have already said,
before the chambers of their sweethearts. Besides these household Mays, a
great May-tree or May-pole, which had also been brought in solemn procession
to the village, was set up in the middle of the village or in the market-place
of the town. It had been chosen by the whole community, who watched over it
most carefully. Generally the tree was stripped of its branches and leaves,
nothing but the crown being left, on which were displayed, in addition to
many-coloured ribbons and cloths, a variety of victuals such as sausages,
cakes, and eggs. The young folk exerted themselves to obtain these prizes. In
the greasy poles which are still to be seen at our fairs we have a relic of
these old May-poles. Not uncommonly there was a race on foot or on horseback
to the May-treea Whitsunday pastime which in course of time has been divested
of its goal and survives as a popular custom to this day in many parts of
Germany. At Bordeaux on the first of May the boys of each street used to
erect in it a May-pole, which they adorned with garlands and a great crown;
and every evening during the whole of the month the young people of both sexes
danced singing about the pole. Down to the present day May-trees decked with
flowers and ribbons are set up on May Day in every village and hamlet of gay
Provence. Under them the young folk make merry and the old folk rest.

In all these cases, apparently, the custom is or was to bring in a new
May-tree each year. However, in England the village May-pole seems as a rule,
at least in later times, to have been permanent, not renewed annually.
Villages of Upper Bavaria renew their May-pole once every three, four, or five
years. It is a fir-tree fetched from the forest, and amid all the wreaths,
flags, and inscriptions with which it is bedecked, an essential part is the
bunch of dark green foliage left at the top as a memento that in it we have
to do, not with a dead pole, but with a living tree from the greenwood. We
can hardly doubt that originally the practice everywhere was to set up a new
May-tree every year. As the object of the custom was to bring in the
fructifying spirit of vegetation, newly awakened in spring, the end would have
been defeated if, instead of a living tree, green and sappy, an old withered
one had been erected year after year or allowed to stand permanently. When,
however, the meaning of the custom had been forgotten, and the May-tree was
regarded simply as a centre for holiday merry-making, people saw no reason for
felling a fresh tree every year, and preferred to let the same tree stand
permanently, only decking it with fresh flowers on May Day. But even when the
May-pole had thus become a fixture, the need of giving it the appearance of
being a green tree, not a dead pole, was sometimes felt. Thus at Weverham in
Cheshire are two May-poles, which are decorated on this day (May Day) with
all due attention to the ancient solemnity; the sides are hung with garlands,
and the top terminated by a birch or other tall slender tree with its leaves
on; the bark being peeled, and the stem spliced to the pole, so as to give the
appearance of one tree from the summit. Thus the renewal of the May-tree is
like the renewal of the Harvest-May; each is intended to secure a fresh
portion of the fertilising spirit of vegetation, and to preserve it throughout
the year. But whereas the efficacy of the Harvest-May is restricted to
promoting the growth of the crops, that of the May-tree or May-branch extends
also, as we have seen, to women and cattle. Lastly, it is worth noting that
the old May-tree is sometimes burned at the end of the year. Thus in the
district of Prague young people break pieces of the public May-tree and place
them behind the holy pictures in their rooms, where they remain till next May
Day, and are then burned on the hearth. In Wrtemberg the bushes which are set
up on the houses on Palm Sunday are sometimes left there for a year and then
burnt.

So much for the tree-spirit conceived as incorporate or immanent in the
tree. We have now to show that the tree-spirit is often conceived and
represented as detached from the tree and clothed in human form, and even as
embodied in living men or women. The evidence for this anthropomorphic
representation of the tree-spirit is largely to be found in the popular
customs of European peasantry.

There is an instructive class of cases in which the tree-spirit is
represented simultaneously in vegetable form and in human form, which are set
side by side as if for the express purpose of explaining each other. In these
cases the human representative of the tree-spirit is sometimes a doll or
puppet, sometimes a living person, but whether a puppet or a person, it is
placed beside a tree or bough; so that together the person or puppet, and the
tree or bough, form a sort of bilingual inscription, the one being, so to
speak, a translation of the other. Here, therefore, there is no room left for
doubt that the spirit of the tree is actually represented in human form. Thus
in Bohemia, on the fourth Sunday in Lent, young people throw a puppet called
Death into the water; then the girls go into the wood, cut down a young tree,
and fasten to it a puppet dressed in white clothes to look like a woman; with
this tree and puppet they go from house to house collecting gratuities and
singing songs with the refrain:

We carry Death out of the village,
We bring Summer into the village.

Here, as we shall see later on, the Summer is the spirit of vegetation
returning or reviving in spring. In some parts of our own country children go
about asking for pence with some small imitations of May-poles, and with a
finely-dressed doll which they call the Lady of the May. In these cases the
tree and the puppet are obviously regarded as equivalent.

At Thann, in Alsace, a girl called the Little May Rose, dressed in white,
carries a small May-tree, which is gay with garlands and ribbons. Her
companions collect gifts from door to door, singing a song:

Little May Rose turn round three times,
Let us look at you round and round!
Rose of the May, come to the greenwood away,
We will be merry all.
So we go from the May to the roses.

In the course of the song a wish is expressed that those who give nothing may
lose their fowls by the marten, that their vine may bear no clusters, their
tree no nuts, their field no corn; the produce of the year is supposed to
depend on the gifts offered to these May singers. Here and in the cases
mentioned above, where children go about with green boughs or garlands on May
Day singing and collecting money, the meaning is that with the spirit of
vegetation they bring plenty and good luck to the house, and they expect to be
paid for the service. In Russian Lithuania, on the first of May, they used to
set up a green tree before the village. Then the rustic swains chose the
prettiest girl, crowned her, swathed her in birch branches and set her beside
the May-tree, where they danced, sang, and shouted O May! O May! In Brie
(Isle de France) a May-tree is erected in the midst of the village; its top is
crowned with flowers; lower down it is twined with leaves and twigs, still
lower with huge green branches. The girls dance round it, and at the same time
a lad wrapt in leaves and called Father May is led about. In the small towns
of the Franken Wald mountains in Northern Bavaria, on the second of May, a
Walber tree is erected before a tavern, and a man dances round it, enveloped
in straw from head to foot in such a way that the ears of corn unite above his
head to form a crown. He is called the Walber, and used to be led in
procession through the streets, which were adorned with sprigs of birch.

Amongst the Slavs of Carinthia, on St. George's Day (the twentythird of
April), the young people deck with flowers and garlands a tree which has been
felled on the eve of the festival. The tree is then carried in procession,
accompanied with music and joyful acclamations, the chief figure in the
procession being the Green George, a young fellow clad from head to foot in
green birch branches. At the close of the ceremonies the Green George, that is
an effigy of him, is thrown into the water. It is the aim of the lad who acts
Green George to step out of his leafy envelope and substitute the effigy so
adroitly that no one shall perceive the change. In many places, however, the
lad himself who plays the part of Green George is ducked in a river or pond,
with the express intention of thus ensuring rain to make the fields and
meadows green in summer. In some places the cattle are crowned and driven from
their stalls to the accompaniment of a song:

Green George we bring,
Green George we accompany,
May he feed our herds well.
If not, to the water with him.

Here we see that the same powers of making rain and fostering the cattle,
which are ascribed to the tree-spirit regarded as incorporate in the tree, are
also attributed to the tree-spirit represented by a living man.

Among the gypsies of Transylvania and Roumania the festival of Green
George is the chief celebration of spring. Some of them keep it on Easter
Monday, others on St. George's Day (the twentythird of April). On the eve of
the festival a young willow tree is cut down, adorned with garlands and
leaves, and set up in the ground. Women with child place one of their garments
under the tree, and leave it there over night; if next morning they find a
leaf of the tree lying on the garment, they know that their delivery will be
easy. Sick and old people go to the tree in the evening, spit on it thrice,
and say, You will soon die, but let us live. Next morning the gypsies gather
about the willow. The chief figure of the festival is Green George, a lad who
is concealed from top to toe in green leaves and blossoms. He throws a few
handfuls of grass to the beasts of the tribe, in order that they may have no
lack of fodder throughout the year. Then he takes three iron nails, which have
lain for three days and nights in water, and knocks them into the willow;
after which he pulls them out and flings them into a running stream to
propitiate the water-spirits. Finally, a pretence is made of throwing Green
George into the water, but in fact it is only a puppet made of branches and
leaves which is ducked in the stream. In this version of the custom the powers
of granting an easy delivery to women and of communicating vital energy to the
sick and old are clearly ascribed to the willow; while Green George, the human
double of the tree, bestows food on the cattle, and further ensures the favour
of the water-spirits by putting them in indirect communication with the tree.

Without citing more examples to the same effect, we may sum up the results
of the preceding pages in the words of Mannhardt: The customs quoted suffice
to establish with certainty the conclusion that in these spring processions
the spirit of vegetation is often represented both by the May-tree and in
addition by a man dressed in green leaves or flowers or by a girl similarly
adorned. It is the same spirit which animates the tree and is active in the
inferior plants and which we have recognised in the May-tree and the
Harvest-May. Quite consistently the spirit is also supposed to manifest his
presence in the first flower of spring and reveals himself both in a girl
representing a May-rose, and also, as giver of harvest, in the person of the
Walber. The procession with this representative of the divinity was supposed
to produce the same beneficial effects on the fowls, the fruit-trees, and the
crops as the presence of the deity himself. In other words the mummer was
regarded not as an image but as an actual representative of the spirit of
vegetation; hence the wish expressed by the attendants on the May-rose and the
May-tree that those who refuse them gifts of eggs, bacon, and so forth, may
have no share in the blessings which it is in the power of the itinerant
spirit to bestow. We may conclude that these begging processions with
May-trees or May-boughs from door to door ('bringing the May or the summer')
had everywhere originally a serious and, so to speak, sacramental
significance; people really believed that the god of growth was present unseen
in the bough; by the procession he was brought to each house to bestow his
blessing. The names May, Father May, May Lady, Queen of the May, by which the
anthropomorphic spirit of vegetation is often denoted, show that the idea of
the spirit of vegetation is blent with a personification of the season at
which his powers are most strikingly manifested.

So far we have seen that the tree-spirit or the spirit of vegetation in
general is represented either in vegetable form alone, as by a tree, bough, or
flower; or in vegetable and human form simultaneously, as by a tree, bough, or
flower in combination with a puppet or a living person. It remains to show
that the representation of him by a tree, bough, or flower is sometimes
entirely dropped, while the representation of him by a living person remains.
In this case the representative character of the person is generally marked by
dressing him or her in leaves or flowers; sometimes, too, it is indicated by
the name he or she bears.

Thus in some parts of Russia on St. George's Day (the twenty-third of
April) a youth is dressed out, like our Jack-in-the-Green, with leaves and
flowers. The Slovenes call him the Green George. Holding a lighted torch in
one hand and a pie in the other, he goes out to the corn-fields, followed by
girls singing appropriate songs. A circle of brushwood is next lighted, in the
middle of which is set the pie. All who take part in the ceremony then sit
down around the fire and divide the pie among them. In this custom the Green
George dressed in leaves and flowers is plainly identical with the similarly
disguised Green George who is associated with a tree in the Carinthian,
Transylvanian, and Roumanian customs observed on the same day. Again, we saw
that in Russia at Whitsuntide a birch-tree is dressed in woman's clothes and
set up in the house. Clearly equivalent to this is the custom observed on
Whit-Monday by Russian girls in the district of Pinsk. They choose the
prettiest of their number, envelop her in a mass of foliage taken from the
birch-trees and maples, and carry her about through the village.

In Ruhla as soon as the trees begin to grow green in spring, the children
assemble on a Sunday and go out into the woods, where they choose one of their
playmates to be the Little Leaf Man. They break branches from the trees and
twine them about the child till only his shoes peep out from the leafy mantle.
Holes are made in it for him to see through, and two of the children lead the
Little Leaf Man that he may not stumble or fall. Singing and dancing they take
him from house to house, asking for gifts of food such as eggs, cream,
sausages, and cakes. Lastly, they sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast
on the food they have collected. In the Fricktal, Switzerland, at Whitsuntide
boys go out into a wood and swathe one of their number in leafy boughs. He is
called the Whitsuntide-lout, and being mounted on horseback with a green
branch in his hand he is led back into the village. At the village-well a halt
is called and the leaf-clad lout is dismounted and ducked in the trough.
Thereby he acquires the right of sprinkling water on everybody, and he
exercises the right specially on girls and street urchins. The urchins march
before him in bands begging him to give them a Whitsuntide wetting.

In England the best-known example of these leaf-clad mummers is the
Jack-in-the-Green, a chimney-sweeper who walks encased in a pyramidal
framework of wickerwork, which is covered with holly and ivy, and surmounted
by a crown of flowers and ribbons. Thus arrayed he dances on May Day at the
head of a troop of chimney-sweeps, who collect pence. In Fricktal a similar
frame of basketwork is called the Whitsuntide Basket. As soon as the trees
begin to bud, a spot is chosen in the wood, and here the village lads make the
frame with all secrecy, lest others should forestall them. Leafy branches are
twined round two hoops, one of which rests on the shoulders of the wearer, the
other encircles his claves; holes are made for his eyes and mouth; and a large
nosegay crowns the whole. In this guise he appears suddenly in the village at
the hour of vespers, preceded by three boys blowing on horns made of willow
bark. The great object of his supporters is to set up the Whitsuntide Basket
on the village well, and to keep it and him there, despite the efforts of the
lads from neighbouring villages, who seek to carry off the Whitsuntide Basket
and set it up on their own well.

In the class of cases of which the foregoing are specimens it is obvious
that the leaf-clad person who is led about is equivalent to the May-tree,
May-bough, or May-doll, which is carried from house to house by children
begging. Both are representatives of the beneficent spirit of vegetation,
whose visit to the house is recompensed by a present of money or food.

Often the leaf-clad person who represents the spirit of vegetation is
known as the king or the queen; thus, for example, he or she is called the May
King, Whitsuntide King, Queen of May, and so on. These titles, as Mannhardt
observes, imply that the spirit incorporate in vegetation is a ruler, whose
creative power extends far and wide.

In a village near Salzwedel a May-tree is set up at Whitsuntide and the
boys race to it; he who reaches it first is king; a garland of flowers is put
round his neck and in his hand he carries a May-bush, with which, as the
procession moves along, he sweeps away the dew. At each house they sing a
song, wishing the inmates good luck, referring to the black cow in the stall
milking white milk, black hen on the nest laying white eggs, and begging a
gift of eggs, bacon, and so on. At the village of Ellgoth in Silesia a
ceremony called the King's Race is observed at Whitsuntide. A pole with a
cloth tied to it is set up in a meadow, and the young men ride past it on
horseback, each trying to snatch away the cloth as he gallops by. The one who
succeeds in carrying it off and dipping it in the neighbouring Oder is
proclaimed King. Here the pole is clearly a substitute for a May-tree. In some
villages of Brunswick at Whitsuntide a May King is completely enveloped in a
May-bush. In some parts of Thringen also they have a May King at Whitsuntide,
but he is dressed up rather differently. A frame of wood is made in which a
man can stand; it is completely covered with birch boughs and is surmounted by
a crown of birch and flowers, in which a bell is fastened. This frame is
placed in the wood and the May King gets into it. The rest go out and look for
him, and when they have found him they lead him back into the village to the
magistrate, the clergyman, and others, who have to guess who is in the
verdurous frame. If they guess wrong, the May King rings his bell by shaking
his head, and a forfeit of beer or the like must be paid by the unsuccessful
guesser. At Wahrstedt the boys at Whitsuntide choose by lot a king and a
high-steward. The latter is completely concealed in a May-bush, wears a wooden
crown wreathen with flowers, and carries a wooden sword. The king, on the
other hand, is only distinguished by a nosegay in his cap, and a reed, with a
red ribbon tied to it, in his hand. They beg for eggs from house to house,
threatening that, where none are given, none will be laid by the hens
throughout the year. In this custom the high-steward appears, for some reason,
to have usurped the insignia of the king. At Hildesheim five or six young
fellows go about on the afternoon of Whit-Monday cracking long whips in
measured time and collecting eggs from the houses. The chief person of the
band is the Leaf King, a lad swathed so completely in birchen twigs that
nothing of him can be seen but his feet. A huge head-dress of birchen twigs
adds to his apparent stature. In his hand he carries a long crook, with which
he tries to catch stray dogs and children. In some parts of Bohemia on
Whit-Monday the young fellows disguise themselves in tall caps of birch bark
adorned with flowers. One of them is dressed as a king and dragged on a sledge
to the village green, and if on the way they pass a pool the sledge is always
overturned into it. Arrived at the green they gather round the king; the crier
jumps on a stone or climbs up a tree and recites lampoons about each house and
its inmates. Afterwards the disguises of bark are stripped off and they go
about the village in holiday attire, carrying a May-tree and begging. Cakes,
eggs, and corn are sometimes given them. At Grossvargula, near Langensalza, in
the eighteenth century a Grass King used to be led about in procession at
Whitsuntide. He was encased in a pyramid of poplar branches, the top of which
was adorned with a royal crown of branches and flowers. He rode on horseback
with the leafy pyramid over him, so that its lower end touched the ground, and
an opening was left in it only for his face. Surrounded by a cavalcade of
young fellows, he rode in procession to the town hall, the parsonage, and so
on, where they all got a drink of beer. Then under the seven lindens of the
neighbouring Sommerberg, the Grass King was stripped of his green casing; the
crown was handed to the Mayor, and the branches were stuck in the flax fields
in order to make the flax grow tall. In this last trait the fertilising
influence ascribed to the representative of the tree-spirit comes out clearly.
In the neighbourhood of Pilsen (Bohemia) a conical hut of green branches,
without any door, is erected at Whitsuntide in the midst of the village. To
this hut rides a troop of village lads with a king at their head. He wears a
sword at his side and a sugar-loaf hat of rushes on his head. In his train are
a judge, a crier, and a personage called the Frog-flayer or Hangman. This last
is a sort of ragged merryandrew, wearing a rusty old sword and bestriding a
sorry hack. On reaching the hut the crier dismounts and goes round it looking
for a door. Finding none, he says, Ah, this is perhaps an enchanted castle;
the witches creep through the leaves and need no door. At last he draws his
sword and hews his way into the hut, where there is a chair, on which he seats
himself and proceeds to criticise in rhyme the girls, farmers, and
farm-servants of the neighbourhood. When this is over, the Frog-flayer steps
forward and, after exhibiting a cage with frogs in it, sets up a gallows on
which he hangs the frogs in a row. In the neighbourhood of Plas the ceremony
differs in some points. The king and his soldiers are completely clad in bark,
adorned with flowers and ribbons; they all carry swords and ride horses, which
are gay with green branches and flowers. While the village dames and girls are
being criticised at the arbour, a frog is secretly pinched and poked by the
crier till it quacks. Sentence of death is passed on the frog by the king; the
hangman beheads it and flings the bleeding body among the spectators. Lastly,
the king is driven from the hut and pursued by the soldiers. The pinching and
beheading of the frog are doubtless, as Mannhardt observes, a rain-charm. We
have seen that some Indians of the Orinoco beat frogs for the express purpose
of producing rain, and that killing a frog is a European rain-charm.

Often the spirit of vegetation in spring is represented by a queen instead
of a king. In the neighbourhood of Libchowic (Bohemia), on the fourth Sunday
in Lent, girls dressed in white and wearing the first spring flowers, as
violets and daisies, in their hair, lead about the village a girl who is
called the Queen and is crowned with flowers. During the procession, which is
conducted with great solemnity, none of the girls may stand still, but must
keep whirling round continually and singing. In every house the Queen
announces the arrival of spring and wishes the inmates good luck and
blessings, for which she receives presents. In German Hungary the girls choose
the prettiest girl to be their Whitsuntide Queen, fasten a towering wreath on
her brow, and carry her singing through the streets. At every house they stop,
sing old ballads, and receive presents. In the south-east of Ireland on May
Day the prettiest girl used to be chosen Queen of the district for twelve
months. She was crowned with wild flowers; feasting, dancing, and rustic
sports followed, and were closed by a grand procession in the evening. During
her year of office she presided over rural gatherings of young people at
dances and merry-makings. If she married before next May Day, her authority
was at an end, but her successor was not elected till that day came round. The
May Queen is common In France and familiar in England.

Again the spirit of vegetation is sometimes represented by a king and
queen, a lord and lady, or a bridegroom and bride. Here again the parallelism
holds between the anthropomorphic and the vegetable representation of the
tree-spirit, for we have seen above that trees are sometimes married to each
other. At Halford in South Warwickshire the children go from house to house on
May Day, walking two and two in procession and headed by a King and Queen. Two
boys carry a May-pole some six or seven feet high, which is covered with
flowers and greenery. Fastened to it near the top are two cross-bars at right
angles to each other. These are also decked with flowers, and from the ends of
the bars hang hoops similarly adorned. At the houses the children sing May
songs and receive money, which is used to provide tea for them at the
schoolhouse in the afternoon. In a Bohemian village near Kniggrtz on
Whit-Monday the children play the king's game, at which a king and queen march
about under a canopy, the queen wearing a garland, and the youngest girl
carrying two wreaths on a plate behind them. They are attended by boys and
girls called groomsmen and bridesmaids, and they go from house to house
collecting gifts. A regular feature in the popular celebration of Whitsuntide
in Silesia used to be, and to some extent still is, the contest for the
kingship. This contest took various forms, but the mark or goal was generally
the May-tree or May-pole. Sometimes the youth who succeeded in climbing the
smooth pole and bringing down the prize was proclaimed the Whitsuntide King
and his sweetheart the Whitsuntide Bride. Afterwards the king, carrying the
May-bush, repaired with the rest of the company to the alehouse, where a dance
and a feast ended the merry-making. Often the young farmers and labourers
raced on horseback to the May-pole, which was adorned with flowers, ribbons,
and a crown. He who first reached the pole was the Whitsuntide King, and the
rest had to obey his orders for that day. The worst rider became the clown. At
the May-tree all dismounted and hoisted the king on their shoulders. He nimbly
swarmed up the pole and brought down the May-bush and the crown, which had
been fastened to the top. Meanwhile the clown hurried to the alehouse and
proceeded to bolt thirty rolls of bread and to swig four quart bottles of
brandy with the utmost possible despatch. He was followed by the king, who
bore the May-bush and crown at the head of the company. If on their arrival
the clown had already disposed of the rolls and the brandy, and greeted the
king with a speech and a glass of beer, his score was paid by the king;
otherwise he had to settle it himself. After church time the stately
procession wound through the village. At the head of it rode the king, decked
with flowers and carrying the May-bush. Next came the clown with his clothes
turned inside out, a great flaxen beard on his chain, and the Whitsuntide
crown on his head. Two riders disguised as guards followed. The procession
drew up before every farmyard; the two guards dismounted, shut the clown into
the house, and claimed a contribution from the housewife to buy soap with
which to wash the clown's beard. Custom allowed them to carry off any victuals
which were not under lock and key. Last of all they came to the house in which
the king's sweetheart lived. She was greeted as Whitsuntide Queen and received
suitable presentsto wit, a many-coloured sash, a cloth, and an apron. The
king got as a prize, a vest, a neck-cloth, and so forth, and had the right of
setting up the May-bush or Whitsuntide-tree before his master's yard, where it
remained as an honourable token till the same day next year. Finally the
procession took its way to the tavern, where the king and queen opened the
dance. Sometimes the Whitsuntide King and Queen succeeded to office in a
different way. A man of straw, as large as life and crowned with a red cap,
was conveyed in a cart, between two men armed and disguised as guards, to a
place where a mock court was waiting to try him. A great crowd followed the
cart. After a formal trial the straw man was condemned to death and fastened
to a stake on the execution ground. The young men with bandaged eyes tried to
stab him with a spear. He who succeeded became king and his sweetheart queen.
The straw man was known as the Goliath.

In a parish of Denmark it used to be the custom at Whitsuntide to dress up
a little girl as the Whitsun-bride and a little boy as her groom. She was
decked in all the finery of a grown-up bride, and wore a crown of the freshest
flowers of spring on her head. Her groom was as gay as flowers, ribbons, and
knots could make him. The other children adorned themselves as best they could
with the yellow flowers of the trollius and caltha. Then they went in great
state from farmhouse to farmhouse, two little girls walking at the head of the
procession as bridesmaids, and six or eight outriders galloping ahead on
hobby-horses to announce their coming. Contributions of eggs, butter, loaves,
cream, coffee, sugar, and tallow-candles were received and conveyed away in
baskets. When they had made the round of the farms, some of the farmers' wives
helped to arrange the wedding feast, and the children danced merrily in clogs
on the stamped clay floor till the sun rose and the birds began to sing. All
this is now a thing of the past. Only the old folks still remember the little
Whitsun-bride and her mimic pomp.

We have seen that in Sweden the ceremonies associated elsewhere with May
Day or Whitsuntide commonly take place at Midsummer. Accordingly we find that
in some parts of the Swedish province of Blekinge they still choose a
Midsummer's Bride, to whom the church coronet is occasionally lent. The girl
selects for herself a Bridegroom, and a collection is made for the pair, who
for the time being are looked on as man and wife. The other youths also choose
each his bride. A similar ceremony seems to be still kept up in Norway.

In the neighbourhood of Brianon (Dauphin) on May Day the lads wrap up in
green leaves a young fellow whose sweetheart has deserted him or married
another. He lies down on the ground and feigns to be asleep. Then a girl who
likes him, and would marry him, comes and wakes him, and raising him up offers
him her arm and a flag. So they go to the alehouse, where the pair lead off
the dancing. But they must marry within the year, or they are treated as old
bachelor and old maid, and are debarred the company of the young folks. The
lad is called the Bridegroom of the month of May. In the alehouse he puts off
his garment of leaves, out of which, mixed with flowers, his partner in the
dance makes a nosegay, and wears it at her breast next day, when he leads her
again to the alehouse. Like this is a Russian custom observed in the district
of Nerechta on the Thursday before Whitsunday. The girls go out into a
birch-wood, wind a girdle or band round a stately birch, twist its lower
branches into a wreath, and kiss each other in pairs through the wreath. The
girls who kiss through the wreath call each other gossips. Then one of the
girls steps forward, and mimicking a drunken man, flings herself on the
ground, rolls on the grass, and feigns to fall fast asleep. Another girl
wakens the pretended sleeper and kisses him; then the whole bevy trips singing
through the wood to twine garlands, which they throw into the water. In the
fate of the garlands floating on the stream they read their own. Here the part
of the sleeper was probably at one time played by a lad. In these French and
Russian customs we have a forsaken bridegroom, in the following a forsaken
bride. On Shrove Tuesday the Slovenes of Oberkrain drag a straw puppet with
joyous cries up and down the village; then they throw it into the water or
burn it, and from the height of the flames they judge of the abundance of the
next harvest. The noisy crew is followed by a female masker, who drags a great
board by a string and gives out that she is a forsaken bride.

Viewed in the light of what has gone before, the awakening of the forsaken
sleeper in these ceremonies probably represents the revival of vegetation in
spring. But it is not easy to assign their respective parts to the forsaken
bridegroom and to the girl who wakes him from his slumber. Is the sleeper the
leafless forest or the bare earth of winter? Is the girl who awakens him the
fresh verdure or the genial sunshine of spring? It is hardly possible, on the
evidence before us, to answer these questions.

In the Highlands of Scotland the revival of vegetation in spring used to
be graphically represented on St. Bride's Day, the first of February. Thus in
the Hebrides the mistress and servants of each family take a sheaf of oats,
and dress it up in women's apparel, put it in a large basket and lay a wooden
club by it, and this they call Briid's bed; and then the mistress and servants
cry three times, 'Briid is come, Briid is welcome.' This they do just before
going to bed, and when they rise in the morning they look among the ashes,
expecting to see the impression of Briid's club there; which if they do, they
reckon it a true presage of a good crop and prosperous year, and the contrary
they take as an ill omen. The same custom is described by another witness
thus: Upon the night before Candlemas it is usual to make a bed with corn and
hay, over which some blankets are laid, in a part of the house, near the door.
When it is ready, a person goes out and repeats three times,  'Bridget,
Bridget, come in; thy bed is ready.' One or more candles are left burning near
it all night. Similarly in the Isle of Man on the eve of the first of
February, a festival was formerly kept, called, in the Manks language, Laa'l
Breeshey, in honour of the Irish lady who went over to the Isle of Man to
receive the veil from St. Maughold. The custom was to gather a bundle of green
rushes, and standing with them in the hand on the threshold of the door, to
invite the holy Saint Bridget to come and lodge with them that night. In the
Manks language, the invitation ran thus: 'Brede, Brede, tar gys my thie tar
dyn thie ayms noght Foshil jee yn dorrys da Brede, as lhig da Brede e heet
staigh.' In English: 'Bridget, Bridget, come to my house, come to my house
to-night. Open the door for Bridget, and let Bridget come in.' After these
words were repeated, the rushes were strewn on the floor by way of a carpet or
bed for St. Bridget. A custom very similar to this was also observed in some
of the Out-Isles of the ancient Kingdom of Man. In these Manx and Highland
ceremonies it is obvious that St. Bride, or St. Bridget, is an old heathen
goddess of fertility, disguised in a threadbare Christian cloak. Probably she
is no other than Brigit, the Celtic goddess of fire and apparently of the
crops.

Often the marriage of the spirit of vegetation in spring, though not
directly represented, is implied by naming the human representative of the
spirit, the Bride, and dressing her in wedding attire. Thus in some villages
of Altmark at Whitsuntide, while the boys go about carrying a May-tree or
leading a boy enveloped in leaves and flowers, the girls lead about the May
Bride, a girl dressed as a bride with a great nosegay in her hair. They go
from house to house, the May Bride singing a song in which she asks for a
present and tells the inmates of each house that if they give her something
they will themselves have something the whole year through; but if they give
her nothing they will themselves have nothing. In some parts of Westphalia two
girls lead a flower-crowned girl called the Whitsuntide Bride from door to
door, singing a song in which they ask for eggs.

Chapter 11. The Influence of the Sexes on Vegetation

FROM THE PRECEDING examination of the spring and summer festivals of Europe
we may infer that our rude forefathers personified the powers of vegetation as
male and female, and attempted, on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative
magic, to quicken the growth of trees and plants by representing the marriage
of the sylvan deities in the persons of a King and Queen of May, a Whitsun
Bridegroom and Bride, and so forth. Such representations were accordingly no
mere symbolic or allegorical dramas, pastoral plays designed to amuse or
instruct a rustic audience. They were charms intended to make the woods to
grow green, the fresh grass to sprout, the corn to shoot, and the flowers to
blow. And it was natural to suppose that the more closely the mock marriage of
the leaf-clad or flower-decked mummers aped the real marriage of the woodland
sprites, the more effective would be the charm. Accordingly we may assume with
a high degree of probability that the profligacy which notoriously attended
these ceremonies was at one time not an accidental excess but an essential
part of the rites, and that in the opinion of those who performed them the
marriage of trees and plants could not be fertile without the real union of
the human sexes. At the present day it might perhaps be vain to look in
civilised Europe for customs of this sort observed for the explicit purpose of
promoting the growth of vegetation. But ruder races in other parts of the
world have consciously employed the intercourse of the sexes as a means to
ensure the fruitfulness of the earth; and some rites which are still, or were
till lately, kept up in Europe can be reasonably explained only as stunted
relics of a similar practice. The following facts will make this plain.

For four days before they committed the seed to the earth the Pipiles of
Central America kept apart from their wives in order that on the night before
planting they might indulge their passions to the fullest extent; certain
persons are even said to have been appointed to perform the sexual act at the
very moment when the first seeds were deposited in the ground. The use of
their wives at that time was indeed enjoined upon the people by the priests as
a religious duty, in default of which it was not lawful to sow the seed. The
only possible explanation of this custom seems to be that the Indians confused
the process by which human beings reproduce their kind with the process by
which plants discharge the same function, and fancied that by resorting to the
former they were simultaneously forwarding the latter. In some parts of Java,
at the season when the bloom will soon be on the rice, the husbandman and his
wife visit their fields by night and there engage in sexual intercourse for
the purpose of promoting the growth of the crop. In the Leti, Sarmata, and
some other groups of islands which lie between the western end of New Guinea
and the northern part of Australia, the heathen population regard the sun as
the male principle by whom the earth or female prnciple is fertilised. They
call him Upu-lera or Mr. Sun, and represent him under the form of a lamp made
of coco-nut leaves, which may be seen hanging everywhere in their houses and
in the sacred fig-tree. Under the tree lies a large flat stone, which serves
as a sacrificial table. On it the heads of slain foes were and are still
placed in some of the islands. Once a year, at the beginning of the rainy
season, Mr. Sun comes down into the holy fig-tree to fertilise the earth, and
to facilitate his descent a ladder with seven rungs is considerately placed at
his disposal. It is set up under the tree and is adorned with carved figures
of the birds whose shrill clarion heralds the approach of the sun in the east.
On this occasion pigs and dogs are sacrificed in profusion; men and women
alike indulge in a saturnalia; and the mystic union of the sun and the earth
is dramatically represented in public, amid song and dance, by the real union
of the sexes under the tree. The object of the festival, we are told, is to
procure rain, plenty of food and drink, abundance of cattle and children and
riches from Grandfather Sun. They pray that he may make every she-goat to cast
two or three young, the people to multiply, the dead pigs to be replaced by
living pigs, the empty rice-baskets to be filled, and so on. And to induce him
to grant their requests they offer him pork and rice and liquor, and invite
him to fall to. In the Babar Islands a special flag is hoisted at this
festival as a symbol of the creative energy of the sun; it is of white cotton,
about nine feet high, and consists of the figure of a man in an appropriate
attitude. It would be unjust to treat these orgies as a mere outburst of
unbridled passion; no doubt they are deliberately and solemnly organised as
essential to the fertility of the earth and the welfare of man.

The same means which are thus adopted to stimulate the growth of the crops
are naturally employed to ensure the fruitfulness of trees. In some parts of
Amboyna, when the state of the clove plantation indicates that the crop is
likely to be scanty, the men go naked to the plantations by night, and there
seek to fertilise the trees precisely as they would impregnate women, while at
the same time they call out for More cloves! This is supposed to make the
trees bear fruit more abundantly.

The Baganda of Central Africa believe so strongly in the intimate relation
between the intercourse of the sexes and the fertility of the ground that
among them a barren wife is generally sent away, because she is supposed to
prevent her husband's garden from bearing fruit. On the contrary, a couple who
have given proof of extraordinary fertility by becoming the parents of twins
are believed by the Baganda to be endowed with a corresponding power of
increasing the fruitfulness of the plantain-trees, which furnish them with
their staple food. Some little time after the birth of the twins a ceremony is
performed, the object of which clearly is to transmit the reproductive virtue
of the parents to the plantains. The mother lies down on her back in the thick
grass near the house and places a flower of the plantain between her legs;
then her husband comes and knocks the flower away with his genital member.
Further, the parents go through the country performing dances in the gardens
of favoured friends, apparently for the purpose of causing the plantain-trees
to bear fruit more abundantly.

In various parts of Europe customs have prevailed both at spring and
harvest which are clearly based on the same crude notion that the relation of
the human sexes to each other can be so used as to quicken the growth of
plants. For example, in the Ukraine on St. George's Day (the twenty-third of
April) the priest in his robes, attended by his acolytes, goes out to the
fields of the village, where the crops are beginning to show green above the
ground, and blesses them. After that the young married people lie down in
couples on the sown fields and roll several times over on them, in the belief
that this will promote the growth of the crops. In some parts of Russia the
priest himself is rolled by women over the sprouting crop, and that without
regard to the mud and holes which he may encounter in his beneficent progress.
If the shepherd resists or remonstrates, his flock murmurs, Little Father,
you do not really wish us well, you do not wish us to have corn, although you
do wish to live on our corn. In some parts of Germany at harvest the men and
women, who have reaped the corn, roll together on the field. This again is
probably a mitigation of an older and ruder custom designed to impart
fertility to the fields by methods like those resorted to by the Pipiles of
Central America long ago and by the cultivators of rice in Java at the present
time.

To the student who cares to track the devious course of the human mind in
its gropings after truth, it is of some interest to observe that the same
theoretical belief in the sympathetic influence of the sexes on vegetation,
which has led some peoples to indulge their passions as a means of fertilising
the earth, has led others to seek the same end by directly opposite means.
From the moment that they sowed the maize till the time that they reaped it,
the Indians of Nicaragua lived chastely, keeping apart from their wives and
sleeping in a separate place. They ate no salt, and drank neither cocoa nor
chicha, the fermented liquor made from maize; in short the season was for
them, as the Spanish historian observes, a time of abstinence. To this day
some of the Indian tribes of Central America practise continence for the
purpose of thereby promoting the growth of the crops. Thus we are told that
before sowing the maize the Kekchi Indians sleep apart from their wives, and
eat no flesh for five days, while among the Lanquineros and Cajaboneros the
period of abstinence from these carnal pleasures extends to thirteen days. So
amongst some of the Germans of Transylvania it is a rule that no man may sleep
with his wife during the whole of the time that he is engaged in sowing his
fields. The same rule is observed at Kalotaszeg in Hungary; the people think
that if the custom were not observed the corn would be mildewed. Similarly a
Central Australian headman of the Kaitish tribe strictly abstains from marital
relations with his wife all the time that he is performing magical ceremonies
to make the grass grow; for he believes that a breach of this rule would
prevent the grass seed from sprouting properly. In some of the Melanesian
islands, when the yam vines are being trained, the men sleep near the gardens
and never approach their wives; should they enter the garden after breaking
this rule of continence the fruits of the garden would be spoilt.

If we ask why it is that similar beliefs should logically lead, among
different peoples, to such opposite modes of conduct as strict chastity and
more or less open debauchery, the reason, as it presents itself to the
primitive mind, is perhaps not very far to seek. If rude man identifies
himself, in a manner, with nature; if he fails to distinguish the impulses and
processes in himself from the methods which nature adopts to ensure the
reproduction of plants and animals, he may leap to one of two conclusions.
Either he may infer that by yielding to his appetites he will thereby assist
in the multiplication of plants and animals; or he may imagine that the vigour
which he refuses to expend in reproducing his own kind, will form as it were a
store of energy whereby other creatures, whether vegetable or animal, will
somehow benefit in propagating their species. Thus from the same crude
philosophy, the same primitive notions of nature and life, the savage may
derive by different channels a rule either of profligacy or of asceticism.

To readers bred in religion which is saturated with the ascetic idealism
of the East, the explanation which I have given of the rule of continence
observed under certain circumstances by rude or savage peoples may seem
far-fetched and improbable. They may think that moral purity, which is so
intimately associated in their minds with the observance of such a rule,
furnishes a sufficient explanation of it; they may hold with Milton that
chastity in itself is a noble virtue, and that the restraint which it imposes
on one of the strongest impulses of our animal nature marks out those who can
submit to it as men raised above the common herd, and therefore worthy to
receive the seal of the divine approbation. However natural this mode of
thought may seem to us, it is utterly foreign and indeed incomprehensible to
the savage. If he resists on occasion the sexual instinct, it is from no high
idealism, no ethereal aspiration after moral purity, but for the sake of some
ulterior yet perfectly definite and concrete object, to gain which he is
prepared to sacrifice the immediate gratification of his senses. That this is
or may be so, the examples I have cited are amply sufficient to prove. They
show that where the instinct of self-preservation, which manifests itself
chiefly in the search for food, conflicts or appears to conflict with the
instinct which conduces to the propagation of the species, the former
instinct, as the primary and more fundamental, is capable of overmastering the
latter. In short, the savage is willing to restrain his sexual propensity for
the sake of food. Another object for the sake of which he consents to exercise
the same self-restraint is victory in war. Not only the warrior in the field
but his friends at home will often bridle their sensual appetites from a
belief that by so doing they will the more easily overcome their enemies. The
fallacy of such a belief, like the belief that the chastity of the sower
conduces to the growth of the seed, is plain enough to us; yet perhaps the
self-restraint which these and the like beliefs, vain and false as they are,
have imposed on mankind, has not been without its utility in bracing and
strengthening the breed. For strength of character in the race as in the
individual consists mainly in the power of sacrificing the present to the
future, of disregarding the immediate temptations of ephemeral pleasure for
more distant and lasting sources of satisfaction. The more the power is
exercised the higher and stronger becomes the character; till the height of
heroism is reached in men who renounce the pleasures of life and even life
itself for the sake of keeping or winning for others, perhaps in distant ages,
the blessings of freedom and truth.

Chapter 12. The Sacred Marriage.

1. Diana as a Goddess of Fertility

WE have seen that according to a widespread belief, which is not without a
foundation in fact, plants reproduce their kinds through the sexual union of
male and female elements, and that on the principle of homoeopathic or
imitative magic this reproduction is supposed to be stimulated by the real or
mock marriage of men and women, who masquerade for the time being as spirits
of vegetation. Such magical dramas have played a great part in the popular
festivals of Europe, and based as they are on a very crude conception of
natural law, it is clear that they must have been handed down from a remote
antiquity. We shall hardly, therefore, err in assuming that they date from a
time when the forefathers of the civilised nations of Europe were still
barbarians, herding their cattle and cultivating patches of corn in the
clearings of the vast forests, which then covered the greater part of the
continent, from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean. But if these old spells
and enchantments for the growth of leaves and blossoms, of grass and flowers
and fruit, have lingered down to our own time in the shape of pastoral plays
and popular merry-makings, is it not reasonable to suppose that they survived
in less attenuated forms some two thousand years ago among the civilised
peoples of antiquity? Or, to put it otherwise, is it not likely that in
certain festivals of the ancients we may be able to detect the equivalents of
our May Day, Whitsuntide, and Midsummer celebrations, with this difference,
that in those days the ceremonies had not yet dwindled into mere shows and
pageants, but were still religious or magical rites, in which the actors
consciously supported the high parts of gods and goddesses? Now in the first
chapter of this book we found reason to believe that the priest who bore the
title of King of the Wood at Nemi had for his mate the goddess of the grove,
Diana herself. May not he and she, as King and Queen of the Wood, have been
serious counterparts of the merry mummers who play the King and Queen of May,
the Whitsuntide Bridegroom and Bride in modern Europe? and may not their union
have been yearly celebrated in a theogamy or divine marriage? Such dramatic
weddings of gods and goddesses, as we shall see presently, were carried out as
solemn religious rites in many parts of the ancient world; hence there is no
intrinsic improbability in the supposition that the sacred grove at Nemi may
have been the scene of an annual ceremony of this sort. Direct evidence that
it was so there is none, but analogy pleads in favour of the view, as I shall
now endeavour to show.

Diana was essentially a goddess of the woodlands, as Ceres was a goddess
of the corn and Bacchus a god of the vine. Her sanctuaries were commonly in
groves, indeed every grove was sacred to her, and she is often associated with
the forest god Silvanus in dedications. But whatever her origin may have been,
Diana was not always a mere goddess of trees. Like her Greek sister Artemis,
she appears to have developed into a personification of the teeming life of
nature, both animal and vegetable. As mistress of the greenwood she would
naturally be thought to own the beasts, whether wild or tame, that ranged
through it, lurking for their prey in its gloomy depths, munching the fresh
leaves and shoots among the boughs, or cropping the herbage in the open glades
and dells. Thus she might come to be the patron goddess both of hunters and
herdsmen, just as Silvanus was the god not only of woods, but of cattle.
Similarly in Finland the wild beasts of the forest were regarded as the herds
of the woodland god Tapio and of his stately and beautiful wife. No man might
slay one of these animals without the gracious permission of their divine
owners. Hence the hunter prayed to the sylvan deities, and vowed rich
offerings to them if they would drive the game across his path. And cattle
also seem to have enjoyed the protection of those spirits of the woods, both
when they were in their stalls and while they strayed in the forest. Before
the Gayos of Sumatra hunt deer, wild goats, or wild pigs with hounds in the
woods, they deem it necessary to obtain the leave of the unseen Lord of the
forest. This is done according to a prescribed form by a man who has special
skill in woodcraft. He lays down a quid of betel before a stake which is cut
in a particular way to represent the Lord of the Wood, and having done so he
prays to the spirit to signify his consent or refusal. In his treatise on
hunting, Arrian tells us that the Celts used to offer an annual sacrifice to
Artemis on her birthday, purchasing the sacrificial victim with the fines
which they had paid into her treasury for every fox, hare, and roe that they
had killed in the course of the year. The custom clearly implied that the wild
beasts belonged to the goddess, and that she must be compensated for their
slaughter.

But Diana was not merely a patroness of wild beasts, a mistress of woods
and hills, of lonely glades and sounding rivers; conceived as the moon, and
especially, it would seem, as the yellow harvest moon, she filled the farmer's
grange with goodly fruits, and heard the prayers of women in travail. In her
sacred grove at Nemi, as we have seen, she was especially worshipped as a
goddess of childbirth, who bestowed offspring on men and women. Thus Diana,
like the Greek Artemis, with whom she was constantly identified, may be
described as a goddess of nature in general and of fertility in particular. We
need not wonder, therefore, that in her sanctuary on the Aventine she was
represented by an image copied from the many-breasted idol of the Ephesian
Artemis, with all its crowded emblems of exuberant fecundity. Hence too we can
understand why an ancient Roman law, attributed to King Tullus Hostilius,
prescribed that, when incest had been committed, an expiatory sacrifice should
be offered by the pontiffs in the grove of Diana. For we know that the crime
of incest is commonly supposed to cause a dearth; hence it would be meet that
atonement for the offence should be made to the goddess of fertility.

Now on the principle that the goddess of fertility must herself be
fertile, it behoved Diana to have a male partner. Her mate, if the testimony
of Servius may be trusted, was that Virbius who had his representative, or
perhaps rather his embodiment, in the King of the Wood at Nemi. The aim of
their union would be to promote the fruitfulness of the earth, of animals, and
of mankind; and it might naturally be thought that this object would be more
surely attained if the sacred nuptials were celebrated every year, the parts
of the divine bride and bridegroom being played either by their images or by
living persons. No ancient writer mentions that this was done in the grove at
Nemi; but our knowledge of the Arician ritual is so scanty that the want of
information on this head can hardly count as a fatal objection to the theory.
That theory, in the absence of direct evidence, must necessarily be based on
the analogy of similar customs practised elsewhere. Some modern examples of
such customs, more or less degenerate, were described in the last chapter.
Here we shall consider their ancient counterparts.

2. The Marriage of the Gods

AT BABYLON the imposing sanctuary of Bel rose like a pyramid above the city
in a series of eight towers or stories, planted one on the top of the other.
On the highest tower, reached by an ascent which wound about all the rest,
there stood a spacious temple, and in the temple a great bed, magnificently
draped and cushioned, with a golden table beside it. In the temple no image
was to be seen, and no human being passed the night there, save a single
woman, whom, according to the Chaldean priests, the god chose from among all
the women of Babylon. They said that the deity himself came into the temple at
night and slept in the great bed; and the woman, as a consort of the god,
might have no intercourse with mortal man.

At Thebes in Egypt a woman slept in the temple of Ammon as the consort of
the god, and, like the human wife of Bel at Babylon, she was said to have no
commerce with a man. In Egyptian texts she is often mentioned as the divine
consort, and usually she was no less a personage than the Queen of Egypt
herself. For, according to the Egyptians, their monarchs were actually
begotten by the god Ammon, who assumed for the time being the form of the
reigning king, and in that disguise had intercourse with the queen. The divine
procreation is carved and painted in great detail on the walls of two of the
oldest temples in Egypt, those of Deir el Bahari and Luxor; and the
inscriptions attached to the paintings leave no doubt as to the meaning of the
scenes.

At Athens the god of the vine, Dionysus, was annually married to the
Queen, and it appears that the consummation of the divine union, as well as
the espousals, was enacted at the ceremony; but whether the part of the god
was played by a man or an image we do not know. We learn from Aristotle that
the ceremony took place in the old official residence of the King, known as
the Cattle-stall, which stood near the Prytaneum or Town-hall on the
north-eastern slope of the Acropolis. The object of the marriage can hardly
have been any other than that of ensuring the fertility of the vines and other
fruit-trees of which Dionysus was the god. Thus both in form and in meaning
the ceremony would answer to the nuptials of the King and Queen of May.

In the great mysteries solemnised at Eleusis in the month of September the
union of the sky-god Zeus with the corn-goddess Demeter appears to have been
represented by the union of the hierophant with the priestess of Demeter, who
acted the parts of god and goddess. But their intercourse was only dramatic or
symbolical, for the hierophant had temporarily deprived himself of his
virility by an application of hemlock. The torches having been extinguished,
the pair descended into a murky place, while the throng of worshippers awaited
in anxious suspense the result of the mystic congress, on which they believed
their own salvation to depend. After a time the hierophant reappeared, and in
a blaze of light silently exhibited to the assembly a reaped ear of corn, the
fruit of the divine marriage. Then in a loud voice he proclaimed, Queen Brimo
has brought forth a sacred boy Brimos, by which he meant, The Mighty One has
brought forth the Mighty. The corn-mother in fact had given birth to her
child, the corn, and her travail-pangs were enacted in the sacred drama. This
revelation of the reaped corn appears to have been the crowning act of the
mysteries. Thus through the glamour shed round these rites by the poetry and
philosophy of later ages there still looms, like a distant landscape through a
sunlit haze, a simple rustic festival designed to cover the wide Eleusinian
plain with a plenteous harvest by wedding the goddess of the corn to the
sky-god, who fertilised the bare earth with genial showers. Every few years
the people of Plataea, in Boeotia, held a festival called the Little Daedala,
at which they felled an oak-tree in an ancient oak forest. Out of the tree
they carved an image, and having dressed it as a bride, they set it on a
bullock-cart with a bridesmaid beside it. The image seems then to have been
drawn to the bank of the river Asopus and back to the town, attended by a
piping and dancing crowd. Every sixty years the festival of the Great Daedala
was celebrated by all the people of Boeotia; and at it all the images,
fourteen in number, which had accumulated at the lesser festivals, were
dragged on wains in procession to the river Asopus and then to the top of
Mount Cithaeron, where they were burnt on a great pyre. The story told to
explain the festivals suggests that they celebrated the marriage of Zeus to
Hera, represented by the oaken image in bridal array. In Sweden every year a
life-size image of Frey, the god of fertility, both animal and vegetable, was
drawn about the country in a waggon attended by a beautiful girl who was
called the god's wife. She acted also as his priestess in his great temple at
Upsala. Wherever the waggon came with the image of the god and his blooming
young bride, the people crowded to meet them and offered sacrifices for a
fruitful year.

Thus the custom of marrying gods either to images or to human beings was
widespread among the nations of antiquity. The ideas on which such a custom is
based are too crude to allow us to doubt that the civilised Babylonians,
Egyptians, and Greeks inherited it from their barbarous or savage forefathers.
This presumption is strengthened when we find rites of a similar kind in vogue
among the lower races. Thus, for example, we are told that once upon a time
the Wotyaks of the Malmyz district in Russia were distressed by a series of
bad harvests. They did not know what to do, but at last concluded that their
powerful but mischievious god Keremet must be angry at being unmarried. So a
deputation of elders visited the Wotyaks of Cura and came to an understanding
with them on the subject. Then they returned home, laid in a large stock of
brandy, and having made ready a gaily decked waggon and horses, they drove in
procession with bells ringing, as they do when they are fetching home a bride,
to the sacred grove at Cura. There they ate and drank merrily all night, and
next morning they cut a square piece of turf in the grove and took it home
with them. After that, though it fared well with the people of Malmyz, it
fared ill with the people of Cura; for in Malmyz the bread was good, but in
Cura it was bad. Hence the men of Cura who had consented to the marriage were
blamed and roughly handled by their indignant fellow-villagers. What they
meant by this marriage ceremony, says the writer who reports it, it is not
easy to imagine. Perhaps, as Bechterew thinks, they meant to marry Keremet to
the kindly and fruitful Mukylcin, the Earth-wife, in order that she might
influence him for good. When wells are dug in Bengal, a wooden image of a god
is made and married to the goddess of water.

Often the bride destined for the god is not a log or a cloud, but a living
woman of flesh and blood. The Indians of a village in Peru have been known to
marry a beautiful girl, about fourteen years of age, to a stone shaped like a
human being, which they regarded as a god (huaca). All the villagers took
part in the marriage ceremony, which lasted three days, and was attended with
much revelry. The girl thereafter remained a virgin and sacrificed to the idol
for the people. They showed her the utmost reverence and deemed her divine.
Every year about the middle of March, when the season for fishing with the
dragnet began, the Algonquins and Hurons married their nets to two young
girls, aged six or seven. At the wedding feast the net was placed between the
two maidens, and was exhorted to take courage and catch many fish. The reason
for choosing the brides so young was to make sure that they were virgins. The
origin of the custom is said to have been this. One year, when the fishing
season came round, the Algonquins cast their nets as usual, but took nothing.
Surprised at their want of success, they did not know what to make of it, till
the soul or genius (oki) of the net appeared to them in the likeness of a
tall well-built man, who said to them in a great passion, I have lost my wife
and I cannot find one who has known no other man but me; that is why you do
not succeed, and why you never will succeed till you give me satisfaction on
this head. So the Algonquins held a council and resolved to appease the
spirit of the net by marrying him to two such very young girls that he could
have no ground of complaint on that score for the future. They did so, and the
fishing turned out all that could be wished. The thing got wind among their
neighbours the Hurons, and they adopted the custom. A share of the catch was
always given to the families of the two girls who acted as brides of the net
for the year.

The Oraons of Bengal worship the Earth as a goddess, and annually
celebrate her marriage with the Sun-god Dharme at the time when the sal
tree is in blossom. The ceremony is as follows. All bathe, then the men repair
to the sacred grove (sarna), while the women assemble at the house of the
village priest. After sacrificing some fowls to the Sun-god and the demon of
the grove, the men eat and drink. The priest is then carried back to the
village on the shoulders of a strong man. Near the village the women meet the
men and wash their feet. With beating of drums and singing, dancing, and
jumping, all proceed to the priest's house, which has been decorated with
leaves and flowers. Then the usual form of marriage is performed between the
priest and his wife, symbolising the supposed union between Sun and Earth.
After the ceremony all eat and drink and make merry; they dance and sing
obscene songs, and finally indulge in the vilest orgies. The object is to move
the mother earth to become fruitful. Thus the Sacred Marriage of the Sun and
Earth, personated by the priest and his wife, is celebrated as a charm to
ensure the fertility of the ground; and for the same purpose, on the principle
of homoeopathic magic, the people indulge in licentious orgy.

It deserves to be remarked that the supernatural being to whom women are
married is often a god or spirit of water. Thus Mukasa, the god of the
Victoria Nyanza lake, who was propitiated by the Baganda every time they
undertook a long voyage, had virgins provided for him to serve as his wives.
Like the Vestals they were bound to chastity, but unlike the Vestals they seem
to have been often unfaithful. The custom lasted until Mwanga was converted to
Christianity. The Akikuyu of British East Africa worship the snake of a
certain river, and at intervals of several years they marry the snake-god to
women, but especially to young girls. For this purpose huts are built by order
of the medicine-men, who there consummate the sacred marriage with the
credulous female devotees. If the girls do not repair to the huts of their own
accord in sufficient numbers, they are seized and dragged thither to the
embraces of the deity. The offspring of these mystic unions appears to be
fathered on God (ngai); certainly there are children among the Akikuyu who
pass for children of God. It is said that once, when the inhabitants of Cayeli
in Buruan East Indian islandwere threatened with destruction by a swarm of
crocodiles, they ascribed the misfortune to a passion which the prince of the
crocodiles had conceived for a certain girl. Accordingly, they compelled the
damsel's father to dress her in bridal array and deliver her over to the
clutches of her crocodile lover.

A usage of the same sort is reported to have prevailed in the Maldive
Islands before the conversion of the inhabitants to Islam. The famous Arab
traveller Ibn Batutah has described the custom and the manner in which it came
to an end. He was assured by several trustworthy natives, whose names he
gives, that when the people of the islands were idolaters there appeared to
them every month an evil spirit among the jinn, who came from across the sea
in the likeness of a ship full of burning lamps. The wont of the inhabitants,
as soon as they perceived him, was to take a young virgin, and, having adorned
her, to lead her to a heathen temple that stood on the shore, with a window
looking out to sea. There they left the damsel for the night, and when they
came back in the morning they found her a maid no more, and dead. Every month
they drew lots, and he upon whom the lot fell gave up his daughter to the
jinnee of the sea. The last of the maidens thus offered to the demon was
rescued by a pious Berber, who by reciting the Koran succeeded in driving the
jinnee back into the sea.

Ibn Batutah's narrative of the demon lover and his mortal brides closely
resembles a well-known type of folk-tale, of which versions have been found
from Japan and Annam in the East to Senegambia, Scandinavia, and Scotland in
the West. The story varies in details from people to people, but as commonly
told it runs thus. A certain country is infested by a many-headed serpent,
dragon, or other monster, which would destroy the whole people if a human
victim, generally a virgin, were not delivered up to him periodically. Many
victims have perished, and at last it has fallen to the lot of the king's own
daughter to be sacrificed. She is exposed to the monster, but the hero of the
tale, generally a young man of humble birth, interposes in her behalf, slays
the monster, and receives the hand of the princess as his reward. In many of
the tales the monster, who is sometimes described as a serpent, inhabits the
water of a sea, a lake, or a fountain. In other versions he is a serpent or
dragon who takes possession of the springs of water, and only allows the water
to flow or the people to make use of it on condition of receiving a human
victim.

It would probably be a mistake to dismiss all these tales as pure
inventions of the story-teller. Rather we may suppose that they reflect a real
custom of sacrificing girls or women to be the wives of waterspirits, who are
very often conceived as great serpents or dragons.

Chapter 13. The Kings of Rome and Alba.

1. Numa and Egeria

FROM THE FOREGOING survey of custom and legend we may infer that the sacred
marriage of the powers both of vegetation and of water has been celebrated by
many peoples for the sake of promoting the fertility of the earth, on which
the life of animals and men ultimately depends, and that in such rites the
part of the divine bridegroom or bride is often sustained by a man or woman.
The evidence may, therefore, lend some countenance to the conjecture that in
the sacred grove at Nemi, where the powers of vegetation and of water
manifested themselves in the fair forms of shady woods, tumbling cascades, and
glassy lake, a marriage like that of our King and Queen of May was annually
celebrated between the mortal King of the Wood and the immortal Queen of the
Wood, Diana. In this connexion an important figure in the grove was the
water-nymph Egeria, who was worshipped by pregnant women because she, like
Diana, could grant them an easy delivery. From this it seems fairly safe to
conclude that, like many other springs, the water of Egeria was credited with
a power of facilitating conception as well as delivery. The votive offerings
found on the spot, which clearly refer to the begetting of children, may
possibly have been dedicated to Egeria rather than to Diana, or perhaps we
should rather say that the water-nymph Egeria is only another form of the
great nature-goddess Diana herself, the mistress of sounding rivers as well as
of umbrageous woods, who had her home by the lake and her mirror in its calm
waters, and whose Greek counterpart Artemis loved to haunt meres and springs.
The identification of Egeria with Diana is confirmed by a statement of
Plutarch that Egeria was one of the oak-nymphs whom the Romans believed to
preside over every green oak-grove; for, while Diana was a goddess of the
woodlands in general, she appears to have been intimately associated with oaks
in particular, especially at her sacred grove of Nemi. Perhaps, then, Egeria
was the fairy of a spring that flowed from the roots of a sacred oak. Such a
spring is said to have gushed from the foot of the great oak at Dodona, and
from its murmurous flow the priestess drew oracles. Among the Greeks a draught
of water from certain sacred springs or wells was supposed to confer prophetic
powers. This would explain the more than mortal wisdom with which, according
to tradition, Egeria inspired her royal husband or lover Numa. When we
remember how very often in early society the king is held responsible for the
fall of rain and the fruitfulness of the earth, it seems hardly rash to
conjecture that in the legend of the nuptials of Numa and Egeria we have a
reminiscence of a sacred marriage which the old Roman kings regularly
contracted with a goddess of vegetation and water for the purpose of enabling
him to discharge his divine or magical functions. In such a rite the part of
the goddess might be played either by an image or a woman, and if by a woman,
probably by the Queen. If there is any truth in this conjecture, we may
suppose that the King and Queen of Rome masqueraded as god and goddess at
their marriage, exactly as the King and Queen of Egypt appear to have done.
The legend of Numa and Egeria points to a sacred grove rather than to a house
as the scene of the nuptial union, which, like the marriage of the King and
Queen of May, or of the vine-god and the Queen of Athens, may have been
annually celebrated as a charm to ensure the fertility not only of the earth
but of man and beast. Now, according to some accounts, the scene of the
marriage was no other than the sacred grove of Nemi, and on quite independent
grounds we have been led to suppose that in that same grove the King of the
Wood was wedded to Diana. The convergence of the two distinct lines of enquiry
suggests that the legendary union of the Roman king with Egeria may have been
a reflection or duplicate of the union of the King of the Wood with Egeria or
her double Diana. This does not imply that the Roman kings ever served as
Kings of the Wood in the Arician grove, but only that they may originally have
been invested with a sacred character of the same general kind, and may have
held office on similar terms. To be more explicit, it is possible that they
reigned, not by right of birth, but in virtue of their supposed divinity as
representatives or embodiments of a god, and that as such they mated with a
goddess, and had to prove their fitness from time to time to discharge their
divine functions by engaging in a severe bodily struggle, which may often have
proved fatal to them, leaving the crown to their victorious adversary. Our
knowledge of the Roman kingship is far too scanty to allow us to affirm any
one of these propositions with confidence; but at least there are some
scattered hints or indications of a similarity in all these respects between
the priests of Nemi and the kings of Rome, or perhaps rather between their
remote predecessors in the dark ages which preceded the dawn of legend.

2. The King as Jupiter

IN THE FIRST place, then, it would seem that the Roman king personated no
less a deity than Jupiter himself. For down to imperial times victorious
generals celebrating a triumph, and magistrates presiding at the games in the
Circus, wore the costume of Jupiter, which was borrowed for the occasion from
his great temple on the Capitol; and it has been held with a high degree of
probability both by ancients and moderns that in so doing they copied the
traditionary attire and insignia of the Roman kings. They rode a chariot drawn
by four laurel-crowned horses through the city, where every one else went on
foot: they wore purple robes embroidered or spangled with gold: in the right
hand they bore a branch of laurel, and in the left hand an ivory sceptre
topped with an eagle: a wreath of laurel crowned their brows: their face was
reddened with vermilion; and over their head a slave held a heavy crown of
massy gold fashioned in the likeness of oak leaves. In this attire the
assimilation of the man to the god comes out above all in the eagle-topped
sceptre, the oaken crown, and the reddened face. For the eagle was the bird of
Jove, the oak was his sacred tree, and the face of his image standing in his
four-horse chariot on the Capitol was in like manner regularly dyed red on
festivals; indeed, so important was it deemed to keep the divine features
properly rouged that one of the first duties of the censors was to contract
for having this done. As the triumphal procession always ended in the temple
of Jupiter on the Capitol, it was peculiarly appropriate that the head of the
victor should be graced by a crown of oak leaves, for not only was every oak
consecrated to Jupiter, but the Capitoline temple of the god was said to have
been built by Romulus beside a sacred oak, venerated by shepherds, to which
the king attached the spoils won by him from the enemy's general in battle. We
are expressly told that the oak crown was sacred to Capitoline Jupiter; a
passage of Ovid proves that it was regarded as the god's special emblem.

According to a tradition which we have no reason to reject, Rome was
founded by settlers from Alba Longa, a city situated on the slope of the Alban
hills, overlooking the lake and the Campagna. Hence if the Roman kings claimed
to be representatives or embodiments of Jupiter, the god of the sky, of the
thunder, and of the oak, it is natural to suppose that the kings of Alba, from
whom the founder of Rome traced his descent, may have set up the same claim
before them. Now the Alban dynasty bore the name of Silvii or Wood, and it can
hardly be without significance that in the vision of the historic glories of
Rome revealed to Aeneas in the underworld, Virgil, an antiquary as well as a
poet, should represent all the line of Silvii as crowned with oak. A chaplet
of oak leaves would thus seem to have been part of the insignia of the old
kings of Alba Longa as of their successors the kings of Rome; in both cases it
marked the monarch as the human representative of the oak-god. The Roman
annals record that one of the kings of Alba, Romulus, Remulus, or Amulius
Silvius by name, set up for being a god in his own person, the equal or
superior of Jupiter. To support his pretensions and overawe his subjects, he
constructed machines whereby he mimicked the clap of thunder and the flash of
lightning. Diodorus relates that in the season of fruitage, when thunder is
loud and frequent, the king commanded his soldiers to drown the roar of
heaven's artillery by clashing their swords against their shields. But he paid
the penalty of his impiety, for he perished, he and his house, struck by a
thunderbolt in the midst of a dreadful storm. Swollen by the rain, the Alban
lake rose in flood and drowned his palace. But still, says an ancient
historian, when the water is low and the surface unruffled by a breeze, you
may see the ruins of the palace at the bottom of the clear lake. Taken along
with the similar story of Salmoneus, king of Elis, this legend points to a
real custom observed by the early kings of Greece and Italy, who, like their
fellows in Africa down to modern times, may have been expected to produce rain
and thunder for the good of the crops. The priestly king Numa passed for an
adept in the art of drawing down lightning from the sky. Mock thunder, we
know, has been made by various peoples as a rain-charm in modern times; why
should it not have been made by kings in antiquity?

Thus, if the kings of Alba and Rome imitated Jupiter as god of the oak by
wearing a crown of oak leaves, they seem also to have copied him in his
character of a weather-god by pretending to make thunder and lightning. And if
they did so, it is probable that, like Jupiter in heaven and many kings on
earth, they also acted as public rain-makers, wringing showers from the dark
sky by their enchantments whenever the parched earth cried out for the
refreshing moisture. At Rome the sluices of heaven were opened by means of a
sacred stone, and the ceremony appears to have formed part of the ritual of
Jupiter Elicius, the god who elicits from the clouds the flashing lightning
and the dripping rain. And who so well fitted to perform the ceremony as the
king, the living representative of the sky-god?

If the kings of Rome aped Capitoline Jove, their predecessors the kings of
Alba probably laid themselves out to mimic the great Latian Jupiter, who had
his seat above the city on the summit of the Alban Mountain. Latinus, the
legendary ancestor of the dynasty, was said to have been changed into Latian
Jupiter after vanishing from the world in the mysterious fashion
characteristic of the old Latin kings. The sanctuary of the god on the top of
the mountain was the religious centre of the Latin League, as Alba was its
political capital till Rome wrested the supremacy from its ancient rival.
Apparently no temple, in our sense of the word, was ever erected to Jupiter on
this his holy mountain; as god of the sky and thunder he appropriately
received the homage of his worshippers in the open air. The massive wall, of
which some remains still enclose the old garden of the Passionist monastery,
seems to have been part of the sacred precinct which Tarquin the Proud, the
last king of Rome, marked out for the solemn annual assembly of the Latin
League. The god's oldest sanctuary on this airy mountain-top was a grove; and
bearing in mind not merely the special consecration of the oak to Jupiter, but
also the traditional oak crown of the Alban kings and the analogy of the
Capitoline Jupiter at Rome, we may suppose that the trees in the grove were
oaks. We know that in antiquity Mount Algidus, an outlying group of the Alban
hills, was covered with dark forests of oak; and among the tribes who belonged
to the Latin League in the earliest days, and were entitled to share the flesh
of the white bull sacrificed on the Alban Mount, there was one whose members
styled themselves the Men of the Oak, doubtless on account of the woods among
which they dwelt.

But we should err if we pictured to ourselves the country as covered in
historical times with an unbroken forest of oaks. Theophrastus has left us a
description of the woods of Latium as they were in the fourth century before
Christ. He says: The land of the Latins is all moist. The plains produce
laurels, myrtles, and wonderful beeches; for they fell trees of such a size
that a single stem suffices for the keel of a Tyrrhenian ship. Pines and firs
grow in the mountains. What they call the land of Circe is a lofty headland
thickly wooded with oak, myrtle, and luxuriant laurels. The natives say that
Circe dwelt there, and they show the grave of Elpenor, from which grow myrtles
such as wreaths are made of, whereas the other myrtle-trees are tall. Thus
the prospect from the top of the Alban Mount in the early days of Rome must
have been very different in some respects from what it is to-day. The purple
Apennines, indeed, in their eternal calm on the one hand, and the shining
Mediterranean in its eternal unrest on the other, no doubt looked then much as
they look now, whether bathed in sunshine, or chequered by the fleeting
shadows of clouds; but instead of the desolate brown expanse of the
fever-stricken Campagna, spanned by its long lines of ruined aqueducts, like
the broken arches of the bridge in the vision of Mirza, the eye must have
ranged over woodlands that stretched away, mile after mile, on all sides, till
their varied hues of green or autumnal scarlet and gold melted insensibly into
the blue of the distant mountains and sea.

But Jupiter did not reign alone on the top of his holy mountain. He had
his consort with him, the goddess Juno, who was worshipped here under the same
title, Moneta, as on the Capitol at Rome. As the oak crown was sacred to
Jupiter and Juno on the Capitol, so we may suppose it was on the Alban Mount,
from which the Capitoline worship was derived. Thus the oak-god would have his
oak-goddess in the sacred oak grove. So at Dodona the oak-god Zeus was coupled
with Dione, whose very name is only a dialectically different form of Juno;
and so on the top of Mount Cithaeron, as we have seen, he appears to have been
periodically wedded to an oaken image of Hera. It is probable, though it
cannot be positively proved, that the sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno was
annually celebrated by all the peoples of the Latin stock in the month which
they named after the goddess, the midsummer month of June.

If at any time of the year the Romans celebrated the sacred marriage of
Jupiter and Juno, as the Greeks commonly celebrated the corresponding marriage
of Zeus and Hera, we may suppose that under the Republic the ceremony was
either performed over images of the divine pair or acted by the Flamen Dialis
and his wife the Flaminica. For the Flamen Dialis was the priest of Jove;
indeed, ancient and modern writers have regarded him, with much probability,
as a living image of Jupiter, a human embodiment of the sky-god. In earlier
times the Roman king, as representative of Jupiter, would naturally play the
part of the heavenly bridegroom at the sacred marriage, while his queen would
figure as the heavenly bride, just as in Egypt the king and queen masqueraded
in the character of deities, and as at Athens the queen annually wedded the
vine-god Dionysus. That the Roman king and queen should act the parts of
Jupiter and Juno would seem all the more natural because these deities
themselves bore the title of King and Queen.

Whether that was so or not, the legend of Numa and Egeria appears to
embody a reminiscence of a time when the priestly king himself played the part
of the divine bridegroom; and as we have seen reason to suppose that the Roman
kings personated the oak-god, while Egeria is expressly said to have been an
oak-nymph, the story of their union in the sacred grove raises a presumption
that at Rome in the regal period a ceremony was periodically performed exactly
analogous to that which was annually celebrated at Athens down to the time of
Aristotle. The marriage of the King of Rome to the oak-goddess, like the
wedding of the vine-god to the Queen of Athens, must have been intended to
quicken the growth of vegetation by homoeopathic magic. Of the two forms of
the rite we can hardly doubt that the Roman was the older, and that long
before the northern invaders met with the vine on the shores of the
Mediterranean their forefathers had married the tree-god to the tree-goddess
in the vast oak forests of Central and Northern Europe. In the England of our
day the forests have mostly disappeared, yet still on many a village green and
in many a country lane a faded image of the sacred marriage lingers in the
rustic pageantry of May Day.

Chapter 14. The Succession to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium

IN REGARD to the Roman king, whose priestly functions were inherited by his
successor the king of the Sacred Rites, the foregoing discussion has led us to
the following conclusions. He represented and indeed personated Jupiter, the
great god of the sky, the thunder, and the oak, and in that character made
rain, thunder, and lightning for the good of his subjects, like many more
kings of the weather in other parts of the world. Further, he not only
mimicked the oak-god by wearing an oak wreath and other insignia of divinity,
but he was married to an oak-nymph Egeria, who appears to have been merely a
local form of Diana in her character of a goddess of woods, of waters, and of
child-birth. All these conclusions, which we have reached mainly by a
consideration of the Roman evidence, may with great probability be applied to
the other Latin communities. They too probably had of old their divine or
priestly kings, who transmitted their religious functions, without their civil
powers, to their successors the Kings of the Sacred Rites.

But we have still to ask, What was the rule of succession to the kingdom
among the old Latin tribes? According to tradition, there were in all eight
kings of Rome, and with regard to the five last of them, at all events, we can
hardly doubt that they actually sat on the throne, and that the traditional
history of their reigns is, in its main outlines, correct. Now it is very
remarkable that though the first king of Rome, Romulus, is said to have been
descended from the royal house of Alba, in which the kingship is represented
as hereditary in the male line, not one of the Roman kings was immediately
succeeded by his son on the throne. Yet several left sons or grandsons behind
them. On the other hand, one of them was descended from a former king through
his mother, not through his father, and three of the kings, namely Tatius, the
elder Tarquin, and Servius Tullius, were succeeded by their sons-in-law, who
were all either foreigners or of foreign descent. This suggests that the right
to the kingship was transmitted in the female line, and was actually exercised
by foreigners who married the royal princesses. To put it in technical
language, the succession to the kingship at Rome and probably in Latium
generally would seem to have been determined by certain rules which have
moulded early society in many parts of the world, namely exogamy, beena
marriage, and female kinship or mother-kin. Exogamy is the rule which obliges
a man to marry a woman of a different clan from his own: beena marriage is
the rule that he must leave the home of his birth and live with his wife's
people; and female kinship or mother-kin is the system of tracing relationship
and transmitting the family name through women instead of through men. If
these principles regulated descent of the kingship among the ancient Latins,
the state of things in this respect would be somewhat as follows. The
political and religious centre of each community would be the perpetual fire
on the king's hearth tended by Vestal Virgins of the royal clan. The king
would be a man of another clan, perhaps of another town or even of another
race, who had married a daughter of his predecessor and received the kingdom
with her. The children whom he had by her would inherit their mother's name,
not his; the daughters would remain at home; the sons, when they grew up,
would go away into the world, marry, and settle in their wives' country,
whether as kings or commoners. Of the daughters who stayed at home, some or
all would be dedicated as Vestal Virgins for a longer or shorter time to the
service of the fire on the hearth, and one of them would in time become the
consort of her father's successor.

This hypothesis has the advantage of explaining in a simple and natural
way some obscure features in the traditional history of the Latin kingship.
Thus the legends which tell how Latin kings were born of virgin mothers and
divine fathers become at least more intelligible. For, stripped of their
fabulous element, tales of this sort mean no more than that a woman has been
gotten with child by a man unknown; and this uncertainty as to fatherhood is
more easily compatible with a system of kinship which ignores paternity than
with one which makes it all-important. If at the birth of the Latin kings
their fathers were really unknown, the fact points either to a general
looseness of life in the royal family or to a special relaxation of moral
rules on certain occasions, when men and women reverted for a season to the
licence of an earlier age. Such Saturnalias are not uncommon at some stages of
social evolution. In our own country traces of them long survived in the
practices of May Day and Whitsuntide, if not of Christmas. Children born of
more or less promiscuous intercourse which characterises festivals of this
kind would naturally be fathered on the god to whom the particular festival
was dedicated.

In this connexion it may be significant that a festival of jollity and
drunkenness was celebrated by the plebeians and slaves at Rome on Midsummer
Day, and that the festival was specially associated with the fireborn King
Servius Tullius, being held in honour of Fortuna, the goddess who loved
Servius as Egeria loved Numa. The popular merrymakings at this season included
foot-races and boat-races; the Tiber was gay with flower-wreathed boats, in
which young folk sat quaffing wine. The festival appears to have been a sort
of Midsummer Saturnalia answering to the real Saturnalia which fell at
Midwinter. In modern Europe, as we shall learn later on, the great Midsummer
festival has been above all a festival of lovers and of fire; one of its
principal features is the pairing of sweethearts, who leap over the bonfires
hand in hand or throw flowers across the flames to each other. And many omens
of love and marriage are drawn from the flowers which bloom at this mystic
season. It is the time of the roses and of love. Yet the innocence and beauty
of such festivals in modern times ought not to blind us to the likelihood that
in earlier days they were marked by coarser features, which were probably of
the essence of the rites. Indeed, among the rude Esthonian peasantry these
features seem to have lingered down to our own generation, if not to the
present day. One other feature in the Roman celebration of Midsummer deserves
to be specially noticed. The custom of rowing in flower-decked boats on the
river on this day proves that it was to some extent a water festival; and
water has always, down to modern times, played a conspicuous part in the rites
of Midsummer Day, which explains why the Church, in throwing its cloak over
the old heathen festival, chose to dedicate it to St. John the Baptist.

The hypothesis that the Latin kings may have been begotten at an annual
festival of love is necessarily a mere conjecture, though the traditional
birth of Numa at the festival of the Parilia, when shepherds leaped across the
spring bonfires, as lovers leap across the Midsummer fires, may perhaps be
thought to lend it a faint colour of probability. But it is quite possible
that the uncertainty as to their fathers may not have arisen till long after
the death of the kings, when their figures began to melt away into the
cloudland of fable, assuming fantastic shapes and gorgeous colouring as they
passed from earth to heaven. If they were alien immigrants, strangers and
pilgrims in the land they ruled over, it would be natural enough that the
people should forget their lineage, and forgetting it should provide them with
another, which made up in lustre what it lacked in truth. The final
apotheosis, which represented the kings not merely as sprung from gods but as
themselves deities incarnate, would be much facilitated if in their lifetime,
as we have seen reason to think, they had actually laid claim to divinity.

If among the Latins the women of royal blood always stayed at home and
received as their consorts men of another stock, and often of another country,
who reigned as kings in virtue of their marriage with a native princess, we
can understand not only why foreigners wore the crown at Rome, but also why
foreign names occur in the list of the Alban kings. In a state of society
where nobility is reckoned only through womenin other words, where descent
through the mother is everything, and descent through the father is nothingno
objection will be felt to uniting girls of the highest rank to men of humble
birth, even to aliens or slaves, provided that in themselves the men appear to
be suitable mates. What really matters is that the royal stock, on which the
prosperity and even the existence of the people is supposed to depend, should
be perpetuated in a vigorous and efficient form, and for this purpose it is
necessary that the women of the royal family should bear children to men who
are physically and mentally fit, according to the standard of early society,
to discharge the important duty of procreation. Thus the personal qualities of
the kings at this stage of social evolution are deemed of vital importance. If
they, like their consorts, are of royal and divine descent, so much the
better; but it is not essential that they should be so.

At Athens, as at Rome, we find traces of succession to the throne by
marriage with a royal princess; for two of the most ancient kings of Athens,
namely Cecrops and Amphictyon, are said to have married the daughters of their
predecessors. This tradition is to a certain extent confirmed by evidence,
pointing to the conclusion that at Athens male kinship was preceded by female
kinship.

Further, if I am right in supposing that in ancient Latium the royal
families kept their daughters at home and sent forth their sons to marry
princesses and reign among their wives' people, it will follow that the male
descendants would reign in successive generations over different kingdoms. Now
this seems to have happened both in ancient Greece and in ancient Sweden; from
which we may legitimately infer that it was a custom practised by more than
one branch of the Aryan stock in Europe. Many Greek traditions relate how a
prince left his native land, and going to a far country married the king's
daughter and succeeded to the kingdom. Various reasons are assigned by ancient
Greek writers for these migrations of the princes. A common one is that the
king's son had been banished for murder. This would explain very well why he
fled his own land, but it is no reason at all why he should become king of
another. We may suspect that such reasons are afterthoughts devised by
writers, who, accustomed to the rule that a son should succeed to his father's
property and kingdom, were hard put to it to account for so many traditions of
kings' sons who quitted the land of their birth to reign over a foreign
kingdom. In Scandinavian tradition we meet with traces of similar customs. For
we read of daughters' husbands who received a share of the kingdoms of their
royal fathers-in-law, even when these fathers-in-law had sons of their own; in
particular, during the five generations which preceded Harold the Fair-haired,
male members of the Ynglingar family, which is said to have come from Sweden,
are reported in the Heimskringla or Sagas of the Norwegian Kings to have
obtained at least six provinces in Norway by marriage with the daughters of
the local kings.

Thus it would seem that among some Aryan peoples, at a certain stage of
their social evolution, it has been customary to regard women and not men as
the channels in which royal blood flows, and to bestow the kingdom in each
successive generation on a man of another family, and often of another
country, who marries one of the princesses and reigns over his wife's people.
A common type of popular tale, which relates how an adventurer, coming to a
strange land, wins the hand of the king's daughter and with her the half or
the whole of the kingdom, may well be a reminiscence of a real custom.

Where usages and ideas of this sort prevail, it is obvious that the
kingship is merely an appanage of marriage with a woman of the blood royal.
The old Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus puts this view of the kingship very
clearly in the mouth of Hermutrude, a legendary queen of Scotland. Indeed she
was a queen, says Hermutrude, and but that her sex gainsaid it, might be
deemed a king; nay (and this is yet truer), whomsoever she thought worthy of
her bed was at once a king, and she yielded her kingdom with herself. Thus her
sceptre and her hand went together. The statement is all the more significant
because it appears to reflect the actual practice of the Pictish kings. We
know from the testimony of Bede that, whenever a doubt arose as to the
succession, the Picts chose their kings from the female rather than the male
line.

The personal qualities which recommended a man for a royal alliance and
succession to the throne would naturally vary according to the popular ideas
of the time and the character of the king or his substitute, but it is
reasonable to suppose that among them in early society physical strength and
beauty would hold a prominent place.

Sometimes apparently the right to the hand of the princess and to the
throne has been determined by a race. The Alitemnian Libyans awarded the
kingdom to the fleetest runner. Amongst the old Prussians, candidates for
nobility raced on horseback to the king, and the one who reached him first was
ennobled. According to tradition the earliest games at Olympia were held by
Endymion, who set his sons to run a race for the kingdom. His tomb was said to
be at the point of the racecourse from which the runners started. The famous
story of Pelops and Hippodamia is perhaps only another version of the legend
that the first races at Olympia were run for no less a prize than a kingdom.

These traditions may very well reflect a real custom of racing for a
bride, for such a custom appears to have prevailed among various peoples,
though in practice it has degenerated into a mere form or pretence. Thus
there is one race, called the 'Love Chase,' which may be considered a part of
the form of marriage among the Kirghiz. In this the bride, armed with a
formidable whip, mounts a fleet horse, and is pursued by all the young men who
make any pretensions to her hand. She will be given as a prize to the one who
catches her, but she has the right, besides urging on her horse to the utmost,
to use her whip, often with no mean force, to keep off those lovers who are
unwelcome to her, and she will probably favour the one whom she has already
chosen in her heart. The race for the bride is found also among the Koryaks
of North-eastern Asia. It takes place in a large tent, round which many
separate compartments called pologs are arranged in a continuous circle. The
girl gets a start and is clear of the marriage if she can run through all the
compartments without being caught by the bridegroom. The women of the
encampment place every obstacle in the man's way, tripping him up, belabouring
him with switches, and so forth, so that he has little chance of succeeding
unless the girl wishes it and waits for him. Similar customs appear to have
been practised by all the Teutonic peoples; for the German, Anglo-Saxon, and
Norse languages possess in common a word for marriage which means simply
bride-race. Moreover, traces of the custom survived into modern times.

Thus it appears that the right to marry a girl, and especially a princess,
has often been conferred as a prize in an athletic contest. There would be no
reason, therefore, for surprise if the Roman kings, before bestowing their
daughters in marriage, should have resorted to this ancient mode of testing
the personal qualities of their future sons-in-law and successors. If my
theory is correct, the Roman king and queen personated Jupiter and his divine
consort, and in the character of these divinities went through the annual
ceremony of a sacred marriage for the purpose of causing the crops to grow and
men and cattle to be fruitful and multiply. Thus they did what in more
northern lands we may suppose the King and Queen of May were believed to do in
days of old. Now we have seen that the right to play the part of the King of
May and to wed the Queen of May has sometimes been determined by an athletic
contest, particularly by a race. This may have been a relic of an old marriage
custom of the sort we have examined, a custom designed to test the fitness of
a candidate for matrimony. Such a test might reasonably be applied with
peculiar rigour to the king in order to ensure that no personal defect should
incapacitate him for the performance of those sacred rites and ceremonies on
which, even more than on the despatch of his civil and military duties, the
safety and prosperity of the community were believed to depend. And it would
be natural to require of him that from time to time he should submit himself
afresh to the same ordeal for the sake of publicly demonstrating that he was
still equal to the discharge of his high calling. A relic of that test perhaps
survived in the ceremony known as the Flight of the King (regifugium), which
continued to be annually observed at Rome down to imperial times. On the
twenty-fourth day of February a sacrifice used to be offered in the Comitium,
and when it was over the King of the Sacred Rites fled from the Forum. We may
conjecture that the Flight of the King was originally a race for an annual
kingship, which may have been awarded as a prize to the fleetest runner. At
the end of the year the king might run again for a second term of office; and
so on, until he was defeated and deposed or perhaps slain. In this way what
had once been a race would tend to assume the character of a flight and a
pursuit. The king would be given a start; he ran and his competitors ran after
him, and if he were overtaken he had to yield the crown and perhaps his life
to the lightest of foot among them. In time a man of masterful character might
succeed in seating himself permanently on the throne and reducing the annual
race or flight to the empty form which it seems always to have been within
historical times. The rite was sometimes interpreted as a commemoration of the
expulsion of the kings from Rome; but this appears to have been a mere
afterthought devised to explain a ceremony of which the old meaning was
forgotten. It is far more likely that in acting thus the King of the Sacred
Rites was merely keeping up an ancient custom which in the regal period had
been annually observed by his predecessors the kings. What the original
intention of the rite may have been must probably always remain more or less a
matter of conjecture. The present explanation is suggested with a full sense
of the difficulty and obscurity in which the subject is involved.

Thus if my theory is correct, the yearly flight of the Roman king was a
relic of a time when the kingship was an annual office awarded, along with the
hand of a princess, to the victorious athlete or gladiator, who thereafter
figured along with his bride as a god and goddess at a sacred marriage
designed to ensure the fertility of the earth by homoeopathic magic. If I am
right in supposing that in very early times the old Latin kings personated a
god and were regularly put to death in that character, we can better
understand the mysterious or violent ends to which so many of them are said to
have come. We have seen that, according to tradition, one of the kings of Alba
was killed by a thunderbolt for impiously mimicking the thunder of Jupiter.
Romulus is said to have vanished mysteriously like Aeneas, or to have been cut
to pieces by the patricians whom he had offended, and the seventh of July, the
day on which he perished, was a festival which bore some resemblance to the
Saturnalia. For on that day the female slaves were allowed to take certain
remarkable liberties. They dressed up as free women in the attire of matrons
and maids, and in this guise they went forth from the city, scoffed and jeered
at all whom they met, and engaged among themselves in a fight, striking and
throwing stones at each other. Another Roman king who perished by violence was
Tatius, the Sabine colleague of Romulus. It is said that he was at Lavinium
offering a public sacrifice to the ancestral gods, when some men, to whom he
had given umbrage, despatched him with the sacrificial knives and spits which
they had snatched from the altar. The occasion and the manner of his death
suggest that the slaughter may have been a sacrifice rather than an
assassination. Again, Tullus Hostilius, the successor of Numa, was commonly
said to have been killed by lightning, but many held that he was murdered at
the instigation of Ancus Marcius, who reigned after him. Speaking of the more
or less mythical Numa, the type of the priestly king, Plutarch observes that
his fame was enhanced by the fortunes of the later kings. For of the five who
reigned after him the last was deposed and ended his life in exile, and of the
remaining four not one died a natural death; for three of them were
assassinated and Tullus Hostilius was consumed by thunderbolts.

These legends of the violent ends of the Roman kings suggest that the
contest by which they gained the throne may sometimes have been a mortal
combat rather than a race. If that were so, the analogy which we have traced
between Rome and Nemi would be still closer. At both places the sacred kings,
the living representatives of the godhead, would thus be liable to suffer
deposition and death at the hand of any resolute man who could prove his
divine right to the holy office by the strong arm and the sharp sword. It
would not be surprising if among the early Latins the claim to the kingdom
should often have been settled by single combat; for down to historical times
the Umbrians regularly submitted their private disputes to the ordeal of
battle, and he who cut his adversary's throat was thought thereby to have
proved the justice of his cause beyond the reach of cavil.

Chapter 15. The Worship of the Oak

THE WORSHIP of the oak tree or of the oak god appears to have been shared by
all the branches of the Aryan stock in Europe. Both Greeks and Italians
associated the tree with their highest god, Zeus or Jupiter, the divinity of
the sky, the rain, and the thunder. Perhaps the oldest and certainly one of
the most famous sanctuaries in Greece was that of Dodona, where Zeus was
revered in the oracular oak. The thunder-storms which are said to rage at
Dodona more frequently than anywhere else in Europe, would render the spot a
fitting home for the god whose voice was heard alike in the rustling of the
oak leaves and in the crash of thunder. Perhaps the bronze gongs which kept up
a humming in the wind round the sanctuary were meant to mimick the thunder
that might so often be heard rolling and rumbling in the coombs of the stern
and barren mountains which shut in the gloomy valley. In Boeotia, as we have
seen, the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera, the oak god and the oak goddess,
appears to have been celebrated with much pomp by a religious federation of
states. And on Mount Lycaeus in Arcadia the character of Zeus as god both of
the oak and of the rain comes out clearly in the rain charm practised by the
priest of Zeus, who dipped an oak branch in a sacred spring. In his latter
capacity Zeus was the god to whom the Greeks regularly prayed for rain.
Nothing could be more natural; for often, though not always, he had his seat
on the mountains where the clouds gather and the oaks grow. On the Acropolis
at Athens there was an image of Earth praying to Zeus for rain. And in time of
drought the Athenians themselves prayed, Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, on the
cornland of the Athenians and on the plains.

Again, Zeus wielded the thunder and lightning as well as the rain. At
Olympia and elsewhere he was worshipped under the surname of Thunderbolt; and
at Athens there was a sacrificial hearth of Lightning Zeus on the city wall,
where some priestly officials watched for lightning over Mount Parnes at
certain seasons of the year. Further, spots which had been struck by lightning
were regularly fenced in by the Greeks and consecrated to Zeus the Descender,
that is, to the god who came down in the flash from heaven. Altars were set up
within these enclosures and sacrifices offered on them. Several such places
are known from inscriptions to have existed in Athens.

Thus when ancient Greek kings claimed to be descended from Zeus, and even
to bear his name, we may reasonably suppose that they also attempted to
exercise his divine functions by making thunder and rain for the good of their
people or the terror and confusion of their foes. In this respect the legend
of Salmoneus probably reflects the pretensions of a whole class of petty
sovereigns who reigned of old, each over his little canton, in the oak-clad
highlands of Greece. Like their kinsmen the Irish kings, they were expected to
be a source of fertility to the land and of fecundity to the cattle; and how
could they fulfil these expectations better than by acting the part of their
kinsman Zeus, the great god of the oak, the thunder, and the rain? They
personified him, apparently, just as the Italian kings personified Jupiter.

In ancient Italy every oak was sacred to Jupiter, the Italian counterpart
of Zeus; and on the Capitol at Rome the god was worshipped as the deity not
merely of the oak, but of the rain and the thunder. Contrasting the piety of
the good old times with the scepticism of an age when nobody thought that
heaven was heaven, or cared a fig for Jupiter, a Roman writer tells us that in
former days noble matrons used to go with bare feet, streaming hair, and pure
minds, up the long Capitoline slope, praying to Jupiter for rain. And
straightway, he goes on, it rained bucketsful, then or never, and everybody
returned dripping like drowned rats. But nowadays, says he, we are no
longer religious, so the fields lie baking.

When we pass from Southern to Central Europe we still meet with the great
god of the oak and the thunder among the barbarous Aryans who dwelt in the
vast primaeval forests. Thus among the Celts of Gaul the Druids esteemed
nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the oak on which it grew; they
chose groves of oaks for the scene of their solemn service, and they performed
none of their rites without oak leaves. The Celts, says a Greek writer,
worship Zeus, and the Celtic image of Zeus is a tall oak. The Celtic
conquerors, who settled in Asia in the third century before our era, appear to
have carried the worship of the oak with them to their new home; for in the
heart of Asia Minor the Galatian senate met in a place which bore the pure
Celtic name of Drynemetum, the sacred oak grove or the temple of the oak.
Indeed the very name of Druids is believed by good authorities to mean no more
than oak men.

In the religion of the ancient Germans the veneration for sacred groves
seems to have held the foremost place, and according to Grimm the chief of
their holy trees was the oak. It appears to have been especially dedicated to
the god of thunder, Donar or Thunar, the equivalent of the Norse Thor; for a
sacred oak near Geismar, in Hesse, which Boniface cut down in the eighth
century, went among the heathen by the name of Jupiter's oak (robur Jovis),
which in old German would be Donares eih, the oak of Donar. That the
Teutonic thunder god Donar, Thunar, Thor was identified with the Italian
thunder god Jupiter appears from our word Thursday, Thunar's day, which is
merely a rendering of the Latin dies Jovis. Thus among the ancient Teutons,
as among the Greeks and Italians, the god of the oak was also the god of the
thunder. Moreover, he was regarded as the great fertilising power, who sent
rain and caused the earth to bear fruit; for Adam of Bremen tells us that
Thor presides in the air; he it is who rules thunder and lightning, wind and
rains, fine weather and crops. In these respects, therefore, the Teutonic
thunder god again resembled his southern counterparts Zeus and Jupiter.

Amongst the Slavs also the oak appears to have been the sacred tree of the
thunder god Perun, the counterpart of Zeus and Jupiter. It is said that at
Novgorod there used to stand an image of Perun in the likeness of a man with a
thunder-stone in his hand. A fire of oak wood burned day and night in his
honour; and if ever it went out the attendants paid for their negligence with
their lives. Perun seems, like Zeus and Jupiter, to have been the chief god of
his people; for Procopius tells us that the Slavs believe that one god, the
maker of lightning, is alone lord of all things, and they sacrifice to him
oxen and every victim.

The chief deity of the Lithuanians was Perkunas or Perkuns, the god of
thunder and lightning, whose resemblance to Zeus and Jupiter has often been
pointed out. Oaks were sacred to him, and when they were cut down by the
Christian missionaries, the people loudly complained that their sylvan deities
were destroyed. Perpetual fires, kindled with the wood of certain oak-trees,
were kept up in honour of Perkunas; if such a fire went out, it was lighted
again by friction of the sacred wood. Men sacrificed to oak-trees for good
crops, while women did the same to lime-trees; from which we may infer that
they regarded oaks as male and lime-trees as female. And in time of drought,
when they wanted rain, they used to sacrifice a black heifer, a black he-goat,
and a black cock to the thunder god in the depths of the woods. On such
occasions the people assembled in great numbers from the country round about,
ate and drank, and called upon Perkunas. They carried a bowl of beer thrice
round the fire, then poured the liquor on the flames, while they prayed to the
god to send showers. Thus the chief Lithuanian deity presents a close
resemblance to Zeus and Jupiter, since he was the god of the oak, the thunder,
and the rain.

From the foregoing survey it appears that a god of the oak, the thunder,
and the rain was worshipped of old by all the main branches of the Aryan stock
in Europe, and was indeed the chief deity of their pantheon.

Chapter 16. Dianus and Diana

IN THIS CHAPTER I propose to recapitulate the conclusions to which the
enquiry has thus far led us, and drawing together the scattered rays of light,
to turn them on the dark figure of the priest of Nemi.

We have found that at an early stage of society men, ignorant of the
secret processes of nature and of the narrow limits within which it is in our
power to control and direct them, have commonly arrogated to themselves
functions which in the present state of knowledge we should deem superhuman or
divine. The illusion has been fostered and maintained by the same causes which
begot it, namely, the marvellous order and uniformity with which nature
conducts her operations, the wheels of her great machine revolving with a
smoothness and precision which enable the patient observer to anticipate in
general the season, if not the very hour, when they will bring round the
fulfilment of his hopes or the accomplishment of his fears. The regularly
recurring events of this great cycle, or rather series of cycles, soon stamp
themselves even on the dull mind of the savage. He foresees them, and
foreseeing them mistakes the desired recurrence for an effect of his own will,
and the dreaded recurrence for an effect of the will of his enemies. Thus the
springs which set the vast machine in motion, though they lie far beyond our
ken, shrouded in a mystery which we can never hope to penetrate, appear to
ignorant man to lie within his reach: he fancies he can touch them and so work
by magic art all manner of good to himself and evil to his foes. In time the
fallacy of this belief becomes apparent to him: he discovers that there are
things he cannot do, pleasures which he is unable of himself to procure, pains
which even the most potent magician is powerless to avoid. The unattainable
good, the inevitable ill, are now ascribed by him to the action of invisible
powers, whose favour is joy and life, whose anger is misery and death. Thus
magic tends to be displaced by religion, and the sorcerer by the priest. At
this stage of thought the ultimate causes of things are conceived to be
personal beings, many in number and often discordant in character, who partake
of the nature and even of the frailty of man, though their might is greater
than his, and their life far exceeds the span of his ephemeral existence.
Their sharply-marked individualities, their clear-cut outlines have not yet
begun, under the powerful solvent of philosophy, to melt and coalesce into
that single unknown substratum of phenomena which, according to the qualities
with which our imagination invests it, goes by one or other of the
high-sounding names which the wit of man has devised to hide his ignorance.
Accordingly, so long as men look on their gods as beings akin to themselves
and not raised to an unapproachable height above them, they believe it to be
possible for those of their own number who surpass their fellows to attain to
the divine rank after death or even in life. Incarnate human deities of this
latter sort may be said to halt midway between the age of magic and the age of
religion. If they bear the names and display the pomp of deities, the powers
which they are supposed to wield are commonly those of their predecessor the
magician. Like him, they are expected to guard their people against hostile
enchantments, to heal them in sickness, to bless them with offspring, and to
provide them with an abundant supply of food by regulating the weather and
performing the other ceremonies which are deemed necessary to ensure the
fertility of the earth and the multiplication of animals. Men who are credited
with powers so lofty and far-reaching naturally hold the highest place in the
land, and while the rift between the spiritual and the temporal spheres has
not yet widened too far, they are supreme in civil as well as religious
matters: in a word, they are kings as well as gods. Thus the divinity which
hedges a king has its roots deep down in human history, and long ages pass
before these are sapped by a profounder view of nature and man.

In the classical period of Greek and Latin antiquity the reign of kings
was for the most part a thing of the past; yet the stories of their lineage,
titles, and pretensions suffice to prove that they too claimed to rule by
divine right and to exercise superhuman powers. Hence we may without undue
temerity assume that the King of the Wood at Nemi, though shorn in later times
of his glory and fallen on evil days, represented a long line of sacred kings
who had once received not only the homage but the adoration of their subjects
in return for the manifold blessings which they were supposed to dispense.
What little we know of the functions of Diana in the Arician grove seems to
prove that she was here conceived as a goddess of fertility, and particularly
as a divinity of childbirth. It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that in
the discharge of these important duties she was assisted by her priest, the
two figuring as King and Queen of the Wood in a solemn marriage, which was
intended to make the earth gay with the blossoms of spring and the fruits of
autumn, and to gladden the hearts of men and women with healthful offspring.

If the priest of Nemi posed not merely as a king, but as a god of the
grove, we have still to ask, What deity in particular did he personate? The
answer of antiquity is that he represented Virbius, the consort or lover of
Diana. But this does not help us much, for of Virbius we know little more than
the name. A clue to the mystery is perhaps supplied by the Vestal fire which
burned in the grove. For the perpetual holy fires of the Aryans in Europe
appear to have been commonly kindled and fed with oak-wood, and in Rome
itself, not many miles from Nemi, the fuel of the Vestal fire consisted of
oaken sticks or logs, as has been proved by a microscopic analysis of the
charred embers of the Vestal fire, which were discovered by Commendatore G.
Boni in the course of the memorable excavations which he conducted in the
Roman forum at the end of the nineteenth century. But the ritual of the
various Latin towns seems to have been marked by great uniformity; hence it is
reasonable to conclude that wherever in Latium a Vestal fire was maintained,
it was fed, as at Rome, with wood of the sacred oak. If this was so at Nemi,
it becomes probable that the hallowed grove there consisted of a natural
oak-wood, and that therefore the tree which the King of the Wood had to guard
at the peril of his life was itself an oak; indeed, it was from an evergreen
oak, according to Virgil, that Aeneas plucked the Golden Bough. Now the oak
was the sacred tree of Jupiter, the supreme god of the Latins. Hence it
follows that the King of the Wood, whose life was bound up in a fashion with
an oak, personated no less a deity than Jupiter himself. At least the
evidence, slight as it is, seems to point to this conclusion. The old Alban
dynasty of the Silvii or Woods, with their crown of oak leaves, apparently
aped the style and emulated the powers of Latian Jupiter, who dwelt on the top
of the Alban Mount. It is not impossible that the King of the Wood, who
guarded the sacred oak a little lower down the mountain, was the lawful
successor and representative of this ancient line of the Silvii or Woods. At
all events, if I am right in supposing that he passed for a human Jupiter, it
would appear that Virbius, with whom legend identified him, was nothing but a
local form of Jupiter, considered perhaps in his original aspect as a god of
the greenwood.

The hypothesis that in later times at all events the King of the Wood
played the part of the oak god Jupiter, is confirmed by an examination of his
divine partner Diana. For two distinct lines of argument converge to show that
if Diana was a queen of the woods in general, she was at Nemi a goddess of the
oak in particular. In the first place, she bore the title of Vesta, and as
such presided over a perpetual fire, which we have seen reason to believe was
fed with oak wood. But a goddess of fire is not far removed from a goddess of
the fuel which burns in the fire; primitive thought perhaps drew no sharp line
of distinction between the blaze and the wood that blazes. In the second
place, the nymph Egeria at Nemi appears to have been merely a form of Diana,
and Egeria is definitely said to have been a Dryad, a nymph of the oak.
Elsewhere in Italy the goddess had her home on oak-clad mountains. Thus Mount
Algidus, a spur of the Alban hills, was covered in antiquity with dark forests
of oak, both of the evergreen and the deciduous sort. In winter the snow lay
long on these cold hills, and their gloomy oak-woods were believed to be a
favourite haunt of Diana, as they have been of brigands in modern times.
Again, Mount Tifata, the long abrupt ridge of the Apennines which looks down
on the Campanian plain behind Capua, was wooded of old with evergreen oaks,
among which Diana had a temple. Here Sulla thanked the goddess for his victory
over the Marians in the plain below, attesting his gratitude by inscriptions
which were long afterwards to be seen in the temple. On the whole, then, we
conclude that at Nemi the King of the Wood personated the oak-god Jupiter and
mated with the oak-goddess Diana in the sacred grove. An echo of their mystic
union has come down to us in the legend of the loves of Numa and Egeria, who
according to some had their trysting-place in these holy woods.

To this theory it may naturally be objected that the divine consort of
Jupiter was not Diana but Juno, and that if Diana had a mate at all he might
be expected to bear the name not of Jupiter, but of Dianus or Janus, the
latter of these forms being merely a corruption of the former. All this is
true, but the objection may be parried by observing that the two pairs of
deities, Jupiter and Juno on the one side, and Dianus and Diana, or Janus and
Jana, on the other side, are merely duplicates of each other, their names and
their functions being in substance and origin identical. With regard to their
names, all four of them come from the same Aryan root DI, meaning bright,
which occurs in the names of the corresponding Greek deities, Zeus and his old
female consort Dione. In regard to their functions, Juno and Diana were both
goddesses of fecundity and childbirth, and both were sooner or later
identified with the moon. As to the true nature and functions of Janus the
ancients themselves were puzzled; and where they hesitated, it is not for us
confidently to decide. But the view mentioned by Varro that Janus was the god
of the sky is supported not only by the etymological identity of his name with
that of the sky-god Jupiter, but also by the relation in which he appears to
have stood to Jupiter's two mates, Juno and Juturna. For the epithet Junonian
bestowed on Janus points to a marriage union between the two deities; and
according to one account Janus was the husband of the water-nymph Juturna, who
according to others was beloved by Jupiter. Moreover, Janus, like Jove, was
regularly invoked, and commonly spoken of under the title of Father. Indeed,
he was identified with Jupiter not merely by the logic of the learned St.
Augustine, but by the piety of a pagan worshipper who dedicated an offering to
Jupiter Dianus. A trace of his relation to the oak may be found in the
oakwoods of the Janiculum, the hill on the right bank of the Tiber, where
Janus is said to have reigned as a king in the remotest ages of Italian
history.

Thus, if I am right, the same ancient pair of deities was variously known
among the Greek and Italian peoples as Zeus and Dione, Jupiter and Juno, or
Dianus (Janus) and Diana (Jana), the names of the divinities being identical
in substance, though varying in form with the dialect of the particular tribe
which worshipped them. At first, when the peoples dwelt near each other, the
difference between the deities would be hardly more than one of name; in other
words, it would be almost purely dialectical. But the gradual dispersion of
the tribes, and their consequent isolation from each other, would favour the
growth of divergent modes of conceiving and worshipping the gods whom they had
carried with them from their old home, so that in time discrepancies of myth
and ritual would tend to spring up and thereby to convert a nominal into a
real distinction between the divinities. Accordingly when, with the slow
progress of culture, the long period of barbarism and separation was passing
away, and the rising political power of a single strong community had begun to
draw or hammer its weaker neighbours into a nation, the confluent peoples
would throw their gods, like their dialects, into a common stock; and thus it
might come about that the same ancient deities, which their forefathers had
worshipped together before the dispersion, would now be so disguised by the
accumulated effect of dialectical and religious divergencies that their
original identity might fail to be recognised, and they would take their
places side by side as independent divinities in the national pantheon.

This duplication of deities, the result of the final fusion of kindred
tribes who had long lived apart, would account for the appearance of Janus
beside Jupiter, and of Diana or Jana beside Juno in the Roman religion. At
least this appears to be a more probable theory than the opinion, which has
found favour with some modern scholars, that Janus was originally nothing but
the god of doors. That a deity of his dignity and importance, whom the Romans
revered as a god of gods and the father of his people, should have started in
life as a humble, though doubtless respectable, doorkeeper appears very
unlikely. So lofty an end hardly consorts with so lowly a beginning. It is
more probable that the door (janua) got its name from Janus than that he got
his name from it. This view is strengthened by a consideration of the word
janua itself. The regular word for door is the same in all the languages of
the Aryan family from India to Ireland. It is dur in Sanscrit, thura in
Greek, tr in German, door in English, dorus in old Irish, and foris
in Latin. Yet besides this ordinary name for door, which the Latins shared
with all their Aryan brethren, they had also the name janua, to which there
is no corresponding term in any Indo-European speech. The word has the
appearance of being an adjectival form derived from the noun Janus. I
conjecture that it may have been customary to set up an image or symbol of
Janus at the principal door of the house in order to place the entrance under
the protection of the great god. A door thus guarded might be known as a
janua foris, that is, a Januan door, and the phrase might in time be
abridged into janua, the noun foris being understood but not expressed.
From this to the use of janua to designate a door in general, whether
guarded by an image of Janus or not, would be an easy and natural transition.

If there is any truth in this conjecture, it may explain very simply the
origin of the double head of Janus, which has so long exercised the ingenuity
of mythologists. When it had become customary to guard the entrance of houses
and towns by an image of Janus, it might well be deemed necessary to make the
sentinel god look both ways, before and behind, at the same time, in order
that nothing should escape his vigilant eye. For if the divine watchman always
faced in one direction, it is easy to imagine what mischief might have been
wrought with impunity behind his back. This explanation of the double-headed
Janus at Rome is confirmed by the double-headed idol which the Bush negroes in
the interior of Surinam regularly set up as a guardian at the entrance of a
village. The idol consists of a block of wood with a human face rudely carved
on each side; it stands under a gateway composed of two uprights and a
cross-bar. Beside the idol generally lies a white rag intended to keep off the
devil; and sometimes there is also a stick which seems to represent a bludgeon
or weapon of some sort. Further, from the cross-bar hangs a small log which
serves the useful purpose of knocking on the head any evil spirit who might
attempt to pass through the gateway. Clearly this double-headed fetish at the
gateway of the negro villages in Surinam bears a close resemblance to the
double-headed images of Janus which, grasping a stick in one hand and a key in
the other, stood sentinel at Roman gates and doorways; and we can hardly doubt
that in both cases the heads facing two ways are to be similarly explained as
expressive of the vigilance of the guardian god, who kept his eye on spiritual
foes behind and before, and stood ready to bludgeon them on the spot. We may,
therefore, dispense with the tedious and unsatisfactory explanations which, if
we may trust Ovid, the wily Janus himself fobbed off an anxious Roman
enquirer.

To apply these conclusions to the priest of Nemi, we may suppose that as
the mate of Diana he represented originally Dianus or Janus rather than
Jupiter, but that the difference between these deities was of old merely
superficial, going little deeper than the names, and leaving practically
unaffected the essential functions of the god as a power of the sky, the
thunder, and the oak. It was fitting, therefore, that his human representative
at Nemi should dwell, as we have seen reason to believe he did, in an oak
grove. His title of King of the Wood clearly indicates the sylvan character of
the deity whom he served; and since he could only be assailed by him who had
plucked the bough of a certain tree in the grove, his own life might be said
to be bound up with that of the sacred tree. Thus he not only served but
embodied the great Aryan god of the oak; and as an oak-god he would mate with
the oak-goddess, whether she went by the name of Egeria or Diana. Their union,
however consummated, would be deemed essential to the fertility of the earth
and the fecundity of man and beast. Further, as the oak-god was also a god of
the sky, the thunder, and the rain, so his human representative would be
required, like many other divine kings, to cause the clouds to gather, the
thunder to peal, and the rain to descend in due season, that the fields and
orchards might bear fruit and the pastures be covered with luxuriant herbage.
The reputed possessor of powers so exalted must have been a very important
personage; and the remains of buildings and of votive offerings which have
been found on the site of the sanctuary combine with the testimony of
classical writers to prove that in later times it was one of the greatest and
most popular shrines in Italy. Even in the old days, when the champaign
country around was still parcelled out among the petty tribes who composed the
Latin League, the sacred grove is known to have been an object of their common
reverence and care. And just as the kings of Cambodia used to send offerings
to the mystic kings of Fire and Water far in the dim depths of the tropical
forest, so, we may well believe, from all sides of the broad Latian plain the
eyes and footsteps of Italian pilgrims turned to the quarter where, standing
sharply out against the faint blue line of the Apennines or the deeper blue of
the distant sea, the Alban Mountain rose before them, the home of the
mysterious priest of Nemi, the King of the Wood. There, among the green woods
and beside the still waters of the lonely hills, the ancient Aryan worship of
the god of the oak, the thunder, and the dripping sky lingered in its early,
almost Druidical form, long after a great political and intellectual
revolution had shifted the capital of Latin religion from the forest to the
city, from Nemi to Rome.

Chapter 17. The Burden of Royalty.

1. Royal and Priestly Taboos

AT A CERTAIN stage of early society the king or priest is often thought to
be endowed with supernatural powers or to be an incarnation of a deity, and
consistently with this belief the course of nature is supposed to be more or
less under his control, and he is held responsible for bad weather, failure of
the crops, and similar calamities. To some extent it appears to be assumed
that the king's power over nature, like that over his subjects and slaves, is
exerted through definite acts of will; and therefore if drought, famine,
pestilence, or storms arise, the people attribute the misfortune to the
negligence or guilt of their king, and punish him accordingly with stripes and
bonds, or, if he remains obdurate, with deposition and death. Sometimes,
however, the course of nature, while regarded as dependent on the king, is
supposed to be partly independent of his will. His person is considered, if we
may express it so, as the dynamical centre of the universe, from which lines
of force radiate to all quarters of the heaven; so that any motion of histhe
turning of his head, the lifting of his handinstantaneously affects and may
seriously disturb some part of nature. He is the point of support on which
hangs the balance of the world, and the slightest irregularity on his part may
overthrow the delicate equipoise. The greatest care must, therefore, be taken
both by and of him; and his whole life, down to its minutest details, must be
so regulated that no act of his, voluntary or involuntary, may disarrange or
upset the established order of nature. Of this class of monarchs the Mikado or
Dairi, the spiritual emperor of Japan, is or rather used to be a typical
example. He is an incarnation of the sun goddess, the deity who rules the
universe, gods and men included; once a year all the gods wait upon him and
spend a month at his court. During that month, the name of which means
without gods, no one frequents the temples, for they are believed to be
deserted. The Mikado receives from his people and assumes in his official
proclamations and decrees the title of manifest or incarnate deity, and he
claims a general authority over the gods of Japan. For example, in an official
decree of the year 646 the emperor is described as the incarnate god who
governs the universe.

The following description of the Mikado's mode of life was written about
two hundred years ago:

Even to this day the princes descended of this family, more particularly
those who sit on the throne, are looked upon as persons most holy in
themselves, and as Popes by birth. And, in order to preserve these
advantageous notions in the minds of their subjects, they are obliged to take
an uncommon care of their sacred persons, and to do such things, which,
examined according to the customs of other nations, would be thought
ridiculous and impertinent. It will not be improper to give a few instances of
it. He thinks that it would be very prejudicial to his dignity and holiness to
touch the ground with his feet; for this reason, when he intends to go
anywhere, he must be carried thither on men's shoulders. Much less will they
suffer that he should expose his sacred person to the open air, and the sun is
not thought worthy to shine on his head. There is such a holiness ascribed to
all the parts of his body that he dares to cut off neither his hair, nor his
beard, nor his nails. However, lest he should grow too dirty, they may clean
him in the night when he is asleep; because, they say, that which is taken
from his body at that time, hath been stolen from him, and that such a theft
doth not prejudice his holiness or dignity. In ancient times, he was obliged
to sit on the throne for some hours every morning, with the imperial crown on
his head, but to sit altogether like a statue, without stirring either hands
or feet, head or eyes, nor indeed any part of his body, because, by this
means, it was thought that he could preserve peace and tranquillity in his
empire; for if, unfortunately, he turned himself on one side or the other, or
if he looked a good while towards any part of his dominions, it was
apprehended that war, famine, fire, or some other great misfortune was near at
hand to desolate the country. But it having been afterwards discovered, that
the imperial crown was the palladium, which by its immobility could preserve
peace in the empire, it was thought expedient to deliver his imperial person,
consecrated only to idleness and pleasures, from this burthensome duty, and
therefore the crown is at present placed on the throne for some hours every
morning. His victuals must be dressed every time in new pots, and served at
table in new dishes: both are very clean and neat, but made only of common
clay; that without any considerable expense they may be laid aside, or broke,
after they have served once. They are generally broke, for fear they should
come into the hands of laymen, for they believe religiously, that if any
layman should presume to eat his food out of these sacred dishes, it would
swell and inflame his mouth and throat. The like ill effect is dreaded from
the Dairi's sacred habits; for they believe that if a layman should wear them,
without the Emperor's express leave or command, they would occasion swellings
and pains in all parts of his body. To the same effect an earlier account of
the Mikado says: It was considered as a shameful degradation for him even to
touch the ground with his foot. The sun and moon were not even permitted to
shine upon his head. None of the superfluities of the body were ever taken
from him, neither his hair, his beard, nor his nails were cut. Whatever he eat
was dressed in new vessels.

Similar priestly or rather divine kings are found, at a lower level of
barbarism, on the west coast of Africa. At Shark Point near Cape Padron, in
Lower Guinea, lives the priestly king Kukulu, alone in a wood. He may not
touch a woman nor leave his house; indeed he may not even quit his chair, in
which he is obliged to sleep sitting, for if he lay down no wind would arise
and navigation would be stopped. He regulates storms, and in general maintains
a wholesome and equable state of the atmosphere. On Mount Agu in Togo there
lives a fetish or spirit called Bagba, who is of great importance for the
whole of the surrounding country. The power of giving or withholding rain is
ascribed to him, and he is lord of the winds, including the Harmattan, the
dry, hot wind which blows from the interior. His priest dwells in a house on
the highest peak of the mountain, where he keeps the winds bottled up in huge
jars. Applications for rain, too, are made to him, and he does a good business
in amulets, which consist of the teeth and claws of leopards. Yet though his
power is great and he is indeed the real chief of the land, the rule of the
fetish forbids him ever to leave the mountain, and he must spend the whole of
his life on its summit. Only once a year may he come down to make purchases in
the market; but even then he may not set foot in the hut of any mortal man,
and must return to his place of exile the same day. The business of government
in the villages is conducted by subordinate chiefs, who are appointed by him.
In the West African kingdom of Congo there was a supreme pontiff called
Chitom or Chitomb, whom the negroes regarded as a god on earth and
all-powerful in heaven. Hence before they would taste the new crops they
offered him the first-fruits, fearing that manifold misfortunes would befall
them if they broke this rule. When he left his residence to visit other places
within his jurisdiction, all married people had to observe strict continence
the whole time he was out; for it was supposed that any act of incontinence
would prove fatal to him. And if he were to die a natural death, they thought
that the world would perish, and the earth, which he alone sustained by his
power and merit, would immediately be annihilated. Amongst the semi-barbarous
nations of the New World, at the date of the Spanish conquest, there were
found hierarchies or theocracies like those of Japan; in particular, the high
pontiff of the Zapotecs appears to have presented a close parallel to the
Mikado. A powerful rival to the king himself, this spiritual lord governed
Yopaa, one of the chief cities of the kingdom, with absolute dominion. It is
impossible, we are told, to overrate the reverence in which he was held. He
was looked on as a god whom the earth was not worthy to hold nor the sun to
shine upon. He profaned his sanctity if he even touched the ground with his
foot. The officers who bore his palanquin on their shoulders were members of
the highest families: he hardly deigned to look on anything around him; and
all who met him fell with their faces to the earth, fearing that death would
overtake them if they saw even his shadow. A rule of continence was regularly
imposed on the Zapotec priests, especially upon the high pontiff; but on
certain days in each year, which were generally celebrated with feasts and
dances, it was customary for the high priest to become drunk. While in this
state, seeming to belong neither to heaven nor to earth, one of the most
beautiful of the virgins consecrated to the service of the gods was brought to
him. If the child she bore him was a son, he was brought up as a prince of
the blood, and the eldest son succeeded his father on the pontifical throne.
The supernatural powers attributed to this pontiff are not specified, but
probably they resembled those of the Mikado and Chitom.

Wherever, as in Japan and West Africa, it is supposed that the order of
nature, and even the existence of the world, is bound up with the life of the
king or priest, it is clear that he must be regarded by his subjects as a
source both of infinite blessing and of infinite danger. On the one hand, the
people have to thank him for the rain and sunshine which foster the fruits of
the earth, for the wind which brings ships to their coasts, and even for the
solid ground beneath their feet. But what he gives he can refuse; and so close
is the dependence of nature on his person, so delicate the balance of the
system of forces whereof he is the centre, that the least irregularity on his
part may set up a tremor which shall shake the earth to its foundations. And
if nature may be disturbed by the slightest involuntary act of the king, it is
easy to conceive the convulsion which his death might provoke. The natural
death of the Chitom, as we have seen, was thought to entail the destruction
of all things. Clearly, therefore, out of a regard for their own safety, which
might be imperilled by any rash act of the king, and still more by his death,
the people will exact of their king or priest a strict conformity to those
rules, the observance of which is deemed necessary for his own preservation,
and consequently for the preservation of his people and the world. The idea
that early kingdoms are despotisms in which the people exist only for the
sovereign, is wholly inapplicable to the monarchies we are considering. On the
contrary, the sovereign in them exists only for his subjects; his life is only
valuable so long as he discharges the duties of his position by ordering the
course of nature for his people's benefit. So soon as he fails to do so, the
care, the devotion, the religious homage which they had hitherto lavished on
him cease and are changed into hatred and contempt; he is dismissed
ignominiously, and may be thankful if he escapes with his life. Worshipped as
a god one day, he is killed as a criminal the next. But in this changed
behaviour of the people there is nothing capricious or inconsistent. On the
contrary, their conduct is entirely of a piece. If their king is their god, he
is or should be also their preserver; and if he will not preserve them, he
must make room for another who will. So long, however, as he answers their
expectations, there is no limit to the care which they take of him, and which
they compel him to take of himself. A king of this sort lives hedged in by a
ceremonious etiquette, a network of prohibitions and observances, of which the
intention is not to contribute to his dignity, much less to his comfort, but
to restrain him from conduct which, by disturbing the harmony of nature, might
involve himself, his people, and the universe in one common catastrophe. Far
from adding to his comfort, these observances, by trammelling his every act,
annihilate his freedom and often render the very life, which it is their
object to preserve, a burden and sorrow to him.

Of the supernaturally endowed kings of Loango it is said that the more
powerful a king is, the more taboos is he bound to observe; they regulate all
his actions, his walking and his standing, his eating and drinking, his
sleeping and waking. To these restraints the heir to the throne is subject
from infancy; but as he advances in life the number of abstinences and
ceremonies which he must observe increases, until at the moment that he
ascends the throne he is lost in the ocean of rites and taboos. In the crater
of an extinct volcano, enclosed on all sides by grassy slopes, lie the
scattered huts and yam-fields of Riabba, the capital of the native king of
Fernando Po. This mysterious being lives in the lowest depths of the crater,
surrounded by a harem of forty women, and covered, it is said, with old silver
coins. Naked savage as he is, he yet exercises far more influence in the
island than the Spanish governor at Santa Isabel. In him the conservative
spirit of the Boobies or aboriginal inhabitants of the island is, as it were,
incorporate. He has never seen a white man and, according to the firm
conviction of all the Boobies, the sight of a pale face would cause his
instant death. He cannot bear to look upon the sea; indeed it is said that he
may never see it even in the distance, and that therefore he wears away his
life with shackles on his legs in the dim twilight of his hut. Certain it is
that he has never set foot on the beach. With the exception of his musket and
knife, he uses nothing that comes from the whites; European cloth never
touches his person, and he scorns tobacco, rum, and even salt.

Among the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast the king is at the same
time high priest. In this quality he was, particularly in former times,
unapproachable by his subjects. Only by night was he allowed to quit his
dwelling in order to bathe and so forth. None but his representative, the
so-called 'visible king,' with three chosen elders might converse with him,
and even they had to sit on an ox-hide with their backs turned to him. He
might not see any European nor any horse, nor might he look upon the sea, for
which reason he was not allowed to quit his capital even for a few moments.
These rules have been disregarded in recent times. The king of Dahomey
himself is subject to the prohibition of beholding the sea, and so are the
kings of Loango and Great Ardra in Guinea. The sea is the fetish of the Eyeos,
to the north-west of Dahomey, and they and their king are threatened with
death by their priests if ever they dare to look on it. It is believed that
the king of Cayor in Senegal would infallibly die within the year if he were
to cross a river or an arm of the sea. In Mashonaland down to recent times the
chiefs would not cross certain rivers, particularly the Rurikwi and the
Nyadiri; and the custom was still strictly observed by at least one chief
within recent years. On no account will the chief cross the river. If it is
absolutely necessary for him to do so, he is blindfolded and carried across
with shouting and singing. Should he walk across, he will go blind or die and
certainly lose the chieftainship. So among the Mahafalys and Sakalavas in the
south of Madagascar some kings are forbidden to sail on the sea or to cross
certain rivers. Among the Sakalavas the chief is regarded as a sacred being,
but he is held in leash by a crowd of restrictions, which regulate his
behaviour like that of the emperor of China. He can undertake nothing whatever
unless the sorcerers have declared the omens favourable; he may not eat warm
food: on certain days he may not quit his hut; and so on. Among some of the
hill tribes of Assam both the headman and his wife have to observe many taboos
in respect of food; thus they may not eat buffalo, pork, dog, fowl, or
tomatoes. The headman must be chaste, the husband of one wife, and he must
separate himself from her on the eve of a general or public observance of
taboo. In one group of tribes the headman is forbidden to eat in a strange
village, and under no provocation whatever may he utter a word of abuse.
Apparently the people imagine that the violation of any of these taboos by a
headman would bring down misfortune on the whole village.

The ancient kings of Ireland, as well as the kings of the four provinces
of Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and Ulster, were subject to certain quaint
prohibitions or taboos, on the due observance of which the prosperity of the
people of the country, as well as their own, was supposed to depend. Thus, for
example, the sun might not rise on the king of Ireland in his bed at Tara, the
old capital of Erin; he was forbidden to alight on Wednesday at Magh Breagh,
to traverse Magh Cuillinn after sunset, to incite his horse at Fan-Chomair, to
go in a ship upon the water the Monday after Bealltaine (May day), and to
leave the track of his army upon Ath Maighne the Tuesday after All-Hallows.
The king of Leinster might not go round Tuath Laighean left-hand-wise on
Wednesday, nor sleep between the Dothair (Dodder) and the Duibhlinn with his
head inclining to one side, nor encamp for nine days on the plains of Cualann,
nor travel the road of Duibhlinn on Monday, nor ride a dirty black-heeled
horse across Magh Maistean. The king of Munster was prohibited from enjoying
the feast of Loch Lein from one Monday to another; from banqueting by night in
the beginning of harvest before Geim at Leitreacha; from encamping for nine
days upon the Siuir; and from holding a border meeting at Gabhran. The king of
Connaught might not conclude a treaty respecting his ancient palace of
Cruachan after making peace on All-Hallows Day, nor go in a speckled garment
on a grey speckled steed to the heath of Dal Chais, nor repair to an assembly
of women at Seaghais, nor sit in autumn on the sepulchral mounds of the wife
of Maine, nor contend in running with the rider of a grey one-eyed horse at
Ath Gallta between two posts. The king of Ulster was forbidden to attend the
horse fair at Rath Line among the youths of Dal Araidhe, to listen to the
fluttering of the flocks of birds of Linn Saileach after sunset, to celebrate
the feast of the bull of Daire-mic-Daire, to go into Magh Cobha in the month
of March, and to drink of the water of Bo Neimhidh between two darknesses. If
the kings of Ireland strictly observed these and many other customs, which
were enjoined by immemorial usage, it was believed that they would never meet
with mischance or misfortune, and would live for ninety years without
experiencing the decay of old age; that no epidemic or mortality would occur
during their reigns; and that the seasons would be favourable and the earth
yield its fruit in abundance; whereas, if they set the ancient usages at
naught, the country would be visited with plague, famine, and bad weather.

The kings of Egypt were worshipped as gods, and the routine of their daily
life was regulated in every detail by precise and unvarying rules. The life
of the kings of Egypt, says Diodorus, was not like that of other monarchs
who are irresponsible and may do just what they choose; on the contrary,
everything was fixed for them by law, not only their official duties, but even
the details of their daily life . The hours both of day and night were
arranged at which the king had to do, not what he pleased, but what was
prescribed for him . For not only were the times appointed at which he should
transact public business or sit in judgment; but the very hours for his
walking and bathing and sleeping with his wife, and, in short, performing
every act of life were all settled. Custom enjoined a simple diet; the only
flesh he might eat was veal and goose, and he might only drink a prescribed
quantity of wine. However, there is reason to think that these rules were
observed, not by the ancient Pharaohs, but by the priestly kings who reigned
at Thebes and Ethiopia at the close of the twentieth dynasty.

Of the taboos imposed on priests we may see a striking example in the
rules of life prescribed for the Flamen Dialis at Rome, who has been
interpreted as a living image of Jupiter, or a human embodiment of the
sky-spirit. They were such as the following: The Flamen Dialis might not ride
or even touch a horse, nor see an army under arms, nor wear a ring which was
not broken, nor have a knot on any part of his garments; no fire except a
sacred fire might be taken out of his house; he might not touch wheaten flour
or leavened bread; he might not touch or even name a goat, a dog, raw meat,
beans, and ivy; he might not walk under a vine; the feet of his bed had to be
daubed with mud; his hair could be cut only by a free man and with a bronze
knife and his hair and nails when cut had to be buried under a lucky tree; he
might not touch a dead body nor enter a place where one was burned; he might
not see work being done on holy days; he might not be uncovered in the open
air; if a man in bonds were taken into his house, the captive had to be
unbound and the cords had to be drawn up through a hole in the roof and so let
down into the street. His wife, the Flaminica, had to observe nearly the same
rules, and others of her own besides. She might not ascend more than three
steps of the kind of staircase called Greek; at a certain festival she might
not comb her hair; the leather of her shoes might not be made from a beast
that had died a natural death, but only from one that had been slain or
sacrificed; if she heard thunder she was tabooed till she had offered an
expiatory sacrifice.

Among the Grebo people of Sierra Leone there is a pontiff who bears the
title of Bodia and has been compared, on somewhat slender grounds, to the high
priest of the Jews. He is appointed in accordance with the behest of an
oracle. At an elaborate ceremony of installation he is anointed, a ring is put
on his ankle as a badge of office, and the door-posts of his house are
sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificed goat. He has charge of the public
talismans and idols, which he feeds with rice and oil every new moon; and he
sacrifices on behalf of the town to the dead and to demons. Nominally his
power is very great, but in practice it is very limited; for he dare not defy
public opinion, and he is held responsible, even with his life, for any
adversity that befalls the country. It is expected of him that he should cause
the earth to bring forth abundantly, the people to be healthy, war to be
driven far away, and witchcraft to be kept in abeyance. His life is trammelled
by the observance of certain restrictions or taboos. Thus he may not sleep in
any house but his own official residence, which is called the anointed house
with reference to the ceremony of anointing him at inauguration. He may not
drink water on the highway. He may not eat while a corpse is in the town, and
he may not mourn for the dead. If he dies while in office, he must be buried
at dead of night; few may hear of his burial, and none may mourn for him when
his death is made public. Should he have fallen a victim to the poison ordeal
by drinking a decoction of sassywood, as it is called, he must be buried under
a running stream of water.

Among the Todas of Southern India the holy milkman, who acts as priest of
the sacred dairy, is subject to a variety of irksome and burdensome
restrictions during the whole time of his incumbency, which may last many
years. Thus he must live at the sacred dairy and may never visit his home or
any ordinary village. He must be celibate; if he is married he must leave his
wife. On no account may any ordinary person touch the holy milkman or the holy
dairy; such a touch would so defile his holiness that he would forfeit his
office. It is only on two days a week, namely Mondays and Thursdays, that a
mere layman may even approach the milkman; on other days if he has any
business with him, he must stand at a distance (some say a quarter of a mile)
and shout his message across the intervening space. Further, the holy milkman
never cuts his hair or pares his nails so long as he holds office; he never
crosses a river by a bridge, but wades through a ford and only certain fords;
if a death occurs in his clan, he may not attend any of the funeral
ceremonies, unless he first resigns his office and descends from the exalted
rank of milkman to that of a mere common mortal. Indeed it appears that in old
days he had to resign the seals, or rather the pails, of office whenever any
member of his clan departed this life. However, these heavy restraints are
laid in their entirety only on milkmen of the very highest class.

2. Divorce of the Spiritual from the Temporal Power

THE BURDENSOME observances attached to the royal or priestly
office produced their natural effect. Either men refused to accept
the office, which hence tended to fall into abeyance; or accepting
it, they sank under its weight into spiritless creatures, cloistered
recluses, from whose nerveless fingers the reins of government
slipped into the firmer grasp of men who were often content to
wield the reality of sovereignty without its name. In some
countries this rift in the supreme power deepened into a total and
permanent separation of the spiritual and temporal powers, the old
royal house retaining their purely religious functions, while the
civil government passed into the hands of a younger and more
vigorous race.

To take examples. In a previous part of this work we saw that in
Cambodia it is often necessary to force the kingships of Fire and
Water upon the reluctant successors, and that in Savage Island the
monarchy actually came to an end because at last no one could be
induced to accept the dangerous distinction. In some parts of West
Africa, when the king dies, a family council is secretly held to
determine his successor. He on whom the choice falls is suddenly
seized, bound, and thrown into the fetish-house, where he is kept
in durance till he consents to accept the crown. Sometimes the heir
finds means of evading the honour which it is sought to thrust
upon him; a ferocious chief has been known to go about constantly
armed, resolute to resist by force any attempt to set him on the
throne. The savage Timmes of Sierra Leone, who elect their king,
reserve to themselves the right of beating him on the eve of his
coronation; and they avail themselves of this constitutional
privilege with such hearty goodwill that sometimes the unhappy
monarch does not long survive his elevation to the throne. Hence
when the leading chiefs have a spite at a man and wish to rid
themselves of him, they elect him king. Formerly, before a man
was proclaimed king of Sierra Leone, it used to be the custom to
load him with chains and thrash him. Then the fetters were
knocked off, the kingly robe was placed on him, and he received in
his hands the symbol of royal dignity, which was nothing but the
axe of the executioner. It is not therefore surprising to read that in
Sierra Leone, where such customs have prevailed, "except among
the Mandingoes and Suzees, few kings are natives of the countries
they govern. So different are their ideas from ours, that very few
are solicitous of the honour, and competition is very seldom heard
of."

The Mikados of Japan seem early to have resorted to the expedient
of transferring the honours and burdens of supreme power to their
infant children; and the rise of the Tycoons, long the temporal
sovereigns of the country, is traced to the abdication of a certain
Mikado in favour of his three-year-old son. The sovereignty having
been wrested by a usurper from the infant prince, the cause of the
Mikado was championed by Yoritomo, a man of spirit and
conduct, who overthrew the usurper and restored to the Mikado
the shadow, while he retained for himself the substance, of power.
He bequeathed to his descendants the dignity he had won, and thus
became the founder of the line of Tycoons. Down to the latter half
of the sixteenth century the Tycoons were active and efficient
rulers; but the same fate overtook them which had befallen the
Mikados. Immeshed in the same inextricable web of custom and
law, they degenerated into mere puppets, hardly stirring from their
palaces and occupied in a perpetual round of empty ceremonies,
while the real business of government was managed by the council
of state. In Tonquin the monarchy ran a similar course. Living like
his predecessors in effeminacy and sloth, the king was driven from
the throne by an ambitious adventurer named Mack, who from a
fisherman had risen to be Grand Mandarin. But the king's brother
Tring put down the usurper and restored the king, retaining,
however, for himself and his descendants the dignity of general of
all the forces. Thenceforward the kings, though invested with the
title and pomp of sovereignty, ceased to govern. While they lived
secluded in their palaces, all real political power was wielded by
the hereditary generals.

In Mangaia, a Polynesian island, religious and civil authority were
lodged in separate hands, spiritual functions being discharged by a
line of hereditary kings, while the temporal government was
entrusted from time to time to a victorious war-chief, whose
investiture, however, had to be completed by the king. Similarly in
Tonga, besides the civil king whose right to the throne was partly
hereditary and partly derived from his warlike reputation and the
number of his fighting men, there was a great divine chief who
ranked above the king and the other chiefs in virtue of his
supposed descent from one of the chief gods. Once a year the
first-fruits of the ground were offered to him at a solemn
ceremony, and it was believed that if these offerings were not
made the vengeance of the gods would fall in a signal manner on
the people. Peculiar forms of speech, such as were applied to no
one else, were used in speaking of him, and everything that he
chanced to touch became sacred or tabooed. When he and the king
met, the monarch had to sit down on the ground in token of respect
until his holiness had passed by. Yet though he enjoyed the highest
veneration by reason of his divine origin, this sacred personage
possessed no political authority, and if he ventured to meddle with
affairs of state it was at the risk of receiving a rebuff from the
king, to whom the real power belonged, and who finally succeeded
in ridding himself of his spiritual rival.

In some parts of Western Africa two kings reign side by side, a
fetish or religious king and a civil king, but the fetish king is really
supreme. He controls the weather and so forth, and can put a stop
to everything. When he lays his red staff on the ground, no one
may pass that way. This division of power between a sacred and a
secular ruler is to be met with wherever the true negro culture has
been left unmolested, but where the negro form of society has been
disturbed, as in Dahomey and Ashantee, there is a tendency to
consolidate the two powers in a single king.

In some parts of the East Indian island of Timor we meet with a
partition of power like that which is represented by the civil king
and the fetish king of Western Africa. Some of the Timorese tribes
recognise two rajahs, the ordinary or civil rajah, who governs the
people, and the fetish or taboo rajah, who is charged with the
control of everything that concerns the earth and its products. This
latter ruler has the right of declaring anything taboo; his
permission must be obtained before new land may be brought
under cultivation, and he must perform certain necessary
ceremonies when the work is being carried out. If drought or blight
threatens the crops, his help is invoked to save them. Though he
ranks below the civil rajah, he exercises a momentous influence on
the course of events, for his secular colleague is bound to consult
him in all important matters. In some of the neighbouring islands,
such as Rotti and eastern Flores, a spiritual ruler of the same sort is
recognised under various native names, which all mean "lord of
the ground." Similarly in the Mekeo district of British New Guinea
there is a double chieftainship. The people are divided into two
groups according to families, and each of the groups has its chief.
One of the two is the war chief, the other is the taboo chief. The
office of the latter is hereditary; his duty is to impose a taboo on
any of the crops, such as the coco-nuts and areca nuts, whenever
he thinks it desirable to prohibit their use. In his office we may
perhaps detect the beginning of a priestly dynasty, but as yet his
functions appear to be more magical than religious, being
concerned with the control of the harvests rather than with the
propitiation of higher powers.

Chapter 18. The Perils of the Soul.

1. The Soul as a Mannikin

THE FOREGOING examples have taught us that the office of a sacred king or
priest is often hedged in by a series of burdensome restrictions or taboos, of
which a principal purpose appears to be to preserve the life of the divine man
for the good of his people. But if the object of the taboos is to save his
life, the question arises, How is their observance supposed to effect this
end? To understand this we must know the nature of the danger which threatens
the king's life, and which it is the intention of these curious restrictions
to guard against. We must, therefore, ask: What does early man understand by
death? To what causes does he attribute it? And how does he think it may be
guarded against?

As the savage commonly explains the processes of inanimate nature by
supposing that they are produced by living beings working in or behind the
phenomena, so he explains the phenomena of life itself. If an animal lives and
moves, it can only be, he thinks, because there is a little animal inside
which moves it: if a man lives and moves, it can only be because he has a
little man or animal inside who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the
man inside the man, is the soul. And as the activity of an animal or man is
explained by the presence of the soul, so the repose of sleep or death is
explained by its absence; sleep or trance being the temporary, death being the
permanent absence of the soul. Hence if death be the permanent absence of the
soul, the way to guard against it is either to prevent the soul from leaving
the body, or, if it does depart, to ensure that it shall return. The
precautions adopted by savages to secure one or other of these ends take the
form of certain prohibitions or taboos, which are nothing but rules intended
to ensure either the continued presence or the return of the soul. In short,
they are life-preservers or life-guards. These general statements will now be
illustrated by examples.

Addressing some Australian blacks, a European missionary said, I am not
one, as you think, but two. Upon this they laughed. You may laugh as much as
you like, continued the missionary, I tell you that I am two in one; this
great body that you see is one; within that there is another little one which
is not visible. The great body dies, and is buried, but the little body flies
away when the great one dies. To this some of the blacks replied, Yes, yes.
We also are two, we also have a little body within the breast. On being asked
where the little body went after death, some said it went behind the bush,
others said it went into the sea, and some said they did not know. The Hurons
thought that the soul had a head and body, arms and legs; in short, that it
was a complete little model of the man himself. The Esquimaux believe that
the soul exhibits the same shape as the body it belongs to, but is of a more
subtle and ethereal nature. According to the Nootkas the soul has the shape
of a tiny man; its seat is the crown of the head. So long as it stands erect,
its owner is hale and hearty; but when from any cause it loses its upright
position, he loses his senses. Among the Indian tribes of the Lower Fraser
River, man is held to have four souls, of which the principal one has the form
of a mannikin, while the other three are shadows of it. The Malays conceive
the human soul as a little man, mostly invisible and of the bigness of a
thumb, who corresponds exactly in shape, proportion, and even in complexion to
the man in whose body he resides. This mannikin is of a thin, unsubstantial
nature, though not so impalpable but that it may cause displacement on
entering a physical object, and it can flit quickly from place to place; it is
temporarily absent from the body in sleep, trance, and disease, and
permanently absent after death.

So exact is the resemblance of the mannikin to the man, in other words, of
the soul to the body, that, as there are fat bodies and thin bodies, so there
are fat souls and thin souls; as there are heavy bodies and light bodies, long
bodies and short bodies, so there are heavy souls and light souls, long souls
and short souls. The people of Nias think that every man, before he is born,
is asked how long or how heavy a soul he would like, and a soul of the desired
weight or length is measured out to him. The heaviest soul ever given out
weighs about ten grammes. The length of a man's life is proportioned to the
length of his soul; children who die young had short souls. The Fijian
conception of the soul as a tiny human being comes clearly out in the customs
observed at the death of a chief among the Nakelo tribe. When a chief dies,
certain men, who are the hereditary undertakers, call him, as he lies, oiled
and ornamented, on fine mats, saying, Rise, sir, the chief, and let us be
going. The day has come over the land. Then they conduct him to the river
side, where the ghostly ferryman comes to ferry Nakelo ghosts across the
stream. As they thus attend the chief on his last journey, they hold their
great fans close to the ground to shelter him, because, as one of them
explained to a missionary, His soul is only a little child. People in the
Punjaub who tattoo themselves believe that at death the soul, the little
entire man or woman inside the mortal frame, will go to heaven blazoned with
the same tattoo patterns which adorned the body in life. Sometimes, however,
as we shall see, the human soul is conceived not in human but in animal form.

2. Absence and Recall of the Soul.

THE SOUL is commonly supposed to escape by the natural openings of the body,
especially the mouth and nostrils. Hence in Celebes they sometimes fasten
fish-hooks to a sick man's nose, navel, and feet, so that if his soul should
try to escape it may be hooked and held fast. A Turik on the Baram River, in
Borneo, refused to part with some hook-like stones, because they, as it were,
hooked his soul to his body, and so prevented the spiritual portion of him
from becoming detached from the material. When a Sea Dyak sorcerer or
medicine-man is initiated, his fingers are supposed to be furnished with
fish-hooks, with which he will thereafter clutch the human soul in the act of
flying away, and restore it to the body of the sufferer. But hooks, it is
plain, may be used to catch the souls of enemies as well as of friends. Acting
on this principle head-hunters in Borneo hang wooden hooks beside the skulls
of their slain enemies in the belief that this helps them on their forays to
hook in fresh heads. One of the implements of a Haida medicine-man is a hollow
bone, in which he bottles up departing souls, and so restores them to their
owners. When any one yawns in their presence the Hindoos always snap their
thumbs, believing that this will hinder the soul from issuing through the open
mouth. The Marquesans used to hold the mouth and nose of a dying man, in order
to keep him in life by preventing his soul from escaping; the same custom is
reported of the New Caledonians; and with the like intention the Bagobos of
the Philippine Islands put rings of brass wire on the wrists or ankles of
their sick. On the other hand, the Itonamas of South America seal up the eyes,
nose, and mouth of a dying person, in case his ghost should get out and carry
off others; and for a similar reason the people of Nias, who fear the spirits
of the recently deceased and identify them with the breath, seek to confine
the vagrant soul in its earthly tabernacle by bunging up the nose or tying up
the jaws of the corpse. Before leaving a corpse the Wakelbura of Australia
used to place hot coals in its ears in order to keep the ghost in the body,
until they had got such a good start that he could not overtake them. In
Southern Celebes, to hinder the escape of a woman's soul in childbed, the
nurse ties a band as tightly as possible round the body of the expectant
mother. The Minangkabauers of Sumatra observe a similar custom; a skein of
thread or a string is sometimes fastened round the wrist or loins of a woman
in childbed, so that when her soul seeks to depart in her hour of travail it
may find the egress barred. And lest the soul of a babe should escape and be
lost as soon as it is born, the Alfoors of Celebes, when a birth is about to
take place, are careful to close every opening in the house, even the keyhole;
and they stop up every chink and cranny in the walls. Also they tie up the
mouths of all animals inside and outside the house, for fear one of them might
swallow the child's soul. For a similar reason all persons present in the
house, even the mother herself, are obliged to keep their mouths shut the
whole time the birth is taking place. When the question was put, Why they did
not hold their noses also, lest the child's soul should get into one of them?
the answer was that breath being exhaled as well as inhaled through the
nostrils, the soul would be expelled before it could have time to settle down.
Popular expressions in the language of civilised peoples, such as to have
one's heart in one's mouth, or the soul on the lips or in the nose, show how
natural is the idea that the life or soul may escape by the mouth or nostrils.

Often the soul is conceived as a bird ready to take flight. This
conception has probably left traces in most languages, and it lingers as a
metaphor in poetry. The Malays carry out the conception of the bird-soul in a
number of odd ways. If the soul is a bird on the wing, it may be attracted by
rice, and so either prevented from flying away or lured back again from its
perilous flight. Thus in Java when a child is placed on the ground for the
first time (a moment which uncultured people seem to regard as especially
dangerous), it is put in a hen-coop and the mother makes a clucking sound, as
if she were calling hens. And in Sintang, a district of Borneo, when a person,
whether man, woman, or child, has fallen out of a house or off a tree, and has
been brought home, his wife or other kinswoman goes as speedily as possible to
the spot where the accident happened, and there strews rice, which has been
coloured yellow, while she utters the words, Cluck! cluck! soul! So-and-so is
in his house again. Cluck! cluck! soul! Then she gathers up the rice in a
basket, carries it to the sufferer, and drops the grains from her hand on his
head, saying again, Cluck! cluck! soul! Here the intention clearly is to
decoy back the loitering bird-soul and replace it in the head of its owner.

The soul of a sleeper is supposed to wander away from his body and
actually to visit the places, to see the persons, and to perform the acts of
which he dreams. For example, when an Indian of Brazil or Guiana wakes up from
a sound sleep, he is firmly convinced that his soul has really been away
hunting, fishing, felling trees, or whatever else he has dreamed of doing,
while all the time his body has been lying motionless in his hammock. A whole
Bororo village has been thrown into a panic and nearly deserted because
somebody had dreamed that he saw enemies stealthily approaching it. A Macusi
Indian in weak health, who dreamed that his employer had made him haul the
canoe up a series of difficult cataracts, bitterly reproached his master next
morning for his want of consideration in thus making a poor invalid go out and
toil during the night. The Indians of the Gran Chaco are often heard to relate
the most incredible stories as things which they have themselves seen and
heard; hence strangers who do not know them intimately say in their haste that
these Indians are liars. In point of fact the Indians are firmly convinced of
the truth of what they relate; for these wonderful adventures are simply their
dreams, which they do not distinguish from waking realities.

Now the absence of the soul in sleep has its dangers, for if from any
cause the soul should be permanently detained away from the body, the person
thus deprived of the vital principle must die. There is a German belief that
the soul escapes from a sleeper's mouth in the form of a white mouse or a
little bird, and that to prevent the return of the bird or animal would be
fatal to the sleeper. Hence in Transylvania they say that you should not let a
child sleep with its mouth open, or its soul will slip out in the shape of a
mouse, and the child will never wake. Many causes may detain the sleeper's
soul. Thus, his soul may meet the soul of another sleeper and the two souls
may fight; if a Guinea negro wakens with sore bones in the morning, he thinks
that his soul has been thrashed by another soul in sleep. Or it may meet the
soul of a person just deceased and be carried off by it; hence in the Aru
Islands the inmates of a house will not sleep the night after a death has
taken place in it, because the soul of the deceased is supposed to be still in
the house and they fear to meet it in a dream. Again, the soul of the sleeper
may be prevented by an accident or by physical force from returning to his
body. When a Dyak dreams of falling into the water, he supposes that this
accident has really befallen his spirit, and he sends for a wizard, who fishes
for the spirit with a hand-net in a basin of water till he catches it and
restores it to its owner. The Santals tell how a man fell asleep, and growing
very thirsty, his soul, in the form of a lizard, left his body and entered a
pitcher of water to drink. Just then the owner of the pitcher happened to
cover it; so the soul could not return to the body and the man died. While his
friends were preparing to burn the body some one uncovered the pitcher to get
water. The lizard thus escaped and returned to the body, which immediately
revived; so the man rose up and asked his friends why they were weeping. They
told him they thought he was dead and were about to burn his body. He said he
had been down a well to get water, but had found it hard to get out and had
just returned. So they saw it all.

It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because
his soul is away and might not have time to get back; so if the man wakened
without his soul, he would fall sick. If it is absolutely necessary to rouse a
sleeper, it must be done very gradually, to allow the soul time to return. A
Fijian in Matuku, suddenly wakened from a nap by somebody treading on his
foot, has been heard bawling after his soul and imploring it to return. He had
just been dreaming that he was far away in Tonga, and great was his alarm on
suddenly wakening to find his body in Matuku. Death stared him in the face
unless his soul could be induced to speed at once across the sea and reanimate
its deserted tenement. The man would probably have died of fright if a
missionary had not been at hand to allay his terror.

Still more dangerous is it in the opinion of primitive man to move a
sleeper or alter his appearance, for if this were done the soul on its return
might not be able to find or recognise its body, and so the person would die.
The Minangkabauers deem it highly improper to blacken or dirty the face of a
sleeper, lest the absent soul should shrink from re-entering a body thus
disfigured. Patani Malays fancy that if a person's face be painted while he
sleeps, the soul which has gone out of him will not recognise him, and he will
sleep on till his face is washed. In Bombay it is thought equivalent to murder
to change the aspect of a sleeper, as by painting his face in fantastic
colours or giving moustaches to a sleeping woman. For when the soul returns it
will not know its own body, and the person will die.

But in order that a man's soul should quit his body, it is not necessary
that he should be asleep. It may quit him in his waking hours, and then
sickness, insanity, or death will be the result. Thus a man of the Wurunjeri
tribe in Australia lay at his last gasp because his spirit had departed from
him. A medicine-man went in pursuit and caught the spirit by the middle just
as it was about to plunge into the sunset glow, which is the light cast by the
souls of the dead as they pass in and out of the under-world, where the sun
goes to rest. Having captured the vagrant spirit, the doctor brought it back
under his opossum rug, laid himself down on the dying man, and put the soul
back into him, so that after a time he revived. The Karens of Burma are
perpetually anxious about their souls, lest these should go roving from their
bodies, leaving the owners to die. When a man has reason to fear that his soul
is about to take this fatal step, a ceremony is performed to retain or recall
it, in which the whole family must take part. A meal is prepared consisting of
a cock and hen, a special kind of rice, and a bunch of bananas. Then the head
of the family takes the bowl which is used to skim rice, and knocking with it
thrice on the top of the houseladder says: Prrrroo! Come back, soul, do not
tarry outside! If it rains, you will be wet. If the sun shines, you will be
hot. The gnats will sting you, the leeches will bite you, the tigers will
devour you, the thunder will crush you. Prrrroo! Come back, soul! Here it
will be well with you. You shall want for nothing. Come and eat under shelter
from the wind and the storm. After that the family partakes of the meal, and
the ceremony ends with everybody tying their right wrist with a string which
has been charmed by a sorcerer. Similarly the Lolos of South-western China
believe that the soul leaves the body in chronic illness. In that case they
read a sort of elaborate litany, calling on the soul by name and beseeching it
to return from the hills, the vales, the rivers, the forests, the fields, or
from wherever it may be straying. At the same time cups of water, wine, and
rice are set at the door for the refreshment of the weary wandering spirit.
When the ceremony is over, they tie a red cord round the arm of the sick man
to tether the soul, and this cord is worn by him until it decays and drops
off.

Some of the Congo tribes believe that when a man is ill, his soul has left
his body and is wandering at large. The aid of the sorcerer is then called in
to capture the vagrant spirit and restore it to the invalid. Generally the
physician declares that he has successfully chased the soul into the branch of
a tree. The whole town thereupon turns out and accompanies the doctor to the
tree, where the strongest men are deputed to break off the branch in which the
soul of the sick man is supposed to be lodged. This they do and carry the
branch back to the town, insinuating by their gestures that the burden is
heavy and hard to bear. When the branch has been brought to the sick man's
hut, he is placed in an upright position by its side, and the sorcerer
performs the enchantments by which the soul is believed to be restored to its
owner.

Pining, sickness, great fright, and death are ascribed by the Bataks of
Sumatra to the absence of the soul from the body. At first they try to beckon
the wanderer back, and to lure him, like a fowl, by strewing rice. Then the
following form of words is commonly repeated: Come back, O soul, whether thou
art lingering in the wood, or on the hills, or in the dale. See, I call thee
with a toemba bras, with an egg of the fowl Rajah moelija, with the eleven
healing leaves. Detain it not, let it come straight here, detain it not,
neither in the wood, nor on the hill, nor in the dale. That may not be. O come
straight home! Once when a popular traveller was leaving a Kayan village, the
mothers, fearing that their children's souls might follow him on his journey,
brought him the boards on which they carry their infants and begged him to
pray that the souls of the little ones would return to the familiar boards and
not go away with him into the far country. To each board was fastened a looped
string for the purpose of tethering the vagrant spirits, and through the loop
each baby was made to pass a chubby finger to make sure that its tiny soul
would not wander away.

In an Indian story a king conveys his soul into the dead body of a
Brahman, and a hunchback conveys his soul into the deserted body of the king.
The hunchback is now king and the king is a Brahman. However, the hunchback is
induced to show his skill by transferring his soul to the dead body of a
parrot, and the king seizes the opportunity to regain possession of his own
body. A tale of the same type, with variations of detail, reappears among the
Malays. A king has incautiously transferred his soul to an ape, upon which the
vizier adroitly inserts his own soul into the king's body and so takes
possession of the queen and the kingdom, while the true king languishes at
court in the outward semblance of an ape. But one day the false king, who
played for high stakes, was watching a combat of rams, and it happened that
the animal on which he had laid his money fell down dead. All efforts to
restore animation proved unavailing till the false king, with the instinct of
a true sportsman, transferred his own soul to the body of the deceased ram,
and thus renewed the fray. The real king in the body of the ape saw his
chance, and with great presence of mind darted back into his own body, which
the vizier had rashly vacated. So he came to his own again, and the usurper in
the ram's body met with the fate he richly deserved. Similarly the Greeks told
how the soul of Hermotimus of Clazomenae used to quit his body and roam far
and wide, bringing back intelligence of what he had seen on his rambles to his
friends at home; until one day, when his spirit was abroad, his enemies
contrived to seize his deserted body and committed it to the flames.

The departure of the soul is not always voluntary. It may be extracted
from the body against its will by ghosts, demons, or sorcerers. Hence, when a
funeral is passing the house, the Karens tie their children with a special
kind of string to a particular part of the house, lest the souls of the
children should leave their bodies and go into the corpse which is passing.
The children are kept tied in this way until the corpse is out of sight. And
after the corpse has been laid in the grave, but before the earth has been
shovelled in, the mourners and friends range themselves round the grave, each
with a bamboo split lengthwise in one hand and a little stick in the other;
each man thrusts his bamboo into the grave, and drawing the stick along the
groove of the bamboo points out to his soul that in this way it may easily
climb up out of the tomb. While the earth is being shovelled in, the bamboos
are kept out of the way, lest the souls should be in them, and so should be
inadvertently buried with the earth as it is being thrown into the grave; and
when the people leave the spot they carry away the bamboos, begging their
souls to come with them. Further, on returning from the grave each Karen
provides himself with three little hooks made of branches of trees, and
calling his spirit to follow him, at short intervals, as he returns, he makes
a motion as if hooking it, and then thrusts the hook into the ground. This is
done to prevent the soul of the living from staying behind with the soul of
the dead. When the Karo-Bataks have buried somebody and are filling in the
grave, a sorceress runs about beating the air with a stick. This she does in
order to drive away the souls of the survivors, for if one of these souls
happened to slip into the grave and to be covered up with earth, its owner
would die.

In Uea, one of the Loyalty Islands, the souls of the dead seem to have
been credited with the power of stealing the souls of the living. For when a
man was sick the soul-doctor would go with a large troop of men and women to
the graveyard. Here the men played on flutes and the women whistled softly to
lure the soul home. After this had gone on for some time they formed in
procession and moved homewards, the flutes playing and the women whistling all
the way, while they led back the wandering soul and drove it gently along with
open palms. On entering the patient's dwelling they commanded the soul in a
loud voice to enter his body.

Often the abduction of a man's soul is set down to demons. Thus fits and
convulsions are generally ascribed by the Chinese to the agency of certain
mischievous spirits who love to draw men's souls out of their bodies. At Amoy
the spirits who serve babies and children in this way rejoice in the
high-sounding titles of celestial agencies bestriding galloping horses and
literary graduates residing halfway up in the sky. When an infant is
writhing in convulsions, the frightened mother hastens to the roof of the
house, and, waving about a bamboo pole to which one of the child's garments is
attached, cries out several times My child So-and-so, come back, return
home! Meantime, another inmate of the house bangs away at a gong in the hope
of attracting the attention of the strayed soul, which is supposed to
recognise the familiar garment and to slip into it. The garment containing the
soul is then placed on or beside the child, and if the child does not die
recovery is sure to follow, sooner or later. Similarly some Indians catch a
man's lost soul in his boots and restore it to his body by putting his feet
into them.

In the Moluccas when a man is unwell it is thought that some devil has
carried away his soul to the tree, mountain, or hill where he (the devil)
resides. A sorcerer having pointed out the devil's abode, the friends of the
patient carry thither cooked rice, fruit, fish, raw eggs, a hen, a chicken, a
silken robe, gold, armlets, and so forth. Having set out the food in order
they pray, saying: We come to offer to you, O devil, this offering of food,
clothes, gold, and so on; take it and release the soul of the patient for whom
we pray. Let it return to his body, and he who now is sick shall be made
whole. Then they eat a little and let the hen loose as a ransom for the soul
of the patient; also they put down the raw eggs; but the silken robe, the
gold, and the armlets they take home with them. As soon as they are come to
the house they place a flat bowl containing the offerings which have been
brought back at the sick man's head, and say to him: Now is your soul
released, and you shall fare well and live to grey hairs on the earth.

Demons are especially feared by persons who have just entered a new house.
Hence at a house-warming among the Alfoors of Minahassa in Celebes the priest
performs a ceremony for the purpose of restoring their souls to the inmates.
He hangs up a bag at the place of sacrifice and then goes through a list of
the gods. There are so many of them that this takes him the whole night
through without stopping. In the morning he offers the gods an egg and some
rice. By this time the souls of the household are supposed to be gathered in
the bag. So the priest takes the bag, and holding it on the head of the master
of the house, says, Here you have your soul; go (soul) to-morrow away again.
He then does the same, saying the same words, to the housewife and all the
other members of the family. Amongst the same Alfoors one way of recovering a
sick man's soul is to let down a bowl by a belt out of a window and fish for
the soul till it is caught in the bowl and hauled up. And among the same
people, when a priest is bringing back a sick man's soul which he has caught
in a cloth, he is preceded by a girl holding the large leaf of a certain palm
over his head as an umbrella to keep him and the soul from getting wet, in
case it should rain; and he is followed by a man brandishing a sword to deter
other souls from any attempt at rescuing the captured spirit.

Sometimes the lost soul is brought back in a visible shape. The Salish or
Flathead Indians of Oregon believe that a man's soul may be separated for a
time from his body without causing death and without the man being aware of
his loss. It is necessary, however, that the lost soul should be soon found
and restored to its owner or he will die. The name of the man who has lost his
soul is revealed in a dream to the medicine-man, who hastens to inform the
sufferer of his loss. Generally a number of men have sustained a like loss at
the same time; all their names are revealed to the medicine-man, and all
employ him to recover their souls. The whole night long these soulless men go
about the village from lodge to lodge, dancing and singing. Towards daybreak
they go into a separate lodge, which is closed up so as to be totally dark. A
small hole is then made in the roof, through which the medicine-man, with a
bunch of feathers, brushes in the souls, in the shape of bits of bone and the
like, which he receives on a piece of matting. A fire is next kindled, by the
light of which the medicine-man sorts out the souls. First he puts aside the
souls of dead people, of which there are usually several; for if he were to
give the soul of a dead person to a living man, the man would die instantly.
Next he picks out the souls of all the persons present, and making them all to
sit down before him, he takes the soul of each, in the shape of a splinter of
bone, wood, or shell, and placing it on the owner's head, pats it with many
prayers and contortions till it descends into the heart and so resumes its
proper place.

Again, souls may be extracted from their bodies or detained on their
wanderings not only by ghosts and demons but also by men, especially by
sorcerers. In Fiji, if a criminal refused to confess, the chief sent for a
scarf with which to catch away the soul of the rogue. At the sight or even
at the mention of the scarf the culprit generally made a clean breast. For if
he did not, the scarf would be waved over his head till his soul was caught in
it, when it would be carefully folded up and nailed to the end of a chief's
canoe; and for want of his soul the criminal would pine and die. The sorcerers
of Danger Island used to set snares for souls. The snares were made of stout
cinet, about fifteen to thirty feet long, with loops on either side of
different sizes, to suit the different sizes of souls; for fat souls there
were large loops, for thin souls there were small ones. When a man was sick
against whom the sorcerers had a grudge, they set up these soul-snares near
his house and watched for the flight of his soul. If in the shape of a bird or
an insect it was caught in the snare, the man would infallibly die. In some
parts of West Africa, indeed, wizards are continually setting traps to catch
souls that wander from their bodies in sleep; and when they have caught one,
they tie it up over the fire, and as it shrivels in the heat the owner
sickens. This is done, not out of any grudge towards the sufferer, but purely
as a matter of business. The wizard does not care whose soul he has captured,
and will readily restore it to its owner, if only he is paid for doing so.
Some sorcerers keep regular asylums for strayed souls, and anybody who has
lost or mislaid his own soul can always have another one from the asylum on
payment of the usual fee. No blame whatever attaches to men who keep these
private asylums or set traps for passing souls; it is their profession, and in
the exercise of it they are actuated by no harsh or unkindly feelings. But
there are also wretches who from pure spite or for the sake of lucre set and
bait traps with the deliberate purpose of catching the soul of a particular
man; and in the bottom of the pot, hidden by the bait, are knives and sharp
hooks which tear and rend the poor soul, either killing it outright or mauling
it so as to impair the health of its owner when it succeeds in escaping and
returning to him. Miss Kingsley knew a Kruman who became very anxious about
his soul, because for several nights he had smelt in his dreams the savoury
smell of smoked crawfish seasoned with red pepper. Clearly some ill-wisher had
set a trap baited with this dainty for his dream-soul, intending to do him
grievous bodily, or rather spiritual, harm; and for the next few nights great
pains were taken to keep his soul from straying abroad in his sleep. In the
sweltering heat of the tropical night he lay sweating and snorting under a
blanket, his nose and mouth tied up with a handkerchief to prevent the escape
of his precious soul. In Hawaii there were sorcerers who caught souls of
living people, shut them up in calabashes, and gave them to people to eat. By
squeezing a captured soul in their hands they discovered the place where
people had been secretly buried.

Nowhere perhaps is the art of abducting human souls more carefully
cultivated or carried to higher perfection than in the Malay Peninsula. Here
the methods by which the wizard works his will are various, and so too are his
motives. Sometimes he desires to destroy an enemy, sometimes to win the love
of a cold or bashful beauty. Thus, to take an instance of the latter sort of
charm, the following are the directions given for securing the soul of one
whom you wish to render distraught. When the moon, just risen, looks red above
the eastern horizon, go out, and standing in the moonlight, with the big toe
of your right foot on the big toe of your left, make a speaking-trumpet of
your right hand and recite through it the following words:

OM. I loose my shaft, I loose it and the moon clouds over,
I loose it, and the sun is extinguished.
I loose it, and the stars burn dim.
But it is not the sun, moon, and stars that I shoot at,
It is the stalk of the heart of that child of the congregation,

So-and-so.
Cluck! cluck! soul of So-and-so, come and walk with me,
Come and sit with me,
Come and sleep and share my pillow.
Cluck! cluck! soul.

Repeat this thrice and after every repetition blow through your hollow fist.
Or you may catch the soul in your turban, thus. Go out on the night of the
full moon and the two succeeding nights; sit down on an ant-hill facing the
moon, burn incense, and recite the following incantation:

I bring you a betel leaf to chew,
Dab the lime on to it, Prince Ferocious,
For Somebody, Prince Distraction's daughter, to chew.
Somebody at sunrise be distraught for love of me
Somebody at sunset be distraught for love of me.
As you remember your parents, remember me;
As you remember your house and houseladder, remember me;
When thunder rumbles, remember me;
When wind whistles, remember me;
When the heavens rain, remember me;
When cocks crow, remember me;
When the dial-bird tells its tales, remember me;
When you look up at the sun, remember me;
When you look up at the moon, remember me,
For in that self-same moon I am there.
Cluck! cluck! soul of Somebody come hither to me.
I do not mean to let you have my soul,
Let your soul come hither to mine.

Now wave the end of your turban towards the moon seven times each night.
Go home and put it under your pillow, and if you want to wear it in the
daytime, burn incense and say, It is not a turban that I carry in my girdle,
but the soul of Somebody.

The Indians of the Nass River, in British Columbia, are impressed with a
belief that a physician may swallow his patient's soul by mistake. A doctor
who is believed to have done so is made by the other members of the faculty to
stand over the patient, while one of them thrusts his fingers down the
doctor's throat, another kneads him in the stomach with his knuckles, and a
third slaps him on the back. If the soul is not in him after all, and if the
same process has been repeated upon all the medical men without success, it is
concluded that the soul must be in the head-doctor's box. A party of doctors,
therefore, waits upon him at his house and requests him to produce his box.
When he has done so and arranged its contents on a new mat, they take the
votary of Aesculapius and hold him up by the heels with his head in a hole in
the floor. In this position they wash his head, and any water remaining from
the ablution is taken and poured upon the sick man's head. No doubt the lost
soul is in the water.

3. The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection

BUT the spiritual dangers I have enumerated are not the only ones which
beset the savage. Often he regards his shadow or reflection as his soul, or at
all events as a vital part of himself, and as such it is necessarily a source
of danger to him. For if it is trampled upon, struck, or stabbed, he will feel
the injury as if it were done to his person; and if it is detached from him
entirely (as he believes that it may be) he will die. In the island of Wetar
there are magicians who can make a man ill by stabbing his shadow with a pike
or hacking it with a sword. After Sankara had destroyed the Buddhists in
India, it is said that he journeyed to Nepaul, where he had some difference of
opinion with the Grand Lama. To prove his supernatural powers, he soared into
the air. But as he mounted up the Grand Lama, perceiving his shadow swaying
and wavering on the ground, struck his knife into it and down fell Sankara and
broke his neck.

In the Banks Islands there are some stones of a remarkably long shape
which go by the name of eating ghosts, because certain powerful and
dangerous ghosts are believed to lodge in them. If a man's shadow falls on one
of these stones, the ghost will draw his soul out from him, so that he will
die. Such stones, therefore, are set in a house to guard it; and a messenger
sent to a house by the absent owner will call out the name of the sender, lest
the watchful ghost in the stone should fancy that he came with evil intent and
should do him a mischief. At a funeral in China, when the lid is about to be
placed on the coffin, most of the bystanders, with the exception of the
nearest kin, retire a few steps or even retreat to another room, for a
person's health is believed to be endangered by allowing his shadow to be
enclosed in a coffin. And when the coffin is about to be lowered into the
grave most of the spectators recoil to a little distance lest their shadows
should fall into the grave and harm should thus be done to their persons. The
geomancer and his assistants stand on the side of the grave which is turned
away from the sun; and the grave-diggers and coffin-bearers attach their
shadows firmly to their persons by tying a strip of cloth tightly round their
waists. Nor is it human beings alone who are thus liable to be injured by
means of their shadows. Animals are to some extent in the same predicament. A
small snail, which frequents the neighbourhood of the limestone hills in
Perak, is believed to suck the blood of cattle through their shadows; hence
the beasts grow lean and sometimes die from loss of blood. The ancients
supposed that in Arabia, if a hyaena trod on a man's shadow, it deprived him
of the power of speech and motion; and that if a dog, standing on a roof in
the moonlight, cast a shadow on the ground and a hyaena trod on it, the dog
would fall down as if dragged with a rope. Clearly in these cases the shadow,
if not equivalent to the soul, is at least regarded as a living part of the
man or the animal, so that injury done to the shadow is felt by the person or
animal as if it were done to his body.

Conversely, if the shadow is a vital part of a man or an animal, it may
under certain circumstances be as hazardous to be touched by it as it would be
to come into contact with the person or animal. Hence the savage makes it a
rule to shun the shadow of certain persons whom for various reasons he regards
as sources of dangerous influence. Amongst the dangerous classes he commonly
ranks mourners and women in general, but especially his mother-in-law. The
Shuswap Indians think that the shadow of a mourner falling upon a person would
make him sick. Amongst the Kurnai of Victoria novices at initiation were
cautioned not to let a woman's shadow fall across them, as this would make
them thin, lazy, and stupid. An Australian native is said to have once nearly
died of fright because the shadow of his mother-in-law fell on his legs as he
lay asleep under a tree. The awe and dread with which the untutored savage
contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of
anthropology. In the Yuin tribes of New South Wales the rule which forbade a
man to hold any communication with his wife's mother was very strict. He might
not look at her or even in her direction. It was a ground of divorce if his
shadow happened to fall on his mother-in-law: in that case he had to leave his
wife, and she returned to her parents. In New Britain the native imagination
fails to conceive the extent and nature of the calamities which would result
from a man's accidentally speaking to his wife's mother; suicide of one or
both would probably be the only course open to them. The most solemn form of
oath a New Briton can take is, Sir, if I am not telling the truth, I hope I
may shake hands with my mother-in-law.

Where the shadow is regarded as so intimately bound up with the life of
the man that its loss entails debility or death, it is natural to expect that
its diminution should be regarded with solicitude and apprehension, as
betokening a corresponding decrease in the vital energy of its owner. In
Amboyna and Uliase, two islands near the equator, where necessarily there is
little or no shadow cast at noon, the people make it a rule not to go out of
the house at mid-day, because they fancy that by doing so a man may lose the
shadow of his soul. The Mangaians tell of a mighty warrior, Tukaitawa, whose
strength waxed and waned with the length of his shadow. In the morning, when
his shadow fell longest, his strength was greatest; but as the shadow
shortened towards noon his strength ebbed with it, till exactly at noon it
reached its lowest point; then, as the shadow stretched out in the afternoon,
his strength returned. A certain hero discovered the secret of Tukaitawa's
strength and slew him at noon. The savage Besisis of the Malay Peninsula fear
to bury their dead at noon, because they fancy that the shortness of their
shadows at that hour would sympathetically shorten their own lives.

Nowhere, perhaps, does the equivalence of the shadow to the life or soul
come out more clearly than in some customs practised to this day in
South-eastern Europe. In modern Greece, when the foundation of a new building
is being laid, it is the custom to kill a cock, a ram, or a lamb, and to let
its blood flow on the foundation-stone, under which the animal is afterwards
buried. The object of the sacrifice is to give strength and stability to the
building. But sometimes, instead of killing an animal, the builder entices a
man to the foundation-stone, secretly measures his body, or a part of it, or
his shadow, and buries the measure under the foundation-stone; or he lays the
foundation-stone upon the man's shadow. It is believed that the man will die
within the year. The Roumanians of Transylvania think that he whose shadow is
thus immured will die within forty days; so persons passing by a building
which is in course of erection may hear a warning cry, Beware lest they take
thy shadow! Not long ago there were still shadow-traders whose business it
was to provide architects with the shadows necessary for securing their walls.
In these cases the measure of the shadow is looked on as equivalent to the
shadow itself, and to bury it is to bury the life or soul of the man, who,
deprived of it, must die. Thus the custom is a substitute for the old practice
of immuring a living person in the walls, or crushing him under the
foundation-stone of a new building, in order to give strength and durability
to the structure, or more definitely in order that the angry ghost may haunt
the place and guard it against the intrusion of enemies.

As some peoples believe a man's soul to be in his shadow, so other (or the
same) peoples believe it to be in his reflection in water or a mirror. Thus
the Andamanese do not regard their shadows but their reflections (in any
mirror) as their souls. When the Motumotu of New Guinea first saw their
likenesses in a looking-glass, they thought that their reflections were their
souls. In New Caledonia the old men are of opinion that a person's reflection
in water or a mirror is his soul; but the younger men, taught by the Catholic
priests, maintain that it is a reflection and nothing more, just like the
reflection of palm-trees in the water. The reflection-soul, being external to
the man, is exposed to much the same dangers as the shadow-soul. The Zulus
will not look into a dark pool because they think there is a beast in it which
will take away their reflections, so that they die. The Basutos say that
crocodiles have the power of thus killing a man by dragging his reflection
under water. When one of them dies suddenly and from no apparent cause, his
relatives will allege that a crocodile must have taken his shadow some time
when he crossed a stream. In Saddle Island, Melanesia, there is a pool into
which if any one looks he dies; the malignant spirit takes hold upon his life
by means of his reflection on the water.

We can now understand why it was a maxim both in ancient India and ancient
Greece not to look at one's reflection in water, and why the Greeks regarded
it as an omen of death if a man dreamed of seeing himself so reflected. They
feared that the water-spirits would drag the person's reflection or soul under
water, leaving him soulless to perish. This was probably the origin of the
classical story of the beautiful Narcissus, who languished and died through
seeing his reflection in the water.

Further, we can now explain the widespread custom of covering up mirrors
or turning them to the wall after a death has taken place in the house. It is
feared that the soul, projected out of the person in the shape of his
reflection in the mirror, may be carried off by the ghost of the departed,
which is commonly supposed to linger about the house till the burial. The
custom is thus exactly parallel to the Aru custom of not sleeping in a house
after a death for fear that the soul, projected out of the body in a dream,
may meet the ghost and be carried off by it. The reason why sick people should
not see themselves in a mirror, and why the mirror in a sick-room is therefore
covered up, is also plain; in time of sickness, when the soul might take
flight so easily, it is particularly dangerous to project it out of the body
by means of the reflection in a mirror. The rule is therefore precisely
parallel to the rule observed by some peoples of not allowing sick people to
sleep; for in sleep the soul is projected out of the body, and there is always
a risk that it may not return.

As with shadows and reflections, so with portraits; they are often
believed to contain the soul of the person portrayed. People who hold this
belief are naturally loth to have their likenesses taken; for if the portrait
is the soul, or at least a vital part of the person portrayed, whoever
possesses the portrait will be able to exercise a fatal influence over the
original of it. Thus the Esquimaux of Bering Strait believe that persons
dealing in witchcraft have the power of stealing a person's shade, so that
without it he will pine away and die. Once at a village on the lower Yukon
River an explorer had set up his camera to get a picture of the people as they
were moving about among their houses. While he was focusing the instrument,
the headman of the village came up and insisted on peeping under the cloth.
Being allowed to do so, he gazed intently for a minute at the moving figures
on the ground glass, then suddenly withdrew his head and bawled at the top of
his voice to the people, He has all of your shades in this box. A panic
ensued among the group, and in an instant they disappeared helterskelter into
their houses. The Tepehuanes of Mexico stood in mortal terror of the camera,
and five days' persuasion was necessary to induce them to pose for it. When at
last they consented, they looked like criminals about to be executed. They
believed that by photographing people the artist could carry off their souls
and devour them at his leisure moments. They said that, when the pictures
reached his country, they would die or some other evil would befall them. When
Dr. Catat and some companions were exploring the Bara country on the west
coast of Madagascar, the people suddenly became hostile. The day before the
travellers, not without difficulty, had photographed the royal family, and now
found themselves accused of taking the souls of the natives for the purpose of
selling them when they returned to France. Denial was vain; in compliance with
the custom of the country they were obliged to catch the souls, which were
then put into a basket and ordered by Dr. Catat to return to their respective
owners.

Some villagers in Sikhim betrayed a lively horror and hid away whenever
the lens of a camera, or the evil eye of the box as they called it, was
turned on them. They thought it took away their souls with their pictures, and
so put it in the power of the owner of the pictures to cast spells on them,
and they alleged that a photograph of the scenery blighted the landscape.
Until the reign of the late King of Siam no Siamese coins were ever stamped
with the image of the king, for at that time there was a strong prejudice
against the making of portraits in any medium. Europeans who travel into the
jungle have, even at the present time, only to point a camera at a crowd to
procure its instant dispersion. When a copy of the face of a person is made
and taken away from him, a portion of his life goes with the picture. Unless
the sovereign had been blessed with the years of a Methusaleh he could
scarcely have permitted his life to be distributed in small pieces together
with the coins of the realm.

Beliefs of the same sort still linger in various parts of Europe. Not very
many years ago some old women in the Greek island of Carpathus were very angry
at having their likenesses drawn, thinking that in consequence they would pine
and die. There are persons in the West of Scotland who refuse to have their
likenesses taken lest it prove unlucky; and give as instances the cases of
several of their friends who never had a day's health after being
photographed.

Chapter 19. Tabooed Acts.

1. Taboos on Intercourse with Strangers

SO much for the primitive conceptions of the soul and the dangers to which
it is exposed. These conceptions are not limited to one people or country;
with variations of detail they are found all over the world, and survive, as
we have seen, in modern Europe. Beliefs so deep-seated and so widespread must
necessarily have contributed to shape the mould in which the early kingship
was cast. For if every person was at such pains to save his own soul from the
perils which threatened it on so many sides, how much more carefully must he
have been guarded upon whose life hung the welfare and even the existence of
the whole people, and whom therefore it was the common interest of all to
preserve? Therefore we should expect to find the king's life protected by a
system of precautions or safeguards still more numerous and minute than those
which in primitive society every man adopts for the safety of his own soul.
Now in point of fact the life of the early kings is regulated, as we have seen
and shall see more fully presently, by a very exact code of rules. May we not
then conjecture that these rules are in fact the very safeguards which we
should expect to find adopted for the protection of the king's life? An
examination of the rules themselves confirms this conjecture. For from this it
appears that some of the rules observed by the kings are identical with those
observed by private persons out of regard for the safety of their souls; and
even of those which seem peculiar to the king, many, if not all, are most
readily explained on the hypothesis that they are nothing but safeguards or
lifeguards of the king. I will now enumerate some of these royal rules or
taboos, offering on each of them such comments and explanations as may serve
to set the original intention of the rule in its proper light.

As the object of the royal taboos is to isolate the king from all sources
of danger, their general effect is to compel him to live in a state of
seclusion, more or less complete, according to the number and stringency of
the rules he observes. Now of all sources of danger none are more dreaded by
the savage than magic and witchcraft, and he suspects all strangers of
practising these black arts. To guard against the baneful influence exerted
voluntarily or involuntarily by strangers is therefore an elementary dictate
of savage prudence. Hence before strangers are allowed to enter a district, or
at least before they are permitted to mingle freely with the inhabitants,
certain ceremonies are often performed by the natives of the country for the
purpose of disarming the strangers of their magical powers, of counteracting
the baneful influence which is believed to emanate from them, or of
disinfecting, so to speak, the tainted atmosphere by which they are supposed
to be surrounded. Thus, when the ambassadors sent by Justin II., Emperor of
the East, to conclude a peace with the Turks had reached their destination,
they were received by shamans, who subjected them to a ceremonial purification
for the purpose of exorcising all harmful influence. Having deposited the
goods brought by the ambassadors in an open place, these wizards carried
burning branches of incense round them, while they rang a bell and beat on a
tambourine, snorting and falling into a state of frenzy in their efforts to
dispel the powers of evil. Afterwards they purified the ambassadors themselves
by leading them through the flames. In the island of Nanumea (South Pacific)
strangers from ships or from other islands were not allowed to communicate
with the people until they all, or a few as representatives of the rest, had
been taken to each of the four temples in the island, and prayers offered that
the god would avert any disease or treachery which these strangers might have
brought with them. Meat offerings were also laid upon the altars, accompanied
by songs and dances in honour of the god. While these ceremonies were going
on, all the people except the priests and their attendants kept out of sight.
Amongst the Ot Danoms of Borneo it is the custom that strangers entering the
territory should pay to the natives a certain sum, which is spent in the
sacrifice of buffaloes or pigs to the spirits of the land and water, in order
to reconcile them to the presence of the strangers, and to induce them not to
withdraw their favour from the people of the country, but to bless the
rice-harvest, and so forth. The men of a certain district in Borneo, fearing
to look upon a European traveller lest he should make them ill, warned their
wives and children not to go near him. Those who could not restrain their
curiosity killed fowls to appease the evil spirits and smeared themselves with
the blood. More dreaded, says a traveller in Central Borneo, than the evil
spirits of the neighbourhood are the evil spirits from a distance which
accompany travellers. When a company from the middle Mahakam River visited me
among the Blu-u Kayans in the year 1897, no woman showed herself outside her
house without a burning bundle of plehiding bark, the stinking smoke of
which drives away evil spirits.

When Crevaux was travelling in South America he entered a village of the
Apalai Indians. A few moments after his arrival some of the Indians brought
him a number of large black ants, of a species whose bite is painful, fastened
on palm leaves. Then all the people of the village, without distinction of age
or sex, presented themselves to him, and he had to sting them all with the
ants on their faces, thighs, and other parts of their bodies. Sometimes, when
he applied the ants too tenderly, they called out More! more! and were not
satisfied till their skin was thickly studded with tiny swellings like what
might have been produced by whipping them with nettles. The object of this
ceremony is made plain by the custom observed in Amboyna and Uliase of
sprinkling sick people with pungent spices, such as ginger and cloves, chewed
fine, in order by the prickling sensation to drive away the demon of disease
which may be clinging to their persons. In Java a popular cure for gout or
rheumatism is to rub Spanish pepper into the nails of the fingers and toes of
the sufferer; the pungency of the pepper is supposed to be too much for the
gout or rheumatism, who accordingly departs in haste. So on the Slave Coast
the mother of a sick child sometimes believes that an evil spirit has taken
possession of the child's body, and in order to drive him out, she makes small
cuts in the body of the little sufferer and inserts green peppers or spices in
the wounds, believing that she will thereby hurt the evil spirit and force him
to be gone. The poor child naturally screams with pain, but the mother hardens
her heart in the belief that the demon is suffering equally.

It is probable that the same dread of strangers, rather than any desire to
do them honour, is the motive of certain ceremonies which are sometimes
observed at their reception, but of which the intention is not directly
stated. In the Ongtong Java Islands, which are inhabited by Polynesians, the
priests or sorcerers seem to wield great influence. Their main business is to
summon or exorcise spirits for the purpose of averting or dispelling sickness,
and of procuring favourable winds, a good catch of fish, and so on. When
strangers land on the islands, they are first of all received by the
sorcerers, sprinkled with water, anointed with oil, and girt with dried
pandanus leaves. At the same time sand and water are freely thrown about in
all directions, and the newcomer and his boat are wiped with green leaves.
After this ceremony the strangers are introduced by the sorcerers to the
chief. In Afghanistan and in some parts of Persia the traveller, before he
enters a village, is frequently received with a sacrifice of animal life or
food, or of fire and incense. The Afghan Boundary Mission, in passing by
villages in Afghanistan, was often met with fire and incense. Sometimes a tray
of lighted embers is thrown under the hoofs of the traveller's horse, with the
words, You are welcome. On entering a village in Central Africa Emin Pasha
was received with the sacrifice of two goats; their blood was sprinkled on the
path and the chief stepped over the blood to greet Emin. Sometimes the dread
of strangers and their magic is too great to allow of their reception on any
terms. Thus when Speke arrived at a certain village, the natives shut their
doors against him, because they had never before seen a white man nor the tin
boxes that the men were carrying: 'Who knows,' they said, 'but that these very
boxes are the plundering Watuta transformed and come to kill us? You cannot be
admitted.' No persuasion could avail with them, and the party had to proceed
to the next village.

The fear thus entertained of alien visitors is often mutual. Entering a
strange land the savage feels that he is treading enchanted ground, and he
takes steps to guard against the demons that haunt it and the magical arts of
its inhabitants. Thus on going to a strange land the Maoris performed certain
ceremonies to make it common, lest it might have been previously sacred.
When Baron Miklucho-Maclay was approaching a village on the Maclay Coast of
New Guinea, one of the natives who accompanied him broke a branch from a tree
and going aside whispered to it for a while; then stepping up to each member
of the party, one after another, he spat something upon his back and gave him
some blows with the branch. Lastly, he went into the forest and buried the
branch under withered leaves in the thickest part of the jungle. This ceremony
was believed to protect the party against all treachery and danger in the
village they were approaching. The idea probably was that the malignant
influences were drawn off from the persons into the branch and buried with it
in the depths of the forest. In Australia, when a strange tribe has been
invited into a district and is approaching the encampment of the tribe which
owns the land, the strangers carry lighted bark or burning sticks in their
hands, for the purpose, they say, of clearing and purifying the air. When the
Toradjas are on a head-hunting expedition and have entered the enemy's
country, they may not eat any fruits which the foe has planted nor any animal
which he has reared until they have first committed an act of hostility, as by
burning a house or killing a man. They think that if they broke this rule they
would receive something of the soul or spiritual essence of the enemy into
themselves, which would destroy the mystic virtue of their talismans.

Again, it is believed that a man who has been on a journey may have
contracted some magic evil from the strangers with whom he has associated.
Hence, on returning home, before he is readmitted to the society of his tribe
and friends, he has to undergo certain purificatory ceremonies. Thus the
Bechuanas cleanse or purify themselves after journeys by shaving their heads,
etc., lest they should have contracted from strangers some evil by witchcraft
or sorcery. In some parts of Western Africa, when a man returns home after a
long absence, before he is allowed to visit his wife, he must wash his person
with a particular fluid, and receive from the sorcerer a certain mark on his
forehead, in order to counteract any magic spell which a stranger woman may
have cast on him in his absence, and which might be communicated through him
to the women of his village. Two Hindoo ambassadors, who had been sent to
England by a native prince and had returned to India, were considered to have
so polluted themselves by contact with strangers that nothing but being born
again could restore them to purity. For the purpose of regeneration it is
directed to make an image of pure gold of the female power of nature, in the
shape either of a woman or of a cow. In this statue the person to be
regenerated is enclosed, and dragged through the usual channel. As a statue of
pure gold and of proper dimensions would be too expensive, it is sufficient to
make an image of the sacred Yoni, through which the person to be regenerated
is to pass. Such an image of pure gold was made at the prince's command, and
his ambassadors were born again by being dragged through it.

When precautions like these are taken on behalf of the people in general
against the malignant influence supposed to be exercised by strangers, it is
no wonder that special measures are adopted to protect the king from the same
insidious danger. In the middle ages the envoys who visited a Tartar Khan were
obliged to pass between two fires before they were admitted to his presence,
and the gifts they brought were also carried between the fires. The reason
assigned for the custom was that the fire purged away any magic influence
which the strangers might mean to exercise over the Khan. When subject chiefs
come with their retinues to visit Kalamba (the most powerful chief of the
Bashilange in the Congo Basin) for the first time or after being rebellious,
they have to bathe, men and women together, in two brooks on two successive
days, passing the nights under the open sky in the market-place. After the
second bath they proceed, entirely naked, to the house of Kalamba, who makes a
long white mark on the breast and forehead of each of them. Then they return
to the market-place and dress, after which they undergo the pepper ordeal.
Pepper is dropped into the eyes of each of them, and while this is being done
the sufferer has to make a confession of all his sins, to answer all questions
that may be put to him, and to take certain vows. This ends the ceremony, and
the strangers are now free to take up their quarters in the town for as long
as they choose to remain.

2. Taboos on Eating and Drinking

IN THE OPINION of savages the acts of eating and drinking are attended with
special danger; for at these times the soul may escape from the mouth, or be
extracted by the magic arts of an enemy present. Among the Ewe-speaking
peoples of the Slave Coast the common belief seems to be that the indwelling
spirit leaves the body and returns to it through the mouth; hence, should it
have gone out, it behoves a man to be careful about opening his mouth, lest a
homeless spirit should take advantage of the opportunity and enter his body.
This, it appears, is considered most likely to take place while the man is
eating. Precautions are therefore adopted to guard against these dangers.
Thus of the Bataks it is said that since the soul can leave the body, they
always take care to prevent their soul from straying on occasions when they
have most need of it. But it is only possible to prevent the soul from
straying when one is in the house. At feasts one may find the whole house shut
up, in order that the soul may stay and enjoy the good things set before it.
The Zafimanelo in Madagascar lock their doors when they eat, and hardly any
one ever sees them eating. The Warua will not allow any one to see them eating
and drinking, being doubly particular that no person of the opposite sex shall
see them doing so. I had to pay a man to let me see him drink; I could not
make a man let a woman see him drink. When offered a drink they often ask
that a cloth may be held up to hide them whilst drinking.

If these are the ordinary precautions taken by common people, the
precautions taken by kings are extraordinary. The king of Loango may not be
seen eating or drinking by man or beast under pain of death. A favourite dog
having broken into the room where the king was dining, the king ordered it to
be killed on the spot. Once the king's own son, a boy of twelve years old,
inadvertently saw the king drink. Immediately the king ordered him to be
finely apparelled and feasted, after which he commanded him to be cut in
quarters, and carried about the city with a proclamation that he had seen the
king drink. When the king has a mind to drink, he has a cup of wine brought;
he that brings it has a bell in his hand, and as soon as he has delivered the
cup to the king, he turns his face from him and rings the bell, on which all
present fall down with their faces to the ground, and continue so till the
king has drank . His eating is much in the same style, for which he has a
house on purpose, where his victuals are set upon a bensa or table: which he
goes to, and shuts the door: when he has done, he knocks and comes out. So
that none ever see the king eat or drink. For it is believed that if any one
should, the king shall immediately die. The remnants of his food are buried,
doubtless to prevent them from falling into the hands of sorcerers, who by
means of these fragments might cast a fatal spell over the monarch. The rules
observed by the neighbouring king of Cacongo were similar; it was thought that
the king would die if any of his subjects were to see him drink. It is a
capital offence to see the king of Dahomey at his meals. When he drinks in
public, as he does on extraordinary occasions, he hides himself behind a
curtain, or handkerchiefs are held up round his head, and all the people throw
themselves with their faces to the earth. When the king of Bunyoro in Central
Africa went to drink milk in the dairy, every man must leave the royal
enclosure and all the women had to cover their heads till the king returned.
No one might see him drink. One wife accompanied him to the dairy and handed
him the milk-pot, but she turned away her face while he drained it.

3. Taboos on Showing the Face

IN SOME of the preceding cases the intention of eating and drinking in
strict seclusion may perhaps be to hinder evil influences from entering the
body rather than to prevent the escape of the soul. This certainly is the
motive of some drinking customs observed by natives of the Congo region. Thus
we are told of these people that there is hardly a native who would dare to
swallow a liquid without first conjuring the spirits. One of them rings a bell
all the time he is drinking; another crouches down and places his left hand on
the earth; another veils his head; another puts a stalk of grass or a leaf in
his hair, or marks his forehead with a line of clay. This fetish custom
assumes very varied forms. To explain them, the black is satisfied to say that
they are an energetic mode of conjuring spirits. In this part of the world a
chief will commonly ring a bell at each draught of beer which he swallows, and
at the same moment a lad stationed in front of him brandishes a spear to keep
at bay the spirits which might try to sneak into the old chief's body by the
same road as the beer. The same motive of warding off evil spirits probably
explains the custom observed by some African sultans of veiling their faces.
The Sultan of Darfur wraps up his face with a piece of white muslin, which
goes round his head several times, covering his mouth and nose first, and then
his forehead, so that only his eyes are visible. The same custom of veiling
the face as a mark of sovereignty is said to be observed in other parts of
Central Africa. The Sultan of Wadai always speaks from behind a curtain; no
one sees his face except his intimates and a few favoured persons.

4. Taboos on Quitting the House

BY AN EXTENSION of the like precaution kings are sometimes forbidden ever to
leave their palaces; or, if they are allowed to do so, their subjects are
forbidden to see them abroad. The fetish king of Benin, who was worshipped as
a deity by his subjects, might not quit his palace. After his coronation the
king of Loango is confined to his palace, which he may not leave. The king of
Onitsha does not step out of his house into the town unless a human sacrifice
is made to propitiate the gods: on this account he never goes out beyond the
precincts of his premises. Indeed we are told that he may not quit his palace
under pain of death or of giving up one or more slaves to be executed in his
presence. As the wealth of the country is measured in slaves, the king takes
good care not to infringe the law. Yet once a year at the Feast of Yams the
king is allowed, and even required by custom, to dance before his people
outside the high mud wall of the palace. In dancing he carries a great weight,
generally a sack of earth, on his back to prove that he is still able to
support the burden and cares of state. Were he unable to discharge this duty,
he would be immediately deposed and perhaps stoned. The kings of Ethiopia were
worshipped as gods, but were mostly kept shut up in their palaces. On the
mountainous coast of Pontus there dwelt in antiquity a rude and warlike people
named the Mosyni or Mosynoeci, through whose rugged country the Ten Thousand
marched on their famous retreat from Asia to Europe. These barbarians kept
their king in close custody at the top of a high tower, from which after his
election he was never more allowed to descend. Here he dispensed justice to
his people; but if he offended them, they punished him by stopping his rations
for a whole day, or even starving him to death. The kings of Sabaea or Sheba,
the spice country of Arabia, were not allowed to go out of their palaces; if
they did so, the mob stoned them to death. But at the top of the palace there
was a window with a chain attached to it. If any man deemed he had suffered
wrong, he pulled the chain, and the king perceived him and called him in and
gave judgment.

5. Taboos on Leaving Food over

AGAIN, magic mischief may be wrought upon a man through the remains of the
food he has partaken of, or the dishes out of which he has eaten. On the
principles of sympathetic magic a real connexion continues to subsist between
the food which a man has in his stomach and the refuse of it which he has left
untouched, and hence by injuring the refuse you can simultaneously injure the
eater. Among the Narrinyeri of South Australia every adult is constantly on
the look-out for bones of beasts, birds, or fish, of which the flesh has been
eaten by somebody, in order to construct a deadly charm out of them. Every one
is therefore careful to burn the bones of the animals which he has eaten, lest
they should fall into the hands of a sorcerer. Too often, however, the
sorcerer succeeds in getting hold of such a bone, and when he does so he
believes that he has the power of life and death over the man, woman, or child
who ate the flesh of the animal. To put the charm in operation he makes a
paste of red ochre and fish oil, inserts in it the eye of a cod and a small
piece of the flesh of a corpse, and having rolled the compound into a ball
sticks it on the top of the bone. After being left for some time in the bosom
of a dead body, in order that it may derive a deadly potency by contact with
corruption, the magical implement is set up in the ground near the fire, and
as the ball melts, so the person against whom the charm is directed wastes
with disease; if the ball is melted quite away, the victim will die. When the
bewitched man learns of the spell that is being cast upon him, he endeavours
to buy the bone from the sorcerer, and if he obtains it he breaks the charm by
throwing the bone into a river or lake. In Tana, one of the New Hebrides,
people bury or throw into the sea the leavings of their food, lest these
should fall into the hands of the disease-makers. For if a disease-maker finds
the remnants of a meal, say the skin of a banana, he picks it up and burns it
slowly in the fire. As it burns, the person who ate the banana falls ill and
sends to the disease-maker, offering him presents if he will stop burning the
banana skin. In New Guinea the natives take the utmost care to destroy or
conceal the husks and other remains of their food, lest these should be found
by their enemies and used by them for the injury or destruction of the eaters.
Hence they burn their leavings, throw them into the sea, or otherwise put them
out of harm's way.

From a like fear, no doubt, of sorcery, no one may touch the food which
the king of Loango leaves upon his plate; it is buried in a hole in the
ground. And no one may drink out of the king's vessel. In antiquity the Romans
used immediately to break the shells of eggs and of snails which they had
eaten, in order to prevent enemies from making magic with them. The common
practice, still observed among us, of breaking egg-shells after the eggs have
been eaten may very well have originated in the same superstition.

The superstitious fear of the magic that may be wrought on a man through
the leavings of his food has had the beneficial effect of inducing many
savages to destroy refuse which, if left to rot, might through its corruption
have proved a real, not a merely imaginary, source of disease and death. Nor
is it only the sanitary condition of a tribe which has benefited by this
superstition; curiously enough the same baseless dread, the same false notion
of causation, has indirectly strengthened the moral bonds of hospitality,
honour, and good faith among men who entertain it. For it is obvious that no
one who intends to harm a man by working magic on the refuse of his food will
himself partake of that food, because if he did so he would, on the principles
of sympathetic magic, suffer equally with his enemy from any injury done to
the refuse. This is the idea which in primitive society lends sanctity to the
bond produced by eating together; by participation in the same food two men
give, as it were, hostages for their good behaviour; each guarantees the other
that he will devise no mischief against him, since, being physically united
with him by the common food in their stomachs, any harm he might do to his
fellow would recoil on his own head with precisely the same force with which
it fell on the head of his victim. In strict logic, however, the sympathetic
bond lasts only so long as the food is in the stomach of each of the parties.
Hence the covenant formed by eating together is less solemn and durable than
the covenant formed by transfusing the blood of the covenanting parties into
each other's veins, for this transfusion seems to knit them together for life.

Chapter 20. Tabooed Persons.

1. Chiefs and Kings tabooed.

WE have seen that the Mikado's food was cooked every day in new pots and
served up in new dishes; both pots and dishes were of common clay, in order
that they might be broken or laid aside after they had been once used. They
were generally broken, for it was believed that if any one else ate his food
out of these sacred dishes, his mouth and throat would become swollen and
inflamed. The same ill effect was thought to be experienced by any one who
should wear the Mikado's clothes without his leave; he would have swellings
and pains all over his body. In Fiji there is a special name (kana lama) for
the disease supposed to be caused by eating out of a chief's dishes or wearing
his clothes. The throat and body swell, and the impious person dies. I had a
fine mat given to me by a man who durst not use it because Thakombau's eldest
son had sat upon it. There was always a family or clan of commoners who were
exempt from this danger. I was talking about this once to Thakombau. 'Oh yes,'
said he. 'Here, So-and-so! come and scratch my back.' The man scratched; he
was one of those who could do it with impunity. The name of the men thus
highly privileged was Na nduka ni, or the dirt of the chief.

In the evil effects thus supposed to follow upon the use of the vessels or
clothes of the Mikado and a Fijian chief we see that other side of the
god-man's character to which attention has been already called. The divine
person is a source of danger as well as of blessing; he must not only be
guarded, he must also be guarded against. His sacred organism, so delicate
that a touch may disorder it, is also, as it were, electrically charged with a
powerful magical or spiritual force which may discharge itself with fatal
effect on whatever comes in contact with it. Accordingly the isolation of the
man-god is quite as necessary for the safety of others as for his own. His
magical virtue is in the strictest sense of the word contagious: his divinity
is a fire, which, under proper restraints, confers endless blessings, but, if
rashly touched or allowed to break bounds, burns and destroys what it touches.
Hence the disastrous effects supposed to attend a breach of taboo; the
offender has thrust his hand into the divine fire, which shrivels up and
consumes him on the spot.

The Nubas, for example, who inhabit the wooded and fertile range of Jebel
Nuba in Eastern Africa, believe that they would die if they entered the house
of their priestly king; however, they can evade the penalty of their intrusion
by baring the left shoulder and getting the king to lay his hand on it. And
were any man to sit on a stone which the king has consecrated to his own use,
the transgressor would die within the year. The Cazembes of Angola regard
their king as so holy that no one can touch him without being killed by the
magical power which pervades his sacred person. But since contact with him is
sometimes unavoidable, they have devised a means whereby the sinner can escape
with his life. Kneeling down before the king he touches the back of the royal
hand with the back of his own, then snaps his fingers; afterwards he lays the
palm of his hand on the palm of the king's hand, then snaps his fingers again.
This ceremony is repeated four or five times, and averts the imminent danger
of death. In Tonga it was believed that if any one fed himself with his own
hands after touching the sacred person of a superior chief or anything that
belonged to him, he would swell up and die; the sanctity of the chief, like a
virulent poison, infected the hands of his inferior, and, being communicated
through them to the food, proved fatal to the eater. A commoner who had
incurred this danger could disinfect himself by performing a certain ceremony,
which consisted in touching the sole of a chief's foot with the palm and back
of each of his hands, and afterwards rinsing his hands in water. If there was
no water near, he rubbed his hands with the juicy stem of a plantain or
banana. After that he was free to feed himself with his own hands without
danger of being attacked by the malady which would otherwise follow from
eating with tabooed or sanctified hands. But until the ceremony of expiation
or disinfection had been performed, if he wished to eat he had either to get
some one to feed him, or else to go down on his knees and pick up the food
from the ground with his mouth like a beast. He might not even use a toothpick
himself, but might guide the hand of another person holding the toothpick. The
Tongans were subject to induration of the liver and certain forms of scrofula,
which they often attributed to a failure to perform the requisite expiation
after having inadvertently touched a chief or his belongings. Hence they often
went through the ceremony as a precaution, without knowing that they had done
anything to call for it. The king of Tonga could not refuse to play his part
in the rite by presenting his foot to such as desired to touch it, even when
they applied to him at an inconvenient time. A fat unwieldy king, who
perceived his subjects approaching with this intention, while he chanced to be
taking his walks abroad, has been sometimes seen to waddle as fast as his legs
could carry him out of their way, in order to escape the importunate and not
wholly disinterested expression of their homage. If any one fancied he might
have already unwittingly eaten with tabooed hands, he sat down before the
chief, and, taking the chief's foot, pressed it against his own stomach, that
the food in his belly might not injure him, and that he might not swell up and
die. Since scrofula was regarded by the Tongans as a result of eating with
tabooed hands, we may conjecture that persons who suffered from it among them
often resorted to the touch or pressure of the king's foot as a cure for their
malady. The analogy of the custom with the old English practice of bringing
scrofulous patients to the king to be healed by his touch is sufficiently
obvious, and suggests, as I have already pointed out elsewhere, that among our
own remote ancestors scrofula may have obtained its name of the King's Evil,
from a belief, like that of the Tongans, that it was caused as well as cured
by contact with the divine majesty of kings.

In New Zealand the dread of the sanctity of chiefs was at least as great
as in Tonga. Their ghostly power, derived from an ancestral spirit, diffused
itself by contagion over everything they touched, and could strike dead all
who rashly or unwittingly meddled with it. For instance, it once happened that
a New Zealand chief of high rank and great sanctity had left the remains of
his dinner by the wayside. A slave, a stout, hungry fellow, coming up after
the chief had gone, saw the unfinished dinner, and ate it up without asking
questions. Hardly had he finished when he was informed by a horror-stricken
spectator that the food of which he had eaten was the chief's. I knew the
unfortunate delinquent well. He was remarkable for courage, and had signalised
himself in the wars of the tribe, but no sooner did he hear the fatal news
than he was seized by the most extraordinary convulsions and cramp in the
stomach, which never ceased till he died, about sundown the same day. He was a
strong man, in the prime of life, and if any pakeha [European] freethinker
should have said he was not killed by the tapu of the chief, which had been
communicated to the food by contact, he would have been listened to with
feelings of contempt for his ignorance and inability to understand plain and
direct evidence. This is not a solitary case. A Maori woman having eaten of
some fruit, and being afterwards told that the fruit had been taken from a
tabooed place, exclaimed that the spirit of the chief, whose sanctity had been
thus profaned, would kill her. This was in the afternoon, and next day by
twelve o'clock she was dead. A Maori chief's tinder-box was once the means of
killing several persons; for, having been lost by him, and found by some men
who used it to light their pipes, they died of fright on learning to whom it
had belonged. So, too, the garments of a high New Zealand chief will kill any
one else who wears them. A chief was observed by a missionary to throw down a
precipice a blanket which he found too heavy to carry. Being asked by the
missionary why he did not leave it on a tree for the use of a future
traveller, the chief replied that it was the fear of its being taken by
another which caused him to throw it where he did, for if it were worn, his
tapu (that is, his spiritual power communicated by contact to the blanket and
through the blanket to the man) would kill the person. For a similar reason
a Maori chief would not blow a fire with his mouth; for his sacred breath
would communicate its sanctity to the fire, which would pass it on to the pot
on the fire, which would pass it on to the meat in the pot, which would pass
it on to the man who ate the meat, which was in the pot, which stood on the
fire, which was breathed on by the chief; so that the eater, infected by the
chief's breath conveyed through these intermediaries, would surely die.

Thus in the Polynesian race, to which the Maoris belong, superstition
erected round the persons of sacred chiefs a real, though at the same time
purely imaginary barrier, to transgress which actually entailed the death of
the transgressor whenever he became aware of what he had done. This fatal
power of the imagination working through superstitious terrors is by no means
confined to one race; it appears to be common among savages. For example,
among the aborigines of Australia a native will die after the infliction of
even the most superficial wound, if only he believes that the weapon which
inflicted the wound had been sung over and thus endowed with magical virtue.
He simply lies down, refuses food, and pines away. Similarly among some of the
Indian tribes of Brazil, if the medicine-man predicted the death of any one
who had offended him, the wretch took to his hammock instantly in such full
expectation of dying, that he would neither eat nor drink, and the prediction
was a sentence which faith effectually executed.

2. Mourners tabooed.

THUS regarding his sacred chiefs and kings as charged with a mysterious
spiritual force which so to say explodes at contact, the savage naturally
ranks them among the dangerous classes of society, and imposes upon them the
same sort of restraints that he lays on manslayers, menstruous women, and
other persons whom he looks upon with a certain fear and horror. For example,
sacred kings and priests in Polynesia were not allowed to touch food with
their hands, and had therefore to be fed by others; and as we have just seen,
their vessels, garments, and other property might not be used by others on
pain of disease and death. Now precisely the same observances are exacted by
some savages from girls at their first menstruation, women after childbirth,
homicides, mourners, and all persons who have come into contact with the dead.
Thus, for example, to begin with the last class of persons, among the Maoris
any one who had handled a corpse, helped to convey it to the grave, or touched
a dead man's bones, was cut off from all intercourse and almost all
communication with mankind. He could not enter any house, or come into contact
with any person or thing, without utterly bedevilling them. He might not even
touch food with his hands, which had become so frightfully tabooed or unclean
as to be quite useless. Food would be set for him on the ground, and he would
then sit or kneel down, and, with his hands carefully held behind his back,
would gnaw at it as best he could. In some cases he would be fed by another
person, who with outstretched arm contrived to do it without touching the
tabooed man; but the feeder was himself subjected to many severe restrictions,
little less onerous than those which were imposed upon the other. In almost
every populous village there lived a degraded wretch, the lowest of the low,
who earned a sorry pittance by thus waiting upon the defiled. Clad in rags,
daubed from head to foot with red ochre and stinking shark oil, always
solitary and silent, generally old, haggard, and wizened, often half crazed,
he might be seen sitting motionless all day apart from the common path or
thoroughfare of the village, gazing with lack-lustre eyes on the busy doings
in which he might never take a part. Twice a day a dole of food would be
thrown on the ground before him to munch as well as he could without the use
of his hands; and at night, huddling his greasy tatters about him, he would
crawl into some miserable lair of leaves and refuse, where, dirty, cold, and
hungry, he passed, in broken ghost-haunted slumbers, a wretched night as a
prelude to another wretched day. Such was the only human being deemed fit to
associate at arm's length with one who had paid the last offices of respect
and friendship to the dead. And when, the dismal term of his seclusion being
over, the mourner was about to mix with his fellows once more, all the dishes
he had used in his seclusion were diligently smashed, and all the garments he
had worn were carefully thrown away, lest they should spread the contagion of
his defilement among others, just as the vessels and clothes of sacred kings
and chiefs are destroyed or cast away for a similar reason. So complete in
these respects is the analogy which the savage traces between the spiritual
influences that emanate from divinities and from the dead, between the odour
of sanctity and the stench of corruption.

The rule which forbids persons who have been in contact with the dead to
touch food with their hands would seem to have been universal in Polynesia.
Thus in Samoa those who attended the deceased were most careful not to handle
food, and for days were fed by others as if they were helpless infants.
Baldness and the loss of teeth were supposed to be the punishment inflicted by
the household god if they violated the rule. Again, in Tonga, no person can
touch a dead chief without being taboo'd for ten lunar months, except chiefs,
who are only taboo'd for three, four, or five months, according to the
superiority of the dead chief; except again it be the body of Tooitonga [the
great divine chief], and then even the greatest chief would be taboo'd ten
months . During the time a man is taboo'd he must not feed himself with his
own hands, but must be fed by somebody else: he must not even use a toothpick
himself, but must guide another person's hand holding the toothpick. If he is
hungry and there is no one to feed him, he must go down upon his hands and
knees, and pick up his victuals with his mouth: and if he infringes upon any
of these rules, it is firmly expected that he will swell up and die.

Among the Shuswap of British Columbia widows and widowers in mourning are
secluded and forbidden to touch their own head or body; the cups and
cooking-vessels which they use may be used by no one else. They must build a
sweat-house beside a creek, sweat there all night and bathe regularly, after
which they must rub their bodies with branches of spruce. The branches may not
be used more than once, and when they have served their purpose they are stuck
into the ground all round the hut. No hunter would come near such mourners,
for their presence is unlucky. If their shadow were to fall on any one, he
would be taken ill at once. They employ thorn bushes for bed and pillow, in
order to keep away the ghost of the deceased; and thorn bushes are also laid
all around their beds. This last precaution shows clearly what the spiritual
danger is which leads to the exclusion of such persons from ordinary society;
it is simply a fear of the ghost who is supposed to be hovering near them. In
the Mekeo district of British New Guinea a widower loses all his civil rights
and becomes a social outcast, an object of fear and horror, shunned by all. He
may not cultivate a garden, nor show himself in public, nor traverse the
village, nor walk on the roads and paths. Like a wild beast he must skulk in
the long grass and the bushes; and if he sees or hears any one coming,
especially a woman, he must hide behind a tree or a thicket. If he wishes to
fish or hunt, he must do it alone and at night. If he would consult any one,
even the missionary, he does so by stealth and at night; he seems to have lost
his voice and speaks only in whispers. Were he to join a party of fishers or
hunters, his presence would bring misfortune on them; the ghost of his dead
wife would frighten away the fish or the game. He goes about everywhere and at
all times armed with a tomahawk to defend himself, not only against wild boars
in the jungle, but against the dreaded spirit of his departed spouse, who
would do him an ill turn if she could; for all the souls of the dead are
malignant and their only delight is to harm the living.

3. Women tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth.

IN GENERAL, we may say that the prohibition to use the vessels, garments,
and so forth of certain persons, and the effects supposed to follow an
infraction of the rule, are exactly the same whether the persons to whom the
things belong are sacred or what we might call unclean and polluted. As the
garments which have been touched by a sacred chief kill those who handle them,
so do the things which have been touched by a menstruous women. An Australian
blackfellow, who discovered that his wife had lain on his blanket at her
menstrual period, killed her and died of terror himself within a fortnight.
Hence Australian women at these times are forbidden under pain of death to
touch anything that men use, or even to walk on a path that any man frequents.
They are also secluded at childbirth, and all vessels used by them during
their seclusion are burned. In Uganda the pots which a woman touches, while
the impurity of childbirth or of menstruation is on her, should be destroyed;
spears and shields defiled by her touch are not destroyed, but only purified.
Among all the Dn and most other American tribes, hardly any other being was
the object of so much dread as a menstruating woman. As soon as signs of that
condition made themselves apparent in a young girl she was carefully
segregated from all but female company, and had to live by herself in a small
hut away from the gaze of the villagers or of the male members of the roving
band. While in that awful state, she had to abstain from touching anything
belonging to man, or the spoils of any venison or other animal, lest she would
thereby pollute the same, and condemn the hunters to failure, owing to the
anger of the game thus slighted. Dried fish formed her diet, and cold water,
absorbed through a drinking tube, was her only beverage. Moreover, as the very
sight of her was dangerous to society, a special skin bonnet, with fringes
falling over her face down to her breast, hid her from the public gaze, even
some time after she had recovered her normal state. Among the Bribri Indians
of Costa Rica a menstruous woman is regarded as unclean. The only plates she
may use for her food are banana leaves, which, when she has done with them,
she throws away in some sequestered spot; for were a cow to find them and eat
them, the animal would waste away and perish. And she drinks out of a special
vessel for a like reason; because if any one drank out of the same cup after
her, he would surely die.

Among many peoples similar restrictions are imposed on women in childbed
and apparently for similar reasons; at such periods women are supposed to be
in a dangerous condition which would infect any person or thing they might
touch; hence they are put into quarantine until, with the recovery of their
health and strength, the imaginary danger has passed away. Thus, in Tahiti a
woman after childbirth was secluded for a fortnight or three weeks in a
temporary hut erected on sacred ground; during the time of her seclusion she
was debarred from touching provisions, and had to be fed by another. Further,
if any one else touched the child at this period, he was subjected to the same
restrictions as the mother until the ceremony of her purification had been
performed. Similarly in the island of Kadiak, off Alaska, a woman about to be
delivered retires to a miserable low hovel built of reeds, where she must
remain for twenty days after the birth of her child, whatever the season may
be, and she is considered so unclean that no one will touch her, and food is
reached to her on sticks. The Bribri Indians regard the pollution of childbed
as much more dangerous even than that of menstruation. When a woman feels her
time approaching, she informs her husband, who makes haste to build a hut for
her in a lonely spot. There she must live alone, holding no converse with
anybody save her mother or another woman. After her delivery the medicine-man
purifies her by breathing on her and laying an animal, it matters not what,
upon her. But even this ceremony only mitigates her uncleanness into a state
considered to be equivalent to that of a menstruous woman; and for a full
lunar month she must live apart from her housemates, observing the same rules
with regard to eating and drinking as at her monthly periods. The case is
still worse, the pollution is still more deadly, if she has had a miscarriage
or has been delivered of a stillborn child. In that case she may not go near a
living soul: the mere contact with things she has used is exceedingly
dangerous: her food is handed to her at the end of a long stick. This lasts
generally for three weeks, after which she may go home, subject only to the
restrictions incident to an ordinary confinement.

Some Bantu tribes entertain even more exaggerated notions of the virulent
infection spread by a woman who has had a miscarriage and has concealed it. An
experienced observer of these people tells us that the blood of childbirth
appears to the eyes of the South Africans to be tainted with a pollution
still more dangerous than that of the menstrual fluid. The husband is excluded
from the hut for eight days of the lying-in period, chiefly from fear that he
might be contaminated by this secretion. He dare not take his child in his
arms for the three first months after the birth. But the secretion of childbed
is particularly terrible when it is the product of a miscarriage, especially
a concealed miscarriage. In this case it is not merely the man who is
threatened or killed, it is the whole country, it is the sky itself which
suffers. By a curious association of ideas a physiological fact causes cosmic
troubles! As for the disastrous effect which a miscarriage may have on the
whole country I will quote the words of a medicine-man and rain-maker of the
Ba-Pedi tribe: When a woman has had a miscarriage, when she has allowed her
blood to flow, and has hidden the child, it is enough to cause the burning
winds to blow and to parch the country with heat. The rain no longer falls,
for the country is no longer in order. When the rain approaches the place
where the blood is, it will not dare to approach. It will fear and remain at a
distance. That woman has committed a great fault. She has spoiled the country
of the chief, for she has hidden blood which had not yet been well congealed
to fashion a man. That blood is taboo. It should never drip on the road! The
chief will assemble his men and say to them, 'Are you in order in your
villages?' Some one will answer, 'Such and such a woman was pregnant and we
have not yet seen the child which she has given birth to.' Then they go and
arrest the woman. They say to her, 'Show us where you have hidden it.' They go
and dig at the spot, they sprinkle the hole with a decoction of two sorts of
roots prepared in a special pot. They take a little of the earth of this
grave, they throw it into the river, then they bring back water from the river
and sprinkle it where she shed her blood. She herself must wash every day with
the medicine. Then the country will be moistened again (by rain). Further, we
(medicine-men), summon the women of the country; we tell them to prepare a
ball of the earth which contains the blood. They bring it to us one morning.
If we wish to prepare medicine with which to sprinkle the whole country, we
crumble this earth to powder; at the end of five days we send little boys and
little girls, girls that yet know nothing of women's affairs and have not yet
had relations with men. We put the medicine in the horns of oxen, and these
children go to all the fords, to all the entrances of the country. A little
girl turns up the soil with her mattock, the others dip a branch in the horn
and sprinkle the inside of the hole saying, 'Rain! rain!' So we remove the
misfortune which the women have brought on the roads; the rain will be able to
come. The country is purified!

4. Warriors tabooed.

ONCE more, warriors are conceived by the savage to move, so to say, in an
atmosphere of spiritual danger which constrains them to practise a variety of
superstitious observances quite different in their nature from those rational
precautions which, as a matter of course, they adopt against foes of flesh and
blood. The general effect of these observances is to place the warrior, both
before and after victory, in the same state of seclusion or spiritual
quarantine in which, for his own safety, primitive man puts his human gods and
other dangerous characters. Thus when the Maoris went out on the war-path they
were sacred or taboo in the highest degree, and they and their friends at home
had to observe strictly many curious customs over and above the numerous
taboos of ordinary life. They became, in the irreverent language of Europeans
who knew them in the old fighting days, tabooed an inch thick; and as for
the leader of the expedition, he was quite unapproachable. Similarly, when the
Israelites marched forth to war they were bound by certain rules of ceremonial
purity identical with rules observed by Maoris and Australian blackfellows on
the war-path. The vessels they used were sacred, and they had to practise
continence and a custom of personal cleanliness of which the original motive,
if we may judge from the avowed motive of savages who conform to the same
custom, was a fear lest the enemy should obtain the refuse of their persons,
and thus be enabled to work their destruction by magic. Among some Indian
tribes of North America a young warrior in his first campaign had to conform
to certain customs, of which two were identical with the observances imposed
by the same Indians on girls at their first menstruation: the vessels he ate
and drank out of might be touched by no other person, and he was forbidden to
scratch his head or any other part of his body with his fingers; if he could
not help scratching himself, he had to do it with a stick. The latter rule,
like the one which forbids a tabooed person to feed himself with his own
fingers, seems to rest on the supposed sanctity or pollution, whichever we
choose to call it, of the tabooed hands. Moreover among these Indian tribes
the men on the war-path had always to sleep at night with their faces turned
towards their own country; however uneasy the posture, they might not change
it. They might not sit upon the bare ground, nor wet their feet, nor walk on a
beaten path if they could help it; when they had no choice but to walk on a
path, they sought to counteract the ill effect of doing so by doctoring their
legs with certain medicines or charms which they carried with them for the
purpose. No member of the party was permitted to step over the legs, hands, or
body of any other member who chanced to be sitting or lying on the ground; and
it was equally forbidden to step over his blanket, gun, tomahawk, or anything
that belonged to him. If this rule was inadvertently broken, it became the
duty of the member whose person or property had been stepped over to knock the
other member down, and it was similarly the duty of that other to be knocked
down peaceably and without resistance. The vessels out of which the warriors
ate their food were commonly small bowls of wood or birch bark, with marks to
distinguish the two sides; in marching from home the Indians invariably drank
out of one side of the bowl, and in returning they drank out of the other.
When on their way home they came within a day's march of the village, they
hung up all their bowls on trees, or threw them away on the prairie, doubtless
to prevent their sanctity or defilement from being communicated with
disastrous effects to their friends, just as we have seen that the vessels and
clothes of the sacred Mikado, of women at childbirth and menstruation, and of
persons defiled by contact with the dead are destroyed or laid aside for a
similar reason. The first four times that an Apache Indian goes out on the
war-path, he is bound to refrain from scratching his head with his fingers and
from letting water touch his lips. Hence he scratches his head with a stick,
and drinks through a hollow reed or cane. Stick and reed are attached to the
warrior's belt and to each other by a leathern thong. The rule not to scratch
their heads with their fingers, but to use a stick for the purpose instead,
was regularly observed by Ojebways on the war-path.

With regard to the Creek Indians and kindred tribes we are told they will
not cohabit with women while they are out at war; they religiously abstain
from every kind of intercourse even with their own wives, for the space of
three days and nights before they go to war, and so after they return home,
because they are to sanctify themselves. Among the Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga
tribes of South Africa not only have the warriors to abstain from women, but
the people left behind in the villages are also bound to continence; they
think that any incontinence on their part would cause thorns to grow on the
ground traversed by the warriors, and that success would not attend the
expedition.

Why exactly many savages have made it a rule to refrain from women in time
of war, we cannot say for certain, but we may conjecture that their motive was
a superstitious fear lest, on the principles of sympathetic magic, close
contact with women should infect them with feminine weakness and cowardice.
Similarly some savages imagine that contact with a woman in childbed enervates
warriors and enfeebles their weapons. Indeed the Kayans of Central Borneo go
so far as to hold that to touch a loom or women's clothes would so weaken a
man that he would have no success in hunting, fishing, and war. Hence it is
not merely sexual intercourse with women that the savage warrior sometimes
shuns; he is careful to avoid the sex altogether. Thus among the hill tribes
of Assam, not only are men forbidden to cohabit with their wives during or
after a raid, but they may not eat food cooked by a woman; nay, they should
not address a word even to their own wives. Once a woman, who unwittingly
broke the rule by speaking to her husband while he was under the war taboo,
sickened and died when she learned the awful crime she had committed.

5. Manslayers tabooed.

IF THE READER still doubts whether the rules of conduct which we have just
been considering are based on superstitious fears or dictated by a rational
prudence, his doubts will probably be dissipated when he learns that rules of
the same sort are often imposed even more stringently on warriors after the
victory has been won and when all fear of the living corporeal foe is at an
end. In such cases one motive for the inconvenient restrictions laid on the
victors in their hour of triumph is probably a dread of the angry ghosts of
the slain; and that the fear of the vengeful ghosts does influence the
behaviour of the slayers is often expressly affirmed. The general effect of
the taboos laid on sacred chiefs, mourners, women at childbirth, men on the
war-path, and so on, is to seclude or isolate the tabooed persons from
ordinary society, this effect being attained by a variety of rules, which
oblige the men or women to live in separate huts or in the open air, to shun
the commerce of the sexes, to avoid the use of vessels employed by others, and
so forth. Now the same effect is produced by similar means in the case of
victorious warriors, particularly such as have actually shed the blood of
their enemies. In the island of Timor, when a warlike expedition has returned
in triumph bringing the heads of the vanquished foe, the leader of the
expedition is forbidden by religion and custom to return at once to his own
house. A special hut is prepared for him, in which he has to reside for two
months, undergoing bodily and spiritual purification. During this time he may
not go to his wife nor feed himself; the food must be put into his mouth by
another person. That these observances are dictated by fear of the ghosts of
the slain seems certain; for from another account of the ceremonies performed
on the return of a successful head-hunter in the same island we learn that
sacrifices are offered on this occasion to appease the soul of the man whose
head has been taken; the people think that some misfortune would befall the
victor were such offerings omitted. Moreover, a part of the ceremony consists
of a dance accompanied by a song, in which the death of the slain man is
lamented and his forgiveness is entreated. Be not angry, they say, because
your head is here with us; had we been less lucky, our heads might now have
been exposed in your village. We have offered the sacrifice to appease you.
Your spirit may now rest and leave us at peace. Why were you our enemy? Would
it not have been better that we should remain friends? Then your blood would
not have been spilt and your head would not have been cut off. The people of
Paloo in Central Celebes take the heads of their enemies in war and afterwards
propitiate the souls of the slain in the temple.

Among the tribes at the mouth of the Wanigela River, in New Guinea, a man
who has taken life is considered to be impure until he has undergone certain
ceremonies: as soon as possible after the deed he cleanses himself and his
weapon. This satisfactorily accomplished, he repairs to his village and seats
himself on the logs of sacrificial staging. No one approaches him or takes any
notice whatever of him. A house is prepared for him which is put in charge of
two or three small boys as servants. He may eat only toasted bananas, and only
the centre portion of themthe ends being thrown away. On the third day of his
seclusion a small feast is prepared by his friends, who also fashion some new
perineal bands for him. This is called ivi poro. The next day the man dons
all his best ornaments and badges for taking life, and sallies forth fully
armed and parades the village. The next day a hunt is organised, and a
kangaroo selected from the game captured. It is cut open and the spleen and
liver rubbed over the back of the man. He then walks solemnly down to the
nearest water, and standing straddle-legs in it washes himself. All the young
untried warriors swim between his legs. This is supposed to impart courage and
strength to them. The following day, at early dawn, he dashes out of his
house, fully armed, and calls aloud the name of his victim. Having satisfied
himself that he has thoroughly scared the ghost of the dead man, he returns to
his house. The beating of flooring-boards and the lighting of fires is also a
certain method of scaring the ghost. A day later his purification is finished.
He can then enter his wife's house.

In Windessi, Dutch New Guinea, when a party of head-hunters has been
successful, and they are nearing home, they announce their approach and
success by blowing on triton shells. Their canoes are also decked with
branches. The faces of the men who have taken a head are blackened with
charcoal. If several have taken part in killing the same victim, his head is
divided among them. They always time their arrival so as to reach home in the
early morning. They come rowing to the village with a great noise, and the
women stand ready to dance in the verandahs of the houses. The canoes row past
the room sram or house where the young men live; and as they pass, the
murderers throw as many pointed sticks or bamboos at the wall or the roof as
there were enemies killed. The day is spent very quietly. Now and then they
drum or blow on the conch; at other times they beat the walls of the houses
with loud shouts to drive away the ghosts of the slain. So the Yabim of New
Guinea believe that the spirit of a murdered man pursues his murderer and
seeks to do him a mischief. Hence they drive away the spirit with shouts and
the beating of drums. When the Fijians had buried a man alive, as they often
did, they used at nightfall to make a great uproar by means of bamboos,
trumpet-shells, and so forth, for the purpose of frightening away his ghost,
lest he should attempt to return to his old home. And to render his house
unattractive to him they dismantled it and clothed it with everything that to
their ideas seemed most repulsive. On the evening of the day on which they had
tortured a prisoner to death, the American Indians were wont to run through
the village with hideous yells, beating with sticks on the furniture, the
walls, and the roofs of the huts to prevent the angry ghost of their victim
from settling there and taking vengeance for the torments that his body had
endured at their hands. Once, says a traveller, on approaching in the night
a village of Ottawas, I found all the inhabitants in confusion: they were all
busily engaged in raising noises of the loudest and most inharmonious kind.
Upon inquiry, I found that a battle had been lately fought between the Ottawas
and the Kickapoos, and that the object of all this noise was to prevent the
ghosts of the departed combatants from entering the village.

Among the Basutos ablution is specially performed on return from battle.
It is absolutely necessary that the warriors should rid themselves, as soon as
possible, of the blood they have shed, or the shades of their victims would
pursue them incessantly, and disturb their slumbers. They go in a procession,
and in full armour, to the nearest stream. At the moment they enter the water
a diviner, placed higher up, throws some purifying substances into the
current. This is, however, not strictly necessary. The javelins and
battle-axes also undergo the process of washing. Among the Bageshu of East
Africa a man who has killed another may not return to his own house on the
same day, though he may enter the village and spend the night in a friend's
house. He kills a sheep and smears his chest, his right arm, and his head with
the contents of the animal's stomach. His children are brought to him and he
smears them in like manner. Then he smears each side of the doorway with the
tripe and entrails, and finally throws the rest of the stomach on the roof of
his house. For a whole day he may not touch food with his hands, but picks it
up with two sticks and so conveys it to his mouth. His wife is not under any
such restrictions. She may even go to mourn for the man whom her husband has
killed, if she wishes to do so. Among the Angoni, to the north of the Zambesi,
warriors who have slain foes on an expedition smear their bodies and faces
with ashes, hang garments of their victims on their persons, and tie bark
ropes round their necks, so that the ends hang down over their shoulders or
breasts. This costume they wear for three days after their return, and rising
at break of day they run through the village uttering frightful yells to drive
away the ghosts of the slain, which, if they were not thus banished from the
houses, might bring sickness and misfortune on the inmates.

In some of these accounts nothing is said of an enforced seclusion, at
least after the ceremonial cleansing, but some South African tribes certainly
require the slayer of a very gallant foe in war to keep apart from his wife
and family for ten days after he has washed his body in running water. He also
receives from the tribal doctor a medicine which he chews with his food. When
a Nandi of East Africa has killed a member of another tribe, he paints one
side of his body, spear, and sword red, and the other side white. For four
days after the slaughter he is considered unclean and may not go home. He has
to build a small shelter by a river and live there; he may not associate with
his wife or sweetheart, and he may eat nothing but porridge, beef, and goat's
flesh. At the end of the fourth day he must purify himself by taking a strong
purge made from the bark of the segetet tree and by drinking goat's milk
mixed with blood. Among the Bantu tribes of Kavirondo, when a man has killed
an enemy in warfare he shaves his head on his return home, and his friends rub
a medicine, which generally consists of goat's dung, over his body to prevent
the spirit of the slain man from troubling him. Exactly the same custom is
practised for the same reason by the Wageia of East Africa. With the Ja-Luo of
Kavirondo the custom is somewhat different. Three days after his return from
the fight the warrior shaves his head. But before he may enter his village he
has to hang a live fowl, head uppermost, round his neck; then the bird is
decapitated and its head left hanging round his neck. Soon after his return a
feast is made for the slain man, in order that his ghost may not haunt his
slayer. In the Pelew Islands, when the men return from a warlike expedition in
which they have taken a life, the young warriors who have been out fighting
for the first time, and all who handled the slain, are shut up in the large
council-house and become tabooed. They may not quit the edifice, nor bathe,
nor touch a woman, nor eat fish; their food is limited to coco-nuts and syrup.
They rub themselves with charmed leaves and chew charmed betel. After three
days they go together to bathe as near as possible to the spot where the man
was killed.

Among the Natchez Indians of North America young braves who had taken
their first scalps were obliged to observe certain rules of abstinence for six
months. They might not sleep with their wives nor eat flesh; their only food
was fish and hasty-pudding. If they broke these rules, they believed that the
soul of the man they had killed would work their death by magic, that they
would gain no more successes over the enemy, and that the least wound
inflicted on them would prove mortal. When a Choctaw had killed an enemy and
taken his scalp, he went into mourning for a month, during which he might not
comb his hair, and if his head itched he might not scratch it except with a
little stick which he wore fastened to his wrist for the purpose. This
ceremonial mourning for the enemies they had slain was not uncommon among the
North American Indians.

Thus we see that warriors who have taken the life of a foe in battle are
temporarily cut off from free intercourse with their fellows, and especially
with their wives, and must undergo certain rites of purification before they
are readmitted to society. Now if the purpose of their seclusion and of the
expiatory rites which they have to perform is, as we have been led to believe,
no other than to shake off, frighten, or appease the angry spirit of the slain
man, we may safely conjecture that the similar purification of homicides and
murderers, who have imbrued their hands in the blood of a fellow-tribesman,
had at first the same significance, and that the idea of a moral or spiritual
regeneration symbolised by the washing, the fasting, and so on, was merely a
later interpretation put upon the old custom by men who had outgrown the
primitive modes of thought in which the custom originated. The conjecture will
be confirmed if we can show that savages have actually imposed certain
restrictions on the murderer of a fellow-tribesman from a definite fear that
he is haunted by the ghost of his victim. This we can do with regard to the
Omahas of North America. Among these Indians the kinsmen of a murdered man had
the right to put the murderer to death, but sometimes they waived their right
in consideration of presents which they consented to accept. When the life of
the murderer was spared, he had to observe certain stringent rules for a
period which varied from two to four years. He must walk barefoot, and he
might eat no warm food, nor raise his voice, nor look around. He was compelled
to pull his robe about him and to have it tied at the neck even in hot
weather; he might not let it hang loose or fly open. He might not move his
hands about, but had to keep them close to his body. He might not comb his
hair, and it might not be blown about by the wind. When the tribe went out
hunting, he was obliged to pitch his tent about a quarter of mile from the
rest of the people lest the ghost of his victim should raise a high wind,
which might cause damage. Only one of his kindred was allowed to remain with
him at his tent. No one wished to eat with him, for they said, If we eat with
him whom Wakanda hates, Wakanda will hate us. Sometimes he wandered at night
crying and lamenting his offence. At the end of his long isolation the kinsmen
of the murdered man heard his crying and said, It is enough. Begone, and walk
among the crowd. Put on moccasins and wear a good robe. Here the reason
alleged for keeping the murderer at a considerable distance from the hunters
gives the clue to all the other restrictions laid on him: he was haunted and
therefore dangerous. The ancient Greeks believed that the soul of a man who
had just been killed was wroth with his slayer and troubled him; wherefore it
was needful even for the involuntary homicide to depart from his country for a
year until the anger of the dead man had cooled down; nor might the slayer
return until sacrifice had been offered and ceremonies of purification
performed. If his victim chanced to be a foreigner, the homicide had to shun
the native country of the dead man as well as his own. The legend of the
matricide Orestes, how he roamed from place to place pursued by the Furies of
his murdered mother, and none would sit at meat with him, or take him in, till
he had been purified, reflects faithfully the real Greek dread of such as were
still haunted by an angry ghost.

6. Hunters and Fishers tabooed

IN SAVAGE society the hunter and the fisherman have often to observe rules
of abstinence and to submit to ceremonies of purification of the same sort as
those which are obligatory on the warrior and the manslayer; and though we
cannot in all cases perceive the exact purpose which these rules and
ceremonies are supposed to serve, we may with some probability assume that,
just as the dread of the spirits of his enemies is the main motive for the
seclusion and purification of the warrior who hopes to take or has already
taken their lives, so the huntsman or fisherman who complies with similar
customs is principally actuated by a fear of the spirits of the beasts, birds,
or fish which he has killed or intends to kill. For the savage commonly
conceives animals to be endowed with souls and intelligences like his own, and
hence he naturally treats them with similar respect. Just as he attempts to
appease the ghosts of the men he has slain, so he essays to propitiate the
spirits of the animals he has killed. These ceremonies of propitiation will be
described later on in this work; here we have to deal, first, with the taboos
observed by the hunter and the fisherman before or during the hunting and
fishing seasons, and, second, with the ceremonies of purification which have
to be practised by these men on returning with their booty from a successful
chase.

While the savage respects, more or less, the souls of all animals, he
treats with particular deference the spirits of such as are either especially
useful to him or formidable on account of their size, strength, or ferocity.
Accordingly the hunting and killing of these valuable or dangerous beasts are
subject to more elaborate rules and ceremonies than the slaughter of
comparatively useless and insignificant creatures. Thus the Indians of Nootka
Sound prepared themselves for catching whales by observing a fast for a week,
during which they ate very little, bathed in the water several times a day,
sang, and rubbed their bodies, limbs, and faces with shells and bushes till
they looked as if they had been severely torn with briars. They were likewise
required to abstain from any commerce with their women for the like period,
this last condition being considered indispensable to their success. A chief
who failed to catch a whale has been known to attribute his failure to a
breach of chastity on the part of his men. It should be remarked that the
conduct thus prescribed as a preparation for whaling is precisely that which
in the same tribe of Indians was required of men about to go on the war-path.
Rules of the same sort are, or were formerly, observed by Malagasy whalers.
For eight days before they went to sea the crew of a whaler used to fast,
abstaining from women and liquor, and confessing their most secret faults to
each other; and if any man was found to have sinned deeply, he was forbidden
to share in the expedition. In the island of Mabuiag continence was imposed on
the people both before they went to hunt the dugong and while the turtles were
pairing. The turtle-season lasts during parts of October and November; and if
at that time unmarried persons had sexual intercourse with each other, it was
believed that when the canoe approached the floating turtle, the male would
separate from the female and both would dive down in different directions. So
at Mowat in New Guinea men have no relation with women when the turtles are
coupling, though there is considerable laxity of morals at other times. In the
island of Uap, one of the Caroline group, every fisherman plying his craft
lies under a most strict taboo during the whole of the fishing season, which
lasts for six or eight weeks. Whenever he is on shore he must spend all his
time in the men's clubhouse, and under no pretext whatever may he visit his
own house or so much as look upon the faces of his wife and womenkind. Were he
but to steal a glance at them, they think that flying fish must inevitably
bore out his eyes at night. If his wife, mother, or daughter brings any gift
for him or wishes to talk with him, she must stand down towards the shore with
her back turned to the men's clubhouse. Then the fisherman may go out and
speak to her, or with his back turned to her he may receive what she has
brought him; after which he must return at once to his rigorous confinement.
Indeed the fishermen may not even join in dance and song with the other men of
the clubhouse in the evening; they must keep to themselves and be silent. In
Mirzapur, when the seed of the silkworm is brought into the house, the Kol or
Bhuiyar puts it in a place which has been carefully plastered with holy
cowdung to bring good luck. From that time the owner must be careful to avoid
ceremonial impurity. He must give up cohabitation with his wife; he may not
sleep on a bed, nor shave himself, nor cut his nails, nor anoint himself with
oil, nor eat food cooked with butter, nor tell lies, nor do anything else that
he deems wrong. He vows to Singarmati Devi that, if the worms are duly born,
he will make her an offering. When the cocoons open and the worms appear, he
assembles the women of the house and they sing the same song as at the birth
of a baby, and red lead is smeared on the parting of the hair of all the
married women of the neighbourhood. When the worms pair, rejoicings are made
as at a marriage. Thus the silkworms are treated as far as possible like human
beings. Hence the custom which prohibits the commerce of the sexes while the
worms are hatching may be only an extension, by analogy, of the rule which is
observed by many races, that the husband may not cohabit with his wife during
pregnancy and lactation.

In the island of Nias the hunters sometimes dig pits, cover them lightly
over with twigs, grass, and leaves, and then drive the game into them. While
they are engaged in digging the pits, they have to observe a number of taboos.
They may not spit, or the game would turn back in disgust from the pits. They
may not laugh, or the sides of the pit would fall in. They may eat no salt,
prepare no fodder for swine, and in the pit they may not scratch themselves,
for if they did, the earth would be loosened and would collapse. And the night
after digging the pit they may have no intercourse with a woman, or all their
labour would be in vain.

This practice of observing strict chastity as a condition of success in
hunting and fishing is very common among rude races; and the instances of it
which have been cited render it probable that the rule is always based on a
superstition rather than on a consideration of the temporary weakness which a
breach of the custom may entail on the hunter or fisherman. In general it
appears to be supposed that the evil effect of incontinence is not so much
that it weakens him, as that, for some reason or other, it offends the
animals, who in consequence will not suffer themselves to be caught. A Carrier
Indian of British Columbia used to separate from his wife for a full month
before he set traps for bears, and during this time he might not drink from
the same vessel as his wife, but had to use a special cup made of birch bark.
The neglect of these precautions would cause the game to escape after it had
been snared. But when he was about to snare martens, the period of continence
was cut down to ten days.

An examination of all the many cases in which the savage bridles his
passions and remains chaste from motives of superstition, would be
instructive, but I cannot attempt it now. I will only add a few miscellaneous
examples of the custom before passing to the ceremonies of purification which
are observed by the hunter and fisherman after the chase and the fishing are
over. The workers in the salt-pans near Siphoum, in Laos, must abstain from
all sexual relations at the place where they are at work; and they may not
cover their heads nor shelter themselves under an umbrella from the burning
rays of the sun. Among the Kachins of Burma the ferment used in making beer is
prepared by two women, chosen by lot, who during the three days that the
process lasts may eat nothing acid and may have no conjugal relations with
their husbands; otherwise it is supposed that the beer would be sour. Among
the Masai honey-wine is brewed by a man and a woman who live in a hut set
apart for them till the wine is ready for drinking. But they are strictly
forbidden to have sexual intercourse with each other during this time; it is
deemed essential that they should be chaste for two days before they begin to
brew and for the whole of the six days that the brewing lasts. The Masai
believe that were the couple to commit a breach of chastity, not only would
the wine be undrinkable but the bees which made the honey would fly away.
Similarly they require that a man who is making poison should sleep alone and
observe other taboos which render him almost an outcast. The Wandorobbo, a
tribe of the same region as the Masai, believe that the mere presence of a
woman in the neighbourhood of a man who is brewing poison would deprive the
poison of its venom, and that the same thing would happen if the wife of the
poison-maker were to commit adultery while her husband was brewing the poison.
In this last case it is obvious that a rationalistic explanation of the taboo
is impossible. How could the loss of virtue in the poison be a physical
consequence of the loss of virtue in the poison-maker's wife? Clearly the
effect which the wife's adultery is supposed to have on the poison is a case
of sympathetic magic; her misconduct sympathetically affects her husband and
his work at a distance. We may, accordingly, infer with some confidence that
the rule of continence imposed on the poison-maker himself is also a simple
case of sympathetic magic, and not, as a civilised reader might be disposed to
conjecture, a wise precaution designed to prevent him from accidentally
poisoning his wife.

Among the Ba-Pedi and Ba-Thonga tribes of South Africa, when the site of a
new village has been chosen and the houses are building, all the married
people are forbidden to have conjugal relations with each other. If it were
discovered that any couple had broken this rule, the work of building would
immediately be stopped, and another site chosen for the village. For they
think that a breach of chastity would spoil the village which was growing up,
that the chief would grow lean and perhaps die, and that the guilty woman
would never bear another child. Among the Chams of Cochin-China, when a dam is
made or repaired on a river for the sake of irrigation, the chief who offers
the traditional sacrifices and implores the protection of the deities on the
work has to stay all the time in a wretched hovel of straw, taking no part in
the labour, and observing the strictest continence; for the people believe
that a breach of his chastity would entail a breach of the dam. Here, it is
plain, there can be no idea of maintaining the mere bodily vigour of the chief
for the accomplishment of a task in which he does not even bear a hand.

If the taboos or abstinences observed by hunters and fishermen before and
during the chase are dictated, as we have seen reason to believe, by
superstitious motives, and chiefly by a dread of offending or frightening the
spirits of the creatures whom it is proposed to kill, we may expect that the
restraints imposed after the slaughter has been perpetrated will be at least
as stringent, the slayer and his friends having now the added fear of the
angry ghosts of his victims before their eyes. Whereas on the hypothesis that
the abstinences in question, including those from food, drink, and sleep, are
merely salutary precautions for maintaining the men in health and strength to
do their work, it is obvious that the observance of these abstinences or
taboos after the work is done, that is, when the game is killed and the fish
caught, must be wholly superfluous, absurd, and inexplicable. But as I shall
now show, these taboos often continue to be enforced or even increased in
stringency after the death of the animals, in other words, after the hunter or
fisher has accomplished his object by making his bag or landing his fish. The
rationalistic theory of them therefore breaks down entirely; the hypothesis of
superstition is clearly the only one open to us.

Among the Inuit or Esquimaux of Bering Strait the dead bodies of various
animals must be treated very carefully by the hunter who obtains them, so that
their shades may not be offended and bring bad luck or even death upon him or
his people. Hence the Unalit hunter who has had a hand in the killing of a
white whale, or even has helped to take one from the net, is not allowed to do
any work for the next four days, that being the time during which the shade or
ghost of the whale is supposed to stay with its body. At the same time no one
in the village may use any sharp or pointed instrument for fear of wounding
the whale's shade, which is believed to be hovering invisible in the
neighbourhood; and no loud noise may be made lest it should frighten or offend
the ghost. Whoever cuts a whale's body with an iron axe will die. Indeed the
use of all iron instruments is forbidden in the village during these four
days.

These same Esquimaux celebrate a great annual festival in December when
the bladders of all the seals, whales, walrus, and white bears that have been
killed in the year are taken into the assembly-house of the village. They
remain there for several days, and so long as they do so the hunters avoid all
intercourse with women, saying that if they failed in that respect the shades
of the dead animals would be offended. Similarly among the Aleuts of Alaska
the hunter who had struck a whale with a charmed spear would not throw again,
but returned at once to his home and separated himself from his people in a
hut specially constructed for the purpose, where he stayed for three days
without food or drink, and without touching or looking upon a woman. During
this time of seclusion he snorted occasionally in imitation of the wounded and
dying whale, in order to prevent the whale which he had struck from leaving
the coast. On the fourth day he emerged from his seclusion and bathed in the
sea, shrieking in a hoarse voice and beating the water with his hands. Then,
taking with him a companion, he repaired to that part of the shore where he
expected to find the whale stranded. If the beast was dead, he at once cut out
the place where the death-wound had been inflicted. If the whale was not dead,
he again returned to his home and continued washing himself until the whale
died. Here the hunter's imitation of the wounded whale is probably intended by
means of homoeopathic magic to make the beast die in earnest. Once more the
soul of the grim polar bear is offended if the taboos which concern him are
not observed. His soul tarries for three days near the spot where it left his
body, and during these days the Esquimaux are particularly careful to conform
rigidly to the laws of taboo, because they believe that punishment overtakes
the transgressor who sins against the soul of a bear far more speedily than
him who sins against the souls of the sea-beasts.

When the Kayans have shot one of the dreaded Bornean panthers, they are
very anxious about the safety of their souls, for they think that the soul of
a panther is almost more powerful than their own. Hence they step eight times
over the carcase of the dead beast reciting the spell, Panther, thy soul
under my soul. On returning home they smear themselves, their dogs, and their
weapons with the blood of fowls in order to calm their souls and hinder them
from fleeing away; for, being themselves fond of the flesh of fowls, they
ascribe the same taste to their souls. For eight days afterwards they must
bathe by day and by night before going out again to the chase. Among the
Hottentots, when a man has killed a lion, leopard, elephant, or rhinoceros, he
is esteemed a great hero, but he has to remain at home quite idle for three
days, during which his wife may not come near him; she is also enjoined to
restrict herself to a poor diet and to eat no more than is barely necessary to
keep her in health. Similarly the Lapps deem it the height of glory to kill a
bear, which they consider the king of beasts. Nevertheless, all the men who
take part in the slaughter are regarded as unclean, and must live by
themselves for three days in a hut or tent made specially for them, where they
cut up and cook the bear's carcase. The reindeer which brought in the carcase
on a sledge may not be driven by a woman for a whole year; indeed, according
to one account, it may not be used by anybody for that period. Before the men
go into the tent where they are to be secluded, they strip themselves of the
garments they had worn in killing the bear, and their wives spit the red juice
of alder bark in their faces. They enter the tent not by the ordinary door but
by an opening at the back. When the bear's flesh has been cooked, a portion of
it is sent by the hands of two men to the women, who may not approach the
men's tent while the cooking is going on. The men who convey the flesh to the
women pretend to be strangers bringing presents from a foreign land; the women
keep up the pretence and promise to tie red threads round the legs of the
strangers. The bear's flesh may not be passed in to the women through the door
of their tent, but must be thrust in at a special opening made by lifting up
the hem of the tent-cover. When the three days' seclusion is over and the men
are at liberty to return to their wives, they run, one after the other, round
the fire, holding the chain by which pots are suspended over it. This is
regarded as a form of purification; they may now leave the tent by the
ordinary door and rejoin the women. But the leader of the party must still
abstain from cohabitation with his wife for two days more.

Again, the Caffres are said to dread greatly the boa-constrictor or an
enormous serpent resembling it; and being influenced by certain superstitious
notions they even fear to kill it. The man who happened to put it to death,
whether in self-defence or otherwise, was formerly required to lie in a
running stream of water during the day for several weeks together; and no
beast whatever was allowed to be slaughtered at the hamlet to which he
belonged, until this duty had been fully performed. The body of the snake was
then taken and carefully buried in a trench, dug close to the cattle-fold,
where its remains, like those of a chief, were henceforward kept perfectly
undisturbed. The period of penance, as in the case of mourning for the dead,
is now happily reduced to a few days. In Madras it is considered a great sin
to kill a cobra. When this has happened, the people generally burn the body of
the serpent, just as they burn the bodies of human beings. The murderer deems
himself polluted for three days. On the second day milk is poured on the
remains of the cobra. On the third day the guilty wretch is free from
pollution.

In these last cases the animal whose slaughter has to be atoned for is
sacred, that is, it is one whose life is commonly spared from motives of
superstition. Yet the treatment of the sacrilegious slayer seems to resemble
so closely the treatment of hunters and fishermen who have killed animals for
food in the ordinary course of business, that the ideas on which both sets of
customs are based may be assumed to be substantially the same. Those ideas, if
I am right, are the respect which the savage feels for the souls of beasts,
especially valuable or formidable beasts, and the dread which he entertains of
their vengeful ghosts. Some confirmation of this view may be drawn from the
ceremonies observed by fishermen of Annam when the carcase of a whale is
washed ashore. These fisherfolk, we are told, worship the whale on account of
the benefits they derive from it. There is hardly a village on the sea-shore
which has not its small pagoda, containing the bones, more or less authentic,
of a whale. When a dead whale is washed ashore, the people accord it a solemn
burial. The man who first caught sight of it acts as chief mourner, performing
the rites which as chief mourner and heir he would perform for a human
kinsman. He puts on all the garb of woe, the straw hat, the white robe with
long sleeves turned inside out, and the other paraphernalia of full mourning.
As next of kin to the deceased he presides over the funeral rites. Perfumes
are burned, sticks of incense kindled, leaves of gold and silver scattered,
crackers let off. When the flesh has been cut off and the oil extracted, the
remains of the carcase are buried in the sand. After wards a shed is set up
and offerings are made in it. Usually some time after the burial the spirit of
the dead whale takes possession of some person in the village and declares by
his mouth whether he is a male or a female.

Chapter 21. Tabooed Things.

1. The Meaning of Taboo.

THUS in primitive society the rules of ceremonial purity observed by divine
kings, chiefs, and priests agree in many respects with the rules observed by
homicides, mourners, women in childbed, girls at puberty, hunters and
fishermen, and so on. To us these various classes of persons appear to differ
totally in character and condition; some of them we should call holy, others
we might pronounce unclean and polluted. But the savage makes no such moral
distinction between them; the conceptions of holiness and pollution are not
yet differentiated in his mind. To him the common feature of all these persons
is that they are dangerous and in danger, and the danger in which they stand
and to which they expose others is what we should call spiritual or ghostly,
and therefore imaginary. The danger, however, is not less real because it is
imaginary; imagination acts upon man as really as does gravitation, and may
kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid. To seclude these persons from
the rest of the world so that the dreaded spiritual danger shall neither reach
them nor spread from them, is the object of the taboos which they have to
observe. These taboos act, so to say, as electrical insulators to preserve the
spiritual force with which these persons are charged from suffering or
inflicting harm by contact with the outer world.

To the illustrations of these general principles which have been already
given I shall now add some more, drawing my examples, first, from the class of
tabooed things, and, second, from the class of tabooed words; for in the
opinion of the savage both things and words may, like persons, be charged or
electrified, either temporarily or permanently, with the mysterious virtue of
taboo, and may therefore require to be banished for a longer or shorter time
from the familiar usage of common life. And the examples will be chosen with
special reference to those sacred chiefs, kings and priests, who, more than
anybody else, live fenced about by taboo as by a wall. Tabooed things will be
illustrated in the present chapter, and tabooed words in the next.

2. Iron tabooed.

IN THE FIRST place we may observe that the awful sanctity of kings naturally
leads to a prohibition to touch their sacred persons. Thus it was unlawful to
lay hands on the person of a Spartan king: no one might touch the body of the
king or queen of Tahiti: it is forbidden to touch the person of the king of
Siam under pain of death; and no one may touch the king of Cambodia, for any
purpose whatever, without his express command. In July 1874 the king was
thrown from his carriage and lay insensible on the ground, but not one of his
suite dared to touch him; a European coming to the spot carried the injured
monarch to his palace. Formerly no one might touch the king of Corea; and if
he deigned to touch a subject, the spot touched became sacred, and the person
thus honoured had to wear a visible mark (generally a cord of red silk) for
the rest of his life. Above all, no iron might touch the king's body. In 1800
King Tieng-tsong-tai-oang died of a tumour in the back, no one dreaming of
employing the lancet, which would probably have saved his life. It is said
that one king suffered terribly from an abscess in the lip, till his physician
called in a jester, whose pranks made the king laugh heartily, and so the
abscess burst. Roman and Sabine priests might not be shaved with iron but only
with bronze razors or shears; and whenever an iron graving-tool was brought
into the sacred grove of the Arval Brothers at Rome for the purpose of cutting
an inscription in stone, an expiatory sacrifice of a lamb and a pig must be
offered, which was repeated when the graving-tool was removed from the grove.
As a general rule iron might not be brought into Greek sanctuaries. In Crete
sacrifices were offered to Menedemus without the use of iron, because the
legend ran that Menedemus had been killed by an iron weapon in the Trojan war.
The Archon of Plataea might not touch iron; but once a year, at the annual
commemoration of the men who fell at the battle of Plataea, he was allowed to
carry a sword wherewith to sacrifice a bull. To this day a Hottentot priest
never uses an iron knife, but always a sharp splint of quartz, in sacrificing
an animal or circumcising a lad. Among the Ovambo of South-west Africa custom
requires that lads should be circumcised with a sharp flint; if none is to
hand, the operation may be performed with iron, but the iron must afterwards
be buried. Amongst the Moquis of Arizona stone knives, hatchets, and so on
have passed out of common use, but are retained in religious ceremonies. After
the Pawnees had ceased to use stone arrow-heads for ordinary purposes, they
still employed them to slay the sacrifices, whether human captives or buffalo
and deer. Amongst the Jews no iron tool was used in building the Temple at
Jerusalem or in making an altar. The old wooden bridge (Pons Sublicius) at
Rome, which was considered sacred, was made and had to be kept in repair
without the use of iron or bronze. It was expressly provided by law that the
temple of Jupiter Liber at Furfo might be repaired with iron tools. The
council chamber at Cyzicus was constructed of wood without any iron nails, the
beams being so arranged that they could be taken out and replaced.

This superstitious objection to iron perhaps dates from that early time in
the history of society when iron was still a novelty, and as such was viewed
by many with suspicion and dislike. For everything new is apt to excite the
awe and dread of the savage. It is a curious superstition, says a pioneer in
Borneo, this of the Dusuns, to attribute anythingwhether good or bad, lucky
or unluckythat happens to them to something novel which has arrived in their
country. For instance, my living in Kindram has caused the intensely hot
weather we have experienced of late. The unusually heavy rains which happened
to follow the English survey of the Nicobar Islands in the winter of 1886-1887
were imputed by the alarmed natives to the wrath of the spirits at the
theodolites, dumpy-levellers, and other strange instruments which had been set
up in so many of their favourite haunts; and some of them proposed to soothe
the anger of the spirits by sacrificing a pig. In the seventeenth century a
succession of bad seasons excited a revolt among the Esthonian peasantry, who
traced the origin of the evil to a watermill, which put a stream to some
inconvenience by checking its flow. The first introduction of iron
ploughshares into Poland having been followed by a succession of bad harvests,
the farmers attributed the badness of the crops to the iron ploughshares, and
discarded them for the old wooden ones. To this day the primitive Baduwis of
Java, who live chiefly by husbandry, will use no iron tools in tilling their
fields.

The general dislike of innovation, which always makes itself strongly felt
in the sphere of religion, is sufficient by itself to account for the
superstitious aversion to iron entertained by kings and priests and attributed
by them to the gods; possibly this aversion may have been intensified in
places by some such accidental cause as the series of bad seasons which cast
discredit on iron ploughshares in Poland. But the disfavour in which iron is
held by the gods and their ministers has another side. Their antipathy to the
metal furnishes men with a weapon which may be turned against the spirits when
occasion serves. As their dislike of iron is supposed to be so great that they
will not approach persons and things protected by the obnoxious metal, iron
may obviously be employed as a charm for banning ghosts and other dangerous
spirits. And often it is so used. Thus in the Highlands of Scotland the great
safeguard against the elfin race is iron, or, better yet, steel. The metal in
any form, whether as a sword, a knife, a gun-barrel, or what not, is
all-powerful for this purpose. Whenever you enter a fairy dwelling you should
always remember to stick a piece of steel, such as a knife, a needle, or a
fish-hook, in the door; for then the elves will not be able to shut the door
till you come out again. So, too, when you have shot a deer and are bringing
it home at night, be sure to thrust a knife into the carcase, for that keeps
the fairies from laying their weight on it. A knife or nail in your pocket is
quite enough to prevent the fairies from lifting you up at night. Nails in the
front of a bed ward off elves from women in the straw and from their babes;
but to make quite sure it is better to put the smoothing-iron under the bed,
and the reaping-hook in the window. If a bull has fallen over a rock and been
killed, a nail stuck into it will preserve the flesh from the fairies. Music
discoursed on a Jew's harp keeps the elfin women away from the hunter, because
the tongue of the instrument is of steel. In Morocco iron is considered a
great protection against demons; hence it is usual to place a knife or dagger
under a sick man's pillow. The Singhalese believe that they are constantly
surrounded by evil spirits, who lie in wait to do them harm. A peasant would
not dare to carry good food, such as cakes or roast meat, from one place to
another without putting an iron nail on it to prevent a demon from taking
possession of the viands and so making the eater ill. No sick person, whether
man or woman, would venture out of the house without a bunch of keys or a
knife in his hand, for without such a talisman he would fear that some devil
might take advantage of his weak state to slip into his body. And if a man has
a large sore on his body he tries to keep a morsel of iron on it as a
protection against demons. On the Slave Coast when a mother sees her child
gradually wasting away, she concludes that a demon has entered into the child,
and takes her measures accordingly. To lure the demon out of the body of her
offspring, she offers a sacrifice of food; and while the devil is bolting it,
she attaches iron rings and small bells to her child's ankles and hangs iron
chains round his neck. The jingling of the iron and the tinkling of the bells
are supposed to prevent the demon, when he has concluded his repast, from
entering again into the body of the little sufferer. Hence many children may
be seen in this part of Africa weighed down with iron ornaments.

3. Sharp Weapons tabooed.

THERE is a priestly king to the north of Zengwih in Burma, revered by the
Sotih as the highest spiritual and temporal authority, into whose house no
weapon or cutting instrument may be brought. This rule may perhaps be
explained by a custom observed by various peoples after a death; they refrain
from the use of sharp instruments so long as the ghost of the deceased is
supposed to be near, lest they should wound it. Thus among the Esquimaux of
Bering Strait during the day on which a person dies in the village no one is
permitted to work, and the relatives must perform no labour during the three
following days. It is especially forbidden during this period to cut with any
edged instrument, such as a knife or an axe; and the use of pointed
instruments, like needles or bodkins, is also forbidden. This is said to be
done to avoid cutting or injuring the shade, which may be present at any time
during this period, and, if accidentally injured by any of these things, it
would become very angry and bring sickness or death to the people. The
relatives must also be very careful at this time not to make any loud or harsh
noises that may startle or anger the shade. We have seen that in like manner
after killing a white whale these Esquimaux abstain from the use of cutting or
pointed instruments for four days, lest they should unwittingly cut or stab
the whale's ghost. The same taboo is sometimes observed by them when there is
a sick person in the village, probably from a fear of injuring his shade which
may be hovering outside of his body. After a death the Roumanians of
Transylvania are careful not to leave a knife lying with the sharp edge
uppermost so long as the corpse remains in the house, or else the soul will
be forced to ride on the blade. For seven days after a death, the corpse
being still in the house, the Chinese abstain from the use of knives and
needles, and even of chopsticks, eating their food with their fingers. On the
third, sixth, ninth, and fortieth days after the funeral the old Prussians and
Lithuanians used to prepare a meal, to which, standing at the door, they
invited the soul of the deceased. At these meals they sat silent round the
table and used no knives and the women who served up the food were also
without knives. If any morsels fell from the table they were left lying there
for the lonely souls that had no living relations or friends to feed them.
When the meal was over the priest took a broom and swept the souls out of the
house, saying, Dear souls, ye have eaten and drunk. Go forth, go forth. We
can now understand why no cutting instrument may be taken into the house of
the Burmese pontiff. Like so many priestly kings, he is probably regarded as
divine, and it is therefore right that his sacred spirit should not be exposed
to the risk of being cut or wounded whenever it quits his body to hover
invisible in the air or to fly on some distant mission.

4. Blood tabooed.

WE have seen that the Flamen Dialis was forbidden to touch or even name raw
flesh. At certain times a Brahman teacher is enjoined not to look on raw
flesh, blood, or persons whose hands have been cut off. In Uganda the father
of twins is in a state of taboo for some time after birth; among other rules
he is forbidden to kill anything or to see blood. In the Pelew Islands when a
raid has been made on a village and a head carried off, the relations of the
slain man are tabooed and have to submit to certain observances in order to
escape the wrath of his ghost. They are shut up in the house, touch no raw
flesh, and chew betel over which an incantation has been uttered by the
exorcist. After this the ghost of the slaughtered man goes away to the enemy's
country in pursuit of his murderer. The taboo is probably based on the common
belief that the soul or spirit of the animal is in the blood. As tabooed
persons are believed to be in a perilous statefor example, the relations of
the slain man are liable to the attacks of his indignant ghostit is
especially necessary to isolate them from contact with spirits; hence the
prohibition to touch raw meat. But as usual the taboo is only the special
enforcement of a general precept; in other words, its observance is
particularly enjoined in circumstances which seem urgently to call for its
application, but apart from such circumstances the prohibition is also
observed, though less strictly, as a common rule of life. Thus some of the
Esthonians will not taste blood because they believe that it contains the
animal's soul, which would enter the body of the person who tasted the blood.
Some Indian tribes of North America, through a strong principle of religion,
abstain in the strictest manner from eating the blood of any animal, as it
contains the life and spirit of the beast. Jewish hunters poured out the
blood of the game they had killed and covered it up with dust. They would not
taste the blood, believing that the soul or life of the animal was in the
blood, or actually was the blood.

It is a common rule that royal blood may not be shed upon the ground.
Hence when a king or one of his family is to be put to death a mode of
execution is devised by which the royal blood shall not be spilt upon the
earth. About the year 1688 the generalissimo of the army rebelled against the
king of Siam and put him to death after the manner of royal criminals, or as
princes of the blood are treated when convicted of capital crimes, which is by
putting them into a large iron caldron, and pounding them to pieces with
wooden pestles, because none of their royal blood must be spilt on the ground,
it being, by their religion, thought great impiety to contaminate the divine
blood by mixing it with earth. When Kublai Khan defeated and took his uncle
Nayan, who had rebelled against him, he caused Nayan to be put to death by
being wrapt in a carpet and tossed to and fro till he died, because he would
not have the blood of his Line Imperial spilt upon the ground or exposed in
the eye of Heaven and before the Sun. Friar Ricold mentions the Tartar
maxim: 'One Khan will put another to death to get possession of the throne,
but he takes great care that the blood be not spilt. For they say that it is
highly improper that the blood of the Great Khan should be spilt upon the
ground; so they cause the victim to be smothered somehow or other.' The like
feeling prevails at the court of Burma, where a peculiar mode of execution
without bloodshed is reserved for princes of the blood.

The reluctance to spill royal blood seems to be only a particular case of
a general unwillingness to shed blood or at least to allow it to fall on the
ground. Marco Polo tells us that in his day persons caught in the streets of
Cambaluc (Peking) at unseasonable hours were arrested, and if found guilty of
a misdemeanor were beaten with a stick. Under this punishment people
sometimes die, but they adopt it in order to eschew bloodshed, for their
Bacsis say that it is an evil thing to shed man's blood. In West Sussex
people believe that the ground on which human blood has been shed is accursed
and will remain barren for ever. Among some primitive peoples, when the blood
of a tribesman has to be spilt it is not suffered to fall upon the ground, but
is received upon the bodies of his fellow-tribesmen. Thus in some Australian
tribes boys who are being circumcised are laid on a platform, formed by the
living bodies of the tribesmen; and when a boy's tooth is knocked out as an
initiatory ceremony, he is seated on the shoulders of a man, on whose breast
the blood flows and may not be wiped away. Also the Gauls used to drink their
enemies' blood and paint themselves therewith. So also they write that the old
Irish were wont; and so have I seen some of the Irish do, but not their
enemies' but friends' blood, as, namely, at the execution of a notable traitor
at Limerick, called Murrogh O'Brien, I saw an old woman, which was his
foster-mother, take up his head whilst he was quartered and suck up all the
blood that ran thereout, saying that the earth was not worthy to drink it, and
therewith also steeped her face and breast and tore her hair, crying out and
shrieking most terribly. Among the Latuka of Central Africa the earth on
which a drop of blood has fallen at childbirth is carefully scraped up with an
iron shovel, put into a pot along with the water used in washing the mother,
and buried tolerably deep outside the house on the left-hand side. In West
Africa, if a drop of your blood has fallen on the ground, you must carefully
cover it up, rub and stamp it into the soil; if it has fallen on the side of a
canoe or a tree, the place is cut out and the chip destroyed. One motive of
these African customs may be a wish to prevent the blood from falling into the
hands of magicians, who might make an evil use of it. That is admittedly the
reason why people in West Africa stamp out any blood of theirs which has
dropped on the ground or cut out any wood that has been soaked with it. From a
like dread of sorcery natives of New Guinea are careful to burn any sticks,
leaves, or rags which are stained with their blood; and if the blood has
dripped on the ground they turn up the soil and if possible light a fire on
the spot. The same fear explains the curious duties discharged by a class of
men called ramanga or blue blood among the Betsileo of Madagascar. It is
their business to eat all the nail-parings and to lick up all the spilt blood
of the nobles. When the nobles pare their nails, the parings are collected to
the last scrap and swallowed by these ramanga. If the parings are too large,
they are minced small and so gulped down. Again, should a nobleman wound
himself, say in cutting his nails or treading on something, the ramanga lick
up the blood as fast as possible. Nobles of high rank hardly go anywhere
without these humble attendants; but if it should happen that there are none
of them present, the cut nails and the spilt blood are carefully collected to
be afterwards swallowed by the ramanga. There is scarcely a nobleman of any
pretensions who does not strictly observe this custom, the intention of which
probably is to prevent these parts of his person from falling into the hands
of sorcerers, who on the principles of contagious magic could work him harm
thereby.

The general explanation of the reluctance to shed blood on the ground is
probably to be found in the belief that the soul is in the blood, and that
therefore any ground on which it may fall necessarily becomes taboo or sacred.
In New Zealand anything upon which even a drop of a high chief's blood chances
to fall becomes taboo or sacred to him. For instance, a party of natives
having come to visit a chief in a fine new canoe, the chief got into it, but
in doing so a splinter entered his foot, and the blood trickled on the canoe,
which at once became sacred to him. The owner jumped out, dragged the canoe
ashore opposite the chief's house, and left it there. Again, a chief in
entering a missionary's house knocked his head against a beam, and the blood
flowed. The natives said that in former times the house would have belonged to
the chief. As usually happens with taboos of universal application, the
prohibition to spill the blood of a tribesman on the ground applies with
peculiar stringency to chiefs and kings, and is observed in their case long
after it has ceased to be observed in the case of others.

5. The Head tabooed.

MANY peoples regard the head as peculiarly sacred; the special sanctity
attributed to it is sometimes explained by a belief that it contains a spirit
which is very sensitive to injury or disrespect. Thus the Yorubas hold that
every man has three spiritual inmates, of whom the first, called Olori, dwells
in the head and is the man's protector, guardian, and guide. Offerings are
made to this spirit, chiefly of fowls, and some of the blood mixed with
palmoil is rubbed on the forehead. The Karens suppose that a being called the
tso resides in the upper part of the head, and while it retains its seat no
harm can befall the person from the efforts of the seven Kelahs, or
personified passions. But if the tso becomes heedless or weak certain evil
to the person is the result. Hence the head is carefully attended to, and all
possible pains are taken to provide such dress and attire as will be pleasing
to the tso. The Siamese think that a spirit called khuan or kwun dwells
in the human head, of which it is the guardian spirit. The spirit must be
carefully protected from injury of every kind; hence the act of shaving or
cutting the hair is accompanied with many ceremonies. The kwun is very
sensitive on points of honour, and would feel mortally insulted if the head in
which he resides were touched by the hand of a stranger. The Cambodians esteem
it a grave offence to touch a man's head; some of them will not enter a place
where anything whatever is suspended over their heads; and the meanest
Cambodian would never consent to live under an inhabited room. Hence the
houses are built of one story only; and even the Government respects the
prejudice by never placing a prisoner in the stocks under the floor of a
house, though the houses are raised high above the ground. The same
superstition exists amongst the Malays; for an early traveller reports that in
Java people wear nothing on their heads, and say that nothing must be on
their heads  and if any person were to put his hand upon their head they
would kill him; and they do not build houses with storeys, in order that they
may not walk over each other's heads.

The same superstition as to the head is found in full force throughout
Polynesia. Thus of Gattanewa, a Marquesan chief, it is said that to touch the
top of his head, or anything which had been on his head, was sacrilege. To
pass over his head was an indignity never to be forgotten. The son of a
Marquesan high priest has been seen to roll on the ground in an agony of rage
and despair, begging for death, because some one had desecrated his head and
deprived him of his divinity by sprinkling a few drops of water on his hair.
But it was not the Marquesan chiefs only whose heads were sacred. The head of
every Marquesan was taboo, and might neither be touched nor stepped over by
another; even a father might not step over the head of his sleeping child;
women were forbidden to carry or touch anything that had been in contact with,
or had merely hung over, the head of their husband or father. No one was
allowed to be over the head of the king of Tonga. In Tahiti any one who stood
over the king or queen, or passed his hand over their heads, might be put to
death. Until certain rites were performed over it, a Tahitian infant was
especially taboo; whatever touched the child's head, while it was in this
state, became sacred and was deposited in a consecrated place railed in for
the purpose at the child's house. If a branch of a tree touched the child's
head, the tree was cut down; and if in its fall it injured another tree so as
to penetrate the bark, that tree also was cut down as unclean and unfit for
use. After the rites were performed these special taboos ceased; but the head
of a Tahitian was always sacred, he never carried anything on it, and to touch
it was an offence. So sacred was the head of a Maori chief that if he only
touched it with his fingers, he was obliged immediately to apply them to his
nose, and snuff up the sanctity which they had acquired by the touch, and thus
restore it to the part from whence it was taken. On account of the sacredness
of his head a Maori chief could not blow the fire with his mouth, for the
breath being sacred, communicated his sanctity to it, and a brand might be
taken by a slave, or a man of another tribe, or the fire might be used for
other purposes, such as cooking, and so cause his death.

6. Hair tabooed.

WHEN the head was considered so sacred that it might not even be touched
without grave offence, it is obvious that the cutting of the hair must have
been a delicate and difficult operation. The difficulties and dangers which,
on the primitive view, beset the operation are of two kinds. There is first
the danger of disturbing the spirit of the head, which may be injured in the
process and may revenge itself upon the person who molests him. Secondly,
there is the difficulty of disposing of the shorn locks. For the savage
believes that the sympathetic connexion which exists between himself and every
part of his body continues to exist even after the physical connexion has been
broken, and that therefore he will suffer from any harm that may befall the
several parts of his body, such as the clippings of his hair or the parings of
his nails. Accordingly he takes care that these severed portions of himself
shall not be left in places where they might either be exposed to accidental
injury or fall into the hands of malicious persons who might work magic on
them to his detriment or death. Such dangers are common to all, but sacred
persons have more to fear from them than ordinary people, so the precautions
taken by them are proportionately stringent. The simplest way of evading the
peril is not to cut the hair at all; and this is the expedient adopted where
the risk is thought to be more than usually great. The Frankish kings were
never allowed to crop their hair; from their childhood upwards they had to
keep it unshorn. To poll the long locks that floated on their shoulders would
have been to renounce their right to the throne. When the wicked brothers
Clotaire and Childebert coveted the kingdom of their dead brother Clodomir,
they inveigled into their power their little nephews, the two sons of
Clodomir; and having done so, they sent a messenger bearing scissors and a
naked sword to the children's grandmother, Queen Clotilde, at Paris. The envoy
showed the scissors and the sword to Clotilde, and bade her choose whether the
children should be shorn and live or remain unshorn and die. The proud queen
replied that if her grandchildren were not to come to the throne she would
rather see them dead than shorn. And murdered they were by their ruthless
uncle Clotaire with his own hand. The king of Ponape, one of the Caroline
Islands, must wear his hair long, and so must his grandees. Among the Hos, a
negro tribe of West Africa, there are priests on whose head no razor may come
during the whole of their lives. The god who dwells in the man forbids the
cutting of his hair on pain of death. If the hair is at last too long, the
owner must pray to his god to allow him at least to clip the tips of it. The
hair is in fact conceived as the seat and lodging-place of his god, so that
were it shorn the god would lose his abode in the priest. The members of a
Masai clan, who are believed to possess the art of making rain, may not pluck
out their beards, because the loss of their beards would, it is supposed,
entail the loss of their rain-making powers. The head chief and the sorcerers
of the Masai observe the same rule for a like reason: they think that were
they to pull out their beards, their supernatural gifts would desert them.

Again, men who have taken a vow of vengeance sometimes keep their hair
unshorn till they have fulfilled their vow. Thus of the Marquesans we are told
that occasionally they have their head entirely shaved, except one lock on
the crown, which is worn loose or put up in a knot. But the latter mode of
wearing the hair is only adopted by them when they have a solemn vow, as to
revenge the death of some near relation, etc. In such case the lock is never
cut off until they have fulfilled their promise. A similar custom was
sometimes observed by the ancient Germans; among the Chatti the young warriors
never clipped their hair or their beard till they had slain an enemy. Among
the Toradjas, when a child's hair is cut to rid it of vermin, some locks are
allowed to remain on the crown of the head as a refuge for one of the child's
souls. Otherwise the soul would have no place in which to settle, and the
child would sicken. The Karo-Bataks are much afraid of frightening away the
soul of a child; hence when they cut its hair, they always leave a patch
unshorn, to which the soul can retreat before the shears. Usually this lock
remains unshorn all through life, or at least up till manhood.

7. Ceremonies at Hair-cutting.

BUT when it becomes necessary to crop the hair, measures are taken to lessen
the dangers which are supposed to attend the operation. The chief of Namosi in
Fiji always ate a man by way of precaution when he had had his hair cut.
There was a certain clan that had to provide the victim, and they used to sit
in solemn council among themselves to choose him. It was a sacrificial feast
to avert evil from the chief. Amongst the Maoris many spells were uttered at
hair-cutting; one, for example, was spoken to consecrate the obsidian knife
with which the hair was cut; another was pronounced to avert the thunder and
lightning which hair-cutting was believed to cause. He who has had his hair
cut is in immediate charge of the Atua (spirit); he is removed from the
contact and society of his family and his tribe; he dare not touch his food
himself; it is put into his mouth by another person; nor can he for some days
resume his accustomed occupations or associate with his fellow-men. The
person who cuts the hair is also tabooed; his hands having been in contact
with a sacred head, he may not touch food with them or engage in any other
employment; he is fed by another person with food cooked over a sacred fire.
He cannot be released from the taboo before the following day, when he rubs
his hands with potato or fern root which has been cooked on a sacred fire; and
this food having been taken to the head of the family in the female line and
eaten by her, his hands are freed from the taboo. In some parts of New Zealand
the most sacred day of the year was that appointed for hair-cutting; the
people assembled in large numbers on that day from all the neighbourhood.

8. Disposal of Cut Hair and Nails.

BUT even when the hair and nails have been safely cut, there remains the
difficulty of disposing of them, for their owner believes himself liable to
suffer from any harm that may befall them. The notion that a man may be
bewitched by means of the clippings of his hair, the parings of his nails, or
any other severed portion of his person is almost world-wide, and attested by
evidence too ample, too familiar, and too tedious in its uniformity to be here
analysed at length. The general idea on which the superstition rests is that
of the sympathetic connexion supposed to persist between a person and
everything that has once been part of his body or in any way closely related
to him. A very few examples must suffice. They belong to that branch of
sympathetic magic which may be called contagious. Dread of sorcery, we are
told, formed one of the most salient characteristics of the Marquesan
islanders in the old days. The sorcerer took some of the hair, spittle, or
other bodily refuse of the man he wished to injure, wrapped it up in a leaf,
and placed the packet in a bag woven of threads or fibres, which were knotted
in an intricate way. The whole was then buried with certain rites, and
thereupon the victim wasted away of a languishing sickness which lasted twenty
days. His life, however, might be saved by discovering and digging up the
buried hair, spittle, or what not; for as soon as this was done the power of
the charm ceased. A Maori sorcerer intent on bewitching somebody sought to get
a tress of his victim's hair, the parings of his nails, some of his spittle,
or a shred of his garment. Having obtained the object, whatever it was, he
chanted certain spells and curses over it in a falsetto voice and buried it in
the ground. As the thing decayed, the person to whom it had belonged was
supposed to waste away. When an Australian blackfellow wishes to get rid of
his wife, he cuts off a lock of her hair in her sleep, ties it to his
spear-thrower, and goes with it to a neighbouring tribe, where he gives it to
a friend. His friend sticks the spear-thrower up every night before the camp
fire, and when it falls down it is a sign that the wife is dead. The way in
which the charm operates was explained to Dr. Howitt by a Wirajuri man. You
see, he said, when a blackfellow doctor gets hold of something belonging to
a man and roasts it with things, and sings over it, the fire catches hold of
the smell of the man, and that settles the poor fellow.

The Huzuls of the Carpathians imagine that if mice get a person's shorn
hair and make a nest of it, the person will suffer from headache or even
become idiotic. Similarly in Germany it is a common notion that if birds find
a person's cut hair, and build their nests with it, the person will suffer
from headache; sometimes it is thought that he will have an eruption on the
head. The same superstition prevails, or used to prevail, in West Sussex.

Again it is thought that cut or combed-out hair may disturb the weather by
producing rain and hail, thunder and lightning. We have seen that in New
Zealand a spell was uttered at hair-cutting to avert thunder and lightning. In
the Tyrol, witches are supposed to use cut or combed-out hair to make
hailstones or thunderstorms with. Thlinkeet Indians have been known to
attribute stormy weather to the rash act of a girl who had combed her hair
outside of the house. The Romans seem to have held similar views, for it was a
maxim with them that no one on shipboard should cut his hair or nails except
in a storm, that is, when the mischief was already done. In the Highlands of
Scotland it is said that no sister should comb her hair at night if she have a
brother at sea. In West Africa, when the Mani of Chitombe or Jumba died, the
people used to run in crowds to the corpse and tear out his hair, teeth, and
nails, which they kept as a rain-charm, believing that otherwise no rain would
fall. The Makoko of the Anzikos begged the missionaries to give him half their
beards as a rain-charm.

If cut hair and nails remain in sympathetic connexion with the person from
whose body they have been severed, it is clear that they can be used as
hostages for his good behaviour by any one who may chance to possess them; for
on the principles of contagious magic he has only to injure the hair or nails
in order to hurt simultaneously their original owner. Hence when the Nandi
have taken a prisoner they shave his head and keep the shorn hair as a surety
that he will not attempt to escape; but when the captive is ransomed, they
return his shorn hair with him to his own people.

To preserve the cut hair and nails from injury and from the dangerous uses
to which they may be put by sorcerers, it is necessary to deposit them in some
safe place. The shorn locks of a Maori chief were gathered with much care and
placed in an adjoining cemetery. The Tahitians buried the cuttings of their
hair at the temples. In the streets of Soku a modern traveller observed cairns
of large stones piled against walls with tufts of human hair inserted in the
crevices. On asking the meaning of this, he was told that when any native of
the place polled his hair he carefully gathered up the clippings and deposited
them in one of these cairns, all of which were sacred to the fetish and
therefore inviolable. These cairns of sacred stones, he further learned, were
simply a precaution against witchcraft, for if a man were not thus careful in
disposing of his hair, some of it might fall into the hands of his enemies,
who would, by means of it, be able to cast spells over him and so compass his
destruction. When the top-knot of a Siamese child has been cut with great
ceremony, the short hairs are put into a little vessel made of plantain leaves
and set adrift on the nearest river or canal. As they float away, all that was
wrong or harmful in the child's disposition is believed to depart with them.
The long hairs are kept till the child makes a pilgrimage to the holy
Footprint of Buddha on the sacred hill at Prabat. They are then presented to
the priests, who are supposed to make them into brushes with which they sweep
the Footprint; but in fact so much hair is thus offered every year that the
priests cannot use it all, so they quietly burn the superfluity as soon as the
pilgrims' backs are turned. The cut hair and nails of the Flamen Dialis were
buried under a lucky tree. The shorn tresses of the Vestal Virgins were hung
on an ancient lotus-tree.

Often the clipped hair and nails are stowed away in any secret place, not
necessarily in a temple or cemetery or at a tree, as in the cases already
mentioned. Thus in Swabia you are recommended to deposit your clipped hair in
some spot where neither sun nor moon can shine on it, for example in the earth
or under a stone. In Danzig it is buried in a bag under the threshold. In Ugi,
one of the Solomon Islands, men bury their hair lest it should fall into the
hands of an enemy, who would make magic with it and so bring sickness or
calamity on them. The same fear seems to be general in Melanesia, and has led
to a regular practice of hiding cut hair and nails. The same practice prevails
among many tribes of South Africa, from a fear lest wizards should get hold of
the severed particles and work evil with them. The Caffres carry still further
this dread of allowing any portion of themselves to fall into the hands of an
enemy; for not only do they bury their cut hair and nails in a secret spot,
but when one of them cleans the head of another he preserves the vermin which
he catches, carefully delivering them to the person to whom they originally
appertained, supposing, according to their theory, that as they derived their
support from the blood of the man from whom they were taken, should they be
killed by another, the blood of his neighbour would be in his possession, thus
placing in his hands the power of some superhuman influence.

Sometimes the severed hair and nails are preserved, not to prevent them
from falling into the hands of a magician, but that the owner may have them at
the resurrection of the body, to which some races look forward. Thus the Incas
of Peru took extreme care to preserve the nail-parings and the hairs that
were shorn off or torn out with a comb; placing them in holes or niches in the
walls; and if they fell out, any other Indian that saw them picked them up and
put them in their places again. I very often asked different Indians, at
various times, why they did this, in order to see what they would say, and
they all replied in the same words saying, 'Know that all persons who are born
must return to life' (they have no word to express resurrection), 'and the
souls must rise out of their tombs with all that belonged to their bodies. We,
therefore, in order that we may not have to search for our hair and nails at a
time when there will be much hurry and confusion, place them in one place,
that they may be brought together more conveniently, and, whenever it is
possible, we are also careful to spit in one place.' Similarly the Turks
never throw away the parings of their nails, but carefully stow them in cracks
of the walls or of the boards, in the belief that they will be needed at the
resurrection. The Armenians do not throw away their cut hair and nails and
extracted teeth, but hide them in places that are esteemed holy, such as a
crack in the church wall, a pillar of the house, or a hollow tree. They think
that all these severed portions of themselves will be wanted at the
resurrection, and that he who has not stowed them away in a safe place will
have to hunt about for them on the great day. In the village of Drumconrath in
Ireland there used to be some old women who, having ascertained from Scripture
that the hairs of their heads were all numbered by the Almighty, expected to
have to account for them at the day of judgment. In order to be able to do so
they stuffed the severed hair away in the thatch of their cottages.

Some people burn their loose hair to save it from falling into the hands
of sorcerers. This is done by the Patagonians and some of the Victorian
tribes. In the Upper Vosges they say that you should never leave the clippings
of your hair and nails lying about, but burn them to hinder the sorcerers from
using them against you. For the same reason Italian women either burn their
loose hairs or throw them into a place where no one is likely to look for
them. The almost universal dread of witchcraft induces the West African
negroes, the Makololo of South Africa, and the Tahitians to burn or bury their
shorn hair. In the Tyrol many people burn their hair lest the witches should
use it to raise thunderstorms; others burn or bury it to prevent the birds
from lining their nests with it, which would cause the heads from which the
hair came to ache.

This destruction of the hair and nails plainly involves an inconsistency
of thought. The object of the destruction is avowedly to prevent these severed
portions of the body from being used by sorcerers. But the possibility of
their being so used depends upon the supposed sympathetic connexion between
them and the man from whom they were severed. And if this sympathetic
connexion still exists, clearly these severed portions cannot be destroyed
without injury to the man.

9. Spittle tabooed.

THE SAME fear of witchcraft which has led so many people to hide or destroy
their loose hair and nails has induced other or the same people to treat their
spittle in a like fashion. For on the principles of sympathetic magic the
spittle is part of the man, and whatever is done to it will have a
corresponding effect on him. A Chilote Indian, who has gathered up the spittle
of an enemy, will put it in a potato, and hang the potato in the smoke,
uttering certain spells as he does so in the belief that his foe will waste
away as the potato dries in the smoke. Or he will put the spittle in a frog
and throw the animal into an inaccessible, unnavigable river, which will make
the victim quake and shake with ague. The natives of Urewera, a district of
New Zealand, enjoyed a high reputation for their skill in magic. It was said
that they made use of people's spittle to bewitch them. Hence visitors were
careful to conceal their spittle, lest they should furnish these wizards with
a handle for working them harm. Similarly among some tribes of South Africa no
man will spit when an enemy is near, lest his foe should find the spittle and
give it to a wizard, who would then mix it with magical ingredients so as to
injure the person from whom it fell. Even in a man's own house his saliva is
carefully swept away and obliterated for a similar reason.

If common folk are thus cautious, it is natural that kings and chiefs
should be doubly so. In the Sandwich Islands chiefs were attended by a
confidential servant bearing a portable spittoon, and the deposit was
carefully buried every morning to put it out of the reach of sorcerers. On the
Slave Coast, for the same reason, whenever a king or chief expectorates, the
saliva is scrupulously gathered up and hidden or buried. The same precautions
are taken for the same reason with the spittle of the chief of Tabali in
Southern Nigeria.

The magical use to which spittle may be put marks it out, like blood or
nail-parings, as a suitable material basis for a covenant, since by exchanging
their saliva the covenanting parties give each other a guarantee of good
faith. If either of them afterwards foreswears himself, the other can punish
his perfidy by a magical treatment of the purjurer's spittle which he has in
his custody. Thus when the Wajagga of East Africa desire to make a covenant,
the two parties will sometimes sit down with a bowl of milk or beer between
them, and after uttering an incantation over the beverage they each take a
mouthful of the milk or beer and spit it into the other's mouth. In urgent
cases, when there is no time to spend on ceremony, the two will simply spit
into each other's mouth, which seals the covenant just as well.

10. Foods tabooed.

AS MIGHT have been expected, the superstitions of the savage cluster thick
about the subject of food; and he abstains from eating many animals and
plants, wholesome enough in themselves, which for one reason or another he
fancies would prove dangerous or fatal to the eater. Examples of such
abstinence are too familiar and far too numerous to quote. But if the ordinary
man is thus deterred by superstitious fear from partaking of various foods,
the restraints of this kind which are laid upon sacred or tabooed persons,
such as kings and priests, are still more numerous and stringent. We have
already seen that the Flamen Dialis was forbidden to eat or even name several
plants and animals, and that the flesh diet of Egyptian kings was restricted
to veal and goose. In antiquity many priests and many kings of barbarous
peoples abstained wholly from a flesh diet. The Gangas or fetish priests of
the Loango Coast are forbidden to eat or even see a variety of animals and
fish, in consequence of which their flesh diet is extremely limited; often
they live only on herbs and roots, though they may drink fresh blood. The heir
to the throne of Loango is forbidden from infancy to eat pork; from early
childhood he is interdicted the use of the cola fruit in company; at puberty
he is taught by a priest not to partake of fowls except such as he has himself
killed and cooked; and so the number of taboos goes on increasing with his
years. In Fernando Po the king after installation is forbidden to eat cocco
(arum acaule), deer, and porcupine, which are the ordinary foods of the
people. The head chief of the Masai may eat nothing but milk, honey, and the
roasted livers of goats; for if he partook of any other food he would lose his
power of soothsaying and of compounding charms.

Chapter 22. Tabooed Words.

1. Personal Names tabooed.

UNABLE to discriminate clearly between words and things, the savage commonly
fancies that the link between a name and the person or thing denominated by it
is not a mere arbitrary and ideal association, but a real and substantial bond
which unites the two in such a way that magic may be wrought on a man just as
easily through his name as through his hair, his nails, or any other material
part of his person. In fact, primitive man regards his name as a vital portion
of himself and takes care of it accordingly. Thus, for example, the North
American Indian regards his name, not as a mere label, but as a distinct part
of his personality, just as much as are his eyes or his teeth, and believes
that injury will result as surely from the malicious handling of his name as
from a wound inflicted on any part of his physical organism. This belief was
found among the various tribes from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and has
occasioned a number of curious regulations in regard to the concealment and
change of names. Some Esquimaux take new names when they are old, hoping
thereby to get a new lease of life. The Tolampoos of Celebes believe that if
you write a man's name down you can carry off his soul along with it. Many
savages at the present day regard their names as vital parts of themselves,
and therefore take great pains to conceal their real names, lest these should
give to evil-disposed persons a handle by which to injure their owners.

Thus, to begin with the savages who rank at the bottom of the social
scale, we are told that the secrecy with which among the Australian aborigines
personal names are often kept from general knowledge arises in great measure
from the belief that an enemy, who knows your name, has in it something which
he can use magically to your detriment. An Australian black, says another
writer, is always very unwilling to tell his real name, and there is no doubt
that this reluctance is due to the fear that through his name he may be
injured by sorcerers. Amongst the tribes of Central Australia every man,
woman, and child has, besides a personal name which is in common use, a secret
or sacred name which is bestowed by the older men upon him or her soon after
birth, and which is known to none but the fully initiated members of the
group. This secret name is never mentioned except upon the most solemn
occasions; to utter it in the hearing of women or of men of another group
would be a most serious breach of tribal custom, as serious as the most
flagrant case of sacrilege among ourselves. When mentioned at all, the name is
spoken only in a whisper, and not until the most elaborate precautions have
been taken that it shall be heard by no one but members of the group. The
native thinks that a stranger knowing his secret name would have special power
to work him ill by means of magic.

The same fear seems to have led to a custom of the same sort amongst the
ancient Egyptians, whose comparatively high civilisation was strangely dashed
and chequered with relics of the lowest savagery. Every Egyptian received two
names, which were known respectively as the true name and the good name, or
the great name and the little name; and while the good or little name was made
public, the true or great name appears to have been carefully concealed. A
Brahman child receives two names, one for common use, the other a secret name
which none but his father and mother should know. The latter is only used at
ceremonies such as marriage. The custom is intended to protect the person
against magic, since a charm only becomes effectual in combination with the
real name. Similarly, the natives of Nias believe that harm may be done to a
person by the demons who hear his name pronounced. Hence the names of infants,
who are especially exposed to the assaults of evil sprits, are never spoken;
and often in haunted spots, such as the gloomy depths of the forest, the banks
of a river, or beside a bubbling spring, men will abstain from calling each
other by their names for a like reason.

The Indians of Chiloe keep their names secret and do not like to have them
uttered aloud; for they say that there are fairies or imps on the mainland or
neighbouring islands who, if they knew folk's names, would do them an injury;
but so long as they do not know the names, these mischievous sprites are
powerless. The Araucanians will hardly ever tell a stranger their names
because they fear that he would thereby acquire some supernatural power over
themselves. Asked his name by a stranger, who is ignorant of their
superstitions, an Araucanian will answer, I have none. When an Ojebway is
asked his name, he will look at some bystander and ask him to answer. This
reluctance arises from an impression they receive when young, that if they
repeat their own names it will prevent their growth, and they will be small in
stature. On account of this unwillingness to tell their names, many strangers
have fancied that they either have no names or have forgotten them.

In this last case no scruple seems to be felt about communicating a man's
name to strangers, and no ill effects appear to be dreaded as a consequence of
divulging it; harm is only done when a name is spoken by its owner. Why is
this? and why in particular should a man be thought to stunt his growth by
uttering his own name? We may conjecture that to savages who act and think
thus a person's name only seems to be a part of himself when it is uttered
with his own breath; uttered by the breath of others it has no vital connexion
with him, and no harm can come to him through it. Whereas, so these primitive
philosophers may have argued, when a man lets his own name pass his lips, he
is parting with a living piece of himself, and if he persists in so reckless a
course he must certainly end by dissipating his energy and shattering his
constitution. Many a broken-down debauchee, many a feeble frame wasted with
disease, may have been pointed out by these simple moralists to their
awe-struck disciples as a fearful example of the fate that must sooner or
later overtake the profligate who indulges immoderately in the seductive habit
of mentioning his own name.

However we may explain it, the fact is certain that many a savage evinces
the strongest reluctance to pronounce his own name, while at the same time he
makes no objection at all to other people pronouncing it, and will even invite
them to do so for him in order to satisfy the curiosity of an inquisitive
stranger. Thus in some parts of Madagascar it is taboo for a person to tell
his own name, but a slave or attendant will answer for him. The same curious
inconsistency, as it may seem to us, is recorded of some tribes of American
Indians. Thus we are told that the name of an American Indian is a sacred
thing, not to be divulged by the owner himself without due consideration. One
may ask a warrior of any tribe to give his name, and the question will be met
with either a point-blank refusal or the more diplomatic evasion that he
cannot understand what is wanted of him. The moment a friend approaches, the
warrior first interrogated will whisper what is wanted, and the friend can
tell the name, receiving a reciprocation of the courtesy from the other. This
general statement applies, for example, to the Indian tribes of British
Columbia, as to whom it is said that one of their strangest prejudices, which
appears to pervade all tribes alike, is a dislike to telling their namesthus
you never get a man's right name from himself; but they will tell each other's
names without hesitation. In the whole of the East Indian Archipelago the
etiquette is the same. As a general rule no one will utter his own name. To
enquire, What is your name? is a very indelicate question in native society.
When in the course of administrative or judicial business a native is asked
his name, instead of replying he will look at his comrade to indicate that he
is to answer for him, or he will say straight out, Ask him. The superstition
is current all over the East Indies without exception, and it is found also
among the Motu and Motumotu tribes, the Papuans of Finsch Haven in North New
Guinea, the Nufoors of Dutch New Guinea, and the Melanesians of the Bismarck
Archipelago. Among many tribes of South Africa men and women never mention
their names if they can get any one else to do it for them, but they do not
absolutely refuse when it cannot be avoided.

Sometimes the embargo laid on personal names is not permanent; it is
conditional on circumstances, and when these change it ceases to operate. Thus
when the Nandi men are away on a foray, nobody at home may pronounce the names
of the absent warriors; they must be referred to as birds. Should a child so
far forget itself as to mention one of the distant ones by name, the mother
would rebuke it, saying, Don't talk of the birds who are in the heavens.
Among the Bangala of the Upper Congo, while a man is fishing and when he
returns with his catch, his proper name is in abeyance and nobody may mention
it. Whatever the fisherman's real name may be, he is called mwele without
distinction. The reason is that the river is full of spirits, who, if they
heard the fisherman's real name, might so work against him that he would catch
little or nothing. Even when he has caught his fish and landed with them, the
buyer must still not address him by his proper name, but must only call him
mwele; for even then, if the spirits were to hear his proper name, they
would either bear it in mind and serve him out another day, or they might so
mar the fish he had caught that he would get very little for them. Hence the
fisherman can extract heavy damages from anybody who mentions his name, or can
compel the thoughtless speaker to relieve him of the fish at a good price so
as to restore his luck. When the Sulka of New Britain are near the territory
of their enemies the Gaktei, they take care not to mention them by their
proper name, believing that were they to do so, their foes would attack and
slay them. Hence in these circumstances they speak of the Gaktei as o
lapsiek, that is, the rotten tree-trunks, and they imagine that by calling
them that they make the limbs of their dreaded enemies ponderous and clumsy
like logs. This example illustrates the extremely materialistic view which
these savages take of the nature of words; they suppose that the mere
utterance of an expression signifying clumsiness will homoeopathically affect
with clumsiness the limbs of their distant foemen. Another illustration of
this curious misconception is furnished by a Caffre superstition that the
character of a young thief can be reformed by shouting his name over a boiling
kettle of medicated water, then clapping a lid on the kettle and leaving the
name to steep in the water for several days. It is not in the least necessary
that the thief should be aware of the use that is being made of his name
behind his back; the moral reformation will be effected without his knowledge.

When it is deemed necessary that a man's real name should be kept secret,
it is often customary, as we have seen, to call him by a surname or nickname.
As distinguished from the real or primary names, these secondary names are
apparently held to be no part of the man himself, so that they may be freely
used and divulged to everybody without endangering his safety thereby.
Sometimes in order to avoid the use of his own name a man will be called after
his child. Thus we are informed that the Gippsland blacks objected strongly
to let any one outside the tribe know their names, lest their enemies,
learning them, should make them vehicles of incantation, and so charm their
lives away. As children were not thought to have enemies, they used to speak
of a man as 'the father, uncle, or cousin of So-and-so,' naming a child; but
on all occasions abstained from mentioning the name of a grown-up person. The
Alfoors of Poso in Celebes will not pronounce their own names. Among them,
accordingly, if you wish to ascertain a person's name, you ought not to ask
the man himself, but should enquire of others. But if this is impossible, for
example, when there is no one else near, you should ask him his child's name,
and then address him as the Father of So-and-so. Nay, these Alfoors are shy
of uttering the names even of children; so when a boy or girl has a nephew or
niece, he or she is addressed as Uncle of So-and-so, or Aunt of So-and-so.
In pure Malay society, we are told, a man is never asked his name, and the
custom of naming parents after their children is adopted only as a means of
avoiding the use of the parents' own names. The writer who makes this
statement adds in confirmation of it that childless persons are named after
their younger brothers. Among the Land Dyaks children as they grow up are
called, according to their sex, the father or mother of a child of their
father's or mother's younger brother or sister, that is, they are called the
father or mother of what we should call their first cousin. The Caffres used
to think it discourteous to call a bride by her own name, so they would call
her the Mother of So-and-so, even when she was only betrothed, far less a
wife and a mother. Among the Kukis and Zemis or Kacha Nagas of Assam parents
drop their names after the birth of a child and are named Father and Mother of
So-and-so. Childless couples go by the name of the childless father, the
childless mother, the father of no child, the mother of no child. The
widespread custom of naming a father after his child has sometimes been
supposed to spring from a desire on the father's part to assert his paternity,
apparently as a means of obtaining those rights over his children which had
previously, under a system of mother-kin, been possessed by the mother. But
this explanation does not account for the parallel custom of naming the mother
after her child, which seems commonly to co-exist with the practice of naming
the father after the child. Still less, if possible, does it apply to the
customs of calling childless couples the father and mother of children which
do not exist, of naming people after their younger brothers, and of
designating children as the uncles and aunts of So-and-so, or as the fathers
and mothers of their first cousins. But all these practices are explained in a
simple and natural way if we suppose that they originate in a reluctance to
utter the real names of persons addressed or directly referred to. That
reluctance is probably based partly on a fear of attracting the notice of evil
spirits, partly on a dread of revealing the name to sorcerers, who would
thereby obtain a handle for injuring the owner of the name.

2. Names of Relations tabooed.

IT might naturally be expected that the reserve so commonly maintained with
regard to personal names would be dropped or at least relaxed among relations
and friends. But the reverse of this is often the case. It is precisely the
persons most intimately connected by blood and especially by marriage to whom
the rule applies with the greatest stringency. Such people are often
forbidden, not only to pronounce each other's names, but even to utter
ordinary words which resemble or have a single syllable in common with these
names. The persons who are thus mutually debarred from mentioning each other's
names are especially husbands and wives, a man and his wife's parents, and a
woman and her husband's father. For example, among the Caffres a woman may not
publicly pronounce the birth-name of her husband or of any of his brothers,
nor may she use the interdicted word in its ordinary sense. If her husband,
for instance, be called u-Mpaka, from impaka, a small feline animal, she
must speak of that beast by some other name. Further, a Caffre wife is
forbidden to pronounce even mentally the names of her father-in-law and of all
her husband's male relations in the ascending line; and whenever the emphatic
syllable of any of their names occurs in another word, she must avoid it by
substituting either an entirely new word, or, at least, another syllable in
its place. Hence this custom has given rise to an almost distinct language
among the women, which the Caffres call women's speech. The interpretation
of this women's speech is naturally very difficult, for no definite rules
can be given for the formation of these substituted words, nor is it possible
to form a dictionary of them, their number being so greatsince there may be
many women, even in the same tribe, who would be no more at liberty to use the
substitutes employed by some others, than they are to use the original words
themselves. A Caffre man, on his side, may not mention the name of his
mother-in-law, nor may she pronounce his; but he is free to utter words in
which the emphatic syllable of her name occurs. A Kirghiz woman dares not
pronounce the names of the older relations of her husband, nor even use words
which resemble them in sound. For example, if one of these relations is called
Shepherd, she may not speak of sheep, but must call them the bleating ones;
if his name is Lamb, she must refer to lambs as the young bleating ones. In
Southern India wives believe that to tell their husband's name or to pronounce
it even in a dream would bring him to an untimely end. Among the Sea Dyaks a
man may not pronounce the name of his father-in-law or mother-in-law without
incurring the wrath of the spirits. And since he reckons as his father-in-law
and mother-in-law not only the father and mother of his own wife, but also the
fathers and mothers of his brothers' wives and sisters' husbands, and likewise
the fathers and mothers of all his cousins, the number of tabooed names may be
very considerable and the opportunities of error correspondingly numerous. To
make confusion worse confounded, the names of persons are often the names of
common things, such as moon, bridge, barley, cobra, leopard; so that when any
of a man's many fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law are called by such names,
these common words may not pass his lips. Among the Alfoors of Minahassa, in
Celebes, the custom is carried still further so as to forbid the use even of
words which merely resemble the personal names in sound. It is especially the
name of a father-in-law which is thus laid under an interdict. If he, for
example, is called Kalala, his son-in-law may not speak of a horse by its
common name kawalo; he must call it a riding-beast (sasakajan). So among
the Alfoors of the island of Buru it is taboo to mention the names of parents
and parents-in-law, or even to speak of common objects by words which resemble
these names in sound. Thus, if your mother-in-law is called Dalu, which means
betel, you may not ask for betel by its ordinary name, you must ask for red
mouth; if you want betel-leaf, you may not say betel-leaf (dalu 'mun), you
must say karon fenna. In the same island it is also taboo to mention the
name of an elder brother in his presence. Transgressions of these rules are
punished with fines. In Sunda it is thought that a particular crop would be
spoilt if a man were to mention the names of his father and mother.

Among the Nufoors of Dutch New Guinea persons who are related to each
other by marriage are forbidden to mention each other's names. Among the
connexions whose names are thus tabooed are wife, mother-in-law,
father-in-law, your wife's uncles and aunts and also her grand-uncles and
grand-aunts, and the whole of your wife's or your husband's family in the same
generation as yourself, except that men may mention the names of their
brothers-in-law, though women may not. The taboo comes into operation as soon
as the betrothal has taken place and before the marriage has been celebrated.
Families thus connected by the betrothal of two of their members are not only
forbidden to pronounce each other's names; they may not even look at each
other, and the rule gives rise to the most comical scenes when they happen to
meet unexpectedly. And not merely the names themselves, but any words that
sound like them are scrupulously avoided and other words used in their place.
If it should chance that a person has inadvertently uttered a forbidden name,
he must at once throw himself on the floor and say, I have mentioned a wrong
name. I throw it through the chinks of the floor in order that I may eat
well.

In the western islands of Torres Straits a man never mentioned the
personal names of his father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and
sister-in-law; and a woman was subject to the same restrictions. A
brother-in-law might be spoken of as the husband or brother of some one whose
name it was lawful to mention; and similarly a sister-in-law might be called
the wife of So-and-so. If a man by chance used the personal name of his
brother-in-law, he was ashamed and hung his head. His shame was only relieved
when he had made a present as compensation to the man whose name he had taken
in vain. The same compensation was made to a sister-in-law, a father-in-law,
and a mother-in-law for the accidental mention of their names. Among the
natives who inhabit the coast of the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain to
mention the name of a brother-in-law is the grossest possible affront you can
offer to him; it is a crime punishable with death. In the Banks' Islands,
Melanesia, the taboos laid on the names of persons connected by marriage are
very strict. A man will not mention the name of his father-in-law, much less
the name of his mother-in-law, nor may he name his wife's brother; but he may
name his wife's sistershe is nothing to him. A woman may not name her
father-in-law, nor on any account her son-in-law. Two people whose children
have intermarried are also debarred from mentioning each other's names. And
not only are all these persons forbidden to utter each other's names; they may
not even pronounce ordinary words which chance to be either identical with
these names or to have any syllables in common with them. Thus we hear of a
native of these islands who might not use the common words for pig and to
die, because these words occurred in the polysyllabic name of his son-in-law;
and we are told of another unfortunate who might not pronounce the everyday
words for hand and hot on account of his wife's brother's name, and who
was even debarred from mentioning the number one, because the word for one
formed part of the name of his wife's cousin.

The reluctance to mention the names or even syllables of the names of
persons connected with the speaker by marriage can hardly be separated from
the reluctance evinced by so many people to utter their own names or the names
of the dead or of the dead or of chiefs and kings; and if the reticence as to
these latter names springs mainly from superstition, we may infer that the
reticence as to the former has no better foundation. That the savage's
unwillingness to mention his own name is based, at least in part, on a
superstitious fear of the ill use that might be made of it by his foes,
whether human or spiritual, has already been shown. It remains to examine the
similar usage in regard to the names of the dead and of royal personages.

3. Names of the Dead tabooed.

THE CUSTOM of abstaining from all mention of the names of the dead was
observed in antiquity by the Albanians of the Caucasus, and at the present day
it is in full force among many savage tribes. Thus we are told that one of the
customs most rigidly observed and enforced amongst the Australian aborigines
is never to mention the name of a deceased person, whether male or female; to
name aloud one who has departed this life would be a gross violation of their
most sacred prejudices, and they carefully abstain from it. The chief motive
for this abstinence appears to be a fear of evoking the ghost, although the
natural unwillingness to revive past sorrows undoubtedly operates also to draw
the veil of oblivion over the names of the dead. Once Mr. Oldfield so
terrified a native by shouting out the name of a deceased person, that the man
fairly took to his heels and did not venture to show himself again for several
days. At their next meeting he bitterly reproached the rash white man for his
indiscretion; nor could I, adds Mr. Oldfield, induce him by any means to
utter the awful sound of a dead man's name, for by so doing he would have
placed himself in the power of the malign spirits. Among the aborigines of
Victoria the dead were very rarely spoken of, and then never by their names;
they were referred to in a subdued voice as the lost one or the poor fellow
that is no more. To speak of them by name would, it was supposed, excite the
malignity of Couit-gil, the spirit of the departed, which hovers on earth for
a time before it departs for ever towards the setting sun. Of the tribes on
the Lower Murray River we are told that when a person dies they carefully
avoid mentioning his name; but if compelled to do so, they pronounce it in a
very low whisper, so faint that they imagine the spirit cannot hear their
voice. Amongst the tribes of Central Australia no one may utter the name of
the deceased during the period of mourning, unless it is absolutely necessary
to do so, and then it is only done in a whisper for fear of disturbing and
annoying the man's spirit which is walking about in ghostly form. If the ghost
hears his name mentioned he concludes that his kinsfolk are not mourning for
him properly; if their grief were genuine they could not bear to bandy his
name about. Touched to the quick by their hard-hearted indifference the
indignant ghost will come and trouble them in dreams.

The same reluctance to utter the names of the dead appears to prevail
among all the Indian tribes of America from Hudson's Bay Territory to
Patagonia. Among the Goajiros of Colombia to mention the dead before his
kinsmen is a dreadful offence, which is often punished with death; for if it
happens on the rancho of the deceased, in presence of his nephew or uncle,
they will assuredly kill the offender on the spot if they can. But if he
escapes, the penalty resolves itself into a heavy fine, usually of two or more
oxen.

A similar reluctance to mention the names of the dead is reported of
peoples so widely separated from each other as the Samoyeds of Siberia and the
Todas of Southern India; the Mongols of Tartary and the Tuaregs of the Sahara;
the Ainos of Japan and the Akamba and Nandi of Eastern Africa; the Tinguianes
of the Philippines and the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands, of Borneo, of
Madagascar, and of Tasmania. In all cases, even where it is not expressly
stated, the fundamental reason for this avoidance is probably the fear of the
ghost. That this is the real motive with the Tuaregs we are positively
informed. They dread the return of the dead man's spirit, and do all they can
to avoid it by shifting their camp after a death, ceasing for ever to
pronounce the name of the departed, and eschewing everything that might be
regarded as an evocation or recall of his soul. Hence they do not, like the
Arabs, designate individuals by adding to their personal names the names of
their fathers; they never speak of So-and-so, son of So-and-so; they give to
every man a name which will live and die with him. So among some of the
Victorian tribes in Australia personal names were rarely perpetuated, because
the natives believed that any one who adopted the name of a deceased person
would not live long; probably his ghostly namesake was supposed to come and
fetch him away to the spirit-land.

The same fear of the ghost, which moves people to suppress his old name,
naturally leads all persons who bear a similar name to exchange it for
another, lest its utterance should attract the attention of the ghost, who
cannot reasonably be expected to discriminate between all the different
applications of the same name. Thus we are told that in the Adelaide and
Encounter Bay tribes of South Australia the repugnance to mentioning the names
of those who have died lately is carried so far, that persons who bear the
same name as the deceased abandon it, and either adopt temporary names or are
known by any others that happen to belong to them. A similar custom prevails
among some of the Queensland tribes; but the prohibition to use the names of
the dead is not permanent, though it may last for many years. In some
Australian tribes the change of name thus brought about is permanent; the old
name is laid aside for ever, and the man is known by his new name for the rest
of his life, or at least until he is obliged to change it again for a like
reason. Among the North American Indians all persons, whether men or women,
who bore the name of one who had just died were obliged to abandon it and to
adopt other names, which was formally done at the first ceremony of mourning
for the dead. In some tribes to the east of the Rocky Mountains this change of
name lasted only during the season of mourning, but in other tribes on the
Pacific Coast of North America it seems to have been permanent.

Sometimes by an extension of the same reasoning all the near relations of
the deceased change their names, whatever they may happen to be, doubtless
from a fear that the sound of the familiar names might lure back the vagrant
spirit to its old home. Thus in some Victorian tribes the ordinary names of
all the next of kin were disused during the period of mourning, and certain
general terms, prescribed by custom, were substituted for them. To call a
mourner by his own name was considered an insult to the departed, and often
led to fighting and bloodshed. Among Indian tribes of North-western America
near relations of the deceased often change their names under an impression
that spirits will be attracted back to earth if they hear familiar names often
repeated. Among the Kiowa Indians the name of the dead is never spoken in the
presence of the relatives, and on the death of any member of a family all the
others take new names. This custom was noted by Raleigh's colonists on Roanoke
Island more than three centuries ago. Among the Lengua Indians not only is a
dead man's name never mentioned, but all the survivors change their names
also. They say that Death has been among them and has carried off a list of
the living, and that he will soon come back for more victims; hence in order
to defeat his fell purpose they change their names, believing that on his
return Death, though he has got them all on his list, will not be able to
identify them under their new names, and will depart to pursue the search
elsewhere. Nicobarese mourners take new names in order to escape the unwelcome
attentions of the ghost; and for the same purpose they disguise themselves by
shaving their heads so that the ghost is unable to recognise them.

Further, when the name of the deceased happens to be that of some common
object, such as an animal, or plant, or fire, or water, it is sometimes
considered necessary to drop that word in ordinary speech and replace it by
another. A custom of this sort, it is plain, may easily be a potent agent of
change in language; for where it prevails to any considerable extent many
words must constantly become obsolete and new ones spring up. And this
tendency has been remarked by observers who have recorded the custom in
Australia, America, and elsewhere. For example, with regard to the Australian
aborigines it has been noted that the dialects change with almost every
tribe. Some tribes name their children after natural objects; and when the
person so named dies, the word is never again mentioned; another word has
therefore to be invented for the object after which the child was called. The
writer gives as an instance the case of a man whose name Karla signified
fire; when Karla died, a new word for fire had to be introduced. Hence,
adds the writer, the language is always changing. Again, in the Encounter
Bay tribe of South Australia, if a man of the name of Ngnke, which means
water, were to die, the whole tribe would be obliged to use some other word
to express water for a considerable time after his decease. The writer who
records this custom surmises that it may explain the presence of a number of
synonyms in the language of the tribe. This conjecture is confirmed by what we
know of some Victorian tribes whose speech comprised a regular set of synonyms
to be used instead of the common terms by all members of a tribe in times of
mourning. For instance, if a man called Waa ( crow) departed this life,
during the period of mourning for him nobody might call a crow a waa;
everybody had to speak of the bird as a narrapart. When a person who
rejoiced in the title of Ringtail Opossum (weearn) had gone the way of all
flesh, his sorrowing relations and the tribe at large were bound for a time to
refer to ringtail opossums by the more sonorous name of manuungkuurt. If the
community were plunged in grief for the loss of a respected female who bore
the honourable name of Turkey Bustard, the proper name for turkey bustards,
which was barrim barrim, went out, and tillit tilliitsh came in. And so
mutatis mutandis with the names of Black Cockatoo, Grey Duck, Gigantic
Crane, Kangaroo, Eagle, Dingo, and the rest.

A similar custom used to be constantly transforming the language of the
Abipones of Paraguay, amongst whom, however, a word once abolished seems never
to have been revived. New words, says the missionary Dobrizhoffer, sprang up
every year like mushrooms in a night, because all words that resembled the
names of the dead were abolished by proclamation and others coined in their
place. The mint of words was in the hands of the old women of the tribe, and
whatever term they stamped with their approval and put in circulation was
immediately accepted without a murmur by high and low alike, and spread like
wildfire through every camp and settlement of the tribe. You would be
astonished, says the same missionary, to see how meekly the whole nation
acquiesces in the decision of a withered old hag, and how completely the old
familiar words fall instantly out of use and are never repeated either through
force of habit or forgetfulness. In the seven years that Dobrizhoffer spent
among these Indians the native word for jaguar was changed thrice, and the
words for crocodile, thorn, and the slaughter of cattle underwent similar
though less varied vicissitudes. As a result of this habit, the vocabularies
of the missionaries teemed with erasures, old words having constantly to be
struck out as obsolete and new ones inserted in their place. In many tribes of
British New Guinea the names of persons are also the names of common things.
The people believe that if the name of a deceased person is pronounced, his
spirit will return, and as they have no wish to see it back among them the
mention of his name is tabooed and a new word is created to take its place,
whenever the name happens to be a common term of the language. Consequently
many words are permanently lost or revived with modified or new meanings. In
the Nicobar Islands a similar practice has similarly affected the speech of
the natives. A most singular custom, says Mr. de Roepstorff, prevails among
them which one would suppose must most effectually hinder the 'making of
history,' or, at any rate, the transmission of historical narrative. By a
strict rule, which has all the sanction of Nicobar superstition, no man's name
may be mentioned after his death! To such a length is this carried that when,
as very frequently happens, the man rejoiced in the name of 'Fowl,' 'Hat',
'Fire,' 'Road,' etc., in its Nicobarese equivalent, the use of these words is
carefully eschewed for the future, not only as being the personal designation
of the deceased, but even as the names of the common things they represent;
the words die out of the language, and either new vocables are coined to
express the thing intended, or a substitute for the disused word is found in
other Nicobarese dialects or in some foreign tongue. This extraordinary custom
not only adds an element of instability to the language, but destroys the
continuity of political life, and renders the record of past events precarious
and vague, if not impossible.

That a superstition which suppresses the names of the dead must cut at the
very root of historical tradition has been remarked by other workers in this
field. The Klamath people, observes Mr. A. S. Gatschet, possess no historic
traditions going further back in time than a century, for the simple reason
that there was a strict law prohibiting the mention of the person or acts of a
deceased individual by using his name. This law was rigidly observed among
the Californians no less than among the Oregonians, and on its transgression
the death penalty could be inflicted. This is certainly enough to suppress all
historical knowledge within a people. How can history be written without
names?

In many tribes, however, the power of this superstition to blot out the
memory of the past is to some extent weakened and impaired by a natural
tendency of the human mind. Time, which wears out the deepest impressions,
inevitably dulls, if it does not wholly efface, the print left on the savage
mind by the mystery and horror of death. Sooner or later, as the memory of his
loved ones fades slowly away, he becomes more willing to speak of them, and
thus their rude names may sometimes be rescued by the philosophic enquirer
before they have vanished, like autumn leaves or winter snows, into the vast
undistinguished limbo of the past. In some of the Victorian tribes the
prohibition to mention the names of the dead remained in force only during the
period of mourning; in the Port Lincoln tribe of South Australia it lasted
many years. Among the Chinook Indians of North America custom forbids the
mention of a dead man's name, at least till many years have elapsed after the
bereavement. Among the Puyallup Indians the observance of the taboo is
relaxed after several years, when the mourners have forgotten their grief; and
if the deceased was a famous warrior, one of his descendants, for instance a
great-grandson, may be named after him. In this tribe the taboo is not much
observed at any time except by the relations of the dead. Similarly the Jesuit
missionary Lafitau tells us that the name of the departed and the similar
names of the survivors were, so to say, buried with the corpse until, the
poignancy of their grief being abated, it pleased the relations to lift up
the tree and raise the dead. By raising the dead they meant bestowing the
name of the departed upon some one else, who thus became to all intents and
purposes a reincarnation of the deceased, since on the principles of savage
philosophy the name is a vital part, if not the soul, of the man.

Among the Lapps, when a woman was with child and near the time of her
delivery, a deceased ancestor or relation used to appear to her in a dream and
inform her what dead person was to be born again in her infant, and whose name
the child was therefore to bear. If the woman had no such dream, it fell to
the father or the relatives to determine the name by divination or by
consulting a wizard. Among the Khonds a birth is celebrated on the seventh day
after the event by a feast given to the priest and to the whole village. To
determine the child's name the priest drops grains of rice into a cup of
water, naming with each grain a deceased ancestor. From the movements of the
seed in the water, and from observations made on the person of the infant, he
pronounces which of his progenitors has reappeared in him, and the child
generally, at least among the northern tribes, receives the name of that
ancestor. Among the Yorubas, soon after a child has been born, a priest of
Ifa, the god of divination, appears on the scene to ascertain what ancestral
soul has been reborn in the infant. As soon as this has been decided, the
parents are told that the child must conform in all respects to the manner of
life of the ancestor who now animates him or her, and if, as often happens,
they profess ignorance, the priest supplies the necessary information. The
child usually receives the name of the ancestor who has been born again in
him.

4. Names of Kings and other Sacred Persons tabooed.

WHEN we see that in primitive society the names of mere commoners, whether
alive or dead, are matters of such anxious care, we need not be surprised that
great precautions should be taken to guard from harm the names of sacred kings
and priests. Thus the name of the king of Dahomey is always kept secret, lest
the knowledge of it should enable some evil-minded person to do him a
mischief. The appellations by which the different kings of Dahomey have been
known to Europeans are not their true names, but mere titles, or what the
natives call strong names. The natives seem to think that no harm comes of
such titles being known, since they are not, like the birth-names, vitally
connected with their owners. In the Galla kingdom of Ghera the birth-name of
the sovereign may not be pronounced by a subject under pain of death, and
common words which resemble it in sound are changed for others. Among the
Bahima of Central Africa, when the king dies, his name is abolished from the
language, and if his name was that of an animal, a new appellation must be
found for the creature at once. For example, the king is often called a lion;
hence at the death of a king named Lion a new name for lions in general has to
be coined. In Siam it used to be difficult to ascertain the king's real name,
since it was carefully kept secret from fear of sorcery; any one who mentioned
it was clapped into gaol. The king might only be referred to under certain
high-sounding titles, such as the august, the perfect, the supreme, the
great emperor, descendant of the angels, and so on. In Burma it was
accounted an impiety of the deepest dye to mention the name of the reigning
sovereign; Burmese subjects, even when they were far from their country, could
not be prevailed upon to do so; after his accession to the throne the king was
known by his royal titles only.

Among the Zulus no man will mention the name of the chief of his tribe or
the names of the progenitors of the chief, so far as he can remember them; nor
will he utter common words which coincide with or merely resemble in sound
tabooed names. In the tribe of the Dwandwes there was a chief called Langa,
which means the sun; hence the name of the sun was changed from langa to
gala, and so remains to this day, though Langa died more than a hundred
years ago. Again, in the Xnumayo tribe the word meaning to herd cattle was
changed from alusa or ayusa to kagesa, because u-Mayusi was the name of
the chief. Besides these taboos, which were observed by each tribe separately,
all the Zulu tribes united in tabooing the name of the king who reigned over
the whole nation. Hence, for example, when Panda was king of Zululand, the
word for a root of a tree, which is impando, was changed to nxabo.
Again, the word for lies or slander was altered from amacebo to
amakwata, because amacebo contains a syllable of the name of the famous
King Cetchwayo. These substitutions are not, however, carried so far by the
men as by the women, who omit every sound even remotely resembling one that
occurs in a tabooed name. At the king's kraal, indeed, it is sometimes
difficult to understand the speech of the royal wives, as they treat in this
fashion the names not only of the king and his forefathers, but even of his
and their brothers back for generations. When to these tribal and national
taboos we add those family taboos on the names of connexions by marriage which
have been already described, we can easily understand how it comes about that
in Zululand every tribe has words peculiar to itself, and that the women have
a considerable vocabulary of their own. Members, too, of one family may be
debarred from using words employed by those of another. The women of one
kraal, for instance, may call a hyaena by its ordinary name; those of the next
may use the common substitute; while in a third the substitute may also be
unlawful and another term may have to be invented to supply its place. Hence
the Zulu language at the present day almost presents the appearance of being a
double one; indeed, for multitudes of things it possesses three or four
synonyms, which through the blending of tribes are known all over Zululand.

In Madagascar a similar custom everywhere prevails and has resulted, as
among the Zulus, in producing certain dialectic differences in the speech of
the various tribes. There are no family names in Madagascar, and almost every
personal name is drawn from the language of daily life and signifies some
common object or action or quality, such as a bird, a beast, a tree, a plant,
a colour, and so on. Now, whenever one of these common words forms the name or
part of the name of the chief of the tribe, it becomes sacred and may no
longer be used in its ordinary signification as the name of a tree, an insect,
or what not. Hence a new name for the object must be invented to replace the
one which has been discarded. It is easy to conceive what confusion and
uncertainty may thus be introduced into a language when it is spoken by many
little local tribes each ruled by a petty chief with his own sacred name. Yet
there are tribes and people who submit to this tyranny of words as their
fathers did before them from time immemorial. The inconvenient results of the
custom are especially marked on the western coast of the island, where, on
account of the large number of independent chieftains, the names of things,
places, and rivers have suffered so many changes that confusion often arises,
for when once common words have been banned by the chiefs the natives will not
acknowledge to have ever known them in their old sense.

But it is not merely the names of living kings and chiefs which are
tabooed in Madagascar; the names of dead sovereigns are equally under a ban,
at least in some parts of the island. Thus among the Sakalavas, when a king
has died, the nobles and people meet in council round the dead body and
solemnly choose a new name by which the deceased monarch shall be henceforth
known. After the new name has been adopted, the old name by which the king was
known during his life becomes sacred and may not be pronounced under pain of
death. Further, words in the common language which bear any resemblance to the
forbidden name also become sacred and have to be replaced by others. Persons
who uttered these forbidden words were looked on not only as grossly rude, but
even as felons; they had committed a capital crime. However, these changes of
vocabulary are confined to the district over which the deceased king reigned;
in the neighbouring districts the old words continue to be employed in the old
sense.

The sanctity attributed to the persons of chiefs in Polynesia naturally
extended also to their names, which on the primitive view are hardly separable
from the personality of their owners. Hence in Polynesia we find the same
systematic prohibition to utter the names of chiefs or of common words
resembling them which we have already met with in Zululand and Madagascar.
Thus in New Zealand the name of a chief is held so sacred that, when it
happens to be a common word, it may not be used in the language, and another
has to be found to replace it. For example, a chief of the southward of East
Cape bore the name of Maripi, which signified a knife, hence a new word
(nekra) for knife was introduced, and the old one became obsolete. Elsewhere
the word for water (wai) had to be changed, because it chanced to be the
name of the chief, and would have been desecrated by being applied to the
vulgar fluid as well as to his sacred person. This taboo naturally produced a
plentiful crop of synonyms in the Maori language, and travellers newly arrived
in the country were sometimes puzzled at finding the same things called by
quite different names in neighbouring tribes. When a king comes to the throne
in Tahiti, any words in the language that resemble his name in sound must be
changed for others. In former times, if any man were so rash as to disregard
this custom and to use the forbidden words, not only he but all his relations
were immediately put to death. But the changes thus introduced were only
temporary; on the death of the king the new words fell into disuse, and the
original ones were revived.

In ancient Greece the names of the priests and other high officials who
had to do with the performance of the Eleusinian mysteries might not be
uttered in their lifetime. To pronounce them was a legal offence The pedant in
Lucian tells how he fell in with these august personages haling along to the
police court a ribald fellow who had dared to name them, though well he knew
that ever since their consecration it was unlawful to do so, because they had
become anonymous, having lost their old names and acquired new and sacred
titles. From two inscriptions found at Eleusis it appears that the names of
the priests were committed to the depths of the sea; probably they were
engraved on tablets of bronze or lead, which were then thrown into deep water
in the Gulf of Salamis. The intention doubtless was to keep the names a
profound secret; and how could that be done more surely than by sinking them
in the sea? what human vision could spy them glimmering far down in the dim
depths of the green water? A clearer illustration of the confusion between the
incorporeal and the corporeal, between the name and its material embodiment,
could hardly be found than in this practice of civilised Greece.

5. Names of Gods tabooed.

PRIMITIVE man creates his gods in his own image. Xenophanes remarked long
ago that the complexion of negro gods was black and their noses flat; that
Thracian gods were ruddy and blue-eyed; and that if horses, oxen, and lions
only believed in gods and had hands wherewith to portray them, they would
doubtless fashion their deities in the form of horses, and oxen, and lions.
Hence just as the furtive savage conceals his real name because he fears that
sorcerers might make an evil use of it, so he fancies that his gods must
likewise keep their true name secret, lest other gods or even men should learn
the mystic sounds and thus be able to conjure with them. Nowhere was this
crude conception of the secrecy and magical virtue of the divine name more
firmly held or more fully developed than in ancient Egypt, where the
superstitions of a dateless past were embalmed in the hearts of the people
hardly less effectually than the bodies of cats and crocodiles and the rest of
the divine menagerie in their rock-cut tombs. The conception is well
illustrated by a story which tells how the subtle Isis wormed his secret name
from Ra, the great Egyptian god of the sun. Isis, so runs the tale, was a
woman mighty in words, and she was weary of the world of men, and yearned
after the world of the gods. And she meditated in her heart, saying, Cannot I
by virtue of the great name of Ra make myself a goddess and reign like him in
heaven and earth? For Ra had many names, but the great name which gave him
all power over gods and men was known to none but himself. Now the god was by
this time grown old; he slobbered at the mouth and his spittle fell upon the
ground. So Isis gathered up the spittle and the earth with it, and kneaded
thereof a serpent and laid it in the path where the great god passed every day
to his double kingdom after his heart's desire. And when he came forth
according to his wont, attended by all his company of gods, the sacred serpent
stung him, and the god opened his mouth and cried, and his cry went up to
heaven. And the company of gods cried, What aileth thee? and the gods
shouted, Lo and behold! But he could not answer; his jaws rattled, his limbs
shook, the poison ran through his flesh as the Nile floweth over the land.
When the great god had stilled his heart, he cried to his followers, Come to
me, O my children, offspring of my body. I am a prince, the son of a prince,
the divine seed of a god. My father devised my name; my father and my mother
gave me my name, and it remained hidden in my body since my birth, that no
magician might have magic power over me. I went out to behold that which I
have made, I walked in the two lands which I have created, and lo! something
stung me. What it was, I know not. Was it fire? was it water? My heart is on
fire, my flesh trembleth, all my limbs do quake. Bring me the children of the
gods with healing words and understanding lips, whose power reacheth to
heaven. Then came to him the children of the gods, and they were very
sorrowful. And Isis came with her craft, whose mouth is full of the breath of
life, whose spells chase pain away, whose word maketh the dead to live. She
said, What is it, divine Father? what is it? The holy god opened his mouth,
he spake and said, I went upon my way, I walked after my heart's desire in
the two regions which I have made to behold that which I have created, and lo!
a serpent that I saw not stung me. Is it fire? is it water? I am colder than
water, I am hotter than fire, all my limbs sweat, I tremble, mine eye is not
steadfast, I behold not the sky, the moisture bedeweth my face as in
summer-time. Then spake Isis, Tell me thy name, divine Father, for the man
shall live who is called by his name. Then answered Ra, I created the
heavens and the earth, I ordered the mountains, I made the great and wide sea,
I stretched out the two horizons like a curtain. I am he who openeth his eyes
and it is light, and who shutteth them and it is dark. At his command the Nile
riseth, but the gods know not his name. I am Khepera in the morning, I am Ra
at noon, I am Tum at eve. But the poison was not taken away from him; it
pierced deeper, and the great god could no longer walk. Then said Isis to him,
That was not thy name that thou spakest unto me. Oh tell it me, that the
poison may depart; for he shall live whose name is named. Now the poison
burned like fire, it was hotter than the flame of fire. The god said, I
consent that Isis shall search into me, and that my name shall pass from my
breast into hers. Then the god hid himself from the gods, and his place in
the ship of eternity was empty. Thus was the name of the great god taken from
him, and Isis, the witch, spake, Flow away, poison, depart from Ra. It is I,
even I, who overcome the poison and cast it to the earth; for the name of the
great god hath been taken away from him. Let Ra live and let the poison die.
Thus spake great Isis, the queen of the gods, she who knows Ra and his true
name.

From this story it appears that the real name of the god, with which his
power was inextricably bound up, was supposed to be lodged, in an almost
physical sense, somewhere in his breast, from which Isis extracted it by a
sort of surgical operation and transferred it with all its supernatural powers
to herself. In Egypt attempts like that of Isis to appropriate the power of a
high god by possessing herself of his name were not mere legends told of the
mythical beings of a remote past; every Egyptian magician aspired to wield
like powers by similar means. For it was believed that he who possessed the
true name possessed the very being of god or man, and could force even a deity
to obey him as a slave obeys his master. Thus the art of the magician
consisted in obtaining from the gods a revelation of their sacred names, and
he left no stone unturned to accomplish his end. When once a god in a moment
of weakness or forgetfulness had imparted to the wizard the wondrous lore, the
deity had no choice but to submit humbly to the man or pay the penalty of his
contumacy.

The belief in the magic virtue of divine names was shared by the Romans.
When they sat down before a city, the priests addressed the guardian deity of
the place in a set form of prayer or incantation, inviting him to abandon the
beleaguered city and come over to the Romans, who would treat him as well as
or better than he had ever been treated in his old home. Hence the name of the
guardian deity of Rome was kept a profound secret, lest the enemies of the
republic might lure him away, even as the Romans themselves had induced many
gods to desert, like rats, the falling fortunes of cities that had sheltered
them in happier days. Nay, the real name, not merely of its guardian deity,
but of the city itself, was wrapt in mystery and might never be uttered, not
even in the sacred rites. A certain Valerius Soranus, who dared to divulge the
priceless secret, was put to death or came to a bad end. In like manner, it
seems, the ancient Assyrians were forbidden to mention the mystic names of
their cities; and down to modern times the Cheremiss of the Caucasus keep the
names of their communal villages secret from motives of superstition.

If the reader has had the patience to follow this examination of the
superstitions attaching to personal names, he will probably agree that the
mystery in which the names of royal personages are so often shrouded is no
isolated phenomenon, no arbitrary expression of courtly servility and
adulation, but merely the particular application of a general law of primitive
thought, which includes within its scope common folk and gods as well as kings
and priests.

Chapter 23. Our Debt to the Savage.

IT would be easy to extend the list of royal and priestly taboos, but the
instances collected in the preceding pages may suffice as specimens. To
conclude this part of our subject it only remains to state summarily the
general conclusions to which our enquiries have thus far conducted us. We have
seen that in savage or barbarous society there are often found men to whom the
superstition of their fellows ascribes a controlling influence over the
general course of nature. Such men are accordingly adored and treated as gods.
Whether these human divinities also hold temporal sway over the lives and
fortunes of their adorers, or whether their functions are purely spiritual and
supernatural, in other words, whether they are kings as well as gods or only
the latter, is a distinction which hardly concerns us here. Their supposed
divinity is the essential fact with which we have to deal. In virtue of it
they are a pledge and guarantee to their worshippers of the continuance and
orderly succession of those physical phenomena upon which mankind depends for
subsistence. Naturally, therefore, the life and health of such a god-man are
matters of anxious concern to the people whose welfare and even existence are
bound up with his; naturally he is constrained by them to conform to such
rules as the wit of early man has devised for averting the ills to which flesh
is heir, including the last ill, death. These rules, as an examination of them
has shown, are nothing but the maxims with which, on the primitive view, every
man of common prudence must comply if he would live long in the land. But
while in the case of ordinary men the observance of the rules is left to the
choice of the individual, in the case of the god-man it is enforced under
penalty of dismissal from his high station, or even of death. For his
worshippers have far too great a stake in his life to allow him to play fast
and loose with it. Therefore all the quaint superstitions, the old-world
maxims, the venerable saws which the ingenuity of savage philosophers
elaborated long ago, and which old women at chimney corners still impart as
treasures of great price to their descendants gathered round the cottage fire
on winter eveningsall these antique fancies clustered, all these cobwebs of
the brain were spun about the path of the old king, the human god, who,
immeshed in them like a fly in the toils of a spider, could hardly stir a limb
for the threads of custom, light as air but strong as links of iron, that
crossing and recrossing each other in an endless maze bound him fast within a
network of observances from which death or deposition alone could release him.

Thus to students of the past the life of the old kings and priests teems
with instruction. In it was summed up all that passed for wisdom when the
world was young. It was the perfect pattern after which every man strove to
shape his life; a faultless model constructed with rigorous accuracy upon the
lines laid down by a barbarous philosophy. Crude and false as that philosophy
may seem to us, it would be unjust to deny it the merit of logical
consistency. Starting from a conception of the vital principle as a tiny being
or soul existing in, but distinct and separable from, the living being, it
deduces for the practical guidance of life a system of rules which in general
hangs well together and forms a fairly complete and harmonious whole. The
flawand it is a fatal oneof the system lies not in its reasoning, but in its
premises; in its conception of the nature of life, not in any irrelevancy of
the conclusions which it draws from that conception. But to stigmatise these
premises as ridiculous because we can easily detect their falseness, would be
ungrateful as well as unphilosophical. We stand upon the foundation reared by
the generations that have gone before, and we can but dimly realise the
painful and prolonged efforts which it has cost humanity to struggle up to the
point, no very exalted one after all, which we have reached. Our gratitude is
due to the nameless and forgotten toilers, whose patient thought and active
exertions have largely made us what we are. The amount of new knowledge which
one age, certainly which one man, can add to the common store is small, and it
argues stupidity or dishonesty, besides ingratitude, to ignore the heap while
vaunting the few grains which it may have been our privilege to add to it.
There is indeed little danger at present of undervaluing the contributions
which modern times and even classical antiquity have made to the general
advancement of our race. But when we pass these limits, the case is different.
Contempt and ridicule or abhorrence and denunciation are too often the only
recognition vouchsafed to the savage and his ways. Yet of the benefactors whom
we are bound thankfully to commemorate, many, perhaps most, were savages. For
when all is said and done our resemblances to the savage are still far more
numerous than our differences from him; and what we have in common with him,
and deliberately retain as true and useful, we owe to our savage forefathers
who slowly acquired by experience and transmitted to us by inheritance those
seemingly fundamental ideas which we are apt to regard as original and
intuitive. We are like heirs to a fortune which has been handed down for so
many ages that the memory of those who built it up is lost, and its possessors
for the time being regard it as having been an original and unalterable
possession of their race since the beginning of the world. But reflection and
enquiry should satisfy us that to our predecessors we are indebted for much of
what we thought most our own, and that their errors were not wilful
extravagances or the ravings of insanity, but simply hypotheses, justifiable
as such at the time when they were propounded, but which a fuller experience
has proved to be inadequate. It is only by the successive testing of
hypotheses and rejection of the false that truth is at last elicited. After
all, what we call truth is only the hypothesis which is found to work best.
Therefore in reviewing the opinions and practices of ruder ages and races we
shall do well to look with leniency upon their errors as inevitable slips made
in the search for truth, and to give them the benefit of that indulgence which
we ourselves may one day stand in need of: cum excusatione itaque veteres
audiendi sunt.

Chapter 24. The Killing of the Divine King.

1. The Mortality of the Gods.

MAN has created gods in his own likeness and being himself mortal he has
naturally supposed his creatures to be in the same sad predicament. Thus the
Greenlanders believed that a wind could kill their most powerful god, and that
he would certainly die if he touched a dog. When they heard of the Christian
God, they kept asking if he never died, and being informed that he did not,
they were much surprised, and said that he must be a very great god indeed. In
answer to the enquiries of Colonel Dodge, a North American Indian stated that
the world was made by the Great Spirit. Being asked which Great Spirit he
meant, the good one or the bad one, Oh, neither of them, replied he, the
Great Spirit that made the world is dead long ago. He could not possibly have
lived as long as this. A tribe in the Philippine Islands told the Spanish
conquerors that the grave of the Creator was upon the top of Mount Cabunian.
Heitsi-eibib, a god or divine hero of the Hottentots, died several times and
came to life again. His graves are generally to be met with in narrow defiles
between mountains. When the Hottentots pass one of them, they throw a stone on
it for good luck, sometimes muttering, Give us plenty of cattle. The grave
of Zeus, the great god of Greece, was shown to visitors in Crete as late as
about the beginning of our era. The body of Dionysus was buried at Delphi
beside the golden statue of Apollo, and his tomb bore the inscription, Here
lies Dionysus dead, the son of Semele. According to one account, Apollo
himself was buried at Delphi; for Pythagoras is said to have carved an
inscription on his tomb, setting forth how the god had been killed by the
python and buried under the tripod.

The great gods of Egypt themselves were not exempt from the common lot.
They too grew old and died. But when at a later time the discovery of the art
of embalming gave a new lease of life to the souls of the dead by preserving
their bodies for an indefinite time from corruption, the deities were
permitted to share the benefit of an invention which held out to gods as well
as to men a reasonable hope of immortality. Every province then had the tomb
and mummy of its dead god. The mummy of Osiris was to be seen at Mendes;
Thinis boasted of the mummy of Anhouri; and Heliopolis rejoiced in the
possession of that of Toumou. The high gods of Babylon also, though they
appeared to their worshippers only in dreams and visions, were conceived to be
human in their bodily shape, human in their passions, and human in their fate;
for like men they were born into the world, and like men they loved and fought
and died.

2. Kings killed when their Strength fails.

IF THE HIGH gods, who dwell remote from the fret and fever of this earthly
life, are yet believed to die at last, it is not to be expected that a god who
lodges in a frail tabernacle of flesh should escape the same fate, though we
hear of African kings who have imagined themselves immortal by virtue of their
sorceries. Now primitive peoples, as we have seen, sometimes believe that
their safety and even that of the world is bound up with the life of one of
these god-men or human incarnations of the divinity. Naturally, therefore,
they take the utmost care of his life, out of a regard for their own. But no
amount of care and precaution will prevent the man-god from growing old and
feeble and at last dying. His worshippers have to lay their account with this
sad necessity and to meet it as best they can. The danger is a formidable one;
for if the course of nature is dependent on the man-god's life, what
catastrophes may not be expected from the gradual enfeeblement of his powers
and their final extinction in death? There is only one way of averting these
dangers. The man-god must be killed as soon as he shows symptoms that his
powers are beginning to fail, and his soul must be transferred to a vigorous
successor before it has been seriously impaired by the threatened decay. The
advantages of thus putting the man-god to death instead of allowing him to die
of old age and disease are, to the savage, obvious enough. For if the man-god
dies what we call a natural death, it means, according to the savage, that his
soul has either voluntarily departed from his body and refuses to return, or
more commonly that it has been extracted, or at least detained in its
wanderings, by a demon or sorcerer. In any of these cases the soul of the
man-god is lost to his worshippers, and with it their prosperity is gone and
their very existence endangered. Even if they could arrange to catch the soul
of the dying god as it left his lips or his nostrils and so transfer it to a
successor, this would not effect their purpose; for, dying of disease, his
soul would necessarily leave his body in the last stage of weakness and
exhaustion, and so enfeebled it would continue to drag out a languid, inert
existence in any body to which it might be transferred. Whereas by slaying him
his worshippers could, in the first place, make sure of catching his soul as
it escaped and transferring it to a suitable successor; and, in the second
place, by putting him to death before his natural force was abated, they would
secure that the world should not fall into decay with the decay of the
man-god. Every purpose, therefore, was answered, and all dangers averted by
thus killing the man-god and transferring his soul, while yet at its prime, to
a vigorous successor.

The mystic kings of Fire and Water in Cambodia are not allowed to die a
natural death. Hence when one of them is seriously ill and the elders think
that he cannot recover, they stab him to death. The people of Congo believed,
as we have seen, that if their pontiff the Chitom were to die a natural
death, the world would perish, and the earth, which he alone sustained by his
power and merit, would immediately be annihilated. Accordingly when he fell
ill and seemed likely to die, the man who was destined to be his successor
entered the pontiff's house with a rope or a club and strangled or clubbed him
to death. The Ethiopian kings of Meroe were worshipped as gods; but whenever
the priests chose, they sent a messenger to the king, ordering him to die, and
alleging an oracle of the gods as their authority for the command. This
command the kings always obeyed down to the reign of Ergamenes, a contemporary
of Ptolemy II., King of Egypt. Having received a Greek education which
emancipated him from the superstitions of his countrymen, Ergamenes ventured
to disregard the command of the priests, and, entering the Golden Temple with
a body of soldiers, put the priests to the sword.

Customs of the same sort appear to have prevailed in this part of Africa
down to modern times. In some tribes of Fazoql the king had to administer
justice daily under a certain tree. If from sickness or any other cause he was
unable to discharge this duty for three whole days, he was hanged on the tree
in a noose, which contained two razors so arranged that when the noose was
drawn tight by the weight of the king's body they cut his throat.

A custom of putting their divine kings to death at the first symptoms of
infirmity or old age prevailed until lately, if indeed it is even now extinct
and not merely dormant, among the Shilluk of the White Nile, and in recent
years it has been carefully investigated by Dr. C. G. Seligman. The reverence
which the Shilluk pay to their king appears to arise chiefly from the
conviction that he is a reincarnation of the spirit of Nyakang, the
semi-divine hero who founded the dynasty and settled the tribe in their
present territory. It is a fundamental article of the Shilluk creed that the
spirit of the divine or semi-divine Nyakang is incarnate in the reigning king,
who is accordingly himself invested to some extent with the character of a
divinity. But while the Shilluk hold their kings in high, indeed religious
reverence and take every precaution against their accidental death,
nevertheless they cherish the conviction that the king must not be allowed to
become ill or senile, lest with his diminishing vigour the cattle should
sicken and fail to bear their increase, the crops should rot in the fields,
and man, stricken with disease, should die in ever-increasing numbers. To
prevent these calamities it used to be the regular custom with the Shilluk to
put the king to death whenever he showed signs of ill-health or failing
strength. One of the fatal symptoms of decay was taken to be an incapacity to
satisfy the sexual passions of his wives, of whom he has very many,
distributed in a large number of houses at Fashoda. When this ominous weakness
manifested itself, the wives reported it to the chiefs, who are popularly said
to have intimated to the king his doom by spreading a white cloth over his
face and knees as he lay slumbering in the heat of the sultry afternoon.
Execution soon followed the sentence of death. A hut was specially built for
the occasion: the king was led into it and lay down with his head resting on
the lap of a nubile virgin: the door of the hut was then walled up; and the
couple were left without food, water, or fire to die of hunger and
suffocation. This was the old custom, but it was abolished some five
generations ago on account of the excessive sufferings of one of the kings who
perished in this way. It is said that the chiefs announce his fate to the
king, and that afterwards he is strangled in a hut which has been specially
built for the occasion.

From Dr. Seligman's enquiries it appears that not only was the Shilluk
king liable to be killed with due ceremony at the first symptoms of incipient
decay, but even while he was yet in the prime of health and strength he might
be attacked at any time by a rival and have to defend his crown in a combat to
the death. According to the common Shilluk tradition any son of a king had the
right thus to fight the king in possession and, if he succeeded in killing
him, to reign in his stead. As every king had a large harem and many sons, the
number of possible candidates for the throne at any time may well have been
not inconsiderable, and the reigning monarch must have carried his life in his
hand. But the attack on him could only take place with any prospect of success
at night; for during the day the king surrounded himself with his friends and
bodyguards, and an aspirant to the throne could hardly hope to cut his way
through them and strike home. It was otherwise at night. For then the guards
were dismissed and the king was alone in his enclosure with his favourite
wives, and there was no man near to defend him except a few herdsmen, whose
huts stood a little way off. The hours of darkness were therefore the season
of peril for the king. It is said that he used to pass them in constant
watchfulness, prowling round his huts fully armed, peering into the blackest
shadows, or himself standing silent and alert, like a sentinel on duty, in
some dark corner. When at last his rival appeared, the fight would take place
in grim silence, broken only by the clash of spears and shields, for it was a
point of honour with the king not to call the herdsmen to his assistance.

Like Nyakang himself, their founder, each of the Shilluk kings after death
is worshipped at a shrine, which is erected over his grave, and the grave of a
king is always in the village where he was born. The tomb-shrine of a king
resembles the shrine of Nyakang, consisting of a few huts enclosed by a fence;
one of the huts is built over the king's grave, the others are occupied by the
guardians of the shrine. Indeed the shrines of Nyakang and the shrines of the
kings are scarcely to be distinguished from each other, and the religious
rituals observed at all of them are identical in form and vary only in matters
of detail, the variations being due apparently to the far greater sanctity
attributed to the shrines of Nyakang. The grave-shrines of the kings are
tended by certain old men or women, who correspond to the guardians of the
shrines of Nyakang. They are usually widows or old men-servants of the
deceased king, and when they die they are succeeded in their office by their
descendants. Moreover, cattle are dedicated to the grave-shrines of the kings
and sacrifices are offered at them just as at the shrines of Nyakang.

In general the principal element in the religion of the Shilluk would seem
to be the worship which they pay to their sacred or divine kings, whether dead
or alive. These are believed to be animated by a single divine spirit, which
has been transmitted from the semi-mythical, but probably in substance
historical, founder of the dynasty through all his successors to the present
day. Hence, regarding their kings as incarnate divinities on whom the welfare
of men, of cattle, and of the corn implicitly depends, the Shilluk naturally
pay them the greatest respect and take every care of them; and however strange
it may seem to us, their custom of putting the divine king to death as soon as
he shows signs of ill-health or failing strength springs directly from their
profound veneration for him and from their anxiety to preserve him, or rather
the divine spirit by which he is animated, in the most perfect state of
efficiency: nay, we may go further and say that their practice of regicide is
the best proof they can give of the high regard in which they hold their
kings. For they believe, as we have seen, that the king's life or spirit is so
sympathetically bound up with the prosperity of the whole country, that if he
fell ill or grew senile the cattle would sicken and cease to multiply, the
crops would rot in the fields, and men would perish of widespread disease.
Hence, in their opinion, the only way of averting these calamities is to put
the king to death while he is still hale and hearty, in order that the divine
spirit which he has inherited from his predecessors may be transmitted in turn
by him to his successor while it is still in full vigour and has not yet been
impaired by the weakness of disease and old age. In this connexion the
particular symptom which is commonly said to seal the king's death-warrant is
highly significant; when he can no longer satisfy the passions of his numerous
wives, in other words, when he has ceased, whether partially or wholly, to be
able to reproduce his kind, it is time for him to die and to make room for a
more vigorous successor. Taken along with the other reasons which are alleged
for putting the king to death, this one suggests that the fertility of men, of
cattle, and of the crops is believed to depend sympathetically on the
generative power of the king, so that the complete failure of that power in
him would involve a corresponding failure in men, animals, and plants, and
would thereby entail at no distant date the entire extinction of all life,
whether human, animal, or vegetable. No wonder, that with such a danger before
their eyes the Shilluk should be most careful not to let the king die what we
should call a natural death of sickness or old age. It is characteristic of
their attitude towards the death of the kings that they refrain from speaking
of it as death: they do not say that a king has died but simply that he has
gone away like his divine ancestors Nyakang and Dag, the two first kings of
the dynasty, both of whom are reported not to have died but to have
disappeared. The similar legends of the mysterious disappearance of early
kings in other lands, for example at Rome and in Uganda, may well point to a
similar custom of putting them to death for the purpose of preserving their
life.

On the whole the theory and practice of the divine kings of the Shilluk
correspond very nearly to the theory and practice of the priests of Nemi, the
Kings of the Wood, if my view of the latter is correct. In both we see a
series of divine kings on whose life the fertility of men, of cattle, and of
vegetation is believed to depend, and who are put to death, whether in single
combat or otherwise, in order that their divine spirit may be transmitted to
their successors in full vigour, uncontaminated by the weakness and decay of
sickness or old age, because any such degeneration on the part of the king
would, in the opinion of his worshippers, entail a corresponding degeneration
on manking, on cattle, and on the crops. Some points in this explanation of
the custom of putting divine kings to death, particularly the method of
transmitting their divine souls to their successors, will be dealt with more
fully in the sequel. Meantime we pass to other examples of the general
practice.

The Dinka are a congeries of independent tribes in the valley of the White
Nile. They are essentially a pastoral people, passionately devoted to the care
of their numerous herds of oxen, though they also keep sheep and goats, and
the women cultivate small quantities of millet and sesame. For their crops and
above all for their pastures they depend on the regularity of the rains: in
seasons of prolonged drought they are said to be reduced to great extremities.
Hence the rain-maker is a very important personage among them to this day;
indeed the men in authority whom travellers dub chiefs or sheikhs are in fact
the actual or potential rain-makers of the tribe or community. Each of them is
believed to be animated by the spirit of a great rain-maker, which has come
down to him through a succession of rain-makers; and in virtue of this
inspiration a successful rain-maker enjoys very great power and is consulted
on all important matters. Yet in spite, or rather in virtue, of the high
honour in which he is held, no Dinka rain-maker is allowed to die a natural
death of sickness or old age; for the Dinka believe that if such an untoward
event were to happen, the tribe would suffer from disease and famine, and the
herds would not yield their increase. So when a rain-maker feels that he is
growing old and infirm, he tells his children that he wishes to die. Among the
Agar Dinka a large grave is dug and the rain-maker lies down in it, surrounded
by his friends and relatives. From time to time he speaks to the people,
recalling the past history of the tribe, reminding them how he has ruled and
advised them, and instructing them how they are to act in the future. Then,
when he has concluded his admonition, he bids them cover him up. So the earth
is thrown down on him as he lies in the grave, and he soon dies of
suffocation. Such, with minor variations, appears to be the regular end of the
honourable career of a rain-maker in all the Dinka tribes. The Khor-Adar Dinka
told Dr. Seligman that when they have dug the grave for their rain-maker they
strangle him in his house. The father and paternal uncle of one of Dr.
Seligman's informants had both been rain-makers and both had been killed in
the most regular and orthodox fashion. Even if a rain-maker is quite young he
will be put to death should he seem likely to perish of disease. Further,
every precaution is taken to prevent a rain-maker from dying an accidental
death, for such an end, though not nearly so serious a matter as death from
illness or old age, would be sure to entail sickness on the tribe. As soon as
a rain-maker is killed, his valuable spirit is supposed to pass to a suitable
successor, whether a son or other near blood relation.

In the Central African kingdom of Bunyoro down to recent years custom
required that as soon as the king fell seriously ill or began to break up from
age, he should die by his own hand; for, according to an old prophecy, the
throne would pass away from the dynasty if ever the king were to die a natural
death. He killed himself by draining a poisoned cup. If he faltered or were
too ill to ask for the cup, it was his wife's duty to administer the poison.
When the king of Kibanga, on the Upper Congo, seems near his end, the
sorcerers put a rope round his neck, which they draw gradually tighter till he
dies. If the king of Gingiro happens to be wounded in war, he is put to death
by his comrades, or, if they fail to kill him, by his kinsfolk, however hard
he may beg for mercy. They say they do it that he may not die by the hands of
his enemies. The Jukos are a heathen tribe of the Benue River, a great
tributary of the Niger. In their country the town of Gatri is ruled by a king
who is elected by the big men of the town as follows. When in the opinion of
the big men the king has reigned long enough, they give out that 'the king is
sick'a formula understood by all to mean that they are going to kill him,
though the intention is never put more plainly. They then decide who is to be
the next king. How long he is to reign is settled by the influential men at a
meeting; the question is put and answered by each man throwing on the ground a
little piece of stick for each year he thinks the new king should rule. The
king is then told, and a great feast prepared, at which the king gets drunk on
guinea-corn beer. After that he is speared, and the man who was chosen becomes
king. Thus each Juko king knows that he cannot have very many more years to
live, and that he is certain of his predecessor's fate. This, however, does
not seem to frighten candidates. The same custom of king-killing is said to
prevail at Quonde and Wukari as well as at Gatri. In the three Hausa kingdoms
of Gobir, Katsina, and Daura, in Northern Nigeria, as soon as a king showed
signs of failing health or growing infirmity, an official who bore the title
of Killer of the Elephant appeared and throttled him.

The Matiamvo is a great king or emperor in the interior of Angola. One of
the inferior kings of the country, by name Challa, gave to a Portuguese
expedition the following account of the manner in which the Matiamvo comes by
his end. It has been customary, he said, for our Matiamvos to die either in
war or by a violent death, and the present Matiamvo must meet this last fate,
as, in consequence of his great exactions, he has lived long enough. When we
come to this understanding, and decide that he should be killed, we invite him
to make war with our enemies, on which occasion we all accompany him and his
family to the war, when we lose some of our people. If he escapes unhurt, we
return to the war again and fight for three or four days. We then suddenly
abandon him and his family to their fate, leaving him in the enemy's hands.
Seeing himself thus deserted, he causes his throne to be erected, and, sitting
down, calls his family around him. He then orders his mother to approach; she
kneels at his feet; he first cuts off her head, then decapitates his sons in
succession, next his wives and relatives, and, last of all, his most beloved
wife, called Anacullo. This slaughter being accomplished, the Matiamvo,
dressed in all his pomp, awaits his own death, which immediately follows, by
an officer sent by the powerful neighbouring chiefs, Caniquinha and Canica.
This officer first cuts off his legs and arms at the joints, and lastly he
cuts off his head; after which the head of the officer is struck off. All the
potentates retire from the encampment, in order not to witness his death. It
is my duty to remain and witness his death, and to mark the place where the
head and arms have been deposited by the two great chiefs, the enemies of the
Matiamvo. They also take possession of all the property belonging to the
deceased monarch and his family, which they convey to their own residence. I
then provide for the funeral of the mutilated remains of the late Matiamvo,
after which I retire to his capital and proclaim the new government. I then
return to where the head, legs, and arms have been deposited, and, for forty
slaves, I ransom them, together with the merchandise and other property
belonging to the deceased, which I give up to the new Matiamvo, who has been
proclaimed. This is what has happened to many Matiamvos, and what must happen
to the present one.

It appears to have been a Zulu custom to put the king to death as soon as
he began to have wrinkles or grey hairs. At least this seems implied in the
following passage written by one who resided for some time at the court of the
notorious Zulu tyrant Chaka, in the early part of the nineteenth century: The
extraordinary violence of the king's rage with me was mainly occasioned by
that absurd nostrum, the hair oil, with the notion of which Mr. Farewell had
impressed him as being a specific for removing all indications of age. From
the first moment of his having heard that such a preparation was attainable,
he evinced a solicitude to procure it, and on every occasion never forgot to
remind us of his anxiety respecting it; more especially on our departure on
the mission his injunctions were particularly directed to this object. It will
be seen that it is one of the barbarous customs of the Zoolas in their choice
or election of their kings that he must neither have wrinkles nor grey hairs,
as they are both distinguishing marks of disqualification for becoming a
monarch of a warlike people. It is also equally indispensable that their king
should never exhibit those proofs of having become unfit and incompetent to
reign; it is therefore important that they should conceal these indications so
long as they possibly can. Chaka had become greatly apprehensive of the
approach of grey hairs; which would at once be the signal for him to prepare
to make his exit from this sublunary world, it being always followed by the
death of the monarch. The writer to whom we are indebted for this instructive
anecdote of the hair oil omits to specify the mode in which a grey-haired and
wrinkled Zulu chief used to make his exit from this sublunary world; but on
analogy we may conjecture that he was killed.

The custom of putting kings to death as soon as they suffered from any
personal defect prevailed two centuries ago in the Caffre kingdom of Sofala.
We have seen that these kings of Sofala were regarded as gods by their people,
being entreated to give rain or sunshine, according as each might be wanted.
Nevertheless a slight bodily blemish, such as the loss of a tooth, was
considered a sufficient cause for putting one of these god-men to death, as we
learn from the following passage of an old Portuguese historian: It was
formerly the custom of the kings of this land to commit suicide by taking
poison when any disaster or natural physical defect fell upon them, such as
impotence, infectious disease, the loss of their front teeth, by which they
were disfigured, or any other deformity or affliction. To put an end to such
defects they killed themselves, saying that the king should be free from any
blemish, and if not, it was better for his honour that he should die and seek
another life where he would be made whole, for there everything was perfect.
But the Quiteve (king) who reigned when I was in those parts would not imitate
his predecessors in this, being discreet and dreaded as he was; for having
lost a front tooth he caused it to be proclaimed throughout the kingdom that
all should be aware that he had lost a tooth and should recognise him when
they saw him without it, and if his predecessors killed themselves for such
things they were very foolish, and he would not do so; on the contrary, he
would be very sorry when the time came for him to die a natural death, for his
life was very necessary to preserve his kingdom and defend it from his
enemies; and he recommended his successors to follow his example.

The king of Sofala who dared to survive the loss of his front tooth was
thus a bold reformer like Ergamenes, king of Ethiopia. We may conjecture that
the ground for putting the Ethiopian kings to death was, as in the case of the
Zulu and Sofala kings, the appearance on their person of any bodily defect or
sign of decay; and that the oracle which the priests alleged as the authority
for the royal execution was to the effect that great calamities would result
from the reign of a king who had any blemish on his body; just as an oracle
warned Sparta against a lame reign, that is, the reign of a lame king. It is
some confirmation of this conjecture that the kings of Ethiopia were chosen
for their size, strength, and beauty long before the custom of killing them
was abolished. To this day the Sultan of Wadai must have no obvious bodily
defect, and the king of Angoy cannot be crowned if he has a single blemish,
such as a broken or a filed tooth or the scar of an old wound. According to
the Book of Acaill and many other authorities no king who was afflicted with a
personal blemish might reign over Ireland at Tara. Hence, when the great King
Cormac Mac Art lost one eye by an accident, he at once abdicated.

Many days' journey to the north-east of Abomey, the old capital of
Dahomey, lies the kingdom of Eyeo. The Eyeos are governed by a king, no less
absolute than the king of Dahomey, yet subject to a regulation of state, at
once humiliating and extraordinary. When the people have conceived an opinion
of his ill-government, which is sometimes insidiously infused into them by the
artifice of his discontented ministers, they send a deputation to him with a
present of parrots' eggs, as a mark of its authenticity, to represent to him
that the burden of government must have so far fatigued him that they consider
it full time for him to repose from his cares and indulge himself with a
little sleep. He thanks his subjects for their attention to his ease, retires
to his own apartment as if to sleep, and there gives directions to his women
to strangle him. This is immediately executed, and his son quietly ascends the
throne upon the usual terms of holding the reins of government no longer than
whilst he merits the approbation of the people. About the year 1774, a king
of Eyeo, whom his ministers attempted to remove in the customary manner,
positively refused to accept the proffered parrots' eggs at their hands,
telling them that he had no mind to take a nap, but on the contrary was
resolved to watch for the benefit of his subjects. The ministers, surprised
and indignant at his recalcitrancy, raised a rebellion, but were defeated with
great slaughter, and thus by his spirited conduct the king freed himself from
the tyranny of his councillors and established a new precedent for the
guidance of his successors. However, the old custom seems to have revived and
persisted until late in the nineteenth century, for a Catholic missionary,
writing in 1884, speaks of the practice as if it were still in vogue. Another
missionary, writing in 1881, thus describes the usage of the Egbas and the
Yorubas of West Africa: Among the customs of the country one of the most
curious is unquestionably that of judging, and punishing the king. Should he
have earned the hatred of his people by exceeding his rights, one of his
councillors, on whom the heavy duty is laid, requires of the prince that he
shall 'go to sleep,' which means simply 'take poison and die.' If his courage
fails him at the supreme moment, a friend renders him this last service, and
quietly, without betraying the secret, they prepare the people for the news of
the king's death. In Yoruba the thing is managed a little differently. When a
son is born to the king of Oyo, they make a model of the infant's right foot
in clay and keep it in the house of the elders (ogboni). If the king fails
to observe the customs of the country, a messenger, without speaking a word,
shows him his child's foot. The king knows what that means. He takes poison
and goes to sleep. The old Prussians acknowledged as their supreme lord a
ruler who governed them in the name of the gods, and was known as God's
Mouth. When he felt himself weak and ill, if he wished to leave a good name
behind him, he had a great heap made of thorn-bushes and straw, on which he
mounted and delivered a long sermon to the people, exhorting them to serve the
gods and promising to go to the gods and speak for the people. Then he took
some of the perpetual fire which burned in front of the holy oak-tree, and
lighting the pile with it burned himself to death.

3. Kings killed at the End of a Fixed Term.

IN THE CASES hitherto described, the divine king or priest is suffered by
his people to retain office until some outward defect, some visible symptom of
failing health or advancing age, warns them that he is no longer equal to the
discharge of his divine duties; but not until such symptoms have made their
appearance is he put to death. Some peoples, however, appear to have thought
it unsafe to wait for even the slightest symptom of decay and have preferred
to kill the king while he was still in the full vigour of life. Accordingly,
they have fixed a term beyond which he might not reign, and at the close of
which he must die, the term fixed upon being short enough to exclude the
probability of his degenerating physically in the interval. In some parts of
Southern India the period fixed was twelve years. Thus, according to an old
traveller, in the province of Quilacare, there is a Gentile house of prayer,
in which there is an idol which they hold in great account, and every twelve
years they celebrate a great feast to it, whither all the Gentiles go as to a
jubilee. This temple possesses many lands and much revenue: it is a very great
affair. This province has a king over it, who has not more than twelve years
to reign from jubilee to jubilee. His manner of living is in this wise, that
is to say: when the twelve years are completed, on the day of this feast there
assemble together innumerable people, and much money is spent in giving food
to Bramans. The king has a wooden scaffolding made, spread over with silken
hangings: and on that day he goes to bathe at a tank with great ceremonies and
sound of music, after that he comes to the idol and prays to it, and mounts on
to the scaffolding, and there before all the people he takes some very sharp
knives, and begins to cut off his nose, and then his ears, and his lips, and
all his members, and as much flesh off himself as he can; and he throws it
away very hurriedly until so much of his blood is spilled that he begins to
faint, and then he cuts his throat himself. And he performs this sacrifice to
the idol, and whoever desires to reign another twelve years and undertake this
martyrdom for love of the idol, has to be present looking on at this: and from
that place they raise him up as king.

The king of Calicut, on the Malabar coast, bears the title of Samorin or
Samory. He pretends to be of a higher rank than the Brahmans, and to be
inferior only to the invisible gods; a pretention that was acknowledged by his
subjects, but which is held as absurd and abominable by the Brahmans, by whom
he is only treated as a Sudra. Formerly the Samorin had to cut his throat in
public at the end of a twelve years' reign. But towards the end of the
seventeenth century the rule had been modified as follows: Many strange
customs were observed in this country in former times, and some very odd ones
are still continued. It was an ancient custom for the Samorin to reign but
twelve years, and no longer. If he died before his term was expired, it saved
him a troublesome ceremony of cutting his own throat, on a publick scaffold
erected for the purpose. He first made a feast for all his nobility and
gentry, who are very numerous. After the feast he saluted his guests, and went
on the scaffold, and very decently cut his own throat in the view of the
assembly, and his body was, a little while after, burned with great pomp and
ceremony, and the grandees elected a new Samorin. Whether that custom was a
religious or a civil ceremony, I know not, but it is now laid aside. And a new
custom is followed by the modern Samorins, that jubilee is proclaimed
throughout his dominions, at the end of twelve years, and a tent is pitched
for him in a spacious plain, and a great feast is celebrated for ten or twelve
days, with mirth and jollity, guns firing night and day, so at the end of the
feast any four of the guests that have a mind to gain a crown by a desperate
action, in fighting their way through 30 or 40,000 of his guards, and kill the
Samorin in his tent, he that kills him succeeds him in his empire. In anno
1695, one of those jubilees happened, and the tent pitched near Pennany, a
seaport of his, about fifteen leagues to the southward of Calicut. There were
but three men that would venture on that desperate action, who fell in, with
sword and target, among the guard, and, after they had killed and wounded
many, were themselves killed. One of the desperados had a nephew of fifteen or
sixteen years of age, that kept close by his uncle in the attack on the
guards, and, when he saw him fall, the youth got through the guards into the
tent, and made a stroke at his Majesty's head, and had certainly despatched
him if a large brass lamp which was burning over his head had not marred the
blow; but, before he could make another, he was killed by the guards; and, I
believe, the same Samorin reigns yet. I chanced to come that time along the
coast and heard the guns for two or three days and nights successively.

The English traveller, whose account I have quoted, did not himself
witness the festival he describes, though he heard the sound of the firing in
the distance. Fortunately, exact records of these festivals and of the number
of men who perished at them have been preserved in the archives of the royal
family at Calicut. In the latter part of the nineteenth century they were
examined by Mr. W. Logan, with the personal assistance of the reigning king,
and from his work it is possible to gain an accurate conception both of the
tragedy and of the scene where it was periodically enacted down to 1743, when
the ceremony took place for the last time.

The festival at which the king of Calicut staked his crown and his life on
the issue of battle was known as the Great Sacrifice. It fell every twelfth
year, when the planet Jupiter was in retrograde motion in the sign of the
Crab, and it lasted twenty-eight days, culminating at the time of the eighth
lunar asterism in the month of Makaram. As the date of the festival was
determined by the position of Jupiter in the sky, and the interval between two
festivals was twelve years, which is roughly Jupiter's period of revolution
round the sun, we may conjecture that the splendid planet was supposed to be
in a special sense the king's star and to rule his destiny, the period of its
revolution in heaven corresponding to the period of his reign on earth.
However that may be, the ceremony was observed with great pomp at the
Tirunavayi temple, on the north bank of the Ponnani River. The spot is close
to the present railway line. As the train rushes by, you can just catch a
glimpse of the temple, almost hidden behind a clump of trees on the river
bank. From the western gateway of the temple a perfectly straight road, hardly
raised above the level of the surrounding rice-fields and shaded by a fine
avenue, runs for half a mile to a high ridge with a precipitous bank, on which
the outlines of three or four terraces can still be traced. On the topmost of
these terraces the king took his stand on the eventful day. The view which it
commands is a fine one. Across the flat expanse of the rice-fields, with the
broad placid river winding through them, the eye ranges eastward to high
tablelands, their lower slopes embowered in woods, while afar off looms the
great chain of the western Ghauts, and in the furthest distance the
Neilgherries or Blue Mountains, hardly distinguishable from the azure of the
sky above.

But it was not to the distant prospect that the king's eyes naturally
turned at this crisis of his fate. His attention was arrested by a spectacle
nearer at hand. For all the plain below was alive with troops, their banners
waving gaily in the sun, the white tents of their many camps standing sharply
out against the green and gold of the ricefields. Forty thousand fighting men
or more were gathered there to defend the king. But if the plain swarmed with
soldiers, the road that cuts across it from the temple to the king's stand was
clear of them. Not a soul was stirring on it. Each side of the way was barred
by palisades, and from the palisades on either hand a long hedge of spears,
held by strong arms, projected into the empty road, their blades meeting in
the middle and forming a glittering arch of steel. All was now ready. The king
waved his sword. At the same moment a great chain of massy gold, enriched with
bosses, was placed on an elephant at his side. That was the signal. On the
instant a stir might be seen half a mile away at the gate of the temple. A
group of swordsmen, decked with flowers and smeared with ashes, has stepped
out from the crowd. They have just partaken of their last meal on earth, and
they now receive the last blessings and farewells of their friends. A moment
more and they are coming down the lane of spears, hewing and stabbing right
and left at the spearmen, winding and turning and writhing among the blades as
if they had no bones in their bodies. It is all in vain. One after the other
they fall, some nearer the king, some farther off, content to die, not for the
shadow of a crown, but for the mere sake of approving their dauntless valour
and swordsmanship to the world. On the last days of the festival the same
magnificent display of gallantry, the same useless sacrifice of life was
repeated again and again. Yet perhaps no sacrifice is wholly useless which
proves that there are men who prefer honour to life.

It is a singular custom in Bengal, says an old native historian of
India, that there is little of hereditary descent in succession to the
sovereignty . Whoever kills the king, and succeeds in placing himself on that
throne, is immediately acknowledged as king; all the amirs, wazirs,
soldiers, and peasants instantly obey and submit to him, and consider him as
being as much their sovereign as they did their former prince, and obey his
orders implicitly. The people of Bengal say, 'We are faithful to the throne;
whoever fills the throne we are obedient and true to it.' A custom of the
same sort formerly prevailed in the little kingdom of Passier, on the northern
coast of Sumatra. The old Portuguese historian De Barros, who informs us of
it, remarks with surprise that no wise man would wish to be king of Passier,
since the monarch was not allowed by his subjects to live long. From time to
time a sort of fury seized the people, and they marched through the streets of
the city chanting with loud voices the fatal words, The king must die! When
the king heard that song of death he knew that his hour had come. The man who
struck the fatal blow was of the royal lineage, and as soon as he had done the
deed of blood and seated himself on the throne he was regarded as the
legitimate king, provided that he contrived to maintain his seat peaceably for
a single day. This, however, the regicide did not always succeed in doing.
When Ferno Peres d'Andrade, on a voyage to China, put in at Passier for a
cargo of spices, two kings were massacred, and that in the most peaceable and
orderly manner, without the smallest sign of tumult or sedition in the city,
where everything went on in its usual course, as if the murder or execution of
a king were a matter of everyday occurrence. Indeed, on one occasion three
kings were raised to the dangerous elevation and followed each other in the
dusty road of death in a single day. The people defended the custom, which
they esteemed very laudable and even of divine institution, by saying that God
would never allow so high and mighty a being as a king, who reigned as his
vicegerent on earth, to perish by violence unless for his sins he thoroughly
deserved it. Far away from the tropical island of Sumatra a rule of the same
sort appears to have obtained among the old Slavs. When the captives Gunn and
Jarmerik contrived to slay the king and queen of the Slavs and made their
escape, they were pursued by the barbarians, who shouted after them that if
they would only come back they would reign instead of the murdered monarch,
since by a public statute of the ancients the succession to the throne fell to
the king's assassin. But the flying regicides turned a deaf ear to promises
which they regarded as mere baits to lure them back to destruction; they
continued their flight, and the shouts and clamour of the barbarians gradually
died away in the distance.

When kings were bound to suffer death, whether at their own hands or at
the hands of others, on the expiration of a fixed term of years, it was
natural that they should seek to delegate the painful duty, along with some of
the privileges of sovereignty, to a substitute who should suffer vicariously
in their stead. This expedient appears to have been resorted to by some of the
princes of Malabar. Thus we are informed by a native authority on that country
that in some places all powers both executive and judicial were delegated for
a fixed period to natives by the sovereign. This institution was styled
Thalavettiparothiam or authority obtained by decapitation. It was an office
tenable for five years during which its bearer was invested with supreme
despotic powers within his jurisdiction. On the expiry of the five years the
man's head was cut off and thrown up in the air amongst a large concourse of
villagers, each of whom vied with the other in trying to catch it in its
course down. He who succeeded was nominated to the post for the next five
years.

When once kings, who had hitherto been bound to die a violent death at the
end of a term of years, conceived the happy thought of dying by deputy in the
persons of others, they would very naturally put it in practice; and
accordingly we need not wonder at finding so popular an expedient, or traces
of it, in many lands. Scandinavian traditions contain some hints that of old
the Swedish kings reigned only for periods of nine years, after which they
were put to death or had to find a substitute to die in their stead. Thus Aun
or On, king of Sweden, is said to have sacrificed to Odin for length of days
and to have been answered by the god that he should live so long as he
sacrificed one of his sons every ninth year. He sacrificed nine of them in
this manner, and would have sacrificed the tenth and last, but the Swedes
would not allow him. So he died and was buried in a mound at Upsala. Another
indication of a similar tenure of the crown occurs in a curious legend of the
deposition and banishment of Odin. Offended at his misdeeds, the other gods
outlawed and exiled him, but set up in his place a substitute, Oller by name,
a cunning wizard, to whom they accorded the symbols both of royalty and of
godhead. The deputy bore the name of Odin, and reigned for nearly ten years,
when he was driven from the throne, while the real Odin came to his own again.
His discomfited rival retired to Sweden and was afterwards slain in an attempt
to repair his shattered fortunes. As gods are often merely men who loom large
through the mists of tradition, we may conjecture that this Norse legend
preserves a confused reminiscence of ancient Swedish kings who reigned for
nine or ten years together, then abdicated, delegating to others the privilege
of dying for their country. The great festival which was held at Upsala every
nine years may have been the occasion on which the king or his deputy was put
to death. We know that human sacrifices formed part of the rites.

There are some grounds for believing that the reign of many ancient Greek
kings was limited to eight years, or at least that at the end of every period
of eight years a new consecration, a fresh outpouring of the divine grace, was
regarded as necessary in order to enable them to discharge their civil and
religious duties. Thus it was a rule of the Spartan constitution that every
eighth year the ephors should choose a clear and moonless night and sitting
down observe the sky in silence. If during their vigil they saw a meteor or
shooting star, they inferred that the king had sinned against the deity, and
they suspended him from his functions until the Delphic or Olympic oracle
should reinstate him in them. This custom, which has all the air of great
antiquity, was not suffered to remain a dead letter even in the last period of
the Spartan monarchy; for in the third century before our era a king, who had
rendered himself obnoxious to the reforming party, was actually deposed on
various trumped-up charges, among which the allegation that the ominous sign
had been seen in the sky took a prominent place.

If the tenure of the regal office was formerly limited among the Spartans
to eight years, we may naturally ask, why was that precise period selected as
the measure of a king's reign? The reason is probably to be found in those
astronomical considerations which determined the early Greek calendar. The
difficulty of reconciling lunar with solar time is one of the standing puzzles
which has taxed the ingenuity of men who are emerging from barbarism. Now an
octennial cycle is the shortest period at the end of which sun and moon really
mark time together after overlapping, so to say, throughout the whole of the
interval. Thus, for example, it is only once in every eight years that the
full moon coincides with the longest or shortest day; and as this coincidence
can be observed with the aid of a simple dial, the observation is naturally
one of the first to furnish a base for a calendar which shall bring lunar and
solar times into tolerable, though not exact, harmony. But in early days the
proper adjustment of the calendar is a matter of religious concern, since on
it depends a knowledge of the right seasons for propitiating the deities whose
favour is indispensable to the welfare of the community. No wonder, therefore,
that the king, as the chief priest of the state, or as himself a god, should
be liable to deposition or death at the end of an astronomical period. When
the great luminaries had run their course on high, and were about to renew the
heavenly race, it might well be thought that the king should renew his divine
energies, or prove them unabated, under pain of making room for a more
vigorous successor. In Southern India, as we have seen, the king's reign and
life terminated with the revolution of the planet Jupiter round the sun. In
Greece, on the other hand, the king's fate seems to have hung in the balance
at the end of every eight years, ready to fly up and kick the beam as soon as
the opposite scale was loaded with a falling star.

Whatever its origin may have been, the cycle of eight years appears to
have coincided with the normal length of the king's reign in other parts of
Greece besides Sparta. Thus Minos, king of Cnossus in Crete, whose great
palace has been unearthed in recent years, is said to have held office for
periods of eight years together. At the end of each period he retired for a
season to the oracular cave on Mount Ida, and there communed with his divine
father Zeus, giving him an account of his kingship in the years that were
past, and receiving from him instructions for his guidance in those which were
to come. The tradition plainly implies that at the end of every eight years
the king's sacred powers needed to be renewed by intercourse with the godhead,
and that without such a renewal he would have forfeited his right to the
throne.

Without being unduly rash we may surmise that the tribute of seven youths
and seven maidens whom the Athenians were bound to send to Minos every eight
years had some connexion with the renewal of the king's power for another
octennial cycle. Traditions varied as to the fate which awaited the lads and
damsels on their arrival in Crete; but the common view appears to have been
that they were shut up in the labyrinth, there to be devoured by the Minotaur,
or at least to be imprisoned for life. Perhaps they were sacrificed by being
roasted alive in a bronze image of a bull, or of a bull-headed man, in order
to renew the strength of the king and of the sun, whom he personated. This at
all events is suggested by the legend of Talos, a bronze man who clutched
people to his breast and leaped with them into the fire, so that they were
roasted alive. He is said to have been given by Zeus to Europa, or by
Hephaestus to Minos, to guard the island of Crete, which he patrolled thrice
daily. According to one account he was a bull, according to another he was the
sun. Probably he was identical with the Minotaur, and stripped of his mythical
features was nothing but a bronze image of the sun represented as a man with a
bull's head. In order to renew the solar fires, human victims may have been
sacrificed to the idol by being roasted in its hollow body or placed on its
sloping hands and allowed to roll into a pit of fire. It was in the latter
fashion that the Carthaginians sacrificed their offspring to Moloch. The
children were laid on the hands of a calf-headed image of bronze, from which
they slid into a fiery oven, while the people danced to the music of flutes
and timbrels to drown the shrieks of the burning victims. The resemblance
which the Cretan traditions bear to the Carthaginian practice suggests that
the worship associated with the names of Minos and the Minotaur may have been
powerfully influenced by that of a Semitic Baal. In the tradition of Phalaris,
tyrant of Agrigentum, and his brazen bull we may have an echo of similar rites
in Sicily, where the Carthaginian power struck deep roots.

In the province of Lagos, the Ijebu tribe of the Yoruba race is divided
into two branches, which are known respectively as the Ijebu Ode and the Ijebu
Remon. The Ode branch of the tribe is ruled by a chief who bears the title of
Awujale and is surrounded by a great deal of mystery. Down to recent times his
face might not be seen even by his own subjects, and if circumstances obliged
him to communicate with them he did so through a screen which hid him from
view. The other or Remon branch of the Ijebu tribe is governed by a chief, who
ranks below the Awujale. Mr. John Parkinson was informed that in former times
this subordinate chief used to be killed with ceremony after a rule of three
years. As the country is now under British protection the custom of putting
the chief to death at the end of a three years' reign has long been abolished,
and Mr. Parkinson was unable to ascertain any particulars on the subject.

At Babylon, within historical times, the tenure of the kingly office was
in practice lifelong, yet in theory it would seem to have been merely annual.
For every year at the festival of Zagmuk the king had to renew his power by
seizing the hands of the image of Marduk in his great temple of Esagil at
Babylon. Even when Babylon passed under the power of Assyria, the monarchs of
that country were expected to legalise their claim to the throne every year by
coming to Babylon and performing the ancient ceremony at the New Year
festival, and some of them found the obligation so burdensome that rather than
discharge it they renounced the title of king altogether and contented
themselves with the humbler one of Governor. Further, it would appear that in
remote times, though not within the historical period, the kings of Babylon or
their barbarous predecessors forfeited not merely their crown but their life
at the end of a year's tenure of office. At least this is the conclusion to
which the following evidence seems to point. According to the historian
Berosus, who as a Babylonian priest spoke with ample knowledge, there was
annually celebrated in Babylon a festival called the Sacaea. It began on the
sixteenth day of the month Lous, and lasted for five days, during which
masters and servants changed places, the servants giving orders and the
masters obeying them. A prisoner condemned to death was dressed in the king's
robes, seated on the king's throne, allowed to issue whatever commands he
pleased, to eat, drink, and enjoy himself, and to lie with the king's
concubines. But at the end of the five days he was stripped of his royal
robes, scourged, and hanged or impaled. During his brief term of office he
bore the title of Zoganes. This custom might perhaps have been explained as
merely a grim jest perpetrated in a season of jollity at the expense of an
unhappy criminal. But one circumstancethe leave given to the mock king to
enjoy the king's concubinesis decisive against this interpretation.
Considering the jealous seclusion of an oriental despot's harem we may be
quite certain that permission to invade it would never have been granted by
the despot, least of all to a condemned criminal, except for the very gravest
cause. This cause could hardly be other than that the condemned man was about
to die in the king's stead, and that to make the substitution perfect it was
necessary he should enjoy the full rights of royalty during his brief reign.
There is nothing surprising in this substitution. The rule that the king must
be put to death either on the appearance of any symptom of bodily decay or at
the end of a fixed period is certainly one which, sooner or later, the kings
would seek to abolish or modify. We have seen that in Ethiopia, Sofala, and
Eyeo the rule was boldly set aside by enlightened monarchs; and that in
Calicut the old custom of killing the king at the end of twelve years was
changed into a permission granted to any one at the end of the twelve years'
period to attack the king, and, in the event of killing him, to reign in his
stead; though, as the king took care at these times to be surrounded by his
guards, the permission was little more than a form. Another way of modifying
the stern old rule is seen in the Babylonian custom just described. When the
time drew near for the king to be put to death (in Babylon this appears to
have been at the end of a single year's reign) he abdicated for a few days,
during which a temporary king reigned and suffered in his stead. At first the
temporary king may have been an innocent person, possibly a member of the
king's own family; but with the growth of civilisation the sacrifice of an
innocent person would be revolting to the public sentiment, and accordingly a
condemned criminal would be invested with the brief and fatal sovereignty. In
the sequel we shall find other examples of a dying criminal representing a
dying god. For we must not forget that, as the case of the Shilluk kings
clearly shows, the king is slain in his character of a god or a demigod, his
death and resurrection, as the only means of perpetuating the divine life
unimpaired, being deemed necessary for the salvation of his people and the
world.

A vestige of a practice of putting the king to death at the end of a
year's reign appears to have survived in the festival called Macahity, which
used to be celebrated in Hawaii during the last month of the year. About a
hundred years ago a Russian voyager described the custom as follows: The
taboo Macahity is not unlike to our festival of Christmas. It continues a
whole month, during which the people amuse themselves with dances, plays, and
sham-fights of every kind. The king must open this festival wherever he is. On
this occasion his majesty dresses himself in his richest cloak and helmet, and
is paddled in a canoe along the shore, followed sometimes by many of his
subjects. He embarks early, and must finish his excursion at sunrise. The
strongest and most expert of the warriors is chosen to receive him on his
landing. This warrior watches the canoe along the beach; and as soon as the
king lands, and has thrown off his cloak, he darts his spear at him, from a
distance of about thirty paces, and the king must either catch the spear in
his hand, or suffer from it: there is no jesting in the business. Having
caught it, he carries it under his arm, with the sharp end downwards, into the
temple or heavoo. On his entrance, the assembled multitude begin their
sham-fights, and immediately the air is obscured by clouds of spears, made for
the occasion with blunted ends. Hamamea [the king] has been frequently advised
to abolish this ridiculous ceremony, in which he risks his life every year;
but to no effect. His answer always is, that he is as able to catch a spear as
any one on the island is to throw it at him. During the Macahity, all
punishments are remitted throughout the country; and no person can leave the
place in which he commences these holidays, let the affair be ever so
important.

That a king should regularly have been put to death at the close of a
year's reign will hardly appear improbable when we learn that to this day
there is still a kingdom in which the reign and the life of the sovereign are
limited to a single day. In Ngoio, a province of the ancient kingdom of Congo,
the rule obtains that the chief who assumes the cap of sovereignty is always
killed on the night after his coronation. The right of succession lies with
the chief of the Musurongo; but we need not wonder that he does not exercise
it, and that the throne stands vacant. No one likes to lose his life for a
few hours' glory on the Ngoio throne.

Chapter 25. Temporary Kings

IN SOME places the modified form of the old custom of regicide which appears
to have prevailed at Babylon has been further softened down. The king still
abdicates annually for a short time and his place is filled by a more or less
nominal sovereign; but at the close of his short reign the latter is no longer
killed, though sometimes a mock execution still survives as a memorial of the
time when he was actually put to death. To take examples. In the month of Mac
(February) the king of Cambodia annually abdicated for three days. During this
time he performed no act of authority, he did not touch the seals, he did not
even receive the revenues which fell due. In his stead there reigned a
temporary king called Sdach Mac, that is, King February. The office of
temporary king was hereditary in a family distantly connected with the royal
house, the sons succeeding the fathers and the younger brothers the elder
brothers just as in the succession to the real sovereignty. On a favourable
day fixed by the astrologers the temporary king was conducted by the mandarins
in triumphal procession. He rode one of the royal elephants, seated in the
royal palanquin, and escorted by soldiers who, dressed in appropriate
costumes, represented the neighbouring peoples of Siam, Annam, Laos, and so
on. In place of the golden crown he wore a peaked white cap, and his regalia,
instead of being of gold encrusted with diamonds, were of rough wood. After
paying homage to the real king, from whom he received the sovereignty for
three days, together with all the revenues accruing during that time (though
this last custom has been omitted for some time), he moved in procession round
the palace and through the streets of the capital. On the third day, after the
usual procession, the temporary king gave orders that the elephants should
trample under foot the mountain of rice, which was a scaffold of bamboo
surrounded by sheaves of rice. The people gathered up the rice, each man
taking home a little with him to secure a good harvest. Some of it was also
taken to the king, who had it cooked and presented to the monks.

In Siam on the sixth day of the moon in the sixth month (the end of April)
a temporary king is appointed, who for three days enjoys the royal
prerogatives, the real king remaining shut up in his palace. This temporary
king sends his numerous satellites in all directions to seize and confiscate
whatever they can find in the bazaar and open shops; even the ships and junks
which arrive in harbour during the three days are forfeited to him and must be
redeemed. He goes to a field in the middle of the city, whither they bring a
gilded plough drawn by gaily-decked oxen. After the plough has been anointed
and the oxen rubbed with incense, the mock king traces nine furrows with the
plough, followed by aged dames of the palace scattering the first seed of the
season. As soon as the nine furrows are drawn, the crowd of spectators rushes
in and scrambles for the seed which has just been sown, believing that, mixed
with the seed-rice, it will ensure a plentiful crop. Then the oxen are
unyoked, and rice, maize, sesame, sago, bananas, sugar-cane, melons, and so
on, are set before them; whatever they eat first will, it is thought, be dear
in the year following, though some people interpret the omen in the opposite
sense. During this time the temporary king stands leaning against a tree with
his right foot resting on his left knee. >From standing thus on one foot he is
popularly known as King Hop; but his official title is Phaya Phollathep Lord
of the Heavenly Hosts. He is a sort of Minister of Agriculture; all disputes
about fields, rice, and so forth, are referred to him. There is moreover
another ceremony in which he personates the king. It takes place in the second
month (which falls in the cold season) and lasts three days. He is conducted
in procession to an open place opposite the Temple of the Brahmans, where
there are a number of poles dressed like May-poles, upon which the Brahmans
swing. All the while that they swing and dance, the Lord of the Heavenly Hosts
has to stand on one foot upon a seat which is made of bricks plastered over,
covered with a white cloth, and hung with tapestry. He is supported by a
wooden frame with a gilt canopy, and two Brahmans stand one on each side of
him. The dancing Brahmans carry buffalo horns with which they draw water from
a large copper caldron and sprinkle it on the spectators; this is supposed to
bring good luck, causing the people to dwell in peace and quiet, health and
prosperity. The time during which the Lord of the Heavenly Hosts has to stand
on one foot is about three hours. This is thought to prove the dispositions
of the Devattas and spirits. If he lets his foot down he is liable to
forfeit his property and have his family enslaved by the king, as it is
believed to be a bad omen, portending destruction to the state, and
instability to the throne. But if he stand firm he is believed to have gained
a victory over evil spirits, and he has moreover the privilege, ostensibly at
least, of seizing any ship which may enter the harbour during these three
days, and taking its contents, and also of entering any open shop in the town
and carrying away what he chooses.

Such were the duties and privileges of the Siamese King Hop down to about
the middle of the nineteenth century or later. Under the reign of the late
enlightened monarch this quaint personage was to some extent both shorn of the
glories and relieved of the burden of his office. He still watches, as of old,
the Brahmans rushing through the air in a swing suspended between two tall
masts, each some ninety feet high; but he is allowed to sit instead of stand,
and, although public opinion still expects him to keep his right foot on his
left knee during the whole of the ceremony, he would incur no legal penalty
were he, to the great chagrin of the people, to put his weary foot to the
ground. Other signs, too, tell of the invasion of the East by the ideas and
civilisation of the West. The thoroughfares that lead to the scene of the
performance are blocked with carriages: lamp-posts and telegraph posts, to
which eager spectators cling like monkeys, rise above the dense crowd; and,
while a tatterdemalion band of the old style, in gaudy garb of vermilion and
yellow, bangs and tootles away on drums and trumpets of an antique pattern,
the procession of barefooted soldiers in brilliant uniforms steps briskly
along to the lively strains of a modern military band playing Marching
through Georgia.

On the first day of the sixth month, which was regarded as the beginning
of the year, the king and people of Samarcand used to put on new clothes and
cut their hair and beards. Then they repaired to a forest near the capital
where they shot arrows on horseback for seven days. On the last day the target
was a gold coin, and he who hit it had the right to be king for one day. In
Upper Egypt on the first day of the solar year by Coptic reckoning, that is,
on the tenth of September, when the Nile has generally reached its highest
point, the regular government is suspended for three days and every town
chooses its own ruler. This temporary lord wears a sort of tall fool's cap and
a long flaxen beard, and is enveloped in a strange mantle. With a wand of
office in his hand and attended by men disguised as scribes, executioners, and
so forth, he proceeds to the Governor's house. The latter allows himself to be
deposed; and the mock king, mounting the throne, holds a tribunal, to the
decisions of which even the governor and his officials must bow. After three
days the mock king is condemned to death; the envelope or shell in which he
was encased is committed to the flames, and from its ashes the Fellah creeps
forth. The custom perhaps points to an old practice of burning a real king in
grim earnest. In Uganda the brothers of the king used to be burned, because it
was not lawful to shed the royal blood.

The Mohammedan students of Fez, in Morocco, are allowed to appoint a
sultan of their own, who reigns for a few weeks, and is known as Sultan
t-tulba, the Sultan of the Scribes. This brief authority is put up for
auction and knocked down to the highest bidder. It brings some substantial
privileges with it, for the holder is freed from taxes thenceforward, and he
has the right of asking a favour from the real sultan. That favour is seldom
refused; it usually consists in the release of a prisoner. Moreover, the
agents of the student-sultan levy fines on the shopkeepers and householders,
against whom they trump up various humorous charges. The temporary sultan is
surrounded with the pomp of a real court, and parades the streets in state
with music and shouting, while a royal umbrella is held over his head. With
the so-called fines and free-will offerings, to which the real sultan adds a
liberal supply of provisions, the students have enough to furnish forth a
magnificent banquet; and altogether they enjoy themselves thoroughly,
indulging in all kinds of games and amusements. For the first seven days the
mock sultan remains in the college; then he goes about a mile out of the town
and encamps on the bank of the river, attended by the students and not a few
of the citizens. On the seventh day of his stay outside the town he is visited
by the real sultan, who grants him his request and gives him seven more days
to reign, so that the reign of the Sultan of the Scribes nominally lasts
three weeks. But when six days of the last week have passed the mock sultan
runs back to the town by night. This temporary sultanship always falls in
spring, about the beginning of April. Its origin is said to have been as
follows. When Mulai Rasheed II. was fighting for the throne in 1664 or 1665, a
certain Jew usurped the royal authority at Taza. But the rebellion was soon
suppressed through the loyalty and devotion of the students. To effect their
purpose they resorted to an ingenious stratagem. Forty of them caused
themselves to be packed in chests which were sent as a present to the usurper.
In the dead of night, while the unsuspecting Jew was slumbering peacefully
among the packing-cases, the lids were stealthily raised, the brave forty
crept forth, slew the usurper, and took possession of the city in the name of
the real sultan, who, to mark his gratitude for the help thus rendered him in
time of need, conferred on the students the right of annually appointing a
sultan of their own. The narrative has all the air of a fiction devised to
explain an old custom, of which the real meaning and origin had been
forgotten.

A custom of annually appointing a mock king for a single day was observed
at Lostwithiel in Cornwall down to the sixteenth century. On little Easter
Sunday the freeholders of the town and manor assembled together, either in
person or by their deputies, and one among them, as it fell to his lot by
turn, gaily attired and gallantly mounted, with a crown on his head, a sceptre
in his hand, and a sword borne before him, rode through the principal street
to the church, dutifully attended by all the rest on horseback. The clergyman
in his best robes received him at the churchyard stile and conducted him to
hear divine service. On leaving the church he repaired, with the same pomp, to
a house provided for his reception. Here a feast awaited him and his suite,
and being set at the head of the table he was served on bended knees, with all
the rites due to the estate of a prince. The ceremony ended with the dinner,
and every man returned home.

Sometimes the temporary king occupies the throne, not annually, but once
for all at the beginning of each reign. Thus in the kingdom of Jambi in
Sumatra it is the custom that at the beginning of a new reign a man of the
people should occupy the throne and exercise the royal prerogatives for a
single day. The origin of the custom is explained by a tradition that there
were once five royal brothers, the four elder of whom all declined the throne
on the ground of various bodily defects, leaving it to their youngest brother.
But the eldest occupied the throne for one day, and reserved for his
descendants a similar privilege at the beginning of every reign. Thus the
office of temporary king is hereditary in a family akin to the royal house. In
Bilaspur it seems to be the custom, after the death of a Rajah, for a Brahman
to eat rice out of the dead Rajah's hand, and then to occupy the throne for a
year. At the end of the year the Brahman receives presents and is dismissed
from the territory, being forbidden apparently to return. The idea seems to
be that the spirit of the Rj enters into the Brhman who eats the khir
(rice and milk) out of his hand when he is dead, as the Brahman is apparently
carefully watched during the whole year, and not allowed to go away. The same
or a similar custom is believed to obtain among the hill states about Kangra.
The custom of banishing the Brahman who represents the king may be a
substitute for putting him to death. At the installation of a prince of
Carinthia a peasant, in whose family the office was hereditary, ascended a
marble stone which stood surrounded by meadows in a spacious valley; on his
right stood a black mother-cow, on his left a lean ugly mare. A rustic crowd
gathered about him. Then the future prince, dressed as a peasant and carrying
a shepherd's staff, drew near, attended by courtiers and magistrates. On
perceiving him the peasant called out, Who is this whom I see coming so
proudly along? The people answered, The prince of the land. The peasant was
then prevailed on to surrender the marble seat to the prince on condition of
receiving sixty pence, the cow and mare, and exemption from taxes. But before
yielding his place he gave the prince a light blow on the cheek.

Some points about these temporary kings deserve to be specially noticed
before we pass to the next branch of the evidence. In the first place, the
Cambodian and Siamese examples show clearly that it is especially the divine
or magical functions of the king which are transferred to his temporary
substitute. This appears from the belief that by keeping up his foot the
temporary king of Siam gained a victory over the evil spirits, whereas by
letting it down he imperilled the existence of the state. Again, the Cambodian
ceremony of trampling down the mountain of rice, and the Siamese ceremony of
opening the ploughing and sowing, are charms to produce a plentiful harvest,
as appears from the belief that those who carry home some of the trampled
rice, or of the seed sown, will thereby secure a good crop. Moreover, when the
Siamese representative of the king is guiding the plough, the people watch him
anxiously, not to see whether he drives a straight furrow, but to mark the
exact point on his leg to which the skirt of his silken robe reaches; for on
that is supposed to hang the state of the weather and the crops during the
ensuing season. If the Lord of the Heavenly Hosts hitches up his garment above
his knee, the weather will be wet and heavy rains will spoil the harvest. If
he lets it trail to his ankle, a drought will be the consequence. But fine
weather and heavy crops will follow if the hem of his robe hangs exactly
half-way down the calf of his leg. So closely is the course of nature, and
with it the weal or woe of the people, dependent on the minutest act or
gesture of the king's representative. But the task of making the crops grow,
thus deputed to the temporary kings, is one of the magical functions regularly
supposed to be discharged by kings in primitive society. The rule that the
mock king must stand on one foot upon a raised seat in the rice-field was
perhaps originally meant as a charm to make the crop grow high; at least this
was the object of a similar ceremony observed by the old Prussians. The
tallest girl, standing on one foot upon a seat, with her lap full of cakes, a
cup of brandy in her right hand and a piece of elm-bark or linden-bark in her
left, prayed to the god Waizganthos that the flax might grow as high as she
was standing. Then, after draining the cup, she had it refilled, and poured
the brandy on the ground as an offering to Waizganthos, and threw down the
cakes for his attendant sprites. If she remained steady on one foot throughout
the ceremony, it was an omen that the flax crop would be good; but if she let
her foot down, it was feared that the crop might fail. The same significance
perhaps attaches to the swinging of the Brahmans, which the Lord of the
Heavenly Hosts had formerly to witness standing on one foot. On the principles
of homoeopathic or imitative magic it might be thought that the higher the
priests swing the higher will grow the rice. For the ceremony is described as
a harvest festival, and swinging is practised by the Letts of Russia with the
avowed intention of influencing the growth of the crops. In the spring and
early summer, between Easter and St. John's Day (the summer solstice), every
Lettish peasant is said to devote his leisure hours to swinging diligently;
for the higher he rises in the air the higher will his flax grow that season.

In the foregoing cases the temporary king is appointed annually in
accordance with a regular custom. But in other cases the appointment is made
only to meet a special emergency, such as to relieve the real king from some
actual or threatened evil by diverting it to a substitute, who takes his place
on the throne for a short time. The history of Persia furnishes instances of
such occasional substitutes for the Shah. Thus Shah Abbas the Great, being
warned by his astrologers in the year 1591 that a serious danger impended over
him, attempted to avert the omen by abdicating the throne and appointing a
certain unbeliever named Yusoofee, probably a Christian, to reign in his
stead. The substitute was accordingly crowned, and for three days, if we may
trust the Persian historians, he enjoyed not only the name and the state but
the power of the king. At the end of his brief reign he was put to death: the
decree of the stars was fulfilled by this sacrifice; and Abbas, who reascended
his throne in a most propitious hour, was promised by his astrologers a long
and glorious reign.

Chapter 26. Sacrifice of the King's Son.

A POINT to notice about the temporary kings described in the foregoing
chapter is that in two places (Cambodia and Jambi) they come of a stock which
is believed to be akin to the royal family. If the view here taken of the
origin of these temporary kingships is correct, we can easily understand why
the king's substitute should sometimes be of the same race as the king. When
the king first succeeded in getting the life of another accepted as a
sacrifice instead of his own, he would have to show that the death of that
other would serve the purpose quite as well as his own would have done. Now it
was as a god or demigod that the king had to die; therefore the substitute who
died for him had to be invested, at least for the occasion, with the divine
attributes of the king. This, as we have just seen, was certainly the case
with the temporary kings of Siam and Cambodia; they were invested with the
supernatural functions, which in an earlier stage of society were the special
attributes of the king. But no one could so well represent the king in his
divine character as his son, who might be supposed to share the divine
afflatus of his father. No one, therefore, could so appropriately die for the
king and, through him, for the whole people, as the king's son.

We have seen that according to tradition, Aun or On, King of Sweden,
sacrificed nine of his sons to Odin at Upsala in order that his own life might
be spared. After he had sacrificed his second son he received from the god an
answer that he should live so long as he gave him one of his sons every ninth
year. When he had sacrificed his seventh son, he still lived, but was so
feeble that he could not walk but had to be carried in a chair. Then he
offered up his eighth son, and lived nine years more, lying in his bed. After
that he sacrificed his ninth son, and lived another nine years, but so that he
drank out of a horn like a weaned child. He now wished to sacrifice his only
remaining son to Odin, but the Swedes would not allow him. So he died and was
buried in a mound at Upsala.

In ancient Greece there seems to have been at least one kingly house of
great antiquity of which the eldest sons were always liable to be sacrificed
in room of their royal sires. When Xerxes was marching through Thessaly at the
head of his mighty host to attack the Spartans at Thermopylae, he came to the
town of Alus. Here he was shown the sanctuary of Laphystian Zeus, about which
his guides told him a strange tale. It ran somewhat as follows. Once upon a
time the king of the country, by name Athamas, married a wife Nephele, and had
by her a son called Phrixus and a daughter named Helle. Afterwards he took to
himself a second wife called Ino, by whom he had two sons, Learchus and
Melicertes. But his second wife was jealous of her stepchildren, Phrixus and
Helle, and plotted their death. She went about very cunningly to compass her
bad end. First of all she persuaded the women of the country to roast the seed
corn secretly before it was committed to the ground. So next year no crops
came up and the people died of famine. Then the king sent messengers to the
oracle at Delphi to enquire the cause of the dearth. But the wicked stepmother
bribed the messenger to give out as the answer of the god that the dearth
would never cease till the children of Athamas by his first wife had been
sacrificed to Zeus. When Athamas heard that, he sent for the children, who
were with the sheep. But a ram with a fleece of gold opened his lips, and
speaking with the voice of a man warned the children of their danger. So they
mounted the ram and fled with him over land and sea. As they flew over the
sea, the girl slipped from the animal's back, and falling into water was
drowned. But her brother Phrixus was brought safe to the land of Colchis,
where reigned a child of the sun. Phrixus married the king's daughter, and she
bore him a son Cytisorus. And there he sacrificed the ram with the golden
fleece to Zeus the God of Flight; but some will have it that he sacrificed the
animal to Laphystian Zeus. The golden fleece itself he gave to his wife's
father, who nailed it to an oak tree, guarded by a sleepless dragon in a
sacred grove of Ares. Meanwhile at home an oracle had commanded that King
Athamas himself should be sacrificed as an expiatory offering for the whole
country. So the people decked him with garlands like a victim and led him to
the altar, where they were just about to sacrifice him when he was rescued
either by his grandson Cytisorus, who arrived in the nick of time from
Colchis, or by Hercules, who brought tidings that the king's son Phrixus was
yet alive. Thus Athamas was saved, but afterward he went mad, and mistaking
his son Learchus for a wild beast, shot him dead. Next he attempted the life
of his remaining son Melicertes, but the child was rescued by his mother Ino,
who ran and threw herself and him from a high rock into the sea. Mother and
son were changed into marine divinities, and the son received special homage
in the isle of Tenedos, where babes were sacrificed to him. Thus bereft of
wife and children the unhappy Athamas quitted his country, and on enquiring of
the oracle where he should dwell was told to take up his abode wherever he
should be entertained by wild beasts. He fell in with a pack of wolves
devouring sheep, and when they saw him they fled and left him the bleeding
remnants of their prey. In this way the oracle was fulfilled. But because King
Athamas had not been sacrificed as a sin-offering for the whole country, it
was divinely decreed that the eldest male scion of his family in each
generation should be sacrificed without fail, if ever he set foot in the
town-hall, where the offerings were made to Laphystian Zeus by one of the
house of Athamas. Many of the family, Xerxes was informed, had fled to foreign
lands to escape this doom; but some of them had returned long afterwards, and
being caught by the sentinels in the act of entering the town-hall were
wreathed as victims, led forth in procession, and sacrificed. These instances
appear to have been notorious, if not frequent; for the writer of a dialogue
attributed to Plato, after speaking of the immolation of human victims by the
Carthaginians, adds that such practices were not unknown among the Greeks, and
he refers with horror to the sacrifices offered on Mount Lycaeus and by the
descendants of Athamas.

The suspicion that this barbarous custom by no means fell into disuse even
in later days is strengthened by a case of human sacrifice which occurred in
Plutarch's time at Orchomenus, a very ancient city of Boeotia, distant only a
few miles across the plain from the historian's birthplace. Here dwelt a
family of which the men went by the name of Psoloeis or Sooty, and the women
by the name of Oleae or Destructive. Every year at the festival of the
Agrionia the priest of Dionysus pursued these women with a drawn sword, and if
he overtook one of them he had the right to slay her. In Plutarch's lifetime
the right was actually exercised by a priest Zoilus. The family thus liable to
furnish at least one human victim every year was of royal descent, for they
traced their lineage to Minyas, the famous old king of Orchomenus, the monarch
of fabulous wealth, whose stately treasury, as it is called, still stands in
ruins at the point where the long rocky hill of Orchomenus melts into the vast
level expanse of the Copaic plain. Tradition ran that the king's three
daughters long despised the other women of the country for yielding to the
Bacchic frenzy, and sat at home in the king's house scornfully plying the
distaff and the loom, while the rest, wreathed with flowers, their dishevelled
locks streaming to the wind, roamed in ecstasy the barren mountains that rise
above Orchomenus, making the solitude of the hills to echo to the wild music
of cymbals and tambourines. But in time the divine fury infected even the
royal damsels in their quiet chamber; they were seized with a fierce longing
to partake of human flesh, and cast lots among themselves which should give up
her child to furnish a cannibal feast. The lot fell on Leucippe, and she
surrendered her son Hippasus, who was torn limb from limb by the three. From
these misguided women sprang the Oleae and the Psoloeis, of whom the men were
said to be so called because they wore sad-coloured raiment in token of their
mourning and grief.

Now this practice of taking human victims from a family of royal descent
at Orchomenus is all the more significant because Athamas himself is said to
have reigned in the land of Orchomenus even before the time of Minyas, and
because over against the city there rises Mount Laphystius, on which, as at
Alus in Thessaly, there was a sanctuary of Laphystian Zeus, where, according
to tradition, Athamas purposed to sacrifice his two children Phrixus and
Helle. On the whole, comparing the traditions about Athamas with the custom
that obtained with regard to his descendants in historical times, we may
fairly infer that in Thessaly and probably in Boeotia there reigned of old a
dynasty of which the kings were liable to be sacrificed for the good of the
country to the god called Laphystian Zeus, but that they contrived to shift
the fatal responsibility to their offspring, of whom the eldest son was
regularly destined to the altar. As time went on, the cruel custom was so far
mitigated that a ram was accepted as a vicarious sacrifice in room of the
royal victim, provided always that the prince abstained from setting foot in
the town-hall where the sacrifices were offered to Laphystian Zeus by one of
his kinsmen. But if he were rash enough to enter the place of doom, to thrust
himself wilfully, as it were, on the notice of the god who had good-naturedly
winked at the substitution of a ram, the ancient obligation which had been
suffered to lie in abeyance recovered all its force, and there was no help for
it but he must die. The tradition which associated the sacrifice of the king
or his children with a great dearth points clearly to the belief, so common
among primitive folk, that the king is responsible for the weather and the
crops, and that he may justly pay with his life for the inclemency of the one
or the failure of the other. Athamas and his line, in short, appear to have
united divine or magical with royal functions; and this view is strongly
supported by the claims to divinity which Salmoneus, the brother of Athamas,
is said to have set up. We have seen that this presumptuous mortal professed
to be no other than Zeus himself, and to wield the thunder and lightning, of
which he made a trumpery imitation by the help of tinkling kettles and blazing
torches. If we may judge from analogy, his mock thunder and lightning were no
mere scenic exhibition designed to deceive and impress the beholders; they
were enchantments practised by the royal magician for the purpose of bringing
about the celestial phenomena which they feebly mimicked.

Among the Semites of Western Asia the king, in a time of national danger,
sometimes gave his own son to die as a sacrifice for the people. Thus Philo of
Byblus, in his work on the Jews, says: It was an ancient custom in a crisis
of great danger that the ruler of a city or nation should give his beloved son
to die for the whole people, as a ransom offered to the avenging demons; and
the children thus offered were slain with mystic rites. So Cronus, whom the
Phoenicians call Israel, being king of the land and having an only-begotten
son called Jeoud (for in the Phoenician tongue Jeoud signifies 'only
begotten'), dressed him in royal robes and sacrificed him upon an altar in a
time of war, when the country was in great danger from the enemy. When the
king of Moab was besieged by the Israelites and hard beset, he took his eldest
son, who should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt
offering on the wall.

Chapter 27. Succession to the Soul.

TO THE VIEW that in early times, and among barbarous races, kings have
frequently been put to death at the end of a short reign, it may be objected
that such a custom would tend to the extinction of the royal family. The
objection may be met by observing, first, that the kingship is often not
confined to one family, but may be shared in turn by several; second, that the
office is frequently not hereditary, but is open to men of any family, even to
foreigners, who may fulfil the requisite conditions, such as marrying a
princess or vanquishing the king in battle; and, third, that even if the
custom did tend to the extinction of a dynasty, that is not a consideration
which would prevent its observance among people less provident of the future
and less heedful of human life than ourselves. Many races, like many
individuals, have indulged in practices which must in the end destroy them.
The Polynesians seem regularly to have killed two-thirds of their children. In
some parts of East Africa the proportion of infants massacred at birth is said
to be the same. Only children born in certain presentations are allowed to
live. The Jagas, a conquering tribe in Angola, are reported to have put to
death all their children, without exception, in order that the women might not
be cumbered with babies on the march. They recruited their numbers by adopting
boys and girls of thirteen or fourteen years of age, whose parents they had
killed and eaten. Among the Mbaya Indians of South America the women used to
murder all their children except the last, or the one they believed to be the
last. If one of them had another child afterwards, she killed it. We need not
wonder that this practice entirely destroyed a branch of the Mbaya nation, who
had been for many years the most formidable enemies of the Spaniards. Among
the Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco, the missionaries discovered what they
describe as a carefully planned system of racial suicide, by the practice of
infanticide by abortion, and other methods. Nor is infanticide the only mode
in which a savage tribe commits suicide. A lavish use of the poison ordeal may
be equally effective. Some time ago a small tribe named Uwet came down from
the hill country, and settled on the left branch of the Calabar River in West
Africa. When the missionaries first visited the place, they found the
population considerable, distributed into three villages. Since then the
constant use of the poison ordeal has almost extinguished the tribe. On one
occasion the whole population took poison to prove their innocence. About half
perished on the spot, and the remnant, we are told, still continuing their
superstitious practice, must soon become extinct. With such examples before us
we need not hesitate to believe that many tribes have felt no scruple or
delicacy in observing a custom which tends to wipe out a single family. To
attribute such scruples to them is to commit the common, the perpetually
repeated mistake of judging the savage by the standard of European
civilisation. If any of my readers set out with the notion that all races of
men think and act much in the same way as educated Englishmen, the evidence of
superstitious belief and custom collected in this work should suffice to
disabuse him of so erroneous a prepossession.

The explanation here given of the custom of killing divine persons
assumes, or at least is readily combined with, the idea that the soul of the
slain divinity is transmitted to his successor. Of this transmission I have no
direct proof except in the case of the Shilluk, among whom the practice of
killing the divine king prevails in a typical form, and with whom it is a
fundamental article of faith that the soul of the divine founder of the
dynasty is immanent in every one of his slain successors. But if this is the
only actual example of such a belief which I can adduce, analogy seems to
render it probable that a similar succession to the soul of the slain god has
been supposed to take place in other instances, though direct evidence of it
is wanting. For it has been already shown that the soul of the incarnate deity
is often supposed to transmigrate at death into another incarnation; and if
this takes place when the death is a natural one, there seems no reason why it
should not take place when the death has been brought about by violence.
Certainly the idea that the soul of a dying person may be transmitted to his
successor is perfectly familiar to primitive peoples. In Nias the eldest son
usually succeeds his father in the chieftainship. But if from any bodily or
mental defect the eldest son is disqualified for ruling, the father determines
in his lifetime which of his sons shall succeed him. In order, however, to
establish his right of succession, it is necessary that the son upon whom his
father's choice falls shall catch in his mouth or in a bag the last breath,
and with it the soul, of the dying chief. For whoever catches his last breath
is chief equally with the appointed successor. Hence the other brothers, and
sometimes also strangers, crowd round the dying man to catch his soul as it
passes. The houses in Nias are raised above the ground on posts, and it has
happened that when the dying man lay with his face on the floor, one of the
candidates has bored a hole in the floor and sucked in the chief's last breath
through a bamboo tube. When the chief has no son, his soul is caught in a bag,
which is fastened to an image made to represent the deceased; the soul is then
believed to pass into the image.

Sometimes it would appear that the spiritual link between a king and the
souls of his predecessors is formed by the possession of some part of their
persons. In southern Celebes the regalia often consist of corporeal portions
of deceased rajahs, which are treasured as sacred relics and confer the right
to the throne. Similarly among the Sakalavas of southern Madagascar a vertebra
of the neck, a nail, and a lock of hair of a deceased king are placed in a
crocodile's tooth and carefully kept along with the similar relics of his
predecessors in a house set apart for the purpose. The possession of these
relics constitutes the right to the throne. A legitimate heir who should be
deprived of them would lose all his authority over the people, and on the
contrary a usurper who should make himself master of the relics would be
acknowledged king without dispute. When the Alake or king of Abeokuta in West
Africa dies, the principal men decapitate his body, and placing the head in a
large earthen vessel deliver it to the new sovereign; it becomes his fetish
and he is bound to pay it honours. Sometimes, in order apparently that the new
sovereign may inherit more surely the magical and other virtues of the royal
line, he is required to eat a piece of his dead predecessor. Thus at Abeokuta
not only was the head of the late king presented to his successor, but the
tongue was cut out and given him to eat. Hence, when the natives wish to
signify that the sovereign reigns, they say, He has eaten the king. A custom
of the same sort is still practised at Ibadan, a large town in the interior of
Lagos, West Africa. When the king dies his head is cut off and sent to his
nominal suzerain, the Alafin of Oyo, the paramount king of Yoruba land; but
his heart is eaten by his successor. This ceremony was performed not very many
years ago at the accession of a new king of Ibadan.

Taking the whole of the preceding evidence into account, we may fairly
suppose that when the divine king or priest is put to death his spirit is
believed to pass into his successor. In point of fact, among the Shilluk of
the White Nile, who regularly kill their divine kings, every king on his
accession has to perform a ceremony which appears designed to convey to him
the same sacred and worshipful spirit which animated all his predecessors, one
after the other, on the throne.

Chapter 28. The Killing of the Tree-Spirit.

1. The Whitsuntide Mummers.

IT remains to ask what light the custom of killing the divine king or priest
sheds upon the special subject to our enquiry. In an earlier part of this work
we saw reason to suppose that the King of the Wood at Nemi was regarded as an
incarnation of a tree-spirit or of the spirit of vegetation, and that as such
he would be endowed, in the belief of his worshippers, with a magical power of
making the trees to bear fruit, the crops to grow, and so on. His life must
therefore have been held very precious by his worshippers, and was probably
hedged in by a system of elaborate precautions or taboos like those by which,
in so many places, the life of the man-god has been guarded against the
malignant influence of demons and sorcerers. But we have seen that the very
value attached to the life of the man-god necessitates his violent death as
the only means of preserving it from the inevitable decay of age. The same
reasoning would apply to the King of the Wood; he, too, had to be killed in
order that the divine spirit, incarnate in him, might be transferred in its
integrity to his successor. The rule that he held office till a stronger
should slay him might be supposed to secure both the preservation of his
divine life in full vigour and its transference to a suitable successor as
soon as that vigour began to be impaired. For so long as he could maintain his
position by the strong hand, it might be inferred that his natural force was
not abated; whereas his defeat and death at the hands of another proved that
his strength was beginning to fail and that it was time his divine life should
be lodged in a less dilapidated tabernacle. This explanation of the rule that
the King of the Wood had to be slain by his successor at least renders that
rule perfectly intelligible. It is strongly supported by the theory and
practice of the Shilluk, who put their divine king to death at the first signs
of failing health, lest his decrepitude should entail a corresponding failure
of vital energy on the corn, the cattle, and men. Moreover, it is countenanced
by the analogy of the Chitom, upon whose life the existence of the world was
supposed to hang, and who was therefore slain by his successor as soon as he
showed signs of breaking up. Again, the terms on which in later times the King
of Calicut held office are identical with those attached to the office of King
of the Wood, except that whereas the former might be assailed by a candidate
at any time, the King of Calicut might only be attacked once every twelve
years. But as the leave granted to the King of Calicut to reign so long as he
could defend himself against all comers was a mitigation of the old rule which
set a fixed term to his life, so we may conjecture that the similar permission
granted to the King of the Wood was a mitigation of an older custom of putting
him to death at the end of a definite period. In both cases the new rule gave
to the god-man at least a chance for his life, which under the old rule was
denied him; and people probably reconciled themselves to the change by
reflecting that so long as the god-man could maintain himself by the sword
against all assaults, there was no reason to apprehend that the fatal decay
had set in.

The conjecture that the King of the Wood was formerly put to death at the
expiry of a fixed term, without being allowed a chance for his life, will be
confirmed if evidence can be adduced of a custom of periodically killing his
counterparts, the human representatives of the tree-spirit, in Northern
Europe. Now in point of fact such a custom has left unmistakable traces of
itself in the rural festivals of the peasantry. To take examples.

At Niederpring, in Lower Bavaria, the Whitsuntide representative of the
tree-spiritthe Pfingstl as he was calledwas clad from top to toe in leaves
and flowers. On his head he wore a high pointed cap, the ends of which rested
on his shoulders, only two holes being left in it for his eyes. The cap was
covered with water-flowers and surmounted with a nosegay of peonies. The
sleeves of his coat were also made of water-plants, and the rest of his body
was enveloped in alder and hazel leaves. On each side of him marched a boy
holding up one of the Pfingstls arms. These two boys carried drawn swords,
and so did most of the others who formed the procession. They stopped at every
house where they hoped to receive a present; and the people, in hiding, soused
the leaf-clad boy with water. All rejoiced when he was well drenched. Finally
he waded into the brook up to his middle; whereupon one of the boys, standing
on the bridge, pretended to cut off his head. At Wurmlingen, in Swabia, a
score of young fellows dress themselves on Whit-Monday in white shirts and
white trousers, with red scarves round their waists and swords hanging from
the scarves. They ride on horseback into the wood, led by two trumpeters
blowing their trumpets. In the wood they cut down leafy oak branches, in which
they envelop from head to foot him who was the last of their number to ride
out of the village. His legs, however, are encased separately, so that he may
be able to mount his horse again. Further, they give him a long artificial
neck, with an artificial head and a false face on the top of it. Then a
May-tree is cut, generally an aspen or beech about ten feet high; and being
decked with coloured handkerchiefs and ribbons it is entrusted to a special
May-bearer. The cavalcade then returns with music and song to the village.
Amongst the personages who figure in the procession are a Moorish king with a
sooty face and a crown on his head, a Dr. Iron-Beard, a corporal, and an
executioner. They halt on the village green, and each of the characters makes
a speech in rhyme. The executioner announces that the leaf-clad man has been
condemned to death, and cuts off his false head. Then the riders race to the
May-tree, which has been set up a little way off. The first man who succeeds
in wrenching it from the ground as he gallops past keeps it with all its
decorations. The ceremony is observed every second or third year.

In Saxony and Thringen there is a Whitsuntide ceremony called chasing
the Wild Man out of the bush, or fetching the Wild Man out of the wood. A
young fellow is enveloped in leaves or moss and called the Wild Man. He hides
in the wood and the other lads of the village go out to seek him. They find
him, lead him captive out of the wood, and fire at him with blank muskets. He
falls like dead to the ground, but a lad dressed as a doctor bleeds him, and
he comes to life again. At this they rejoice, and, binding him fast on a
waggon, take him to the village, where they tell all the people how they have
caught the Wild Man. At every house they receive a gift. In the Erzgebirge the
following custom was annually observed at Shrovetide about the beginning of
the seventeenth century. Two men disguised as Wild Men, the one in brushwood
and moss, the other in straw, were led about the streets, and at last taken to
the market-place, where they were chased up and down, shot and stabbed. Before
falling they reeled about with strange gestures and spirted blood on the
people from bladders which they carried. When they were down, the huntsmen
placed them on boards and carried them to the ale-house, the miners marching
beside them and winding blasts on their mining tools as if they had taken a
noble head of game. A very similar Shrovetide custom is still observed near
Schluckenau in Bohemia. A man dressed up as a Wild Man is chased through
several streets till he comes to a narrow lane across which a cord is
stretched. He stumbles over the cord and, falling to the ground, is overtaken
and caught by his pursuers. The executioner runs up and stabs with his sword a
bladder filled with blood which the Wild Man wears round his body; so the Wild
Man dies, while a stream of blood reddens the ground. Next day a straw-man,
made up to look like the Wild Man, is placed on a litter, and, accompanied by
a great crowd, is taken to a pool into which it is thrown by the executioner.
The ceremony is called burying the Carnival.

In Semic (Bohemia) the custom of beheading the King is observed on
Whit-Monday. A troop of young people disguise themselves; each is girt with a
girdle of bark and carries a wooden sword and a trumpet of willow-bark. The
King wears a robe of tree-bark adorned with flowers, on his head is a crown of
bark decked with flowers and branches, his feet are wound about with ferns, a
mask hides his face, and for a sceptre he has a hawthorn switch in his hand. A
lad leads him through the village by a rope fastened to his foot, while the
rest dance about, blow their trumpets, and whistle. In every farmhouse the
King is chased round the room, and one of the troop, amid much noise and
outcry, strikes with his sword a blow on the Kings robe of bark till it rings
again. Then a gratuity is demanded. The ceremony of decapitation, which is
here somewhat slurred over, is carried out with a greater semblance of reality
in other parts of Bohemia. Thus in some villages of the Kniggrtz district on
Whit-Monday the girls assemble under one lime-tree and the young men under
another, all dressed in their best and tricked out with ribbons. The young men
twine a garland for the Queen, and the girls another for the King. When they
have chosen the King and Queen they all go in procession two and two, to the
ale-house, from the balcony of which the crier proclaims the names of the King
and Queen. Both are then invested with the insignia of their office and are
crowned with the garlands, while the music plays up. Then some one gets on a
bench and accuses the King of various offences, such as ill-treating the
cattle. The King appeals to witnesses and a trial ensues, at the close of
which the judge, who carries a white wand as his badge of office, pronounces a
verdict of Guilty, or Not guilty. If the verdict is Guilty, the judge
breaks his wand, the King kneels on a white cloth, all heads are bared, and a
soldier sets three or four hats, one above the other, on his Majestys head.
The judge then pronounces the word Guilty thrice in a loud voice, and orders
the crier to behead the King. The crier obeys by striking off the Kings hats
with the wooden sword.

But perhaps, for our purpose, the most instructive of these mimic
executions is the following Bohemian one. In some places of the Pilsen
district (Bohemia) on Whit-Monday the King is dressed in bark, ornamented with
flowers and ribbons; he wears a crown of gilt paper and rides a horse, which
is also decked with flowers. Attended by a judge, an executioner, and other
characters, and followed by a train of soldiers, all mounted, he rides to the
village square, where a hut or arbour of green boughs has been erected under
the May-trees, which are firs, freshly cut, peeled to the top, and dressed
with flowers and ribbons. After the dames and maidens of the village have been
criticised and a frog beheaded, the cavalcade rides to a place previously
determined upon, in a straight, broad street. Here they draw up in two lines
and the King takes to flight. He is given a short start and rides off at full
speed, pursued by the whole troop. If they fail to catch him he remains King
for another year, and his companions must pay his score at the ale-house in
the evening. But if they overtake and catch him he is scourged with hazel rods
or beaten with the wooden swords and compelled to dismount. Then the
executioner asks, Shall I behead this King? The answer is given, Behead
him; the executioner brandishes his axe, and with the words, One, two,
three, let the King headless be! he strikes off the Kings crown. Amid the
loud cries of the bystanders the King sinks to the ground; then he is laid on
a bier and carried to the nearest farmhouse.

In most of the personages who are thus slain in mimicry it is impossible
not to recognise representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation,
as he is supposed to manifest himself in spring. The bark, leaves, and flowers
in which the actors are dressed, and the season of the year at which they
appear, show that they belong to the same class as the Grass King, King of the
May, Jack-in-the-Green, and other representatives of the vernal spirit of
vegetation which we examined in an earlier part of this work. As if to remove
any possible doubt on this head, we find that in two cases these slain men are
brought into direct connexion with May-trees, which are the impersonal, as the
May King, Grass King, and so forth, are the personal representatives of the
tree-spirit. The drenching of the Pfingstl with water and his wading up to
the middle into the brook are, therefore, no doubt rain-charms like those
which have been already described.

But if these personages represent, as they certainly do, the spirit of
vegetation in spring, the question arises, Why kill them? What is the object
of slaying the spirit of vegetation at any time and above all in spring, when
his services are most wanted? The only probable answer to this question seems
to be given in the explanation already proposed of the custom of killing the
divine king or priest. The divine life, incarnate in a material and mortal
body, is liable to be tainted and corrupted by the weakness of the frail
medium in which it is for a time enshrined; and if it is to be saved from the
increasing enfeeblement which it must necessarily share with its human
incarnation as he advances in years, it must be detached from him before, or
at least as soon as, he exhibits signs of decay, in order to be transferred to
a vigorous successor. This is done by killing the old representative of the
god and conveying the divine spirit from him to a new incarnation. The killing
of the god, that is, of his human incarnation, is therefore merely a necessary
step to his revival or resurrection in a better form. Far from being an
extinction of the divine spirit, it is only the beginning of a purer and
stronger manifestation of it. If this explanation holds good of the custom of
killing divine kings and priests in general, it is still more obviously
applicable to the custom of annually killing the representative of the
tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation in spring. For the decay of plant life in
winter is readily interpreted by primitive man as an enfeeblement of the
spirit of vegetation; the spirit has, he thinks, grown old and weak and must
therefore be renovated by being slain and brought to life in a younger and
fresher form. Thus the killing of the representative of the tree-spirit in
spring is regarded as a means to promote and quicken the growth of vegetation.
For the killing of the tree-spirit is associated always (we must suppose)
implicitly, and sometimes explicitly also, with a revival or resurrection of
him in a more youthful and vigorous form. So in the Saxon and Thringen
custom, after the Wild Man has been shot he is brought to life again by a
doctor; and in the Wurmlingen ceremony there figures a Dr. Iron-Beard, who
probably once played a similar part; certainly in another spring ceremony,
which will be described presently, Dr. Iron-Beard pretends to restore a dead
man to life. But of this revival or resurrection of the god we shall have more
to say anon.

The points of similarity between these North European personages and the
subject of our enquiry "the King of the Wood or priest of Nemi" are sufficiently
striking. In these northern maskers we see kings, whose dress of bark and
leaves along with the hut of green boughs and the fir-trees, under which they
hold their court, proclaim them unmistakably as, like their Italian
counterpart, Kings of the Wood. Like him they die a violent death, but like
him they may escape from it for a time by their bodily strength and agility;
for in several of these northern customs the flight and pursuit of the king is
a prominent part of the ceremony, and in one case at least if the king can
outrun his pursuers he retains his life and his office for another year. In
this last case the king in fact holds office on condition of running for his
life once a year, just as the King of Calicut in later times held office on
condition of defending his life against all comers once every twelve years,
and just as the priest of Nemi held office on condition of defending himself
against any assault at any time. In every one of these instances the life of
the god-man is prolonged on condition of his showing, in a severe physical
contest of fight or flight, that his bodily strength is not decayed, and that,
therefore, the violent death, which sooner or later is inevitable, may for the
present be postponed. With regard to flight it is noticeable that flight
figured conspicuously both in the legend and in the practice of the King of
the Wood. He had to be a runaway slave in memory of the flight of Orestes, the
traditional founder of the worship; hence the Kings of the Wood are described
by an ancient writer as both strong of hand and fleet of foot. Perhaps if we
knew the ritual of the Arician grove fully we might find that the king was
allowed a chance for his life by flight, like his Bohemian brother. I have
already conjectured that the annual flight of the priestly king at Rome
(regifugium) was at first a flight of the same kind; in other words, that he
was originally one of those divine kings who are either put to death after a
fixed period or allowed to prove by the strong hand or the fleet foot that
their divinity is vigorous and unimpaired. One more point of resemblance may
be noted between the Italian King of the Wood and his northern counterparts.
In Saxony and Thringen the representative of the tree-spirit, after being
killed, is brought to life again by a doctor. This is exactly what legend
affirmed to have happened to the first King of the Wood at Nemi, Hippolytus or
Virbius, who after he had been killed by his horses was restored to life by
the physician Aesculapius. Such a legend tallies well with the theory that the
slaying of the King of the Wood was only a step to his revival or resurrection
in his successor.
2. Burying the Carnival

THUS far I have offered an explanation of the rule which required that the
priest of Nemi should be slain by his successor. The explanation claims to be
no more than probable; our scanty knowledge of the custom and of its history
forbids it to be more. But its probability will be augmented in proportion to
the extent to which the motives and modes of thought which it assumes can be
proved to have operated in primitive society. Hitherto the god with whose
death and resurrection we have been chiefly concerned has been the tree-god.
But if I can show that the custom of killing the god and the belief in his
resurrection originated, or at least existed, in the hunting and pastoral
stage of society, when the slain god was an animal, and that it survived into
the agricultural stage, when the slain god was the corn or a human being
representing the corn, the probability of my explanation will have been
considerably increased. This I shall attempt to do in the sequel, and in the
course of the discussion I hope to clear up some obscurities which still
remain, and to answer some objections which may have suggested themselves to
the reader.

We start from the point at which we left offthe spring customs of
European peasantry. Besides the ceremonies already described there are two
kindred sets of observances in which the simulated death of a divine or
supernatural being is a conspicuous feature. In one of them the being whose
death is dramatically represented is a personification of the Carnival; in the
other it is Death himself. The former ceremony falls naturally at the end of
the Carnival, either on the last day of that merry season, namely Shrove
Tuesday, or on the first day of Lent, namely Ash Wednesday. The date of the
other ceremonythe Carrying or Driving out of Death, as it is commonly
calledis not so uniformly fixed. Generally it is the fourth Sunday in Lent,
which hence goes by the name of Dead Sunday; but in some places the
celebration falls a week earlier, in others, as among the Czechs of Bohemia, a
week later, while in certain German villages of Moravia it is held on the
first Sunday after Easter. Perhaps, as has been suggested, the date may
originally have been variable, depending on the appearance of the first
swallow or some other herald of the spring. Some writers regard the ceremony
as Slavonic in its origin. Grimm thought it was a festival of the New Year
with the old Slavs, who began their year in March. We shall first take
examples, of the mimic death of the Carnival, which always falls before the
other in the calendar.

At Frosinone, in Latium, about half-way between Rome and Naples, the dull
monotony of life in a provincial Italian town is agreeably broken on the last
day of the Carnival by the ancient festival known as the Radica. About four
o'clock in the afternoon the town band, playing lively tunes and followed by a
great crowd, proceeds to the Piazza del Plebiscito, where is the
Sub-Prefecture as well as the rest of the Government buildings. Here, in the
middle of the square, the eyes of the expectant multitude are greeted by the
sight of an immense car decked with many-coloured festoons and drawn by four
horses. Mounted on the car is a huge chair, on which sits enthroned the
majestic figure of the Carnival, a man of stucco about nine feet high with a
rubicund and smiling countenance. Enormous boots, a tin helmet like those
which grace the heads of officers of the Italian marine, and a coat of many
colours embellished with strange devices, adorn the outward man of this
stately personage. His left hand rests on the arm of the chair, while with his
right he gracefully salutes the crowd, being moved to this act of civility by
a string which is pulled by a man who modestly shrinks from publicity under
the mercy-seat. And now the crowd, surging excitedly round the car, gives vent
to its feelings in wild cries of joy, gentle and simple being mixed up
together and all dancing furiously the Saltarello. A special feature of the
festival is that every one must carry in his hand what is called a radica (
root), by which is meant a huge leaf of the aloe or rather the agave. Any
one who ventured into the crowd without such a leaf would be unceremoniously
hustled out of it, unless indeed he bore as a substitute a large cabbage at
the end of a long stick or a bunch of grass curiously plaited. When the
multitude, after a short turn, has escorted the slow-moving car to the gate of
the Sub-Prefecture, they halt, and the car, jolting over the uneven ground,
rumbles into the courtyard. A hush now falls on the crowd, their subdued
voices sounding, according to the description of one who has heard them, like
the murmur of a troubled sea. All eyes are turned anxiously to the door from
which the Sub-Prefect himself and the other representatives of the majesty of
the law are expected to issue and pay their homage to the hero of the hour. A
few moments of suspense and then a storm of cheers and hand-clapping salutes
the appearance of the dignitaries, as they file out and, descending the
staircase, take their place in the procession. The hymn of the Carnival is now
thundered out, after which, amid a deafening roar, aloe leaves and cabbages
are whirled aloft and descend impartially on the heads of the just and the
unjust, who lend fresh zest to the proceedings by engaging in a free fight.
When these preliminaries have been concluded to the satisfaction of all
concerned, the procession gets under weigh. The rear is brought up by a cart
laden with barrels of wine and policemen, the latter engaged in the congenial
task of serving out wine to all who ask for it, while a most internecine
struggle, accompanied by a copious discharge of yells, blows, and blasphemy,
goes on among the surging crowd at the cart's tail in their anxiety not to
miss the glorious opportunity of intoxicating themselves at the public
expense. Finally, after the procession has paraded the principal streets in
this majestic manner, the effigy of Carnival is taken to the middle of a
public square, stripped of his finery, laid on a pile of wood, and burnt amid
the cries of the multitude, who thundering out once more the song of the
Carnival fling their so-called roots on the pyre and give themselves up
without restraint to the pleasures of the dance.

In the Abruzzi a pasteboard figure of the Carnival is carried by four
grave-diggers with pipes in their mouths and bottles of wine slung at their
shoulder-belts. In front walks the wife of the Carnival, dressed in mourning
and dissolved in tears. From time to time the company halts, and while the
wife addresses the sympathising public, the grave-diggers refresh the inner
man with a pull at the bottle. In the open square the mimic corpse is laid on
a pyre, and to the roll of drums, the shrill screams of the women, and the
gruffer cries of the men a light is set to it. While the figure burns,
chestnuts are thrown about among the crowd. Sometimes the Carnival is
represented by a straw-man at the top of a pole which is borne through the
town by a troop of mummers in the course of the afternoon. When evening comes
on, four of the mummers hold out a quilt or sheet by the corners, and the
figure of the Carnival is made to tumble into it. The procession is then
resumed, the performers weeping crocodile tears and emphasising the poignancy
of their grief by the help of saucepans and dinner bells. Sometimes, again, in
the Abruzzi the dead Carnival is personified by a living man who lies in a
coffin, attended by another who acts the priest and dispenses holy water in
great profusion from a bathing tub.

At Lerida, in Catalonia, the funeral of the Carnival was witnessed by an
English traveller in 1877. On the last Sunday of the Carnival a grand
procession of infantry, cavalry, and maskers of many sorts, some on horseback
and some in carriages, escorted the grand car of His Grace Pau Pi, as the
effigy was called, in triumph through the principal streets. For three days
the revelry ran high, and then at midnight on the last day of the Carnival the
same procession again wound through the streets, but under a different aspect
and for a different end. The triumphal car was exchanged for a hearse, in
which reposed the effigy of his dead Grace: a troop of maskers, who in the
first procession had played the part of Students of Folly with many a merry
quip and jest, now, robed as priests and bishops, paced slowly along holding
aloft huge lighted tapers and singing a dirge. All the mummers wore crape, and
all the horsemen carried blazing flambeaux. Down the high street, between the
lofty, many-storeyed and balconied houses, where every window, every balcony,
every housetop was crammed with a dense mass of spectators, all dressed and
masked in fantastic gorgeousness, the procession took its melancholy way. Over
the scene flashed and played the shifting cross-lights and shadows from the
moving torches: red and blue Bengal lights flared up and died out again; and
above the trampling of the horses and the measured tread of the marching
multitude rose the voices of the priests chanting the requiem, while the
military bands struck in with the solemn roll of the muffled drums. On
reaching the principal square the procession halted, a burlesque funeral
oration was pronounced over the defunct Pau Pi, and the lights were
extinguished. Immediately the devil and his angels darted from the crowd,
seized the body and fled away with it, hotly pursued by the whole multitude,
yelling, screaming, and cheering. Naturally the fiends were overtaken and
dispersed; and the sham corpse, rescued from their clutches, was laid in a
grave that had been made ready for its reception. Thus the Carnival of 1877 at
Lerida died and was buried.

A ceremony of the same sort is observed in Provence on Ash Wednesday. An
effigy called Caramantran, whimsically attired, is drawn in a chariot or borne
on a litter, accompanied by the populace in grotesque costumes, who carry
gourds full of wine and drain them with all the marks, real or affected, of
intoxication. At the head of the procession are some men disguised as judges
and barristers, and a tall gaunt personage who masquerades as Lent; behind
them follow young people mounted on miserable hacks and attired as mourners
who pretend to bewail the fate that is in store for Caramantran. In the
principal square the procession halts, the tribunal is constituted, and
Caramantran placed at the bar. After a formal trial he is sentenced to death
amid the groans of the mob: the barrister who defended him embraces his client
for the last time: the officers of justice do their duty: the condemned is set
with his back to a wall and hurried into eternity under a shower of stones.
The sea or a river receives his mangled remains. Throughout nearly the whole
of the Ardennes it was and still is customary on Ash Wednesday to burn an
effigy which is supposed to represent the Carnival, while appropriate verses
are sung round about the blazing figure. Very often an attempt is made to
fashion the effigy in the likeness of the husband who is reputed to be least
faithful to his wife of any in the village. As might perhaps have been
anticipated, the distinction of being selected for portraiture under these
painful circumstances has a slight tendency to breed domestic jars, especially
when the portrait is burnt in front of the house of the gay deceiver whom it
represents, while a powerful chorus of caterwauls, groans, and other melodious
sounds bears public testimony to the opinion which his friends and neighbours
entertain of his private virtues. In some villages of the Ardennes a young man
of flesh and blood, dressed up in hay and straw, used to act the part of
Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras), as the personification of the Carnival is often
called in France after the last day of the period which he personates. He was
brought before a mock tribunal, and being condemned to death was placed with
his back to a wall, like a soldier at a military execution, and fired at with
blank cartridges. At Vrigne-aux-Bois one of these harmless buffoons, named
Thierry, was accidentally killed by a wad that had been left in a musket of
the firing-party. When poor Shrove Tuesday dropped under the fire, the
applause was loud and long, he did it so naturally; but when he did not get up
again, they ran to him and found him a corpse. Since then there have been no
more of these mock executions in the Ardennes.

In Normandy on the evening of Ash Wednesday it used to be the custom to
hold a celebration called the Burial of Shrove Tuesday. A squalid effigy
scantily clothed in rags, a battered old hat crushed down on his dirty face,
his great round paunch stuffed with straw, represented the disreputable old
rake who, after a long course of dissipation, was now about to suffer for his
sins. Hoisted on the shoulders of a sturdy fellow, who pretended to stagger
under the burden, this popular personification of the Carnival promenaded the
streets for the last time in a manner the reverse of triumphal. Preceded by a
drummer and accompanied by a jeering rabble, among whom the urchins and all
the tag-rag and bobtail of the town mustered in great force, the figure was
carried about by the flickering light of torches to the discordant din of
shovels and tongs, pots and pans, horns and kettles, mingled with hootings,
groans, and hisses. From time to time the procession halted, and a champion of
morality accused the broken-down old sinner of all the excesses he had
committed and for which he was now about to be burned alive. The culprit,
having nothing to urge in his own defence, was thrown on a heap of straw, a
torch was put to it, and a great blaze shot up, to the delight of the children
who frisked round it screaming out some old popular verses about the death of
the Carnival. Sometimes the effigy was rolled down the slope of a hill before
being burnt. At Saint-L the ragged effigy of Shrove Tuesday was followed by
his widow, a big burly lout dressed as a woman with a crape veil, who emitted
sounds of lamentation and woe in a stentorian voice. After being carried about
the streets on a litter attended by a crowd of maskers, the figure was thrown
into the River Vire. The final scene has been graphically described by Madame
Octave Feuillet as she witnessed it in her childhood some sixty years ago. My
parents invited friends to see, from the top of the tower of Jeanne Couillard,
the funeral procession passing. It was there that, quaffing lemonadethe only
refreshment allowed because of the fastwe witnessed at nightfall a spectacle
of which I shall always preserve a lively recollection. At our feet flowed the
Vire under its old stone bridge. On the middle of the bridge lay the figure of
Shrove Tuesday on a litter of leaves, surrounded by scores of maskers dancing,
singing, and carrying torches. Some of them in their motley costumes ran along
the parapet like fiends. The rest, worn out with their revels, sat on the
posts and dozed. Soon the dancing stopped, and some of the troop, seizing a
torch, set fire to the effigy, after which they flung it into the river with
redoubled shouts and clamour. The man of straw, soaked with resin, floated
away burning down the stream of the Vire, lighting up with its funeral fires
the woods on the bank and the battlements of the old castle in which Louis XI.
and Francis I. had slept. When the last glimmer of the blazing phantom had
vanished, like a falling star, at the end of the valley, every one withdrew,
crowd and maskers alike, and we quitted the ramparts with our guests.

In the neighbourhood of Tbingen on Shrove Tuesday a straw-man, called the
Shrovetide Bear, is made up; he is dressed in a pair of old trousers, and a
fresh black-pudding or two squirts filled with blood are inserted in his neck.
After a formal condemnation he is beheaded, laid in a coffin, and on Ash
Wednesday is buried in the churchyard. This is called Burying the Carnival.
Amongst some of the Saxons of Transylvania the Carnival is hanged. Thus at
Braller on Ash Wednesday or Shrove Tuesday two white and two chestnut horses
draw a sledge on which is placed a straw-man swathed in a white cloth; beside
him is a cart-wheel which is kept turning round. Two lads disguised as old men
follow the sledge lamenting. The rest of the village lads, mounted on
horseback and decked with ribbons, accompany the procession, which is headed
by two girls crowned with evergreen and drawn in a waggon or sledge. A trial
is held under a tree, at which lads disguised as soldiers pronounce sentence
of death. The two old men try to rescue the straw-man and to fly with him, but
to no purpose; he is caught by the two girls and handed over to the
executioner, who hangs him on a tree. In vain the old men try to climb up the
tree and take him down; they always tumble down, and at last in despair they
throw themselves on the ground and weep and howl for the hanged man. An
official then makes a speech in which he declares that the Carnival was
condemned to death because he had done them harm, by wearing out their shoes
and making them tired and sleepy. At the Burial of Carnival in Lechrain, a
man dressed as a woman in black clothes is carried on a litter or bier by four
men; he is lamented over by men disguised as women in black clothes, then
thrown down before the village dung-heap, drenched with water, buried in the
dung-heap, and covered with straw. On the evening of Shrove Tuesday the
Esthonians make a straw figure called metsik or wood-spirit; one year it
is dressed with a man's coat and hat, next year with a hood and a petticoat.
This figure is stuck on a long pole, carried across the boundary of the
village with loud cries of joy, and fastened to the top of a tree in the wood.
The ceremony is believed to be a protection against all kinds of misfortune.

Sometimes at these Shrovetide or Lenten ceremonies the resurrection of the
pretended dead person is enacted. Thus, in some parts of Swabia on Shrove
Tuesday Dr. Iron-Beard professes to bleed a sick man, who thereupon falls as
dead to the ground; but the doctor at last restores him to life by blowing air
into him through a tube. In the Harz Mountains, when Carnival is over, a man
is laid on a baking-trough and carried with dirges to the grave; but in the
grave a glass of brandy is buried instead of the man. A speech is delivered
and then the people return to the village-green or meeting-place, where they
smoke the long clay pipes which are distributed at funerals. On the morning of
Shrove Tuesday in the following year the brandy is dug up and the festival
begins by every one tasting the spirit which, as the phrase goes, has come to
life again.

3. Carrying out Death

THE CEREMONY of Carrying out Death presents much the same features as
Burying the Carnival; except that the carrying out of Death is generally
followed by a ceremony, or at least accompanied by a profession, of bringing
in Summer, Spring, or Life. Thus in Middle Franken, a province of Bavaria, on
the fourth Sunday in Lent, the village urchins used to make a straw effigy of
Death, which they carried about with burlesque pomp through the streets, and
afterwards burned with loud cries beyond the bounds. The Frankish custom is
thus described by a writer of the sixteenth century: At Mid-Lent, the season
when the church bids us rejoice, the young people of my native country make a
straw image of Death, and fastening it to a pole carry it with shouts to the
neighbouring villages. By some they are kindly received, and after being
refreshed with milk, peas, and dried pears, the usual food of that season, are
sent home again. Others, however, treat them with anything but hospitality;
for, looking on them as harbingers of misfortune, to wit of death, they drive
them from their boundaries with weapons and insults. In the villages near
Erlangen, when the fourth Sunday in Lent came around, the peasant girls used
to dress themselves in all their finery with flowers in their hair. Thus
attired they repaired to the neighbouring town, carrying puppets which were
adorned with leaves and covered with white cloths. These they took from house
to house in pairs, stopping at every door where they expected to receive
something, and singing a few lines in which they announced that it was
Mid-Lent and that they were about to throw Death into the water. When they had
collected some trifling gratuities they went to the river Regnitz and flung
the puppets representing Death into the stream. This was done to ensure a
fruitful and prosperous year; further, it was considered a safeguard against
pestilence and sudden death. At Nuremberg girls of seven to eighteen years of
age go through the streets bearing a little open coffin, in which is a doll
hidden under a shroud. Others carry a beech branch, with an apple fastened to
it for a head, in an open box. They sing, We carry Death into the water, it
is well, or We carry Death into the water, carry him in and out again. In
some parts of Bavaria down to 1780 it was believed that a fatal epidemic would
ensue if the custom of Carrying out Death were not observed.

In some villages of Thringen, on the fourth Sunday of Lent, the children
used to carry a puppet of birchen twigs through the village, and then threw it
into a pool, while they sang, We carry the old Death out behind the herdman's
old house; we have got Summer, and Kroden's (?) power is destroyed. At
Debschwitz or Dobschwitz, near Gera, the ceremony of Driving out Death is or
was annually observed on the first of March. The young people make up a figure
of straw or the like materials, dress it in old clothes, which they have
begged from houses in the village, and carry it out and throw it into the
river. On returning to the village they break the good news to the people, and
receive eggs and other victuals as a reward. The ceremony is or was supposed
to purify the village and to protect the inhabitants from sickness and plague.
In other villages of Thringen, in which the population was originally
Slavonic, the carrying out of the puppet is accompanied with the singing of a
song, which begins, Now we carry Death out of the village and Spring into the
village. At the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth
century the custom was observed in Thringen as follows. The boys and girls
made an effigy of straw or the like materials, but the shape of the figure
varied from year to year. In one year it would represent an old man, in the
next an old woman, in the third a young man, and in the fourth a maiden, and
the dress of the figure varied with the character it personated. There used to
be a sharp contest as to where the effigy was to be made, for the people
thought that the house from which it was carried forth would not be visited
with death that year. Having been made, the puppet was fastened to a pole and
carried by a girl if it represented an old man, but by a boy if it represented
an old woman. Thus it was borne in procession, the young people holding sticks
in their hands and singing that they were driving out Death. When they came to
water they threw the effigy into it and ran hastily back, fearing that it
might jump on their shoulders and wring their necks. They also took care not
to touch it, lest it should dry them up. On their return they beat the cattle
with the sticks, believing that this would make the animals fat or fruitful.
Afterwards they visited the house or houses from which they had carried the
image of Death; where they received a dole of half-boiled peas. The custom of
Carrying out Death was practised also in Saxony. At Leipsic the bastards and
public women used to make a straw effigy of Death every year at Mid-Lent. This
they carried through all the streets with songs and showed it to the young
married women. Finally they threw it into the river Parthe. By this ceremony
they professed to make the young wives fruitful, to purify the city, and to
protect the inhabitants for that year from plague and other epidemics.

Ceremonies of the same sort are observed at Mid-Lent in Silesia. Thus in
many places the grown girls with the help of the young men dress up a straw
figure with women's clothes and carry it out of the village towards the
setting sun. At the boundary they strip it of its clothes, tear it in pieces,
and scatter the fragments about the fields. This is called Burying Death. As
they carry the image out, they sing that they are about to bury Death under an
oak, that he may depart from the people. Sometimes the song runs that they are
bearing Death over hill and dale to return no more. In the Polish
neighbourhood of Gross-Strehlitz the puppet is called Goik. It is carried on
horseback and thrown into the nearest water. The people think that the
ceremony protects them from sickness of every sort in the coming year. In the
districts of Wohlau and Guhrau the image of Death used to be thrown over the
boundary of the next village. But as the neighbours feared to receive the
ill-omened figure, they were on the look-out to repel it, and hard knocks were
often exchanged between the two parties. In some Polish parts of Upper Silesia
the effigy, representing an old woman, goes by the name of Marzana, the
goddess of death. It is made in the house where the last death occurred, and
is carried on a pole to the boundary of the village, where it is thrown into a
pond or burnt. At Polkwitz the custom of Carrying out Death fell into
abeyance; but an outbreak of fatal sickness which followed the intermission of
the ceremony induced the people to resume it.

In Bohemia the children go out with a straw-man, representing Death, to
the end of the village, where they burn it, singing

Now carry we Death out of the village,
The new Summer into the village,
Welcome, dear Summer,
Green little corn.

At Tabor in Bohemia the figure of Death is carried out of the town and
flung from a high rock into the water, while they sing

Death swims on the water,
Summer will soon be here,
We carried Death away for you
We brought the Summer.
And do thou, O holy Marketa,
Give us a good year
For wheat and for rye.

In other parts of Bohemia they carry Death to the end of the village,
singing

We carry Death out of the village,
And the New Year into the village.
Dear Spring, we bid you welcome,
Green grass, we bid you welcome.

Behind the village they erect a pyre, on which they burn the straw figure,
reviling and scoffing at it the while. Then they return, singing

We have carried away Death,
And brought Life back.
He has taken up his quarters in the village,
Therefore sing joyous songs.

In some German villages of Moravia, as in Jassnitz and Seitendorf, the
young folk assemble on the third Sunday in Lent and fashion a straw-man, who
is generally adorned with a fur cap and a pair of old leathern hose, if such
are to be had. The effigy is then hoisted on a pole and carried by the lads
and lasses out into the open fields. On the way they sing a song, in which it
is said that they are carrying Death away and bringing dear Summer into the
house, and with Summer the May and the flowers. On reaching an appointed place
they dance in a circle round the effigy with loud shouts and screams, then
suddenly rush at it and tear it to pieces with their hands. Lastly, the pieces
are thrown together in a heap, the pole is broken, and fire is set to the
whole. While it burns the troop dances merrily round it, rejoicing at the
victory won by Spring; and when the fire has nearly died out they go to the
householders to beg for a present of eggs wherewith to hold a feast, taking
care to give as a reason for the request that they have carried Death out and
away.

The preceding evidence shows that the effigy of Death is often regarded
with fear and treated with marks of hatred and abhorrence. Thus the anxiety of
the villagers to transfer the figure from their own to their neighbours' land,
and the reluctance of the latter to receive the ominous guest, are proof
enough of the dread which it inspires. Further, in Lusatia and Silesia the
puppet is sometimes made to look in at the window of a house, and it is
believed that some one in the house will die within the year unless his life
is redeemed by the payment of money. Again, after throwing the effigy away,
the bearers sometimes run home lest Death should follow them, and if one of
them falls in running, it is believed that he will die within the year. At
Chrudim, in Bohemia, the figure of Death is made out of a cross, with a head
and mask stuck at the top, and a shirt stretched out on it. On the fifth
Sunday in Lent the boys take this effigy to the nearest brook or pool, and
standing in a line throw it into the water. Then they all plunge in after it;
but as soon as it is caught no one more may enter the water. The boy who did
not enter the water or entered it last will die within the year, and he is
obliged to carry the Death back to the village. The effigy is then burned. On
the other hand, it is believed that no one will die within the year in the
house out of which the figure of Death has been carried; and the village out
of which Death has been driven is sometimes supposed to be protected against
sickness and plague. In some villages of Austrian Silesia on the Saturday
before Dead Sunday an effigy is made of old clothes, hay, and straw, for the
purpose of driving Death out of the village. On Sunday the people, armed with
sticks and straps, assemble before the house where the figure is lodged. Four
lads then draw the effigy by cords through the village amid exultant shouts,
while all the others beat it with their sticks and straps. On reaching a field
which belongs to a neighbouring village they lay down the figure, cudgel it
soundly, and scatter the fragments over the field. The people believe that the
village from which Death has been thus carried out will be safe from any
infectious disease for the whole year.

4. Bringing in Summer

IN THE PRECEDING ceremonies the return of Spring, Summer, or Life, as a
sequel to the expulsion of Death, is only implied or at most announced. In the
following ceremonies it is plainly enacted. Thus in some parts of Bohemia the
effigy of Death is drowned by being thrown into the water at sunset; then the
girls go out into the wood and cut down a young tree with a green crown, hang
a doll dressed as a woman on it, deck the whole with green, red, and white
ribbons, and march in procession with their Lto (Summer) into the village,
collecting gifts and singing

Death swims in the water,
Spring comes to visit us,
With eggs that are red,
With yellow pancakes.
We carried Death out of the village,
We are carrying Summer into the village.

In many Silesian villages the figure of Death, after being treated with
respect, is stript of its clothes and flung with curses into the water, or
torn to pieces in a field. Then the young folk repair to a wood, cut down a
small fir-tree, peel the trunk, and deck it with festoons of evergreens, paper
roses, painted egg-shells, motley bits of cloth, and so forth. The tree thus
adorned is called Summer or May. Boys carry it from house to house singing
appropriate songs and begging for presents. Among their songs is the
following:

We have carried Death out,
We are bringing the dear Summer back,
The Summer and the May
And all the flowers gay.

Sometimes they also bring back from the wood a prettily adorned figure,
which goes by the name of Summer, May, or the Bride; in the Polish districts
it is called Dziewanna, the goddess of spring.

At Eisenach on the fourth Sunday in Lent young people used to fasten a
straw-man, representing Death, to a wheel, which they trundled to the top of a
hill. Then setting fire to the figure they allowed it and the wheel to roll
down the slope. Next day they cut a tall fir-tree, tricked it out with
ribbons, and set it up in the plain. The men then climbed the tree to fetch
down the ribbons. In Upper Lusatia the figure of Death, made of straw and
rags, is dressed in a veil furnished by the last bride and a shirt provided by
the house in which the last death took place. Thus arrayed the figure is stuck
on the end of a long pole and carried at full speed by the tallest and
strongest girl, while the rest pelt the effigy with sticks and stones. Whoever
hits it will be sure to live through the year. In this way Death is carried
out of the village and thrown into the water or over the boundary of the next
village. On their way home each one breaks a green branch and carries it gaily
with him till he reaches the village, when he throws it away. Sometimes the
young people of the next village, upon whose land the figure has been thrown,
run after them and hurl it back, not wishing to have Death among them. Hence
the two parties occasionally come to blows.

In these cases Death is represented by the puppet which is thrown away,
Summer or Life by the branches or trees which are brought back. But sometimes
a new potency of life seems to be attributed to the image of Death itself, and
by a kind of resurrection it becomes the instrument of the general revival.
Thus in some parts of Lusatia women alone are concerned in carrying out Death,
and suffer no male to meddle with it. Attired in mourning, which they wear the
whole day, they make a puppet of straw, clothe it in a white shirt, and give
it a broom in one hand and a scythe in the other. Singing songs and pursued by
urchins throwing stones, they carry the puppet to the village boundary, where
they tear it in pieces. Then they cut down a fine tree, hang the shirt on it,
and carry it home singing. On the Feast of Ascension the Saxons of Braller, a
village of Transylvania, not far from Hermannstadt, observe the ceremony of
Carrying out Death in the following manner. After morning service all the
school-girls repair to the house of one of their number, and there dress up
the Death. This is done by tying a threshed-out sheaf of corn into a rough
semblance of a head and body, while the arms are simulated by a broomstick
thrust through it horizontally. The figure is dressed in the holiday attire of
a young peasant woman, with a red hood, silver brooches, and a profusion of
ribbons at the arms and breast. The girls bustle at their work, for soon the
bells will be ringing to vespers, and the Death must be ready in time to be
placed at the open window, that all the people may see it on their way to
church. When vespers are over, the longed-for moment has come for the first
procession with the Death to begin; it is a privilege that belongs to the
school-girls alone. Two of the older girls seize the figure by the arms and
walk in front: all the rest follow two and two. Boys may take no part in the
procession, but they troop after it gazing with open-mouthed admiration at the
beautiful Death. So the procession goes through all the streets of the
village, the girls singing the old hymn that begins

Gott mein Vater, deine Liebe
Reicht so weit der Himmel ist,

to a tune that differs from the ordinary one. When the procession has wound
its way through every street, the girls go to another house, and having shut
the door against the eager prying crowd of boys who follow at their heels,
they strip the Death and pass the naked truss of straw out of the window to
the boys, who pounce on it, run out of the village with it without singing,
and fling the dilapidated effigy into the neighbouring brook. This done, the
second scene of the little drama begins. While the boys were carrying away the
Death out of the village, the girls remained in the house, and one of them is
now dressed in all the finery which had been worn by the effigy. Thus arrayed
she is led in procession through all the streets to the singing of the same
hymn as before. When the procession is over they all betake themselves to the
house of the girl who played the leading part. Here a feast awaits them from
which also the boys are excluded. It is a popular belief that the children may
safely begin to eat gooseberries and other fruit after the day on which Death
has thus been carried out; for Death, which up to that time lurked especially
in gooseberries, is now destroyed. Further, they may now bathe with impunity
out of doors. Very similar is the ceremony which, down to recent years, was
observed in some of the German villages of Moravia. Boys and girls met on the
afternoon of the first Sunday after Easter, and together fashioned a puppet of
straw to represent Death. Decked with bright-coloured ribbons and cloths, and
fastened to the top of a long pole, the effigy was then borne with singing and
clamour to the nearest height, where it was stript of its gay attire and
thrown or rolled down the slope. One of the girls was next dressed in the
gauds taken from the effigy of Death, and with her at its head the procession
moved back to the village. In some villages the practice is to bury the effigy
in the place that has the most evil reputation of all the country-side: others
throw it into running water.

In the Lusatian ceremony described above, the tree which is brought home
after the destruction of the figure of Death is plainly equivalent to the
trees or branches which, in the preceding customs, were brought back as
representatives of Summer or Life, after Death had been thrown away or
destroyed. But the transference of the shirt worn by the effigy of Death to
the tree clearly indicates that the tree is a kind of revivification, in a new
form, of the destroyed effigy. This comes out also in the Transylvanian and
Moravian customs: the dressing of a girl in the clothes worn by the Death, and
the leading her about the village to the same song which had been sung when
the Death was being carried about, show that she is intended to be a kind of
resuscitation of the being whose effigy has just been destroyed. These
examples therefore suggest that the Death whose demolition is represented in
these ceremonies cannot be regarded as the purely destructive agent which we
understand by Death. If the tree which is brought back as an embodiment of the
reviving vegetation of spring is clothed in the shirt worn by the Death which
has just been destroyed, the object certainly cannot be to check and
counteract the revival of vegetation: it can only be to foster and promote it.
Therefore the being which has just been destroyedthe so-called Deathmust be
supposed to be endowed with a vivifying and quickening influence, which it can
communicate to the vegetable and even the animal world. This ascription of a
life-giving virtue to the figure of Death is put beyond a doubt by the custom,
observed in some places, of taking pieces of the straw effigy of Death and
placing them in the fields to make the crops grow, or in the manger to make
the cattle thrive. Thus in Spachendorf, a village of Austrian Silesia, the
figure of Death, made of straw, brushwood, and rags, is carried with wild
songs to an open place outside the village and there burned, and while it is
burning a general struggle takes place for the pieces, which are pulled out of
the flames with bare hands. Each one who secures a fragment of the effigy ties
it to a branch of the largest tree in his garden, or buries it in his field,
in the belief that this causes the crops to grow better. In the Troppau
district of Austrian Silesia the straw figure which the boys make on the
fourth Sunday in Lent is dressed by the girls in woman's clothes and hung with
ribbons, necklace, and garlands. Attached to a long pole it is carried out of
the village, followed by a troop of young people of both sexes, who
alternately frolic, lament, and sing songs. Arrived at its destinationa field
outside the villagethe figure is stripped of its clothes and ornaments; then
the crowd rushes at it and tears it to bits, scuffling for the fragments.
Every one tries to get a wisp of the straw of which the effigy was made,
because such a wisp, placed in the manger, is believed to make the cattle
thrive. Or the straw is put in the hens' nest, it being supposed that this
prevents the hens from carrying away their eggs, and makes them brood much
better. The same attribution of a fertilising power to the figure of Death
appears in the belief that if the bearers of the figure, after throwing it
away, beat cattle with their sticks, this will render the beasts fat or
prolific. Perhaps the sticks had been previously used to beat the Death, and
so had acquired the fertilising power ascribed to the effigy. We have seen,
too, that at Leipsic a straw effigy of Death was shown to young wives to make
them fruitful.

It seems hardly possible to separate from the May-trees the trees or
branches which are brought into the village after the destruction of the
Death. The bearers who bring them in profess to be bringing in the Summer,
therefore the trees obviously represent the Summer; indeed in Silesia they are
commonly called the Summer or the May, and the doll which is sometimes
attached to the Summer-tree is a duplicate representative of the Summer, just
as the May is sometimes represented at the same time by a May-tree and a May
Lady. Further, the Summer-trees are adorned like May-trees with ribbons and so
on; like May-trees, when large, they are planted in the ground and climbed up;
and like May-trees, when small, they are carried from door to door by boys or
girls singing songs and collecting money. And as if to demonstrate the
identity of the two sets of customs the bearers of the Summer-tree sometimes
announce that they are bringing in the Summer and the May. The customs,
therefore, of bringing in the May and bringing in the Summer are essentially
the same; and the Summer-tree is merely another form of the May-tree, the only
distinction (besides that of name) being in the time at which they are
respectively brought in; for while the May-tree is usually fetched in on the
first of May or at Whitsuntide, the Summer-tree is fetched in on the fourth
Sunday in Lent. Therefore, if the May-tree is an embodiment of the tree-spirit
or spirit of vegetation, the Summer-tree must likewise be an embodiment of the
tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. But we have seen that the Summer-tree is
in some cases a revivification of the effigy of Death. It follows, therefore,
that in these cases the effigy called Death must be an embodiment of the
tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. This inference is confirmed, first, by
the vivifying and fertilising influence which the fragments of the effigy of
Death are believed to exercise both on vegetable and on animal life; for this
influence, as we saw in an earlier part of this work, is supposed to be a
special attribute of the tree-spirit. It is confirmed, secondly, by observing
that the effigy of Death is sometimes decked with leaves or made of twigs,
branches, hemp, or a threshed-out sheaf of corn; and that sometimes it is hung
on a little tree and so carried about by girls collecting money, just as is
done with the May-tree and the May Lady, and with the Summer-tree and the doll
attached to it. In short we are driven to regard the expulsion of Death and
the bringing in of Summer as, in some cases at least, merely another form of
that death and revival of the spirit of vegetation in spring which we saw
enacted in the killing and resurrection of the Wild Man. The burial and
resurrection of the Carnival is probably another way of expressing the same
idea. The interment of the representative of the Carnival under a dung-heap is
natural, if he is supposed to possess a quickening and fertilising influence
like that ascribed to the effigy of Death. The Esthonians, indeed, who carry
the straw figure out of the village in the usual way on Shrove Tuesday, do not
call it the Carnival, but the Wood-spirit (Metsik), and they clearly
indicate the identity of the effigy with the wood-spirit by fixing it to the
top of a tree in the wood, where it remains for a year, and is besought almost
daily with prayers and offerings to protect the herds; for like a true
wood-spirit the Metsik is a patron of cattle. Sometimes the Metsik is made
of sheaves of corn.

Thus we may fairly conjecture that the names Carnival, Death, and Summer
are comparatively late and inadequate expressions for the beings personified
or embodied in the customs with which we have been dealing. The very
abstractness of the names bespeaks a modern origin; for the personification of
times and seasons like the Carnival and Summer, or of an abstract notion like
death, is not primitive. But the ceremonies themselves bear the stamp of a
dateless antiquity; therefore we can hardly help supposing that in their
origin the ideas which they embodied were of a more simple and concrete order.
The notion of a tree, perhaps of a particular kind of tree (for some savages
have no word for tree in general), or even of an individual tree, is
sufficiently concrete to supply a basis from which by a gradual process of
generalisation the wider idea of a spirit of vegetation might be reached. But
this general idea of vegetation would readily be confounded with the season in
which it manifests itself; hence the substitution of Spring, Summer, or May
for the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation would be easy and natural. Again,
the concrete notion of the dying tree or dying vegetation would by a similar
process of generalisation glide into a notion of death in general; so that the
practice of carrying out the dying or dead vegetation in spring, as a
preliminary to its revival, would in time widen out into an attempt to banish
Death in general from the village or district. The view that in these spring
ceremonies Death meant originally the dying or dead vegetation of winter has
the high support of W. Mannhardt; and he confirms it by the analogy of the
name Death as applied to the spirit of the ripe corn. Commonly the spirit of
the ripe corn is conceived, not as dead, but as old, and hence it goes by the
name of the Old Man or the Old Woman. But in some places the last sheaf cut at
harvest, which is generally believed to be the seat of the corn spirit, is
called the Dead One: children are warned against entering the corn-fields
because Death sits in the corn; and, in a game played by Saxon children in
Transylvania at the maize harvest, Death is represented by a child completely
covered with maize leaves.

5. Battle of Summer and Winter.

SOMETIMES in the popular customs of the peasantry the contrast between the
dormant powers of vegetation in winter and their awakening vitality in spring
takes the form of a dramatic contest between actors who play the parts
respectively of Winter and Summer. Thus in the towns of Sweden on May Day two
troops of young men on horseback used to meet as if for mortal combat. One of
them was led by a representative of Winter clad in furs, who threw snowballs
and ice in order to prolong the cold weather. The other troop was commanded by
a representative of Summer covered with fresh leaves and flowers. In the sham
fight which followed the party of Summer came off victorious, and the ceremony
ended with a feast. Again, in the region of the middle Rhine, a representative
of Summer clad in ivy combats a representative of Winter clad in straw or moss
and finally gains a victory over him. The vanquished foe is thrown to the
ground and stripped of his casing of straw, which is torn to pieces and
scattered about, while the youthful comrades of the two champions sing a song
to commemorate the defeat of Winter by Summer. Afterwards they carry about a
summer garland or branch and collect gifts of eggs and bacon from house to
house. Sometimes the champion who acts the part of Summer is dressed in leaves
and flowers and wears a chaplet of flowers on his head. In the Palatinate this
mimic conflict takes place on the fourth Sunday in Lent. All over Bavaria the
same drama used to be acted on the same day, and it was still kept up in some
places down to the middle of the nineteenth century or later. While Summer
appeared clad all in green, decked with fluttering ribbons, and carrying a
branch in blossom or a little tree hung with apples and pears, Winter was
muffled up in cap and mantle of fur and bore in his hand a snow-shovel or a
flail. Accompanied by their respective retinues dressed in corresponding
attire, they went through all the streets of the village, halting before the
houses and singing staves of old songs, for which they received presents of
bread, eggs, and fruit. Finally, after a short struggle, Winter was beaten by
Summer and ducked in the village well or driven out of the village with shouts
and laughter into the forest.

At Goepfritz in Lower Austria, two men personating Summer and Winter used
to go from house to house on Shrove Tuesday, and were everywhere welcomed by
the children with great delight. The representative of Summer was clad in
white and bore a sickle; his comrade, who played the part of Winter, had a
fur-cap on his head, his arms and legs were swathed in straw, and he carried a
flail. In every house they sang verses alternately. At Drmling in Brunswick,
down to the present time, the contest between Summer and Winter is acted every
year at Whitsuntide by a troop of boys and a troop of girls. The boys rush
singing, shouting, and ringing bells from house to house to drive Winter away;
after them come the girls singing softly and led by a May Bride, all in bright
dresses and decked with flowers and garlands to represent the genial advent of
spring. Formerly the part of Winter was played by a straw-man which the boys
carried with them; now it is acted by a real man in disguise.

Among the Central Esquimaux of North America the contest between
representatives of summer and winter, which in Europe has long degenerated
into a mere dramatic performance, is still kept up as a magical ceremony of
which the avowed intention is to influence the weather. In autumn, when storms
announce the approach of the dismal Arctic winter, the Esquimaux divide
themselves into two parties called respectively the ptarmigans and the ducks,
the ptarmigans comprising all persons born in winter, and the ducks all
persons born in summer. A long rope of sealskin is then stretched out, and
each party laying hold of one end of it seeks by tugging with might and main
to drag the other party over to its side. If the ptarmigans get the worst of
it, then summer has won the game and fine weather may be expected to prevail
through the winter.

6. Death and Resurrection ofKostrubonko

I RUSSIA funeral ceremonies like those of Burying the Carnival and
Carrying out Death are celebrated under the names, not of Death or the
Carnival, but of certain mythic figures, Kostrubonko, Kostroma, Kupalo, Lada,
and Yarilo. These Russian ceremonies are observed both in spring and at
midsummer. Thus in Little Russia it used to be the custom at Eastertide to
celebrate the funeral of a being called Kostrubonko, the deity of the spring.
A circle was formed of singers who moved slowly around a girl who lay on the
ground as if dead, and as they went they sang:

'Dead, dead is our Kostrubonko!
Dead, dead is our dear one!'

until the girl suddenly sprang up, on which the chorus joyfully exclaimed:

'Come to life, come to life has our Kostrubonko!
Come to life, come to life has our dear one!'

On the Eve of St. John (Midsummer Eve) a figure of Kupalo is made of straw
and is dressed in woman's clothes, with a necklace and a floral crown. Then a
tree is felled, and, after being decked with ribbons, is set up on some chosen
spot. Near this tree, to which they give the name of Marena [Winter or Death],
the straw figure is placed, together with a table, on which stand spirits and
viands. Afterwards a bonfire is lit, and the young men and maidens jump over
it in couples, carrying the figure with them. On the next day they strip the
tree and the figure of their ornaments, and throw them both into a stream. On
St. Peter's Day, the twenty-ninth of June, or on the following Sunday, the
Funeral of Kostroma or of Lada or of Yarilo is celebrated in Russia. In the
Governments of Penza and Simbirsk the funeral used to be represented as
follows. A bonfire was kindled on the twenty-eighth of June, and on the next
day the maidens chose one of their number to play the part of Kostroma. Her
companions saluted her with deep obeisances, placed her on a board, and
carried her to the bank of a stream. There they bathed her in the water, while
the oldest girl made a basket of lime-tree bark and beat it like a drum. Then
they returned to the village and ended the day with processions, games, and
dances. In the Murom district Kostroma was represented by a straw figure
dressed in woman's clothes and flowers. This was laid in a trough and carried
with songs to the bank of a lake or river. Here the crowd divided into two
sides, of which the one attacked and the other defended the figure. At last
the assailants gained the day, stripped the figure of its dress and ornaments,
tore it in pieces, trod the straw of which it was made under foot, and flung
it into the stream; while the defenders of the figure hid their faces in their
hands and pretended to bewail the death of Kostroma. In the district of
Kostroma the burial of Yarilo was celebrated on the twenty-ninth or thirtieth
of June. The people chose an old man and gave him a small coffin containing a
Priapus-like figure representing Yarilo. This he carried out of the town,
followed by women chanting dirges and expressing by their gestures grief and
despair. In the open fields a grave was dug, and into it the figure was
lowered amid weeping and wailing, after which games and dances were begun,
calling to mind the funeral games celebrated in old times by the pagan
Slavonians. In Little Russia the figure of Yarilo was laid in a coffin and
carried through the streets after sunset surrounded by drunken women, who kept
repeating mournfully, He is dead! he is dead! The men lifted and shook the
figure as if they were trying to recall the dead man to life. Then they said
to the women, Women, weep not. I know what is sweeter than honey. But the
women continued to lament and chant, as they do at funerals. Of what was he
guilty? He was so good. He will arise no more. O how shall we part from thee?
What is life without thee? Arise, if only for a brief hour. But he rises not,
he not. At last the Yarilo was buried in a grave.

7. Death and Revival ofVegetation

THESE Russian customs are plainly of the same nature as those which in
Austria and Germany are known as Carrying out Death. Therefore if the
interpretation here adopted of the latter is right, the Russian Kostrubonko,
Yarilo, and the rest must also have been originally embodiments of the spirit
of vegetation, and their death must have been regarded as a necessary
preliminary to their revival. The revival as a sequel to the death is enacted
in the first of the ceremonies described, the death and resurrection of
Kostrubonko. The reason why in some of these Russian ceremonies the death of
the spirit of vegetation is celebrated at midsummer may be that the decline of
summer is dated from Midsummer Day, after which the days begin to shorten, and
the sun sets out on his downward journey:

To the darksome hollows
Where the frosts of winter lie.

Such a turning-point of the year, when vegetation might be thought to share
the incipient though still almost imperceptible decay of summer, might very
well be chosen by primitive man as a fit moment for resorting to those magic
rites by which he hopes to stay the decline, or at least to ensure the
revival, of plant life.

But while the death of vegetation appears to have been represented in all,
and its revival in some, of these spring and midsummer ceremonies, there are
features in some of them which can hardly be explained on this hypothesis
alone. The solemn funeral, the lamentations, and the mourning attire, which
often characterise these rites, are indeed appropriate at the death of the
beneficent spirit of vegetation. But what shall we say of the glee with which
the effigy is often carried out, of the sticks and stones with which it is
assailed, and the taunts and curses which are hurled at it? What shall we say
of the dread of the effigy evinced by the haste with which the bearers scamper
home as soon as they have thrown it away, and by the belief that some one must
soon die in any house into which it has looked? This dread might perhaps be
explained by a belief that there is a certain infectiousness in the dead
spirit of vegetation which renders its approach dangerous. But this
explanation, besides being rather strained, does not cover the rejoicings
which often attend the carrying out of Death. We must therefore recognise two
distinct and seemingly opposite features in these ceremonies: on the one hand,
sorrow for the death, and affection and respect for the dead; on the other
hand, fear and hatred of the dead, and rejoicings at his death. How the former
of these features is to be explained I have attempted to show: how the latter
came to be so closely associated with the former is a question which I shall
try to answer in the sequel.

8. Analogous Rites in India.

IN THE KANAGRA district of India there is a custom observed by young girls
in spring which closely resembles some of the European spring ceremonies just
described. It is called the Ral Ka mel, or fair of Ral, the Ral being
a small painted earthen image of Siva or Prvat. The custom is in vogue all
over the Kanagra district, and its celebration, which is entirely confined to
young girls, lasts through most of Chet (March-April) up to the Sankrnt of
Baiskh (April). On a morning in March all the young girls of the village take
small baskets of db grass and flowers to an appointed place, where they
throw them in a heap. Round this heap they stand in a circle and sing. This
goes on every day for ten days, till the heap of grass and flowers has reached
a fair height. Then they cut in the jungle two branches, each with three
prongs at one end, and place them, prongs downwards, over the heap of flowers,
so as to make two tripods or pyramids. On the single uppermost points of these
branches they get an image-maker to construct two clay images, one to
represent Siva, and the other Prvat. The girls then divide themselves into
two parties, one for Siva and one for Prvat, and marry the images in the
usual way, leaving out no part of the ceremony. After the marriage they have a
feast, the cost of which is defrayed by contributions solicited from their
parents. Then at the next Sankrnt (Baiskh) they all go together to the
river-side, throw the images into a deep pool, and weep over the place, as
though they were performing funeral obsequies. The boys of the neighbourhood
often tease them by diving after the images, bringing them up, and waving them
about while the girls are crying over them. The object of the fair is said to
be to secure a good husband.

That in this Indian ceremony the deities Siva and Prvat are conceived as
spirits of vegetation seems to be proved by the placing of their images on
branches over a heap of grass and flowers. Here, as often in European
folk-custom, the divinities of vegetation are represented in duplicate, by
plants and by puppets. The marriage of these Indian deities in spring
corresponds to the European ceremonies in which the marriage of the vernal
spirits of vegetation is represented by the King and Queen of May, the May
Bride, Bridegroom of the May, and so forth. The throwing of the images into
the water, and the mourning for them, are the equivalents of the European
customs of throwing the dead spirit of vegetation under the name of Death,
Yarilo, Kostroma, and the rest, into the water and lamenting over it. Again,
in India, as often in Europe, the rite is performed exclusively by females.
The notion that the ceremony helps to procure husbands for the girls can be
explained by the quickening and fertilising influence which the spirit of
vegetation is believed to exert upon the life of man as well as of plants.

9. The Magic Spring.

THE GENERAL explanation which we have been led to adopt of these and many
similar ceremonies is that they are, or were in their origin, magical rites
intended to ensure the revival of nature in spring. The means by which they
were supposed to effect this end were imitation and sympathy. Led astray by
his ignorance of the true causes of things, primitive man believed that in
order to produce the great phenomena of nature on which his life depended he
had only to imitate them, and that immediately by a secret sympathy or mystic
influence the little drama which he acted in forest glade or mountain dell, on
desert plain or wind-swept shore, would be taken up and repeated by mightier
actors on a vaster stage. He fancied that by masquerading in leaves and
flowers he helped the bare earth to clothe herself with verdure, and that by
playing the death and burial of winter he drove that gloomy season away, and
made smooth the path for the footsteps of returning spring. If we find it hard
to throw ourselves even in fancy into a mental condition in which such things
seem possible, we can more easily picture to ourselves the anxiety which the
savage, when he first began to lift his thoughts above the satisfaction of his
merely animal wants, and to meditate on the causes of things, may have felt as
to the continued operation of what we now call the laws of nature. To us,
familiar as we are with the conception of the uniformity and regularity with
which the great cosmic phenomena succeed each other, there seems little ground
for apprehension that the causes which produce these effects will cease to
operate, at least within the near future. But this confidence in the stability
of nature is bred only by the experience which comes of wide observation and
long tradition; and the savage, with his narrow sphere of observation and his
short-lived tradition, lacks the very elements of that experience which alone
could set his mind at rest in face of the ever-changing and often menacing
aspects of nature. No wonder, therefore, that he is thrown into a panic by an
eclipse, and thinks that the sun or the moon would surely perish, if he did
not raise a clamour and shoot his puny shafts into the air to defend the
luminaries from the monster who threatens to devour them. No wonder he is
terrified when in the darkness of night a streak of sky is suddenly illumined
by the flash of a meteor, or the whole expanse of the celestial arch glows
with the fitful light of the Northern Streamers. Even phenomena which recur at
fixed and uniform intervals may be viewed by him with apprehension, before he
has come to recognise the orderliness of their recurrence. The speed or
slowness of his recognition of such periodic or cyclic changes in nature will
depend largely on the length of the particular cycle. The cycle, for example,
of day and night is everywhere, except in the polar regions, so short and
hence so frequent that men probably soon ceased to discompose themselves
seriously as to the chance of its failing to recur, though the ancient
Egyptians, as we have seen, daily wrought enchantments to bring back to the
east in the morning the fiery orb which had sunk at evening in the crimson
west. But it was far otherwise with the annual cycle of the seasons. To any
man a year is a considerable period, seeing that the number of our years is
but few at the best. To the primitive savage, with his short memory and
imperfect means of marking the flight of time, a year may well have been so
long that he failed to recognise it as a cycle at all, and watched the
changing aspects of earth and heaven with a perpetual wonder, alternately
delighted and alarmed, elated and cast down, according as the vicissitudes of
light and heat, of plant and animal life, ministered to his comfort or
threatened his existence. In autumn when the withered leaves were whirled
about the forest by the nipping blast, and he looked up at the bare boughs,
could he feel sure that they would ever be green again? As day by day the sun
sank lower and lower in the sky, could he be certain that the luminary would
ever retrace his heavenly road? Even the waning moon, whose pale sickle rose
thinner and thinner every night over the rim of the eastern horizon, may have
excited in his mind a fear lest, when it had wholly vanished, there should be
moons no more.

These and a thousand such misgivings may have thronged the fancy and
troubled the peace of the man who first began to reflect on the mysteries of
the world he lived in, and to take thought for a more distant future than the
morrow. It was natural, therefore, that with such thoughts and fears he should
have done all that in him lay to bring back the faded blossom to the bough, to
swing the low sun of winter up to his old place in the summer sky, and to
restore its orbed fulness to the silver lamp of the waning moon. We may smile
at his vain endeavours if we please, but it was only by making a long series
of experiments, of which some were almost inevitably doomed to failure, that
man learned from experience the futility of some of his attempted methods and
the fruitfulness of others. After all, magical ceremonies are nothing but
experiments which have failed and which continue to be repeated merely
because, for reasons which have already been indicated, the operator is
unaware of their failure. With the advance of knowledge these ceremonies
either cease to be performed altogether or are kept up from force of habit
long after the intention with which they were instituted has been forgotten.
Thus fallen from their high estate, no longer regarded as solemn rites on the
punctual performance of which the welfare and even the life of the community
depend, they sink gradually to the level of simple pageants, mummeries, and
pastimes, till in the final stage of degeneration they are wholly abandoned by
older people, and, from having once been the most serious occupation of the
sage, become at last the idle sport of children. It is in this final stage of
decay that most of the old magical rites of our European forefathers linger on
at the present day, and even from this their last retreat they are fast being
swept away by the rising tide of those multitudinous forces, moral,
intellectual, and social, which are bearing mankind onward to a new and
unknown goal. We may feel some natural regret at the disappearance of quaint
customs and picturesque ceremonies, which have preserved to an age often
deemed dull and prosaic something of the flavour and freshness of the olden
time, some breath of the springtime of the world; yet our regret will be
lessened when we remember that these pretty pageants, these now innocent
diversions, had their origin in ignorance and superstition; that if they are a
record of human endeavour, they are also a monument of fruitless ingenuity, of
wasted labour, and of blighted hopes; and that for all their gay
trappingstheir flowers, their ribbons, and their musicthey partake far more
of tragedy than of farce.

The interpretation which, following in the footsteps of W. Mannhardt, I
have attempted to give of these ceremonies has been not a little confirmed by
the discovery, made since this book was first written, that the natives of
Central Australia regularly practise magical ceremonies for the purpose of
awakening the dormant energies of nature at the approach of what may be called
the Australian spring. Nowhere apparently are the alternations of the seasons
more sudden and the contrasts between them more striking than in the deserts
of Central Australia, where at the end of a long period of drought the sandy
and stony wilderness, over which the silence and desolation of death appear to
brood, is suddenly, after a few days of torrential rain, transformed into a
landscape smiling with verdure and peopled with teeming multitudes of insects
and lizards, of frogs and birds. The marvellous change which passes over the
face of nature at such times has been compared even by European observers to
the effect of magic; no wonder, then, that the savage should regard it as such
in very deed. Now it is just when there is promise of the approach of a good
season that the natives of Central Australia are wont especially to perform
those magical ceremonies of which the avowed intention is to multiply the
plants and animals they use as food. These ceremonies, therefore, present a
close analogy to the spring customs of our European peasantry not only in the
time of their celebration, but also in their aim; for we can hardly doubt that
in instituting rites designed to assist the revival of plant life in spring
our primitive forefathers were moved, not by any sentimental wish to smell at
early violets, or pluck the rathe primrose, or watch yellow daffodils dancing
in the breeze, but by the very practical consideration, certainly not
formulated in abstract terms, that the life of man is inextricably bound up
with that of plants, and that if they were to perish he could not survive. And
as the faith of the Australian savage in the efficacy of his magic rites is
confirmed by observing that their performance is invariably followed, sooner
or later, by that increase of vegetable and animal life which it is their
object to produce, so, we may suppose, it was with European savages in the
olden time. The sight of the fresh green in brake and thicket, of vernal
flowers blowing on mossy banks, of swallows arriving from the south, and of
the sun mounting daily higher in the sky, would be welcomed by them as so many
visible signs that their enchantments were indeed taking effect, and would
inspire them with a cheerful confidence that all was well with a world which
they could thus mould to suit their wishes. Only in autumn days, as summer
slowly faded, would their confidence again be dashed by doubts and misgivings
at symptoms of decay, which told how vain were all their efforts to stave off
for ever the approach of winter and of death.

Chapter 29. The Myth of Adonis.

THE SPECTACLE of the great changes which annually pass over the face of the
earth has powerfully impressed the minds of men in all ages, and stirred them
to meditate on the causes of transformations so vast and wonderful. Their
curiosity has not been purely disinterested; for even the savage cannot fail
to perceive how intimately his own life is bound up with the life of nature,
and how the same processes which freeze the stream and strip the earth of
vegetation menace him with extinction. At a certain stage of development men
seem to have imagined that the means of averting the threatened calamity were
in their own hands, and that they could hasten or retard the flight of the
seasons by magic art. Accordingly they performed ceremonies and recited spells
to make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, animals to multiply, and the
fruits of the earth to grow. In course of time the slow advance of knowledge,
which has dispelled so many cherished illusions, convinced at least the more
thoughtful portion of mankind that the alternations of summer and winter, of
spring and autumn, were not merely the result of their own magical rites, but
that some deeper cause, some mightier power, was at work behind the shifting
scenes of nature. They now pictured to themselves the growth and decay of
vegetation, the birth and death of living creatures, as effects of the waxing
or waning strength of divine beings, of gods and goddesses, who were born and
died, who married and begot children, on the pattern of human life.


Thus the old magical theory of the seasons was displaced, or rather
supplemented, by a religious theory. For although men now attributed the
annual cycle of change primarily to corresponding changes in their deities,
they still thought that by performing certain magical rites they could aid the
god who was the principle of life, in his struggle with the opposing principle
of death. They imagined that they could recruit his failing energies and even
raise him from the dead. The ceremonies which they observed for this purpose
were in substance a dramatic representation of the natural processes which
they wished to facilitate; for it is a familiar tenet of magic that you can
produce any desired effect by merely imitating it. And as they now explained
the fluctuations of growth and decay, of reproduction and dissolution, by the
marriage, the death, and the rebirth or revival of the gods, their religious
or rather magical dramas turned in great measure on these themes. They set
forth the fruitful union of the powers of fertility, the sad death of one at
least of the divine partners, and his joyful resurrection. Thus a religious
theory was blended with a magical practice. The combination is familiar in
history. Indeed, few religions have ever succeeded in wholly extricating
themselves from the old trammels of magic. The inconsistency of acting on two
opposite principles, however it may vex the soul of the philosopher, rarely
troubles the common man; indeed he is seldom even aware of it. His affair is
to act, not to analyse the motives of his action. If mankind had always been
logical and wise, history would not be a long chronicle of folly and crime.

Of the changes which the seasons bring with them, the most striking within
the temperate zone are those which affect vegetation. The influence of the
seasons on animals, though great, is not nearly so manifest. Hence it is
natural that in the magical dramas designed to dispel winter and bring back
spring the emphasis should be laid on vegetation, and that trees and plants
should figure in them more prominently than beasts and birds. Yet the two
sides of life, the vegetable and the animal, were not dissociated in the minds
of those who observed the ceremonies. Indeed they commonly believed that the
tie between the animal and the vegetable world was even closer than it really
is; hence they often combined the dramatic representation of reviving plants
with a real or a dramatic union of the sexes for the purpose of furthering at
the same time and by the same act the multiplication of fruits, of animals,
and of men. To them the principle of life and fertility, whether animal or
vegetable, was one and indivisible. To live and to cause to live, to eat food
and to beget children, these were the primary wants of men in the past, and
they will be the primary wants of men in the future so long as the world
lasts. Other things may be added to enrich and beautify human life, but unless
these wants are first satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These
two things, therefore, food and children, were what men chiefly sought to
procure by the performance of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons.

Nowhere, apparently, have these rites been more widely and solemnly
celebrated than in the lands which border the Eastern Mediterranean. Under the
names of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, the peoples of Egypt and Western
Asia represented the yearly decay and revival of life, especially of vegetable
life, which they personified as a god who annually died and rose again from
the dead. In name and detail the rites varied from place to place: in
substance they were the same. The supposed death and resurrection of this
oriental deity, a god of many names but of essentially one nature, is now to
be examined. We begin with Tammuz or Adonis.

The worship of Adonis was practised by the Semitic peoples of Babylonia
and Syria, and the Greeks borrowed it from them as early as the seventh
century before Christ. The true name of the deity was Tammuz: the appellation
of Adonis is merely the Semitic Adon, lord, a title of honour by which his
worshippers addressed him. But the Greeks through a misunderstanding converted
the title of honour into a proper name. In the religious literature of
Babylonia Tammuz appears as the youthful spouse or lover of Ishtar, the great
mother goddess, the embodiment of the reproductive energies of nature. The
references to their connexion with each other in myth and ritual are both
fragmentary and obscure, but we gather from them that every year Tammuz was
believed to die, passing away from the cheerful earth to the gloomy
subterranean world, and that every year his divine mistress journeyed in quest
of him to the land from which there is no returning, to the house of
darkness, where dust lies on door and bolt. During her absence the passion of
love ceased to operate: men and beasts alike forgot to reproduce their kinds:
all life was threatened with extinction. So intimately bound up with the
goddess were the sexual functions of the whole animal kingdom that without her
presence they could not be discharged. A messenger of the great god Ea was
accordingly despatched to rescue the goddess on whom so much depended. The
stern queen of the infernal regions, Allatu or Eresh-Kigal by name,
reluctantly allowed Ishtar to be sprinkled with the Water of Life and to
depart, in company probably with her lover Tammuz, that the two might return
together to the upper world, and that with their return all nature might
revive.

Laments for the departed Tammuz are contained in several Babylonian hymns,
which liken him to plants that quickly fade. He is

A tamarisk that in the garden has drunk no water,
Whose crown in the field has brought forth no blossom.
A willow that rejoiced not by the watercourse,
A willow whose roots were torn up.
A herb that in the garden had drunk no water.

His death appears to have been annually mourned, to the shrill music of
flutes, by men and women about midsummer in the month named after him, the
month of Tammuz. The dirges were seemingly chanted over an effigy of the dead
god, which was washed with pure water, anointed with oil, and clad in a red
robe, while the fumes of incense rose into the air, as if to stir his dormant
senses by their pungent fragrance and wake him from the sleep of death. In one
of these dirges, inscribed Lament of the Flutes for Tammuz, we seem still to
hear the voices of the singers chanting the sad refrain and to catch, like
far-away music, the wailing notes of the flutes:

At his vanishing away she lifts up a lament,
'Oh my child!' at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament;
'My Damu!' at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament.
'My enchanter and priest!' at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament,
At the shining cedar, rooted in a spacious place,
In Eanna, above and below, she lifts up a lament.
Like the lament that a house lifts up for its master, lifts she up a lament,
Like the lament that a city lifts up for its lord, lifts she up a lament.
Her lament is the lament for a herb that grows not in the bed,
Her lament is the lament for the corn that grows not in the ear.
Her chamber is a possession that brings not forth a possession,
A weary woman, a weary child, forspent.
Her lament is for a great river, where no willows grow,
Her lament is for a field, where corn and herbs grow not.
Her lament is for a pool, where fishes grow not.
Her lament is for a thickest of reeds, where no reeds grow.
Her lament is for woods, where tamarisks grow not.
Her lament is for a wilderness where no cypresses (?) grow.
Her lament is for the depth of a garden of trees, where honey and wine
grow not.
Her lament is for meadows, where no plants grow.

Her lament is for a palace, where length of life grows not.

The tragical story and the melancholy rites of Adonis are better known to
us from the descriptions of Greek writers than from the fragments of
Babylonian literature or the brief reference of the prophet Ezekiel, who saw
the women of Jerusalem weeping for Tammuz at the north gate of the temple.
Mirrored in the glass of Greek mythology, the oriental deity appears as a
comely youth beloved by Aphrodite. In his infancy the goddess hid him in a
chest, which she gave in charge to Persephone, queen of the nether world. But
when Persephone opened the chest and beheld the beauty of the babe, she
refused to give him back to Aphrodite, though the goddess of love went down
herself to hell to ransom her dear one from the power of the grave. The
dispute between the two goddesses of love and death was settled by Zeus, who
decreed that Adonis should abide with Persephone in the under world for one
part of the year, and with Aphrodite in the upper world for another part. At
last the fair youth was killed in hunting by a wild boar, or by the jealous
Ares, who turned himself into the likeness of a boar in order to compass the
death of his rival. Bitterly did Aphrodite lament her loved and lost Adonis.
In this form of the myth, the contest between Aphrodite and Persephone for the
possession of Adonis clearly reflects the struggle between Ishtar and Allatu
in the land of the dead, while the decision of Zeus that Adonis is to spend
one part of the year under ground and another part above ground is merely a
Greek version of the annual disappearance and reappearance of Tammuz.
 Chapter 30. Adonis in Syria.

THE MYTH of Adonis was localised and his rites celebrated with much
solemnity at two places in Western Asia. One of these was Byblus on the coast
of Syria, the other was Paphos in Cyprus. Both were great seats of the worship
of Aphrodite, or rather of her Semitic counterpart, Astarte; and of both, if
we accept the legends, Cinyras, the father of Adonis, was king. Of the two
cities Byblus was the more ancient; indeed it claimed to be the oldest city in
Phoenicia, and to have been founded in the early ages of the world by the
great god El, whom Greeks and Romans identified with Cronus and Saturn
respectively. However that may have been, in historical times it ranked as a
holy place, the religious capital of the country, the Mecca or Jerusalem of
the Phoenicians. The city stood on a height beside the sea, and contained a
great sanctuary of Astarte, where in the midst of a spacious open court,
surrounded by cloisters and approached from below by staircases, rose a tall
cone or obelisk, the holy image of the goddess. In this sanctuary the rites of
Adonis were celebrated. Indeed the whole city was sacred to him, and the river
Nahr Ibrahim, which falls into the sea a little to the south of Byblus, bore
in antiquity the name of Adonis. This was the kingdom of Cinyras. From the
earliest to the latest times the city appears to have been ruled by kings,
assisted perhaps by a senate or council of elders.

The last king of Byblus bore the ancient name of Cinyras, and was beheaded
by Pompey the Great for his tyrannous excesses. His legendary namesake Cinyras
is said to have founded a sanctuary of Aphrodite, that is, of Astarte, at a
place on Mount Lebanon, distant a day's journey from the capital. The spot was
probably Aphaca, at the source of the river Adonis, half-way between Byblus
and Baalbec; for at Aphaca there was a famous grove and sanctuary of Astarte
which Constantine destroyed on account of the flagitious character of the
worship. The site of the temple has been discovered by modern travellers near
the miserable village which still bears the name of Afka at the head of the
wild, romantic, wooded gorge of the Adonis. The hamlet stands among groves of
noble walnut-trees on the brink of the lyn. A little way off the river rushes
from a cavern at the foot of a mighty amphitheatre of towering cliffs to
plunge in a series of cascades into the awful depths of the glen. The deeper
it descends, the ranker and denser grows the vegetation, which, sprouting from
the crannies and fissures of the rocks, spreads a green veil over the roaring
or murmuring stream in the tremendous chasm below. There is something
delicious, almost intoxicating, in the freshness of these tumbling waters, in
the sweetness and purity of the mountain air, in the vivid green of the
vegetation. The temple, of which some massive hewn blocks and a fine column of
Syenite granite still mark the site, occupied a terrace facing the source of
the river and commanding a magnificent prospect. Across the foam and the roar
of the waterfalls you look up to the cavern and away to the top of the sublime
precipices above. So lofty is the cliff that the goats which creep along its
ledges to browse on the bushes appear like ants to the spectator hundreds of
feet below. Seaward the view is especially impressive when the sun floods the
profound gorge with golden light, revealing all the fantastic buttresses and
rounded towers of its mountain rampart, and falling softly on the varied green
of the woods which clothe its depths. It was here that, according to the
legend, Adonis met Aphrodite for the first or the last time, and here his
mangled body was buried. A fairer scene could hardly be imagined for a story
of tragic love and death. Yet, sequestered as the valley is and must always
have been, it is not wholly deserted. A convent or a village may be observed
here and there standing out against the sky on the top of some beetling crag,
or clinging to the face of a nearly perpendicular cliff high above the foam
and the din of the river; and at evening the lights that twinkle through the
gloom betray the presence of human habitations on slopes which might seem
inaccessible to man. In antiquity the whole of the lovely vale appears to have
been dedicated to Adonis, and to this day it is haunted by his memory; for the
heights which shut it in are crested at various points by ruined monuments of
his worship, some of them overhanging dreadful abysses, down which it turns
the head dizzy to look and see the eagles wheeling about their nests far
below. One such monument exists at Ghineh. The face of a great rock, above a
roughly hewn recess, is here carved with figures of Adonis and Aphrodite. He
is portrayed with spear in rest, awaiting the attack of a bear, while she is
seated in an attitude of sorrow. Her grief-stricken figure may well be the
mourning Aphrodite of the Lebanon described by Macrobius, and the recess in
the rock is perhaps her lover's tomb. Every year, in the belief of his
worshippers, Adonis was wounded to death on the mountains, and every year the
face of nature itself was dyed with his sacred blood. So year by year the
Syrian damsels lamented his untimely fate, while the red anemone, his flower,
bloomed among the cedars of Lebanon, and the river ran red to the sea,
fringing the winding shores of the blue Mediterranean, whenever the wind set
inshore, with a sinuous band of crimson.

Chapter 31. Adonis in Cyprus.

THE ISLAND of Cyprus lies but one day's sail from the coast of Syria.
Indeed, on fine summer evenings its mountains may be descried looming low and
dark against the red fires of sunset. With its rich mines of copper and its
forests of firs and stately cedars, the island naturally attracted a
commercial and maritime people like the Phoenicians; while the abundance of
its corn, its wine, and its oil must have rendered it in their eyes a Land of
Promise by comparison with the niggardly nature of their own rugged coast,
hemmed in between the mountains and the sea. Accordingly they settled in
Cyprus at a very early date and remained there long after the Greeks had also
established themselves on its shores; for we know from inscriptions and coins
that Phoenician kings reigned at Citium, the Chittim of the Hebrews, down to
the time of Alexander the Great. Naturally the Semitic colonists brought their
gods with them from the mother-land. They worshipped Baal of the Lebanon, who
may well have been Adonis, and at Amathus on the south coast they instituted
the rites of Adonis and Aphrodite, or rather Astarte. Here, as at Byblus,
these rites resembled the Egyptian worship of Osiris so closely that some
people even identified the Adonis of Amathus with Osiris.

But the great seat of the worship of Aphrodite and Adonis in Cyprus was
Paphos on the south-western side of the island. Among the petty kingdoms into
which Cyprus was divided from the earliest times until the end of the fourth
century before our era Paphos must have ranked with the best. It is a land of
hills and billowy ridges, diversified by fields and vineyards and intersected
by rivers, which in the course of ages have carved for themselves beds of such
tremendous depth that travelling in the interior is difficult and tedious. The
lofty range of Mount Olympus (the modern Troodos), capped with snow the
greater part of the year, screens Paphos from the northerly and easterly winds
and cuts it off from the rest of the island. On the slopes of the range the
last pine-woods of Cyprus linger, sheltering here and there monasteries in
scenery not unworthy of the Apennines. The old city of Paphos occupied the
summit of a hill about a mile from the sea; the newer city sprang up at the
harbour some ten miles off. The sanctuary of Aphrodite at Old Paphos (the
modern Kuklia) was one of the most celebrated shrines in the ancient world.
According to Herodotus, it was founded by Phoenician colonists from Ascalon;
but it is possible that a native goddess of fertility was worshipped on the
spot before the arrival of the Phoenicians, and that the newcomers identified
her with their own Baalath or Astarte, whom she may have closely resembled. If
two deities were thus fused in one, we may suppose that they were both
varieties of that great goddess of motherhood and fertility whose worship
appears to have been spread all over Western Asia from a very early time. The
supposition is confirmed as well by the archaic shape of her image as by the
licentious character of her rites; for both that shape and those rites were
shared by her with other Asiatic deities. Her image was simply a white cone or
pyramid. In like manner, a cone was the emblem of Astarte at Byblus, of the
native goddess whom the Greeks called Artemis at Perga in Pamphylia, and of
the sun-god Heliogabalus at Emesa in Syria. Conical stones, which apparently
served as idols, have also been found at Golgi in Cyprus, and in the
Phoenician temples of Malta; and cones of sandstone came to light at the
shrine of the Mistress of Torquoise among the barren hills and frowning
precipices of Sinai.

In Cyprus it appears that before marriage all women were formerly obliged
by custom to prostitute themselves to strangers at the sanctuary of the
goddess, whether she went by the name of Aphrodite, Astarte, or what not.
Similar customs prevailed in many parts of Western Asia. Whatever its motive,
the practice was clearly regarded, not as an orgy of lust, but as a solemn
religious duty performed in the service of that great Mother Goddess of
Western Asia whose name varied, while her type remained constant, from place
to place. Thus at Babylon every woman, whether rich or poor, had once in her
life to submit to the embraces of a stranger at the temple of Mylitta, that
is, of Ishtar or Astarte, and to dedicate to the goddess the wages earned by
this sanctified harlotry. The sacred precinct was crowded with women waiting
to observe the custom. Some of them had to wait there for years. At Heliopolis
or Baalbec in Syria, famous for the imposing grandeur of its ruined temples,
the custom of the country required that every maiden should prostitute herself
to a stranger at the temple of Astarte, and matrons as well as maids testified
their devotion to the goddess in the same manner. The emperor Constantine
abolished the custom, destroyed the temple, and built a church in its stead.
In Phoenician temples women prostituted themselves for hire in the service of
religion, believing that by this conduct they propitiated the goddess and won
her favour. It was a law of the Amorites, that she who was about to marry
should sit in fornication seven days by the gate. At Byblus the people shaved
their heads in the annual mourning for Adonis. Women who refused to sacrifice
their hair had to give themselves up to strangers on a certain day of the
festival, and the money which they thus earned was devoted to the goddess. A
Greek inscription found at Tralles in Lydia proves that the practice of
religious prostitution survived in that country as late as the second century
of our era. It records of a certain woman, Aurelia Aemilia by name, not only
that she herself served the god in the capacity of a harlot at his express
command, but that her mother and other female ancestors had done the same
before her; and the publicity of the record, engraved on a marble column which
supported a votive offering, shows that no stain attached to such a life and
such a parentage. In Armenia the noblest families dedicated their daughters to
the service of the goddess Anaitis in her temple of Acilisena, where the
damsels acted as prostitutes for a long time before they were given in
marriage. Nobody scrupled to take one of these girls to wife when her period
of service was over. Again, the goddess Ma was served by a multitude of sacred
harlots at Comana in Pontus, and crowds of men and women flocked to her
sanctuary from the neighbouring cities and country to attend the biennial
festivals or to pay their vows to the goddess.

If we survey the whole of the evidence on this subject, some of which has
still to be laid before the reader, we may conclude that a great Mother
Goddess, the personification of all the reproductive energies of nature, was
worshipped under different names but with a substantial similarity of myth and
ritual by many peoples of Western Asia; that associated with her was a lover,
or rather series of lovers, divine yet mortal, with whom she mated year by
year, their commerce being deemed essential to the propagation of animals and
plants, each in their several kind; and further, that the fabulous union of
the divine pair was simulated and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the
real, though temporary, union of the human sexes at the sanctuary of the
goddess for the sake of thereby ensuring the fruitfulness of the ground and
the increase of man and beast.

At Paphos the custom of religious prostitution is said to have been
instituted by King Cinyras, and to have been practised by his daughters, the
sisters of Adonis, who, having incurred the wrath of Aphrodite, mated with
strangers and ended their days in Egypt. In this form of the tradition the
wrath of Aphrodite is probably a feature added by a later authority, who could
only regard conduct which shocked his own moral sense as a punishment
inflicted by the goddess instead of as a sacrifice regularly enjoined by her
on all her devotees. At all events the story indicates that the princesses of
Paphos had to conform to the custom as well as women of humble birth.

Among the stories which were told of Cinyras, the ancestor of the priestly
kings of Paphos and the father of Adonis, there are some that deserve our
attention. In the first place, he is said to have begotten his son Adonis in
incestuous intercourse with his daughter Myrrha at a festival of the
corn-goddess, at which women robed in white were wont to offer corn-wreaths as
first-fruits of the harvest and to observe strict chastity for nine days.
Similar cases of incest with a daughter are reported of many ancient kings. It
seems unlikely that such reports are without foundation, and perhaps equally
improbable that they refer to mere fortuitous outbursts of unnatural lust. We
may suspect that they are based on a practice actually observed for a definite
reason in certain special circumstances. Now in countries where the royal
blood was traced through women only, and where consequently the king held
office merely in virtue of his marriage with an hereditary princess, who was
the real sovereign, it appears to have often happened that a prince married
his own sister, the princess royal, in order to obtain with her hand the crown
which otherwise would have gone to another man, perhaps to a stranger. May not
the same rule of descent have furnished a motive for incest with a daughter?
For it seems a natural corollary from such a rule that the king was bound to
vacate the throne on the death of his wife, the queen, since he occupied it
only by virtue of his marriage with her. When that marriage terminated, his
right to the throne terminated with it and passed at once to his daughter's
husband. Hence if the king desired to reign after his wife's death, the only
way in which he could legitimately continue to do so was by marrying his
daughter, and thus prolonging through her the title which had formerly been
his through her mother.

Cinyras is said to have been famed for his exquisite beauty and to have
been wooed by Aphrodite herself. Thus it would appear, as scholars have
already observed, that Cinyras was in a sense a duplicate of his handsome son
Adonis, to whom the inflammable goddess also lost her heart. Further, these
stories of the love of Aphrodite for two members of the royal house of Paphos
can hardly be dissociated from the corresponding legend told of Pygmalion, a
Phoenician king of Cyprus, who is said to have fallen in love with an image of
Aphrodite and taken it to his bed. When we consider that Pygmalion was the
father-in-law of Cinyras, that the son of Cinyras was Adonis, and that all
three, in successive generations, are said to have been concerned in a
love-intrigue with Aphrodite, we can hardly help concluding that the early
Phoenician kings of Paphos, or their sons, regularly claimed to be not merely
the priests of the goddess but also her lovers, in other words, that in their
official capacity they personated Adonis. At all events Adonis is said to have
reigned in Cyprus, and it appears to be certain that the title of Adonis was
regularly borne by the sons of all the Phoenician kings of the island. It is
true that the title strictly signified no more than lord; yet the legends
which connect these Cyprian princes with the goddess of love make it probable
that they claimed the divine nature as well as the human dignity of Adonis.
The story of Pygmalion points to a ceremony of a sacred marriage in which the
king wedded the image of Aphrodite, or rather of Astarte. If that was so, the
tale was in a sense true, not of a single man only, but of a whole series of
men, and it would be all the more likely to be told of Pygmalion, if that was
a common name of Semitic kings in general, and of Cyprian kings in particular.
Pygmalion, at all events, is known as the name of the king of Tyre from whom
his sister Dido fled; and a king of Citium and Idalium in Cyprus, who reigned
in the time of Alexander the Great, was also called Pygmalion, or rather
Pumiyathon, the Phoenician name which the Greeks corrupted into Pygmalion.
Further, it deserves to be noted that the names Pygmalion and Astarte occur
together in a Punic inscription on a gold medallion which was found in a grave
at Carthage; the characters of the inscription are of the earliest type. As
the custom of religious prostitution at Paphos is said to have been founded by
king Cinyras and observed by his daughters, we may surmise that the kings of
Paphos played the part of the divine bridegroom in a less innocent rite than
the form of marriage with a statue; in fact, that at certain festivals each of
them had to mate with one or more of the sacred harlots of the temple, who
played Astarte to his Adonis. If that was so, there is more truth than has
commonly been supposed in the reproach cast by the Christian fathers that the
Aphrodite worshipped by Cinyras was a common whore. The fruit of their union
would rank as sons and daughters of the deity, and would in time become the
parents of gods and goddesses, like their fathers and mothers before them. In
this manner Paphos, and perhaps all sanctuaries of the great Asiatic goddess
where sacred prostitution was practised, might be well stocked with human
deities, the offspring of the divine king by his wives, concubines, and temple
harlots. Any one of these might probably succeed his father on the throne or
be sacrificed in his stead whenever stress of war or other grave junctures
called, as they sometimes did, for the death of a royal victim. Such a tax,
levied occasionally on the king's numerous progeny for the good of the
country, would neither extinguish the divine stock nor break the father's
heart, who divided his paternal affection among so many. At all events, if, as
there seems reason to believe, Semitic kings were often regarded at the same
time as hereditary deities, it is easy to understand the frequency of Semitic
personal names which imply that the bearers of them were the sons or
daughters, the brothers or sisters, the fathers or mothers of a god, and we
need not resort to the shifts employed by some scholars to evade the plain
sense of the words. This interpretation is confirmed by a parallel Egyptian
usage; for in Egypt, where the kings were worshipped as divine, the queen was
called the wife of the god or the mother of the god, and the title father
of the god was borne not only by the king's real father but also by his
father-in-law. Similarly, perhaps, among the Semites any man who sent his
daughter to swell the royal harem may have been allowed to call himself the
father of the god.

If we may judge by his name, the Semitic king who bore the name of Cinyras
was, like King David, a harper; for the name of Cinyras is clearly connected
with the Greek cinyra, a lyre, which in its turn comes from the Semitic
kinnor, a lyre, the very word applied to the instrument on which David
played before Saul. We shall probably not err in assuming that at Paphos as at
Jerusalem the music of the lyre or harp was not a mere pastime designed to
while away an idle hour, but formed part of the service of religion, the
moving influence of its melodies being perhaps set down, like the effect of
wine, to the direct inspiration of a deity. Certainly at Jerusalem the regular
clergy of the temple prophesied to the music of harps, of psalteries, and of
cymbals; and it appears that the irregular clergy also, as we may call the
prophets, depended on some such stimulus for inducing the ecstatic state which
they took for immediate converse with the divinity. Thus we read of a band of
prophets coming down from a high place with a psaltery, a timbrel, a pipe, and
a harp before them, and prophesying as they went. Again, when the united
forces of Judah and Ephraim were traversing the wilderness of Moab in pursuit
of the enemy, they could find no water for three days, and were like to die of
thirst, they and the beasts of burden. In this emergency the prophet Elisha,
who was with the army, called for a minstrel and bade him play. Under the
influence of the music he ordered the soldiers to dig trenches in the sandy
bed of the waterless waddy through which lay the line of march. They did so,
and next morning the trenches were full of the water that had drained down
into them underground from the desolate, forbidding mountains on either hand.
The prophet's success in striking water in the wilderness resembles the
reported success of modern dowsers, though his mode of procedure was
different. Incidentally he rendered another service to his countrymen. For the
skulking Moabites from their lairs among the rocks saw the red sun of the
desert reflected in the water, and taking it for the blood, or perhaps rather
for an omen of the blood, of their enemies, they plucked up heart to attack
the camp and were defeated with great slaughter.

Again, just as the cloud of melancholy which from time to time darkened
the moody mind of Saul was viewed as an evil spirit from the Lord vexing him,
so on the other hand the solemn strains of the harp, which soothed and
composed his troubled thoughts, may well have seemed to the hag-ridden king
the very voice of God or of his good angel whispering peace. Even in our own
day a great religious writer, himself deeply sensitive to the witchery of
music, has said that musical notes, with all their power to fire the blood and
melt the heart, cannot be mere empty sounds and nothing more; no, they have
escaped from some higher sphere, they are outpourings of eternal harmony, the
voice of angels, the Magnificat of saints. It is thus that the rude imaginings
of primitive man are transfigured and his feeble lispings echoed with a
rolling reverberation in the musical prose of Newman. Indeed the influence of
music on the development of religion is a subject which would repay a
sympathetic study. For we cannot doubt that this, the most intimate and
affecting of all the arts, has done much to create as well as to express the
religious emotions, thus modifying more or less deeply the fabric of belief to
which at first sight it seems only to minister. The musician has done his part
as well as the prophet and the thinker in the making of religion. Every faith
has its appropriate music, and the difference between the creeds might almost
be expressed in musical notation. The interval, for example, which divides the
wild revels of Cybele from the stately ritual of the Catholic Church is
measured by the gulf which severs the dissonant clash of cymbals and
tambourines from the grave harmonies of Palestrina and Handel. A different
spirit breathes in the difference of the music.

Chapter 32. The Ritual of Adonis.

AT THE FESTIVALS of Adonis, which were held in Western Asia and in Greek
lands, the death of the god was annually mourned, with a bitter wailing,
chiefly by women; images of him, dressed to resemble corpses, were carried out
as to burial and then thrown into the sea or into springs; and in some places
his revival was celebrated on the following day. But at different places the
ceremonies varied somewhat in the manner and apparently also in the season of
their celebration. At Alexandria images of Aphrodite and Adonis were displayed
on two couches; beside them were set ripe fruits of all kinds, cakes, plants
growing in flower-pots, and green bowers twined with anise. The marriage of
the lovers was celebrated one day, and on the morrow women attired as
mourners, with streaming hair and bared breasts, bore the image of the dead
Adonis to the sea-shore and committed it to the waves. Yet they sorrowed not
without hope, for they sang that the lost one would come back again. The date
at which this Alexandrian ceremony was observed is not expressly stated; but
from the mention of the ripe fruits it has been inferred that it took place in
late summer. In the great Phoenician sanctuary of Astarte at Byblus the death
of Adonis was annually mourned, to the shrill wailing notes of the flute, with
weeping, lamentation, and beating of the breast; but next day he was believed
to come to life again and ascend up to heaven in the presence of his
worshippers. The disconsolate believers, left behind on earth, shaved their
heads as the Egyptians did on the death of the divine bull Apis; women who
could not bring themselves to sacrifice their beautiful tresses had to give
themselves up to strangers on a certain day of the festival, and to dedicate
to Astarte the wages of their shame.

This Phoenician festival appears to have been a vernal one, for its date
was determined by the discoloration of the river Adonis, and this has been
observed by modern travellers to occur in spring. At that season the red earth
washed down from the mountains by the rain tinges the water of the river, and
even the sea, for a great way with a blood-red hue, and the crimson stain was
believed to be the blood of Adonis, annually wounded to death by the boar on
Mount Lebanon. Again, the scarlet anemone is said to have sprung from the
blood of Adonis, or to have been stained by it; and as the anemone blooms in
Syria about Easter, this may be thought to show that the festival of Adonis,
or at least one of his festivals, was held in spring. The name of the flower
is probably derived from Naaman (darling), which seems to have been an
epithet of Adonis. The Arabs still call the anemone wounds of the Naaman.
The red rose also was said to owe its hue to the same sad occasion; for
Aphrodite, hastening to her wounded lover, trod on a bush of white roses; the
cruel thorns tore her tender flesh, and her sacred blood dyed the white roses
for ever red. It would be idle, perhaps, to lay much weight on evidence drawn
from the calendar of flowers, and in particular to press an argument so
fragile as the bloom of the rose. Yet so far as it counts at all, the tale
which links the damask rose with the death of Adonis points to a summer rather
than to a spring celebration of his passion. In Attica, certainly, the
festival fell at the height of summer. For the fleet which Athens fitted out
against Syracuse, and by the destruction of which her power was permanently
crippled, sailed at midsummer, and by an ominous coincidence the sombre rites
of Adonis were being celebrated at the very time. As the troops marched down
to the harbour to embark, the streets through which they passed were lined
with coffins and corpse-like effigies, and the air was rent with the noise of
women wailing for the dead Adonis. The circumstance cast a gloom over the
sailing of the most splendid armament that Athens ever sent to sea. Many ages
afterwards, when the Emperor Julian made his first entry into Antioch, he
found in like manner the gay, the luxurious capital of the East plunged in
mimic grief for the annual death of Adonis; and if he had any presentiment of
coming evil, the voices of lamentation which struck upon his ear must have
seemed to sound his knell.

The resemblance of these ceremonies to the Indian and European ceremonies
which I have described elsewhere is obvious. In particular, apart from the
somewhat doubtful date of its celebration, the Alexandrian ceremony is almost
identical with the Indian. In both of them the marriage of two divine beings,
whose affinity with vegetation seems indicated by the fresh plants with which
they are surrounded, is celebrated in effigy, and the effigies are afterwards
mourned over and thrown into the water. From the similarity of these customs
to each other and to the spring and midsummer customs of modern Europe we
should naturally expect that they all admit of a common explanation. Hence, if
the explanation which I have adopted of the latter is correct, the ceremony of
the death and resurrection of Adonis must also have been a dramatic
representation of the decay and revival of plant life. The inference thus
based on the resemblance of the customs is confirmed by the following features
in the legend and ritual of Adonis. His affinity with vegetation comes out at
once in the common story of his birth. He was said to have been born from a
myrrh-tree, the bark of which bursting, after a ten months' gestation, allowed
the lovely infant to come forth. According to some, a boar rent the bark with
his tusk and so opened a passage for the babe. A faint rationalistic colour
was given to the legend by saying that his mother was a woman named Myrrh, who
had been turned into a myrrh-tree soon after she had conceived the child. The
use of myrrh as incense at the festival of Adonis may have given rise to the
fable. We have seen that incense was burnt at the corresponding Babylonian
rites, just as it was burnt by the idolatrous Hebrews in honour of the Queen
of Heaven, who was no other than Astarte. Again, the story that Adonis spent
half, or according to others a third, of the year in the lower world and the
rest of it in the upper world, is explained most simply and naturally by
supposing that he represented vegetation, especially the corn, which lies
buried in the earth half the year and reappears above ground the other half.
Certainly of the annual phenomena of nature there is none which suggests so
obviously the idea of death and resurrection as the disappearance and
reappearance of vegetation in autumn and spring. Adonis has been taken for the
sun; but there is nothing in the sun's annual course within the temperate and
tropical zones to suggest that he is dead for half or a third of the year and
alive for the other half or two-thirds. He might, indeed, be conceived as
weakened in winter, but dead he could not be thought to be; his daily
reappearance contradicts the supposition. Within the Arctic Circle, where the
sun annually disappears for a continuous period which varies from twenty-four
hours to six months according to the latitude, his yearly death and
resurrection would certainly be an obvious idea; but no one except the
unfortunate astronomer Bailly has maintained that the Adonis worship came from
the Arctic regions. On the other hand, the annual death and revival of
vegetation is a conception which readily presents itself to men in every stage
of savagery and civilisation; and the vastness of the scale on which this
ever-recurring decay and regeneration takes place, together with man's
intimate dependence on it for subsistence, combine to render it the most
impressive annual occurrence in nature, at least within the temperate zones.
It is no wonder that a phenomenon so important, so striking, and so universal
should, by suggesting similar ideas, have given rise to similar rites in many
lands. We may, therefore, accept as probable an explanation of the Adonis
worship which accords so well with the facts of nature and with the analogy of
similar rites in other lands. Moreover, the explanation is countenanced by a
considerable body of opinion amongst the ancients themselves, who again and
again interpreted the dying and reviving god as the reaped and sprouting
grain.

The character of Tammuz or Adonis as a corn-spirit comes out plainly in an
account of his festival given by an Arabic writer of the tenth century. In
describing the rites and sacrifices observed at the different seasons of the
year by the heathen Syrians of Harran, he says: Tammuz (July). In the middle
of this month is the festival of el-Bgt, that is, of the weeping women, and
this is the T-uz festival, which is celebrated in honour of the god T-uz.
The women bewail him, because his lord slew him so cruelly, ground his bones
in a mill, and then scattered them to the wind. The women (during this
festival) eat nothing which has been ground in a mill, but limit their diet to
steeped wheat, sweet vetches, dates, raisins, and the like. T-uz, who is no
other than Tammuz, is here like Burns's John Barleycorn:

They wasted o'er a scorching flame
The marrow of his bones;
But a miller us'd him worst of all
For he crush'd him between two stones.

This concentration, so to say, of the nature of Adonis upon the cereal
crops is characteristic of the stage of culture reached by his worshippers in
historical times. They had left the nomadic life of the wandering hunter and
herdsman far behind them; for ages they had been settled on the land, and had
depended for their subsistence mainly on the products of tillage. The berries
and roots of the wilderness, the grass of the pastures, which had been matters
of vital importance to their ruder forefathers, were now of little moment to
them: more and more their thoughts and energies were engrossed by the staple
of their life, the corn; more and more accordingly the propitiation of the
deities of fertility in general and of the corn-spirit in particular tended to
become the central feature of their religion. The aim they set before
themselves in celebrating the rites was thoroughly practical. It was no vague
poetical sentiment which prompted them to hail with joy the rebirth of
vegetation and to mourn its decline. Hunger, felt or feared, was the
mainspring of the worship of Adonis.

It has been suggested by Father Lagrange that the mourning for Adonis was
essentially a harvest rite designed to propitiate the corngod, who was then
either perishing under the sickles of the reapers, or being trodden to death
under the hoofs of the oxen on the threshing-floor. While the men slew him,
the women wept crocodile tears at home to appease his natural indignation by a
show of grief for his death. The theory fits in well with the dates of the
festivals, which fell in spring or summer; for spring and summer, not autumn,
are the seasons of the barley and wheat harvests in the lands which worshipped
Adonis. Further, the hypothesis is confirmed by the practice of the Egyptian
reapers, who lamented, calling upon Isis, when they cut the first corn; and it
is recommended by the analogous customs of many hunting tribes, who testify
great respect for the animals which they kill and eat.

Thus interpreted the death of Adonis is not the natural decay of
vegetation in general under the summer heat or the winter cold; it is the
violent destruction of the corn by man, who cuts it down on the field, stamps
it to pieces on the threshing-floor, and grinds it to powder in the mill. That
this was indeed the principal aspect in which Adonis presented himself in
later times to the agricultural peoples of the Levant, may be admitted; but
whether from the beginning he had been the corn and nothing but the corn, may
be doubted. At an earlier period he may have been to the herdsman, above all,
the tender herbage which sprouts after rain, offering rich pasture to the lean
and hungry cattle. Earlier still he may have embodied the spirit of the nuts
and berries which the autumn woods yield to the savage hunter and his squaw.
And just as the husband-man must propitiate the spirit of the corn which he
consumes, so the herdsman must appease the spirit of the grass and leaves
which his cattle munch, and the hunter must soothe the spirit of the roots
which he digs, and of the fruits which he gathers from the bough. In all cases
the propitiation of the injured and angry, sprite would naturally comprise
elaborate excuses and apologies, accompanied by loud lamentations at his
decease whenever, through some deplorable accident or necessity, he happened
to be murdered as well as robbed. Only we must bear in mind that the savage
hunter and herdsman of those early days had probably not yet attained to the
abstract idea of vegetation in general; and that accordingly, so far as Adonis
existed for them at all, he must have been the Adon or lord of each
individual tree and plant rather than a personification of vegetable life as a
whole. Thus there would be as many Adonises as there were trees and shrubs,
and each of them might expect to receive satisfaction for any damage done to
his person or property. And year by year, when the trees were deciduous, every
Adonis would seem to bleed to death with the red leaves of autumn and to come
to life again with the fresh green of spring.

There is some reason to think that in early times Adonis was sometimes
personated by a living man who died a violent death in the character of the
god. Further, there is evidence which goes to show that among the agricultural
peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean, the corn-spirit, by whatever name he was
known, was often represented, year by year, by human victims slain on the
harvest-field. If that was so, it seems likely that the propitiation of the
corn-spirit would tend to fuse to some extent with the worship of the dead.
For the spirits of these victims might be thought to return to life in the
ears which they had fattened with their blood, and to die a second death at
the reaping of the corn. Now the ghosts of those who have perished by violence
are surly and apt to wreak their vengeance on their slayers whenever an
opportunity offers. Hence the attempt to appease the souls of the slaughtered
victims would naturally blend, at least in the popular conception, with the
attempt to pacify the slain corn-spirit. And as the dead came back in the
sprouting corn, so they might be thought to return in the spring flowers,
waked from their long sleep by the soft vernal airs. They had been laid to
their rest under the sod. What more natural than to imagine that the violets
and the hyacinths, the roses and the anemones, sprang from their dust, were
empurpled or incarnadined by their blood, and contained some portion of their
spirit?

I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.

And this reviving Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean
Ah, lean upon it lightly, for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen?

In the summer after the battle of Landen, the most sanguinary battle of
the seventeenth century in Europe, the earth, saturated with the blood of
twenty thousand slain, broke forth into millions of poppies, and the traveller
who passed that vast sheet of scarlet might well fancy that the earth had
indeed given up her dead. At Athens the great Commemoration of the Dead fell
in spring about the middle of March, when the early flowers are in bloom. Then
the dead were believed to rise from their graves and go about the streets,
vainly endeavouring to enter the temples and dwellings, which were barred
against these perturbed spirits with ropes, buckthorn, and pitch. The name of
the festival, according to the most obvious and natural interpretation, means
the Festival of Flowers, and the title would fit well with the substance of
the ceremonies if at that season the poor ghosts were indeed thought to creep
from the narrow house with the opening flowers. There may therefore be a
measure of truth in the theory of Renan, who saw in the Adonis worship a
dreamy voluptuous cult of death, conceived not as the King of Terrors, but as
an insidious enchanter who lures his victims to himself and lulls them into an
eternal sleep. The infinite charm of nature in the Lebanon, he thought, lends
itself to religious emotions of this sensuous, visionary sort, hovering
vaguely between pain and pleasure, between slumber and tears. It would
doubtless be a mistake to attribute to Syrian peasants the worship of a
conception so purely abstract as that of death in general. Yet it may be true
that in their simple minds the thought of the reviving spirit of vegetation
was blent with the very concrete notion of the ghosts of the dead, who come to
life again in spring days with the early flowers, with the tender green of the
corn and the many-tinted blossoms of the trees. Thus their views of the death
and resurrection of nature would be coloured by their views of the death and
resurrection of man, by their personal sorrows and hopes and fears. In like
manner we cannot doubt that Renan's theory of Adonis was itself deeply tinged
by passionate memories, memories of the slumber akin to death which sealed his
own eyes on the slopes of the Lebanon, memories of the sister who sleeps in
the land of Adonis never again to wake with the anemones and the roses.

Chapter 33. The Gardens of Adonis.

PERHAPS the best proof that Adonis was a deity of vegetation, and especially
of the corn, is furnished by the gardens of Adonis, as they were called. These
were baskets or pots filled with earth, in which wheat, barley, lettuces,
fennel, and various kinds of flowers were sown and tended for eight days,
chiefly or exclusively by women. Fostered by the sun's heat, the plants shot
up rapidly, but having no root they withered as rapidly away, and at the end
of eight days were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis, and flung
with them into the sea or into springs.

These gardens of Adonis are most naturally interpreted as representatives
of Adonis or manifestations of his power; they represented him, true to his
original nature, in vegetable form, while the images of him, with which they
were carried out and cast into the water, portrayed him in his later human
shape. All these Adonis ceremonies, if I am right, were originally intended as
charms to promote the growth or revival of vegetation; and the principle by
which they were supposed to produce this effect was homoeopathic or imitative
magic. For ignorant people suppose that by mimicking the effect which they
desire to produce they actually help to produce it; thus by sprinkling water
they make rain, by lighting a fire they make sunshine, and so on. Similarly,
by mimicking the growth of crops they hope to ensure a good harvest. The rapid
growth of the wheat and barley in the gardens of Adonis was intended to make
the corn shoot up; and the throwing of the gardens and of the images into the
water was a charm to secure a due supply of fertilising rain. The same, I take
it, was the object of throwing the effigies of Death and the Carnival into
water in the corresponding ceremonies of modern Europe. Certainly the custom
of drenching with water a leaf-clad person, who undoubtedly personifies
vegetation, is still resorted to in Europe for the express purpose of
producing rain. Similarly the custom of throwing water on the last corn cut at
harvest, or on the person who brings it home (a custom observed in Germany and
France, and till lately in England and Scotland), is in some places practised
with the avowed intent to procure rain for the next year's crops. Thus in
Wallachia and amongst the Roumanians in Transylvania, when a girl is bringing
home a crown made of the last ears of corn cut at harvest, all who meet her
hasten to throw water on her, and two farm-servants are placed at the door for
the purpose; for they believe that if this were not done, the crops next year
would perish from drought. At the spring ploughing in Prussia, when the
ploughmen and sowers returned in the evening from their work in the fields,
the farmer's wife and the servants used to splash water over them. The
ploughmen and sowers retorted by seizing every one, throwing them into the
pond, and ducking them under the water. The farmer's wife might claim
exemption on payment of a forfeit, but every one else had to be ducked. By
observing this custom they hoped to ensure a due supply of rain for the seed.

The opinion that the gardens of Adonis are essentially charms to promote
the growth of vegetation, especially of the crops, and that they belong to the
same class of customs as those spring and mid-summer folk-customs of modern
Europe which I have described else-where, does not rest for its evidence
merely on the intrinsic probability of the case. Fortunately we are able to
show that gardens of Adonis (if we may use the expression in a general sense)
are still planted, first, by a primitive race at their sowing season, and,
second, by European peasants at midsummer. Amongst the Oraons and Mundas of
Bengal, when the time comes for planting out the rice which has been grown in
seed-beds, a party of young people of both sexes go to the forest and cut a
young Karma-tree, or the branch of one. Bearing it in triumph they return
dancing, singing, and beating drums, and plant it in the middle of the village
dancing-ground. A sacrifice is offered to the tree; and next morning the youth
of both sexes, linked arm-in-arm, dance in a great circle round the
Karma-tree, which is decked with strips of coloured cloth and sham bracelets
and necklets of plaited straw. As a preparation for the festival, the
daughters of the headman of the village cultivate blades of barley in a
peculiar way. The seed is sown in moist, sandy soil, mixed with turmeric, and
the blades sprout and unfold of a pale-yellow or primrose colour. On the day
of the festival the girls take up these blades and carry them in baskets to
the dancing-ground, where, prostrating themselves reverentially, they place
some of the plants before the Karma-tree. Finally, the Karma-tree is taken
away and thrown into a stream or tank. The meaning of planting these barley
blades and then presenting them to the Karma-tree is hardly open to question.
Trees are supposed to exercise a quickening influence upon the growth of
crops, and amongst the very people in questionthe Mundas or Mundaris the
grove deities are held responsible for the crops. Therefore, when at the
season for planting out the rice the Mundas bring in a tree and treat it with
so much respect, their object can only be to foster thereby the growth of the
rice which is about to be planted out; and the custom of causing barley blades
to sprout rapidly and then presenting them to the tree must be intended to
subserve the same purpose, perhaps by reminding the tree-spirit of his duty
towards the crops, and stimulating his activity by this visible example of
rapid vegetable growth. The throwing of the Karma-tree into the water is to be
interpreted as a rain-charm. Whether the barley blades are also thrown into
the water is not said; but if my interpretation of the custom is right,
probably they are so. A distinction between this Bengal custom and the Greek
rites of Adonis is that in the former the tree-spirit appears in his original
form as a tree; whereas in the Adonis worship he appears in human form,
represented as a dead man, though his vegetable nature is indicated by the
gardens of Adonis, which are, so to say, a secondary manifestation of his
original power as a tree-spirit.

Gardens of Adonis are cultivated also by the Hindoos, with the intention
apparently of ensuring the fertility both of the earth and of mankind. Thus at
Oodeypoor in Rajputana a festival is held in honour of Gouri, or Isani, the
goddess of abundance. The rites begin when the sun enters the sign of the Ram,
the opening of the Hindoo year. An image of the goddess Gouri is made of
earth, and a smaller one of her husband Iswara, and the two are placed
together. A small trench is next dug, barley is sown in it, and the ground
watered and heated artificially till the grain sprouts, when the women dance
round it hand in hand, invoking the blessing of Gouri on their husbands. After
that the young corn is taken up and distributed by the women to the men, who
wear it in their turbans. In these rites the distribution of the barley shoots
to the men, and the invocation of a blessing on their husbands by the wives,
point clearly to the desire of offspring as one motive for observing the
custom. The same motive probably explains the use of gardens of Adonis at the
marriage of Brahmans in the Madras Presidency. Seeds of five or nine sorts are
mixed and sown in earthen pots, which are made specially for the purpose and
are filled with earth. Bride and bridegroom water the seeds both morning and
evening for four days; and on the fifth day the seedlings are thrown, like the
real gardens of Adonis, into a tank or river.

In Sardinia the gardens of Adonis are still planted in connexion with the
great midsummer festival which bears the name of St. John. At the end of March
or on the first of April a young man of the village presents himself to a
girl, and asks her to be his comare (gossip or sweetheart), offering to be
her compare. The invitation is considered as an honour by the girl's family,
and is gladly accepted. At the end of May the girl makes a pot of the bark of
the cork-tree, fills it with earth, and sows a handful of wheat and barley in
it. The pot being placed in the sun and often watered, the corn sprouts
rapidly and has a good head by Midsummer Eve (St. John's Eve, the twenty-third
of June). The pot is then called Erme or Nenneri. On St. John's Day the
young man and the girl, dressed in their best, accompanied by a long retinue
and preceded by children gambolling and frolicking, move in procession to a
church outside the village. Here they break the pot by throwing it against the
door of the church. Then they sit down in a ring on the grass and eat eggs and
herbs to the music of flutes. Wine is mixed in a cup and passed round, each
one drinking as it passes. Then they join hands and sing Sweethearts of St.
John (Compare e comare di San Giovanni) over and over again, the flutes
playing the while. When they tire of singing they stand up and dance gaily in
a ring till evening. This is the general Sardinian custom. As practised at
Ozieri it has some special features. In May the pots are made of cork-bark and
planted with corn, as already described. Then on the Eve of St. John the
window-sills are draped with rich cloths, on which the pots are placed,
adorned with crimson and blue silk and ribbons of various colours. On each of
the pots they used formerly to place a statuette or cloth doll dressed as a
woman, or a Priapus-like figure made of paste; but this custom, rigorously
forbidden by the Church, has fallen into disuse. The village swains go about
in a troop to look at the pots and their decorations and to wait for the
girls, who assemble on the public square to celebrate the festival. Here a
great bonfire is kindled, round which they dance and make merry. Those who
wish to be Sweethearts of St. John act as follows. The young man stands on
one side of the bonfire and the girl on the other, and they, in a manner, join
hands by each grasping one end of a long stick, which they pass three times
backwards and forwards across the fire, thus thrusting their hands thrice
rapidly into the flames. This seals their relationship to each other. Dancing
and music go on till late at night. The correspondence of these Sardinian pots
of grain to the gardens of Adonis seems complete, and the images formerly
placed in them answer to the images of Adonis which accompanied his gardens.

Customs of the same sort are observed at the same season in Sicily. Pairs
of boys and girls become gossips of St. John on St. John's Day by drawing each
a hair from his or her head and performing various ceremonies over them. Thus
they tie the hairs together and throw them up in the air, or exchange them
over a potsherd, which they afterwards break in two, preserving each a
fragment with pious care. The tie formed in the latter way is supposed to last
for life. In some parts of Sicily the gossips of St. John present each other
with plates of sprouting corn, lentils, and canary seed, which have been
planted forty days before the festival. The one who receives the plate pulls a
stalk of the young plants, binds it with a ribbon, and preserves it among his
or her greatest treasures, restoring the platter to the giver. At Catania the
gossips exchange pots of basil and great cucumbers; the girls tend the basil,
and the thicker it grows the more it is prized.

In these midsummer customs of Sardinia and Sicily it is possible that, as
Mr. R. Wnsch supposes, St. John has replaced Adonis. We have seen that the
rites of Tammuz or Adonis were commonly celebrated about midsummer; according
to Jerome, their date was June.

In Sicily gardens of Adonis are still sown in spring as well as in summer,
from which we may perhaps infer that Sicily as well as Syria celebrated of old
a vernal festival of the dead and risen god. At the approach of Easter,
Sicilian women sow wheat, lentils, and canaryseed in plates, which they keep
in the dark and water every two days. The plants soon shoot up; the stalks are
tied together with red ribbons, and the plates containing them are placed on
the sepulchres which, with the effigies of the dead Christ, are made up in
Catholic and Greek churches on Good Friday, just as the gardens of Adonis were
placed on the grave of the dead Adonis. The practice is not confined to
Sicily, for it is observed also at Cosenza in Calabria, and perhaps in other
places. The whole customsepulchres as well as plates of sprouting grainmay
be nothing but a continuation, under a different name, of the worship of
Adonis.

Nor are these Sicilian and Calabrian customs the only Easter ceremonies
which resemble the rites of Adonis. During the whole of Good Friday a waxen
effigy of the dead Christ is exposed to view in the middle of the Greek
churches and is covered with fervent kisses by the thronging crowd, while the
whole church rings with melancholy, monotonous dirges. Late in the evening,
when it has grown quite dark, this waxen image is carried by the priests into
the street on a bier adorned with lemons, roses, jessamine, and other flowers,
and there begins a grand procession of the multitude, who move in serried
ranks, with slow and solemn step, through the whole town. Every man carries
his taper and breaks out into doleful lamentation. At all the houses which the
procession passes there are seated women with censers to fumigate the marching
host. Thus the community solemnly buries its Christ as if he had just died. At
last the waxen image is again deposited in the church, and the same lugubrious
chants echo anew. These lamentations, accompanied by a strict fast, continue
till midnight on Saturday. As the clock strikes twelve, the bishop appears and
announces the glad tidings that 'Christ is risen,' to which the crowd replies,
'He is risen indeed,' and at once the whole city bursts into an uproar of joy,
which finds vent in shrieks and shouts, in the endless discharge of carronades
and muskets, and the explosion of fire-works of every sort. In the very same
hour people plunge from the extremity of the fast into the enjoyment of the
Easter lamb and neat wine.

In like manner the Catholic Church has been accustomed to bring before its
followers in a visible form the death and resurrection of the Redeemer. Such
sacred dramas are well fitted to impress the lively imagination and to stir
the warm feelings of a susceptible southern race, to whom the pomp and
pageantry of Catholicism are more congenial than to the colder temperament of
the Teutonic peoples.

When we reflect how often the Church has skilfully contrived to plant the
seeds of the new faith on the old stock of paganism, we may surmise that the
Easter celebration of the dead and risen Christ was grafted upon a similar
celebration of the dead and risen Adonis, which, as we have seen reason to
believe, was celebrated in Syria at the same season. The type, created by
Greek artists, of the sorrowful goddess with her dying lover in her arms,
resembles and may have been the model of the Piet of Christian art, the
Virgin with the dead body of her divine Son in her lap, of which the most
celebrated example is the one by Michael Angelo in St. Peters. That noble
group, in which the living sorrow of the mother contrasts so wonderfully with
the languor of death in the son, is one of the finest compositions in marble.
Ancient Greek art has bequeathed to us few works so beautiful, and none so
pathetic.

In this connexion a well-known statement of Jerome may not be without
significance. He tells us that Bethlehem, the traditionary birthplace of the
Lord, was shaded by a grove of that still older Syrian Lord, Adonis, and that
where the infant Jesus had wept, the lover of Venus was bewailed. Though he
does not expressly say so, Jerome seems to have thought that the grove of
Adonis had been planted by the heathen after the birth of Christ for the
purpose of defiling the sacred spot. In this he may have been mistaken. If
Adonis was indeed, as I have argued, the spirit of the corn, a more suitable
name for his dwelling-place could hardly be found than Bethlehem, the House
of Bread, and he may well have been worshipped there at his House of Bread
long ages before the birth of Him who said, I am the bread of life. Even on
the hypothesis that Adonis followed rather than preceded Christ at Bethlehem,
the choice of his sad figure to divert the allegiance of Christians from their
Lord cannot but strike us as eminently appropriate when we remember the
similarity of the rites which commemorated the death and resurrection of the
two. One of the earliest seats of the worship of the new god was Antioch, and
at Antioch, as we have seen, the death of the old god was annually celebrated
with great solemnity. A circumstance which attended the entrance of Julian
into the city at the time of the Adonis festival may perhaps throw some light
on the date of its celebration. When the emperor drew near to the city he was
received with public prayers as if he had been a god, and he marvelled at the
voices of a great multitude who cried that the Star of Salvation had dawned
upon them in the East. This may doubtless have been no more than a fulsome
compliment paid by an obsequious Oriental crowd to the Roman emperor. But it
is also possible that the rising of a bright star regularly gave the signal
for the festival, and that as chance would have it the star emerged above the
rim of the eastern horizon at the very moment of the emperor's approach. The
coincidence, if it happened, could hardly fail to strike the imagination of a
superstitious and excited multitude, who might thereupon hail the great man as
the deity whose coming was announced by the sign in the heavens. Or the
emperor may have mistaken for a greeting to himself the shouts which were
addressed to the star. Now Astarte, the divine mistress of Adonis, was
identified with the planet Venus, and her changes from a morning to an evening
star were carefully noted by the Babylonian astronomers, who drew omens from
her alternate appearance and disappearance. Hence we may conjecture that the
festival of Adonis was regularly timed to coincide with the appearance of
Venus as the Morning or Evening Star. But the star which the people of Antioch
saluted at the festival was seen in the East; therefore, if it was indeed
Venus, it can only have been the Morning Star. At Aphaca in Syria, where there
was a famous temple of Astarte, the signal for the celebration of the rites
was apparently given by the flashing of a meteor, which on a certain day fell
like a star from the top of Mount Lebanon into the river Adonis. The meteor
was thought to be Astarte herself, and its flight through the air might
naturally be interpreted as the descent of the amorous goddess to the arms of
her lover. At Antioch and elsewhere the appearance of the Morning Star on the
day of the festival may in like manner have been hailed as the coming of the
goddess of love to wake her dead leman from his earthy bed. If that were so,
we may surmise that it was the Morning Star which guided the wise men of the
East to Bethlehem, the hallowed spot which heard, in the language of Jerome,
the weeping of the infant Christ and the lament for Adonis.

Chapter 34. The Myth and Ritual of Attis.

ANOTHER of those gods whose supposed death and resurrection struck such deep
roots into the faith and ritual of Western Asia is Attis. He was to Phrygia
what Adonis was to Syria. Like Adonis, he appears to have been a god of
vegetation, and his death and resurrection were annually mourned and rejoiced
over at a festival in spring. The legends and rites of the two gods were so
much alike that the ancients themselves sometimes identified them. Attis was
said to have been a fair young shepherd or herdsman beloved by Cybele, the
Mother of the Gods, a great Asiatic goddess of fertility, who had her chief
home in Phrygia. Some held that Attis was her son. His birth, like that of
many other heroes, is said to have been miraculous. His mother, Nana, was a
virgin, who conceived by putting a ripe almond or a pomegranate in her bosom.
Indeed in the Phrygian cosmogony an almond figured as the father of all
things, perhaps because its delicate lilac blossom is one of the first heralds
of the spring, appearing on the bare boughs before the leaves have opened.
Such tales of virgin mothers are relics of an age of childish ignorance when
men had not yet recognized the intercourse of the sexes as the true cause of
offspring. Two different accounts of the death of Attis were current.
According to the one he was killed by a boar, like Adonis. According to the
other he unmanned himself under a pine-tree, and bled to death on the spot.
The latter is said to have been the local story told by the people of
Pessinus, a great seat of the worship of Cybele, and the whole legend of which
the story forms a part is stamped with a character of rudeness and savagery
that speaks strongly for its antiquity. Both tales might claim the support of
custom, or rather both were probably invented to explain certain customs
observed by the worshippers. The story of the self-mutilation of Attis is
clearly an attempt to account for the self-mutilation of his priests, who
regularly castrated themselves on entering the service of the goddess. The
story of his death by the boar may have been told to explain why his
worshippers, especially the people of Pessinus, abstained from eating swine.
In like manner the worshippers of Adonis abstained from pork, because a boar
had killed their god. After his death Attis is said to have been changed into
a pine-tree.

The worship of the Phrygian Mother of the Gods was adopted by the Romans
in 204 B.C. towards the close of their long struggle with Hannibal. For their
drooping spirits had been opportunely cheered by a prophecy, alleged to be
drawn from that convenient farrago of nonsense, the Sibylline Books, that the
foreign invader would be driven from Italy if the great Oriental goddess were
brought to Rome. Accordingly ambassadors were despatched to her sacred city
Pessinus in Phrygia. The small black stone which embodied the mighty divinity
was entrusted to them and conveyed to Rome, where it was received with great
respect and installed in the temple of Victory on the Palatine Hill. It was
the middle of April when the goddess arrived, and she went to work at once.
For the harvest that year was such as had not been seen for many a long day,
and in the very next year Hannibal and his veterans embarked for Africa. As he
looked his last on the coast of Italy, fading behind him in the distance, he
could not foresee that Europe, which had repelled the arms, would yet yield to
the gods, of the Orient. The vanguard of the conquerors had already encamped
in the heart of Italy before the rearguard of the beaten army fell sullenly
back from its shores.

We may conjecture, though we are not told, that the Mother of the Gods
brought with her the worship of her youthful lover or son to her new home in
the West. Certainly the Romans were familiar with the Galli, the emasculated
priests of Attis, before the close of the Republic. These unsexed beings, in
their Oriental costume, with little images suspended on their breasts, appear
to have been a familiar sight in the streets of Rome, which they traversed in
procession, carrying the image of the goddess and chanting their hymns to the
music of cymbals and tambourines, flutes and horns, while the people,
impressed by the fantastic show and moved by the wild strains, flung alms to
them in abundance, and buried the image and its bearers under showers of
roses. A further step was taken by the Emperor Claudius when he incorporated
the Phrygian worship of the sacred tree, and with it probably the orgiastic
rites of Attis, in the established religion of Rome. The great spring festival
of Cybele and Attis is best known to us in the form in which it was celebrated
at Rome; but as we are informed that the Roman ceremonies were also Phrygian,
we may assume that they differed hardly, if at all, from their Asiatic
original. The order of the festival seems to have been as follows.
 3

On the twenty-second day of March, a pine-tree was cut in the woods and
brought into the sanctuary of Cybele, where it was treated as a great
divinity. The duty of carrying the sacred tree was entrusted to a guild of
Tree-bearers. The trunk was swathed like a corpse with woollen bands and
decked with wreaths of violets, for violets were said to have sprung from the
blood of Attis, as roses and anemones from the blood of Adonis; and the effigy
of a young man, doubtless Attis himself, was tied to the middle of the stem.
On the second day of the festival, the twenty-third of March, the chief
ceremony seems to have been a blowing of trumpets. The third day, the
twenty-fourth of March, was known as the Day of Blood: the Archigallus or
highpriest drew blood from his arms and presented it as an offering. Nor was
he alone in making this bloody sacrifice. Stirred by the wild barbaric music
of clashing cymbals, rumbling drums, droning horns, and screaming flutes, the
inferior clergy whirled about in the dance with waggling heads and streaming
hair, until, rapt into a frenzy of excitement and insensible to pain, they
gashed their bodies with potsherds or slashed them with knives in order to
bespatter the altar and the sacred tree with their flowing blood. The ghastly
rite probably formed part of the mourning for Attis and may have been intended
to strengthen him for the resurrection. The Australian aborigines cut
themselves in like manner over the graves of their friends for the purpose,
perhaps, of enabling them to be born again. Further, we may conjecture, though
we are not expressly told, that it was on the same Day of Blood and for the
same purpose that the novices sacrificed their virility. Wrought up to the
highest pitch of religious excitement they dashed the severed portions of
themselves against the image of the cruel goddess. These broken instruments of
fertility were afterwards reverently wrapt up and buried in the earth or in
subterranean chambers sacred to Cybele, where, like the offering of blood,
they may have been deemed instrumental in recalling Attis to life and
hastening the general resurrection of nature, which was then bursting into
leaf and blossom in the vernal sunshine. Some confirmation of this conjecture
is furnished by the savage story that the mother of Attis conceived by putting
in her bosom a pomegranate sprung from the severed genitals of a man-monster
named Agdestis, a sort of double of Attis.

If there is any truth in this conjectural explanation of the custom, we
can readily understand why other Asiatic goddesses of fertility were served in
like manner by eunuch priests. These feminine deities required to receive from
their male ministers, who personated the divine lovers, the means of
discharging their beneficent functions: they had themselves to be impregnated
by the life-giving energy before they could transmit it to the world.
Goddesses thus ministered to by eunuch priests were the great Artemis of
Ephesus and the great Syrian Astarte of Hierapolis, whose sanctuary,
frequented by swarms of pilgrims and enriched by the offerings of Assyria and
Babylonia, of Arabia and Phoenicia, was perhaps in the days of its glory the
most popular in the East. Now the unsexed priests of this Syrian goddess
resembled those of Cybele so closely that some people took them to be the
same. And the mode in which they dedicated themselves to the religious life
was similar. The greatest festival of the year at Hierapolis fell at the
beginning of spring, when multitudes thronged to the sanctuary from Syria and
the regions round about. While the flutes played, the drums beat, and the
eunuch priests slashed themselves with knives, the religious excitement
gradually spread like a wave among the crowd of onlookers, and many a one did
that which he little thought to do when he came as a holiday spectator to the
festival. For man after man, his veins throbbing with the music, his eyes
fascinated by the sight of the streaming blood, flung his garments from him,
leaped forth with a shout, and seizing one of the swords which stood ready for
the purpose, castrated himself on the spot. Then he ran through the city,
holding the bloody pieces in his hand, till he threw them into one of the
houses which he passed in his mad career. The household thus honoured had to
furnish him with a suit of female attire and female ornaments, which he wore
for the rest of his life. When the tumult of emotion had subsided, and the man
had come to himself again, the irrevocable sacrifice must often have been
followed by passionate sorrow and lifelong regret. This revulsion of natural
human feeling after the frenzies of a fanatical religion is powerfully
depicted by Catullus in a celebrated poem.

The parallel of these Syrian devotees confirms the view that in the
similar worship of Cybele the sacrifice of virility took place on the Day of
Blood at the vernal rites of the goddess, when the violets, supposed to spring
from the red drops of her wounded lover, were in bloom among the pines. Indeed
the story that Attis unmanned himself under a pine-tree was clearly devised to
explain why his priests did the same beside the sacred violet-wreathed tree at
his festival. At all events, we can hardly doubt that the Day of Blood
witnessed the mourning for Attis over an effigy of him which was afterwards
buried. The image thus laid in the sepulchre was probably the same which had
hung upon the tree. Throughout the period of mourning the worshippers fasted
from bread, nominally because Cybele had done so in her grief for the death of
Attis, but really perhaps for the same reason which induced the women of
Harran to abstain from eating anything ground in a mill while they wept for
Tammuz. To partake of bread or flour at such a season might have been deemed a
wanton profanation of the bruised and broken body of the god. Or the fast may
possibly have been a preparation for a sacramental meal.

But when night had fallen, the sorrow of the worshippers was turned to
joy. For suddenly a light shone in the darkness: the tomb was opened: the god
had risen from the dead; and as the priest touched the lips of the weeping
mourners with balm, he softly whispered in their ears the glad tidings of
salvation. The resurrection of the god was hailed by his disciples as a
promise that they too would issue triumphant from the corruption of the grave.
On the morrow, the twenty-fifth day of March, which was reckoned the vernal
equinox, the divine resurrection was celebrated with a wild outburst of glee.
At Rome, and probably elsewhere, the celebration took the form of a carnival.
It was the Festival of Joy (Hilaria). A universal licence prevailed. Every
man might say and do what he pleased. People went about the streets in
disguise. No dignity was too high or too sacred for the humblest citizen to
assume with impunity. In the reign of Commodus a band of conspirators thought
to take advantage of the masquerade by dressing in the uniform of the Imperial
Guard, and so, mingling with the crowd of merrymakers, to get within stabbing
distance of the emperor. But the plot miscarried. Even the stern Alexander
Severus used to relax so far on the joyous day as to admit a pheasant to his
frugal board. The next day, the twenty-sixth of March, was given to repose,
which must have been much needed after the varied excitements and fatigues of
the preceding days. Finally, the Roman festival closed on the twenty-seventh
of March with a procession to the brook Almo. The silver image of the goddess,
with its face of jagged black stone, sat in a waggon drawn by oxen. Preceded
by the nobles walking barefoot, it moved slowly, to the loud music of pipes
and tambourines, out by the Porta Capena, and so down to the banks of the
Almo, which flows into the Tiber just below the walls of Rome. There the
high-priest, robed in purple, washed the waggon, the image, and the other
sacred objects in the water of the stream. On returning from their bath, the
wain and the oxen were strewn with fresh spring flowers. All was mirth and
gaiety. No one thought of the blood that had flowed so lately. Even the eunuch
priests forgot their wounds.

Such, then, appears to have been the annual solemnisation of the death and
resurrection of Attis in spring. But besides these public rites, his worship
is known to have comprised certain secret or mystic ceremonies, which probably
aimed at bringing the worshipper, and especially the novice, into closer
communication with his god. Our information as to the nature of these
mysteries and the date of their celebration is unfortunately very scanty, but
they seem to have included a sacramental meal and a baptism of blood. In the
sacrament the novice became a partaker of the mysteries by eating out of a
drum and drinking out of a cymbal, two instruments of music which figured
prominently in the thrilling orchestra of Attis. The fast which accompanied
the mourning for the dead god may perhaps have been designed to prepare the
body of the communicant for the reception of the blessed sacrament by purging
it of all that could defile by contact the sacred elements. In the baptism the
devotee, crowned with gold and wreathed with fillets, descended into a pit,
the mouth of which was covered with a wooden grating. A bull, adorned with
garlands of flowers, its forehead glittering with gold leaf, was then driven
on to the grating and there stabbed to death with a consecrated spear. Its hot
reeking blood poured in torrents through the apertures, and was received with
devout eagerness by the worshipper on every part of his person and garments,
till he emerged from the pit, drenched, dripping, and scarlet from head to
foot, to receive the homage, nay the adoration, of his fellows as one who had
been born again to eternal life and had washed away his sins in the blood of
the bull. For some time afterwards the fiction of a new birth was kept up by
dieting him on milk like a new-born babe. The regeneration of the worshipper
took place at the same time as the regeneration of his god, namely at the
vernal equinox. At Rome the new birth and the remission of sins by the
shedding of bull's blood appear to have been carried out above all at the
sanctuary of the Phrygian goddess on the Vatican Hill, at or near the spot
where the great basilica of St. Peter's now stands; for many inscriptions
relating to the rites were found when the church was being enlarged in 1608 or
1609. From the Vatican as a centre this barbarous system of superstition seems
to have spread to other parts of the Roman empire. Inscriptions found in Gaul
and Germany prove that provincial sanctuaries modelled their ritual on that of
the Vatican. From the same source we learn that the testicles as well as the
blood of the bull played an important part in the ceremonies. Probably they
were regarded as a powerful charm to promote fertility and hasten the new
birth.

Chapter 35. Attis as a God of Vegetation.

THE ORIGINAL character of Attis as a tree-spirit is brought out plainly by
the part which the pine-tree plays in his legend, his ritual, and his
monuments. The story that he was a human being transformed into a pine-tree is
only one of those transparent attempts at rationalising old beliefs which meet
us so frequently in mythology. The bringing in of the pine-tree from the
woods, decked with violets and woollen bands, is like bringing in the May-tree
or Summer-tree in modern folk-custom; and the effigy which was attached to the
pine-tree was only a duplicate representative of the tree-spirit Attis. After
being fastened to the tree, the effigy was kept for a year and then burned.
The same thing appears to have been sometimes done with the May-pole; and in
like manner the effigy of the corn-spirit, made at harvest, is often preserved
till it is replaced by a new effigy at next year's harvest. The original
intention of such customs was no doubt to maintain the spirit of vegetation in
life throughout the year. Why the Phrygians should have worshipped the pine
above other trees we can only guess. Perhaps the sight of its changeless,
though sombre, green cresting the ridges of the high hills above the fading
splendour of the autumn woods in the valleys may have seemed to their eyes to
mark it out as the seat of a diviner life, of something exempt from the sad
vicissitudes of the seasons, constant and eternal as the sky which stooped to
meet it. For the same reason, perhaps, ivy was sacred to Attis; at all events,
we read that his eunuch priests were tattooed with a pattern of ivy leaves.
Another reason for the sanctity of the pine may have been its usefulness. The
cones of the stone-pine contain edible nut-like seeds, which have been used as
food since antiquity, and are still eaten, for example, by the poorer classes
in Rome. Moreover, a wine was brewed from these seeds, and this may partly
account for the orgiastic nature of the rites of Cybele, which the ancients
compared to those of Dionysus. Further, pine-cones were regarded as symbols or
rather instruments of fertility. Hence at the festival of the Thesmophoria
they were thrown, along with pigs and other agents or emblems of fecundity,
into the sacred vaults of Demeter for the purpose of quickening the ground and
the wombs of women.

Like tree-spirits in general, Attis was apparently thought to wield power
over the fruits of the earth or even to be identical with the corn. One of his
epithets was very fruitful: he was addressed as the reaped green (or
yellow) ear of corn; and the story of his sufferings, death, and resurrection
was interpreted as the ripe grain wounded by the reaper, buried in the
granary, and coming to life again when it is sown in the ground. A statue of
him in the Lateran Museum at Rome clearly indicates his relation to the fruits
of the earth, and particularly to the corn; for it represents him with a bunch
of ears of corn and fruit in his hand, and a wreath of pine-cones,
pomegranates, and other fruits on his head, while from the top of his Phrygian
cap ears of corn are sprouting. On a stone urn, which contained the ashes of
an Archigallus or high-priest of Attis, the same idea is expressed in a
slightly different way. The top of the urn is adorned with ears of corn carved
in relief, and it is surmounted by the figure of a cock, whose tail consists
of ears of corn. Cybele in like manner was conceived as a goddess of fertility
who could make or mar the fruits of the earth; for the people of Augustodunum
(Autun) in Gaul used to cart her image about in a waggon for the good of the
fields and vineyards, while they danced and sang before it, and we have seen
that in Italy an unusually fine harvest was attributed to the recent arrival
of the Great Mother. The bathing of the image of the goddess in a river may
well have been a rain-charm to ensure an abundant supply of moisture for the
crops.

Chapter 36. Human Representatives of Attis.

FROM INSCRIPTIONS it appears that both at Pessinus and Rome the high-priest
of Cybele regularly bore the name of Attis. It is therefore a reasonable
conjecture that he played the part of his namesake, the legendary Attis, at
the annual festival. We have seen that on the Day of Blood he drew blood from
his arms, and this may have been an imitation of the self-inflicted death of
Attis under the pine-tree. It is not inconsistent with this supposition that
Attis was also represented at these ceremonies by an effigy; for instances can
be shown in which the divine being is first represented by a living person and
afterwards by an effigy, which is then burned or otherwise destroyed. Perhaps
we may go a step farther and conjecture that this mimic killing of the priest,
accompanied by a real effusion of his blood, was in Phrygia, as it has been
elsewhere, a substitute for a human sacrifice which in earlier times was
actually offered.

A reminiscence of the manner in which these old representatives of the
deity were put to death is perhaps preserved in the famous story of Marsyas.
He was said to be a Phrygian satyr or Silenus, according to others a shepherd
or herdsman, who played sweetly on the flute. A friend of Cybele, he roamed
the country with the disconsolate goddess to soothe her grief for the death of
Attis. The composition of the Mother's Air, a tune played on the flute in
honour of the Great Mother Goddess, was attributed to him by the people of
Celaenae in Phrygia. Vain of his skill, he challenged Apollo to a musical
contest, he to play on the flute and Apollo on the lyre. Being vanquished,
Marsyas was tied up to a pine-tree and flayed or cut limb from limb either by
the victorious Apollo or by a Scythian slave. His skin was shown at Celaenae
in historical times. It hung at the foot of the citadel in a cave from which
the river Marsyas rushed with an impetuous and noisy tide to join the
Maeander. So the Adonis bursts full-born from the precipices of the Lebanon;
so the blue river of Ibreez leaps in a crystal jet from the red rocks of the
Taurus; so the stream, which now rumbles deep underground, used to gleam for a
moment on its passage from darkness to darkness in the dim light of the
Corycian cave. In all these copious fountains, with their glad promise of
fertility and life, men of old saw the hand of God and worshipped him beside
the rushing river with the music of its tumbling waters in their ears. At
Celaenae, if we can trust tradition, the piper Marsyas, hanging in his cave,
had a soul for harmony even in death; for it is said that at the sound of his
native Phrygian melodies the skin of the dead satyr used to thrill, but that
if the musician struck up an air in praise of Apollo it remained deaf and
motionless.

In this Phrygian satyr, shepherd, or herdsman who enjoyed the friendship
of Cybele, practised the music so characteristic of her rites, and died a
violent death on her sacred tree, the pine, may we not detect a close
resemblance to Attis, the favourite shepherd or herdsman of the goddess, who
is himself described as a piper, is said to have perished under a pine-tree,
and was annually represented by an effigy hung, like Marsyas, upon a pine? We
may conjecture that in old days the priest who bore the name and played the
part of Attis at the spring festival of Cybele was regularly hanged or
otherwise slain upon the sacred tree, and that this barbarous custom was
afterwards mitigated into the form in which it is known to us in later times,
when the priest merely drew blood from his body under the tree and attached an
effigy instead of himself to its trunk. In the holy grove at Upsala men and
animals were sacrificed by being hanged upon the sacred trees. The human
victims dedicated to Odin were regularly put to death by hanging or by a
combination of hanging and stabbing, the man being strung up to a tree or a
gallows and then wounded with a spear. Hence Odin was called the Lord of the
Gallows or the God of the Hanged, and he is represented sitting under a
gallows tree. Indeed he is said to have been sacrificed to himself in the
ordinary way, as we learn from the weird verses of the Havamal, in which the
god describes how he acquired his divine power by learning the magic runes:

I know that I hung on the windy tree

For nine whole nights,

Wounded with the spear, dedicated to Odin,

Myself to myself.

The Bagobos of Mindanao, one of the Philippine Islands, used annually to
sacrifice human victims for the good of the crops in a similar way. Early in
December, when the constellation Orion appeared at seven o'clock in the
evening, the people knew that the time had come to clear their fields for
sowing and to sacrifice a slave. The sacrifice was presented to certain
powerful spirits as payment for the good year which the people had enjoyed,
and to ensure the favour of the spirits for the coming season. The victim was
led to a great tree in the forest; there he was tied with his back to the tree
and his arms stretched high above his head, in the attitude in which ancient
artists portrayed Marsyas hanging on the fatal tree. While he thus hung by the
arms, he was slain by a spear thrust through his body at the level of the
armpits. Afterwards the body was cut clean through the middle at the waist,
and the upper part was apparently allowed to dangle for a little from the
tree, while the under part wallowed in blood on the ground. The two portions
were finally cast into a shallow trench beside the tree. Before this was done,
anybody who wished might cut off a piece of flesh or a lock of hair from the
corpse and carry it to the grave of some relation whose body was being
consumed by a ghoul. Attracted by the fresh corpse, the ghoul would leave the
mouldering old body in peace. These sacrifices have been offered by men now
living.

In Greece the great goddess Artemis herself appears to have been annually
hanged in effigy in her sacred grove of Condylea among the Arcadian hills, and
there accordingly she went by the name of the Hanged One. Indeed a trace of a
similar rite may perhaps be detected even at Ephesus, the most famous of her
sanctuaries, in the legend of a woman who hanged herself and was thereupon
dressed by the compassionate goddess in her own divine garb and called by the
name of Hecate. Similarly, at Melite in Phthia, a story was told of a girl
named Aspalis who hanged herself, but who appears to have been merely a form
of Artemis. For after her death her body could not be found, but an image of
her was discovered standing beside the image of Artemis, and the people
bestowed on it the title of Hecaerge or Far-shooter, one of the regular
epithets of the goddess. Every year the virgins sacrificed a young goat to the
image by hanging it, because Aspalis was said to have hanged herself. The
sacrifice may have been a substitute for hanging an image or a human
representative of Artemis. Again, in Rhodes the fair Helen was worshipped
under the title of Helen of the Tree, because the queen of the island had
caused her handmaids, disguised as Furies, to string her up to a bough. That
the Asiatic Greeks sacrificed animals in this fashion is proved by coins of
Ilium, which represent an ox or cow hanging on a tree and stabbed with a knife
by a man, who sits among the branches or on the animal's back. At Hierapolis
also the victims were hung on trees before they were burnt. With these Greek
and Scandinavian parallels before us we can hardly dismiss as wholly
improbable the conjecture that in Phrygia a man-god may have hung year by year
on the sacred but fatal tree.

Chapter 37. Oriental Religions in the West.

THE WORSHIP of the Great Mother of the Gods and her lover or son was very
popular under the Roman Empire. Inscriptions prove that the two received
divine honours, separately or conjointly, not only in Italy, and especially at
Rome, but also in the provinces, particularly in Africa, Spain, Portugal,
France, Germany, and Bulgaria. Their worship survived the establishment of
Christianity by Constantine; for Symmachus records the recurrence of the
festival of the Great Mother, and in the days of Augustine her effeminate
priests still paraded the streets and squares of Carthage with whitened faces,
scented hair, and mincing gait, while, like the mendicant friars of the Middle
Ages, they begged alms from the passers-by. In Greece, on the other hand, the
bloody orgies of the Asiatic goddess and her consort appear to have found
little favour. The barbarous and cruel character of the worship, with its
frantic excesses, was doubtless repugnant to the good taste and humanity of
the Greeks, who seem to have preferred the kindred but gentler rites of
Adonis. Yet the same features which shocked and repelled the Greeks may have
positively attracted the less refined Romans and barbarians of the West. The
ecstatic frenzies, which were mistaken for divine inspiration, the mangling of
the body, the theory of a new birth and the remission of sins through the
shedding of blood, have all their origin in savagery, and they naturally
appealed to peoples in whom the savage instincts were still strong. Their true
character was indeed often disguised under a decent veil of allegorical or
philosophical interpretation, which probably sufficed to impose upon the rapt
and enthusiastic worshippers, reconciling even the more cultivated of them to
things which otherwise must have filled them with horror and disgust.

The religion of the Great Mother, with its curious blending of crude
savagery with spiritual aspirations, was only one of a multitude of similar
Oriental faiths which in the later days of paganism spread over the Roman
Empire, and by saturating the European peoples with alien ideals of life
gradually undermined the whole fabric of ancient civilisation. Greek and Roman
society was built on the conception of the subordination of the individual to
the community, of the citizen to the state; it set the safety of the
commonwealth, as the supreme aim of conduct, above the safety of the
individual whether in this world or in the world to come. Trained from infancy
in this unselfish ideal, the citizens devoted their lives to the public
service and were ready to lay them down for the common good; or if they shrank
from the supreme sacrifice, it never occurred to them that they acted
otherwise than basely in preferring their personal existence to the interests
of their country. All this was changed by the spread of Oriental religions
which inculcated the communion of the soul with God and its eternal salvation
as the only objects worth living for, objects in comparison with which the
prosperity and even the existence of the state sank into insignificance. The
inevitable result of this selfish and immoral doctrine was to withdraw the
devotee more and more from the public service, to concentrate his thoughts on
his own spiritual emotions, and to breed in him a contempt for the present
life which he regarded merely as a probation for a better and an eternal. The
saint and the recluse, disdainful of earth and rapt in ecstatic contemplation
of heaven, became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing
the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives and is
ready to die for the good of his country. The earthly city seemed poor and
contemptible to men whose eyes beheld the City of God coming in the clouds of
heaven. Thus the centre of gravity, so to say, was shifted from the present to
a future life, and however much the other world may have gained, there can be
little doubt that this one lost heavily by the change. A general
disintegration of the body politic set in. The ties of the state and the
family were loosened: the structure of society tended to resolve itself into
its individual elements and thereby to relapse into barbarism; for
civilisation is only possible through the active co-operation of the citizens
and their willingness to subordinate their private interests to the common
good. Men refused to defend their country and even to continue their kind. In
their anxiety to save their own souls and the souls of others, they were
content to leave the material world, which they identified with the principle
of evil, to perish around them. This obsession lasted for a thousand years.
The revival of Roman law, of the Aristotelian philosophy, of ancient art and
literature at the close of the Middle Ages, marked the return of Europe to
native ideals of life and conduct, to saner, manlier views of the world. The
long halt in the march of civilisation was over. The tide of Oriental invasion
had turned at last. It is ebbing still.

Among the gods of eastern origin who in the decline of the ancient world
competed against each other for the allegiance of the West was the old Persian
deity Mithra. The immense popularity of his worship is attested by the
monuments illustrative of it which have been found scattered in profusion all
over the Roman Empire. In respect both of doctrines and of rites the cult of
Mithra appears to have presented many points of resemblance not only to the
religion of the Mother of the Gods but also to Christianity. The similarity
struck the Christian doctors themselves and was explained by them as a work of
the devil, who sought to seduce the souls of men from the true faith by a
false and insidious imitation of it. So to the Spanish conquerors of Mexico
and Peru many of the native heathen rites appeared to be diabolical
counterfeits of the Christian sacraments. With more probability the modern
student of comparative religion traces such resemblances to the similar and
independent workings of the mind of man in his sincere, if crude, attempts to
fathom the secret of the universe, and to adjust his little life to its awful
mysteries. However that may be, there can be no doubt that the Mithraic
religion proved a formidable rival to Christianity, combining as it did a
solemn ritual with aspirations after moral purity and a hope of immortality.
Indeed the issue of the conflict between the two faiths appears for a time to
have hung in the balance. An instructive relic of the long struggle is
preserved in our festival of Christmas, which the Church seems to have
borrowed directly from its heathen rival. In the Julian calendar the
twenty-fifth of December was reckoned the winter solstice, and it was regarded
as the Nativity of the Sun, because the day begins to lengthen and the power
of the sun to increase from that turning-point of the year. The ritual of the
nativity, as it appears to have been celebrated in Syria and Egypt, was
remarkable. The celebrants retired into certain inner shrines, from which at
midnight they issued with a loud cry, The Virgin has brought forth! The light
is waxing! The Egyptians even represented the new-born sun by the image of an
infant which on his birthday, the winter solstice, they brought forth and
exhibited to his worshippers. No doubt the Virgin who thus conceived and bore
a son on the twenty-fifth of December was the great Oriental goddess whom the
Semites called the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess; in Semitic
lands she was a form of Astarte. Now Mithra was regularly identified by his
worshippers with the Sun, the Unconquered Sun, as they called him; hence his
nativity also fell on the twenty-fifth of December. The Gospels say nothing as
to the day of Christ's birth, and accordingly the early Church did not
celebrate it. In time, however, the Christians of Egypt came to regard the
sixth of January as the date of the Nativity, and the custom of commemorating
the birth of the Saviour on that day gradually spread until by the fourth
century it was universally established in the East. But at the end of the
third or the beginning of the fourth century the Western Church, which had
never recognised the sixth of January as the day of the Nativity, adopted the
twenty-fifth of December as the true date, and in time its decision was
accepted also by the Eastern Church. At Antioch the change was not introduced
till about the year 375 A.D.

What considerations led the ecclesiastical authorities to institute the
festival of Christmas? The motives for the innovation are stated with great
frankness by a Syrian writer, himself a Christian. The reason, he tells us,
why the fathers transferred the celebration of the sixth of January to the
twenty-fifth of December was this. It was a custom of the heathen to celebrate
on the same twenty-fifth of December the birthday of the Sun, at which they
kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and festivities the
Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church
perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took
counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day
and the festival of the Epiphany on the sixth of January. Accordingly, along
with this custom, the practice has prevailed of kindling fires till the
sixth. The heathen origin of Christmas is plainly hinted at, if not tacitly
admitted, by Augustine when he exhorts his Christian brethren not to celebrate
that solemn day like the heathen on account of the sun, but on account of him
who made the sun. In like manner Leo the Great rebuked the pestilent belief
that Christmas was solemnised because of the birth of the new sun, as it was
called, and not because of the nativity of Christ.

Thus it appears that the Christian Church chose to celebrate the birthday
of its Founder on the twenty-fifth of December in order to transfer the
devotion of the heathen from the Sun to him who was called the Sun of
Righteousness. If that was so, there can be no intrinsic improbability in the
conjecture that motives of the same sort may have led the ecclesiastical
authorities to assimilate the Easter festival of the death and resurrection of
their Lord to the festival of the death and resurrection of another Asiatic
god which fell at the same season. Now the Easter rites still observed in
Greece, Sicily, and Southern Italy bear in some respects a striking
resemblance to the rites of Adonis, and I have suggested that the Church may
have consciously adapted the new festival to its heathen predecessor for the
sake of winning souls to Christ. But this adaptation probably took place in
the Greek-speaking rather than in the Latin-speaking parts of the ancient
world; for the worship of Adonis, while it flourished among the Greeks,
appears to have made little impression on Rome and the West. Certainly it
never formed part of the official Roman religion. The place which it might
have taken in the affections of the vulgar was already occupied by the similar
but more barbarous worship of Attis and the Great Mother. Now the death and
resurrection of Attis were officially celebrated at Rome on the twenty-fourth
and twenty-fifth of March, the latter being regarded as the spring equinox,
and therefore as the most appropriate day for the revival of a god of
vegetation who had been dead or sleeping throughout the winter. But according
to an ancient and widespread tradition Christ suffered on the twenty-fifth of
March, and accordingly some Christians regularly celebrated the Crucifixion on
that day without any regard to the state of the moon. This custom was
certainly observed in Phrygia, Cappadocia, and Gaul, and there seem to be
grounds for thinking that at one time it was followed also in Rome. Thus the
tradition which placed the death of Christ on the twenty-fifth of March was
ancient and deeply rooted. It is all the more remarkable because astronomical
considerations prove that it can have had no historical foundation. The
inference appears to be inevitable that the passion of Christ must have been
arbitrarily referred to that date in order to harmonise with an older festival
of the spring equinox. This is the view of the learned ecclesiastical
historian Mgr. Duchesne, who points out that the death of the Saviour was thus
made to fall upon the very day on which, according to a widespread belief, the
world had been created. But the resurrection of Attis, who combined in himself
the characters of the divine Father and the divine Son, was officially
celebrated at Rome on the same day. When we remember that the festival of St.
George in April has replaced the ancient pagan festival of the Parilia; that
the festival of St. John the Baptist in June has succeeded to a heathen
midsummer festival of water: that the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin
in August has ousted the festival of Diana; that the feast of All Souls in
November is a continuation of an old heathen feast of the dead; and that the
Nativity of Christ himself was assigned to the winter solstice in December
because that day was deemed the Nativity of the Sun; we can hardly be thought
rash or unreasonable in conjecturing that the other cardinal festival of the
Christian churchthe solemnisation of Eastermay have been in like manner, and
from like motives of edification, adapted to a similar celebration of the
Phrygian god Attis at the vernal equinox.

At least it is a remarkable coincidence, if it is nothing more, that the
Christian and the heathen festivals of the divine death and resurrection
should have been solemnised at the same season and in the same places. For the
places which celebrated the death of Christ at the spring equinox were
Phrygia, Gaul, and apparently Rome, that is, the very regions in which the
worship of Attis either originated or struck deepest root. It is difficult to
regard the coincidence as purely accidental. If the vernal equinox, the season
at which in the temperate regions the whole face of nature testifies to a
fresh outburst of vital energy, had been viewed from of old as the time when
the world was annually created afresh in the resurrection of a god, nothing
could be more natural than to place the resurrection of the new deity at the
same cardinal point of the year. Only it is to be observed that if the death
of Christ was dated on the twenty-fifth of March, his resurrection, according
to Christian tradition, must have happened on the twenty-seventh of March,
which is just two days later than the vernal equinox of the Julian calendar
and the resurrection of Attis. A similar displacement of two days in the
adjustment of Christian to heathen celebrations occurs in the festivals of St.
George and the Assumption of the Virgin. However, another Christian tradition,
followed by Lactantius and perhaps by the practice of the Church in Gaul,
placed the death of Christ on the twenty-third and his resurrection on the
twenty-fifth of March. If that was so, his resurrection coincided exactly with
the resurrection of Attis.

In point of fact it appears from the testimony of an anonymous Christian,
who wrote in the fourth century of our era, that Christians and pagans alike
were struck by the remarkable coincidence between the death and resurrection
of their respective deities, and that the coincidence formed a theme of bitter
controversy between the adherents of the rival religions, the pagans
contending that the resurrection of Christ was a spurious imitation of the
resurrection of Attis, and the Christians asserting with equal warmth that the
resurrection of Attis was a diabolical counterfeit of the resurrection of
Christ. In these unseemly bickerings the heathen took what to a superficial
observer might seem strong ground by arguing that their god was the older and
therefore presumably the original, not the counterfeit, since as a general
rule an original is older than its copy. This feeble argument the Christians
easily rebutted. They admitted, indeed, that in point of time Christ was the
junior deity, but they triumphantly demonstrated his real seniority by falling
back on the subtlety of Satan, who on so important an occasion had surpassed
himself by inverting the usual order of nature.

Taken altogether, the coincidences of the Christian with the heathen
festivals are too close and too numerous to be accidental. They mark the
compromise which the Church in the hour of its triumph was compelled to make
with its vanquished yet still dangerous rivals. The inflexible Protestantism
of the primitive missionaries, with their fiery denunciations of heathendom,
had been exchanged for the supple policy, the easy tolerance, the
comprehensive charity of shrewd ecclesiastics, who clearly perceived that if
Christianity was to conquer the world it could do so only by relaxing the too
rigid principles of its Founder, by widening a little the narrow gate which
leads to salvation. In this respect an instructive parallel might be drawn
between the history of Christianity and the history of Buddhism. Both systems
were in their origin essentially ethical reforms born of the generous ardour,
the lofty aspirations, the tender compassion of their noble Founders, two of
those beautiful spirits who appear at rare intervals on earth like beings come
from a better world to support and guide our weak and erring nature. Both
preached moral virtue as the means of accomplishing what they regarded as the
supreme object of life, the eternal salvation of the individual soul, though
by a curious antithesis the one sought that salvation in a blissful eternity,
the other in a final release from suffering, in annihilation. But the austere
ideals of sanctity which they inculcated were too deeply opposed not only to
the frailties but to the natural instincts of humanity ever to be carried out
in practice by more than a small number of disciples, who consistently
renounced the ties of the family and the state in order to work out their own
salvation in the still seclusion of the cloister. If such faiths were to be
nominally accepted by whole nations or even by the world, it was essential
that they should first be modified or transformed so as to accord in some
measure with the prejudices, the passions, the superstitions of the vulgar.
This process of accommodation was carried out in after ages by followers who,
made of less ethereal stuff than their masters, were for that reason the
better fitted to mediate between them and the common herd. Thus as time went
on, the two religions, in exact proportion to their growing popularity,
absorbed more and more of those baser elements which they had been instituted
for the very purpose of suppressing. Such spiritual decadences are inevitable.
The world cannot live at the level of its great men. Yet it would be unfair to
the generality of our kind to ascribe wholly to their intellectual and moral
weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from their
primitive patterns. For it should never be forgotten that by their
glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions struck straight at
the root not merely of civil society but of human existence. The blow was
parried by the wisdom or the folly of the vast majority of mankind, who
refused to purchase a chance of saving their souls with the certainty of
extinguishing the species.

Chapter 38. The Myth of Osiris.

IN ANCIENT EGYPT the god whose death and resurrection were annually
celebrated with alternate sorrow and joy was Osiris, the most popular of all
Egyptian deities; and there are good grounds for classing him in one of his
aspects with Adonis and Attis as a personification of the great yearly
vicissitudes of nature, especially of the corn. But the immense vogue which he
enjoyed for many ages induced his devoted worshippers to heap upon him the
attributes and powers of many other gods; so that it is not always easy to
strip him, so to say, of his borrowed plumes and to restore them to their
proper owners.

The story of Osiris is told in a connected form only by Plutarch, whose
narrative has been confirmed and to some extent amplified in modern times by
the evidence of the monuments.

Osiris was the offspring of an intrigue between the earth-god Seb (Keb or
Geb, as the name is sometimes transliterated) and the sky-goddess Nut. The
Greeks identified his parents with their own deities Cronus and Rhea. When the
sun-god Ra perceived that his wife Nut had been unfaithful to him, he declared
with a curse that she should be delivered of the child in no month and no
year. But the goddess had another lover, the god Thoth or Hermes, as the
Greeks called him, and he playing at draughts with the moon won from her a
seventy-second part of every day, and having compounded five whole days out of
these parts he added them to the Egyptian year of three hundred and sixty
days. This was the mythical origin of the five supplementary days which the
Egyptians annually inserted at the end of every year in order to establish a
harmony between lunar and solar time. On these five days, regarded as outside
the year of twelve months, the curse of the sun-god did not rest, and
accordingly Osiris was born on the first of them. At his nativity a voice rang
out proclaiming that the Lord of All had come into the world. Some say that a
certain Pamyles heard a voice from the temple at Thebes bidding him announce
with a shout that a great king, the beneficent Osiris, was born. But Osiris
was not the only child of his mother. On the second of the supplementary days
she gave birth to the elder Horus, on the third to the god Set, whom the
Greeks called Typhon, on the fourth to the goddess Isis, and on the fifth to
the goddess Nephthys. Afterwards Set married his sister Nephthys, and Osiris
married his sister Isis.

Reigning as a king on earth, Osiris reclaimed the Egyptians from savagery,
gave them laws, and taught them to worship the gods. Before his time the
Egyptians had been cannibals. But Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris,
discovered wheat and barley growing wild, and Osiris introduced the
cultivation of these grains amongst his people, who forthwith abandoned
cannibalism and took kindly to a corn diet. Moreover, Osiris is said to have
been the first to gather fruit from trees, to train the vine to poles, and to
tread the grapes. Eager to communicate these beneficent discoveries to all
mankind, he committed the whole government of Egypt to his wife Isis, and
travelled over the world, diffusing the blessings of civilisation and
agriculture wherever he went. In countries where a harsh climate or niggardly
soil forbade the cultivation of the vine, he taught the inhabitants to console
themselves for the want of wine by brewing beer from barley. Loaded with the
wealth that had been showered upon him by grateful nations, he returned to
Egypt, and on account of the benefits he had conferred on mankind he was
unanimously hailed and worshipped as a deity. But his brother Set (whom the
Greeks called Typhon) with seventy-two others plotted against him. Having
taken the measure of his good brother's body by stealth, the bad brother
Typhon fashioned and highly decorated a coffer of the same size, and once when
they were all drinking and making merry he brought in the coffer and jestingly
promised to give it to the one whom it should fit exactly. Well, they all
tried one after the other, but it fitted none of them. Last of all Osiris
stepped into it and lay down. On that the conspirators ran and slammed the lid
down on him, nailed it fast, soldered it with molten lead, and flung the
coffer into the Nile. This happened on the seventeenth day of the month Athyr,
when the sun is in the sign of the Scorpion, and in the eight-and-twentieth
year of the reign or the life of Osiris. When Isis heard of it she sheared off
a lock of her hair, put on a mourning attire, and wandered disconsolately up
and down, seeking the body.

By the advice of the god of wisdom she took refuge in the papyrus swamps
of the Delta. Seven scorpions accompanied her in her flight. One evening when
she was weary she came to the house of a woman, who, alarmed at the sight of
the scorpions, shut the door in her face. Then one of the scorpions crept
under the door and stung the child of the woman that he died. But when Isis
heard the mother's lamentation, her heart was touched, and she laid her hands
on the child and uttered her powerful spells; so the poison was driven out of
the child and he lived. Afterwards Isis herself gave birth to a son in the
swamps. She had conceived him while she fluttered in the form of a hawk over
the corpse of her dead husband. The infant was the younger Horus, who in his
youth bore the name of Harpocrates, that is, the child Horus. Him Buto, the
goddess of the north, hid from the wrath of his wicked uncle Set. Yet she
could not guard him from all mishap; for one day when Isis came to her little
son's hiding-place she found him stretched lifeless and rigid on the ground: a
scorpion had stung him. Then Isis prayed to the sun-god Ra for help. The god
hearkened to her and staid his bark in the sky, and sent down Thoth to teach
her the spell by which she might restore her son to life. She uttered the
words of power, and straightway the poison flowed from the body of Horus, air
passed into him, and he lived. Then Thoth ascended up into the sky and took
his place once more in the bark of the sun, and the bright pomp passed onward
jubilant.

Meantime the coffer containing the body of Osiris had floated down the
river and away out to sea, till at last it drifted ashore at Byblus, on the
coast of Syria. Here a fine erica-tree shot up suddenly and enclosed the
chest in its trunk. The king of the country, admiring the growth of the tree,
had it cut down and made into a pillar of his house; but he did not know that
the coffer with the dead Osiris was in it. Word of this came to Isis and she
journeyed to Byblus, and sat down by the well, in humble guise, her face wet
with tears. To none would she speak till the king's handmaidens came, and them
she greeted kindly, and braided their hair, and breathed on them from her own
divine body a wondrous perfume. But when the queen beheld the braids of her
handmaidens' hair and smelt the sweet smell that emanated from them, she sent
for the stranger woman and took her into her house and made her the nurse of
her child. But Isis gave the babe her finger instead of her breast to suck,
and at night she began to burn all that was mortal of him away, while she
herself in the likeness of a swallow fluttered round the pillar that contained
her dead brother, twittering mournfully. But the queen spied what she was
doing and shrieked out when she saw her child in flames, and thereby she
hindered him from becoming immortal. Then the goddess revealed herself and
begged for the pillar of the roof, and they gave it her, and she cut the
coffer out of it, and fell upon it and embraced it and lamented so loud that
the younger of the king's children died of fright on the spot. But the trunk
of the tree she wrapped in fine linen, and poured ointment on it, and gave it
to the king and queen, and the wood stands in a temple of Isis and is
worshipped by the people of Byblus to this day. And Isis put the coffer in a
boat and took the eldest of the king's children with her and sailed away. As
soon as they were alone, she opened the chest, and laying her face on the face
of her brother she kissed him and wept. But the child came behind her softly
and saw what she was about, and she turned and looked at him in anger, and the
child could not bear her look and died; but some say that it was not so, but
that he fell into the sea and was drowned. It is he whom the Egyptians sing of
at their banquets under the name of Maneros.

But Isis put the coffer by and went to see her son Horus at the city of
Buto, and Typhon found the coffer as he was hunting a boar one night by the
light of a full moon. And he knew the body, and rent it into fourteen pieces,
and scattered them abroad. But Isis sailed up and down the marshes in a
shallop made of papyrus, looking for the pieces; and that is why when people
sail in shallops made of papyrus, the crocodiles do not hurt them, for they
fear or respect the goddess. And that is the reason, too, why there are many
graves of Osiris in Egypt, for she buried each limb as she found it. But
others will have it that she buried an image of him in every city, pretending
it was his body, in order that Osiris might be worshipped in many places, and
that if Typhon searched for the real grave he might not be able to find it.
However, the genital member of Osiris had been eaten by the fishes, so Isis
made an image of it instead, and the image is used by the Egyptians at their
festivals to this day. Isis, writes the historian Diodorus Siculus,
recovered all the parts of the body except the genitals; and because she
wished that her husband's grave should be unknown and honoured by all who
dwell in the land of Egypt, she resorted to the following device. She moulded
human images out of wax and spices, corresponding to the stature of Osiris,
round each one of the parts of his body. Then she called in the priests
according to their families and took an oath of them all that they would
reveal to no man the trust she was about to repose in them. So to each of them
privately she said that to them alone she entrusted the burial of the body,
and reminding them of the benefits they had received she exhorted them to bury
the body in their own land and to honour Osiris as a god. She also besought
them to dedicate one of the animals of their country, whichever they chose,
and to honour it in life as they had formerly honoured Osiris, and when it
died to grant it obsequies like his. And because she would encourage the
priests in their own interest to bestow the aforesaid honours, she gave them a
third part of the land to be used by them in the service and worship of the
gods. Accordingly it is said that the priests, mindful of the benefits of
Osiris, desirous of gratifying the queen, and moved by the prospect of gain,
carried out all the injunctions of Isis. Wherefore to this day each of the
priests imagines that Osiris is buried in his country, and they honour the
beasts that were consecrated in the beginning, and when the animals die the
priests renew at their burial the mourning for Osiris. But the sacred bulls,
the one called Apis and the other Mnevis, were dedicated to Osiris, and it was
ordained that they should be worshipped as gods in common by all the
Egyptians, since these animals above all others had helped the discoverers of
corn in sowing the seed and procuring the universal benefits of agriculture.

Such is the myth or legend of Osiris, as told by Greek writers and eked
out by more or less fragmentary notices or allusions in native Egyptian
literature. A long inscription in the temple at Denderah has preserved a list
of the god's graves, and other texts mention the parts of his body which were
treasured as holy relics in each of the sanctuaries. Thus his heart was at
Athribis, his backbone at Busiris, his neck at Letopolis, and his head at
Memphis. As often happens in such cases, some of his divine limbs were
miraculously multiplied. His head, for example, was at Abydos as well as at
Memphis, and his legs, which were remarkably numerous, would have sufficed for
several ordinary mortals. In this respect, however, Osiris was nothing to St.
Denys, of whom no less than seven heads, all equally genuine, are extant.

According to native Egyptian accounts, which supplement that of Plutarch,
when Isis had found the corpse of her husband Osiris, she and her sister
Nephthys sat down beside it and uttered a lament which in after ages became
the type of all Egyptian lamentations for the dead. Come to thy house, they
wailed. Come to thy house. O god On! come to thy house, thou who hast no
foes. O fair youth, come to thy house, that thou mayest see me. I am thy
sister, whom thou lovest; thou shalt not part from me. O fair boy, come to thy
house . I see thee not, yet doth my heart yearn after thee and mine eyes
desire thee. Come to her who loves thee, who loves thee, Unnefer, thou blessed
one! Come to thy sister, come to thy wife, to thy wife, thou whose heart
stands still. Come to thy housewife. I am thy sister by the same mother, thou
shalt not be far from me. Gods and men have turned their faces towards thee
and weep for thee together . I call after thee and weep, so that my cry is
heard to heaven, but thou hearest not my voice; yet am I thy sister, whom thou
didst love on earth; thou didst love none but me, my brother! my brother!
This lament for the fair youth cut off in his prime reminds us of the laments
for Adonis. The title of Unnefer or the Good Being bestowed on him marks the
beneficence which tradition universally ascribed to Osiris; it was at once his
commonest title and one of his names as king.

The lamentations of the two sad sisters were not in vain. In pity for her
sorrow the sun-god Ra sent down from heaven the jackal-headed god Anubis, who,
with the aid of Isis and Nephthys, of Thoth and Horus, pieced together the
broken body of the murdered god, swathed it in linen bandages, and observed
all the other rites which the Egyptians were wont to perform over the bodies
of the departed. Then Isis fanned the cold clay with her wings: Osiris
revived, and thenceforth reigned as king over the dead in the other world.
There he bore the titles of Lord of the Underworld, Lord of Eternity, Ruler of
the Dead. There, too, in the great Hall of the Two Truths, assisted by
forty-two assessors, one from each of the principal districts of Egypt, he
presided as judge at the trial of the souls of the departed, who made their
solemn confession before him, and, their heart having been weighed in the
balance of justice, received the reward of virtue in a life eternal or the
appropriate punishment of their sins.

In the resurrection of Osiris the Egyptians saw the pledge of a life
everlasting for themselves beyond the grave. They believed that every man
would live eternally in the other world if only his surviving friends did for
his body what the gods had done for the body of Osiris. Hence the ceremonies
observed by the Egyptians over the human dead were an exact copy of those
which Anubis, Horus, and the rest had performed over the dead god. At every
burial there was enacted a representation of the divine mystery which had been
performed of old over Osiris, when his son, his sisters, his friends were
gathered round his mangled remains and succeeded by their spells and
manipulations in converting his broken body into the first mummy, which they
afterwards reanimated and furnished with the means of entering on a new
individual life beyond the grave. The mummy of the deceased was Osiris; the
professional female mourners were his two sisters Isis and Nephthys; Anubis,
Horus, all the gods of the Osirian legend gathered about the corpse. In this
way every dead Egyptian was identified with Osiris and bore his name. From the
Middle Kingdom onwards it was the regular practice to address the deceased as
Osiris So-and-So, as if he were the god himself, and to add the standing
epithet true of speech, because true speech was characteristic of Osiris.
The thousands of inscribed and pictured tombs that have been opened in the
valley of the Nile prove that the mystery of the resurrection was performed
for the benefit of every dead Egyptian; as Osiris died and rose again from the
dead, so all men hoped to arise like him from death to life eternal.

Thus according to what seems to have been the general native tradition
Osiris was a good and beloved king of Egypt, who suffered a violent death but
rose from the dead and was henceforth worshipped as a deity. In harmony with
this tradition he was regularly represented by sculptors and painters in human
and regal form as a dead king, swathed in the wrappings of a mummy, but
wearing on his head a kingly crown and grasping in one of his hands, which
were left free from the bandages, a kingly sceptre. Two cities above all
others were associated with his myth or memory. One of them was Busiris in
Lower Egypt, which claimed to possess his backbone; the other was Abydos in
Upper Egypt, which gloried in the possession of his head. Encircled by the
nimbus of the dead yet living god, Abydos, originally an obscure place, became
from the end of the Old Kingdom the holiest spot in Egypt; his tomb there
would seem to have been to the Egyptians what the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
at Jerusalem is to Christians. It was the wish of every pious man that his
dead body should rest in hallowed earth near the grave of the glorified
Osiris. Few indeed were rich enough to enjoy this inestimable privilege; for,
apart from the cost of a tomb in the sacred city, the mere transport of
mummies from great distances was both difficult and expensive. Yet so eager
were many to absorb in death the blessed influence which radiated from the
holy sepulchre that they caused their surviving friends to convey their mortal
remains to Abydos, there to tarry for a short time, and then to be brought
back by river and interred in the tombs which had been made ready for them in
their native land. Others had cenotaphs built or memorial tablets erected for
themselves near the tomb of their dead and risen Lord, that they might share
with him the bliss of a joyful resurrection.

Chapter 39. The Ritual of Osiris.

1. The Popular Rites.

A USEFUL clue to the original nature of a god or goddess is often furnished
by the season at which his or her festival is celebrated. Thus, if the
festival falls at the new or the full moon, there is a certain presumption
that the deity thus honoured either is the moon or at least has lunar
affinities. If the festival is held at the winter or summer solstice, we
naturally surmise that the god is the sun, or at all events that he stands in
some close relation to that luminary. Again, if the festival coincides with
the time of sowing or harvest, we are inclined to infer that the divinity is
an embodiment of the earth or of the corn. These presumptions or inferences,
taken by themselves, are by no means conclusive; but if they happen to be
confirmed by other indications, the evidence may be regarded as fairly strong.

Unfortunately, in dealing with the Egyptian gods we are in a great measure
precluded from making use of this clue. The reason is not that the dates of
the festivals are always unknown, but that they shifted from year to year,
until after a long interval they had revolved through the whole course of the
seasons. This gradual revolution of the festal Egyptian cycle resulted from
the employment of a calendar year which neither corresponded exactly to the
solar year nor was periodically corrected by intercalation.

If the Egyptian farmer of the olden time could get no help, except at the
rarest intervals, from the official or sacerdotal calendar, he must have been
compelled to observe for himself those natural signals which marked the times
for the various operations of husbandry. In all ages of which we possess any
records the Egyptians have been an agricultural people, dependent for their
subsistence on the growth of the corn. The cereals which they cultivated were
wheat, barley, and apparently sorghum (Holcus sorghum, Linnaeus), the
doora of the modern fellaheen. Then as now the whole country, with the
exception of a fringe on the coast of the Mediterranean, was almost rainless,
and owed its immense fertility entirely to the annual inundation of the Nile,
which, regulated by an elaborate system of dams and canals, was distributed
over the fields, renewing the soil year by year with a fresh deposit of mud
washed down from the great equatorial lakes and the mountains of Abyssinia.
Hence the rise of the river has always been watched by the inhabitants with
the utmost anxiety; for if it either falls short of or exceeds a certain
height, dearth and famine are the inevitable consequences. The water begins to
rise early in June, but it is not until the latter half of July that it swells
to a mighty tide. By the end of September the inundation is at its greatest
height. The country is now submerged, and presents the appearance of a sea of
turbid water, from which the towns and villages, built on higher ground, rise
like islands. For about a month the flood remains nearly stationary, then
sinks more and more rapidly, till by December or January the river has
returned to its ordinary bed. With the approach of summer the level of the
water continues to fall. In the early days of June the Nile is reduced to half
its ordinary breadth; and Egypt, scorched by the sun, blasted by the wind that
has blown from the Sahara for many days, seems a mere continuation of the
desert. The trees are choked with a thick layer of grey dust. A few meagre
patches of vegetables, watered with difficulty, struggle painfully for
existence in the immediate neighbourhood of the villages. Some appearance of
verdure lingers beside the canals and in the hollows from which the moisture
has not wholly evaporated. The plain appears to pant in the pitiless sunshine,
bare, dusty, ash-coloured, cracked and seamed as far as the eye can see with a
network of fissures. From the middle of April till the middle of June the land
of Egypt is but half alive, waiting for the new Nile.

For countless ages this cycle of natural events has determined the annual
labours of the Egyptian husbandman. The first work of the agricultural year is
the cutting of the dams which have hitherto prevented the swollen river from
flooding the canals and the fields. This is done, and the pent-up waters
released on their beneficent mission, in the first half of August. In
November, when the inundation has subsided, wheat, barley, and sorghum are
sown. The time of harvest varies with the district, falling about a month
later in the north than in the south. In Upper or Southern Egypt barley is
reaped at the beginning of March, wheat at the beginning of April, and sorghum
about the end of that month.

It is natural to suppose that the various events of the agricultural year
were celebrated by the Egyptian farmer with some simple religious rites
designed to secure the blessing of the gods upon his labours. These rustic
ceremonies he would continue to perform year after year at the same season,
while the solemn festivals of the priests continued to shift, with the
shifting calendar, from summer through spring to winter, and so backward
through autumn to summer. The rites of the husbandman were stable because they
rested on direct observation of nature: the rites of the priest were unstable
because they were based on a false calculation. Yet many of the priestly
festivals may have been nothing but the old rural festivals disguised in the
course of ages by the pomp of sacerdotalism and severed, by the error of the
calendar, from their roots in the natural cycle of the seasons.

These conjectures are confirmed by the little we know both of the popular
and of the official Egyptian religion. Thus we are told that the Egyptians
held a festival of Isis at the time when the Nile began to rise. They believed
that the goddess was then mourning for the lost Osiris, and that the tears
which dropped from her eyes swelled the impetuous tide of the river. Now if
Osiris was in one of his aspects a god of the corn, nothing could be more
natural than that he should be mourned at midsummer. For by that time the
harvest was past, the fields were bare, the river ran low, life seemed to be
suspended, the corn-god was dead. At such a moment people who saw the
handiwork of divine beings in all the operations of nature might well trace
the swelling of the sacred stream to the tears shed by the goddess at the
death of the beneficent corn-god her husband.

And the sign of the rising waters on earth was accompanied by a sign in
heaven. For in the early days of Egyptian history, some three or four thousand
years before the beginning of our era, the splendid star of Sirius, the
brightest of all the fixed stars, appeared at dawn in the east just before
sunrise about the time of the summer solstice, when the Nile begins to rise.
The Egyptians called it Sothis, and regarded it as the star of Isis, just as
the Babylonians deemed the planet Venus the star of Astarte. To both peoples
apparently the brilliant luminary in the morning sky seemed the goddess of
life and love come to mourn her departed lover or spouse and to wake him from
the dead. Hence the rising of Sirius marked the beginning of the sacred
Egyptian year, and was regularly celebrated by a festival which did not shift
with the shifting official year.

The cutting of the dams and the admission of the water into the canals and
fields is a great event in the Egyptian year. At Cairo the operation generally
takes place between the sixth and the sixteenth of August, and till lately was
attended by ceremonies which deserve to be noticed, because they were probably
handed down from antiquity. An ancient canal, known by the name of the Khalj,
formerly passed through the native town of Cairo. Near its entrance the canal
was crossed by a dam of earth, very broad at the bottom and diminishing in
breadth upwards, which used to be constructed before or soon after the Nile
began to rise. In front of the dam, on the side of the river, was reared a
truncated cone of earth called the 'arooseh or bride, on the top of which
a little maize or millet was generally sown. This bride was commonly washed
down by the rising tide a week or a fortnight before the cutting of the dam.
Tradition runs that the old custom was to deck a young virgin in gay apparel
and throw her into the river as a sacrifice to obtain a plentiful inundation.
Whether that was so or not, the intention of the practice appears to have been
to marry the river, conceived as a male power, to his bride the cornland,
which was so soon to be fertilised by his water. The ceremony was therefore a
charm to ensure the growth of the crops. In modern times money used to be
thrown into the canal on this occasion, and the populace dived into the water
after it. This practice also would seem to have been ancient, for Seneca tells
us that at a place called the Veins of the Nile, not far from Philae, the
priests used to cast money and offerings of gold into the river at a festival
which apparently took place at the rising of the water.

The next great operation of the agricultural year in Egypt is the sowing
of the seed in November, when the water of the inundation has retreated from
the fields. With the Egyptians, as with many peoples of antiquity, the
committing of the seed to the earth assumed the character of a solemn and
mournful rite. On this subject I will let Plutarch speak for himself. What,
he asks, are we to make of the gloomy, joyless, and mournful sacrifices, if
it is wrong either to omit the established rites or to confuse and disturb our
conceptions of the gods by absurd suspicions? For the Greeks also perform many
rites which resemble those of the Egyptians and are observed about the same
time. Thus at the festival of the Thesmophoria in Athens women sit on the
ground and fast. And the Boeotians open the vaults of the Sorrowful One,
naming that festival sorrowful because Demeter is sorrowing for the descent of
the Maiden. The month is the month of sowing about the setting of the
Pleiades. The Egyptians call it Athyr, the Athenians Pyanepsion, the Boeotians
the month of Demeter . For it was that time of year when they saw some of the
fruits vanishing and failing from the trees, while they sowed others
grudgingly and with difficulty, scraping the earth with their hands and
huddling it up again, on the uncertain chance that what they deposited in the
ground would ever ripen and come to maturity. Thus they did in many respects
like those who bury and mourn their dead.

The Egyptian harvest, as we have seen, falls not in autumn but in spring,
in the months of March, April, and May. To the husbandman the time of harvest,
at least in a good year, must necessarily be a season of joy: in bringing home
his sheaves he is requited for his long and anxious labours. Yet if the old
Egyptian farmer felt a secret joy at reaping and garnering the grain, it was
essential that he should conceal the natural emotion under an air of profound
dejection. For was he not severing the body of the corn-god with his sickle
and trampling it to pieces under the hoofs of his cattle on the
threshing-floor? Accordingly we are told that it was an ancient custom of the
Egyptian corn-reapers to beat their breasts and lament over the first sheaf
cut, while at the same time they called upon Isis. The invocation seems to
have taken the form of a melancholy chant, to which the Greeks gave the name
of Maneros. Similar plaintive strains were chanted by corn-reapers in
Phoenicia and other parts of Western Asia. Probably all these doleful ditties
were lamentations for the corn-god killed by the sickles of the reapers. In
Egypt the slain deity was Osiris, and the name Maneros, applied to the
dirge, appears to be derived from certain words meaning Come to thy house,
which often occur in the lamentations for the dead god.

Ceremonies of the same sort have been observed by other peoples, probably
for the same purpose. Thus we are told that among all vegetables corn, by
which is apparently meant maize, holds the first place in the household
economy and the ceremonial observance of the Cherokee Indians, who invoke it
under the name of the Old Woman in allusion to a myth that it sprang from
the blood of an old woman killed by her disobedient sons. After the last
working of the crop a priest and his assistant went into the field and sang
songs of invocation to the spirit of the corn. After that a loud rustling
would be heard, which was thought to be caused by the Old Woman bringing the
corn into the field. A clean trail was always kept from the field to the
house, so that the corn might be encouraged to stay at home and not go
wandering elsewhere. Another curious ceremony, of which even the memory is
now almost forgotten, was enacted after the first working of the corn, when
the owner or priest stood in succession at each of the four corners of the
field and wept and wailed loudly. Even the priests are now unable to give a
reason for this performance, which may have been a lament for the bloody death
of Selu, the Old Woman of the Corn. In these Cherokee practices the
lamentations and the invocations of the Old Woman of the Corn resemble the
ancient Egyptian customs of lamenting over the first corn cut and calling upon
Isis, herself probably in one of her aspects an Old Woman of the Corn.
Further, the Cherokee precaution of leaving a clear path from the field to the
house resembles the Egyptian invitation to Osiris, Come to thy house. So in
the East Indies to this day people observe elaborate ceremonies for the
purpose of bringing back the Soul of the Rice from the fields to the barn. The
Nandi of East Africa perform a ceremony in September when the eleusine grain
is ripening. Every woman who owns a plantation goes out with her daughters
into the cornfields and makes a bonfire of the branches and leaves of certain
trees. After that they pluck some of the eleusine, and each of them puts one
grain in her necklace, chews another and rubs it on her forehead, throat, and
breast. No joy is shown by the womenfolk on this occasion, and they
sorrowfully cut a basketful of the corn which they take home with them and
place in the loft to dry.

The conception of the corn-spirit as old and dead at harvest is very
clearly embodied in a custom observed by the Arabs of Moab. When the
harvesters have nearly finished their task and only a small corner of the
field remains to be reaped, the owner takes a handful of wheat tied up in a
sheaf. A hole is dug in the form of a grave, and two stones are set upright,
one at the head and the other at the foot, just as in an ordinary burial. Then
the sheaf of wheat is laid at the bottom of the grave, and the sheikh
pronounces these words, 'The old man is dead. Earth is afterwards thrown in
to cover the sheaf, with a prayer, May Allah bring us back the wheat of the
dead.

Chapter 40. The Nature of Osiris.

1. Osiris a Corn-god.

THE FOREGOING survey of the myth and ritual of Osiris may suffice to prove
that in one of his aspects the god was a personification of the corn, which
may be said to die and come to life again every year. Through all the pomp and
glamour with which in later times the priests had invested his worship, the
conception of him as the corn-god comes clearly out in the festival of his
death and resurrection, which was celebrated in the month of Khoiak and at a
later period in the month of Athyr. That festival appears to have been
essentially a festival of sowing, which properly fell at the time when the
husbandman actually committed the seed to the earth. On that occasion an
effigy of the corn-god, moulded of earth and corn, was buried with funeral
rites in the ground in order that, dying there, he might come to life again
with the new crops. The ceremony was, in fact, a charm to ensure the growth of
the corn by sympathetic magic, and we may conjecture that as such it was
practised in a simple form by every Egyptian farmer on his fields long before
it was adopted and transfigured by the priests in the stately ritual of the
temple. In the modern, but doubtless ancient, Arab custom of burying the Old
Man, namely, a sheaf of wheat, in the harvest-field and praying that he may
return from the dead, we see the germ out of which the worship of the corn-god
Osiris was probably developed.

The details of his myth fit in well with this interpretation of the god.
He was said to be the offspring of Sky and Earth. What more appropriate
parentage could be invented for the corn which springs from the ground that
has been fertilised by the water of heaven? It is true that the land of Egypt
owed its fertility directly to the Nile and not to showers; but the
inhabitants must have known or guessed that the great river in its turn was
fed by the rains which fell in the far interior. Again, the legend that Osiris
was the first to teach men the use of corn would be most naturally told of the
corn-god himself. Further, the story that his mangled remains were scattered
up and down the land and buried in different places may be a mythical way of
expressing either the sowing or the winnowing of the grain. The latter
interpretation is supported by the tale that Isis placed the severed limbs of
Osiris on a corn-sieve. Or more probably the legend may be a reminiscence of a
custom of slaying a human victim, perhaps a representative of the corn-spirit,
and distributing his flesh or scattering his ashes over the fields to
fertilise them. In modern Europe the figure of Death is sometimes torn in
pieces, and the fragments are then buried in the ground to make the crops grow
well, and in other parts of the world human victims are treated in the same
way. With regard to the ancient Egyptians we have it on the authority of
Manetho that they used to burn red-haired men and scatter their ashes with
winnowing fans, and it is highly significant that this barbarous sacrifice was
offered by the kings at the grave of Osiris. We may conjecture that the
victims represented Osiris himself, who was annually slain, dismembered, and
buried in their persons that he might quicken the seed in the earth.

Possibly in prehistoric times the kings themselves played the part of the
god and were slain and dismembered in that character. Set as well as Osiris is
said to have been torn in pieces after a reign of eighteen days, which was
commemorated by an annual festival of the same length. According to one story
Romulus, the first king of Rome, was cut in pieces by the senators, who buried
the fragments of him in the ground; and the traditional day of his death, the
seventh of July, was celebrated with certain curious rites, which were
apparently connected with the artificial fertilisation of the fig. Again,
Greek legend told how Pentheus, king of Thebes, and Lycurgus, king of the
Thracian Edonians, opposed the vine-god Dionysus, and how the impious monarchs
were rent in pieces, the one by the frenzied Bacchanals, the other by horses.
The Greek traditions may well be distorted reminiscences of a custom of
sacrificing human beings, and especially divine kings, in the character of
Dionysus, a god who resembled Osiris in many points and was said like him to
have been torn limb from limb. We are told that in Chios men were rent in
pieces as a sacrifice to Dionysus; and since they died the same death as their
god, it is reasonable to suppose that they personated him. The story that the
Thracian Orpheus was similarly torn limb from limb by the Bacchanals seems to
indicate that he too perished in the character of the god whose death he died.
It is significant that the Thracian Lycurgus, king of the Edonians, is said to
have been put to death in order that the ground, which had ceased to be
fruitful, might regain its fertility.

Further, we read of a Norwegian king, Halfdan the Black, whose body was
cut up and buried in different parts of his kingdom for the sake of ensuring
the fruitfulness of the earth. He is said to have been drowned at the age of
forty through the breaking of the ice in spring. What followed his death is
thus related by the old Norse historian Snorri Sturluson: He had been the
most prosperous (literally, blessed with abundance) of all kings. So greatly
did men value him that when the news came that he was dead and his body
removed to Hringariki and intended for burial there, the chief men from
Raumariki and Westfold and Heithmrk came and all requested that they might
take his body with them and bury it in their various provinces; they thought
that it would bring abundance to those who obtained it. Eventually it was
settled that the body was distributed in four places. The head was laid in a
barrow at Steinn in Hringariki, and each party took away their own share and
buried it. All these barrows are called Halfdan's barrows. It should be
remembered that this Halfdan belonged to the family of the Ynglings, who
traced their descent from Frey, the great Scandinavian god of fertility.

The natives of Kiwai, an island lying off the mouth of the Fly River in
British New Guinea, tell of a certain magician named Segera, who had sago for
his totem. When Segera was old and ill, he told the people that he would soon
die, but that, nevertheless, he would cause their gardens to thrive.
Accordingly, he instructed them that when he was dead they should cut him up
and place pieces of his flesh in their gardens, but his head was to be buried
in his own garden. Of him it is said that he outlived the ordinary age, and
that no man knew his father, but that he made the sago good and no one was
hungry any more. Old men who were alive some years ago affirmed that they had
known Segera in their youth, and the general opinion of the Kiwai people seems
to be that Segera died not more than two generations ago.

Taken all together, these legends point to a widespread practice of
dismembering the body of a king or magician and burying the pieces in
different parts of the country in order to ensure the fertility of the ground
and probably also the fecundity of man and beast.

To return to the human victims whose ashes the Egyptians scattered with
winnowing-fans, the red hair of these unfortunates was probably significant.
For in Egypt the oxen which were sacrificed had also to be red; a single black
or white hair found on the beast would have disqualified it for the sacrifice.
If, as I conjecture, these human sacrifices were intended to promote the
growth of the cropsand the winnowing of their ashes seems to support this
viewredhaired victims were perhaps selected as best fitted to personate the
spirit of the ruddy grain. For when a god is represented by a living person,
it is natural that the human representative should be chosen on the ground of
his supposed resemblance to the divine original. Hence the ancient Mexicans,
conceiving the maize as a personal being who went through the whole course of
life between seed-time and harvest, sacrificed new-born babes when the maize
was sown, older children when it had sprouted, and so on till it was fully
ripe, when they sacrificed old men. A name for Osiris was the crop or
harvest; and the ancients sometimes explained him as a personification of
the corn.

2. Osiris a Tree-spirit.

BUT Osiris was more than a spirit of the corn; he was also a tree-spirit,
and this may perhaps have been his primitive character, since the worship of
trees is naturally older in the history of religion than the worship of the
cereals. The character of Osiris as a tree-spirit was represented very
graphically in a ceremony described by Firmicus Maternus. A pine-tree having
been cut down, the centre was hollowed out, and with the wood thus excavated
an image of Osiris was made, which was then buried like a corpse in the hollow
of the tree. It is hard to imagine how the conception of a tree as tenanted by
a personal being could be more plainly expressed. The image of Osiris thus
made was kept for a year and then burned, exactly as was done with the image
of Attis which was attached to the pine-tree. The ceremony of cutting the
tree, as described by Firmicus Maternus, appears to be alluded to by Plutarch.
It was probably the ritual counterpart of the mythical discovery of the body
of Osiris enclosed in the erica-tree. In the hall of Osiris at Denderah the
coffin containing the hawk-headed mummy of the god is clearly depicted as
enclosed within a tree, apparently a conifer, the trunk and branches of which
are seen above and below the coffin. The scene thus corresponds closely both
to the myth and to the ceremony described by Firmicus Maternus.

It accords with the character of Osiris as a tree-spirit that his
worshippers were forbidden to injure fruit-trees, and with his character as a
god of vegetation in general that they were not allowed to stop up wells of
water, which are so important for the irrigation of hot southern lands.
According to one legend, he taught men to train the vine to poles, to prune
its superfluous foliage, and to extract the juice of the grape. In the papyrus
of Nebseni, written about 1550 B.C., Osiris is depicted sitting in a shrine,
from the roof of which hang clusters of grapes; and in the papyrus of the
royal scribe Nekht we see the god enthroned in front of a pool, from the banks
of which a luxuriant vine, with many bunches of grapes, grows towards the
green face of the seated deity. The ivy was sacred to him, and was called his
plant because it is always green.

3. Osiris a God of Fertility.

AS A GOD of vegetation Osiris was naturally conceived as a god of creative
energy in general, since men at a certain stage of evolution fail to
distinguish between the reproductive powers of animals and of plants. Hence a
striking feature in his worship was the coarse but expressive symbolism by
which this aspect of his nature was presented to the eye not merely of the
initiated but of the multitude. At his festival women used to go about the
villages singing songs in his praise and carrying obscene images of him which
they set in motion by means of strings. The custom was probably a charm to
ensure the growth of the crops. A similar image of him, decked with all the
fruits of the earth, is said to have stood in a temple before a figure of
Isis, and in the chambers dedicated to him at Philae the dead god is portrayed
lying on his bier in an attitude which indicates in the plainest way that even
in death his generative virtue was not extinct but only suspended, ready to
prove a source of life and fertility to the world when the opportunity should
offer. Hymns addressed to Osiris contain allusions to this important side of
his nature. In one of them it is said that the world waxes green in triumph
through him; and another declares, Thou art the father and mother of mankind,
they live on thy breath, they subsist on the flesh of thy body. We may
conjecture that in this paternal aspect he was supposed, like other gods of
fertility, to bless men and women with offspring, and that the processions at
his festival were intended to promote this object as well as to quicken the
seed in the ground. It would be to misjudge ancient religion to denounce as
lewd and profligate the emblems and the ceremonies which the Egyptians
employed for the purpose of giving effect to this conception of the divine
power. The ends which they proposed to themselves in these rites were natural
and laudable; only the means they adopted to compass them were mistaken. A
similar fallacy induced the Greeks to adopt a like symbolism in their
Dionysiac festivals, and the superficial but striking resemblance thus
produced between the two religions has perhaps more than anything else misled
enquirers, both ancient and modern, into identifying worships which, though
certainly akin in nature, are perfectly distinct and independent in origin.

4. Osiris a God of the Dead.

WE have seen that in one of his aspects Osiris was the ruler and judge of
the dead. To a people like the Egyptians, who not only believed in a life
beyond the grave but actually spent much of their time, labour, and money in
preparing for it, this office of the god must have appeared hardly, if at all,
less important than his function of making the earth to bring forth its fruits
in due season. We may assume that in the faith of his worshippers the two
provinces of the god were intimately connected. In laying their dead in the
grave they committed them to his keeping who could raise them from the dust to
life eternal, even as he caused the seed to spring from the ground. Of that
faith the corn-stuffed effigies of Osiris found in Egyptian tombs furnish an
eloquent and un-equivocal testimony. They were at once an emblem and an
instrument of resurrection. Thus from the sprouting of the grain the ancient
Egyptians drew an augury of human immortality. They are not the only people
who have built the same lofty hopes on the same slender foundation.

A god who thus fed his people with his own broken body in this life, and
who held out to them a promise of a blissful eternity in a better world
hereafter, naturally reigned supreme in their affections. We need not wonder,
therefore, that in Egypt the worship of the other gods was overshadowed by
that of Osiris, and that while they were revered each in his own district, he
and his divine partner Isis were adored in all.

Chapter 41. Isis.

THE ORIGINAL meaning of the goddess Isis is still more difficult to
determine than that of her brother and husband Osiris. Her attributes and
epithets were so numerous that in the hieroglyphics she is called the
many-named, the thousand-named, and in Greek inscriptions the
myriad-named. Yet in her complex nature it is perhaps still possible to
detect the original nucleus round which by a slow process of accretion the
other elements gathered. For if her brother and husband Osiris was in one of
his aspects the corn-god, as we have seen reason to believe, she must surely
have been the corn-goddess. There are at least some grounds for thinking so.
For if we may trust Diodorus Siculus, whose authority appears to have been the
Egyptian historian Manetho, the discovery of wheat and barley was attributed
to Isis, and at her festivals stalks of these grains were carried in
procession to commemorate the boon she had conferred on men. A further detail
is added by Augustine. He says that Isis made the discovery of barley at the
moment when she was sacrificing to the common ancestors of her husband and
herself, all of whom had been kings, and that she showed the newly discovered
ears of barley to Osiris and his councillor Thoth or Mercury, as Roman writers
called him. That is why, adds Augustine, they identify Isis with Ceres.
Further, at harvest-time, when the Egyptian reapers had cut the first stalks,
they laid them down and beat their breasts, wailing and calling upon Isis. The
custom has been already explained as a lamen for the corn-spirit slain under
the sickle. Amongst the epithets by which Isis is designated in the
inscriptions are Creatress of green things, Green goddess, whose green
colour is like unto the greenness of the earth, Lady of Bread, Lady of
Beer, Lady of Abundance. According to Brugsch she is not only the
creatress of the fresh verdure of vegetation which covers the earth, but is
actually the green corn-field itself, which is personified as a goddess. This
is confirmed by her epithet Sochit or Sochet, meaning a corn-field, a
sense which the word still retains in Coptic. The Greeks conceived of Isis as
a corn-goddess, for they identified her with Demeter. In a Greek epigram she
is described as she who has given birth to the fruits of the earth, and the
mother of the ears of corn; and in a hymn composed in her honour she speaks
of herself as queen of the wheat-field, and is described as charged with
the care of the fruitful furrow's wheat-rich path. Accordingly, Greek or
Roman artists often represented her with ears of corn on her head or in her
hand.

Such, we may suppose, was Isis in the olden time, a rustic Corn-Mother
adored with uncouth rites by Egyptian swains. But the homely features of the
clownish goddess could hardly be traced in the refined, the saintly form
which, spiritualised by ages of religious evolution, she presented to her
worshippers of after days as the true wife, the tender mother, the beneficent
queen of nature, encircled with the nimbus of moral purity, of immemorial and
mysterious sanctity. Thus chastened and transfigured she won many hearts far
beyond the boundaries of her native land. In that welter of religions which
accompanied the decline of national life in antiquity her worship was one of
the most popular at Rome and throughout the empire. Some of the Roman emperors
themselves were openly addicted to it. And however the religion of Isis may,
like any other, have been often worn as a cloak by men and women of loose
life, her rites appear on the whole to have been honourably distinguished by a
dignity and composure, a solemnity and decorum, well fitted to soothe the
troubled mind, to ease the burdened heart. They appealed therefore to gentle
spirits, and above all to women, whom the bloody and licentious rites of other
Oriental goddesses only shocked and repelled. We need not wonder, then, that
in a period of decadence, when traditional faiths were shaken, when systems
clashed, when men's minds were disquieted, when the fabric of empire itself,
once deemed eternal, began to show ominous rents and fissures, the serene
figure of Isis with her spiritual calm, her gracious promise of immortality,
should have appeared to many like a star in a stormy sky, and should have
roused in their breasts a rapture of devotion not unlike that which was paid
in the Middle Ages to the Virgin Mary. Indeed her stately ritual, with its
shaven and tonsured priests, its matins and vespers, its tinkling music, its
baptism and aspersions of holy water, its solemn processions, its jewelled
images of the Mother of God, presented many points of similarity to the pomps
and ceremonies of Catholicism. The resemblance need not be purely accidental.
Ancient Egypt may have contributed its share to the gorgeous symbolism of the
Catholic Church as well as to the pale abstractions of her theology. Certainly
in art the figure of Isis suckling the infant Horus is so like that of the
Madonna and child that it has sometimes received the adoration of ignorant
Christians. And to Isis in her later character of patroness of mariners the
Virgin Mary perhaps owes her beautiful epithet of Stella Maris, Star of the
Sea, under which she is adored by tempest-tossed sailors. The attributes of a
marine deity may have been bestowed on Isis by the sea-faring Greeks of
Alexandria. They are quite foreign to her original character and to the habits
of the Egyptians, who had no love of the sea. On this hypothesis Sirius, the
bright star of Isis, which on July mornings rises from the glassy waves of the
eastern Mediterranean, a harbinger of halcyon weather to mariners, was the
true Stella Maris, the Star of the Sea.

Chapter 42. Osiris and the Sun.

OSIRIS has been sometimes interpreted as the sun-god, and in modern times
this view has been held by so many distinguished writers that it deserves a
brief examination. If we enquire on what evidence Osiris has been identified
with the sun or the sun-god, it will be found on analysis to be minute in
quantity and dubious, where it is not absolutely worthless, in quality. The
diligent Jablonski, the first modern scholar to collect and sift the testimony
of classical writers on Egyptian religion, says that it can be shown in many
ways that Osiris is the sun, and that he could produce a cloud of witnesses to
prove it, but that it is needless to do so, since no learned man is ignorant
of the fact. Of the ancient writers whom he condescends to quote, the only two
who expressly identify Osiris with the sun are Diodorus and Macrobius. But
little weight can be attached to their evidence; for the statement of Diodorus
is vague and rhetorical, and the reasons which Macrobius, one of the fathers
of solar mythology, assigns for the identification are exceedingly slight.

The ground upon which some modern writers seem chiefly to rely for the
identification of Osiris with the sun is that the story of his death fits
better with the solar phenomena than with any other in nature. It may readily
be admitted that the daily appearance and disappearance of the sun might very
naturally be expressed by a myth of his death and resurrection; and writers
who regard Osiris as the sun are careful to indicate that it is the diurnal,
and not the annual, course of the sun to which they understand the myth to
apply. Thus Renouf, who identified Osiris with the sun, admitted that the
Egyptian sun could not with any show of reason be described as dead in winter.
But if his daily death was the theme of the legend, why was it celebrated by
an annual ceremony? This fact alone seems fatal to the interpretation of the
myth as descriptive of sunset and sunrise. Again, though the sun may be said
to die daily, in what sense can he be said to be torn in pieces?

In the course of our enquiry it has, I trust, been made clear that there
is another natural phenomenon to which the conception of death and
resurrection is as applicable as to sunset and sunrise, and which, as a matter
of fact, has been so conceived and represented in folk-custom. That phenomenon
is the annual growth and decay of vegetation. A strong reason for interpreting
the death of Osiris as the decay of vegetation rather than as the sunset is to
be found in the general, though not unanimous, voice of antiquity, which
classed together the worship and myths of Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and
Demeter, as religions of essentially the same type. The consensus of ancient
opinion on this subject seems too great to be rejected as a mere fancy. So
closely did the rites of Osiris resemble those of Adonis at Byblus that some
of the people of Byblus themselves maintained that it was Osiris and not
Adonis whose death was mourned by them. Such a view could certainly not have
been held if the rituals of the two gods had not been so alike as to be almost
indistinguishable. Herodotus found the similarity between the rites of Osiris
and Dionysus so great, that he thought it impossible the latter could have
arisen independently; they must, he supposed, have been recently borrowed,
with slight alterations, by the Greeks from the Egyptians. Again, Plutarch, a
very keen student of comparative religion, insists upon the detailed
resemblance of the rites of Osiris to those of Dionysus. We cannot reject the
evidence of such intelligent and trustworthy witnesses on plain matters of
fact which fell under their own cognizance. Their explanations of the worships
it is indeed possible to reject, for the meaning of religious cults is often
open to question; but resemblances of ritual are matters of observation.
Therefore, those who explain Osiris as the sun are driven to the alternative
of either dismissing as mistaken the testimony of antiquity to the similarity
of the rites of Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and Demeter, or of
interpreting all these rites as sun-worship. No modern scholar has fairly
faced and accepted either side of this alternative. To accept the former would
be to affirm that we know the rites of these deities better than the men who
practised, or at least who witnessed them. To accept the latter would involve
a wrenching, clipping, mangling, and distorting of myth and ritual from which
even Macrobius shrank. On the other hand, the view that the essence of all
these rites was the mimic death and revival of vegetation, explains them
separately and collectively in an easy and natural way, and harmonises with
the general testimony borne by the ancients to their substantial similarity.

Chapter 43. Dionysus.

IN THE PRECEDING chapters we saw that in antiquity the civilised nations of
Western Asia and Egypt pictured to themselves the changes of the seasons, and
particularly the annual growth and decay of vegetation, as episodes in the
life of gods, whose mournful death and happy resurrection they celebrated with
dramatic rites of alternate lamentation and rejoicing. But if the celebration
was in form dramatic, it was in substance magical; that is to say, it was
intended, on the principles of sympathetic magic, to ensure the vernal
regeneration of plants and the multiplication of animals, which had seemed to
be menaced by the inroads of winter. In the ancient world, however, such ideas
and such rites were by no means confined to the Oriental peoples of Babylon
and Syria, of Phrygia and Egypt; they were not a product peculiar to the
religious mysticism of the dreamy East, but were shared by the races of
livelier fancy and more mercurial temperament who inhabited the shores and
islands of the Aegean. We need not, with some enquirers in ancient and modern
times, suppose that these Western peoples borrowed from the older civilisation
of the Orient the conception of the Dying and Reviving God, together with the
solemn ritual, in which that conception was dramatically set forth before the
eyes of the worshippers. More probably the resemblance which may be traced in
this respect between the religions of the East and West is no more than what
we commonly, though incorrectly, call a fortuitous coincidence, the effect of
similar causes acting alike on the similar constitution of the human mind in
different countries and under different skies. The Greek had no need to
journey into far countries to learn the vicissitudes of the seasons, to mark
the fleeting beauty of the damask rose, the transient glory of the golden
corn, the passing splendour of the purple grapes. Year by year in his own
beautiful land he beheld, with natural regret, the bright pomp of summer
fading into the gloom and stagnation of winter, and year by year he hailed
with natural delight the outburst of fresh life in spring. Accustomed to
personify the forces of nature, to tinge her cold abstractions with the warm
hues of imagination, to clothe her naked realities with the gorgeous drapery
of a mythic fancy, he fashioned for himself a train of gods and goddesses, of
spirits and elves, out of the shifting panorama of the seasons, and followed
the annual fluctuations of their fortunes with alternate emotions of
cheerfulness and dejection, of gladness and sorrow, which found their natural
expression in alternate rites of rejoicing and lamentation, of revelry and
mourning. A consideration of some of the Greek divinities who thus died and
rose again from the dead may furnish us with a series of companion pictures to
set side by side with the sad figures of Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. We begin
with Dionysus.

The god Dionysus or Bacchus is best known to us as a personification of
the vine and of the exhilaration produced by the juice of the grape. His
ecstatic worship, characterised by wild dances, thrilling music, and tipsy
excess, appears to have originated among the rude tribes of Thrace, who were
notoriously addicted to drunkenness. Its mystic doctrines and extravagant
rites were essentially foreign to the clear intelligence and sober temperament
of the Greek race. Yet appealing as it did to that love of mystery and that
proneness to revert to savagery which seem to be innate in most men, the
religion spread like wildfire through Greece until the god whom Homer hardly
deigned to notice had become the most popular figure of the pantheon. The
resemblance which his story and his ceremonies present to those of Osiris have
led some enquirers both in ancient and modern times to hold that Dionysus was
merely a disguised Osiris, imported directly from Egypt into Greece. But the
great preponderance of evidence points to his Thracian origin, and the
similarity of the two worships is sufficiently explained by the similarity of
the ideas and customs on which they were founded.

While the vine with its clusters was the most characteristic manifestation
of Dionysus, he was also a god of trees in general. Thus we are told that
almost all the Greeks sacrificed to Dionysus of the tree. In Boeotia one of
his titles was Dionysus in the tree. His image was often merely an upright
post, without arms, but draped in a mantle, with a bearded mask to represent
the head, and with leafy boughs projecting from the head or body to show the
nature of the deity. On a vase his rude effigy is depicted appearing out of a
low tree or bush. At Magnesia on the Maeander an image of Dionysus is said to
have been found in a plane-tree, which had been broken by the wind. He was the
patron of cultivated trees: prayers were offered to him that he would make the
trees grow; and he was especially honoured by husbandmen, chiefly
fruit-growers, who set up an image of him, in the shape of a natural
tree-stump, in their orchards. He was said to have discovered all tree-fruits,
amongst which apples and figs are particularly mentioned; and he was referred
to as well-fruited, he of the green fruit, and making the fruit to grow.
One of his titles was teeming or bursting (as of sap or blossoms); and
there was a Flowery Dionysus in Attica and at Patrae in Achaia. The Athenians
sacrificed to him for the prosperity of the fruits of the land. Amongst the
trees particularly sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine-tree.
The Delphic oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a particular pine-tree
equally with the god, so they made two images of Dionysus out of it, with
red faces and gilt bodies. In art a wand, tipped with a pine-cone, is commonly
carried by the god or his worshippers. Again, the ivy and the fig-tree were
especially associated with him. In the Attic township of Acharnae there was a
Dionysus Ivy; at Lacedaemon there was a Fig Dionysus; and in Naxos, where figs
were called meilicha, there was a Dionysus Meilichios, the face of whose
image was made of fig-wood.

Further, there are indications, few but significant, that Dionysus was
conceived as a deity of agriculture and the corn. He is spoken of as himself
doing the work of a husbandman: he is reported to have been the first to yoke
oxen to the plough, which before had been dragged by hand alone; and some
people found in this tradition the clue to the bovine shape in which, as we
shall see, the god was often supposed to present himself to his worshippers.
Thus guiding the ploughshare and scattering the seed as he went, Dionysus is
said to have eased the labour of the husbandman. Further, we are told that in
the land of the Bisaltae, a Thracian tribe, there was a great and fair
sanctuary of Dionysus, where at his festival a bright light shone forth at
night as a token of an abundant harvest vouchsafed by the diety; but if the
crops were to fail that year, the mystic light was not seen, darkness brooded
over the sanctuary as at other times. Moreover, among the emblems of Dionysus
was the winnowing-fan, that is the large open shovel-shaped basket, which down
to modern times has been used by farmers to separate the grain from the chaff
by tossing the corn in the air. This simple agricultural instrument figured in
the mystic rites of Dionysus; indeed the god is traditionally said to have
been placed at birth in a winnowing-fan as in a cradle: in art he is
represented as an infant so cradled; and from these traditions and
representations he derived the epithet of Liknites, that is, He of the
Winnowing-fan.

Like other gods of vegetation Dionysus was believed to have died a violent
death, but to have been brought to life again; and his sufferings, death, and
resurrection were enacted in his sacred rites. His tragic story is thus told
by the poet Nonnus. Zeus in the form of a serpent visited Persephone, and she
bore him Zagreus, that is, Dionysus, a horned infant. Scarcely was he born,
when the babe mounted the throne of his father Zeus and mimicked the great god
by brandishing the lightning in his tiny hand. But he did not occupy the
throne long; for the treacherous Titans, their faces whitened with chalk,
attacked him with knives while he was looking at himself in a mirror. For a
time he evaded their assaults by turning himself into various shapes, assuming
the likeness successively of Zeus and Cronus, of a young man, of a lion, a
horse, and a serpent. Finally, in the form of a bull, he was cut to pieces by
the murderous knives of his enemies. His Cretan myth, as related by Firmicus
Maternus, ran thus. He was said to have been the bastard son of Jupiter, a
Cretan king. Going abroad, Jupiter transferred the throne and sceptre to the
youthful Dionysus, but, knowing that his wife Juno cherished a jealous dislike
of the child, he entrusted Dionysus to the care of guards upon whose fidelity
he believed he could rely. Juno, however, bribed the guards, and amusing the
child with rattles and a cunningly-wrought looking glass lured him into an
ambush, where her satellites, the Titans, rushed upon him, cut him limb from
limb, boiled his body with various herbs, and ate it. But his sister Minerva,
who had shared in the deed, kept his heart and gave it to Jupiter on his
return, revealing to him the whole history of the crime. In his rage, Jupiter
put the Titans to death by torture, and, to soothe his grief for the loss of
his son, made an image in which he enclosed the child's heart, and then built
a temple in his honour. In this version a Euhemeristic turn has been given to
the myth by representing Jupiter and Juno (Zeus and Hera) as a king and queen
of Crete. The guards referred to are the mythical Curetes who danced a
war-dance round the infant Dionysus, as they are said to have done round the
infant Zeus. Very noteworthy is the legend, recorded both by Nonnus and
Firmicus, that in his infancy Dionysus occupied for a short time the throne of
his father Zeus. So Proclus tells us that Dionysus was the last king of the
gods appointed by Zeus. For his father set him on the kingly throne, and
placed in his hand the sceptre, and made him king of all the gods of the
world. Such traditions point to a custom of temporarily investing the king's
son with the royal dignity as a preliminary to sacrificing him instead of his
father. Pomegranates were supposed to have sprung from the blood of Dionysus,
as anemones from the blood of Adonis and violets from the blood of Attis:
hence women refrained from eating seeds of pomegranates at the festival of the
Thesmophoria. According to some, the severed limbs of Dionysus were pieced
together, at the command of Zeus, by Apollo, who buried them on Parnassus. The
grave of Dionysus was shown in the Delphic temple beside a golden statue of
Apollo. However, according to another account, the grave of Dionysus was at
Thebes, where he is said to have been torn in pieces. Thus far the
resurrection of the slain god is not mentioned, but in other versions of the
myth it is variously related. According to one version, which represented
Dionysus as a son of Zeus and Demeter, his mother pieced together his mangled
limbs and made him young again. In others it is simply said that shortly after
his burial he rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven; or that Zeus
raised him up as he lay mortally wounded; or that Zeus swallowed the heart of
Dionysus and then begat him afresh by Semele, who in the common legend figures
as mother of Dionysus. Or, again, the heart was pounded up and given in a
potion to Semele, who thereby conceived him.

Turning from the myth to the ritual, we find that the Cretans celebrated a
biennial festival at which the passion of Dionysus was represented in every
detail. All that he had done or suffered in his last moments was enacted
before the eyes of his worshippers, who tore a live bull to pieces with their
teeth and roamed the woods with frantic shouts. In front of them was carried a
casket supposed to contain the sacred heart of Dionysus, and to the wild music
of flutes and cymbals they mimicked the rattles by which the infant god had
been lured to his doom. Where the resurrection formed part of the myth, it
also was acted at the rites, and it even appears that a general doctrine of
resurrection, or at least of immortality, was inculcated on the worshippers;
for Plutarch, writing to console his wife on the death of their infant
daughter, comforts her with the thought of the immortality of the soul as
taught by tradition and revealed in the mysteries of Dionysus. A different
form of the myth of the death and resurrection of Dionysus is that he
descended into Hades to bring up his mother Semele from the dead. The local
Argive tradition was that he went down through the Alcyonian lake; and his
return from the lower world, in other words his resurrection, was annually
celebrated on the spot by the Argives, who summoned him from the water by
trumpet blasts, while they threw a lamb into the lake as an offering to the
warder of the dead. Whether this was a spring festival does not appear, but
the Lydians certainly celebrated the advent of Dionysus in spring; the god was
supposed to bring the season with him. Deities of vegetation, who are believed
to pass a certain portion of each year underground, naturally come to be
regarded as gods of the lower world or of the dead. Both Dionysus and Osiris
were so conceived.

A feature in the mythical character of Dionysus, which at first sight
appears inconsistent with his nature as a deity of vegetation, is that he was
often conceived and represented in animal shape, especially in the form, or at
least with the horns, of a bull. Thus he is spoken of as cow-born, bull,
bull-shaped, bull-faced, bull-browed, bull-horned, horn-bearing,
two-horned, horned. He was believed to appear, at least occasionally, as a
bull. His images were often, as at Cyzicus, made in bull shape, or with bull
horns; and he was painted with horns. Types of the horned Dionysus are found
amongst the surviving monuments of antiquity. On one statuette he appears clad
in a bull's hide, the head, horns, and hoofs hanging down behind. Again, he is
represented as a child with clusters of grapes round his brow, and a calf's
head, with sprouting horns, attached to the back of his head. On a red-figured
vase the god is portrayed as a calf-headed child seated on a woman's lap. The
people of Cynaetha held a festival of Dionysus in winter, when men, who had
greased their bodies with oil for the occasion, used to pick out a bull from
the herd and carry it to the sanctuary of the god. Dionysus was supposed to
inspire their choice of the particular bull, which probably represented the
deity himself; for at his festivals he was believed to appear in bull form.
The women of Elis hailed him as a bull, and prayed him to come with his bull's
foot. They sang, Come hither, Dionysus, to thy holy temple by the sea; come
with the Graces to thy temple, rushing with thy bull's foot, O goodly bull, O
goodly bull! The Bacchanals of Thrace wore horns in imitation of their god.
According to the myth, it was in the shape of a bull that he was torn to
pieces by the Titans; and the Cretans, when they acted the sufferings and
death of Dionysus, tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth. Indeed, the
rending and devouring of live bulls and calves appear to have been a regular
feature of the Dionysiac rites. When we consider the practice of portraying
the god as a bull or with some of the features of the animal, the belief that
he appeared in bull form to his worshippers at the sacred rites, and the
legend that in bull form he had been torn in pieces, we cannot doubt that in
rending and devouring a live bull at his festival the worshippers of Dionysus
believed themselves to be killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his
blood.

Another animal whose form Dionysus assumed was the goat. One of his names
was Kid. At Athens and at Hermion he was worshipped under the title of the
one of the Black Goatskin, and a legend ran that on a certain occasion he had
appeared clad in the skin from which he took the title. In the wine-growing
district of Phlius, where in autumn the plain is still thickly mantled with
the red and golden foliage of the fading vines, there stood of old a bronze
image of a goat, which the husbandmen plastered with gold-leaf as a means of
protecting their vines against blight. The image probably represented the
vine-god himself. To save him from the wrath of Hera, his father Zeus changed
the youthful Dionysus into a kid; and when the gods fled to Egypt to escape
the fury of Typhon, Dionysus was turned into a goat. Hence when his
worshippers rent in pieces a live goat and devoured it raw, they must have
believed that they were eating the body and blood of the god. The custom of
tearing in pieces the bodies of animals and of men and then devouring them raw
has been practised as a religious rite by savages in modern times. We need not
therefore dismiss as a fable the testimony of antiquity to the observance of
similar rites among the frenzied worshippers of Bacchus.

The custom of killing a god in animal form, which we shall examine more in
detail further on, belongs to a very early stage of human culture, and is apt
in later times to be misunderstood. The advance of thought tends to strip the
old animal and plant gods of their bestial and vegetable husk, and to leave
their human attributes (which are always the kernel of the conception) as the
final and sole residuum. In other words, animal and plant gods tend to become
purely anthropomorphic. When they have become wholly or nearly so, the animals
and plants which were at first the deities themselves, still retain a vague
and ill-understood connexion with the anthropomorphic gods who have developed
out of them. The origin of the relationship between the deity and the animal
or plant having been forgotten, various stories are invented to explain it.
These explanations may follow one of two lines according as they are based on
the habitual or on the exceptional treatment of the sacred animal or plant.
The sacred animal was habitually spared, and only exceptionally slain; and
accordingly the myth might be devised to explain either why it was spared or
why it was killed. Devised for the former purpose, the myth would tell of some
service rendered to the deity by the animal; devised for the latter purpose,
the myth would tell of some injury inflicted by the animal on the god. The
reason given for sacrificing goats to Dionysus exemplifies a myth of the
latter sort. They were sacrificed to him, it was said, because they injured
the vine. Now the goat, as we have seen, was originally an embodiment of the
god himself. But when the god had divested himself of his animal character and
had become essentially anthropomorphic, the killing of the goat in his worship
came to be regarded no longer as a slaying of the deity himself, but as a
sacrifice offered to him; and since some reason had to be assigned why the
goat in particular should be sacrificed, it was alleged that this was a
punishment inflicted on the goat for injuring the vine, the object of the
god's especial care. Thus we have the strange spectacle of a god sacrificed to
himself on the ground that he is his own enemy. And as the deity is supposed
to partake of the victim offered to him, it follows that, when the victim is
the god's old self, the god eats of his own flesh. Hence the goat-god Dionysus
is represented as eating raw goat's blood; and the bull-god Dionysus is called
eater of bulls. On the analogy of these instances we may conjecture that
wherever a deity is described as the eater of a particular animal, the animal
in question was originally nothing but the deity himself. Later on we shall
find that some savages propitiate dead bears and whales by offering them
portions of their own bodies.

All this, however, does not explain why a deity of vegetation should
appear in animal form. But the consideration of that point had better be
deferred till we have discussed the character and attributes of Demeter.
Meantime it remains to mention that in some places, instead of an animal, a
human being was torn in pieces at the rites of Dionysus. This was the practice
in Chios and Tenedos; and at Potniae in Boeotia the tradition ran that it had
been formerly the custom to sacrifice to the goat-smiting Dionysus a child,
for whom a goat was afterwards substituted. At Orchomenus, as we have seen,
the human victim was taken from the women of an old royal family. As the slain
bull or goat represented the slain god, so, we may suppose, the human victim
also represented him.

The legends of the deaths of Pentheus and Lycurgus, two kings who are said
to have been torn to pieces, the one by Bacchanals, the other by horses, for
their opposition to the rites of Dionysus, may be, as I have already
suggested, distorted reminiscences of a custom of sacrificing divine kings in
the character of Dionysus and of dispersing the fragments of their broken
bodies over the fields for the purpose of fertilising them. It is probably no
mere coincidence that Dionysus himself is said to have been torn in pieces at
Thebes, the very place where according to legend the same fate befell king
Pentheus at the hands of the frenzied votaries of the vine-god.

However, a tradition of human sacrifice may sometimes have been a mere
misinterpretation of a sacrificial ritual in which an animal victim was
treated as a human being. For example, at Tenedos the new-born calf sacrificed
to Dionysus was shod in buskins, and the mother cow was tended like a woman in
child-bed. At Rome a shegoat was sacrificed to Vedijovis as if it were a human
victim. Yet on the other hand it is equally possible, and perhaps more
probable, that these curious rites were themselves mitigations of an older and
ruder custom of sacrificing human beings, and that the later pretence of
treating the sacrificial victims as if they were human beings was merely part
of a pious and merciful fraud, which palmed off on the deity less precious
victims than living men and women. This interpretation is supported by many
undoubted cases in which animals have been substituted for human victims.

Chapter 44. Demeter and Persephone.

DIONYSUS was not the only Greek deity whose tragic story and ritual appear
to reflect the decay and revival of vegetation. In another form and with a
different application the old tale reappears in the myth of Demeter and
Persephone. Substantially their myth is identical with the Syrian one of
Aphrodite (Astarte) and Adonis, the Phrygian one of Cybele and Attis, and the
Egyptian one of Isis and Osiris. In the Greek fable, as in its Asiatic and
Egyptian counterparts, a goddess mourns the loss of a loved one, who
personifies the vegetation, more especially the corn, which dies in winter to
revive in spring; only whereas the Oriental imagination figured the loved and
lost one as a dead lover or a dead husband lamented by his leman or his wife,
Greek fancy embodied the same idea in the tenderer and purer form of a dead
daughter bewailed by her sorrowing mother.

The oldest literary document which narrates the myth of Demeter and
Persephone is the beautiful Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which critics assign to
the seventh century before our era. The object of the poem is to explain the
origin of the Eleusinian mysteries, and the complete silence of the poet as to
Athens and the Athenians, who in after ages took conspicuous part in the
festival, renders it probable that the hymn was composed in the far off time
when Eleusis was still a petty independent state, and before the stately
procession of the Mysteries had begun to defile, in bright September days,
over the low chain of barren rocky hills which divides the flat Eleusinian
cornland from the more spacious olive-clad expanse of the Athenian plain. Be
that as it may, the hymn reveals to us the conception which the writer
entertained of the character and functions of the two goddesses; their natural
shapes stand out sharply enough under the thin veil of poetical imagery. The
youthful Persephone, so runs the tale, was gathering roses and lilies,
crocuses and violets, hyacinths and narcissuses in a lush meadow, when the
earth gaped and Pluto, lord of the Dead, issuing from the abyss carried her
off on his golden car to be his bride and queen in the gloomy subterranean
world. Her sorrowing mother Demeter, with her yellow tresses veiled in a dark
mourning mantle, sought her over land and sea, and learning from the Sun her
daughter's fate she withdrew in high dudgeon from the gods and took up her
abode at Eleusis, where she presented herself to the king's daughters in the
guise of an old woman, sitting sadly under the shadow of an olive tree beside
the Maiden's Well, to which the damsels had come to draw water in bronze
pitchers for their father's house. In her wrath at her bereavement the goddess
suffered not the seed to grow in the earth but kept it hidden under ground,
and she vowed that never would she set foot on Olympus and never would she let
the corn sprout till her lost daughter should be restored to her. Vainly the
oxen dragged the ploughs to and fro in the fields; vainly the sower dropped
the barley seed in the brown furrows; nothing came up from the parched and
crumbling soil. Even the Rarian plain near Eleusis, which was wont to wave
with yellow harvests, lay bare and fallow. Mankind would have perished of
hunger and the gods would have been robbed of the sacrifices which were their
due, if Zeus in alarm had not commanded Pluto to disgorge his prey, to restore
his bride Persephone to her mother Demeter. The grim lord of the Dead smiled
and obeyed, but before he sent back his queen to the upper air on a golden
car, he gave her the seed of a pomegranate to eat, which ensured that she
would return to him. But Zeus stipulated that henceforth Persephone should
spend two thirds of every year with her mother and the gods in the upper world
and one third of the year with her husband in the nether world, from which she
was to return year by year when the earth was gay with spring flowers. Gladly
the daughter then returned to the sunshine, gladly her mother received her and
fell upon her neck; and in her joy at recovering the lost one Demeter made the
corn to sprout from the clods of the ploughed fields and all the broad earth
to be heavy with leaves and blossoms. And straightway she went and showed this
happy sight to the princes of Eleusis, to Triptolemus, Eumolpus, Diocles, and
to the king Celeus himself, and moreover she revealed to them her sacred rites
and mysteries. Blessed, says the poet, is the mortal man who has seen these
things, but he who has had no share of them in life will never be happy in
death when he has descended into the darkness of the grave. So the two
goddesses departed to dwell in bliss with the gods on Olympus; and the bard
ends the hymn with a pious prayer to Demeter and Persephone that they would be
pleased to grant him a livelihood in return for his song.

It has been generally recognised, and indeed it seems scarcely open to
doubt, that the main theme which the poet set before himself in composing this
hymn was to describe the traditional foundation of the Eleusinian mysteries by
the goddess Demeter. The whole poem leads up to the transformation scene in
which the bare leafless expanse of the Eleusinian plain is suddenly turned, at
the will of the goddess, into a vast sheet of ruddy corn; the beneficent deity
takes the princes of Eleusis, shows them what she has done, teaches them her
mystic rites, and vanishes with her daughter to heaven. The revelation of the
mysteries is the triumphal close of the piece. This conclusion is confirmed by
a more minute examination of the poem, which proves that the poet has given,
not merely a general account of the foundation of the mysteries, but also in
more or less veiled language mythical explanations of the origin of particular
rites which we have good reason to believe formed essential features of the
festival. Amongst the rites as to which the poet thus drops significant hints
are the preliminary fast of the candidates for initiation, the torchlight
procession, the all-night vigil, the sitting of the candidates, veiled and in
silence, on stools covered with sheepskins, the use of scurrilous language,
the breaking of ribald jests, and the solemn communion with the divinity by
participation in a draught of barley-water from a holy chalice.

But there is yet another and a deeper secret of the mysteries which the
author of the poem appears to have divulged under cover of his narrative. He
tells us how, as soon as she had transformed the barren brown expanse of the
Eleusinian plain into a field of golden grain, she gladdened the eyes of
Triptolemus and the other Eleusinian princes by showing them the growing or
standing corn. When we compare this part of the story with the statement of a
Christian writer of the second century, Hippolytus, that the very heart of the
mysteries consisted in showing to the initiated a reaped ear of corn, we can
hardly doubt that the poet of the hymn was well acquainted with this solemn
rite, and that he deliberately intended to explain its origin in precisely the
same way as he explained other rites of the mysteries, namely by representing
Demeter as having set the example of performing the ceremony in her own
person. Thus myth and ritual mutually explain and confirm each other. The poet
of the seventh century before our era gives us the mythhe could not without
sacrilege have revealed the ritual: the Christian father reveals the ritual,
and his revelation accords perfectly with the veiled hint of the old poet. On
the whole, then, we may, with many modern scholars, confidently accept the
statement of the learned Christian father Clement of Alexandria, that the myth
of Demeter and Persephone was acted as a sacred drama in the mysteries of
Eleusis.

But if the myth was acted as a part, perhaps as the principal part, of the
most famous and solemn religious rites of ancient Greece, we have still to
enquire, What was, after all, stripped of later accretions, the original
kernel of the myth which appears to later ages surrounded and transfigured by
an aureole of awe and mystery, lit up by some of the most brilliant rays of
Grecian literature and art? If we follow the indications given by our oldest
literary authority on the subject, the author of the Homeric hymn to Demeter,
the riddle is not hard to read; the figures of the two goddesses, the mother
and the daughter, resolve themselves into personifications of the corn. At
least this appears to be fairly certain for the daughter Persephone. The
goddess who spends three or, according to another version of the myth, six
months of every year with the dead under ground and the remainder of the year
with the living above ground; in whose absence the barley seed is hidden in
the earth and the fields lie bare and fallow; on whose return in spring to the
upper world the corn shoots up from the clods and the earth is heavy with
leaves and blossomsthis goddess can surely be nothing else than a mythical
embodiment of the vegetation, and particularly of the corn, which is buried
under the soil for some months of every winter and comes to life again, as
from the grave, in the sprouting cornstalks and the opening flowers and
foliage of every spring. No other reasonable and probable explanation of
Persephone seems possible. And if the daughter goddess was a personification
of the young corn of the present year, may not the mother goddess be a
personification of the old corn of last year, which has given birth to the new
crops? The only alternative to this view of Demeter would seem to be to
suppose that she is a personification of the earth, from whose broad bosom the
corn and all other plants spring up, and of which accordingly they may
appropriately enough be regarded as the daughters. This view of the original
nature of Demeter has indeed been taken by some writers, both ancient and
modern, and it is one which can be reasonably maintained. But it appears to
have been rejected by the author of the Homeric hymn to Demeter, for he not
only distinguishes Demeter from the personified Earth but places the two in
the sharpest opposition to each other. He tells us that it was Earth who, in
accordance with the will of Zeus and to please Pluto, lured Persephone to her
doom by causing the narcissuses to grow which tempted the young goddess to
stray far beyond the reach of help in the lush meadow. Thus Demeter of the
hymn, far from being identical with the Earth-goddess, must have regarded that
divinity as her worst enemy, since it was to her insidious wiles that she owed
the loss of her daughter. But if the Demeter of the hymn cannot have been a
personification of the earth, the only alternative apparently is to conclude
that she was a personification of the corn.

The conclusion is confirmed by the monuments; for in ancient art Demeter
and Persephone are alike characterised as goddesses of the corn by the crowns
of corn which they wear on their heads and by the stalks of corn which they
hold in their hands. Again, it was Demeter who first revealed to the Athenians
the secret of the corn and diffused the beneficent discovery far and wide
through the agency of Triptolemus, whom she sent forth as an itinerant
missionary to communicate the boon to all mankind. On monuments of art,
especially in vase-paintings, he is constantly represented along with Demeter
in this capacity, holding corn-stalks in his hand and sitting in his car,
which is sometimes winged and sometimes drawn by dragons, and from which he is
said to have sowed the seed down on the whole world as he sped through the
air. In gratitude for the priceless boon many Greek cities long continued to
send the first-fruits of their barley and wheat harvests as thank-offerings to
the Two Goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, at Eleusis, where subterranean
granaries were built to store the overflowing contributions. Theocritus tells
how in the island of Cos, in the sweet-scented summer time, the farmer brought
the first-fruits of the harvest to Demeter who had filled his threshingfloor
with barley, and whose rustic image held sheaves and poppies in her hands.
Many of the epithets bestowed by the ancients on Demeter mark her intimate
association with the corn in the clearest manner.

How deeply implanted in the mind of the ancient Greeks was this faith in
Demeter as goddess of the corn may be judged by the circumstance that the
faith actually persisted among their Christian descendants at her old
sanctuary of Eleusis down to the beginning of the nineteenth century. For when
the English traveller Dodwell revisited Eleusis, the inhabitants lamented to
him the loss of a colossal image of Demeter, which was carried off by Clarke
in 1802 and presented to the University of Cambridge, where it still remains.
In my first journey to Greece, says Dodwell, this protecting deity was in
its full glory, situated in the centre of a threshing-floor, amongst the ruins
of her temple. The villagers were impressed with a persuasion that their rich
harvests were the effect of her bounty, and since her removal, their
abundance, as they assured me, has disappeared. Thus we see the Corn Goddess
Demeter standing on the threshing-floor of Eleusis and dispensing corn to her
worshippers in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, precisely as her
image stood and dispensed corn to her worshippers on the threshing-floor of
Cos in the days of Theocritus. And just as the people of Eleusis in the
nineteenth century attributed the diminution of their harvests to the loss of
the image of Demeter, so in antiquity the Sicilians, a corn-growing people
devoted to the worship of the two Corn Goddesses, lamented that the crops of
many towns had perished because the unscrupulous Roman governor Verres had
impiously carried off the image of Demeter from her famous temple at Henna.
Could we ask for a clearer proof that Demeter was indeed the goddess of the
corn than this belief, held by the Greeks down to modern times, that the
corn-crops depended on her presence and bounty and perished when her image was
removed?

On the whole, then, if, ignoring theories, we adhere to the evidence of
the ancients themselves in regard to the rites of Eleusis, we shall probably
incline to agree with the most learned of ancient antiquaries, the Roman
Varro, who, to quote Augustine's report of his opinion, interpreted the whole
of the Eleusinian mysteries as relating to the corn which Ceres (Demeter) had
discovered, and to Proserpine (Persephone), whom Pluto had carried off from
her. And Proserpine herself he said, signifies the fecundity of the seeds, the
failure of which at a certain time had caused the earth to mourn for
barrenness, and therefore had given rise to the opinion that the daughter of
Ceres, that is, fecundity itself, had been ravished by Pluto and detained in
the nether world; and when the dearth had been publicly mourned and fecundity
had returned once more, there was gladness at the return of Proserpine and
solemn rites were instituted accordingly. After that he says, continues
Augustine, reporting Varro, that many things were taught in her mysteries
which had no reference but to the discovery of the corn.

Thus far I have for the most part assumed an identity of nature between
Demeter and Persephone, the divine mother and daughter personifying the corn
in its double aspect of the seed-corn of last year and the ripe ears of this,
and this view of the substantial unity of mother and daughter is borne out by
their portraits in Greek art, which are often so alike as to be
indistinguishable. Such a close resemblance between the artistic types of
Demeter and Persephone militates decidedly against the view that the two
goddesses are mythical embodiments of two things so different and so easily
distinguishable from each other as the earth and the vegetation which springs
from it. Had Greek artists accepted that view of Demeter and Persephone, they
could surely have devised types of them which would have brought out the deep
distinction between the goddesses. And if Demeter did not personify the earth,
can there be any reasonable doubt that, like her daughter, she personified the
corn which was so commonly called by her name from the time of Homer
downwards? The essential identity of mother and daughter is suggested, not
only by the close resemblance of their artistic types, but also by the
official title of the Two Goddesses which was regularly applied to them in
the great sanctuary at Eleusis without any specification of their individual
attributes and titles, as if their separate individualities had almost merged
in a single divine substance.

Surveying the evidence as a whole, we are fairly entitled to conclude that
in the mind of the ordinary Greek the two goddesses were essentially
personifications of the corn, and that in this germ the whole efflorescence of
their religion finds implicitly its explanation. But to maintain this is not
to deny that in the long course of religious evolution high moral and
spiritual conceptions were grafted on this simple original stock and blossomed
out into fairer flowers than the bloom of the barley and the wheat. Above all,
the thought of the seed buried in the earth in order to spring up to new and
higher life readily suggested a comparison with human destiny, and
strengthened the hope that for man too the grave may be but the beginning of a
better and happier existence in some brighter world unknown. This simple and
natural reflection seems perfectly sufficient to explain the association of
the Corn Goddess at Eleusis with the mystery of death and the hope of a
blissful immortality. For that the ancients regarded initiation in the
Eleusinian mysteries as a key to unlock the gates of Paradise appears to be
proved by the allusions which well-informed writers among them drop to the
happiness in store for the initiated hereafter. No doubt it is easy for us to
discern the flimsiness of the logical foundation on which such high hopes were
built. But drowning men clutch at straws, and we need not wonder that the
Greeks, like ourselves, with death before them and a great love of life in
their hearts, should not have stopped to weigh with too nice a hand the
arguments that told for and against the prospect of human immortality. The
reasoning that satisfied Saint Paul and has brought comfort to untold
thousands of sorrowing Christians, standing by the deathbed or the open grave
of their loved ones, was good enough to pass muster with ancient pagans, when
they too bowed their heads under the burden of grief, and, with the taper of
life burning low in the socket, looked forward into the darkness of the
unknown. Therefore we do no indignity to the myth of Demeter and
Persephoneone of the few myths in which the sunshine and clarity of the Greek
genius are crossed by the shadow and mystery of deathwhen we trace its origin
to some of the most familiar, yet eternally affecting aspects of nature, to
the melancholy gloom and decay of autumn and to the freshness, the brightness,
and the verdure of spring.

Chapter 45. The Corn-Mother and the Corn-Maiden in Northern Europe.

IT has been argued by W. Mannhardt that the first part of Demeter's name is
derived from an alleged Cretan word deai, barley, and that accordingly
Demeter means neither more nor less than Barley-mother or Corn-mother; for
the root of the word seems to have been applied to different kinds of grain by
different branches of the Aryans. As Crete appears to have been one of the
most ancient seats of the worship of Demeter, it would not be surprising if
her name were of Cretan origin. But the etymology is open to serious
objections, and it is safer therefore to lay no stress on it. Be that as it
may, we have found independent reasons for identifying Demeter as the
Corn-mother, and of the two species of corn associated with her in Greek
religion, namely barley and wheat, the barley has perhaps the better claim to
be her original element; for not only would it seem to have been the staple
food of the Greeks in the Homeric age, but there are grounds for believing
that it is one of the oldest, if not the very oldest, cereal cultivated by the
Aryan race. Certainly the use of barley in the religious ritual of the ancient
Hindoos as well as of the ancient Greeks furnishes a strong argument in favour
of the great antiquity of its cultivation, which is known to have been
practised by the lake-dwellers of the Stone Age in Europe.

Analogies to the Corn-mother or Barley-mother of ancient Greece have been
collected in great abundance by W. Mannhardt from the folk-lore of modern
Europe. The following may serve as specimens.

In Germany the corn is very commonly personified under the name of the
Corn-mother. Thus in spring, when the corn waves in the wind, the peasants
say, There comes the Corn-mother, or The Corn-mother is running over the
field, or The Corn-mother is going through the corn. When children wish to
go into the fields to pull the blue corn-flowers or the red poppies, they are
told not to do so, because the Corn-mother is sitting in the corn and will
catch them. Or again she is called, according to the crop, the Rye-mother or
the Pea-mother, and children are warned against straying in the rye or among
the peas by threats of the Rye-mother or the Pea-mother. Again the Corn-mother
is believed to make the crop grow. Thus in the neighbourhood of Magdeburg it
is sometimes said, It will be a good year for flax; the Flax-mother has been
seen. In a village of Styria it is said that the Corn-mother, in the shape of
a female puppet made out of the last sheaf of corn and dressed in white, may
be seen at mid-night in the corn-fields, which she fertilises by passing
through them; but if she is angry with a farmer, she withers up all his corn.

Further, the Corn-mother plays an important part in harvest customs. She
is believed to be present in the handful of corn which is left standing last
on the field; and with the cutting of this last handful she is caught, or
driven away, or killed. In the first of these cases, the last sheaf is carried
joyfully home and honoured as a divine being. It is placed in the barn, and at
threshing the corn-spirit appears again. In the Hanoverian district of Hadeln
the reapers stand round the last sheaf and beat it with sticks in order to
drive the Corn-mother out of it. They call to each other, There she is! hit
her! Take care she doesn't catch you! The beating goes on till the grain is
completely threshed out; then the Corn-mother is believed to be driven away.
In the neighbourhood of Danzig the person who cuts the last ears of corn makes
them into a doll, which is called the Corn-mother or the Old Woman and is
brought home on the last waggon. In some parts of Holstein the last sheaf is
dressed in woman's clothes and called the Corn-mother. It is carried home on
the last waggon, and then thoroughly drenched with water. The drenching with
water is doubtless a rain-charm. In the district of Bruck in Styria the last
sheaf, called the Corn-mother, is made up into the shape of a woman by the
oldest married woman in the village, of an age from fifty to fifty-five years.
The finest ears are plucked out of it and made into a wreath, which, twined
with flowers, is carried on her head by the prettiest girl of the village to
the farmer or squire, while the Corn-mother is laid down in the barn to keep
off the mice. In other villages of the same district the Corn-mother, at the
close of harvest, is carried by two lads at the top of a pole. They march
behind the girl who wears the wreath to the squire's house, and while he
receives the wreath and hangs it up in the hall, the Corn-mother is placed on
the top of a pile of wood, where she is the centre of the harvest supper and
dance. Afterwards she is hung up in the barn and remains there till the
threshing is over. The man who gives the last stroke at threshing is called
the son of the Corn-mother; he is tied up in the Corn-mother, beaten, and
carried through the village. The wreath is dedicated in church on the
following Sunday; and on Easter Eve the grain is rubbed out of it by a
seven-year-old girl and scattered amongst the young corn. At Christmas the
straw of the wreath is placed in the manger to make the cattle thrive. Here
the fertilising power of the Corn-mother is plainly brought out by scattering
the seed taken from her body (for the wreath is made out of the Corn-mother)
among the new corn; and her influence over animal life is indicated by placing
the straw in the manger. Amongst the Slavs also the last sheaf is known as the
Rye-mother, the Wheat-mother, the Oats-mother, the Barley-mother, and so on,
according to the crop. In the district of Tarnow, Galicia, the wreath made out
of the last stalks is called the Wheat-mother, Rye-mother, or Pea-mother. It
is placed on a girl's head and kept till spring, when some of the grain is
mixed with the seed-corn. Here again the fertilising power of the Corn-mother
is indicated. In France, also, in the neighbourhood of Auxerre, the last sheaf
goes by the name of the Mother of the Wheat, Mother of the Barley, Mother of
the Rye, or Mother of the Oats. They leave it standing in the field till the
last waggon is about to wend homewards. Then they make a puppet out of it,
dress it with clothes belonging to the farmer, and adorn it with a crown and a
blue or white scarf. A branch of a tree is stuck in the breast of the puppet,
which is now called the Ceres. At the dance in the evening the Ceres is set in
the middle of the floor, and the reaper who reaped fastest dances round it
with the prettiest girl for his partner. After the dance a pyre is made. All
the girls, each wearing a wreath, strip the puppet, pull it to pieces, and
place it on the pyre, along with the flowers with which it was adorned. Then
the girl who was the first to finish reaping sets fire to the pile, and all
pray that Ceres may give a fruitful year. Here, as Mannhardt observes, the old
custom has remained intact, though the name Ceres is a bit of schoolmaster's
learning. In Upper Brittany the last sheaf is always made into human shape;
but if the farmer is a married man, it is made double and consists of a little
corn-puppet placed inside of a large one. This is called the Mother-sheaf. It
is delivered to the farmer's wife, who unties it and gives drink-money in
return.

Sometimes the last sheaf is called, not the Corn-mother, but the
Harvest-mother or the Great Mother. In the province of Osnabrck, Hanover, it
is called the Harvest-mother; it is made up in female form, and then the
reapers dance about with it. In some parts of Westphalia the last sheaf at the
rye-harvest is made especially heavy by fastening stones in it. They bring it
home on the last waggon and call it the Great Mother, though they do not
fashion it into any special shape. In the district of Erfurt a very heavy
sheaf, not necessarily the last, is called the Great Mother, and is carried on
the last waggon to the barn, where all hands lift it down amid a fire of
jokes.

Sometimes again the last sheaf is called the Grandmother, and is adorned
with flowers, ribbons, and a woman's apron. In East Prussia, at the rye or
wheat harvest, the reapers call out to the woman who binds the last sheaf,
You are getting the Old Grandmother. In the neighbourhood of Magdeburg the
men and women servants strive who shall get the last sheaf, called the
Grandmother. Whoever gets it will be married in the next year, but his or her
spouse will be old; if a girl gets it, she will marry a widower; if a man gets
it, he will marry an old crone. In Silesia the Grandmothera huge bundle made
up of three or four sheaves by the person who tied the last sheafwas formerly
fashioned into a rude likeness of the human form. In the neighbourhood of
Belfast the last sheaf sometimes goes by the name of the Granny. It is not cut
in the usual way, but all the reapers throw their sickles at it and try to
bring it down. It is plaited and kept till the (next?) autumn. Whoever gets it
will marry in the course of the year.

Often the last sheaf is called the Old Woman or the Old Man. In Germany it
is frequently shaped and dressed as a woman, and the person who cuts it or
binds it is said to get the Old Woman. At Altisheim, in Swabia, when all the
corn of a farm has been cut except a single strip, all the reapers stand in a
row before the strip; each cuts his share rapidly, and he who gives the last
cut has the Old Woman. When the sheaves are being set up in heaps, the
person who gets hold of the Old Woman, which is the largest and thickest of
all the sheaves, is jeered at by the rest, who call out to him, He has the
Old Woman and must keep her. The woman who binds the last sheaf is sometimes
herself called the Old Woman, and it is said that she will be married in the
next year. In Neusaass, West Prussia, both the last sheafwhich is dressed up
in jacket, hat, and ribbonsand the woman who binds it are called the Old
Woman. Together they are brought home on the last waggon and are drenched with
water. In various parts of North Germany the last sheaf at harvest is made up
into a human effigy and called the Old Man; and the woman who bound it is
said to have the Old Man.

In West Prussia, when the last rye is being raked together, the women and
girls hurry with the work, for none of them likes to be the last and to get
the Old Man, that is, a puppet made out of the last sheaf, which must be
carried before the other reapers by the person who was the last to finish. In
Silesia the last sheaf is called the Old Woman or the Old Man and is the theme
of many jests; it is made unusually large and is sometimes weighted with a
stone. Among the Wends the man or woman who binds the last sheaf at wheat
harvest is said to have the Old Man. A puppet is made out of the wheaten
straw and ears in the likeness of a man and decked with flowers. The person
who bound the last sheaf must carry the Old Man home, while the rest laugh and
jeer at him. The puppet is hung up in the farmhouse and remains till a new Old
Man is made at the next harvest.

In some of these customs, as Mannhardt has remarked, the person who is
called by the same name as the last sheaf and sits beside it on the last
waggon is obviously identified with it; he or she represents the corn-spirit
which has been caught in the last sheaf; in other words, the corn-spirit is
represented in duplicate, by a human being and by a sheaf. The identification
of the person with the sheaf is made still clearer by the custom of wrapping
up in the last sheaf the person who cuts or binds it. Thus at Hermsdorf in
Silesia it used to be the regular practice to tie up in the last sheaf the
woman who had bound it. At Weiden, in Bavaria, it is the cutter, not the
binder, of the last sheaf who is tied up in it. Here the person wrapt up in
the corn represents the corn-spirit, exactly as a person wrapt in branches or
leaves represents the tree-spirit.

The last sheaf, designated as the Old Woman, is often distinguished from
the other sheaves by its size and weight. Thus in some villages of West
Prussia the Old Woman is made twice as long and thick as a common sheaf, and a
stone is fastened in the middle of it. Sometimes it is made so heavy that a
man can barely lift it. At Alt-Pillau, in Samland, eight or nine sheaves are
often tied together to make the Old Woman, and the man who sets it up grumbles
at its weight. At Itzgrund, in Saxe-Coburg, the last sheaf, called the Old
Woman, is made large with the express intention of thereby securing a good
crop next year. Thus the custom of making the last sheaf unusually large or
heavy is a charm, working by sympathetic magic, to ensure a large and heavy
crop at the following harvest.

In Scotland, when the last corn was cut after Hallowmas, the female figure
made out of it was sometimes called the Carlin or Carline, that is, the Old
Woman. But if cut before Hallowmas, it was called the Maiden; if cut after
sunset, it was called the Witch, being supposed to bring bad luck. Among the
Highlanders of Scotland the last corn cut at harvest is known either as the
Old Wife (Cailleach) or as the Maiden; on the whole the former name seems to
prevail in the western and the latter in the central and eastern districts. Of
the Maiden we shall speak presently; here we are dealing with the Old Wife.
The following general account of the custom is given by a careful and
well-informed enquirer, the Rev. J. G. Campbell, minister of the remote
Hebridean island of Tiree: The Harvest Old Wife (a Cailleach).In harvest,
there was a struggle to escape from being the last done with the shearing, and
when tillage in common existed, instances were known of a ridge being left
unshorn (no person would claim it) because of it being behind the rest. The
fear entertained was that of having the 'famine of the farm' (gort a
bhaile), in the shape of an imaginary old woman (cailleach), to feed till
next harvest. Much emulation and amusement arose from the fear of this old
woman . . The first done made a doll of some blades of corn, which was called
the 'old wife,' and sent it to his nearest neighbour. He in turn, when ready,
passed it to another still less expeditious, and the person it last remained
with had 'the old woman' to keep for that year.

In the island of Islay the last corn cut goes by the name of the Old Wife
(Cailleach), and when she has done her duty at harvest she is hung up on the
wall and stays there till the time comes to plough the fields for the next
year's crop. Then she is taken down, and on the first day when the men go to
plough she is divided among them by the mistress of the house. They take her
in their pockets and give her to the horses to eat when they reach the field.
This is supposed to secure good luck for the next harvest, and is understood
to be the proper end of the Old Wife.

Usages of the same sort are reported from Wales. Thus in North
Pembrokeshire a tuft of the last corn cut, from six to twelve inches long, is
plaited and goes by the name of the Hag (wrach); and quaint old customs used
to be practised with it within the memory of many persons still alive. Great
was the excitement among the reapers when the last patch of standing corn was
reached. All in turn threw their sickles at it, and the one who succeeded in
cutting it received a jug of home-brewed ale. The Hag (wrach) was then
hurriedly made and taken to a neighbouring farm, where the reapers were still
busy at their work. This was generally done by the ploughman; but he had to be
very careful not to be observed by his neighbours, for if they saw him coming
and had the least suspicion of his errand they would soon make him retrace his
steps. Creeping stealthily up behind a fence he waited till the foreman of his
neighbour's reapers was just opposite him and within easy reach. Then he
suddenly threw the Hag over the fence and, if possible, upon the foreman's
sickle. On that he took to his heels and made off as fast as he could run, and
he was a lucky man if he escaped without being caught or cut by the flying
sickles which the infuriated reapers hurled after him. In other cases the Hag
was brought home to the farmhouse by one of the reapers. He did his best to
bring it home dry and without being observed; but he was apt to be roughly
handled by the people of the house, if they suspected his errand. Sometimes
they stripped him of most of his clothes, sometimes they would drench him with
water which had been carefully stored in buckets and pans for the purpose. If,
however, he succeeded in bringing the Hag in dry and unobserved, the master of
the house had to pay him a small fine; or sometimes a jug of beer from the
cask next to the wall, which seems to have commonly held the best beer, would
be demanded by the bearer. The Hag was then carefully hung on a nail in the
hall or elsewhere and kept there all the year. The custom of bringing in the
Hag (wrach) into the house and hanging it up still exists in some farms of
North Pembrokeshire, but the ancient ceremonies which have just been described
are now discontinued.

In County Antrim, down to some years ago, when the sickle was finally
expelled by the reaping machine, the few stalks of corn left standing last on
the field were plaited together; then the reapers, blindfolded, threw their
sickles at the plaited corn, and whoever happened to cut it through took it
home with him and put it over his door. This bunch of corn was called the
Carleyprobably the same word as Carlin.

Similar customs are observed by Slavonic peoples. Thus in Poland the last
sheaf is commonly called the Baba, that is, the Old Woman. In the last
sheaf, it is said, sits the Baba. The sheaf itself is also called the Baba,
and is sometimes composed of twelve smaller sheaves lashed together. In some
parts of Bohemia the Baba, made out of the last sheaf, has the figure of a
woman with a great straw hat. It is carried home on the last harvest-waggon
and delivered, along with a garland, to the farmer by two girls. In binding
the sheaves the women strive not to be last, for she who binds the last sheaf
will have a child next year. Sometimes the harvesters call out to the woman
who binds the last sheaf, She has the Baba, or She is the Baba. In the
district of Cracow, when a man binds the last sheaf, they say, The
Grandfather is sitting in it; when a woman binds it, they say, The Baba is
sitting in it, and the woman herself is wrapt up in the sheaf, so that only
her head projects out of it. Thus encased in the sheaf, she is carried on the
last harvest-waggon to the house, where she is drenched with water by the
whole family. She remains in the sheaf till the dance is over, and for a year
she retains the name of Baba.

In Lithuania the name for the last sheaf is Boba (Old Woman), answering to
the Polish name Baba. The Boba is said to sit in the corn which is left
standing last. The person who binds the last sheaf or digs the last potato is
the subject of much banter, and receives and long retains the name of the Old
Rye-woman or the Old Potato-woman. The last sheafthe Bobais made into the
form of a woman, carried solemnly through the village on the last
harvest-waggon, and drenched with water at the farmer's house; then every one
dances with it.

In Russia also the last sheaf is often shaped and dressed as a woman, and
carried with dance and song to the farmhouse. Out of the last sheaf the
Bulgarians make a doll which they call the Corn-queen or Corn-mother; it is
dressed in a woman's shirt, carried round the village, and then thrown into
the river in order to secure plenty of rain and dew for the next year's crop.
Or it is burned and the ashes strew on the fields, doubtless to fertilise
them. The name Queen, as applied to the last sheaf, has its analogies in
Central and Northern Europe. Thus, in the Salzburg district of Austria, at the
end of the harvest a great procession takes place, in which a Queen of the
Corn-ears (hrenknigin) is drawn along in a little carriage by young
fellows. The custom of the Harvest Queen appears to have been common in
England. Milton must have been familiar with it, for in Paradise Lost he
says:

Adam the while
Waiting desirous her return, had wove
Of choicest flow'rs a garland to adorn
Her tresses, and her rural labours crown,
As reapers oft are wont their harvest-queen.

Often customs of this sort are practised, not on the harvest-field but on
the threshing-floor. The spirit of the corn, fleeing before the reapers as
they cut down the ripe grain, quits the reaped corn and takes refuge in the
barn, where it appears in the last sheaf threshed, either to perish under the
blows of the flail or to flee thence to the still unthreshed corn of a
neighbouring farm. Thus the last corn to be threshed is called the Mother-Corn
or the Old Woman. Sometimes the person who gives the last stroke with the
flail is called the Old Woman, and is wrapt in the straw of the last sheaf, or
has a bundle of straw fastened on his back. Whether wrapt in the straw or
carrying it on his back, he is carted through the village amid general
laughter. In some districts of Bavaria, Thringen, and elsewhere, the man who
threshes the last sheaf is said to have the Old Woman or the Old Corn-woman;
he is tied up in straw, carried or carted about the village, and set down at
last on the dunghill, or taken to the threshing-floor of a neighbouring farmer
who has not finished his threshing. In Poland the man who gives the last
stroke at threshing is called Baba (Old Woman); he is wrapt in corn and
wheeled through the village. Sometimes in Lithuania the last sheaf is not
threshed, but is fashioned into female shape and carried to the barn of a
neighbour who has not finished his threshing.

In some parts of Sweden, when a stranger woman appears on the
threshing-floor, a flail is put round her body, stalks of corn are wound round
her neck, a crown of ears is placed on her head, and the threshers call out,
Behold the Corn-woman. Here the stranger woman, thus suddenly appearing, is
taken to be the corn-spirit who has just been expelled by the flails from the
corn-stalks. In other cases the farmer's wife represents the corn-spirit. Thus
in the Commune of Salign (Vende), the farmer's wife, along with the last
sheaf, is tied up in a sheet, placed on a litter, and carried to the threshing
machine, under which she is shoved. Then the woman is drawn out and the sheaf
is threshed by itself, but the woman is tossed in the sheet, as if she were
being winnowed. It would be impossible to express more clearly the
identification of the woman with the corn than by this graphic imitation of
threshing and winnowing her.

In these customs the spirit of the ripe corn is regarded as old, or at
least as of mature age. Hence the names of Mother, Grandmother, Old Woman, and
so forth. But in other cases the corn-spirit is conceived as young. Thus at
Saldern, near Wolfenbuttel, when the rye has been reaped, three sheaves are
tied together with a rope so as to make a puppet with the corn ears for a
head. This puppet is called the Maiden or the Corn-maiden. Sometimes the
corn-spirit is conceived as a child who is separated from its mother by the
stroke of the sickle. This last view appears in the Polish custom of calling
out to the man who cuts the last handful of corn, You have cut the
navel-string. In some districts of West Prussia the figure made out of the
last sheaf is called the Bastard, and a boy is wrapt up in it. The woman who
binds the last sheaf and represents the Corn-mother is told that she is about
to be brought to bed; she cries like a woman in travail, and an old woman in
the character of grandmother acts as midwife. At last a cry is raised that the
child is born; whereupon the boy who is tied up in the sheaf whimpers and
squalls like an infant. The grandmother wraps a sack, in imitation of
swaddling bands, round the pretended baby, who is carried joyfully to the
barn, lest he should catch cold in the open air. In other parts of North
Germany the last sheaf, or the puppet made out of it, is called the Child, the
Harvest-Child, and so on, and they call out to the woman who binds the last
sheaf, you are getting the child.

In some parts of Scotland, as well as in the north of England, the last
handful of corn cut on the harvest-field was called the kirn, and the person
who carried it off was said to win the kirn. It was then dressed up like a
child's doll and went by the name of the kirn-baby, the kirn-doll, or the
Maiden. In Berwickshire down to about the middle of the nineteenth century
there was an eager competition among the reapers to cut the last bunch of
standing corn. They gathered round it at a little distance and threw their
sickles in turn at it, and the man who succeeded in cutting it through gave it
to the girl he preferred. She made the corn so cut into a kirn-dolly and
dressed it, and the doll was then taken to the farmhouse and hung up there
till the next harvest, when its place was taken by the new kirn-dolly. At
Spottiswoode in Berwickshire the reaping of the last corn at harvest was
called cutting the Queen almost as often as cutting the kirn. The mode of
cutting it was not by throwing sickles. One of the reapers consented to be
blindfolded, and having been given a sickle in his hand and turned twice or
thrice about by his fellows, he was bidden to go and cut the kirn. His groping
about and making wild strokes in the air with his sickle excited much
hilarity. When he had tired himself out in vain and given up the task as
hopeless, another reaper was blindfolded and pursued the quest, and so on, one
after the other, till at last the kirn was cut. The successful reaper was
tossed up in the air with three cheers by his brother harvesters. To decorate
the room in which the kirn-supper was held at Spottiswoode as well as the
granary, where the dancing took place, two women made kirn-dollies or Queens
every year; and many of these rustic effigies of the corn-spirit might be seen
hanging up together.

In some parts of the Highlands of Scotland the last handful of corn that
is cut by the reapers on any particular farm is called the Maiden, or in
Gaelic Maidhdeanbuain, literally, the shorn Maiden. Superstitions attach
to the winning of the Maiden. If it is got by a young person, they think it an
omen that he or she will be married before another harvest. For that or other
reasons there is a strife between the reapers as to who shall get the Maiden,
and they resort to various stratagems for the purpose of securing it. One of
them, for example, will often leave a handful of corn uncut and cover it up
with earth to hide it from the other reapers, till all the rest of the corn on
the field is cut down. Several may try to play the same trick, and the one who
is coolest and holds out longest obtains the coveted distinction. When it has
been cut, the Maiden is dressed with ribbons into a sort of doll and affixed
to a wall of the farmhouse. In the north of Scotland the Maiden is carefully
preserved till Yule morning, when it is divided among the cattle to make them
thrive all the year round. In the neighbourhood of Balquhidder, Perthshire,
the last handful of corn is cut by the youngest girl on the field, and is made
into the rude form of a female doll, clad in a paper dress, and decked with
ribbons. It is called the Maiden, and is kept in the farmhouse, generally
above the chimney, for a good while, sometimes till the Maiden of the next
year is brought in. The writer of this book witnessed the ceremony of cutting
the Maiden at Balquhidder in September 1888. A lady friend informed me that as
a young girl she cut the Maiden several times at the request of the reapers in
the neighbourhood of Perth. The name of the Maiden was given to the last
handful of standing corn; a reaper held the top of the bunch while she cut it.
Afterwards the bunch was plaited, decked with ribbons, and hung up in a
conspicuous place on the wall of the kitchen till the next Maiden was brought
in. The harvest-supper in this neighbourhood was also called the Maiden; the
reapers danced at it.

On some farms on the Gareloch, in Dumbartonshire, about the year 1830, the
last handful of standing corn was called the Maiden. It was divided in two,
plaited, and then cut with the sickle by a girl, who, it was thought, would be
lucky and would soon be married. When it was cut the reapers gathered together
and threw their sickles in the air. The Maiden was dressed with ribbons and
hung in the kitchen near the roof, where it was kept for several years with
the date attached. Sometimes five or six Maidens might be seen hanging at once
on hooks. The harvest-supper was called the Kirn. In other farms on the
Gareloch the last handful of corn was called the Maidenhead or the Head; it
was neatly plaited, sometimes decked with ribbons, and hung in the kitchen for
a year, when the grain was given to the poultry.

In Aberdeenshire the last sheaf cut, or 'Maiden,' is carried home in
merry procession by the harvesters. It is then presented to the mistress of
the house, who dresses it up to be preserved till the first mare foals. The
Maiden is then taken down and presented to the mare as its first food. The
neglect of this would have untoward effects upon the foal, and disastrous
consequences upon farm operations generally for the season. In the north-east
of Aberdeenshire the last sheaf is commonly called the clyack sheaf. It used
to be cut by the youngest girl present and was dressed as a woman. Being
brought home in triumph, it was kept till Christmas morning, and then given to
a mare in foal, if there was one on the farm, or, if there was not, to the
oldest cow in calf. Elsewhere the sheaf was divided between all the cows and
their calves or between all the horses and the cattle of the farm. In
Fifeshire the last handful of corn, known as the Maiden, is cut by a young
girl and made into the rude figure of a doll, tied with ribbons, by which it
is hung on the wall of the farm-kitchen till the next spring. The custom of
cutting the Maiden at harvest was also observed in Inverness-shire and
Sutherlandshire.

A somewhat maturer but still youthful age is assigned to the corn-spirit
by the appellations of Bride, Oats-bride, and Wheat-bride, which in Germany
are sometimes bestowed both on the last sheaf and on the woman who binds it.
At wheat-harvest near Mglitz, in Moravia, a small portion of the wheat is
left standing after all the rest has been reaped. This remnant is then cut,
amid the rejoicing of the reapers, by a young girl who wears a wreath of
wheaten ears on her head and goes by the name of the Wheat-bride. It is
supposed that she will be a real bride that same year. Near Roslin and
Stonehaven, in Scotland, the last handful of corn cut got the name of 'the
bride,' and she was placed over the bress or chimney-piece; she had a ribbon
tied below her numerous ears, and another round her waist.

Sometimes the idea implied by the name of Bride is worked out more fully
by representing the productive powers of vegetation as bride and bridegroom.
Thus in the Vorharz an Oats-man and an Oats-woman, swathed in straw, dance at
the harvest feast. In South Saxony an Oats-bridegroom and an Oats-bride figure
together at the harvest celebration. The Oats-bridegroom is a man completely
wrapt in oats-straw; the Oats-bride is a man dressed in woman's clothes, but
not wrapt in straw. They are drawn in a waggon to the ale-house, where the
dance takes place. At the beginning of the dance the dancers pluck the bunches
of oats one by one from the Oats-bridegroom, while he struggles to keep them,
till at last he is completely stript of them and stands bare, exposed to the
laughter and jests of the company. In Austrian Silesia the ceremony of the
Wheat-bride is celebrated by the young people at the end of the harvest. The
woman who bound the last sheaf plays the part of the Wheat-bride, wearing the
harvest-crown of wheat ears and flowers on her head. Thus adorned, standing
beside her Bridegroom in a waggon and attended by bridesmaids, she is drawn by
a pair of oxen, in full imitation of a marriage procession, to the tavern,
where the dancing is kept up till morning. Somewhat later in the season the
wedding of the Oats-bride is celebrated with the like rustic pomp. About
Neisse, in Silesia, an Oats-king and an Oats-queen, dressed up quaintly as a
bridal pair, are seated on a harrow and drawn by oxen into the village.

In these last instances the corn-spirit is personified in double form as
male and female. But sometimes the spirit appears in a double female form as
both old and young, corresponding exactly to the Greek Demeter and Persephone,
if my interpretation of these goddesses is right. We have seen that in
Scotland, especially among the Gaelic-speaking population, the last corn cut
is sometimes called the Old Wife and sometimes the Maiden. Now there are parts
of Scotland in which both an Old Wife (Cailleach) and a Maiden are cut at
harvest. The accounts of this custom are not quite clear and consistent, but
the general rule seems to be that, where both a Maiden and an Old Wife
(Cailleach) are fashioned out of the reaped corn at harvest, the Maiden is
made out of the last stalks left standing, and is kept by the farmer on whose
land it was cut; while the Old Wife is made out of other stalks, sometimes out
of the first stalks cut, and is regularly passed on to a laggard farmer who
happens to be still reaping after his brisker neighbour has cut all his corn.
Thus while each farmer keeps his own Maiden, as the embodiment of the young
and fruitful spirit of the corn, he passes on the Old Wife as soon as he can
to a neighbour, and so the old lady may make the round of all the farms in the
district before she finds a place in which to lay her venerable head. The
farmer with whom she finally takes up her abode is of course the one who has
been the last of all the countryside to finish reaping his crops, and thus the
distinction of entertaining her is rather an invidious one. He is thought to
be doomed to poverty or to be under the obligation of providing for the
dearth of the township in the ensuing season. Similarly we saw that in
Pembrokeshire, where the last corn cut is called, not the Maiden, but the Hag,
she is passed on hastily to a neighbour who is still at work in his fields and
who receives his aged visitor with anything but a transport of joy. If the Old
Wife represents the corn-spirit of the past year, as she probably does
wherever she is contrasted with and opposed to a Maiden, it is natural enough
that her faded charms should have less attractions for the husbandman than the
buxom form of her daughter, who may be expected to become in her turn the
mother of the golden grain when the revolving year has brought round another
autumn. The same desire to get rid of the effete Mother of the Corn by palming
her off on other people comes out clearly in some of the customs observed at
the close of threshing, particularly in the practice of passing on a hideous
straw puppet to a neighbour farmer who is still threshing his corn.

The harvest customs just described are strikingly analogous to the spring
customs which we reviewed in an earlier part of this work. (1) As in the
spring customs the tree-spirit is represented both by a tree and by a person,
so in the harvest customs the corn-spirit is represented both by the last
sheaf and by the person who cuts or binds or threshes it. The equivalence of
the person to the sheaf is shown by giving him or her the same name as the
sheaf; by wrapping him or her in it; and by the rule observed in some places,
that when the sheaf is called the Mother, it must be made up into human shape
by the oldest married woman, but that when it is called the Maiden, it must be
cut by the youngest girl. Here the age of the personal representative of the
corn-spirit corresponds with that of the supposed age of the corn-spirit, just
as the human victims offered by the Mexicans to promote the growth of the
maize varied with the age of the maize. For in the Mexican, as in the
European, custom the human beings were probably representatives of the
corn-spirit rather than victims offered to it. (2) Again the same fertilising
influence which the tree-spirit is supposed to exert over vegetation, cattle,
and even women is ascribed to the corn-spirit. Thus, its supposed influence on
vegetation is shown by the practice of taking some of the grain of the last
sheaf (in which the corn-spirit is regularly supposed to be present), and
scattering it among the young corn in spring or mixing it with the seed-corn.
Its influence on animals is shown by giving the last sheaf to a mare in foal,
to a cow in calf, and to horses at the first ploughing. Lastly, its influence
on women is indicated by the custom of delivering the Mother-sheaf, made into
the likeness of a pregnant woman, to the farmer's wife; by the belief that the
woman who binds the last sheaf will have a child next year; perhaps, too, by
the idea that the person who gets it will soon be married.

Plainly, therefore, these spring and harvest customs are based on the same
ancient modes of thought, and form parts of the same primitive heathendom,
which was doubtless practised by our forefathers long before the dawn of
history. Amongst the marks of a primitive ritual we may note the following:

1. No special class of persons is set apart for the performance of the
rites; in other words, there are no priests. The rites may be performed by any
one, as occasion demands.

2. No special places are set apart for the performance of the rites; in
other words, there are no temples. The rites may be performed anywhere, as
occasion demands.

3. Spirits, not gods, are recognised. (a) As distinguished from gods,
spirits are restricted in their operations to definite departments of nature.
Their names are general, not proper. Their attributes are generic, rather than
individual; in other words, there is an indefinite number of spirits of each
class, and the individuals of a class are all much alike; they have no
definitely marked individuality; no accepted traditions are current as to
their origin, life, adventures, and character. (b) On the other hand gods,
as distinguished from spirits, are not restricted to definite departments of
nature. It is true that there is generally some one department over which they
preside as their special province; but they are not rigorously confined to it;
they can exert their power for good or evil in many other spheres of nature
and life. Again, they bear individual or proper names, such as Demeter,
Persephone, Dionysus; and their individual characters and histories are fixed
by current myths and the representations of art.

4. The rites are magical rather than propitiatory. In other words, the
desired objects are attained, not by propitiating the favour of divine beings
through sacrifice, prayer, and praise, but by ceremonies which, as I have
already explained, are believed to influence the course of nature directly
through a physical sympathy or resemblance between the rite and the effect
which it is the intention of the rite to produce.

Judged by these tests, the spring and harvest customs of our European
peasantry deserve to rank as primitive. For no special class of persons and no
special places are set exclusively apart for their performance; they may be
performed by any one, master or man, mistress or maid, boy or girl; they are
practised, not in temples or churches, but in the woods and meadows, beside
brooks, in barns, on harvest fields and cottage floors. The supernatural
beings whose existence is taken for granted in them are spirits rather than
deities: their functions are limited to certain well-defined departments of
nature: their names are general like the Barley-mother, the Old Woman, the
Maiden, not proper names like Demeter, Persephone, Dionysus. Their generic
attributes are known, but their individual histories and characters are not
the subject of myths. For they exist in classes rather than as individuals,
and the members of each class are indistinguishable. For example, every farm
has its Corn-mother, or its Old Woman, or its Maiden; but every Corn-mother is
much like every other Corn-mother, and so with the Old Women and Maidens.
Lastly, in these harvests, as in the spring customs, the ritual is magical
rather than propitiatory. This is shown by throwing the Corn-mother into the
river in order to secure rain and dew for the crops; by making the Old Woman
heavy in order to get a heavy crop next year; by strewing grain from the last
sheaf amongst the young crops in spring; and by giving the last sheaf to the
cattle to make them thrive.

Chapter 46. The Corn-Mother in Many Lands.

1. The Corn-mother in America.

EUROPEAN peoples, ancient and modern, have not been singular in personifying
the corn as a mother goddess. The same simple idea has suggested itself to
other agricultural races in distant parts of the world, and has been applied
by them to other indigenous cereals than barley and wheat. If Europe has its
Wheat-mother and its Barley-mother, America has its Maize-mother and the East
Indies their Rice-mother. These personifications I will now illustrate,
beginning with the American personification of the maize.

We have seen that among European peoples it is a common custom to keep the
plaited corn-stalks of the last sheaf, or the puppet which is formed out of
them, in the farm-house from harvest to harvest. The intention no doubt is, or
rather originally was, by preserving the representative of the corn-spirit to
maintain the spirit itself in life and activity throughout the year, in order
that the corn may grow and the crops be good. This interpretation of the
custom is at all events rendered highly probable by a similar custom observed
by the ancient Peruvians, and thus described by the old Spanish historian
Acosta: They take a certain portion of the most fruitful of the maize that
grows in their farms, the which they put in a certain granary which they do
call Pirua, with certain ceremonies, watching three nights; they put this
maize in the richest garments they have, and being thus wrapped and dressed,
they worship this Pirua, and hold it in great veneration, saying it is the
mother of the maize of their inheritances, and that by this means the maize
augments and is preserved. In this month [the sixth month, answering to May]
they make a particular sacrifice, and the witches demand of this Pirua if it
hath strength sufficient to continue until the next year; and if it answers
no, then they carry this maize to the farm to burn, whence they brought it,
according to every man's power; then they make another Pirua, with the same
ceremonies, saying that they renew it, to the end the seed of maize may not
perish, and if it answers that it hath force sufficient to last longer, they
leave it until the next year. This foolish vanity continueth to this day, and
it is very common amongst the Indians to have these Piruas.

In this description of the custom there seems to be some error. Probably
it was the dressed-up bunch of maize, not the granary (Pirua), which was
worshipped by the Peruvians and regarded as the Mother of the Maize. This is
confirmed by what we know of the Peruvian custom from another source. The
Peruvians, we are told, believed all useful plants to be animated by a divine
being who causes their growth. According to the particular plant, these divine
beings were called the Maize-mother (Zara-mama), the Quinoa-mother
(Quinoa-mama), the Coca-mother (Coca-mama), and the Potato-mother
(Axo-mama). Figures of these divine mothers were made respectively of ears
of maize and leaves of the quinoa and coca plants; they were dressed in
women's clothes and worshipped. Thus the Maize-mother was represented by a
puppet made of stalks of maize dressed in full female attire; and the Indians
believed that as mother, it had the power of producing and giving birth to
much maize. Probably, therefore, Acosta misunderstood his informant, and the
Mother of the Maize which he describes was not the granary (Pirua), but the
bunch of maize dressed in rich vestments. The Peruvian Mother of the Maize,
like the harvest-Maiden at Balquhidder, was kept for a year in order that by
her means the corn might grow and multiply. But lest her strength might not
suffice to last till the next harvest, she was asked in the course of the year
how she felt, and if she answered that she felt weak, she was burned and a
fresh Mother of the Maize made, to the end the seed of maize may not perish.
Here, it may be observed, we have a strong confirmation of the explanation
already given of the custom of killing the god, both periodically and
occasionally. The Mother of the maize was allowed, as a rule, to live through
a year, that being the period during which her strength might reasonably be
supposed to last unimpaired; but on any symptom of her strength failing she
was put to death, and a fresh and vigorous Mother of the Maize took her place,
lest the maize which depended on her for its existence should languish and
decay.

2. The Rice-mother in the East Indies.

IF THE READER still feels any doubts as to the meaning of the harvest
customs which have been practised within living memory by European peasants,
these doubts may perhaps be dispelled by comparing the customs observed at the
rice-harvest by the Malays and Dyaks of the East Indies. For these Eastern
peoples have not, like our peasantry, advanced beyond the intellectual stage
at which the customs originated; their theory and their practice are still in
unison; for them the quaint rites which in Europe have long dwindled into mere
fossils, the pastime of clowns and the puzzle of the learned, are still living
realities of which they can render an intelligible and truthful account. Hence
a study of their beliefs and usages concerning the rice may throw some light
on the true meaning of the ritual of the corn in ancient Greece and modern
Europe.

Now the whole of the ritual which the Malays and Dyaks observe in
connexion with the rice is founded on the simple conception of the rice as
animated by a soul like that which these people attribute to mankind. They
explain the phenomena of reproduction, growth, decay, and death in the rice on
the same principles on which they explain the corresponding phenomena in human
beings. They imagine that in the fibres of the plant, as in the body of a man,
there is a certain vital element, which is so far independent of the plant
that it may for a time be completely separated from it without fatal effects,
though if its absence be prolonged beyond certain limits the plant will wither
and die. This vital yet separable element is what, for the want of a better
word, we must call the soul of a plant, just as a similar vital and separable
element is commonly supposed to constitute the soul of man; and on this theory
or myth of the plant-soul is built the whole worship of the cereals, just as
on the theory or myth of the human soul is built the whole worship of the
dead,a towering superstructure reared on a slender and precarious foundation.

Believing the rice to be animated by a soul like that of a man, the
Indonesians naturally treat it with the deference and the consideration which
they show to their fellows. Thus they behave towards the rice in bloom as they
behave towards a pregnant woman; they abstain from firing guns or making loud
noises in the field, lest they should so frighten the soul of the rice that it
would miscarry and bear no grain; and for the same reason they will not talk
of corpses or demons in the rice-fields. Moreover, they feed the blooming rice
with foods of various kinds which are believed to be wholesome for women with
child; but when the rice-ears are just beginning to form, they are looked upon
as infants, and women go through the fields feeding them with rice-pap as if
they were human babes. In such natural and obvious comparisons of the breeding
plant to a breeding woman, and of the young grain to a young child, is to be
sought the origin of the kindred Greek conception of the Corn-mother and the
Corn-daughter, Demeter and Persephone. But if the timorous feminine soul of
the rice can be frightened into a miscarriage even by loud noises, it is easy
to imagine what her feelings must be at harvest, when people are under the sad
necessity of cutting down the rice with the knife. At so critical a season
every precaution must be used to render the necessary surgical operation of
reaping as inconspicuous and as painless as possible. For that reason the
reaping of the seed-rice is done with knives of a peculiar pattern, such that
the blades are hidden in the reapers' hands and do not frighten the
rice-spirit till the very last moment, when her head is swept off almost
before she is aware; and from a like delicate motive the reapers at work in
the fields employ a special form of speech, which the rice-spirit cannot be
expected to understand, so that she has no warning or inkling of what is going
forward till the heads of rice are safely deposited in the basket.

Among the Indonesian peoples who thus personify the rice we may take the
Kayans or Bahaus of Central Borneo as typical. In order to secure and detain
the volatile soul of the rice the Kayans resort to a number of devices. Among
the instruments employed for this purpose are a miniature ladder, a spatula,
and a basket containing hooks, thorns, and cords. With the spatula the
priestess strokes the soul of the rice down the little ladder into the basket,
where it is naturally held fast by the hooks, the thorn, and the cord; and
having thus captured and imprisoned the soul she conveys it into the
rice-granary. Sometimes a bamboo box and a net are used for the same purpose.
And in order to ensure a good harvest for the following year it is necessary
not only to detain the soul of all the grains of rice which are safely stored
in the granary, but also to attract and recover the soul of all the rice that
has been lost through falling to the earth or being eaten by deer, apes, and
pigs. For this purpose instruments of various sorts have been invented by the
priests. One, for example, is a bamboo vessel provided with four hooks made
from the wood of a fruit-tree, by means of which the absent rice-soul may be
hooked and drawn back into the vessel, which is then hung up in the house.
Sometimes two hands carved out of the wood of a fruit-tree are used for the
same purpose. And every time that a Kayan housewife fetches rice from the
granary for the use of her household, she must propitiate the souls of the
rice in the granary, lest they should be angry at being robbed of their
substance.

The same need of securing the soul of the rice, if the crop is to thrive,
is keenly felt by the Karens of Burma. When a rice-field does not flourish,
they suppose that the soul (kelah) of the rice is in some way detained from
the rice. If the soul cannot be called back, the crop will fail. The following
formula is used in recalling the kelah (soul) of the rice: O come,
rice-kelah, come! Come to the field. Come to the rice. With seed of each
gender, come. Come from the river Kho, come from the river Kaw; from the place
where they meet, come. Come from the West, come from the East. From the throat
of the bird, from the maw of the ape, from the throat of the elephant. Come
from the sources of rivers and their mouths. Come from the country of the Shan
and Burman. From the distant kingdoms come. From all granaries come. O
rice-kelah, come to the rice.

The Corn-mother of our European peasants has her match in the Rice-mother
of the Minangkabauers of Sumatra. The Minangkabauers definitely attribute a
soul to rice, and will sometimes assert that rice pounded in the usual way
tastes better than rice ground in a mill, because in the mill the body of the
rice was so bruised and battered that the soul has fled from it. Like the
Javanese they think that the rice is under the special guardianship of a
female spirit called Saning Sari, who is conceived as so closely knit up with
the plant that the rice often goes by her name, as with the Romans the corn
might be called Ceres. In particular Saning Sari is represented by certain
stalks or grains called indoea padi, that is, literally, Mother of Rice, a
name that is often given to the guardian spirit herself. This so-called Mother
of Rice is the occasion of a number of ceremonies observed at the planting and
harvesting of the rice as well as during its preservation in the barn. When
the seed of the rice is about to be sown in the nursery or bedding-out ground,
where under the wet system of cultivation it is regularly allowed to sprout
before being transplanted to the fields, the best grains are picked out to
form the Rice-mother. These are then sown in the middle of the bed, and the
common seed is planted round about them. The state of the Rice-mother is
supposed to exert the greatest influence on the growth of the rice; if she
droops or pines away, the harvest will be bad in consequence. The woman who
sows the Rice-mother in the nursery lets her hair hang loose and afterwards
bathes, as a means of ensuring an abundant harvest. When the time comes to
transplant the rice from the nursery to the field, the Rice-mother receives a
special place either in the middle or in a corner of the field, and a prayer
or charm is uttered as follows: Saning Sari, may a measure of rice come from
a stalk of rice and a basketful from a root; may you be frightened neither by
lightning nor by passers-by! Sunshine make you glad; with the storm may you be
at peace; and may rain serve to wash your face! While the rice is growing,
the particular plant which was thus treated as the Rice-mother is lost sight
of; but before harvest another Rice-mother is found. When the crop is ripe for
cutting, the oldest woman of the family or a sorcerer goes out to look for
her. The first stalks seen to bend under a passing breeze are the Rice-mother,
and they are tied together but not cut until the first-fruits of the field
have been carried home to serve as a festal meal for the family and their
friends, nay even for the domestic animals; since it is Saning Sari's pleasure
that the beasts also should partake of her good gifts. After the meal has been
eaten, the Rice-mother is fetched home by persons in gay attire, who carry her
very carefully under an umbrella in a neatly worked bag to the barn, where a
place in the middle is assigned to her. Every one believes that she takes care
of the rice in the barn and even multiplies it not uncommonly.

When the Tomori of Central Celebes are about to plant the rice, they bury
in the field some betel as an offering to the spirits who cause the rice to
grow. The rice that is planted round this spot is the last to be reaped at
harvest. At the commencement of the reaping the stalks of this patch of rice
are tied together into a sheaf, which is called the Mother of the Rice
(ineno pae), and offerings in the shape of rice, fowl's liver, eggs, and
other things are laid down before it. When all the rest of the rice in the
field has been reaped, the Mother of the Rice is cut down and carried with
due honour to the rice-barn, where it is laid on the floor, and all the other
sheaves are piled upon it. The Tomori, we are told, regard the Mother of the
Rice as a special offering made to the rice-spirit Omonga, who dwells in the
moon. If that spirit is not treated with proper respect, for example if the
people who fetch rice from the barn are not decently clad, he is angry and
punishes the offenders by eating up twice as much rice in the barn as they
have taken out of it; some people have heard him smacking his lips in the
barn, as he devoured the rice. On the other hand the Toradjas of Central
Celebes, who also practice the custom of the Rice-mother at harvest, regard
her as the actual mother of the whole harvest, and therefore keep her
carefully, lest in her absence the garnered store of rice should all melt away
and disappear.

Again, just as in Scotland the old and the young spirit of the corn are
represented as an Old Wife (Cailleach) and a Maiden respectively, so in the
Malay Peninsula we find both the Rice-mother and her child represented by
different sheaves or bundles of ears on the harvest-field. The ceremony of
cutting and bringing home the Soul of the Rice was witnessed by Mr. W. W.
Skeat at Chodoi in Selangor on the twenty-eighth of January 1897. The
particular bunch or sheaf which was to serve as the Mother of the Rice-soul
had previously been sought and identified by means of the markings or shape of
the ears. From this sheaf an aged sorceress, with much solemnity, cut a little
bundle of seven ears, anointed them with oil, tied them round with
parti-coloured thread, fumigated them with incense, and having wrapt them in a
white cloth deposited them in a little oval-shaped basket. These seven ears
were the infant Soul of the Rice and the little basket was its cradle. It was
carried home to the farmer's house by another woman, who held up an umbrella
to screen the tender infant from the hot rays of the sun. Arrived at the house
the Rice-child was welcomed by the women of the family, and laid, cradle and
all, on a new sleepingmat with pillows at the head. After that the farmer's
wife was instructed to observe certain rules of taboo for three days, the
rules being in many respects identical with those which have to be observed
for three days after the birth of a real child. Something of the same tender
care which is thus bestowed on the newly-born Rice-child is naturally extended
also to its parent, the sheaf from whose body it was taken. This sheaf, which
remains standing in the field after the Rice-soul has been carried home and
put to bed, is treated as a newly-made mother; that is to say, young shoots of
trees are pounded together and scattered broadcast every evening for three
successive days, and when the three days are up you take the pulp of a
coco-nut and what are called goat-flowers, mix them up, eat them with a
little sugar, and spit some of the mixture out among the rice. So after a real
birth the young shoots of the jack-fruit, the rose-apple, certain kinds of
banana, and the thin pulp of young coco-nuts are mixed with dried fish, salt,
acid, prawn-condiment, and the like dainties to form a sort of salad, which is
administered to mother and child for three successive days. The last sheaf is
reaped by the farmer's wife, who carries it back to the house, where it is
threshed and mixed with the Rice-soul. The farmer then takes the Rice-soul and
its basket and deposits it, together with the product of the last sheaf, in
the big circular rice-bin used by the Malays. Some grains from the Rice-soul
are mixed with the seed which is to be sown in the following year. In this
Rice-mother and Rice-child of the Malay Peninsula we may see the counterpart
and in a sense the prototype of the Demeter and Persephone of ancient Greece.

Once more, the European custom of representing the corn-spirit in the
double form of bride and bridegroom has its parallel in a ceremony observed at
the rice-harvest in Java. Before the reapers begin to cut the rice, the priest
or sorcerer picks out a number of ears of rice, which are tied together,
smeared with ointment, and adorned with flowers. Thus decked out, the ears are
called the padi-pengantn, that is, the Rice-bride and the Rice-bridegroom;
their wedding feast is celebrated, and the cutting of the rice begins
immediately afterwards. Later on, when the rice is being got in, a bridal
chamber is partitioned off in the barn, and furnished with a new mat, a lamp,
and all kinds of toilet articles. Sheaves of rice, to represent the wedding
guests, are placed beside the Rice-bride and the Rice-bridegroom. Not till
this has been done may the whole harvest be housed in the barn. And for the
first forty days after the rice has been housed, no one may enter the barn,
for fear of disturbing the newly-wedded pair.

In the islands of Bali and Lombok, when the time of harvest has come, the
owner of the field himself makes a beginning by cutting the principal rice
with his own hands and binding it into two sheaves, each composed of one
hundred and eight stalks with their leaves attached to them. One of the
sheaves represents a man and the other a woman, and they are called husband
and wife. The male sheaf is wound about with thread so that none of the
leaves are visible, whereas the female sheaf has its leaves bent over and tied
so as to resemble the roll of a woman's hair. Sometimes, for further
distinction, a necklace of rice-straw is tied round the female sheaf. When the
rice is brought home from the field, the two sheaves representing the husband
and wife are carried by a woman on her head, and are the last of all to be
deposited in the barn. There they are laid to rest on a small erection or on a
cushion of rice-straw. The whole arrangement, we are informed, has for its
object to induce the rice to increase and multiply in the granary, so that the
owner may get more out of it than he put in. Hence when the people of Bali
bring the two sheaves, the husband and wife, into the barn, they say,
Increase ye and multiply without ceasing. When all the rice in the barn has
been used up, the two sheaves representing the husband and wife remain in the
empty building till they have gradually disappeared or been devoured by mice.
The pinch of hunger sometimes drives individuals to eat up the rice of these
two sheaves, but the wretches who do so are viewed with disgust by their
fellows and branded as pigs and dogs. Nobody would ever sell these holy
sheaves with the rest of their profane brethren.

The same notion of the propagation of the rice by a male and female power
finds expression amongst the Szis of Upper Burma. When the paddy, that is, the
rice with the husks still on it, has been dried and piled in a heap for
threshing, all the friends of the household are invited to the
threshing-floor, and food and drink are brought out. The heap of paddy is
divided and one half spread out for threshing, while the other half is left
piled up. On the pile food and spirits are set, and one of the elders,
addressing the father and mother of the paddy-plant, prays for plenteous
harvests in future, and begs that the seed may bear many fold. Then the whole
party eat, drink, and make merry. This ceremony at the threshing-floor is the
only occasion when these people invoke the father and mother of the paddy.

3. The Spirit of the Corn embodied in Human Beings.

THUS the theory which recognises in the European Corn-mother, Corn-maiden,
and so forth, the embodiment in vegetable form of the animating spirit of the
crops is amply confirmed by the evidence of peoples in other parts of the
world, who, because they have lagged behind the European races in mental
development, retain for that very reason a keener sense of the original
motives for observing those rustic rites which among ourselves have sunk to
the level of meaningless survivals. The reader may, however, remember that
according to Mannhardt, whose theory I am expounding, the spirit of the corn
manifests itself not merely in vegetable but also in human form; the person
who cuts the last sheaf or gives the last stroke at threshing passes for a
temporary embodiment of the corn-spirit, just as much as the bunch of corn
which he reaps or threshes. Now in the parallels which have been hitherto
adduced from the customs of peoples outside Europe the spirit of the crops
appears only in vegetable form. It remains, therefore, to prove that other
races besides our European peasantry have conceived the spirit of the crops as
incorporate in or represented by living men and women. Such a proof, I may
remind the reader, is germane to the theme of this book; for the more
instances we discover of human beings representing in themselves the life or
animating spirit of plants, the less difficulty will be felt at classing
amongst them the King of the Wood at Nemi.

The Mandans and Minnitarees of North America used to hold a festival in
spring which they called the corn-medicine festival of the women. They thought
that a certain Old Woman who Never Dies made the crops to grow, and that,
living somewhere in the south, she sent the migratory waterfowl in spring as
her tokens and representatives. Each sort of bird represented a special kind
of crop cultivated by the Indians: the wild goose stood for the maize, the
wild swan for the gourds, and the wild duck for the beans. So when the
feathered messengers of the Old Woman began to arrive in spring the Indians
celebrated the corn-medicine festival of the women. Scaffolds were set up, on
which the people hung dried meat and other things by way of offerings to the
Old Woman; and on a certain day the old women of the tribe, as representatives
of the Old Woman who Never Dies, assembled at the scaffolds each bearing in
her hand an ear of maize fastened to a stick. They first planted these sticks
in the ground, then danced round the scaffolds, and finally took up the sticks
again in their arms. Meanwhile old men beat drums and shook rattles as a
musical accompaniment to the performance of the old women. Further, young
women came and put dried flesh into the mouths of the old women, for which
they received in return a grain of the consecrated maize to eat. Three or four
grains of the holy corn were also placed in the dishes of the young women, to
be afterwards carefully mixed with the seed-corn, which they were supposed to
fertilise. The dried flesh hung on the scaffold belonged to the old women,
because they represented the Old Woman who Never Dies. A similar corn-medicine
festival was held in autumn for the purpose of attracting the herds of
buffaloes and securing a supply of meat. At that time every woman carried in
her arms an uprooted plant of maize. They gave the name of the Old Woman who
Never Dies both to the maize and to those birds which they regarded as symbols
of the fruits of the earth, and they prayed to them in autumn saying, Mother,
have pity on us! send us not the bitter cold too soon, lest we have not meat
enough! let not all the game depart, that we may have something for the
winter! In autumn, when the birds were flying south, the Indians thought that
they were going home to the Old Woman and taking to her the offerings that had
been hung up on the scaffolds, especially the dried meat, which she ate. Here
then we have the spirit or divinity of the corn conceived as an Old Woman and
represented in bodily form by old women, who in their capacity of
representatives receive some at least of the offerings which are intended for
her.

In some parts of India the harvest-goddess Gauri is represented at once by
an unmarried girl and by a bundle of wild balsam plants, which is made up into
the figure of a woman and dressed as such with mask, garments, and ornaments.
Both the human and the vegetable representative of the goddess are worshipped,
and the intention of the whole ceremony appears to be to ensure a good crop of
rice.

4. The Double Personification ofthe Corn as Mother and Daughter.

COMPARED with the Corn-mother of Germany and the Harvest-maiden of Scotland,
the Demeter and Persephone of Greece are late products of religious growth.
Yet as members of the Aryan family the Greeks must at one time or another have
observed harvest customs like those which are still practised by Celts,
Teutons, and Slavs, and which, far beyond the limits of the Aryan world, have
been practised by the Indians of Peru and many peoples of the East Indiesa
sufficient proof that the ideas on which these customs rest are not confined
to any one race, but naturally suggest themselves to all untutored peoples
engaged in agriculture. It is probable, therefore, that Demeter and
Persephone, those stately and beautiful figures of Greek mythology, grew out
of the same simple beliefs and practices which still prevail among our modern
peasantry, and that they were represented by rude dolls made out of the yellow
sheaves on many a harvest-field long before their breathing images were
wrought in bronze and marble by the master hands of Phidias and
Praxiteles. A reminiscence of that olden timea scent, so to say, of the
harvest-fieldlingered to the last in the title of the Maiden (Kore) by
which Persephone was commonly known. Thus if the prototype of Demeter is the
Corn-mother of Germany, the prototype of Persephone is the Harvest-maiden
which, autumn after autumn, is still made from the last sheaf on the Braes of
Balquhidder. Indeed, if we knew more about the peasant-farmers of ancient
Greece, we should probably find that even in classical times they continued
annually to fashion their Corn-mothers (Demeters) and Maidens (Persephones)
out of the ripe corn on the harvest-fields. But unfortunately the Demeter and
Persephone whom we know were the denizens of towns, the majestic inhabitants
of lordly temples; it was for such divinities alone that the refined writers
of antiquity had eyes; the uncouth rites performed by rustics amongst the corn
were beneath their notice. Even if they noticed them, they probably never
dreamed of any connexion between the puppet of corn-stalks on the sunny
stubble-field and the marble divinity in the shady coolness of the temple.
Still the writings even of these town-bred and cultured persons afford us an
occasional glimpse of a Demeter as rude as the rudest that a remote German
village can show. Thus the story that Iasion begat a child Plutus ( wealth,
abundance) by Demeter on a thrice-ploughed field, may be compared with the
West Prussian custom of the mock birth of a child on the harvest-field. In
this Prussian custom the pretended mother represents the Corn-mother
(Zytniamatka); the pretended child represents the Corn-baby, and the whole
ceremony is a charm to ensure a crop next year. The custom and the legend
alike point to an older practice of performing, among the sprouting crops in
spring or the stubble in autumn, one of those real or mimic acts of
procreation by which, as we have seen, primitive man often seeks to infuse his
own vigorous life into the languid or decaying energies of nature. Another
glimpse of the savage under the civilised Demeter will be afforded farther on,
when we come to deal with another aspect of those agricultural divinities.

The reader may have observed that in modern folk-customs the corn-spirit
is generally represented either by a Corn-mother (Old Woman, etc.) or by a
Maiden (Harvest-child, etc.), not both by a Corn-mother and by a Maiden. Why
then did the Greeks represent the corn both as a mother and a daughter?

In the Breton custom the mother-sheafa large figure made out of the last
sheaf with a small corn-doll inside of itclearly represents both the
Corn-mother and the Corn-daughter, the latter still unborn. Again, in the
Prussian custom just referred to, the woman who plays the part of Corn-mother
represents the ripe grain; the child appears to represent next year's corn,
which may be regarded, naturally enough, as the child of this year's corn,
since it is from the seed of this year's harvest that next year's crop will
spring. Further, we have seen that among the Malays of the Peninsula and
sometimes among the Highlanders of Scotland the spirit of the grain is
represented in double female form, both as old and young, by means of ears
taken alike from the ripe crop: in Scotland the old spirit of the corn appears
as the Carline or Cailleach, the young spirit as the Maiden; while among the
Malays of the Peninsula the two spirits of the rice are definitely related to
each other as mother and child. Judged by these analogies Demeter would be the
ripe crop of this year; Persephone would be the seed-corn taken from it and
sown in autumn, to reappear in spring. The descent of Persephone into the
lower world would thus be a mythical expression for the sowing of the seed;
her reappearance in spring would signify the sprouting of the young corn. In
this way the Persephone of one year becomes the Demeter of the next, and this
may very well have been the original form of the myth. But when with the
advance of religious thought the corn came to be personified no longer as a
being that went through the whole cycle of birth, growth, reproduction, and
death within a year, but as an immortal goddess, consistency required that one
of the two personifications, the mother or the daughter, should be sacrificed.
However, the double conception of the corn as mother and daughter may have
been too old and too deeply rooted in the popular mind to be eradicated by
logic, and so room had to be found in the reformed myth both for mother and
daughter. This was done by assigning to Persephone the character of the corn
sown in autumn and sprouting in spring, while Demeter was left to play the
somewhat vague part of the heavy mother of the corn, who laments its annual
disappearance underground, and rejoices over its reappearance in spring. Thus
instead of a regular succession of divine beings, each living a year and then
giving birth to her successor, the reformed myth exhibits the conception of
two divine and immortal beings, one of whom annually disappears into and
reappears from the ground, while the other has little to do but to weep and
rejoice at the appropriate seasons.

This theory of the double personification of the corn in Greek myth
assumes that both personifications (Demeter and Persephone) are original. But
if we suppose that the Greek myth started with a single personification, the
aftergrowth of a second personification may perhaps be explained as follows.
On looking over the harvest customs which have been passed under review, it
may be noticed that they involve two distinct conceptions of the corn-spirit.
For whereas in some of the customs the corn-spirit is treated as immanent in
the corn, in others it is regarded as external to it. Thus when a particular
sheaf is called by the name of the corn-spirit, and is dressed in clothes and
handled with reverence, the spirit is clearly regarded as immanent in the
corn. But when the spirit is said to make the crops grow by passing through
them, or to blight the grain of those against whom she has a grudge, she is
apparently conceived as distinct from, though exercising power over, the corn.
Conceived in the latter mode the corn-spirit is in a fair way to become a
deity of the corn, if she has not become so already. Of these two conceptions,
that of the cornspirit as immanent in the corn is doubtless the older, since
the view of nature as animated by indwelling spirits appears to have generally
preceded the view of it as controlled by external deities; to put it shortly,
animism precedes deism. In the harvest customs of our European peasantry the
corn-spirit seems to be conceived now as immanent in the corn and now as
external to it. In Greek mythology, on the other hand, Demeter is viewed
rather as the deity of the corn than as the spirit immanent in it. The process
of thought which leads to the change from the one mode of conception to the
other is anthropomorphism, or the gradual investment of the immanent spirits
with more and more of the attributes of humanity. As men emerge from savagery
the tendency to humanise their divinities gains strength; and the more human
these become the wider is the breach which severs them from the natural
objects of which they were at first merely the animating spirits or souls. But
in the progress upwards from savagery men of the same generation do not march
abreast; and though the new anthropomorphic gods may satisfy the religious
wants of the more developed intelligences, the backward members of the
community will cling by preference to the old animistic notions. Now when the
spirit of any natural object such as the corn has been invested with human
qualities, detached from the object, and converted into a deity controlling
it, the object itself is, by the withdrawal of its spirit, left inanimate; it
becomes, so to say, a spiritual vacuum. But the popular fancy, intolerant of
such a vacuum, in other words, unable to conceive anything as inanimate,
immediately creates a fresh mythical being, with which it peoples the vacant
object. Thus the same natural object comes to be represented in mythology by
two distinct beings: first by the old spirit now separated from it and raised
to the rank of a deity; second, by the new spirit, freshly created by the
popular fancy to supply the place vacated by the old spirit on its elevation
to a higher sphere. In such cases the problem for mythology is, having got two
distinct personifications of the same object, what to do with them? How are
their relations to each other to be adjusted, and room found for both in the
mythological system? When the old spirit or new deity is conceived as creating
or producing the object in question, the problem is easily solved. Since the
object is believed to be produced by the old spirit, and animated by the new
one, the latter, as the soul of the object, must also owe its existence to the
former; thus the old spirit will stand to the new one as producer to produced,
that is, in mythology, as parent to child, and if both spirits are conceived
as female, their relation will be that of mother and daughter. In this way,
starting from a single personification of the corn as female, mythic fancy
might in time reach a double personification of it as mother and daughter. It
would be very rash to affirm that this was the way in which the myth of
Demeter and Persephone actually took shape; but it seems a legitimate
conjecture that the reduplication of deities, of which Demeter and Persephone
furnish an example, may sometimes have arisen in the way indicated. For
example, among the pairs of deities dealt with in a former part of this work,
it has been shown that there are grounds for regarding both Isis and her
companion god Osiris as personifications of the corn. On the hypothesis just
suggested, Isis would be the old corn-spirit, and Osiris would be the newer
one, whose relationship to the old spirit was variously explained as that of
brother, husband, and son; for of course mythology would always be free to
account for the coexistence of the two divinities in more ways than one. It
must not, however, be forgotten that this proposed explanation of such pairs
of deities as Demeter and Persephone or Isis and Osiris is purely conjectural,
and is only given for what it is worth.

Chapter 47. Lityerses.

1. Songs of the Corn Reapers.

IN THE PRECEDING pages an attempt has been made to show that in the
Corn-mother and Harvest-maiden of Northern Europe we have the prototypes of
Demeter and Persephone. But an essential feature is still wanting to complete
the resemblance. A leading incident in the Greek myth is the death and
resurrection of Persephone; it is this incident which, coupled with the nature
of the goddess as a deity of vegetation, links the myth with the cults of
Adonis, Attis, Osiris, and Dionysus; and it is in virtue of this incident that
the myth finds a place in our discussion of the Dying God. It remains,
therefore, to see whether the conception of the annual death and resurrection
of a god, which figures so prominently in these great Greek and Oriental
worships, has not also its origin or its analogy in the rustic rites observed
by reapers and vine-dressers amongst the corn-shocks and the vines.

Our general ignorance of the popular superstitions and customs of the
ancients has already been confessed. But the obscurity which thus hangs over
the first beginnings of ancient religion is fortunately dissipated to some
extent in the present case. The worships of Osiris, Adonis, and Attis had
their respective seats, as we have seen, in Egypt, Syria, and Phrygia; and in
each of these countries certain harvest and vintage customs are known to have
been observed, the resemblance of which to each other and to the national
rites struck the ancients themselves, and, compared with the harvest customs
of modern peasants and barbarians, seems to throw some light on the origin of
the rites in question.

It has been already mentioned, on the authority of Diodorus, that in
ancient Egypt the reapers were wont to lament over the first sheaf cut,
invoking Isis as the goddess to whom they owed the discovery of corn. To the
plaintive song or cry sung or uttered by Egyptian reapers the Greeks gave the
name of Maneros, and explained the name by a story that Maneros, the only son
of the first Egyptian king, invented agriculture, and, dying an untimely
death, was thus lamented by the people. It appears, however, that the name
Maneros is due to a misunderstanding of the formula maa-ne-hra, Come to the
house, which has been discovered in various Egyptian writings, for example in
the dirge of Isis in the Book of the Dead. Hence we may suppose that the cry
maa-ne-hra was chanted by the reapers over the cut corn as a dirge for the
death of the corn-spirit (Isis or Osiris) and a prayer for its return. As the
cry was raised over the first ears reaped, it would seem that the corn-spirit
was believed by the Egyptians to be present in the first corn cut and to die
under the sickle. We have seen that in the Malay Peninsula and Java the first
ears of rice are taken to represent either the Soul of the Rice or the
Rice-bride and the Rice-bridegroom. In parts of Russia the first sheaf is
treated much in the same way that the last sheaf is treated elsewhere. It is
reaped by the mistress herself, taken home and set in the place of honour near
the holy pictures; afterwards it is threshed separately, and some of its grain
is mixed with the next year's seed-corn. In Aberdeenshire, while the last corn
cut was generally used to make the clyack sheaf, it was sometimes, though
rarely, the first corn cut that was dressed up as a woman and carried home
with ceremony.

In Phoenicia and Western Asia a plaintive song, like that chanted by the
Egyptian corn-reapers, was sung at the vintage and probably (to judge by
analogy) also at harvest. This Phoenician song was called by the Greeks Linus
or Ailinus and explained, like Maneros, as a lament for the death of a youth
named Linus. According to one story Linus was brought up by a shepherd, but
torn to pieces by his dogs. But, like Maneros, the name Linus or Ailinus
appears to have originated in a verbal misunderstanding, and to be nothing
more than the cry ai lanu, that is Woe to us, which the Phoenicians
probably uttered in mourning for Adonis; at least Sappho seems to have
regarded Adonis and Linus as equivalent.

In Bithynia a like mournful ditty, called Bormus or Borimus, was chanted
by Mariandynian reapers. Bormus was said to have been a handsome youth, the
son of King Upias or of a wealthy and distinguished man. One summer day,
watching the reapers at work in his fields, he went to fetch them a drink of
water and was never heard of more. So the reapers sought for him, calling him
in plaintive strains, which they continued to chant at harvest ever
afterwards.

2. Killing the Corn-spirit.

IN PHRYGIA the corresponding song, sung by harvesters both at reaping and at
threshing, was called Lityerses. According to one story, Lityerses was a
bastard son of Midas, King of Phrygia, and dwelt at Celaenae. He used to reap
the corn, and had an enormous appetite. When a stranger happened to enter the
corn-field or to pass by it, Lityerses gave him plenty to eat and drink, then
took him to the corn-fields on the banks of the Maeander and compelled him to
reap along with him. Lastly, it was his custom to wrap the stranger in a
sheaf, cut off his head with a sickle, and carry away his body, swathed in the
corn-stalks. But at last Hercules undertook to reap with him, cut off his head
with the sickle, and threw his body into the river. As Hercules is reported to
have slain Lityerses in the same way that Lityerses slew others, we may infer
that Lityerses used to throw the bodies of his victims into the river.
According to another version of the story, Lityerses, a son of Midas, was wont
to challenge people to a reaping match with him, and if he vanquished them he
used to thrash them; but one day he met with a stronger reaper, who slew him.

There are some grounds for supposing that in these stories of Lityerses we
have the description of a Phrygian harvest custom in accordance with which
certain persons, especially strangers passing the harvest field, were
regularly regarded as embodiments of the corn-spirit, and as such were seized
by the reapers, wrapt in sheaves, and beheaded, their bodies, bound up in the
corn-stalks, being after-wards thrown into water as a rain-charm. The grounds
for this supposition are, first, the resemblance of the Lityerses story to the
harvest customs of European peasantry, and, second, the frequency of human
sacrifices offered by savage races to promote the fertility of the fields. We
will examine these grounds successively, beginning with the former.

In comparing the story with the harvest customs of Europe, three points
deserve special attention, namely: I. the reaping match and the binding of
persons in the sheaves; II. the killing of the corn-spirit or his
representatives; III. the treatment of visitors to the harvest field or of
strangers passing it.

I. In regard to the first head, we have seen that in modern Europe the
person who cuts or binds or threshes the last sheaf is often exposed to rough
treatment at the hands of his fellow-labourers. For example, he is bound up in
the last sheaf, and, thus encased, is carried or carted about, beaten,
drenched with water, thrown on a dunghill, and so forth. Or, if he is spared
this horse-play, he is at least the subject of ridicule or is thought to be
destined to suffer some misfortune in the course of the year. Hence the
harvesters are naturally reluctant to give the last cut at reaping or the last
stroke at threshing or to bind the last sheaf, and towards the close of the
work this reluctance produces an emulation among the labourers, each striving
to finish his task as fast as possible, in order that he may escape the
invidious distinction of being last. For example, in the Mittelmark district
of Prussia, when the rye has been reaped, and the last sheaves are about to be
tied up, the binders stand in two rows facing each other, every woman with her
sheaf and her straw rope before her. At a given signal they all tie up their
sheaves, and the one who is the last to finish is ridiculed by the rest. Not
only so, but her sheaf is made up into human shape and called the Old Man, and
she must carry it home to the farmyard, where the harvesters dance in a circle
round her and it. Then they take the Old Man to the farmer and deliver it to
him with the words, We bring the Old Man to the Master. He may keep him till
he gets a new one. After that the Old Man is set up against a tree, where he
remains for a long time, the butt of many jests. At Aschbach in Bavaria, when
the reaping is nearly finished, the reapers say, Now, we will drive out the
Old Man. Each of them sets himself to reap a patch of corn as fast as he can;
he who cuts the last handful or the last stalk is greeted by the rest with an
exulting cry, You have the Old Man. Sometimes a black mask is fastened on
the reaper's face and he is dressed in woman's clothes; or if the reaper is a
woman, she is dressed in man's clothes. A dance follows. At the supper the Old
Man gets twice as large a portion of the food as the others. The proceedings
are similar at threshing; the person who gives the last stroke is said to have
the Old Man. At the supper given to the threshers he has to eat out of the
cream-ladle and to drink a great deal. Moreover, he is quizzed and teased in
all sorts of ways till he frees himself from further annoyance by treating the
others to brandy or beer.

These examples illustrate the contests in reaping, threshing, and binding
which take place amongst the harvesters, from their unwillingness to suffer
the ridicule and discomfort incurred by the one who happens to finish his work
last. It will be remembered that the person who is last at reaping, binding,
or threshing, is regarded as the representative of the corn-spirit, and this
idea is more fully expressed by binding him or her in corn-stalks. The latter
custom has been already illustrated, but a few more instances may be added. At
Kloxin, near Stettin, the harvesters call out to the woman who binds the last
sheaf, You have the Old Man, and must keep him. As late as the first half of
the nineteenth century the custom was to tie up the woman herself in
pease-straw, and bring her with music to the farmhouse, where the harvesters
danced with her till the pease-straw fell off. In other villages round
Stettin, when the last harvest-waggon is being loaded, there is a regular race
amongst the women, each striving not to be last. For she who places the last
sheaf on the waggon is called the Old Man, and is completely swathed in
corn-stalks; she is also decked with flowers, and flowers and a helmet of
straw are placed on her head. In solemn procession she carries the
harvest-crown to the squire, over whose head she holds it while she utters a
string of good wishes. At the dance which follows, the Old Man has the right
to choose his, or rather her, partner; it is an honour to dance with him. At
Gommern, near Magdeburg, the reaper who cuts the last ears of corn is often
wrapt up in corn-stalks so completely that it is hard to see whether there is
a man in the bundle or not. Thus wrapt up he is taken by another stalwart
reaper on his back, and carried round the field amidst the joyous cries of the
harvesters. At Neuhausen, near Merseburg, the person who binds the last sheaf
is wrapt in ears of oats and saluted as the Oatsman, whereupon the others
dance round him. At Brie, Isle de France, the farmer himself is tied up in the
first sheaf. At Dingelstedt, in the district of Erfurt, down to the first
half of the nineteenth century it was the custom to tie up a man in the last
sheaf. He was called the Old Man, and was brought home on the last waggon,
amid huzzas and music. On reaching the farmyard he was rolled round the barn
and drenched with water. At Nrdlingen in Bavaria the man who gives the last
stroke at threshing is wrapt in straw and rolled on the threshing-floor. In
some parts of Oberpfalz, Bavaria, he is said to get the Old Man, is wrapt in
straw, and carried to a neighbour who has not yet finished his threshing. In
Silesia the woman who binds the last sheaf has to submit to a good deal of
horse-play. She is pushed, knocked down, and tied up in the sheaf, after which
she is called the corn-puppet (Kornpopel).

In all these cases the idea is that the spirit of the cornthe Old Man
of vegetationis driven out of the corn last cut or last threshed, and lives
in the barn during the winter. At sowing-time he goes out again to the fields
to resume his activity as animating force among the sprouting corn.

II. Passing to the second point of comparison between the Lityerses story
and European harvest customs, we have now to see that in the latter the
corn-spirit is often believed to be killed at reaping or threshing. In the
Romsdal and other parts of Norway, when the haymaking is over, the people say
that the Old Hay-man has been killed. In some parts of Bavaria the man who
gives the last stroke at threshing is said to have killed the Corn-man, the
Oats-man, or the Wheat-man, according to the crop. In the Canton of Tillot, in
Lorraine, at threshing the last corn the men keep time with their flails,
calling out as they thresh, We are killing the Old Woman! We are killing the
Old Woman! If there is an old woman in the house she is warned to save
herself, or she will be struck dead. Near Ragnit, in Lithuania, the last
handful of corn is left standing by itself, with the words, The Old Woman
(Boba) is sitting in there. Then a young reaper whets his scythe and, with
a strong sweep, cuts down the handful. It is now said of him that he has cut
off the Boba's head; and he receives a gratuity from the farmer and a jugful
of water over his head from the farmer's wife. According to another account,
every Lithuanian reaper makes haste to finish his task; for the Old Rye-woman
lives in the last stalks, and whoever cuts the last stalks kills the Old
Rye-woman, and by killing her he brings trouble on himself. In Wilkischken, in
the district of Tilsit, the man who cuts the last corn goes by the name of
the killer of the Rye-woman. In Lithuania, again, the corn-spirit is
believed to be killed at threshing as well as at reaping. When only a single
pile of corn remains to be threshed, all the threshers suddenly step back a
few paces, as if at the word of command. Then they fall to work, plying their
flails with the utmost rapidity and vehemence, till they come to the last
bundle. Upon this they fling themselves with almost frantic fury, straining
every nerve, and raining blows on it till the word Halt! rings out sharply
from the leader. The man whose flail is the last to fall after the command to
stop has been given is immediately surrounded by all the rest, crying out that
he has struck the Old Rye-woman dead. He has to expiate the deed by treating
them to brandy; and, like the man who cuts the last corn, he is known as the
killer of the Old Rye-woman. Sometimes in Lithuania the slain corn-spirit was
represented by a puppet. Thus a female figure was made out of corn-stalks,
dressed in clothes, and placed on the threshing-floor, under the heap of corn
which was to be threshed last. Whoever thereafter gave the last stroke at
threshing struck the Old Woman dead. We have already met with examples of
burning the figure which represents the corn-spirit. In the East Riding of
Yorkshire a custom called burning the Old Witch is observed on the last day
of harvest. A small sheaf of corn is burnt on the field in a fire of stubble;
peas are parched at the fire and eaten with a liberal allowance of ale; and
the lads and lasses romp about the flames and amuse themselves by blackening
each other's faces. Sometimes, again, the corn-spirit is represented by a man,
who lies down under the last corn; it is threshed upon his body, and the
people say that the Old Man is being beaten to death. We saw that sometimes
the farmer's wife is thrust, together with the last sheaf, under the
threshing-machine, as if to thresh her, and that afterwards a pretence is made
of winnowing her. At Volders, in the Tyrol, husks of corn are stuck behind the
neck of the man who gives the last stroke at threshing, and he is throttled
with a straw garland. If he is tall, it is believed that the corn will be tall
next year. Then he is tied on a bundle and flung into the river. In Carinthia,
the thresher who gave the last stroke, and the person who untied the last
sheaf on the threshing-floor, are bound hand and foot with straw bands, and
crowns of straw are placed on their heads. Then they are tied, face to face,
on a sledge, dragged through the village, and flung into a brook. The custom
of throwing the representative of the corn-spirit into a stream, like that of
drenching him with water, is, as usual, a rain-charm.

III. Thus far the representatives of the corn-spirit have generally been
the man or woman who cuts, binds, or threshes the last corn. We now come to
the cases in which the corn-spirit is represented either by a stranger passing
the harvest-field (as in the Lityerses tale), or by a visitor entering it for
the first time. All over Germany it is customary for the reapers or threshers
to lay hold of passing strangers and bind them with a rope made of
corn-stalks, till they pay a forfeit; and when the farmer himself or one of
his guests enters the field or the threshing-floor for the first time, he is
treated in the same way. Sometimes the rope is only tied round his arm or his
feet or his neck. But sometimes he is regularly swathed in corn. Thus at Solr
in Norway, whoever enters the field, be he the master or a stranger, is tied
up in a sheaf and must pay a ransom. In the neighbourhood of Soest, when the
farmer visits the flax-pullers for the first time, he is completely enveloped
in flax. Passers-by are also surrounded by the women, tied up in flax, and
compelled to stand brandy. At Nrdlingen strangers are caught with straw ropes
and tied up in a sheaf till they pay a forfeit. Among the Germans of
Haselberg, in West Bohemia, as soon as a farmer had given the last corn to be
threshed on the threshing-floor, he was swathed in it and had to redeem
himself by a present of cakes. In the canton of Putanges, in Normandy, a
pretence of tying up the owner of the land in the last sheaf of wheat is still
practised, or at least was still practised some quarter of a century ago. The
task falls to the women alone. They throw themselves on the proprietor, seize
him by the arms, the legs, and the body, throw him to the ground, and stretch
him on the last sheaf. Then a show is made of binding him, and the conditions
to be observed at the harvest-supper are dictated to him. When he has accepted
them, he is released and allowed to get up. At Brie, Isle de France, when any
one who does not belong to the farm passes by the harvest-field, the reapers
give chase. If they catch him, they bind him in a sheaf an dbite him, one
after the other, in the forehead, crying, You shall carry the key of the
field. To have the key is an expression used by harvesters elsewhere in the
sense of to cut or bind or thresh the last sheaf; hence, it is equivalent to
the phrases You have the Old Man, You are the Old Man, which are addressed
to the cutter, binder, or thresher of the last sheaf. Therefore, when a
stranger, as at Brie, is tied up in a sheaf and told that he will carry the
key of the field, it is as much as to say that he is the Old Man, that is, an
embodiment of the corn-spirit. In hop-picking, if a well-dressed stranger
passes the hop-yard, he is seized by the women, tumbled into the bin, covered
with leaves, and not released till he has paid a fine.

Thus, like the ancient Lityerses, modern European reapers have been wont
to lay hold of a passing stranger and tie him up in a sheaf. It is not to be
expected that they should complete the parallel by cutting off his head; but
if they do not take such a strong step, their language and gestures are at
least indicative of a desire to do so. For instance, in Mecklenburg on the
first day of reaping, if the master or mistress or a stranger enters the
field, or merely passes by it, all the mowers face towards him and sharpen
their scythes, clashing their whet-stones against them in unison, as if they
were making ready to mow. Then the woman who leads the mowers steps up to him
and ties a band round his left arm. He must ransom himself by payment of a
forfeit. Near Ratzeburg, when the master or other person of mark enters the
field or passes by it, all the harvesters stop work and march towards him in a
body, the men with their scythes in front. On meeting him they form up in
line, men and women. The men stick the poles of their scythes in the ground,
as they do in whetting them; then they take off their caps and hang them on
the scythes, while their leader stands forward and makes a speech. When he has
done, they all whet their scythes in measured time very loudly, after which
they put on their caps. Two of the women binders then come forward; one of
them ties the master or stranger (as the case may be) with corn-ears or with a
silken band; the other delivers a rhyming address. The following are specimens
of the speeches made by the reaper on these occasions. In some parts of
Pomerania every passer-by is stopped, his way being barred with a corn-rope.
The reapers form a circle round him and sharpen their scythes, while their
leader says:

The men are ready,
The scythes are bent,
The corn is great and small,
The gentleman must be mowed.

Then the process of whetting the scythes is repeated. At Ramin, in the
district of Stettin, the stranger, standing encircled by the reapers, is thus
addressed:

We'll stroke the gentleman
With our naked sword,
Wherewith we shear meadows and fields.
We shear princes and lords.
Labourers are often athirst;
If the gentleman will stand beer and brandy
The joke will soon be over.
But, if our prayer he does not like,
The sword has a right to strike.

On the threshing-floor strangers are also regarded as embodiments of the
corn-spirit, and are treated accordingly. At Wiedingharde in Schleswig when a
stranger comes to the threshing-floor he is asked, Shall I teach you the
flail-dance? If he says yes, they put the arms of the threshing-flail round
his neck as if he were a sheaf of corn, and press them together so tight that
he is nearly choked. In some parishes of Wermland (Sweden), when a stranger
enters the threshing-floor where the threshers are at work, they say that
they will teach him the threshing-song. Then they put a flail round his neck
and a straw rope about his body. Also, as we have seen, if a stranger woman
enters the threshing-floor, the threshers put a flail round her body and a
wreath of corn-stalks round her neck, and call out, See the Corn-woman! See!
that is how the Corn-maiden looks!

Thus in these harvest-customs of modern Europe the person who cuts, binds,
or threshes the last corn is treated as an embodiment of the corn-spirit by
being wrapt up in sheaves, killed in mimicry by agricultural implements, and
thrown into the water. These coincidences with the Lityerses story seem to
prove that the latter is a genuine description of an old Phrygian
harvest-custom. But since in the modern parallels the killing of the personal
representative of the corn-spirit is necessarily omitted or at most enacted
only in mimicry, it is desirable to show that in rude society human beings
have been commonly killed as an agricultural ceremony to promote the fertility
of the fields. The following examples will make this plain.

3. Human Sacrifices for the Crops.

THE INDIANS of Guayaquil, in Ecuador, used to sacrifice human blood and the
hearts of men when they sowed their fields. The people of Caar (now Cuenca in
Ecuador) used to sacrifice a hundred children annually at harvest. The kings
of Quito, the Incas of Peru, and for a long time the Spaniards were unable to
suppress the bloody rite. At a Mexican harvest-festival, when the first-fruits
of the season were offered to the sun, a criminal was placed between two
immense stones, balanced opposite each other, and was crushed by them as they
fell together. His remains were buried, and a feast and dance followed. This
sacrifice was known as the meeting of the stones. We have seen that the
ancient Mexicans also sacrificed human beings at all the various stages in the
growth of the maize, the age of the victims corresponding to the age of the
corn; for they sacrificed new-born babes at sowing, older children when the
grain had sprouted, and so on till it was fully ripe, when they sacrificed old
men. No doubt the correspondence between the ages of the victims and the state
of the corn was supposed to enhance the efficacy of the sacrifice.

The Pawnees annually sacrificed a human victim in spring when they sowed
their fields. The sacrifice was believed to have been enjoined on them by the
Morning Star, or by a certain bird which the Morning Star had sent to them as
its messenger. The bird was stuffed and preserved as a powerful talisman. They
thought that an omission of this sacrifice would be followed by the total
failure of the crops of maize, beans, and pumpkins. The victim was a captive
of either sex. He was clad in the gayest and most costly attire, was fattened
on the choicest food, and carefully kept in ignorance of his doom. When he was
fat enough, they bound him to a cross in the presence of the multitude, danced
a solemn dance, then cleft his head with a tomahawk and shot him with arrows.
According to one trader, the squaws then cut pieces of flesh from the victim's
body, with which they greased their hoes; but this was denied by another
trader who had been present at the ceremony. Immediately after the sacrifice
the people proceeded to plant their fields. A particular account has been
preserved of the sacrifice of a Sioux girl by the Pawnees in April 1837 or
1838. The girl was fourteen or fifteen years old and had been kept for six
months and well treated. Two days before the sacrifice she was led from wigwam
to wigwam, accompanied by the whole council of chiefs and warriors. At each
lodge she received a small billet of wood and a little paint, which she handed
to the warrior next to her. In this way she called at every wigwam, receiving
at each the same present of wood and paint. On the twenty-second of April she
was taken out to be sacrificed, attended by the warriors, each of whom carried
two pieces of wood which he had received from her hands. Her body having been
painted half red and half black, she was attached to a sort of gibbet and
roasted for some time over a slow fire, then shot to death with arrows. The
chief sacrificer next tore out her heart and devoured it. While her flesh was
still warm it was cut in small pieces from the bones, put in little baskets,
and taken to a neighbouring corn-field. There the head chief took a piece of
the flesh from a basket and squeezed a drop of blood upon the newly-deposited
grains of corn. His example was followed by the rest, till all the seed had
been sprinkled with the blood; it was then covered up with earth. According to
one account the body of the victim was reduced to a kind of paste, which was
rubbed or sprinkled not only on the maize but also on the potatoes, the beans,
and other seeds to fertilise them. By this sacrifice they hoped to obtain
plentiful crops.

A West African queen used to sacrifice a man and woman in the month of
March. They were killed with spades and hoes, and their bodies buried in the
middle of a field which had just been tilled. At Lagos in Guinea it was the
custom annually to impale a young girl alive soon after the spring equinox in
order to secure good crops. Along with her were sacrificed sheep and goats,
which, with yams, heads of maize, and plantains, were hung on stakes on each
side of her. The victims were bred up for the purpose in the king's seraglio,
and their minds had been so powerfully wrought upon by the fetish men that
they went cheerfully to their fate. A similar sacrifice used to be annually
offered at Benin, in Guinea. The Marimos, a Bechuana tribe, sacrifice a human
being for the crops. The victim chosen is generally a short, stout man. He is
seized by violence or intoxicated and taken to the fields, where he is killed
amongst the wheat to serve as seed (so they phrase it). After his blood has
coagulated in the sun, it is burned along with the frontal bone, the flesh
attached to it, and the brain; the ashes are then scattered over the ground to
fertilise it. The rest of the body is eaten.

The Bagobos of Mindanao, one of the Philippine Islands, offer a human
sacrifice before they sow their rice. The victim is a slave, who is hewn to
pieces in the forest. The natives of Bontoc in the interior of Luzon, one of
the Philippine Islands, are passionate head-hunters. Their principal seasons
for head-hunting are the times of planting and reaping the rice. In order that
the crop may turn out well, every farm must get at least one human head at
planting and one at sowing. The head-hunters go out in twos or threes, lie in
wait for the victim, whether man or woman, cut off his or her head, hands, and
feet, and bring them back in haste to the village, where they are received
with great rejoicings. The skulls are at first exposed on the branches of two
or three dead trees which stand in an open space of every village surrounded
by large stones which serve as seats. The people then dance round them and
feast and get drunk. When the flesh has decayed from the head, the man who cut
it off takes it home and preserves it as a relic, while his companions do the
same with the hands and the feet. Similar customs are observed by the Apoyaos,
another tribe in the interior of Luzon.

Among the Lhota Naga, one of the many savage tribes who inhabit the deep
rugged labyrinthine glens which wind into the mountains from the rich valley
of Brahmapootra, it used to be a common custom to chop off the heads, hands,
and feet of people they met with, and then to stick up the severed extremities
in their fields to ensure a good crop of grain. They bore no ill-will whatever
to the persons upon whom they operated in this unceremonious fashion. Once
they flayed a boy alive, carved him in pieces, and distributed the flesh among
all the villagers, who put it into their corn-bins to avert bad luck and
ensure plentiful crops of grain. The Gonds of India, a Dravidian race,
kidnapped Brahman boys, and kept them as victims to be sacrificed on various
occasions. At sowing and reaping, after a triumphal procession, one of the
lads was slain by being punctured with a poisoned arrow. His blood was then
sprinkled over the ploughed field or the ripe crop, and his flesh was
devoured. The Oraons or Uraons of Chota Nagpur worship a goddess called Anna
Kuari, who can give good crops and make a man rich, but to induce her to do so
it is necessary to offer human sacrifices. In spite of the vigilance of the
British Government these sacrifices are said to be still secretly perpetrated.
The victims are poor waifs and strays whose disappearance attracts no notice.
April and May are the months when the catchpoles are out on the prowl. At that
time strangers will not go about the country alone, and parents will not let
their children enter the jungle or herd the cattle. When a catchpole has found
a victim, he cuts his throat and carries away the upper part of the ring
finger and the nose. The goddess takes up her abode in the house of any man
who has offered her a sacrifice, and from that time his fields yield a double
harvest. The form she assumes in the house is that of a small child. When the
householder brings in his unhusked rice, he takes the goddess and rolls her
over the heap to double its size. But she soon grows restless and can only be
pacified with the blood of fresh human victims.

But the best known case of human sacrifices, systematically offered to
ensure good crops, is supplied by the Khonds or Kandhs, another Dravidian race
in Bengal. Our knowledge of them is derived from the accounts written by
British officers who, about the middle of the nineteenth century, were engaged
in putting them down. The sacrifices were offered to the Earth Goddess. Tari
Pennu or Bera Pennu, and were believed to ensure good crops and immunity from
all disease and accidents. In particular, they were considered necessary in
the cultivation of turmeric, the Khonds arguing that the turmeric could not
have a deep red colour without the shedding of blood. The victim or Meriah, as
he was called, was acceptable to the goddess only if he had been purchased, or
had been born a victimthat is, the son of a victim father, or had been
devoted as a child by his father or guardian. Khonds in distress often sold
their children for victims, considering the beatification of their souls
certain, and their death, for the benefit of mankind, the most honourable
possible. A man of the Panua tribe was once seen to load a Khond with curses,
and finally to spit in his face, because the Khond had sold for a victim his
own child, whom the Panua had wished to marry. A party of Khonds, who saw
this, immediately pressed forward to comfort the seller of his child, saying,
Your child has died that all the world may live, and the Earth Goddess
herself will wipe that spittle from your face. The victims were often kept
for years before they were sacrificed. Being regarded as consecrated beings,
they were treated with extreme affection, mingled with deference, and were
welcomed wherever they went. A Meriah youth, on attaining maturity, was
generally given a wife, who was herself usually a Meriah or victim; and with
her he received a portion of land and farm-stock. Their offspring were also
victims. Human sacrifices were offered to the Earth Goddess by tribes,
branches of tribes, or villages, both at periodical festivals and on
extraordinary occasions. The periodical sacrifices were generally so arranged
by tribes and divisions of tribes that each head of a family was enabled, at
least once a year, to procure a shred of flesh for his fields, generally about
the time when his chief crop was laid down.

The mode of performing these tribal sacrifices was as follows. Ten or
twelve days before the sacrifice, the victim was devoted by cutting off his
hair, which, until then, had been kept unshorn. Crowds of men and women
assembled to witness the sacrifice; none might be excluded, since the
sacrifice was declared to be for all mankind. It was preceded by several days
of wild revelry and gross debauchery. On the day before the sacrifice the
victim, dressed in a new garment, was led forth from the village in solemn
procession, with music and dancing, to the Meriah grove, a clump of high
forest trees standing a little way from the village and untouched by the axe.
There they tied him to a post, which was sometimes placed between two plants
of the sankissar shrub. He was then anointed with oil, ghee, and turmeric, and
adorned with flowers; and a species of reverence, which it is not easy to
distinguish from adoration, was paid to him throughout the day. A great
struggle now arose to obtain the smallest relic from his person; a particle of
the turmeric paste with which he was smeared, or a drop of his spittle, was
esteemed of sovereign virtue, especially by the women. The crowd danced round
the post to music, and addressing the earth, said, O God, we offer this
sacrifice to you; give us good crops, seasons, and health; then speaking to
the victim they said, We bought you with a price, and did not seize you; now
we sacrifice you according to custom, and no sin rests with us.

On the last morning the orgies, which had been scarcely interrupted during
the night, were resumed, and continued till noon, when they ceased, and the
assembly proceeded to consummate the sacrifice. The victim was again anointed
with oil, and each person touched the anointed part, and wiped the oil on his
own head. In some places they took the victim in procession round the village,
from door to door, where some plucked hair from his head, and others begged
for a drop of his spittle, with which they anointed their heads. As the victim
might not be bound nor make any show of resistance, the bones of his arms and,
if necessary, his legs were broken; but often this precaution was rendered
unnecessary by stupefying him with opium. The mode of putting him to death
varied in different places. One of the commonest modes seems to have been
strangulation, or squeezing to death. The branch of a green tree was cleft
several feet down the middle; the victim's neck (in other places, his chest)
was inserted in the cleft, which the priest, aided by his assistants, strove
with all his force to close. Then he wounded the victim slightly with his axe,
whereupon the crowd rushed at the wretch and hewed the flesh from the bones,
leaving the head and bowels untouched. Sometimes he was cut up alive. In
Chinna Kimedy he was dragged along the fields, surrounded by the crowd, who,
avoiding his head and intestines, hacked the flesh from his body with their
knives till he died. Another very common mode of sacrifice in the same
district was to fasten the victim to the proboscis of a wooden elephant, which
revolved on a stout post, and, as it whirled round, the crowd cut the flesh
from the victim while life remained. In some villages Major Campbell found as
many as fourteen of these wooden elephants, which had been used at sacrifices.
In one district the victim was put to death slowly by fire. A low stage was
formed, sloping on either side like a roof; upon it they laid the victim, his
limbs wound round with cords to confine his struggles. Fires were then lighted
and hot brands applied, to make him roll up and down the slopes of the stage
as long as possible; for the more tears he shed the more abundant would be the
supply of rain. Next day the body was cut to pieces.

The flesh cut from the victim was instantly taken home by the persons who
had been deputed by each village to bring it. To secure its rapid arrival, it
was sometimes forwarded by relays of men, and conveyed with postal fleetness
fifty or sixty miles. In each village all who stayed at home fasted rigidly
until the flesh arrived. The bearer deposited it in the place of public
assembly, where it was received by the priest and the heads of families. The
priest divided it into two portions, one of which he offered to the Earth
Goddess by burying it in a hole in the ground with his back turned, and
without looking. Then each man added a little earth to bury it, and the priest
poured water on the spot from a hill gourd. The other portion of flesh he
divided into as many shares as there were heads of houses present. Each head
of a house rolled his shred of flesh in leaves, and buried it in his favourite
field, placing it in the earth behind his back without looking. In some places
each man carried his portion of flesh to the stream which watered his fields,
and there hung it on a pole. For three days thereafter no house was swept;
and, in one district, strict silence was observed, no fire might be given out,
no wood cut, and no strangers received. The remains of the human victim
(namely, the head, bowels, and bones) were watched by strong parties the night
after the sacrifice; and next morning they were burned, along with a whole
sheep, on a funeral pile. The ashes were scattered over the fields, laid as
paste over the houses and granaries, or mixed with the new corn to preserve it
from insects. Sometimes, however, the head and bones were buried, not burnt.
After the suppression of the human sacrifices, inferior victims were
substituted in some places; for instance, in the capital of Chinna Kimedy a
goat took the place of the human victim. Others sacrifice a buffalo. They tie
it to a wooden post in a sacred grove, dance wildly round it with brandished
knives, then, falling on the living animal, hack it to shreds and tatters in a
few minutes, fighting and struggling with each other for every particle of
flesh. As soon as a man has secured a piece he makes off with it at full speed
to bury it in his fields, according to ancient custom, before the sun has set,
and as some of them have far to go they must run very fast. All the women
throw clods of earth at the rapidly retreating figures of the men, some of
them taking very good aim. Soon the sacred grove, so lately a scene of tumult,
is silent and deserted except for a few people who remain to guard all that is
left of the buffalo, to wit, the head, the bones, and the stomach, which are
burned with ceremony at the foot of the stake.

In these Khond sacrifices the Meriahs are represented by our authorities
as victims offered to propitiate the Earth Goddess. But from the treatment of
the victims both before and after death it appears that the custom cannot be
explained as merely a propitiatory sacrifice. A part of the flesh certainly
was offered to the Earth Goddess, but the rest was buried by each householder
in his fields, and the ashes of the other parts of the body were scattered
over the fields, laid as paste on the granaries, or mixed with the new corn.
These latter customs imply that to the body of the Meriah there was ascribed a
direct or intrinsic power of making the crops to grow, quite independent of
the indirect efficacy which it might have as an offering to secure the
good-will of the deity. In other words, the flesh and ashes of the victim were
believed to be endowed with a magical or physical power of fertilising the
land. The same intrinsic power was ascribed to the blood and tears of the
Meriah, his blood causing the redness of the turmeric and his tears producing
rain; for it can hardly be doubted that, originally at least, the tears were
supposed to bring down the rain, not merely to prognosticate it. Similarly the
custom of pouring water on the buried flesh of the Meriah was no doubt a
rain-charm. Again, magical power as an attribute of the Meriah appears in the
sovereign virtue believed to reside in anything that came from his person, as
his hair or spittle. The ascription of such power to the Meriah indicates that
he was much more than a mere man sacrificed to propitiate a deity. Once more,
the extreme reverence paid him points to the same conclusion. Major Campbell
speaks of the Meriah as being regarded as something more than mortal, and
Major Macpherson says, A species of reverence, which it is not easy to
distinguish from adoration, is paid to him. In short, the Meriah seems to
have been regarded as divine. As such, he may originally have represented the
Earth Goddess or, perhaps, a deity of vegetation; though in later times he
came to be regarded rather as a victim offered to a deity than as himself an
incarnate god. This later view of the Meriah as a victim rather than a
divinity may perhaps have received undue emphasis from the European writers
who have described the Khond religion. Habituated to the later idea of
sacrifice as an offering made to a god for the purpose of conciliating his
favour, European observers are apt to interpret all religious slaughter in
this sense, and to suppose that wherever such slaughter takes place, there
must necessarily be a deity to whom the carnage is believed by the slayers to
be acceptable. Thus their preconceived ideas may unconsciously colour and warp
their descriptions of savage rites.

The same custom of killing the representative of a god, of which strong
traces appear in the Khond sacrifices, may perhaps be detected in some of the
other human sacrifices described above. Thus the ashes of the slaughtered
Marimo were scattered over the fields; the blood of the Brahman lad was put on
the crop and field; the flesh of the slain Naga was stowed in the corn-bin;
and the blood of the Sioux girl was allowed to trickle on the seed. Again, the
identification of the victim with the corn, in other words, the view that he
is an embodiment or spirit of the corn, is brought out in the pains which seem
to be taken to secure a physical correspondence between him and the natural
object which he embodies or represents. Thus the Mexicans killed young victims
for the young corn and old ones for the ripe corn; the Marimos sacrifice, as
seed, a short, fat man, the shortness of his stature corresponding to that
of the young corn, his fatness to the condition which it is desired that the
crops may attain; and the Pawnees fattened their victims probably with the
same view. Again, the identification of the victim with the corn comes out in
the African custom of killing him with spades and hoes, and the Mexican custom
of grinding him, like corn, between two stones.

One more point in these savage customs deserves to be noted. The Pawnee
chief devoured the heart of the Sioux girl, and the Marimos and Gonds ate the
victim's flesh. If, as we suppose, the victim was regarded as divine, it
follows that in eating his flesh his worshippers believed themselves to be
partaking of the body of their god.

4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives.

THE BARBAROUS rites just described offer analogies to the harvest customs of
Europe. Thus the fertilising virtue ascribed to the corn-spirit is shown
equally in the savage custom of mixing the victim's blood or ashes with the
seed-corn and the European custom of mixing the grain from the last sheaf with
the young corn in spring. Again, the identification of the person with the
corn appears alike in the savage custom of adapting the age and stature of the
victim to the age and stature, whether actual or expected, of the crop; in the
Scotch and Styrian rules that when the corn-spirit is conceived as the Maiden
the last corn shall be cut by a young maiden, but when it is conceived as the
Corn-mother it shall be cut by an old woman; in the warning given to old women
in Lorraine to save themselves when the Old Woman is being killed, that is,
when the last corn is being threshed; and in the Tyrolese expectation that if
the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is tall, the next year's corn
will be tall also. Further, the same identification is implied in the savage
custom of killing the representative of the corn-spirit with hoes or spades or
by grinding him between stones, and in the European custom of pretending to
kill him with the scythe or the flail. Once more the Khond custom of pouring
water on the buried flesh of the victim is parallel to the European customs of
pouring water on the personal representative of the corn-spirit or plunging
him into a stream. Both the Khond and the European customs are rain-charms.

To return now to the Lityerses story. It has been shown that in rude
society human beings have been commonly killed to promote the growth of the
crops. There is therefore no improbability in the supposition that they may
once have been killed for a like purpose in Phrygia and Europe; and when
Phrygian legend and European folk-custom, closely agreeing with each other,
point to the conclusion that men were so slain, we are bound, provisionally at
least, to accept the conclusion. Further, both the Lityerses story and
European harvest-customs agree in indicating that the victim was put to death
as a representative of the corn-spirit, and this indication is in harmony with
the view which some savages appear to take of the victim slain to make the
crops flourish. On the whole, then, we may fairly suppose that both in Phrygia
and in Europe the representative of the corn-spirit was annually killed upon
the harvest-field. Grounds have been already shown for believing that
similarly in Europe the representative of the tree-spirit was annually slain.
The proofs of these two remarkable and closely analogous customs are entirely
independent of each other. Their coincidence seems to furnish fresh
presumption in favour of both.

To the question, How was the representative of the corn-spirit chosen? one
answer has been already given. Both the Lityerses story and European
folk-custom show that passing strangers were regarded as manifestations of the
corn-spirit escaping from the cut or threshed corn, and as such were seized
and slain. But this is not the only answer which the evidence suggests.
According to the Phrygian legend the victims of Lityerses were not simply
passing strangers, but persons whom he had vanquished in a reaping contest and
afterwards wrapt up in corn-sheaves and beheaded. This suggests that the
representative of the corn-spirit may have been selected by means of a
competition on the harvest-field, in which the vanquished competitor was
compelled to accept the fatal honour. The supposition is countenanced by
European harvest-customs. We have seen that in Europe there is sometimes a
contest amongst the reapers to avoid being last, and that the person who is
vanquished in this competition, that is, who cuts the last corn, is often
roughly handled. It is true we have not found that a pretence is made of
killing him; but on the other hand we have found that a pretence is made of
killing the man who gives the last stroke at threshing, that is, who is
vanquished in the threshing contest. Now, since it is in the character of
representative of the corn-spirit that the thresher of the last corn is slain
in mimicry, and since the same representative character attaches (as we have
seen) to the cutter and binder as well as to the thresher of the last corn,
and since the same repugnance is evinced by harvesters to be last in any one
of these labours, we may conjecture that a pretence has been commonly made of
killing the reaper and binder as well as the thresher of the last corn, and
that in ancient times this killing was actually carried out. This conjecture
is corroborated by the common superstition that whoever cuts the last corn
must die soon. Sometimes it is thought that the person who binds the last
sheaf on the field will die in the course of next year. The reason for fixing
on the reaper, binder, or thresher of the last corn as the representative of
the corn-spirit may be this. The corn-spirit is supposed to lurk as long as he
can in the corn, retreating before the reapers, the binders, and the threshers
at their work. But when he is forcibly expelled from his refuge in the last
corn cut or the last sheaf bound or the last grain threshed, he necessarily
assumes some other form than that of the corn-stalks, which had hitherto been
his garment or body. And what form can the expelled corn-spirit assume more
naturally than that of the person who stands nearest to the corn from which he
(the corn-spirit) has just been expelled? But the person in question is
necessarily the reaper, binder, or thresher of the last corn. He or she,
therefore, is seized and treated as the corn-spirit himself.

Thus the person who was killed on the harvest-field as the representative
of the corn-spirit may have been either a passing stranger or the harvester
who was last at reaping, binding, or threshing. But there is a third
possibility, to which ancient legend and modern folk-custom alike point.
Lityerses not only put strangers to death; he was himself slain, and
apparently in the same way as he had slain others, namely, by being wrapt in a
corn-sheaf, beheaded, and cast into the river; and it is implied that this
happened to Lityerses on his own land. Similarly in modern harvest-customs the
pretence of killing appears to be carried out quite as often on the person of
the master (farmer or squire) as on that of strangers. Now when we remember
that Lityerses was said to have been a son of the King of Phrygia, and that in
one account he is himself called a king, and when we combine with this the
tradition that he was put to death, apparently as a representative of the
corn-spirit, we are led to conjecture that we have here another trace of the
custom of annually slaying one of those divine or priestly kings who are known
to have held ghostly sway in many parts of Western Asia and particularly in
Phrygia. The custom appears, as we have seen, to have been so far modified in
places that the king's son was slain in the king's stead. Of the custom thus
modified the story of Lityerses would be, in one version at least, a
reminiscence.

Turning now to the relation of the Phrygian Lityerses to the Phrygian
Attis, it may be remembered that at Pessinusthe seat of a priestly
kingshipthe high-priest appears to have been annually slain in the character
of Attis, a god of vegetation, and that Attis was described by an ancient
authority as a reaped ear of corn. Thus Attis, as an embodiment of the
corn-spirit, annually slain in the person of his representative, might be
thought to be ultimately identical with Lityerses, the latter being simply the
rustic prototype out of which the state religion of Attis was developed. It
may have been so; but, on the other hand, the analogy of European folk-custom
warns us that amongst the same people two distinct deities of vegetation may
have their separate personal representatives, both of whom are slain in the
character of gods at different times of the year. For in Europe, as we have
seen, it appears that one man was commonly slain in the character of the
tree-spirit in spring, and another in the character of the corn-spirit in
autumn. It may have been so in Phrygia also. Attis was especially a tree-god,
and his connexion with corn may have been only such an extension of the power
of a tree-spirit as is indicated in customs like the Harvest-May. Again, the
representative of Attis appears to have been slain in spring; whereas
Lityerses must have been slain in summer or autumn, according to the time of
the harvest in Phrygia. On the whole, then, while we are not justified in
regarding Lityerses as the prototype of Attis, the two may be regarded as
parallel products of the same religious idea, and may have stood to each other
as in Europe the Old Man of harvest stands to the Wild Man, the Leaf Man, and
so forth, of spring. Both were spirits or deities of vegetation, and the
personal representatives of both were annually slain. But whereas the Attis
worship became elevated into the dignity of a state religion and spread to
Italy, the rites of Lityerses seem never to have passed the limits of their
native Phrygia, and always retained their character of rustic ceremonies
performed by peasants on the harvest-field. At most a few villages may have
clubbed together, as amongst the Khonds, to procure a human victim to be slain
as representative of the corn-spirit for their common benefit. Such victims
may have been drawn from the families of priestly kings or kinglets, which
would account for the legendary character of Lityerses as the son of a
Phrygian king or as himself a king. When villages did not so club together,
each village or farm may have procured its own representative of the
corn-spirit by dooming to death either a passing stranger or the harvester who
cut, bound, or threshed the last sheaf. Perhaps in the olden time the practice
of head-hunting as a means of promoting the growth of the corn may have been
as common among the rude inhabitants of Europe and Western Asia as it still
is, or was till lately, among the primitive agricultural tribes of Assam,
Burma, the Philippine Islands, and the Indian Archipelago. It is hardly
necessary to add that in Phrygia, as in Europe, the old barbarous custom of
killing a man on the harvest-field or the threshing-floor had doubtless passed
into a mere pretence long before the classical era, and was probably regarded
by the reapers and threshers themselves as no more than a rough jest which the
license of a harvest-home permitted them to play off on a passing stranger, a
comrade, or even on their master himself.

I have dwelt on the Lityerses song at length because it affords so many
points of comparison with European and savage folk-custom. The other harvest
songs of Western Asia and Egypt, to which attention has been called above, may
now be dismissed much more briefly. The similarity of the Bithynian Bormus to
the Phrygian Lityerses helps to bear out the interpretation which has been
given of the latter. Bormus, whose death or rather disappearance was annually
mourned by the reapers in a plaintive song, was, like Lityerses, a king's son
or at least the son of a wealthy and distinguished man. The reapers whom he
watched were at work on his own fields, and he disappeared in going to fetch
water for them; according to one version of the story he was carried off by
the nymphs, doubtless the nymphs of the spring or pool or river whither he
went to draw water. Viewed in the light of the Lityerses story and of European
folk-custom, this disappearance of Bormus may be a reminiscence of the custom
of binding the farmer himself in a corn-sheaf and throwing him into the water.
The mournful strain which the reapers sang was probably a lamentation over the
death of the corn-spirit, slain either in the cut corn or in the person of a
human representative; and the call which they addressed to him may have been a
prayer that he might return in fresh vigour next year.

The Phoenician Linus song was sung at the vintage, at least in the west of
Asia Minor, as we learn from Homer; and this, combined with the legend of
Syleus, suggests that in ancient times passing strangers were handled by
vintagers and vine-diggers in much the same way as they are said to have been
handled by the reaper Lityerses. The Lydian Syleus, so ran the legend,
compelled passers-by to dig for him in his vineyard, till Hercules came and
killed him and dug up his vines by the roots. This seems to be the outline of
a legend like that of Lityerses; but neither ancient writers nor modern
folk-custom enable us to fill in the details. But, further, the Linus song was
probably sung also by Phoenician reapers, for Herodotus compares it to the
Maneros song, which, as we have seen, was a lament raised by Egyptian reapers
over the cut corn. Further, Linus was identified with Adonis, and Adonis has
some claims to be regarded as especially a corn-deity. Thus the Linus lament,
as sung at harvest, would be identical with the Adonis lament; each would be
the lamentation raised by reapers over the dead spirit of the corn. But
whereas Adonis, like Attis, grew into a stately figure of mythology, adored
and mourned in splendid cities far beyond the limits of his Phoenician home,
Linus appears to have remained a simple ditty sung by reapers and vintagers
among the corn-sheaves and the vines. The analogy of Lityerses and of
folk-custom, both European and savage, suggests that in Phoenicia the slain
corn-spiritthe dead Adonismay formerly have been represented by a human
victim; and this suggestion is possibly supported by the Harran legend that
Tammuz (Adonis) was slain by his cruel lord, who ground his bones in a mill
and scattered them to the wind. For in Mexico, as we have seen, the human
victim at harvest was crushed between two stones; and both in Africa and India
the ashes or other remains of the victim were scattered over the fields. But
the Harran legend may be only a mythical way of expressing the grinding of
corn in the mill and the scattering of the seed. It seems worth suggesting
that the mock king who was annually killed at the Babylonian festival of the
Sacaea on the sixteenth day of the month Lous may have represented Tammuz
himself. For the historian Berosus, who records the festival and its date,
probably used the Macedonian calendar, since he dedicated his history to
Antiochus Soter; and in his day the Macedonian month Lous appears to have
corresponded to the Babylonian month Tammuz. If this conjecture is right, the
view that the mock king at the Sacaea was slain in the character of a god
would be established.

There is a good deal more evidence that in Egypt the slain corn-spiritthe
dead Osiriswas represented by a human victim, whom the reapers slew on the
harvest-field, mourning his death in a dirge, to which the Greeks, through a
verbal misunderstanding, gave the name of Maneros. For the legend of Busiris
seems to preserve a reminiscence of human sacrifices once offered by the
Egyptians in connexion with the worship of Osiris. Busiris was said to have
been an Egyptian king who sacrificed all strangers on the altar of Zeus. The
origin of the custom was traced to a dearth which afflicted the land of Egypt
for nine years. A Cyprian seer informed Busiris that the dearth would cease if
a man were annually sacrificed to Zeus. So Busiris instituted the sacrifice.
But when Hercules came to Egypt, and was being dragged to the altar to be
sacrificed, he burst his bonds and slew Busiris and his son. Here then is a
legend that in Egypt a human victim was annually sacrificed to prevent the
failure of the crops, and a belief is implied that an omission of the
sacrifice would have entailed a recurrence of that infertility which it was
the object of the sacrifice to prevent. So the Pawnees, as we have seen,
believed that an omission of the human sacrifice at planting would have been
followed by a total failure of their crops. The name Busiris was in reality
the name of a city, pe-Asar, the house of Osiris, the city being so called
because it contained the grave of Osiris. Indeed some high modern authorities
believe that Busiris was the original home of Osiris, from which his worship
spread to other parts of Egypt. The human sacrifice were said to have been
offered at his grave, and the victims were red-haired men, whose ashes were
scattered abroad by means of winnowing-fans. This tradition of human
sacrifices offered at the tomb of Osiris is confirmed by the evidence of the
monuments.

In the light of the foregoing discussion the Egyptian tradition of Busiris
admits of a consistent and fairly probable explanation. Osiris, the
corn-spirit, was annually represented at harvest by a stranger, whose red hair
made him a suitable representative of the ripe corn. This man, in his
representative character, was slain on the harvest-field, and mourned by the
reapers, who prayed at the same time that the corn-spirit might revive and
return (m-ne-rha, Maneros) with renewed vigour in the following year.
Finally, the victim, or some part of him, was burned, and the ashes scattered
by winnowing-fans over the fields to fertilise them. Here the choice of the
victim on the ground of his resemblance to the corn which he was to represent
agrees with the Mexican and African customs already described. Similarly the
woman who died in the character of the Corn-mother at the Mexican midsummer
sacrifice had her face painted red and yellow in token of the colours of the
corn, and she wore a pasteboard mitre surmounted by waving plumes in imitation
of the tassel of the maize. On the other hand, at the festival of the Goddess
of the White Maize the Mexicans sacrificed lepers. The Romans sacrificed
red-haired puppies in spring to avert the supposed blighting influence of the
Dog-star, believing that the crops would thus grow ripe and ruddy. The heathen
of Harran offered to the sun, moon, and planets human victims who were chosen
on the ground of their supposed resemblance to the heavenly bodies to which
they were sacrificed; for example, the priests, clothed in red and smeared
with blood, offered a red-haired, red-cheeked man to the red planet Mars in
a temple which was painted red and draped with red hangings. These and the
like cases of assimilating the victim to the god, or to the natural phenomenon
which he represents, are based ultimately on the principle of homoeopathic or
imitative magic, the notion being that the object aimed at will be most
readily attained by means of a sacrifice which resembles the effect that it is
designed to bring about.

The story that the fragments of Osiris's body were scattered up and down
the land, and buried by Isis on the spots where they lay, may very well be a
reminiscence of a custom, like that observed by the Khonds, of dividing the
human victim in pieces and burying the pieces, often at intervals of many
miles from each other, in the fields.

Thus, if I am right, the key to the mysteries of Osiris is furnished by
the melancholy cry of the Egyptian reapers, which down to Roman times could be
heard year after year sounding across the fields, announcing the death of the
corn-spirit, the rustic prototype of Osiris. Similar cries, as we have seen,
were also heard on all the harvest-fields of Western Asia. By the ancients
they are spoken of as songs; but to judge from the analysis of the names Linus
and Maneros, they probably consisted only of a few words uttered in a
prolonged musical note which could be heard at a great distance. Such sonorous
and long-drawn cries, raised by a number of strong voices in concert, must
have had a striking effect, and could hardly fail to arrest the attention of
any wayfarer who happened to be within hearing. The sounds, repeated again and
again, could probably be distinguished with tolerable ease even at a distance;
but to a Greek traveller in Asia or Egypt the foreign words would commonly
convey no meaning, and he might take them, not unnaturally, for the name of
some one (Maneros, Linus, Lityerses, Bormus) upon whom the reapers were
calling. And if his journey led him through more countries than one, as
Bithynia and Phrygia, or Phoenicia and Egypt, while the corn was being reaped,
he would have an opportunity of comparing the various harvest cries of the
different peoples. Thus we can readily understand why these harvest cries were
so often noted and compared with each other by the Greeks. Whereas, if they
had been regular songs, they could not have been heard at such distances, and
therefore could not have attracted the attention of so many travellers; and,
moreover, even if the wayfarer were within hearing of them, he could not so
easily have picked out the words.

Down to recent times Devonshire reapers uttered cries of the same sort,
and performed on the field a ceremony exactly analogous to that in which, if I
am not mistaken, the rites of Osiris originated. The cry and the ceremony are
thus described by an observer who wrote in the first half of the nineteenth
century. After the wheat is all cut, on most farms in the north of Devon, the
harvest people have a custom of 'crying the neck.' I believe that this
practice is seldom omitted on any large farm in that part of the country. It
is done in this way. An old man, or some one else well acquainted with the
ceremonies used on the occasion (when the labourers are reaping the last field
of wheat), goes round to the shocks and sheaves, and picks out a little bundle
of all the best ears he can find; this bundle he ties up very neat and trim,
and plats and arranges the straws very tastefully. This is called 'the neck'
of wheat, or wheaten-ears. After the field is cut out, and the pitcher once
more circulated, the reapers, binders, and the women stand round in a circle.
The person with 'the neck' stands in the centre, grasping it with both hands.
He first stoops and holds it near the ground, and all the men forming the ring
take off their hats, stooping and holding them with both hands towards the
ground. They then all begin at once in a very prolonged and harmonious tone to
cry 'The neck!' at the same time slowly raising themselves upright, and
elevating their arms and hats above their heads; the person with 'the neck'
also raising it on high. This is done three times. They then change their cry
to 'Wee yen!''Way yen!'which they sound in the same prolonged and slow
manner as before, with singular harmony and effect, three times. This last cry
is accompanied by the same movements of the body and arms as in crying 'the
neck.'  After having thus repeated 'the neck' three times, and 'wee yen,' or
'way yen' as often, they all burst out into a kind of loud and joyous laugh,
flinging up their hats and caps into the air, capering about and perhaps
kissing the girls. One of them then gets 'the neck' and runs as hard as he can
down to the farmhouse, where the dairymaid, or one of the young female
domestics, stands at the door prepared with a pail of water. If he who holds
'the neck' can manage to get into the house, in any way unseen, or openly, by
any other way than the door at which the girl stands with the pail of water,
then he may lawfully kiss her; but, if otherwise, he is regularly soused with
the contents of the bucket. On a fine still autumn evening the 'crying of the
neck' has a wonderful effect at a distance, far finer than that of the Turkish
muezzin, which Lord Byron eulogises so much, and which he says is preferable
to all the bells of Christendom. I have once or twice heard upwards of twenty
men cry it, and sometimes joined by an equal number of female voices. About
three years back, on some high grounds, where our people were harvesting, I
heard six or seven 'necks' cried in one night, although I know that some of
them were four miles off. They are heard through the quiet evening air at a
considerable distance sometimes. Again, Mrs. Bray tells how, travelling in
Devonshire, she saw a party of reapers standing in a circle on a rising
ground, holding their sickles aloft. One in the middle held up some ears of
corn tied together with flowers, and the party shouted three times (what she
writes as) 'Arnack, arnack, arnack, we haven, we haven, we haven.' They
went home, accompanied by women and children carrying boughs of flowers,
shouting and singing. The manservant who attended Mrs. Bray said 'it was only
the people making their games, as they always did, to the spirit of
harvest.' Here, as Miss Burne remarks, 'arnack, we haven!' is obviously in
the Devon dialect, 'a neck (or nack)! we have un!'

Another account of this old custom, written at Truro in 1839, runs thus:
Now, when all the corn was cut at Heligan, the farming men and maidens come
in front of the house, and bring with them a small sheaf of corn, the last
that has been cut, and this is adorned with ribbons and flowers, and one part
is tied quite tight, so as to look like a neck. Then they cry out 'Our (my)
side, my side,' as loud as they can; then the dairymaid gives the neck to the
head farming-man. He takes it, and says, very loudly three times, 'I have him,
I have him, I have him.' Then another farming-man shouts very loudly, 'What
have ye? what have ye? what have ye?' Then the first says, 'A neck, a neck, a
neck.' And when he has said this, all the people make a very great shouting.
This they do three times, and after one famous shout go away and eat supper,
and dance, and sing songs. According to another account, all went out to the
field when the last corn was cut, the 'neck' was tied with ribbons and
plaited, and they danced round it, and carried it to the great kitchen, where
by-and-by the supper was. The words were as given in the previous account, and
'Hip, hip, hack, heck, I have 'ee, I have 'ee, I have 'ee.' It was hung up in
the hall. Another account relates that one of the men rushed from the field
with the last sheaf, while the rest pursued him with vessels of water, which
they tried to throw over the sheaf before it could be brought into the barn.

In the foregoing customs a particular bunch of ears, generally the last
left standing, is conceived as the neck of the corn-spirit, who is
consequently beheaded when the bunch is cut down. Similarly in Shropshire the
name neck, or the gander's neck, used to be commonly given to the last
handful of ears left standing in the middle of the field when all the rest of
the corn was cut. It was plaited together, and the reapers, standing ten or
twenty paces off, threw their sickles at it. Whoever cut it through was said
to have cut off the gander's neck. The neck was taken to the farmer's wife,
who was supposed to keep it in the house for good luck till the next harvest
came round. Near Trves, the man who reaps the last standing corn cuts the
goat's neck off. At Faslane, on the Gareloch (Dumbartonshire), the last
handful of standing corn was sometimes called the head. At Aurich, in East
Friesland, the man who reaps the last corn cuts the hare's tail off. In
mowing down the last corner of a field French reapers sometimes call out, We
have the cat by the tail. In Bresse (Bourgogne) the last sheaf represented
the fox. Beside it a score of ears were left standing to form the tail, and
each reaper, going back some paces, threw his sickle at it. He who succeeded
in severing it cut off the fox's tail, and a cry of You cou cou! was
raised in his honour. These examples leave no room to doubt the meaning of the
Devonshire and Cornish expression the neck, as applied to the last sheaf.
The corn-spirit is conceived in human or animal form, and the last standing
corn is part of its bodyits neck, its head, or its tail. Sometimes, as we
have seen, the last corn is regarded as the navel-string. Lastly, the
Devonshire custom of drenching with water the person who brings in the neck
is a raincharm, such as we have had many examples of. Its parallel in the
mysteries of Osiris was the custom of pouring water on the image of Osiris or
on the person who represented him.

Chapter 48. The Corn-Spirit as an Animal.

1. Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit.

IN SOME of the examples which I have cited to establish the meaning of the
term neck as applied to the last sheaf, the corn-spirit appears in animal
form as a gander, a goat, a hare, a cat, and a fox. This introduces us to a
new aspect of the corn-spirit, which we must now examine. By doing so we shall
not only have fresh examples of killing the god, but may hope also to clear up
some points which remain obscure in the myths and worship of Adonis, Attis,
Osiris, Dionysus, Demeter, and Virbius.

Amongst the many animals whose forms the corn-spirit is supposed to take
are the wolf, dog, hare, fox, cock, goose, quail, cat, goat, cow (ox, bull),
pig, and horse. In one or other of these shapes the corn-spirit is often
believed to be present in the corn, and to be caught or killed in the last
sheaf. As the corn is being cut the animal flees before the reapers, and if a
reaper is taken ill on the field, he is supposed to have stumbled unwittingly
on the corn-spirit, who has thus punished the profane intruder. It is said
the Rye-wolf has got hold of him, the Harvest-goat has given him a push.
The person who cuts the last corn or binds the last sheaf gets the name of the
animal, as the Rye-wolf, the Rye-sow, the Oats-goat, and so forth, and retains
the name sometimes for a year. Also the animal is frequently represented by a
puppet made out of the last sheaf or of wood, flowers, and so on, which is
carried home amid rejoicings on the last harvest-waggon. Even where the last
sheaf is not made up in animal shape, it is often called the Rye-wolf, the
Hare, Goat, and so forth. Generally each kind of crop is supposed to have its
special animal, which is caught in the last sheaf, and called the Rye-wolf,
the Barley-wolf, the Oats-wolf, the Pea-wolf, or the Potato-wolf, according to
the crop; but sometimes the figure of the animal is only made up once for all
at getting in the last crop of the whole harvest. Sometimes the creature is
believed to be killed by the last stroke of the sickle or scythe. But oftener
it is thought to live so long as there is corn still unthreshed, and to be
caught in the last sheaf threshed. Hence the man who gives the last stroke
with the flail is told that he has got the Corn-sow, the Threshing-dog, or the
like. When the threshing is finished, a puppet is made in the form of the
animal, and this is carried by the thresher of the last sheaf to a
neighbouring farm, where the threshing is still going on. This again shows
that the corn-spirit is believed to live wherever the corn is still being
threshed. Sometimes the thresher of the last sheaf himself represents the
animal; and if the people of the next farm, who are still threshing, catch
him, they treat him like the animal he represents, by shutting him up in the
pig-sty, calling him with the cries commonly addressed to pigs, and so forth.
These general statements will now be illustrated by examples.

2. The Corn-spirit as a Wolf or a Dog.

WE begin with the corn-spirit conceived as a wolf or a dog. This conception
is common in France, Germany, and Slavonic countries. Thus, when the wind sets
the corn in wave-like motion the peasants often say, The Wolf is going over,
or through, the corn, the Rye-wolf is rushing over the field, the Wolf is
in the corn, the mad Dog is in the corn, the big Dog is there. When
children wish to go into the corn-fields to pluck ears or gather the blue
corn-flowers, they are warned not to do so, for the big Dog sits in the
corn, or the Wolf sits in the corn, and will tear you in pieces, the Wolf
will eat you. The wolf against whom the children are warned is not a common
wolf, for he is often spoken of as the Corn-wolf, Rye-wolf, or the like; thus
they say, The Rye-wolf will come and eat you up, children, the Rye-wolf
will carry you off, and so forth. Still he has all the outward appearance of
a wolf. For in the neighbourhood of Feilenhof (East Prussia), when a wolf was
seen running through a field, the peasants used to watch whether he carried
his tail in the air or dragged it on the ground. If he dragged it on the
ground, they went after him, and thanked him for bringing them a blessing, and
even set tit-bits before him. But if he carried his tail high, they cursed him
and tried to kill him. Here the wolf is the corn-spirit whose fertilising
power is in his tail.

Both dog and wolf appear as embodiments of the corn-spirit in
harvest-customs. Thus in some parts of Silesia the person who cuts or binds
the last sheaf is called the Wheat-dog or the Peas-pug. But it is in the
harvest-customs of the north-east of France that the idea of the Corn-dog
comes out most clearly. Thus when a harvester, through sickness, weariness, or
laziness, cannot or will not keep up with the reaper in front of him, they
say, The White Dog passed near him, he has the White Bitch, or the White
Bitch has bitten him. In the Vosges the Harvest-May is called the Dog of the
harvest, and the person who cuts the last handful of hay or wheat is said to
kill the Dog. About Lons-le-Saulnier, in the Jura, the last sheaf is called
the Bitch. In the neighbourhood of Verdun the regular expression for finishing
the reaping is, They are going to kill the Dog; and at Epinal they say,
according to the crop, We will kill the Wheat-dog, or the Rye-dog, or the
Potato-dog. In Lorraine it is said of the man who cuts the last corn, He is
killing the Dog of the harvest. At Dux, in the Tyrol, the man who gives the
last stroke at threshing is said to strike down the Dog; and at Ahnebergen,
near Stade, he is called, according to the crop, Corn-pug, Rye-pug, Wheat-pug.

So with the wolf. In Silesia, when the reapers gather round the last patch
of standing corn to reap it they are said to be about to catch the Wolf. In
various parts of Mecklenburg, where the belief in the Corn-wolf is
particularly prevalent, every one fears to cut the last corn, because they say
that the Wolf is sitting in it; hence every reaper exerts himself to the
utmost in order not to be the last, and every woman similarly fears to bind
the last sheaf because the Wolf is in it. So both among the reapers and the
binders there is a competition not to be the last to finish. And in Germany
generally it appears to be a common saying that the Wolf sits in the last
sheaf. In some places they call out to the reaper, Beware of the Wolf; or
they say, He is chasing the Wolf out of the corn. In Mecklenburg the last
bunch of standing corn is itself commonly called the Wolf, and the man who
reaps it has the Wolf, the animal being described as the Rye-wolf, the
Wheat-wolf, the Barley-wolf, and so on according to the particular crop. The
reaper of the last corn is himself called Wolf or the Rye-wolf, if the crop is
rye, and in many parts of Mecklenburg he has to support the character by
pretending to bite the other harvesters or by howling like a wolf. The last
sheaf of corn is also called the Wolf or the Rye-wolf or the Oats-wolf
according to the crop, and of the woman who binds it they say, The Wolf is
biting her, She has the Wolf, She must fetch the Wolf (out of the corn).
Moreover, she herself is called Wolf; they cry out to her, Thou art the
Wolf, and she has to bear the name for a whole year; sometimes, according to
the crop, she is called the Rye-wolf or the Potato-wolf. In the island of
Rgen not only is the woman who binds the last sheaf called Wolf, but when she
comes home she bites the lady of the house and the stewardess, for which she
receives a large piece of meat. Yet nobody likes to be the Wolf. The same
woman may be Rye-wolf, Wheat-wolf, and Oats-wolf, if she happens to bind the
last sheaf of rye, wheat, and oats. At Buir, in the district of Cologne, it
was formerly the custom to give to the last sheaf the shape of a wolf. It was
kept in the barn till all the corn was threshed. Then it was brought to the
farmer and he had to sprinkle it with beer or brandy. At Brunshaupten in
Mecklenburg the young woman who bound the last sheaf of wheat used to take a
handful of stalks out of it and make the Wheat-wolf with them; it was the
figure of a wolf about two feet long and half a foot high, the legs of the
animal being represented by stiff stalks and its tail and mane by wheat-ears.
This Wheat-wolf she carried back at the head of the harvesters to the village,
where it was set up on a high place in the parlour of the farm and remained
there for a long time. In many places the sheaf called the Wolf is made up in
human form and dressed in clothes. This indicates a confusion of ideas between
the corn-spirit conceived in human and in animal form. Generally the Wolf is
brought home on the last waggon with joyful cries. Hence the last waggon-load
itself receives the name of the Wolf.

Again, the Wolf is supposed to hide himself amongst the cut corn in the
granary, until he is driven out of the last bundle by the strokes of the
flail. Hence at Wanzleben, near Magdeburg, after the threshing the peasants go
in procession, leading by a chain a man who is enveloped in the threshed-out
straw and is called the Wolf. He represents the corn-spirit who has been
caught escaping from the threshed corn. In the district of Treves it is
believed that the Corn-wolf is killed at threshing. The men thresh the last
sheaf till it is reduced to chopped straw. In this way they think that the
Corn-wolf, who was lurking in the last sheaf, has been certainly killed.

In France also the Corn-wolf appears at harvest. Thus they call out to the
reaper of the last corn, You will catch the Wolf. Near Chambry they form a
ring round the last standing corn, and cry, The Wolf is in there. In
Finisterre, when the reaping draws near an end, the harvesters cry, There is
the Wolf; we will catch him. Each takes a swath to reap, and he who finishes
first calls out, I've caught the Wolf. In Guyenne, when the last corn has
been reaped, they lead a wether all round the field. It is called the Wolf of
the field. Its horns are decked with a wreath of flowers and corn-ears, and
its neck and body are also encircled with garlands and ribbons. All the
reapers march, singing, behind it. Then it is killed on the field. In this
part of France the last sheaf is called the coujoulage, which, in the
patois, means a wether. Hence the killing of the wether represents the death
of the corn-spirit, considered as present in the last sheaf; but two different
conceptions of the corn-spiritas a wolf and as a wetherare mixed up
together.

Sometimes it appears to be thought that the Wolf, caught in the last corn,
lives during the winter in the farmhouse, ready to renew his activity as
corn-spirit in the spring. Hence at midwinter, when the lengthening days begin
to herald the approach of spring, the Wolf makes his appearance once more. In
Poland a man, with a wolf's skin thrown over his head, is led about at
Christmas; or a stuffed wolf is carried about by persons who collect money.
There are facts which point to an old custom of leading about a man enveloped
in leaves and called the Wolf, while his conductors collected money.

3. The Corn-spirit as a Cock.

ANOTHER form which the corn-spirit often assumes is that of a cock. In
Austria children are warned against straying in the corn-fields, because the
Corn-cock sits there, and will peck their eyes out. In North Germany they say
that the Cock sits in the last sheaf; and at cutting the last corn the
reapers cry, Now we will chase out the Cock. When it is cut they say, We
have caught the Cock. At Braller, in Transylvania, when the reapers come to
the last patch of corn, they cry, Here we shall catch the Cock. At
Frstenwalde, when the last sheaf is about to be bound, the master releases a
cock, which he has brought in a basket, and lets it run over the field. All
the harvesters chase it till they catch it. Elsewhere the harvesters all try
to seize the last corn cut; he who succeeds in grasping it must crow, and is
called Cock. Among the Wends it is or used to be customary for the farmer to
hide a live cock under the last sheaf as it lay on the field; and when the
corn was being gathered up, the harvester who lighted upon this sheaf had a
right to keep the cock, provided he could catch it. This formed the close of
the harvest-festival and was known as the Cock-catching, and the beer which
was served out to the reapers at this time went by the name of Cock-beer.
The last sheaf is called Cock, Cock-sheaf, Harvest-cock, Harvest-hen,
Autumn-hen. A distinction is made between a Wheat-cock, Bean-cock, and so on,
according to the crop. At Wnschensuhl, in Thringen, the last sheaf is made
into the shape of a cock, and called the Harvest-cock. A figure of a cock,
made of wood, pasteboard, ears of corn, or flowers, is borne in front of the
harvest-waggon, especially in Westphalia, where the cock carries in his beak
fruits of the earth of all kinds. Sometimes the image of the cock is fastened
to the top of a May-tree on the last harvest-waggon. Elsewhere a live cock, or
a figure of one, is attached to a harvest-crown and carried on a pole. In
Galicia and elsewhere this live cock is fastened to the garland of corn-ears
or flowers, which the leader of the women-reapers carries on her head as she
marches in front of the harvest procession. In Silesia a live cock is
presented to the master on a plate. The harvest-supper is called Harvest-cock,
Stubble-cock, etc., and a chief dish at it, at least in some places, is a
cock. If a waggoner upsets a harvest-waggon, it is said that he has spilt the
Harvest-cock, and he loses the cock, that is, the harvest-supper. The
harvest-waggon, with the figure of the cock on it, is driven round the
farmhouse before it is taken to the barn. Then the cock is nailed over or at
the side of the house-door, or on the gable, and remains there till next
harvest. In East Friesland the person who gives the last stroke at threshing
is called the Clucking-hen, and grain is strewed before him as if he were a
hen.

Again, the corn-spirit is killed in the form of a cock. In parts of
Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Picardy the reapers place a live cock in the
corn which is to be cut last, and chase it over the field, or bury it up to
the neck in the ground; afterwards they strike off its head with a sickle or
scythe. In many parts of Westphalia, when the harvesters bring the wooden cock
to the farmer, he gives them a live cock, which they kill with whips or
sticks, or behead with an old sword, or throw into the barn to the girls, or
give to the mistress to cook. It the Harvest-cock has not been spiltthat is,
if no waggon has been upsetthe harvesters have the right to kill the farmyard
cock by throwing stones at it or beheading it. Where this custom has fallen
into disuse, it is still common for the farmer's wife to make cockie-leekie
for the harvesters, and to show them the head of the cock which has been
killed for the soup. In the neighbourhood of Klausenburg, Transylvania, a cock
is buried on the harvest-field in the earth, so that only its head appears. A
young man then takes a scythe and cuts off the cock's head at a single sweep.
If he fails to do this, he is called the Red Cock for a whole year, and people
fear that next year's crop will be bad. Near Udvarhely, in Transylvania, a
live cock is bound up in the last sheaf and killed with a spit. It is then
skinned. The flesh is thrown away, but the skin and feathers are kept till
next year; and in spring the grain from the last sheaf is mixed with the
feathers of the cock and scattered on the field which is to be tilled. Nothing
could set in a clearer light the identification of the cock with the spirit of
the corn. By being tied up in the last sheaf and killed, the cock is
identified with the corn, and its death with the cutting of the corn. By
keeping its feathers till spring, then mixing them with the seed-corn taken
from the very sheaf in which the bird had been bound, and scattering the
feathers together with the seed over the field, the identity of the bird with
the corn is again emphasised, and its quickening and fertilising power, as an
embodiment of the corn-spirit, is intimated in the plainest manner. Thus the
corn-spirit, in the form of a cock, is killed at harvest, but rises to fresh
life and activity in spring. Again, the equivalence of the cock to the corn is
expressed, hardly less plainly, in the custom of burying the bird in the
ground, and cutting off its head (like the ears of corn) with the scythe.

4. The Corn-spirit as a Hare.

ANOTHER common embodiment of the corn-spirit is the hare. In Galloway the
reaping of the last standing corn is called cutting the Hare. The mode of
cutting it is as follows. When the rest of the corn has been reaped, a handful
is left standing to form the Hare. It is divided into three parts and plaited,
and the ears are tied in a knot. The reapers then retire a few yards and each
throws his or her sickle in turn at the Hare to cut it down. It must be cut
below the knot, and the reapers continue to throw their sickles at it, one
after the other, until one of them succeeds in severing the stalks below the
knot. The Hare is then carried home and given to a maidservant in the kitchen,
who places it over the kitchen-door on the inside. Sometimes the Hare used to
be thus kept till the next harvest. In the parish of Minnigaff, when the Hare
was cut, the unmarried reapers ran home with all speed, and the one who
arrived first was the first to be married. In Germany also one of the names
for the last sheaf is the Hare. Thus in some parts of Anhalt, when the corn
has been reaped and only a few stalks are left standing, they say, The Hare
will soon come, or the reapers cry to each other, Look how the Hare comes
jumping out. In East Prussia they say that the Hare sits in the last patch of
standing corn, and must be chased out by the last reaper. The reapers hurry
with their work, each being anxious not to have to chase out the Hare; for
the man who does so, that is, who cuts the last corn, is much laughed at. At
Aurich, as we have seen, an expression for cutting the last corn is to cut
off the Hare's tail. He is killing the Hare is commonly said of the man who
cuts the last corn in Germany, Sweden, Holland, France, and Italy. In Norway
the man who is thus said to kill the Hare must give hare's blood, in the
form of brandy, to his fellows to drink. In Lesbos, when the reapers are at
work in two neighbouring fields, each party tries to finish first in order to
drive the Hare into their neighbour's field; the reapers who succeed in doing
so believe that next year the crop will be better. A small sheaf of corn is
made up and kept beside the holy picture till next harvest.

5. The Corn-spirit as a Cat.

AGAIN, the corn-spirit sometimes takes the form of a cat. Near Kiel children
are warned not to go into the corn-fields because the Cat sits there. In the
Eisenach Oberland they are told the Corn-cat will come and fetch you, the
Corn-cat goes in the corn. In some parts of Silesia at mowing the last corn
they say, The Cat is caught; and at threshing, the man who gives the last
stroke is called the Cat. In the neighbourhood of Lyons the last sheaf and the
harvest-supper are both called the Cat. About Vesoul when they cut the last
corn they say, We have the Cat by the tail. At Brianon, in Dauphin, at the
beginning of reaping, a cat is decked out with ribbons, flowers, and ears of
corn. It is called the Cat of the ball-skin (le chat de peau de balle). If a
reaper is wounded at his work, they make the cat lick the wound. At the close
of the reaping the cat is again decked out with ribbons and ears of corn; then
they dance and make merry. When the dance is over the girls solemnly strip the
cat of its finery. At Grneberg, in Silesia, the reaper who cuts the last corn
goes by the name of the Tom-cat. He is enveloped in rye-stalks and green
withes, and is furnished with a long plaited tail. Sometimes as a companion he
has a man similarly dressed, who is called the (female) Cat. Their duty is to
run after people whom they see and to beat them with a long stick. Near Amiens
the expression for finishing the harvest is, They are going to kill the Cat;
and when the last corn is cut they kill a cat in the farmyard. At threshing,
in some parts of France, a live cat is placed under the last bundle of corn to
be threshed, and is struck dead with the flails. Then on Sunday it is roasted
and eaten as a holiday dish. In the Vosges Mountains the close of haymaking or
harvest is called catching the cat, killing the dog, or more rarely
catching the hare. The cat, the dog, or the hare is said to be fat or lean
according as the crop is good or bad. The man who cuts the last handful of hay
or of wheat is said to catch the cat or the hare or to kill the dog.

6. The Corn-spirit as a Goat.

FURTHER, the corn-spirit often appears in the form of a goat. In some parts
of Prussia, when the corn bends before the wind, they say, The Goats are
chasing each other, the wind is driving the Goats through the corn, the
Goats are browsing there, and they expect a very good harvest. Again they
say, The Oats-goat is sitting in the oats-field, the Corn-goat is sitting
in the rye-field. Children are warned not to go into the corn-fields to pluck
the blue corn-flowers, or amongst the beans to pluck pods, because the
Rye-goat, the Corn-goat, the Oats-goat, or the Bean-goat is sitting or lying
there, and will carry them away or kill them. When a harvester is taken sick
or lags behind his fellows at their work, they call out, The Harvest-goat has
pushed him, he has been pushed by the Corn-goat. In the neighbourhood of
Braunsberg (East Prussia) at binding the oats every harvester makes haste
lest the Corn-goat push him. At Oefoten, in Norway, each reaper has his
allotted patch to reap. When a reaper in the middle has not finished reaping
his piece after his neighbours have finished theirs, they say of him, He
remains on the island. And if the laggard is a man, they imitate the cry with
which they call a he-goat; if a woman, the cry with which they call a
she-goat. Near Straubing, in Lower Bavaria, it is said of the man who cuts the
last corn that he has the Corn-goat, or the Wheat-goat, or the Oats-goat,
according to the crop. Moreover, two horns are set up on the last heap of
corn, and it is called the horned Goat. At Kreutzburg, East Prussia, they
call out to the woman who is binding the last sheaf, The Goat is sitting in
the sheaf. At Gablingen, in Swabia, when the last field of oats upon a farm
is being reaped, the reapers carve a goat out of wood. Ears of oats are
inserted in its nostrils and mouth, and it is adorned with garlands of
flowers. It is set up on the field and called the Oats-goat. When the reaping
approaches an end, each reaper hastens to finish his piece first; he who is
the last to finish gets the Oats-goat. Again, the last sheaf is itself called
the Goat. Thus, in the valley of the Wiesent, Bavaria, the last sheaf bound on
the field is called the Goat, and they have a proverb, The field must bear a
goat. At Spachbrcken, in Hesse, the last handful of corn which is cut is
called the Goat, and the man who cuts it is much ridiculed. At Drrenbchig
and about Mosbach in Baden the last sheaf is also called the Goat. Sometimes
the last sheaf is made up in the form of a goat, and they say, The Goat is
sitting in it. Again, the person who cuts or binds the last sheaf is called
the Goat. Thus, in parts of Mecklenburg they call out to the woman who binds
the last sheaf, You are the Harvest-goat. Near Uelzen, in Hanover, the
harvest festival begins with the bringing of the Harvest-goat; that is, the
woman who bound the last sheaf is wrapt in straw, crowned with a
harvest-wreath, and brought in a wheel-barrow to the village, where a round
dance takes place. About Luneburg, also, the woman who binds the last corn is
decked with a crown of corn-ears and is called the Corn-goat. At Mnzesheim in
Baden the reaper who cuts the last handful of corn or oats is called the
Corn-goat or the Oats-goat. In the Canton St. Gall, Switzerland, the person
who cuts the last handful of corn on the field, or drives the last
harvest-waggon to the barn, is called the Corn-goat or the Rye-goat, or simply
the Goat. In the Canton Thurgau he is called Corn-goat; like a goat he has a
bell hung round his neck, is led in triumph, and drenched with liquor. In
parts of Styria, also, the man who cuts the last corn is called Corn-goat,
Oats-goat, or the like. As a rule, the man who thus gets the name of Corn-goat
has to bear it a whole year till the next harvest.

According to one view, the corn-spirit, who has been caught in the form of
a goat or otherwise, lives in the farmhouse or barn over winter. Thus, each
farm has its own embodiment of the corn-spirit. But, according to another
view, the corn-spirit is the genius or deity, not of the corn of one farm
only, but of all the corn. Hence when the corn on one farm is all cut, he
flees to another where there is still corn left standing. This idea is brought
out in a harvest-custom which was formerly observed in Skye. The farmer who
first finished reaping sent a man or woman with a sheaf to a neighbouring
farmer who had not finished; the latter in his turn, when he had finished,
sent on the sheaf to his neighbour who was still reaping; and so the sheaf
made the round of the farms till all the corn was cut. The sheaf was called
the goabbir bhacagh, that is, the Cripple Goat. The custom appears not to be
extinct at the present day, for it was reported from Skye not very many years
ago. The corn-spirit was probably thus represented as lame because he had been
crippled by the cutting of the corn. Sometimes the old woman who brings home
the last sheaf must limp on one foot.

But sometimes the corn-spirit, in the form of a goat, is believed to be
slain on the harvest-field by the sickle or scythe. Thus, in the neighbourhood
of Bernkastel, on the Moselle, the reapers determine by lot the order in which
they shall follow each other. The first is called the fore-reaper, the last
the tail-bearer. If a reaper overtakes the man in front he reaps past him,
bending round so as to leave the slower reaper in a patch by himself. This
patch is called the Goat; and the man for whom the Goat is cut in this way,
is laughed and jeered at by his fellows for the rest of the day. When the
tail-bearer cuts the last ears of corn, it is said, He is cutting the Goat's
neck off. In the neighbourhood of Grenoble, before the end of the reaping, a
live goat is adorned with flowers and ribbons and allowed to run about the
field. The reapers chase it and try to catch it. When it is caught, the
farmer's wife holds it fast while the farmer cuts off its head. The goat's
flesh serves to furnish the harvest-supper. A piece of the flesh is pickled
and kept till the next harvest, when another goat is killed. Then all the
harvesters eat of the flesh. On the same day the skin of the goat is made into
a cloak, which the farmer, who works with his men, must always wear at
harvest-time if rain or bad weather sets in. But if a reaper gets pains in his
back, the farmer gives him the goat-skin to wear. The reason for this seems to
be that the pains in the back, being inflicted by the corn-spirit, can also be
healed by it. Similarly, we saw that elsewhere, when a reaper is wounded at
reaping, a cat, as the representative of the corn-spirit, is made to lick the
wound. Esthonian reapers of the island of Mon think that the man who cuts the
first ears of corn at harvest will get pains in his back, probably because the
corn-spirit is believed to resent especially the first wound; and, in order to
escape pains in the back, Saxon reapers in Transylvania gird their loins with
the first handful of ears which they cut. Here, again, the corn-spirit is
applied to for healing or protection, but in his original vegetable form, not
in the form of a goat or a cat.

Further, the corn-spirit under the form of a goat is sometimes conceived
as lurking among the cut corn in the barn, till he is driven from it by the
threshing-flail. Thus in Baden the last sheaf to be threshed is called the
Corn-goat, the Spelt-goat, or the Oats-goat according to the kind of grain.
Again, near Marktl, in Upper Bavaria, the sheaves are called Straw-goats or
simply Goats. They are laid in a great heap on the open field and threshed by
two rows of men standing opposite each other, who, as they ply their flails,
sing a song in which they say that they see the Straw-goat amongst the
corn-stalks. The last Goat, that is, the last sheaf, is adorned with a wreath
of violets and other flowers and with cakes strung together. It is placed
right in the middle of the heap. Some of the threshers rush at it and tear the
best of it out; others lay on with their flails so recklessly that heads are
sometimes broken. At Oberinntal, in the Tyrol, the last thresher is called
Goat. So at Haselberg, in West Bohemia, the man who gives the last stroke at
threshing oats is called the Oats-goat. At Tettnang, in Wrtemburg, the
thresher who gives the last stroke to the last bundle of corn before it is
turned goes by the name of the He-goat, and it is said, He has driven the
He-goat away. The person who, after the bundle has been turned, gives the
last stroke of all, is called the She-goat. In this custom it is implied that
the corn is inhabited by a pair of corn-spirits, male and female.

Further, the corn-spirit, captured in the form of a goat at threshing, is
passed on to a neighbour whose threshing is not yet finished. In Franche
Comt, as soon as the threshing is over, the young people set up a straw
figure of a goat on the farmyard of a neighbour who is still threshing. He
must give them wine or money in return. At Ellwangen, in Wrtemburg, the
effigy of a goat is made out of the last bundle of corn at threshing; four
sticks form its legs, and two its horns. The man who gives the last stroke
with the flail must carry the Goat to the barn of a neighbour who is still
threshing and throw it down on the floor; if he is caught in the act, they tie
the Goat on his back. A similar custom is observed at Indersdorf, in Upper
Bavaria; the man who throws the straw Goat into the neighbour's barn imitates
the bleating of a goat; if they catch him, they blacken his face and tie the
Goat on his back. At Saverne, in Alsace, when a farmer is a week or more
behind his neighbours with his threshing, they set a real stuffed goat or fox
before his door.

Sometimes the spirit of the corn in goat form is believed to be killed at
threshing. In the district of Traunstein, Upper Bavaria, they think that the
Oats-goat is in the last sheaf of oats. He is represented by an old rake set
up on end, with an old pot for a head. The children are then told to kill the
Oats-goat.

7. The Corn-spirit as a Bull, Cow, or Ox.

ANOTHER form which the corn-spirit often assumes is that of a bull, cow, or
ox. When the wind sweeps over the corn they say at Conitz, in West Prussia,
The Steer is running in the corn; when the corn is thick and strong in one
spot, they say in some parts of East Prussia, The Bull is lying in the corn.
When a harvester has overstrained and lamed himself, they say in the Graudenz
district of West Prussia, The Bull pushed him; in Lorraine they say, He has
the Bull. The meaning of both expressions is that he has unwittingly lighted
upon the divine corn-spirit, who has punished the profane intruder with
lameness. So near Chambry when a reaper wounds himself with his sickle, it is
said that he has the wound of the Ox. In the district of Bunzlau (Silesia)
the last sheaf is sometimes made into the shape of a horned ox, stuffed with
tow and wrapt in corn-ears. This figure is called the Old Man. In some parts
of Bohemia the last sheaf is made up in human form and called the
Buffalo-bull. These cases show a confusion of the human with the animal shape
of the corn-spirit. The confusion is like that of killing a wether under the
name of a wolf. All over Swabia the last bundle of corn on the field is called
the Cow; the man who cuts the last ears has the Cow, and is himself called
Cow or Barley-cow or Oats-cow, according to the crop; at the harvest-supper he
gets a nosegay of flowers and corn-ears and a more liberal allowance of drink
than the rest. But he is teased and laughed at; so no one likes to be the Cow.
The Cow was sometimes represented by the figure of a woman made out of ears of
corn and corn-flowers. It was carried to the farmhouse by the man who had cut
the last handful of corn. The children ran after him and the neighbours turned
out to laugh at him, till the farmer took the Cow from him. Here again the
confusion between the human and the animal form of the corn-spirit is
apparent. In various parts of Switzerland the reaper who cuts the last ears of
corn is called Wheat-cow, Corn-cow, Oats-cow, or Corn-steer, and is the butt
of many a joke. On the other hand, in the district of Rosenheim, Upper
Bavaria, when a farmer is later of getting in his harvest than his neighbours,
they set up on his land a Straw-bull, as it is called. This is a gigantic
figure of a bull made of stubble on a framework of wood and adorned with
flowers and leaves. Attached to it is a label on which are scrawled doggerel
verses in ridicule of the man on whose land the Straw-bull is set up.

Again, the corn-spirit in the form of a bull or ox is killed on the
harvest-field at the close of the reaping. At Pouilly, near Dijon, when the
last ears of corn are about to be cut, an ox adorned with ribbons, flowers,
and ears of corn is led all round the field, followed by the whole troop of
reapers dancing. Then a man disguised as the Devil cuts the last ears of corn
and immediately slaughters the ox. Part of the flesh of the animal is eaten at
the harvest-supper; part is pickled and kept till the first day of sowing in
spring. At Pont  Mousson and elsewhere on the evening of the last day of
reaping, a calf adorned with flowers and ears of corn is led thrice round the
farmyard, being allured by a bait or driven by men with sticks, or conducted
by the farmer's wife with a rope. The calf chosen for this ceremony is the
calf which was born first on the farm in the spring of the year. It is
followed by all the reapers with their tools. Then it is allowed to run free;
the reapers chase it, and whoever catches it is called King of the Calf.
Lastly, it is solemnly killed; at Lunville the man who acts as butcher is the
Jewish merchant of the village.

Sometimes again the corn-spirit hides himself amongst the cut corn in the
barn to reappear in bull or cow form at threshing. Thus at Wurmlingen, in
Thringen, the man who gives the last stroke at threshing is called the Cow,
or rather the Barley-cow, Oats-cow, Peas-cow, or the like, according to the
crop. He is entirely enveloped in straw; his head is surmounted by sticks in
imitation of horns, and two lads lead him by ropes to the well to drink. On
the way thither he must low like a cow, and for a long time afterwards he goes
by the name of the Cow. At Obermedlingen, in Swabia, when the threshing draws
near an end, each man is careful to avoid giving the last stroke. He who does
give it gets the Cow, which is a straw figure dressed in an old ragged
petticoat, hood, and stockings. It is tied on his back with a straw-rope; his
face is blackened, and being bound with straw-ropes to a wheelbarrow he is
wheeled round the village. Here, again, we meet with that confusion between
the human and animal shape of the corn-spirit which we have noted in other
customs. In Canton Schaffhausen the man who threshes the last corn is called
the Cow; in Canton Thurgau, the Corn-bull; in Canton Zurich, the Thresher-cow.
In the last-mentioned district he is wrapt in straw and bound to one of the
trees in the orchard. At Arad, in Hungary, the man who gives the last stroke
at threshing is enveloped in straw and a cow's hide with the horns attached to
it. At Pessnitz, in the district of Dresden, the man who gives the last stroke
with the flail is called Bull. He must make a straw-man and set it up before a
neighbour's window. Here, apparently, as in so many cases, the corn-spirit is
passed on to a neighbour who has not finished threshing. So at Herbrechtingen,
in Thringen, the effigy of a ragged old woman is flung into the barn of the
farmer who is last with his threshing. The man who throws it in cries, There
is the Cow for you. If the threshers catch him they detain him over night and
punish him by keeping him from the harvest-supper. In these latter customs the
confusion between the human and the animal shape of the corn-spirit meets us
again.

Further, the corn-spirit in bull form is sometimes believed to be killed
at threshing. At Auxerre, in threshing the last bundle of corn, they call out
twelve times, We are killing the Bull. In the neighbourhood of Bordeaux,
where a butcher kills an ox on the field immediately after the close of the
reaping, it is said of the man who gives the last stroke at threshing that he
has killed the Bull. At Chambry the last sheaf is called the sheaf of the
Young Ox, and a race takes place to it in which all the reapers join. When the
last stroke is given at threshing they say that the Ox is killed; and
immediately thereupon a real ox is slaughtered by the reaper who cut the last
corn. The flesh of the ox is eaten by the threshers at supper.

We have seen that sometimes the young corn-spirit, whose task it is to
quicken the corn of the coming year, is believed to be born as a Corn-baby on
the harvest-field. Similarly in Berry the young corn-spirit is sometimes
supposed to be born on the field in calf form; for when a binder has not rope
enough to bind all the corn in sheaves, he puts aside the wheat that remains
over and imitates the lowing of a cow. The meaning is that the sheaf has
given birth to a calf. In Puy-de-Dme when a binder cannot keep up with the
reaper whom he or she follows, they say He (or she) is giving birth to the
Calf. In some parts of Prussia, in similar circumstances, they call out to
the woman, The Bull is coming, and imitate the bellowing of a bull. In these
cases the woman is conceived as the Corn-cow or old corn-spirit, while the
supposed calf is the Corn-calf or young corn-spirit. In some parts of Austria
a mythical calf (Muhklbchen) is believed to be seen amongst the sprouting
corn in spring and to push the children; when the corn waves in the wind they
say, The Calf is going about. Clearly, as Mannhardt observes, this calf of
the spring-time is the same animal which is afterwards believed to be killed
at reaping.

8. The Corn-spirit as a Horse or Mare.

SOMETIMES the corn-spirit appears in the shape of a horse or mare. Between
Kalw and Stuttgart, when the corn bends before the wind, they say, There runs
the Horse. At Bohlingen, near Radolfzell in Baden, the last sheaf of oats is
called the Oats-stallion. In Hertfordshire, at the end of the reaping, there
is or used to be observed a ceremony called crying the Mare. The last blades
of corn left standing on the field are tied together and called the Mare. The
reapers stand at a distance and throw their sickles at it; he who cuts it
through has the prize, with acclamations and good cheer. After it is cut the
reapers cry thrice with a loud voice, I have her! Others answer thrice,
What have you? A Mare! a Mare! a Mare! Whose is she? is next asked
thrice. A. B.'s, naming the owner thrice. Whither will you send her? To
C. D., naming some neighbour who has not reaped all his corn. In this custom
the corn-spirit in the form of a mare is passed on from a farm where the corn
is all cut to another farm where it is still standing, and where therefore the
corn-spirit may be supposed naturally to take refuge. In Shropshire the custom
is similar. The farmer who finishes his harvest last, and who therefore cannot
send the Mare to any one else, is said to keep her all winter. The mocking
offer of the Mare to a laggard neighbour was sometimes responded to by a
mocking acceptance of her help. Thus an old man told an inquirer, While we
wun at supper, a mon cumm'd wi' a autar [halter] to fatch her away. At one
place a real mare used to be sent, but the man who rode her was subjected to
some rough treatment at the farmhouse to which he paid his unwelcome visit.

In the neighbourhood of Lille the idea of the corn-spirit in horse form in
clearly preserved. When a harvester grows weary at his work, it is said, He
has the fatigue of the Horse. The first sheaf, called the Cross of the
Horse, is placed on a cross of boxwood in the barn, and the youngest horse on
the farm must tread on it. The reapers dance round the last blades of corn,
crying, See the remains of the Horse. The sheaf made out of these last
blades is given to the youngest horse of the parish (commune) to eat. This
youngest horse of the parish clearly represents, as Mannhardt says, the
corn-spirit of the following year, the Corn-foal, which absorbs the spirit of
the old Corn-horse by eating the last corn cut; for, as usual, the old
corn-spirit takes his final refuge in the last sheaf. The thresher of the last
sheaf is said to beat the Horse.

9. The Corn-spirit as a Pig (Boar or Sow).

THE LAST animal embodiment of the corn-spirit which we shall notice is the
pig (boar or sow). In Thringen, when the wind sets the young corn in motion,
they sometimes say, The Boar is rushing through the corn. Amongst the
Esthonians of the island of Oesel the last sheaf is called the Ryeboar, and
the man who gets it is saluted with a cry of You have the Rye-boar on your
back! In reply he strikes up a song, in which he prays for plenty. At
Kohlerwinkel, near Augsburg, at the close of the harvest, the last bunch of
standing corn is cut down, stalk by stalk, by all the reapers in turn. He who
cuts the last stalk gets the Sow, and is laughed at. In other Swabian
villages also the man who cuts the last corn has the Sow, or has the
Rye-sow. At Bohlingen, near Radolfzell in Baden, the last sheaf is called the
Rye-sow or the Wheat-sow, according to the crop; and at Rhrenbach in Baden
the person who brings the last armful for the last sheaf is called the
Corn-sow or the Oats-sow. At Friedingen, in Swabia, the thresher who gives the
last stroke is called SowBarley-sow, Corn-sow, or the like, according to the
crop. At Onstmettingen the man who gives the last stroke at threshing has the
Sow; he is often bound up in a sheaf and dragged by a rope along the ground.
And, generally, in Swabia the man who gives the last stroke with the flail is
called Sow. He may, however, rid himself of this invidious distinction by
passing on to a neighbour the straw-rope, which is the badge of his position
as Sow. So he goes to a house and throws the straw-rope into it, crying,
There, I bring you the Sow. All the inmates give chase; and if they catch
him they beat him, shut him up for several hours in the pig-sty, and oblige
him to take the Sow away again. In various parts of Upper Bavaria the man
who gives the last stroke at threshing must carry the Pigthat is, either a
straw effigy of a pig or merely a bundle of straw-ropes. This he carries to a
neighbouring farm where the threshing is not finished, and throws it into the
barn. If the threshers catch him they handle him roughly, beating him,
blackening or dirtying his face, throwing him into filth, binding the Sow on
his back, and so on; if the bearer of the Sow is a woman they cut off her
hair. At the harvest supper or dinner the man who carried the Pig gets one
or more dumplings made in the form of pigs. When the dumplings are served up
by the maidservant, all the people at table cry Sz, sz, sz ! that being
the cry used in calling pigs. Sometimes after dinner the man who carried the
Pig has his face blackened, and is set on a cart and drawn round the village
by his fellows, followed by a crowd crying Sz, sz, sz ! as if they were
calling swine. Sometimes, after being wheeled round the village, he is flung
on the dunghill.

Again, the corn-spirit in the form of a pig plays his part at sowing-time
as well as at harvest. At Neuautz, in Courland, when barley is sown for the
first time in the year, the farmer's wife boils the chine of a pig along with
the tail, and brings it to the sower on the field. He eats of it, but cuts off
the tail and sticks it in the field; it is believed that the ears of corn will
then grow as long as the tail. Here the pig is the corn-spirit, whose
fertilising power is sometimes supposed to lie especially in his tail. As a
pig he is put in the ground at sowing-time, and as a pig he reappears amongst
the ripe corn at harvest. For amongst the neighbouring Esthonians, as we have
seen, the last sheaf is called the Rye-boar. Somewhat similar customs are
observed in Germany. In the Salza district, near Meiningen, a certain bone in
the pig is called the Jew on the winnowing-fan. The flesh of this bone is
boiled on Shrove Tuesday, but the bone is put amongst the ashes which the
neighbours exchange as presents on St. Peter's Day (the twenty-second of
February), and then mix with the seedcorn. In the whole of Hesse, Meiningen,
and other districts, people eat pea-soup with dried pig-ribs on Ash Wednesday
or Candlemas. The ribs are then collected and hung in the room till
sowing-time, when they are inserted in the sown field or in the seed-bag
amongst the flax seed. This is thought to be an infallible specific against
earth-fleas and moles, and to cause the flax to grow well and tall.

But the idea of the corn-spirit as embodied in pig form is nowhere more
clearly expressed than in the Scandinavian custom of the Yule Boar. In Sweden
and Denmark at Yule (Christmas) it is the custom to bake a loaf in the form of
a boar-pig. This is called the Yule Boar. The corn of the last sheaf is often
used to make it. All through Yule the Yule Boar stands on the table. Often it
is kept till the sowing-time in spring, when part of it is mixed with the
seed-corn and part given to the ploughman and plough-horses or ploughoxen to
eat, in the expectation of a good harvest. In this custom the corn-spirit,
immanent in the last sheaf, appears at midwinter in the form of a boar made
from the corn of the last sheaf; and his quickening influence on the corn is
shown by mixing part of the Yule Boar with the seed-corn, and giving part of
it to the ploughman and his cattle to eat. Similarly we saw that the Corn-wolf
makes his appearance at mid-winter, the time when the year begins to verge
towards spring. Formerly a real boar was sacrificed at Christmas, and
apparently also a man in the character of the Yule Boar. This, at least, may
perhaps be inferred from a Christmas custom still observed in Sweden. A man is
wrapt up in a skin, and carries a wisp of straw in his mouth, so that the
projecting straws look like the bristles of a boar. A knife is brought, and an
old woman, with her face blackened, pretends to sacrifice him.

On Christmas Eve in some parts of the Esthonian island of Oesel they bake
a long cake with the two ends turned up. It is called the Christmas Boar, and
stands on the table till the morning of New Year's Day, when it is distributed
among the cattle. In other parts of the island the Christmas Boar is not a
cake but a little pig born in March, which the housewife fattens secretly,
often without the knowledge of the other members of the family. On Christmas
Eve the little pig is secretly killed, then roasted in the oven, and set on
the table standing on all fours, where it remains in this posture for several
days. In other parts of the island, again, though the Christmas cake has
neither the name nor the shape of a boar, it is kept till the New Year, when
half of it is divided among all the members and all the quadrupeds of the
family. The other half of the cake is kept till sowing-time comes round, when
it is similarly distributed in the morning among human beings and beasts. In
other parts of Esthonia, again, the Christmas Boar, as it is called, is baked
of the first rye cut at harvest; it has a conical shape and a cross is
impressed on it with a pig's bone or a key, or three dints are made in it with
a buckle or a piece of charcoal. It stands with a light beside it on the table
all through the festal season. On New Year's Day and Epiphany, before sunrise,
a little of the cake is crumbled with salt and given to the cattle. The rest
is kept till the day when the cattle are driven out to pasture for the first
time in spring. It is then put in the herdsman's bag, and at evening is
divided among the cattle to guard them from magic and harm. In some places the
Christmas Boar is partaken of by farm-servants and cattle at the time of the
barley sowing, for the purpose of thereby producing a heavier crop.

10. On the Animal Embodiments ofthe Corn-spirit.

SO much for the animal embodiments of the corn-spirit as they are presented
to us in the folk-customs of Northern Europe. These customs bring out clearly
the sacramental character of the harvest-supper. The corn-spirit is conceived
as embodied in an animal; this divine animal is slain, and its flesh and blood
are partaken of by the harvesters. Thus the cock, the hare, the cat, the goat,
and the OX are eaten sacramentally by the harvester, and the pig is eaten
sacramentally by ploughmen in spring. Again, as a substitute for the real
flesh of the divine being, bread or dumplings are made in his image and eaten
sacramentally; thus, pig-shaped dumplings are eaten by the harvesters, and
loaves made in boar-shape (the Yule Boar) are eaten in spring by the ploughman
and his cattle.

The reader has probably remarked the complete parallelism between the
conceptions of the corn-spirit in human and in animal form. The parallel may
be here briefly resumed. When the corn waves in the wind it is said either
that the Corn-mother or that the Corn-wolf, etc., is passing through the corn.
Children are warned against straying in corn-fields either because the
Corn-mother or because the Corn-wolf, etc., is there. In the last corn cut or
the last sheaf threshed either the Corn-mother or the Corn-wolf, etc., is
supposed to be present. The last sheaf is itself called either the Corn-mother
or the Corn-wolf, etc., and is made up in the shape either of a woman or of a
wolf, etc. The person who cuts, binds, or threshes the last sheaf is called
either the Old Woman or the Wolf, etc., according to the name bestowed on the
sheaf itself. As in some places a sheaf made in human form and called the
Maiden, the Mother of the Maize, etc., is kept from one harvest to the next in
order to secure a continuance of the corn-spirit's blessing, so in some places
the Harvest-cock and in others the flesh of the goat is kept for a similar
purpose from one harvest to the next. As in some places the grain taken from
the Corn-mother is mixed with the seed-corn in spring to make the crop
abundant, so in some places the feathers of the cock, and in Sweden the Yule
Boar, are kept till spring and mixed with the seed-corn for a like purpose. As
part of the Corn-mother or Maiden is given to the cattle at Christmas or to
the horses at the first ploughing, so part of the Yule Boar is given to the
ploughing horses or oxen in spring. Lastly, the death of the corn-spirit is
represented by killing or pretending to kill either his human or his animal
representative; and the worshippers partake sacramentally either of the actual
body and blood of the representative of the divinity, or of bread made in his
likeness.

Other animal forms assumed by the corn-spirit are the fox, stag, roe,
sheep, bear, ass, mouse, quail, stork, swan, and kite. If it is asked why the
corn-spirit should be thought to appear in the form of an animal and of so
many different animals, we may reply that to primitive man the simple
appearance of an animal or bird among the corn is probably enough to suggest a
mysterious link between the creature and the corn; and when we remember that
in the old days, before fields were fenced in, all kinds of animals must have
been free to roam over them, we need not wonder that the corn-spirit should
have been identified even with large animals like the horse and cow, which
nowadays could not, except by a rare accident, be found straying in an English
corn-field. This explanation applies with peculiar force to the very common
case in which the animal embodiment of the corn-spirit is believed to lurk in
the last standing corn. For at harvest a number of wild animals, such as
hares, rabbits, and partridges, are commonly driven by the progress of the
reaping into the last patch of standing corn, and make their escape from it as
it is being cut down. So regularly does this happen that reapers and others
often stand round the last patch of corn armed with sticks or guns, with which
they kill the animals as they dart out of their last refuge among the stalks.
Now, primitive man, to whom magical changes of shape seem perfectly credible,
finds it most natural that the spirit of the corn, driven from his home in the
ripe grain, should make his escape in the form of the animal which is seen to
rush out of the last patch of corn as it falls under the scythe of the reaper.
Thus the identification of the corn-spirit with an animal is analogous to the
identification of him with a passing stranger. As the sudden appearance of a
stranger near the harvest-field or threshing-floor is, to the primitive mind,
enough to identify him as the spirit of the corn escaping from the cut or
threshed corn, so the sudden appearance of an animal issuing from the cut corn
is enough to identify it with the corn-spirit escaping from his ruined home.
The two identifications are so analogous that they can hardly be dissociated
in any attempt to explain them. Those who look to some other principle than
the one here suggested for the explanation of the latter identification are
bound to show that their theory covers the former identification also.

Chapter 49. Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals.

1. Dionysus, the Goat and the Bull.

HOWEVER we may explain it, the fact remains that in peasant folk-lore the
corn-spirit is very commonly conceived and represented in animal form. May not
this fact explain the relation in which certain animals stood to the ancient
deities of vegetation, Dionysus, Demeter, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris?

To begin with Dionysus. We have seen that he was represented sometimes as
a goat and sometimes as a bull. As a goat he can hardly be separated from the
minor divinities, the Pans, Satyrs, and Silenuses, all of whom are closely
associated with him and are represented more or less completely in the form of
goats. Thus, Pan was regularly portrayed in sculpture and painting with the
face and legs of a goat. The Satyrs were depicted with pointed goat-ears, and
sometimes with sprouting horns and short tails. They were sometimes spoken of
simply as goats; and in the drama their parts were played by men dressed in
goatskins. Silenus is represented in art clad in a goatskin. Further, the
Fauns, the Italian counterpart of the Greek Pans and Satyrs, are described as
being half goats, with goat-feet and goat-horns. Again, all these minor
goat-formed divinities partake more or less clearly of the character of
woodland deities. Thus, Pan was called by the Arcadians the Lord of the Wood.
The Silenuses kept company with the tree-nymphs. The Fauns are expressly
designated as woodland deities; and their character as such is still further
brought out by their association, or even identification, with Silvanus and
the Silvanuses, who, as their name of itself indicates, are spirits of the
woods. Lastly, the association of the Satyrs with the Silenuses, Fauns, and
Silvanuses, proves that the Satyrs also were woodland deities. These
goat-formed spirits of the woods have their counterparts in the folk-lore of
Northern Europe. Thus, the Russian wood-spirits, called Ljeschie (from
ljes, wood), are believed to appear partly in human shape, but with the
horns, ears, and legs of goats. The Ljeschi can alter his stature at
pleasure; when he walks in the wood he is as tall as the trees; when he walks
in the meadows he is no higher than the grass. Some of the Ljeschie are
spirits of the corn as well as of the wood; before harvest they are as tall as
the corn-stalks, but after it they shrink to the height of the stubble. This
brings outwhat we have remarked beforethe close connexion between
tree-spirits and corn-spirits, and shows how easily the former may melt into
the latter. Similarly the Fauns, though wood-spirits, were believed to foster
the growth of the crops. We have already seen how often the corn-spirit is
represented in folk-custom as a goat. On the whole, then, as Mannhardt argues,
the Pans, Satyrs, and Fauns perhaps belong to a widely diffused class of
wood-spirits conceived in goat-form. The fondness of goats for straying in
woods and nibbling the bark of trees, to which indeed they are most
destructive, is an obvious and perhaps sufficient reason why wood-spirits
should so often be supposed to take the form of goats. The inconsistency of a
god of vegetation subsisting upon the vegetation which he personifies is not
one to strike the primitive mind. Such inconsistencies arise when the deity,
ceasing to be immanent in the vegetation, comes to be regarded as its owner or
lord; for the idea of owning the vegetation naturally leads to that of
subsisting on it. Sometimes the corn-spirit, originally conceived as immanent
in the corn, afterwards comes to be regarded as its owner, who lives on it and
is reduced to poverty and want by being deprived of it. Hence he is often
known as the Poor Man or the Poor Woman. Occasionally the last sheaf is
left standing on the field for the Poor Old Woman or for the Old
Rye-woman.

Thus the representation of wood-spirits in the form of goats appears to be
both widespread and, to the primitive mind, natural. Therefore when we find,
as we have done, that Dionysusa tree-godis sometimes represented in
goat-form, we can hardly avoid concluding that this representation is simply a
part of his proper character as a tree-god and is not to be explained by the
fusion of two distinct and independent worships, in one of which he originally
appeared as a tree-god and in the other as a goat.

Dionysus was also figured, as we have seen, in the shape of a bull. After
what has gone before we are naturally led to expect that his bull form must
have been only another expression for his character as a deity of vegetation,
especially as the bull is a common embodiment of the corn-spirit in Northern
Europe; and the close association of Dionysus with Demeter and Persephone in
the mysteries of Eleusis shows that he had at least strong agricultural
affinities.

The probability of this view will be somewhat increased if it can be shown
that in other rites than those of Dionysus the ancients slew an OX as a
representative of the spirit of vegetation. This they appear to have done in
the Athenian sacrifice known as the murder of the OX (bouphonia). It took
place about the end of June or beginning of July, that is, about the time when
the threshing is nearly over in Attica. According to tradition the sacrifice
was instituted to procure a cessation of drought and dearth which had
afflicted the land. The ritual was as follows. Barley mixed with wheat, or
cakes made of them, were laid upon the bronze altar of Zeus Polieus on the
Acropolis. Oxen were driven round the altar, and the OX which went up to the
altar and ate the offering on it was sacrificed. The axe and knife with which
the beast was slain had been previously wetted with water brought by maidens
called water-carriers. The weapons were then sharpened and handed to the
butchers, one of whom felled the OX with the axe and another cut its throat
with the knife. As soon as he had felled the OX, the former threw the axe from
him and fled; and the man who cut the beast's throat apparently imitated his
example. Meantime the OX was skinned and all present partook of its flesh.
Then the hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up; next the stuffed animal was
set on its feet and yoked to a plough as if it were ploughing. A trial then
took place in an ancient law-court presided over by the King (as he was
called) to determine who had murdered the OX. The maidens who had brought the
water accused the men who had sharpened the axe and knife; the men who had
sharpened the axe and knife blamed the men who had handed these implements to
the butchers; the men who had handed the implements to the butchers blamed the
butchers; and the butchers laid the blame on the axe and knife, which were
accordingly found guilty, condemned, and cast into the sea.

The name of this sacrifice, the murder of the OX,the pains taken by
each person who had a hand in the slaughter to lay the blame on some one else,
together with the formal trial and punishment of the axe or knife or both,
prove that the OX was here regarded not merely as a victim offered to a god,
but as itself a sacred creature, the slaughter of which was sacrilege or
murder. This is borne out by a statement of Varro that to kill an OX was
formerly a capital crime in Attica. The mode of selecting the victim suggests
that the OX which tasted the corn was viewed as the corn-deity taking
possession of his own. This interpretation is supported by the following
custom. In Beauce, in the district of Orleans, on the twenty-fourth or
twenty-fifth of April they make a straw man called the great mondard. For
they say that the old mondard is now dead and it is necessary to make a new
one. The straw man is carried in solemn procession up and down the village and
at last is placed upon the oldest apple-tree. There he remains till the apples
are gathered, when he is taken down and thrown into the water, or he is burned
and his ashes cast into water. But the person who plucks the first fruit from
the tree succeeds to the title of the great mondard. Here the straw
figure, called the great mondard and placed on the oldest apple-tree in
spring, represents the spirit of the tree, who, dead in winter, revives when
the apple-blossoms appear on the boughs. Thus the person who plucks the first
fruit from the tree and thereby receives the name of the great mondard
must be regarded as a representative of the tree-spirit. Primitive peoples are
usually reluctant to taste the annual first-fruits of any crop, until some
ceremony has been performed which makes it safe and pious for them to do so.
The reason of this reluctance appears to be a belief that the first-fruits
either belong to or actually contain a divinity. Therefore when a man or
animal is seen boldly to appropriate the sacred first-fruits, he or it is
naturally regarded as the divinity himself in human or animal form taking
possession of his own. The time of the Athenian sacrifice, which fell about
the close of the threshing, suggests that the wheat and barley laid upon the
altar were a harvest offering; and the sacramental character of the subsequent
repastall partaking of the flesh of the divine animalwould make it parallel
to the harvest-suppers of modern Europe, in which, as we have seen, the flesh
of the animal which stands for the corn-spirit is eaten by the harvesters.
Again, the tradition that the sacrifice was instituted in order to put an end
to drought and famine is in favour of taking it as a harvest festival. The
resurrection of the corn-spirit, enacted by setting up the stuffed OX and
yoking it to the plough, may be compared with the resurrection of the
tree-spirit in the person of his representative, the Wild Man.

The OX appears as a representative of the corn-spirit in other parts of
the world. At Great Bassam, in Guinea, two oxen are slain annually to procure
a good harvest. If the sacrifice is to be effectual, it is necessary that the
oxen should weep. So all the women of the village sit in front of the beasts,
chanting, The OX will weep; yes, he will weep! From time to time one of the
women walks round the beasts, throwing manioc meal or palm wine upon them,
especially into their eyes. When tears roll down from the eyes of the oxen,
the people dance, singing, The OX weeps! the OX weeps! Then two men seize
the tails of the beasts and cut them off at one blow. It is believed that a
great misfortune will happen in the course of the year if the tails are not
severed at one blow. The oxen are afterwards killed, and their flesh is eaten
by the chiefs. Here the tears of the oxen, like those of the human victims
amongst the Khonds and the Aztecs, are probably a rain-charm. We have already
seen that the virtue of the corn-spirit, embodied in animal form, is sometimes
supposed to reside in the tail, and that the last handful of corn is sometimes
conceived as the tail of the corn-spirit. In the Mithraic religion this
conception is graphically set forth in some of the numerous sculptures which
represent Mithras kneeling on the back of a bull and plunging a knife into its
flank; for on certain of these monuments the tail of the bull ends in three
stalks of corn, and in one of them corn-stalks instead of blood are seen
issuing from the wound inflicted by the knife. Such representations certainly
suggest that the bull, whose sacrifice appears to have formed a leading
feature in the Mithraic ritual, was conceived, in one at least of its aspects,
as an incarnation of the corn-spirit.

Still more clearly does the ox appear as a personification of the
corn-spirit in a ceremony which is observed in all the provinces and districts
of China to welcome the approach of spring. On the first day of spring,
usually on the third or fourth of February, which is also the beginning of the
Chinese New Year, the governor or prefect of the city goes in procession to
the east gate of the city, and sacrifices to the Divine Husbandman, who is
represented with a bull's head on the body of a man. A large effigy of an ox,
cow, or buffalo has been prepared for the occasion, and stands outside of the
east gate, with agricultural implements beside it. The figure is made of
differently-coloured pieces of paper pasted on a framework either by a blind
man or according to the directions of a necromancer. The colours of the paper
prognosticate the character of the coming year; if red prevails, there will be
many fires; if white, there will be floods and rain; and so with the other
colours. The mandarins walk slowly round the ox, beating it severely at each
step with rods of various hues. It is filled with five kinds of grain, which
pour forth when the effigy is broken by the blows of the rods. The paper
fragments are then set on fire, and a scramble takes place for the burning
fragments, because the people believe that whoever gets one of them is sure to
be fortunate throughout the year. A live buffalo is next killed, and its flesh
is divided among the mandarins. According to one account, the effigy of the ox
is made of clay, and, after being beaten by the governor, is stoned by the
people till they break it in pieces, from which they expect an abundant
year. Here the corn-spirit appears to be plainly represented by the
corn-filled ox, whose fragments may therefore be supposed to bring fertility
with them.

On the whole we may perhaps conclude that both as a goat and as a bull
Dionysus was essentially a god of vegetation. The Chinese and European customs
which I have cited may perhaps shed light on the custom of rending a live bull
or goat at the rites of Dionysus. The animal was torn in fragments, as the
Khond victim was cut in pieces, in order that the worshippers might each
secure a portion of the life-giving and fertilising influence of the god. The
flesh was eaten raw as a sacrament, and we may conjecture that some of it was
taken home to be buried in the fields, or otherwise employed so as to convey
to the fruits of the earth the quickening influence of the god of vegetation.
The resurrection of Dionysus, related in his myth, may have been enacted in
his rites by stuffing and setting up the slain ox, as was done at the Athenian
bouphonia.

2. Demeter, the Pig and the Horse.

PASSING next to the corn-goddess Demeter, and remembering that in European
folk-lore the pig is a common embodiment of the corn-spirit, we may now ask
whether the pig, which was so closely associated with Demeter, may not have
been originally the goddess herself in animal form. The pig was sacred to her;
in art she was portrayed carrying or accompanied by a pig; and the pig was
regularly sacrificed in her mysteries, the reason assigned being that the pig
injures the corn and is therefore an enemy of the goddess. But after an animal
has been conceived as a god, or a god as an animal, it sometimes happens, as
we have seen, that the god sloughs off his animal form and becomes purely
anthropomorphic; and that then the animal, which at first had been slain in
the character of the god, comes to be viewed as a victim offered to the god on
the ground of its hostility to the deity; in short, the god is sacrificed to
himself on the ground that he is his own enemy. This happened to Dionysus, and
it may have happened to Demeter also. And in fact the rites of one of her
festivals, the Thesmophoria, bear out the view that originally the pig was an
embodiment of the corn-goddess herself, either Demeter or her daughter and
double Persephone. The Attic Thesmophoria was an autumn festival, celebrated
by women alone in October, and appears to have represented with mourning rites
the descent of Persephone (or Demeter) into the lower world, and with joy her
return from the dead. Hence the name Descent or Ascent variously applied to
the first, and the name Kalligeneia (fair-born) applied to the third day of
the festival. Now it was customary at the Thesmophoria to throw pigs, cakes of
dough, and branches of pine-trees into the chasms of Demeter and Persephone,
which appear to have been sacred caverns or vaults. In these caverns or vaults
there were said to be serpents, which guarded the caverns and consumed most of
the flesh of the pigs and dough-cakes which were thrown in.

Afterwardsapparently at the next annual festivalthe decayed remains of the
pigs, the cakes, and the pine-branches were fetched by women called drawers,
who, after observing rules of ceremonial purity for three days, descended into
the caverns, and, frightening away the serpents by clapping their hands,
brought up the remains and placed them on the altar. Whoever got a piece of
the decayed flesh and cakes, and sowed it with the seed-corn in his field, was
believed to be sure of a good crop.

To explain the rude and ancient ritual of the Thesmophoria the following
legend was told. At the moment when Pluto carried off Persephone, a swineherd
called Eubuleus chanced to be herding his swine on the spot, and his herd was
engulfed in the chasm down which Pluto vanished with Persephone. Accordingly
at the Thesmophoria pigs were annually thrown into caverns to commemorate the
disappearance of the swine of Eubuleus. It follows from this that the casting
of the pigs into the vaults at the Thesmophoria formed part of the dramatic
representation of Persephone's descent into the lower world; and as no image
of Persephone appears to have been thrown in, we may infer that the descent of
the pigs was not so much an accompaniment of her descent as the descent
itself, in short, that the pigs were Persephone. Afterwards when Persephone or
Demeter (for the two are equivalent) took on human form, a reason had to be
found for the custom of throwing pigs into caverns at her festival; and this
was done by saying that when Pluto carried off Persephone there happened to be
some swine browsing near, which were swallowed up along with her. The story is
obviously a forced and awkward attempt to bridge over the gulf between the old
conception of the corn-spirit as a pig and the new conception of her as an
anthropomorphic goddess. A trace of the older conception survived in the
legend that when the sad mother was searching for traces of the vanished
Persephone, the footprints of the lost one were obliterated by the footprints
of a pig; originally, we may conjecture, the footprints of the pig were the
footprints of Persephone and of Demeter herself. A consciousness of the
intimate connexion of the pig with the corn lurks in the legend that the
swineherd Eubuleus was a brother of Triptolemus, to whom Demeter first
imparted the secret of the corn. Indeed, according to one version of the
story, Eubuleus himself received, jointly with his brother Triptolemus, the
gift of the corn from Demeter as a reward for revealing to her the fate of
Persephone. Further, it is to be noted that at the Thesmophoria the women
appear to have eaten swine's flesh. The meal, if I am right, must have been a
solemn sacrament or communion, the worshippers partaking of the body of the
god.

As thus explained, the Thesmophoria has its analogies in the folk-customs
of Northern Europe which have been already described. Just as at the
Thesmophoriaan autumn festival in honour of the corn-goddessswine's flesh
was partly eaten, partly kept in caverns till the following year, when it was
taken up to be sown with the seed-corn in the fields for the purpose of
securing a good crop; so in the neighbourhood of Grenoble the goat killed on
the harvest-field is partly eaten at the harvest-supper, partly pickled and
kept till the next harvest; so at Pouilly the ox killed on the harvest-field
is partly eaten by the harvesters, partly pickled and kept till the first day
of sowing in spring, probably to be then mixed with the seed, or eaten by the
ploughmen, or both; so at Udvarhely the feathers of the cock which is killed
in the last sheaf at harvest are kept till spring, and then sown with the seed
on the field; so in Hesse and Meiningen the flesh of pigs is eaten on Ash
Wednesday or Candlemas, and the bones are kept till sowing-time, when they are
put into the field sown or mixed with the seed in the bag; so, lastly, the
corn from the last sheaf is kept till Christmas, made into the Yule Boar, and
afterwards broken and mixed with the seed-corn at sowing in spring. Thus, to
put it generally, the corn-spirit is killed in animal form in autumn; part of
his flesh is eaten as a sacrament by his worshippers; and part of it is kept
till next sowing-time or harvest as a pledge and security for the continuance
or renewal of the corn-spirit's energies.

If persons of fastidious taste should object that the Greeks never could
have conceived Demeter and Persephone to be embodied in the form of pigs, it
may be answered that in the cave of Phigalia in Arcadia the Black Demeter was
portrayed with the head and mane of a horse on the body of a woman. Between
the portraits of a goddess as a pig, and the portrait of her as a woman with a
horse's head, there is little to choose in respect of barbarism. The legend
told of the Phigalian Demeter indicates that the horse was one of the animal
forms assumed in ancient Greece, as in modern Europe, by the cornspirit. It
was said that in her search for her daughter, Demeter assumed the form of a
mare to escape the addresses of Poseidon, and that, offended at his
importunity, she withdrew in dudgeon to a cave not far from Phigalia in the
highlands of Western Arcadia. There, robed in black, she tarried so long that
the fruits of the earth were perishing, and mankind would have died of famine
if Pan had not soothed the angry goddess and persuaded her to quit the cave.
In memory of this event, the Phigalians set up an image of the Black Demeter
in the cave; it represented a woman dressed in a long robe, with the head and
mane of a horse. The Black Demeter, in whose absence the fruits of the earth
perish, is plainly a mythical expression for the bare wintry earth stripped of
its summer mantle of green.

3. Attis, Adonis, and the Pig.

PASSING now to Attis and Adonis, we may note a few facts which seem to show
that these deities of vegetation had also, like other deities of the same
class, their animal embodiments. The worshippers of Attis abstained from
eating the flesh of swine. This appears to indicate that the pig was regarded
as an embodiment of Attis. And the legend that Attis was killed by a boar
points in the same direction. For after the examples of the goat Dionysus and
the pig Demeter it may almost be laid down as a rule that an animal which is
said to have injured a god was originally the god himself. Perhaps the cry of
Hyes Attes! Hyes Attes! which was raised by the worshippers of Attis, may be
neither more nor less than Pig Attis! Pig Attis!hyes being possibly a
Phrygian form of the Greek hys, a pig.

In regard to Adonis, his connexion with the boar was not always explained
by the story that he had been killed by the animal. According to another
story, a boar rent with his tusk the bark of the tree in which the infant
Adonis was born. According to yet another story, he perished at the hands of
Hephaestus on Mount Lebanon while he was hunting wild boars. These variations
in the legend serve to show that, while the connexion of the boar with Adonis
was certain, the reason of the connexion was not understood, and that
consequently different stories were devised to explain it. Certainly the pig
ranked as a sacred animal among the Syrians. At the great religious metropolis
of Hierapolis on the Euphrates pigs were neither sacrificed nor eaten, and if
a man touched a pig he was unclean for the rest of the day. Some people said
this was because the pigs were unclean; others said it was because the pigs
were sacred. This difference of opinion points to a hazy state of religious
thought in which the ideas of sanctity and uncleanness are not yet sharply
distinguished, both being blent in a sort of vaporous solution to which we
give the name of taboo. It is quite consistent with this that the pig should
have been held to be an embodiment of the divine Adonis, and the analogies of
Dionysus and Demeter make it probable that the story of the hostility of the
animal to the god was only a late misapprehension of the old view of the god
as embodied in a pig. The rule that pigs were not sacrificed or eaten by
worshippers of Attis and presumably of Adonis, does not exclude the
possibility that in these rituals the pig was slain on solemn occasions as a
representative of the god and consumed sacramentally by the worshippers.
Indeed, the sacramental killing and eating of an animal implies that the
animal is sacred, and that, as a general rule, it is spared.

The attitude of the Jews to the pig was as ambiguous as that of the
heathen Syrians towards the same animal. The Greeks could not decide whether
the Jews worshipped swine or abominated them. On the one hand they might not
eat swine; but on the other hand they might not kill them. And if the former
rule speaks for the uncleanness, the latter speaks still more strongly for the
sanctity of the animal. For whereas both rules may, and one rule must, be
explained on the supposition that the pig was sacred; neither rule must, and
one rule cannot, be explained on the supposition that the pig was unclean. If,
therefore, we prefer the former supposition, we must conclude that, originally
at least, the pig was revered rather than abhorred by the Israelites. We are
confirmed in this opinion by observing that down to the time of Isaiah some of
the Jews used to meet secretly in gardens to eat the flesh of swine and mice
as a religious rite. Doubtless this was a very ancient ceremony, dating from a
time when both the pig and the mouse were venerated as divine, and when their
flesh was partaken of sacramentally on rare and solemn occasions as the body
and blood of gods. And in general it may perhaps be said that all so-called
unclean animals were originally sacred; the reason for not eating them was
that they were divine.

4. Osiris, the Pig and the Bull.

IN ANCIENT Egypt, within historical times, the pig occupied the same dubious
position as in Syria and Palestine, though at first sight its uncleanness is
more prominent than its sanctity. The Egyptians are generally said by Greek
writers to have abhorred the pig as a foul and loathsome animal. If a man so
much as touched a pig in passing, he stepped into the river with all his
clothes on, to wash off the taint. To drink pig's milk was believed to cause
leprosy to the drinker. Swineherds, though natives of Egypt, were forbidden to
enter any temple, and they were the only men who were thus excluded. No one
would give his daughter in marriage to a swineherd, or marry a swineherd's
daughter; the swineherds married among themselves. Yet once a year the
Egyptians sacrificed pigs to the moon and to Osiris, and not only sacrificed
them, but ate of their flesh, though on any other day of the year they would
neither sacrifice them nor taste of their flesh. Those who were too poor to
offer a pig on this day baked cakes of dough, and offered them instead. This
can hardly be explained except by the supposition that the pig was a sacred
animal which was eaten sacramentally by his worshippers once a year.

The view that in Egypt the pig was sacred is borne out by the very facts
which, to moderns, might seem to prove the contrary. Thus the Egyptians
thought, as we have seen, that to drink pig's milk produced leprosy. But
exactly analogous views are held by savages about the animals and plants which
they deem most sacred. Thus in the island of Wetar (between New Guinea and
Celebes) people believe themselves to be variously descended from wild pigs,
serpents, crocodiles, turtles, dogs, and eels; a man may not eat an animal of
the kind from which he is descended; if he does so, he will become a leper,
and go mad. Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America men whose totem is the
elk, believe that if they ate the flesh of the male elk they would break out
in boils and white spots in different parts of their bodies. In the same tribe
men whose totem is the red maize, think that if they ate red maize they would
have running sores all round their mouths. The Bush negroes of Surinam, who
practise totemism, believe that if they ate the capia (an animal like a
pig) it would give them leprosy; perhaps the capia is one of their totems.
The Syrians, in antiquity, who esteemed fish sacred, thought that if they ate
fish their bodies would break out in ulcers, and their feet and stomach would
swell up. The Chasas of Orissa believe that if they were to injure their
totemic animal they would be attacked by leprosy and their line would die out.
These examples prove that the eating of a sacred animal is often believed to
produce leprosy or other skin-diseases; so far, therefore, they support the
view that the pig must have been sacred in Egypt, since the effect of drinking
its milk was believed to be leprosy.

Again, the rule that, after touching a pig, a man had to wash himself and
his clothes, also favours the view of the sanctity of the pig. For it is a
common belief that the effect of contact with a sacred object must be removed,
by washing or otherwise, before a man is free to mingle with his fellows. Thus
the Jews wash their hands after reading the sacred scriptures. Before coming
forth from the tabernacle after the sin-offering, the high priest had to wash
himself, and put off the garments which he had worn in the holy place. It was
a rule of Greek ritual that, in offering an expiatory sacrifice, the
sacrificer should not touch the sacrifice, and that, after the offering was
made, he must wash his body and his clothes in a river or spring before he
could enter a city or his own house. The Polynesians felt strongly the need of
ridding themselves of the sacred contagion, if it may be so called, which they
caught by touching sacred objects. Various ceremonies were performed for the
purpose of removing this contagion. We have seen, for example, how in Tonga a
man who happened to touch a sacred chief, or anything personally belonging to
him, had to perform a certain ceremony before he could feed himself with his
hands; otherwise it was believed that he would swell up and die, or at least
be afflicted with scrofula or some other disease. We have seen, too, what
fatal effects are supposed to follow, and do actually follow, from contact
with a sacred object in New Zealand. In short, primitive man believes that
what is sacred is dangerous; it is pervaded by a sort of electrical sanctity
which communicates a shock to, even if it does not kill, whatever comes in
contact with it. Hence the savage is unwilling to touch or even to see that
which he deems peculiarly holy. Thus Bechuanas, of the Crocodile clan, think
it hateful and unlucky to meet or see a crocodile; the sight is thought to
cause inflammation of the eyes. Yet the crocodile is their most sacred object;
they call it their father, swear by it, and celebrate it in their festivals.
The goat is the sacred animal of the Madenassana Bushmen; yet to look upon it
would be to render the man for the time impure, as well as to cause him
undefined uneasiness. The Elk clan, among the Omaha Indians, believe that
even to touch the male elk would be followed by an eruption of boils and white
spots on the body. Members of the Reptile clan in the same tribe think that if
one of them touches or smells a snake, it will make his hair white. In Samoa
people whose god was a butterfly believed that if they caught a butterfly it
would strike them dead. Again, in Samoa the reddish-seared leaves of the
banana-tree were commonly used as plates for handing food; but if any member
of the Wild Pigeon family had used banana leaves for this purpose, it was
supposed that he would suffer from rheumatic swellings or an eruption all over
the body like chicken-pox. The Mori clan of the Bhils in Central India worship
the peacock as their totem and make offerings of grain to it; yet members of
the clan believe that were they even to set foot on the tracks of a peacock
they would afterwards suffer from some disease, and if a woman sees a peacock
she must veil her face and look away. Thus the primitive mind seems to
conceive of holiness as a sort of dangerous virus, which a prudent man will
shun as far as possible, and of which, if he should chance to be infected by
it, he will carefully disinfect himself by some form of ceremonial
purification.

In the light of these parallels the beliefs and customs of the Egyptians
touching the pig are probably to be explained as based upon an opinion of the
extreme sanctity rather than of the extreme uncleanness of the animal; or
rather, to put it more correctly, they imply that the animal was looked on,
not simply as a filthy and disgusting creature, but as a being endowed with
high supernatural powers, and that as such it was regarded with that primitive
sentiment of religious awe and fear in which the feelings of reverence and
abhorrence are almost equally blended. The ancients themselves seem to have
been aware that there was another side to the horror with which swine seemed
to inspire the Egyptians. For the Greek astronomer and mathematician Eudoxus,
who resided fourteen months in Egypt and conversed with the priests, was of
opinion that the Egyptians spared the pig, not out of abhorrence, but from a
regard to its utility in agriculture; for, according to him, when the Nile had
subsided, herds of swine were turned loose over the fields to tread the seed
down into the moist earth. But when a being is thus the object of mixed and
implicitly contradictory feelings, he may be said to occupy a position of
unstable equilibrium. In course of time one of the contradictory feelings is
likely to prevail over the other, and according as the feeling which finally
predominates is that of reverence or abhorrence, the being who is the object
of it will rise into a god or sink into a devil. The latter, on the whole, was
the fate of the pig in Egypt. For in historical times the fear and horror of
the pig seem certainly to have outweighed the reverence and worship of which
he may once have been the object, and of which, even in his fallen state, he
never quite lost trace. He came to be looked on as an embodiment of Set or
Typhon, the Egyptian devil and enemy of Osiris. For it was in the shape of a
black pig that Typhon injured the eye of the god Horus, who burned him and
instituted the sacrifice of the pig, the sun-god Ra having declared the beast
abominable. Again, the story that Typhon was hunting a boar when he discovered
and mangled the body of Osiris, and that this was the reason why pigs were
sacrificed once a year, is clearly a modernised version of an older story that
Osiris, like Adonis and Attis, was slain or mangled by a boar, or by Typhon in
the form of a boar. Thus, the annual sacrifice of a pig to Osiris might
naturally be interpreted as vengeance inflicted on the hostile animal that had
slain or mangled the god. But, in the first place, when an animal is thus
killed as a solemn sacrifice once and once only in the year, it generally or
always means that the animal is divine, that he is spared and respected the
rest of the year as a god and slain, when he is slain, also in the character
of a god. In the second place, the examples of Dionysus and Demeter, if not of
Attis and Adonis, have taught us that the animal which is sacrificed to a god
on the ground that he is the god's enemy may have been, and probably was,
originally the god himself. Therefore, the annual sacrifice of a pig to
Osiris, coupled with the alleged hostility of the animal to the god, tends to
show, first, that originally the pig was a god, and, second, that he was
Osiris. At a later age, when Osiris became anthropomorphic and his original
relation to the pig had been forgotten, the animal was first distinguished
from him, and afterwards opposed as an enemy to him by mythologists who could
think of no reason for killing a beast in connexion with the worship of a god
except that the beast was the god's enemy; or, as Plutarch puts it, not that
which is dear to the gods, but that which is the contrary, is fit to be
sacrificed. At this later stage the havoc which a wild boar notoriously makes
amongst the corn would supply a plausible reason for regarding him as the foe
of the corn-spirit, though originally, if I am right, the very freedom with
which the boar ranged at will through the corn led people to identify him with
the corn-spirit, to whom he was afterwards opposed as an enemy.

The view which identifies the pig with Osiris derives not a little support
from the sacrifice of pigs to him on the very day on which, according to
tradition, Osiris himself was killed; for thus the killing of the pig was the
annual representation of the killing of Osiris, just as the throwing of the
pigs into the caverns at the Thesmophoria was an annual representation of the
descent of Persephone into the lower world; and both customs are parallel to
the European practice of killing a goat, cock, and so forth, at harvest as a
representative of the corn-spirit.

Again, the theory that the pig, originally Osiris himself, afterwards came
to be regarded as an embodiment of his enemy Typhon, is supported by the
similar relation of red-haired men and red oxen to Typhon. For in regard to
the red-haired men who were burned and whose ashes were scattered with
winnowing-fans, we have seen fair grounds for believing that originally, like
the red-haired puppies killed at Rome in spring, they were representatives of
the corn-spirit himself that is, of Osiris, and were slain for the express
purpose of making the corn turn red or golden. Yet at a later time these men
were explained to be representatives, not of Osiris, but of his enemy Typhon,
and the killing of them was regarded as an act of vengeance inflicted on the
enemy of the god. Similarly, the red oxen sacrificed by the Egyptians were
said to be offered on the ground of their resemblance to Typhon; though it is
more likely that originally they were slain on the ground of their resemblance
to the corn-spirit Osiris. We have seen that the ox is a common representative
of the corn-spirit and is slain as such on the harvest-field.

Osiris was regularly identified with the bull Apis of Memphis and the bull
Mnevis of Heliopolis. But it is hard to say whether these bulls were
embodiments of him as the corn-spirit, as the red oxen appear to have been, or
whether they were not in origin entirely distinct deities who came to be fused
with Osiris at a later time. The universality of the worship of these two
bulls seems to put them on a different footing from the ordinary sacred
animals whose worships were purely local. But whatever the original relation
of Apis to Osiris may have been, there is one fact about the former which
ought not to be passed over in a disquisition on the custom of killing a god.
Although the bull Apis was worshipped as a god with much pomp and profound
reverence, he was not suffered to live beyond a certain length of time which
was prescribed by the sacred books, and on the expiry of which he was drowned
in a holy spring. The limit, according to Plutarch, was twenty-five years; but
it cannot always have been enforced, for the tombs of the Apis bulls have been
discovered in modern times, and from the inscriptions on them it appears that
in the twenty-second dynasty two of the holy steers lived more than twenty-six
years.

5. Virbius and theHorse.

WE are now in a position to hazard a conjecture as to the meaning of the
tradition that Virbius, the first of the divine Kings of the Wood at Aricia,
had been killed in the character of Hippolytus by horses. Having found, first,
that spirits of the corn are not infrequently represented in the form of
horses; and, second, that the animal which in later legends is said to have
injured the god was sometimes originally the god himself, we may conjecture
that the horses by which Virbius or Hippolytus was said to have been slain
were really embodiments of him as a deity of vegetation. The myth that he had
been killed by horses was probably invented to explain certain features in his
worship, amongst others the custom of excluding horses from his sacred grove.
For myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their
fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have
been long forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile
old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd practice. In
the case before us we may be sure that the myth is more modern than the custom
and by no means represents the original reason for excluding horses from the
grove. From their exclusion it might be inferred that horses could not be the
sacred animals or embodiments of the god of the grove. But the inference would
be rash. The goat was at one time a sacred animal or embodiment of Athena, as
may be inferred from the practice of representing the goddess clad in a
goat-skin (aegis). Yet the goat was neither sacrificed to her as a rule, nor
allowed to enter her great sanctuary, the Acropolis at Athens. The reason
alleged for this was that the goat injured the olive, the sacred tree of
Athena. So far, therefore, the relation of the goat to Athena is parallel to
the relation of the horse to Virbius, both animals being excluded from the
sanctuary on the ground of injury done by them to the god. But from Varro we
learn that there was an exception to the rule which excluded the goat from the
Acropolis. Once a year, he says, the goat was driven on to the Acropolis for a
necessary sacrifice. Now, as has been remarked before, when an animal is
sacrificed once and once only in the year, it is probably slain, not as a
victim offered to the god, but as a representative of the god himself.
Therefore we may infer that if a goat was sacrificed on the Acropolis once a
year, it was sacrificed in the character of Athena herself; and it may be
conjectured that the skin of the sacrificed animal was placed on the statue of
the goddess and formed the aegis, which would thus be renewed annually.
Similarly at Thebes in Egypt rams were sacred and were not sacrificed. But on
one day in the year a ram was killed, and its skin was placed on the statue of
the god Ammon. Now, if we knew the ritual of the Arician grove better, we
might find that the rule of excluding horses from it, like the rule of
excluding goats from the Acropolis at Athens, was subject to an annual
exception, a horse being once a year taken into the grove and sacrificed as an
embodiment of the god Virbius. By the usual misunderstanding the horse thus
killed would come in time to be regarded as an enemy offered up in sacrifice
to the god whom he had injured, like the pig which was sacrificed to Demeter
and Osiris or the goat which was sacrificed to Dionysus, and possibly to
Athena. It is so easy for a writer to record a rule without noticing an
exception that we need not wonder at finding the rule of the Arician grove
recorded without any mention of an exception such as I suppose. If we had had
only the statements of Athenaeus and Pliny, we should have known only the rule
which forbade the sacrifice of goats to Athena and excluded them from the
Acropolis, without being aware of the important exception which the fortunate
preservation of Varro's work has revealed to us.

The conjecture that once a year a horse may have been sacrificed in the
Arician grove as a representative of the deity of the grove derives some
support from the similar sacrifice of a horse which took place once a year at
Rome. On the fifteenth of October in each year a chariot-race was run on the
Field of Mars. Stabbed with a spear, the right-hand horse of the victorious
team was then sacrificed to Mars for the purpose of ensuring good crops, and
its head was cut off and adorned with a string of loaves. Thereupon the
inhabitants of two wardsthe Sacred Way and the Suburacontended with each
other who should get the head. If the people of the Sacred Way got it, they
fastened it to a wall of the king's house; if the people of the Subura got it,
they fastened it to the Mamilian tower. The horse's tail was cut off and
carried to the king's house with such speed that the blood dripped on the
hearth of the house. Further, it appears that the blood of the horse was
caught and preserved till the twenty-first of April, when the Vestal Virgins
mixed it with the blood of the unborn calves which had been sacrificed six
days before. The mixture was then distributed to shepherds, and used by them
for fumigating their flocks.

In this ceremony the decoration of the horse's head with a string of
loaves, and the alleged object of the sacrifice, namely, to procure a good
harvest, seem to indicate that the horse was killed as one of those animal
representatives of the corn-spirit of which we have found so many examples.
The custom of cutting off the horse's tail is like the African custom of
cutting off the tails of the oxen and sacrificing them to obtain a good crop.
In both the Roman and the African custom the animal apparently stands for the
corn-spirit, and its fructifying power is supposed to reside especially in its
tail. The latter idea occurs, as we have seen, in European folk-lore. Again,
the practice of fumigating the cattle in spring with the blood of the horse
may be compared with the practice of giving the Old Wife, the Maiden, or the
clyack sheaf as fodder to the horses in spring or the cattle at Christmas,
and giving the Yule Boar to the ploughing oxen or horses to eat in spring. All
these usages aim at ensuring the blessing of the corn-spirit on the homestead
and its inmates and storing it up for another year.

The Roman sacrifice of the October horse, as it was called, carries us
back to the early days when the Subura, afterwards a low and squalid quarter
of the great metropolis, was still a separate village, whose inhabitants
engaged in a friendly contest on the harvest-field with their neighbours of
Rome, then a little rural town. The Field of Mars on which the ceremony took
place lay beside the Tiber, and formed part of the king's domain down to the
abolition of the monarchy. For tradition ran that at the time when the last of
the kings was driven from Rome, the corn stood ripe for the sickle on the
crown lands beside the river; but no one would eat the accursed grain and it
was flung into the river in such heaps that, the water being low with the
summer heat, it formed the nucleus of an island. The horse sacrifice was thus
an old autumn custom observed upon the king's corn-fields at the end of the
harvest. The tail and blood of the horse, as the chief parts of the
corn-spirit's representative, were taken to the king's house and kept there;
just as in Germany the harvest-cock is nailed on the gable or over the door of
the farmhouse; and as the last sheaf, in the form of the Maiden, is carried
home and kept over the fireplace in the Highlands of Scotland. Thus the
blessing of the corn-spirit was brought to the king's house and hearth and,
through them, to the community of which he was the head. Similarly in the
spring and autumn customs of Northern Europe the May-pole is sometimes set up
in front of the house of the mayor or burgomaster, and the last sheaf at
harvest is brought to him as the head of the village. But while the tail and
blood fell to the king, the neighbouring village of the Subura, which no doubt
once had a similar ceremony of its own, was gratified by being allowed to
compete for the prize of the horse's head. The Mamilian tower, to which the
Suburans nailed the horse's head when they succeeded in carrying it off,
appears to have been a peel-tower or keep of the old Mamilian family, the
magnates of the village. The ceremony thus performed on the king's fields and
at his house on behalf of the whole town and of the neighbouring village
presupposes a time when each township performed a similar ceremony on its own
fields. In the rural districts of Latium the villages may have continued to
observe the custom, each on its own land, long after the Roman hamlets had
merged their separate harvest-homes in the common celebration on the king's
lands. There is no intrinsic improbability in the supposition that the sacred
grove of Aricia, like the Field of Mars at Rome, may have been the scene of a
common harvest celebration, at which a horse was sacrificed with the same rude
rites on behalf of the neighbouring villages. The horse would represent the
fructifying spirit both of the tree and of the corn, for the two ideas melt
into each other, as we see in customs like the Harvest-May.

Chapter 50. Eating the God.

1. The Sacrament of First-Fruits

WE have now seen that the corn-spirit is represented sometimes in human,
sometimes in animal form, and that in both cases he is killed in the person of
his representative and eaten sacramentally. To find examples of actually
killing the human representative of the corn-spirit we had naturally to go to
savage races; but the harvest-suppers of our European peasants have furnished
unmistakable examples of the sacramental eating of animals as representatives
of the corn-spirit. But further, as might have been anticipated, the new corn
is itself eaten sacramentally, that is, as the body of the corn-spirit. In
Wermland, Sweden, the farmer's wife uses the grain of the last sheaf to bake a
loaf in the shape of a little girl; this loaf is divided amongst the whole
household and eaten by them. Here the loaf represents the corn-spirit
conceived as a maiden; just as in Scotland the corn-spirit is similarly
conceived and represented by the last sheaf made up in the form of a woman and
bearing the name of the Maiden. As usual, the corn-spirit is believed to
reside in the last sheaf; and to eat a loaf made from the last sheaf is,
therefore, to eat the corn-spirit itself. Similarly at La Palisse, in France,
a man made of dough is hung upon the fir-tree which is carried on the last
harvest-waggon. The tree and the dough-man are taken to the mayor's house and
kept there till the vintage is over. Then the close of the harvest is
celebrated by a feast at which the mayor breaks the dough-man in pieces and
gives the pieces to the people to eat.

In these examples the corn-spirit is represented and eaten in human shape.
In other cases, though the new corn is not baked in loaves of human shape,
still the solemn ceremonies with which it is eaten suffice to indicate that it
is partaken of sacramentally, that is, as the body of the corn-spirit. For
example, the following ceremonies used to be observed by Lithuanian peasants
at eating the new corn. About the time of the autumn sowing, when all the corn
had been got in and the threshing had begun, each farmer held a festival
called Sabarios, that is, the mixing or throwing together. He took nine good
handfuls of each kind of cropwheat, barley, oats, flax, beans, lentils, and
the rest; and each handful he divided into three parts. The twentyseven
portions of each grain were then thrown on a heap and all mixed up together.
The grain used had to be that which was first threshed and winnowed and which
had been set aside and kept for this purpose. A part of the grain thus mixed
was employed to bake little loaves, one for each of the household; the rest
was mixed with more barley or oats and made into beer. The first beer brewed
from this mixture was for the drinking of the farmer, his wife, and children;
the second brew was for the servants. The beer being ready, the farmer chose
an evening when no stranger was expected. Then he knelt down before the barrel
of beer, drew a jugful of the liquor and poured it on the bung of the barrel,
saying, O fruitful earth, make rye and barley and all kinds of corn to
flourish. Next he took the jug to the parlour, where his wife and children
awaited him. On the floor of the parlour lay bound a black or white or
speckled (not a red) cock and a hen of the same colour and of the same brood,
which must have been hatched within the year. Then the farmer knelt down, with
the jug in his hand, and thanked God for the harvest and prayed for a good
crop next year. Next all lifted up their hands and said, O God, and thou, O
earth, we give you this cock and hen as a free-will offering. With that the
farmer killed the fowls with the blows of a wooden spoon, for he might not cut
their heads off. After the first prayer and after killing each of the birds he
poured out a third of the beer. Then his wife boiled the fowls in a new pot
which had never been used before. After that, a bushel was set, bottom
upwards, on the floor, and on it were placed the little loaves mentioned above
and the boiled fowls. Next the new beer was fetched, together with a ladle and
three mugs, none of which was used except on this occasion. When the farmer
had ladled the beer into the mugs, the family knelt down round the bushel. The
father then uttered a prayer and drank off the three mugs of beer. The rest
followed his example. Then the loaves and the flesh of the fowls were eaten,
after which the beer went round again, till every one had emptied each of the
three mugs nine times. None of the food should remain over; but if anything
did happen to be left, it was consumed next morning with the same ceremonies.
The bones were given to the dog to eat; if he did not eat them all up, the
remains were buried under the dung in the cattle-stall. This ceremony was
observed at the beginning of December. On the day on which it took place no
bad word might be spoken.

Such was the custom about two hundred years or more ago. At the present
day in Lithuania, when new potatoes or loaves made from the new corn are being
eaten, all the people at table pull each other's hair. The meaning of this
last custom is obscure, but a similar custom was certainly observed by the
heathen Lithuanians at their solemn sacrifices. Many of the Esthonians of the
island of Oesel will not eat bread baked of the new corn till they have first
taken a bite at a piece of iron. The iron is here plainly a charm, intended to
render harmless the spirit that is in the corn. In Sutherlandshire at the
present day, when the new potatoes are dug all the family must taste them,
otherwise the spirits in them [the potatoes] take offence, and the potatoes
would not keep. In one part of Yorkshire it is still customary for the
clergyman to cut the first corn; and my informant believes that the corn so
cut is used to make the communion bread. If the latter part of the custom is
correctly reported (and analogy is all in its favour), it shows how the
Christian communion has absorbed within itself a sacrament which is doubtless
far older than Christianity.

The Aino or Ainu of Japan are said to distinguish various kinds of millet
as male and female respectively, and these kinds, taken together, are called
the divine husband and wife cereal (Umurek haru kamui). Therefore before
millet is pounded and made into cakes for general eating, the old men have a
few made for themselves first to worship. When they are ready they pray to
them very earnestly and say: 'O thou cereal deity, we worship thee. Thou hast
grown very well this year, and thy flavour will be sweet. Thou art good. The
goddess of fire will be glad, and we also shall rejoice greatly. O thou god, O
thou divine cereal, do thou nourish the people. I now partake of thee. I
worship thee and give thee thanks.' After having thus prayed, they, the
worshippers, take a cake and eat it, and from this time the people may all
partake of the new millet. And so with many gestures of homage and words of
prayer this kind of food is dedicated to the well-being of the Ainu. No doubt
the cereal offering is regarded as a tribute paid to a god, but that god is no
other than the seed itself; and it is only a god in so far as it is beneficial
to the human body.

At the close of the rice harvest in the East Indian island of Buru, each
clan meets at a common sacramental meal, to which every member of the clan is
bound to contribute a little of the new rice. This meal is called eating the
soul of the rice, a name which clearly indicates the sacramental character of
the repast. Some of the rice is also set apart and offered to the spirits.
Amongst the Alfoors of Minahassa, in Celebes, the priest sows the first
rice-seed and plucks the first ripe rice in each field. This rice he roasts
and grinds into meal, and gives some of it to each of the household. Shortly
before the rice-harvest in Boland Mongondo, another district of Celebes, an
offering is made of a small pig or a fowl. Then the priest plucks a little
rice, first on his own field and next on those of his neighbours. All the rice
thus plucked by him he dries along with his own, and then gives it back to the
respective owners, who have it ground and boiled. When it is boiled the women
take it back, with an egg, to the priest, who offers the egg in sacrifice and
returns the rice to the women. Of this rice every member of the family, down
to the youngest child, must partake. After this ceremony every one is free to
get in his rice.

Amongst the Burghers or Badagas, a tribe of the Neilgherry Hills in
Southern India, the first handful of seed is sown and the first sheaf reaped
by a Curumbar, a man of a different tribe, the members of which the Burghers
regard as sorcerers. The grain contained in the first sheaf is that day
reduced to meal, made into cakes, and, being offered as a first-fruit
oblation, is, together with the remainder of the sacrificed animal, partaken
of by the Burgher and the whole of his family, as the meat of a federal
offering and sacrifice. Among the Hindoos of Southern India the eating of the
new rice is the occasion of a family festival called Pongol. The new rice is
boiled in a new pot on a fire which is kindled at noon on the day when,
according to Hindoo astrologers, the sun enters the tropic of Capricorn. The
boiling of the pot is watched with great anxiety by the whole family, for as
the milk boils, so will the coming year be. If the milk boils rapidly, the
year will be prosperous; but it will be the reverse if the milk boils slowly.
Some of the new boiled rice is offered to the image of Ganesa; then every one
partakes of it. In some parts of Northern India the festival of the new crop
is known as Navan, that is, new grain. When the crop is ripe, the owner
takes the omens, goes to the field, plucks five or six ears of barley in the
spring crop and one of the millets in the autumn harvest. This is brought
home, parched, and mixed with coarse sugar, butter, and curds. Some of it is
thrown on the fire in the name of the village gods and deceased ancestors; the
rest is eaten by the family.

The ceremony of eating the new yams at Onitsha, on the Niger, is thus
described: Each headman brought out six yams, and cut down young branches of
palm-leaves and placed them before his gate, roasted three of the yams, and
got some kola-nuts and fish. After the yam is roasted, the Libia, or country
doctor, takes the yam, scrapes it into a sort of meal, and divides it into
halves; he then takes one piece, and places it on the lips of the person who
is going to eat the new yam. The eater then blows up the steam from the hot
yam, and afterwards pokes the whole into his mouth, and says, 'I thank God for
being permitted to eat the new yam'; he then begins to chew it heartily, with
fish likewise.

Among the Nandi of British East Africa, when the eleusine grain is
ripening in autumn, every woman who owns a corn-field goes out into it with
her daughters, and they all pluck some of the ripe grain. Each of the women
then fixes one grain in her necklace and chews another, which she rubs on her
forehead, throat, and breast. No mark of joy escapes them; sorrowfully they
cut a basketful of the new corn, and carrying it home place it in the loft to
dry. As the ceiling is of wickerwork, a good deal of the grain drops through
the crevices and falls into the fire, where it explodes with a crackling
noise. The people make no attempt to prevent this waste; for they regard the
crackling of the grain in the fire as a sign that the souls of the dead are
partaking of it. A few days later porridge is made from the new grain and
served up with milk at the evening meal. All the members of the family take
some of the porridge and dab it on the walls and roofs of the huts; also they
put a little in their mouths and spit it out towards the east and on the
outside of the huts. Then, holding up some of the grain in his hand, the head
of the family prays to God for health and strength, and likewise for milk, and
everybody present repeats the words of the prayer after him.

Amongst the Caffres of Natal and Zululand, no one may eat of the new
fruits till after a festival which marks the beginning of the Caffre year and
falls at the end of December or the beginning of January. All the people
assemble at the king's kraal, where they feast and dance. Before they separate
the dedication of the people takes place. Various fruits of the earth, as
corn, mealies, and pumpkins, mixed with the flesh of a sacrificed animal and
with medicine, are boiled in great pots, and a little of this food is placed
in each man's mouth by the king himself. After thus partaking of the
sanctified fruits, a man is himself sanctified for the whole year, and may
immediately get in his crops. It is believed that if any man were to partake
of the new fruits before the festival, he would die; if he were detected, he
would be put to death, or at least all his cattle would be taken from him. The
holiness of the new fruits is well marked by the rule that they must be cooked
in a special pot which is used only for this purpose, and on a new fire
kindled by a magician through the friction of two sticks which are called
husband and wife.

Among the Bechuanas it is a rule that before they partake of the new crops
they must purify themselves. The purification takes place at the commencement
of the new year on a day in January which is fixed by the chief. It begins in
the great kraal of the tribe, where all the adult males assemble. Each of them
takes in his hand leaves of a gourd called by the natives lerotse (described
as something between a pumpkin and a vegetable marrow); and having crushed the
leaves he anoints with the expressed juice his big toes and his navel; many
people indeed apply the juice to all the joints of their body, but the
better-informed say that this is a vulgar departure from ancient custom. After
this ceremony in the great kraal every man goes home to his own kraal,
assembles all the members of his family, men, women, and children, and smears
them all with the juice of the lerotse leaves. Some of the leaves are also
pounded, mixed with milk in a large wooden dish, and given to the dogs to lap
up. Then the porridge plate of each member of the family is rubbed with the
lerotse leaves. When this purification has been completed, but not before,
the people are free to eat of the new crops.

The Bororo Indians of Brazil think that it would be certain death to eat
the new maize before it has been blessed by the medicine-man. The ceremony of
blessing it is as follows. The half-ripe husk is washed and placed before the
medicine-man, who by dancing and singing for several hours, and by incessant
smoking, works himself up into a state of ecstasy, whereupon he bites into the
husk, trembling in every limb and uttering shrieks from time to time. A
similar ceremony is performed whenever a large animal or a large fish is
killed. The Bororo are firmly persuaded that were any man to touch
unconsecrated maize or meat, before the ceremony had been completed, he and
his whole tribe would perish.

Amongst the Creek Indians of North America, the busk or festival of
first-fruits was the chief ceremony of the year. It was held in July or
August, when the corn was ripe, and marked the end of the old year and the
beginning of the new one. Before it took place, none of the Indians would eat
or even handle any part of the new harvest. Sometimes each town had its own
busk; sometimes several towns united to hold one in common. Before celebrating
the busk, the people provided themselves with new clothes and new household
utensils and furniture; they collected their old clothes and rubbish, together
with all the remaining grain and other old provisions, cast them together in
one common heap, and consumed them with fire. As a preparation for the
ceremony, all the fires in the village were extinguished, and the ashes swept
clean away. In particular, the hearth or altar of the temple was dug up and
the ashes carried out. Then the chief priest put some roots of the
button-snake plant, with some green tobacco leaves and a little of the new
fruits, at the bottom of the fireplace, which he afterwards commanded to be
covered up with white clay, and wetted over with clean water. A thick arbour
of green branches of young trees was then made over the altar. Meanwhile the
women at home were cleaning out their houses, renewing the old hearths, and
scouring all the cooking vessels that they might be ready to receive the new
fire and the new fruits. The public or sacred square was carefully swept of
even the smallest crumbs of previous feasts, for fear of polluting the
first-fruit offerings. Also every vessel that had contained or had been used
about any food during the expiring year was removed from the temple before
sunset. Then all the men who were not known to have violated the law of the
first-fruit offering and that of marriage during the year were summoned by a
crier to enter the holy square and observe a solemn fast. But the women
(except six old ones), the children, and all who had not attained the rank of
warriors were forbidden to enter the square. Sentinels were also posted at the
corners of the square to keep out all persons deemed impure and all animals. A
strict fast was then observed for two nights and a day, the devotees drinking
a bitter decoction of button-snake root in order to vomit and purge their
sinful bodies. That the people outside the square might also be purified, one
of the old men laid down a quantity of green tobacco at a corner of the
square; this was carried off by an old woman and distributed to the people
without, who chewed and swallowed it in order to afflict their souls. During
this general fast, the women, children, and men of weak constitution were
allowed to eat after mid-day, but not before. On the morning when the fast
ended, the women brought a quantity of the old year's food to the outside of
the sacred square. These provisions were then fetched in and set before the
famished multitude, but all traces of them had to be removed before noon. When
the sun was declining from the meridian, all the people were commanded by the
voice of a crier to stay within doors, to do no bad act, and to be sure to
extinguish and throw away every spark of the old fire. Universal silence now
reigned. Then the high priest made the new fire by the friction of two pieces
of wood, and placed it on the altar under the green arbour. This new fire was
believed to atone for all past crimes except murder. Next a basket of new
fruits was brought; the high priest took out a little of each sort of fruit,
rubbed it with bear's oil, and offered it, together with some flesh, to the
bountiful holy spirit of fire, as a first-fruit offering, and an annual
oblation for sin. He also consecrated the sacred emetics (the button-snake
root and the cassina or black-drink) by pouring a little of them into the
fire. The persons who had remained outside now approached, without entering,
the sacred square; and the chief priest thereupon made a speech, exhorting the
people to observe their old rites and customs, announcing that the new divine
fire had purged away the sins of the past year, and earnestly warning the
women that, if any of them had not extinguished the old fire, or had
contracted any impurity, they must forthwith depart, lest the divine fire
should spoil both them and the people. Some of the new fire was then set down
outside the holy square; the women carried it home joyfully, and laid it on
their unpolluted hearths. When several towns had united to celebrate the
festival, the new fire might thus be carried for several miles. The new fruits
were then dressed on the new fires and eaten with bear's oil, which was deemed
indispensable. At one point of the festival the men rubbed the new corn
between their hands, then on their faces and breasts. During the festival
which followed, the warriors, dressed in their wild martial array, their heads
covered with white down and carrying white feathers in their hands, danced
round the sacred arbour, under which burned the new fire. The ceremonies
lasted eight days, during which the strictest continence was practised.
Towards the conclusion of the festival the warriors fought a mock battle; then
the men and women together, in three circles, danced round the sacred fire.
Lastly, all the people smeared themselves with white clay and bathed in
running water. They came out of the water believing that no evil could now
befall them for what they had done amiss in the past. So they departed in joy
and peace.

To this day, also, the remnant of the Seminole Indians of Florida, a
people of the same stock as the Creeks, hold an annual purification and
festival called the Green Corn Dance, at which the new corn is eaten. On the
evening of the first day of the festival they quaff a nauseous Black Drink,
as it is called, which acts both as an emetic and a purgative; they believe
that he who does not drink of this liquor cannot safely eat the new green
corn, and besides that he will be sick at some time in the year. While the
liquor is being drunk, the dancing begins, and the medicine-men join in it.
Next day they eat of the green corn; the following day they fast, probably
from fear of polluting the sacred food in their stomachs by contact with
common food; but the third day they hold a great feast.

Even tribes which do not till the ground sometimes observe analogous
ceremonies when they gather the first wild fruits or dig the first roots of
the season. Thus among the Salish and Tinneh Indians of North-West America,
before the young people eat the first berries or roots of the season, they
always addressed the fruit or plant, and begged for its favour and aid. In
some tribes regular First-fruit ceremonies were annually held at the time of
picking the wild fruit or gathering the roots, and also among the
salmon-eating tribes when the run of the 'sockeye' salmon began. These
ceremonies were not so much thanksgivings, as performances to ensure a
plentiful crop or supply of the particular object desired, for if they were
not properly and reverently carried out there was danger of giving offence to
the 'spirits' of the objects, and being deprived of them. For example, these
Indians are fond of the young shoots or suckers of the wild raspberry, and
they observe a solemn ceremony at eating the first of them in season. The
shoots are cooked in a new pot: the people assemble and stand in a great
circle with closed eyes, while the presiding chief or medicine-man invokes the
spirit of the plant, begging that it will be propitious to them and grant them
a good supply of suckers. After this part of the ceremony is over the cooked
suckers are handed to the presiding officer in a newly carved dish, and a
small portion is given to each person present, who reverently and decorously
eats it.

The Thompson Indians of British Columbia cook and eat the sunflower root
(Balsamorrhiza sagittata, Nutt.), but they used to regard it as a mysterious
being, and observed a number of taboos in connexion with it; for example,
women who were engaged in digging or cooking the root must practice
continence, and no man might come near the oven where the women were baking
the root. When young people ate the first berries, roots, or other products of
the season, they addressed a prayer to the Sunflower-Root as follows: I
inform thee that I intend to eat thee. Mayest thou always help me to ascend,
so that I may always be able to reach the tops of mountains, and may I never
be clumsy! I ask this from thee, Sunflower-Root. Thou art the greatest of all
in mystery. To omit this prayer would make the eater lazy and cause him to
sleep long in the morning.

These customs of the Thompson and other Indian tribes of North-West
America are instructive, because they clearly indicate the motive, or at least
one of the motives, which underlies the ceremonies observed at eating the
first fruits of the season. That motive in the case of these Indians is simply
a belief that the plant itself is animated by a conscious and more or less
powerful spirit, who must be propitiated before the people can safely partake
of the fruits or roots which are supposed to be part of his body. Now if this
is true of wild fruits and roots, we may infer with some probability that it
is also true of cultivated fruits and roots, such as yams, and in particular
that it holds good of the cereals, such as wheat, barley, oats, rice, and
maize. In all cases it seems reasonable to infer that the scruples which
savages manifest at eating the first fruits of any crop, and the ceremonies
which they observe before they overcome their scruples, are due at least in
large measure to a notion that the plant or tree is animated by a spirit or
even a deity, whose leave must be obtained, or whose favour must be sought,
before it is possible to partake with safety of the new crop. This indeed is
plainly affirmed of the Aino: they call the millet the divine cereal, the
cereal deity, and they pray to and worship him before they will eat of the
cakes made from the new millet. And even where the indwelling divinity of the
first fruits is not expressly affirmed, it appears to be implied both by the
solemn preparations made for eating them and by the danger supposed to be
incurred by persons who venture to partake of them without observing the
prescribed ritual. In all such cases, accordingly, we may not improperly
describe the eating of the new fruits as a sacrament or communion with a
deity, or at all events with a powerful spirit.

Among the usages which point to this conclusion are the custom of
employing either new or specially reserved vessels to hold the new fruits, and
the practice of purifying the persons of the communicants before it is lawful
to engage in the solemn act of communion with the divinity. Of all the modes
of purification adopted on these occasions none perhaps brings out the
sacramental virtue of the rite so clearly as the Creek and Seminole practice
of taking a purgative before swallowing the new corn. The intention is thereby
to prevent the sacred food from being polluted by contact with common food in
the stomach of the eater. For the same reason Catholics partake of the
Eucharist fasting; and among the pastoral Masai of Eastern Africa the young
warriors, who live on meat and milk exclusively, are obliged to eat nothing
but milk for so many days and then nothing but meat for so many more, and
before they pass from the one food to the other they must make sure that none
of the old food remains in their stomachs; this they do by swallowing a very
powerful purgative and emetic.

In some of the festivals which we have examined, the sacrament of
first-fruits is combined with a sacrifice or presentation of them to gods or
spirits, and in course of time the sacrifice of first-fruits tends to throw
the sacrament into the shade, if not to supersede it. The mere fact of
offering the first-fruits to the gods or spirits comes now to be thought a
sufficient preparation for eating the new corn; the higher powers having
received their share, man is free to enjoy the rest. This mode of viewing the
new fruits implies that they are regarded no longer as themselves instinct
with divine life, but merely as a gift bestowed by the gods upon man, who is
bound to express his gratitude and homage to his divine benefactors by
returning to them a portion of their bounty.

2. Eating the God among the Aztecs

THE CUSTOM of eating bread sacramentally as the body of a god was practised
by the Aztecs before the discovery and conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards.
Twice a year, in May and December, an image of the great Mexican god
Huitzilopochtli or Vitzilipuztli was made of dough, then broken in pieces, and
solemnly eaten by his worshippers. The May ceremony is thus described by the
historian Acosta: The Mexicans in the month of May made their principal feast
to their god Vitzilipuztli, and two days before this feast, the virgins
whereof I have spoken (the which were shut up and secluded in the same temple
and were as it were religious women) did mingle a quantity of the seed of
beets with roasted maize, and then they did mould it with honey, making an
idol of that paste in bigness like to that of wood, putting instead of eyes
grains of green glass, of blue or white; and for teeth grains of maize set
forth with all the ornament and furniture that I have said. This being
finished, all the noblemen came and brought it an exquisite and rich garment,
like unto that of the idol, wherewith they did attire it. Being thus clad and
deckt, they did set it in an azured chair and in a litter to carry it on their
shoulders. The morning of this feast being come, an hour before day all the
maidens came forth attired in white, with new ornaments, the which that day
were called the Sisters of their god Vitzilipuztli, they came crowned with
garlands of maize roasted and parched, being like unto azahar or the flower of
orange; and about their necks they had great chains of the same, which went
bauldrick-wise under their left arm. Their cheeks were dyed with vermilion,
their arms from the elbow to the wrist were covered with red parrots'
feathers. Young men, dressed in red robes and crowned like the virgins with
maize, then carried the idol in its litter to the foot of the great
pyramid-shaped temple, up the steep and narrow steps of which it was drawn to
the music of flutes, trumpets, cornets, and drums. While they mounted up the
idol all the people stood in the court with much reverence and fear. Being
mounted to the top, and that they had placed it in a little lodge of roses
which they held ready, presently came the young men, which strewed many
flowers of sundry kinds, wherewith they filled the temple both within and
without. This done, all the virgins came out of their convent, bringing pieces
of paste compounded of beets and roasted maize, which was of the same paste
whereof their idol was made and compounded, and they were of the fashion of
great bones. They delivered them to the young men, who carried them up and
laid them at the idol's feet, wherewith they filled the whole place that it
could receive no more. They called these morsels of paste the flesh and bones
of Vitzilipuztli. Having laid abroad these bones, presently came all the
ancients of the temple, priests, Levites, and all the rest of the ministers,
according to their dignities and antiquities (for herein there was a strict
order amongst them) one after another, with their veils of diverse colours and
works, every one according to his dignity and office, having garlands upon
their heads and chains of flowers about their necks; after them came their
gods and goddesses whom they worshipped, of diverse figures, attired in the
same livery; then putting themselves in order about those morsels and pieces
of paste, they used certain ceremonies with singing and dancing. By means
whereof they were blessed and consecrated for the flesh and bones of this
idol. This ceremony and blessing (whereby they were taken for the flesh and
bones of the idol) being ended, they honoured those pieces in the same sort as
their god.  All the city came to this goodly spectacle, and there was a
commandment very strictly observed throughout all the land, that the day of
the feast of the idol of Vitzilipuztli they should eat no other meat but this
paste, with honey, whereof the idol was made. And this should be eaten at the
point of day, and they should drink no water nor any other thing till after
noon: they held it for an ill sign, yea, for sacrilege to do the contrary: but
after the ceremonies ended, it was lawful for them to eat anything. During the
time of this ceremony they hid the water from their little children,
admonishing all such as had the use of reason not to drink any water; which,
if they did, the anger of God would come upon them, and they should die, which
they did observe very carefully and strictly. The ceremonies, dancing, and
sacrifice ended, the went to unclothe themselves, and the priests and
superiors of the temple took the idol of paste, which they spoiled of all the
ornaments it had, and made many pieces, as well of the idol itself as of the
truncheons which they consecrated, and then they gave them to the people in
manner of a communion, beginning with the greater, and continuing unto the
rest, both men, women, and little children, who received it with such tears,
fear, and reverence as it was an admirable thing, saying that they did eat the
flesh and bones of God, where-with they were grieved. Such as had any sick
folks demanded thereof for them, and carried it with great reverence and
veneration.

From this interesting passage we learn that the ancient Mexicans, even
before the arrival of Christian missionaries, were fully acquainted with the
doctrine of transubstantiation and acted upon it in the solemn rites of their
religion. They believed that by consecrating bread their priests could turn it
into the very body of their god, so that all who thereupon partook of the
consecrated bread entered into a mystic communion with the deity by receiving
a portion of his divine substance into themselves. The doctrine of
transubstantiation, or the magical conversion of bread into flesh, was also
familiar to the Aryans of ancient India long before the spread and even the
rise of Christianity. The Brahmans taught that the rice-cakes offered in
sacrifice were substitutes for human beings, and that they were actually
converted into the real bodies of men by the manipulation of the priest. We
read that when it (the rice-cake) still consists of rice-meal, it is the
hair. When he pours water on it, it becomes skin. When he mixes it, it becomes
flesh: for then it becomes consistent; and consistent also is the flesh. When
it is baked, it becomes bone: for then it becomes somewhat hard; and hard is
the bone. And when he is about to take it off (the fire) and sprinkles it with
butter, he changes it into marrow. This is the completeness which they call
the fivefold animal sacrifice.

Now, too, we can perfectly understand why on the day of their solemn
communion with the deity the Mexicans refused to eat any other food than the
consecrated bread which they revered as the very flesh and bones of their God,
and why up till noon they might drink nothing at all, not even water. They
feared no doubt to defile the portion of God in their stomachs by contact with
common things. A similar pious fear led the Creek and Seminole Indians, as we
saw, to adopt the more thoroughgoing expedient of rinsing out their bodies by
a strong purgative before they dared to partake of the sacrament of
first-fruits.

At the festival of the winter solstice in December the Aztecs killed their
god Huitzilopochtli in effigy first and ate him afterwards. As a preparation
for this solemn ceremony an image of the deity in the likeness of a man was
fashioned out of seeds of various sorts, which were kneaded into a dough with
the blood of children. The bones of the god were represented by pieces of
acacia wood. This image was placed on the chief altar of the temple, and on
the day of the festival the king offered incense to it. Early next day it was
taken down and set on its feet in a great hall. Then a priest, who bore the
name and acted the part of the god Quetzalcoatl, took a flint-tipped dart and
hurled it into the breast of the dough-image, piercing it through and through.
This was called killing the god Huitzilopochtli so that his body might be
eaten. One of the priests cut out the heart of the image and gave it to the
king to eat. The rest of the image was divided into minute pieces, of which
every man great and small, down to the male children in the cradle, receive
one to eat. But no woman might taste a morsel. The ceremony was called
teoqualo, that is, god is eaten.

At another festival the Mexicans made little images like men, which stood
for the cloud-capped mountains. These images were moulded of a paste of
various seeds and were dressed in paper ornaments. Some people fashioned five,
others ten, others as many as fifteen of them. Having been made, they were
placed in the oratory of each house and worshipped. Four times in the course
of the night offerings of food were brought to them in tiny vessels; and
people sang and played the flute before them through all the hours of
darkness. At break of day the priests stabbed the images with a weaver's
instrument, cut off their heads, and tore out their hearts, which they
presented to the master of the house on a green saucer. The bodies of the
images were then eaten by all the family, especially by the servants, in
order that by eating them they might be preserved from certain distempers, to
which those persons who were negligent of worship to those deities conceived
themselves to be subject.

3. Many Manii at Aricia

WE are now able to suggest an explanation of the proverb There are many
Manii at Aricia. Certain loaves made in the shape of men were called by the
Romans maniae, and it appears that this kind of loaf was especially made at
Aricia. Now, Mania, the name of one of these loaves, was also the name of the
Mother or Grandmother of Ghosts, to whom woollen effigies of men and women
were dedicated at the festival of the Compitalia. These effigies were hung at
the doors of all the houses in Rome; one effigy was hung up for every free
person in the house, and one effigy, of a different kind, for every slave. The
reason was that on this day the ghosts of the dead were believed to be going
about, and it was hoped that, either out of good nature or through simple
inadvertence, they would carry off the effigies at the door instead of the
living people in the house. According to tradition, these woollen figures were
substitutes for a former custom of sacrificing human beings. Upon data so
fragmentary and uncertain, it is impossible to build with confidence; but it
seems worth suggesting that the loaves in human form, which appear to have
been baked at Aricia, were sacramental bread, and that in the old days, when
the divine King of the Wood was annually slain, loaves were made in his image,
like the paste figures of the gods in Mexico, and were eaten sacramentally by
his worshippers. The Mexican sacraments in honour of Huitzilopochtli were also
accompanied by the sacrifice of human victims. The tradition that the founder
of the sacred grove at Aricia was a man named Manius, from whom many Manii
were descended, would thus be an etymological myth invented to explain the
name maniae as applied to these sacramental loaves. A dim recollection of
the original connexion of the loaves with human sacrifices may perhaps be
traced in the story that the effigies dedicated to Mania at the Compitalia
were substitutes for human victims. The story itself, however, is probably
devoid of foundation, since the practice of putting up dummies to divert the
attention of ghosts or demons from living people is not uncommon.

For example, the Tibetans stand in fear of innumerable earth-demons, all
of whom are under the authority of Old Mother Khn-ma. This goddess, who may
be compared to the Roman Mania, the Mother or Grandmother of Ghosts, is
dressed in golden-yellow robes, holds a golden noose in her hand, and rides on
a ram. In order to bar the dwelling-house against the foul fiends, of whom Old
Mother Khn-ma is mistress, an elaborate structure somewhat resembling a
chandelier is fixed above the door on the outside of the house. It contains a
ram's skull, a variety of precious objects such as gold-leaf, silver, and
turquoise, also some dry food, such as rice, wheat, and pulse, and finally
images or pictures of a man, a woman, and a house. The object of these
figures of a man, wife, and house is to deceive the demons should they still
come in spite of this offering, and to mislead them into the belief that the
foregoing pictures are the inmates of the house, so that they may wreak their
wrath on these bits of wood and to save the real human occupants. When all is
ready, a priest prays to Old Mother Khn-ma that she would be pleased to
accept these dainty offerings and to close the open doors of the earth, in
order that the demons may not come forth to infest and injure the household.

Again, effigies are often employed as a means of preventing or curing
sickness; the demons of disease either mistake the effigies for living people
or are persuaded or compelled to enter them, leaving the real men and women
well and whole. Thus the Alfoors of Minahassa, in Celebes, will sometimes
transport a sick man to another house, while they leave on his bed a dummy
made up of a pillow and clothes. This dummy the demon is supposed to mistake
for the sick man, who consequently recovers. Cure or prevention of this sort
seems to find especial favour with the natives of Borneo. Thus, when an
epidemic is raging among them, the Dyaks of the Katoengouw River set up wooden
images at their doors in the hope that the demons of the plague may be deluded
into carrying off the effigies instead of the people. Among the Oloh Ngadju of
Borneo, when a sick man is supposed to be suffering from the assaults of a
ghost, puppets of dough or rice-meal are made and thrown under the house as
substitutes for the patient, who thus rids himself of the ghost. In certain of
the western districts of Borneo if a man is taken suddenly and violently sick,
the physician, who in this part of the world is generally an old woman,
fashions a wooden image and brings it seven times into contact with the
sufferer's head, while she says: This image serves to take the place of the
sick man; sickness, pass over into the image. Then, with some rice, salt, and
tobacco in a little basket, the substitute is carried to the spot where the
evil spirit is supposed to have entered into the man. There it is set upright
on the ground, after the physician has invoked the spirit as follows: O
devil, here is an image which stands instead of the sick man. Release the soul
of the sick man and plague the image, for it is indeed prettier and better
than he. Batak magicians can conjure the demon of disease out of the
patient's body into an image made out of a banana-tree with a human face and
wrapt up in magic herbs; the image is then hurriedly removed and thrown away
or buried beyond the boundaries of the village. Sometimes the image, dressed
as a man or a woman according to the sex of the patient, is deposited at a
cross-road or other thoroughfare, in the hope that some passer-by, seeing it,
may start and cry out, Ah! So-and-So is dead; for such an exclamation is
supposed to delude the demon of disease into a belief that he has accomplished
his fell purpose, so he takes himself off and leaves the sufferer to get well.
The Mai Darat, a Sakai tribe of the Malay Peninsula, attribute all kinds of
diseases to the agency of spirits which they call nyani; fortunately,
however, the magician can induce these maleficent beings to come out of the
sick person and take up their abode in rude figures of grass, which are hung
up outside the houses in little bell-shaped shrines decorated with peeled
sticks. During an epidemic of small-pox the Ewe negroes will sometimes clear a
space outside of the town, where they erect a number of low mounds and cover
them with as many little clay figures as there are people in the place. Pots
of food and water are also set out for the refreshment of the spirit of
small-pox who, it is hoped, will take the clay figures and spare the living
folk; and to make assurance doubly sure the road into the town is barricaded
against him.

With these examples before us we may surmise that the woollen effigies,
which at the festival of the Compitalia might be seen hanging at the doors of
all the houses in ancient Rome, were not substitutes for human victims who had
formerly been sacrificed at this season, but rather vicarious offerings
presented to the Mother or Grandmother of Ghosts, in the hope that on her
rounds through the city she would accept or mistake the effigies for the
inmates of the house and so spare the living for another year. It is possible
that the puppets made of rushes, which in the month of May the pontiffs and
Vestal Virgins annually threw into the Tiber from the old Sublician bridge at
Rome, had originally the same significance; that is, they may have been
designed to purge the city from demoniac influence by diverting the attention
of the demons from human beings to the puppets and then toppling the whole
uncanny crew, neck and crop, into the river, which would soon sweep them far
out to sea. In precisely the same way the natives of Old Calabar used
periodically to rid their town of the devils which infested it by luring the
unwary demons into a number of lamentable scarecrows, which they afterwards
flung into the river. This interpretation of the Roman custom is supported to
some extent by the evidence of Plutarch, who speaks of the ceremony as the
greatest of purifications.

Chapter 51. Homeopathic Magic of a Flesh Diet

THE PRACTICE of killing a god has now been traced amongst peoples who have
reached the agricultural stage of society. We have seen that the spirit of the
corn, or of other cultivated plants, is commonly represented either in human
or in animal form, and that in some places a custom has prevailed of killing
annually either the human or the animal representative of the god. One reason
for thus killing the corn-spirit in the person of his representative has been
given implicitly in an earlier part of this work: we may suppose that the
intention was to guard him or her (for the corn-spirit is often feminine) from
the enfeeblement of old age by transferring the spirit, while still hale and
hearty, to the person of a youthful and vigorous successor. Apart from the
desirability of renewing his divine energies, the death of the corn-spirit may
have been deemed inevitable under the sickles or the knives of the reapers,
and his worshippers may accordingly have felt bound to acquiesce in the sad
necessity. But, further, we have found a widespread custom of eating the god
sacramentally, either in the shape of the man or animal who represents the
god, or in the shape of bread made in human or animal form. The reasons for
thus partaking of the body of the god are, from the primitive standpoint,
simple enough. The savage commonly believes that by eating the flesh of an
animal or man he acquires not only the physical, but even the moral and
intellectual qualities which were characteristic of that animal or man; so
when the creature is deemed divine, our simple savage naturally expects to
absorb a portion of its divinity along with its material substance. It may be
well to illustrate by instances this common faith in the acquisition of
virtues or vices of many kinds through the medium of animal food, even when
there is no pretence that the viands consist of the body or blood of a god.
The doctrine forms part of the widely ramified system of sympathetic or
homoeopathic magic.

Thus, for example, the Creeks, Cherokee, and kindred tribes of North
American Indians believe that nature is possest of such a property as to
transfuse into men and animals the qualities, either of the food they use, or
of those objects that are presented to their senses; he who feeds on venison
is, according to their physical system, swifter and more sagacious than the
man who lives on the flesh of the clumsy bear, or helpless dunghill fowls, the
slow-footed tame cattle, or the heavy wallowing swine. This is the reason that
several of their old men recommend, and say, that formerly their greatest
chieftains observed a constant rule in their diet, and seldom ate of any
animal of a gross quality, or heavy motion of body, fancying it conveyed a
dullness through the whole system, and disabled them from exerting themselves
with proper vigour in their martial, civil, and religious duties. The Zaparo
Indians of Ecuador will, unless from necessity, in most cases not eat any
heavy meats, such as tapir and peccary, but confine themselves to birds,
monkeys, deer, fish, etc., principally because they argue that the heavier
meats make them unwieldy, like the animals who supply the flesh, impeding
their agility, and unfitting them for the chase. Similarly some of the
Brazilian Indians would eat no beast, bird, or fish that ran, flew, or swam
slowly, lest by partaking of its flesh they should lose their ability and be
unable to escape from their enemies. The Caribs abstained from the flesh of
pigs lest it should cause them to have small eyes like pigs; and they refused
to partake of tortoises from a fear that if they did so they would become
heavy and stupid like the animal. Among the Fans of West Africa men in the
prime of life never eat tortoises for a similar reason; they imagine that if
they did so, their vigour and fleetness of foot would be gone. But old men may
eat tortoises freely, because having already lost the power of running they
can take no harm from the flesh of the slow-footed creature.

While many savages thus fear to eat the flesh of slow-footed animals lest
they should themselves become slow-footed, the Bushmen of South Africa
purposely ate the flesh of such creatures, and the reason which they gave for
doing so exhibits a curious refinement of savage philosophy. They imagined
that the game which they pursued would be influenced sympathetically by the
food in the body of the hunter, so that if he had eaten of swift-footed
animals, the quarry would be swift-footed also and would escape him; whereas
if he had eaten of slow-footed animals, the quarry would also be slow-footed,
and he would be able to overtake and kill it. For that reason hunters of
gemsbok particularly avoided eating the flesh of the swift and agile
springbok; indeed they would not even touch it with their hands, because they
believed the springbok to be a very lively creature which did not go to sleep
at night, and they thought that if they ate springbok, the gemsbok which they
hunted would likewise not be willing to go to sleep, even at night. How, then,
could they catch it?

The Namaquas abstain from eating the flesh of hares, because they think it
would make them faint-hearted as a hare. But they eat the flesh of the lion,
or drink the blood of the leopard or lion, to get the courage and strength of
these beasts. The Bushmen will not give their children a jackal's heart to
eat, lest it should make them timid like the jackal; but they give them a
leopard's heart to eat to make them brave like the leopard. When a Wagogo man
of East Africa kills a lion, he eats the heart in order to become brave like a
lion; but he thinks that to eat the heart of a hen would make him timid. When
a serious disease has attacked a Zulu kraal, the medicine-man takes the bone
of a very old dog, or the bone of an old cow, bull, or other very old animal,
and administers it to the healthy as well as to the sick people, in order that
they may live to be as old as the animal of whose bone they have partaken. So
to restore the aged Aeson to youth, the witch Medea infused into his veins a
decoction of the liver of the long-lived deer and the head of a crow that had
outlived nine generations of men.

Among the Dyaks of North-West Borneo young men and warriors may not eat
venison, because it would make them as timid as deer; but the women and very
old men are free to eat it. However, among the Kayans of the same region, who
share the same view as to the ill effect of eating venison, men will partake
of the dangerous viand provided it is cooked in the open air, for then the
timid spirit of the animal is supposed to escape at once into the jungle and
not to enter into the eater. The Aino believe that the heart of the
water-ousel is exceedingly wise, and that in speech the bird is most eloquent.
Therefore whenever he is killed, he should be at once torn open and his heart
wrenched out and swallowed before it has time to grow cold or suffer damage of
any kind. If a man swallows it thus, he will become very fluent and wise, and
will be able to argue down all his adversaries. In Northern India people fancy
that if you eat the eyeballs of an owl you will be able like an owl to see in
the dark.

When the Kansas Indians were going to war, a feast used to be held in the
chief's hut, and the principal dish was dog's flesh, because, said the
Indians, the animal who is so brave that he will let himself be cut in pieces
in defence of his master, must needs inspire valour. Men of the Buru and Aru
Islands, East Indies, eat the flesh of dogs in order to be bold and nimble in
war. Amongst the Papuans of the Port Moresby and Motumotu districts, New
Guinea, young lads eat strong pig, wallaby, and large fish, in order to
acquire the strength of the animal or fish. Some of the natives of Northern
Australia fancy that by eating the flesh of the kangaroo or emu they are
enabled to jump or run faster than before. The Miris of Assam prize tiger's
flesh as food for men; it gives them strength and courage. But it is not
suited for women; it would make them too strong-minded. In Corea the bones of
tigers fetch a higher price than those of leopards as a means of inspiring
courage. A Chinaman in Seoul bought and ate a whole tiger to make himself
brave and fierce. In Norse legend, Ingiald, son of King Aunund, was timid in
his youth, but after eating the heart of a wolf he became very bold; Hialto
gained strength and courage by eating the heart of a bear and drinking its
blood.

In Morocco lethargic patients are given ants to swallow, and to eat lion's
flesh will make a coward brave; but people abstain from eating the hearts of
fowls, lest thereby they should be rendered timid. When a child is late in
learning to speak, the Turks of Central Asia will give it the tongues of
certain birds to eat. A North American Indian thought that brandy must be a
decoction of hearts and tongues, because, said he, after drinking it I fear
nothing, and I talk wonderfully. In Java there is a tiny earthworm which now
and then utters a shrill sound like that of the alarum of a small clock. Hence
when a public dancing girl has screamed herself hoarse in the exercise of her
calling, the leader of the troop makes her eat some of these worms, in the
belief that thus she will regain her voice and will, after swallowing them, be
able to scream as shrilly as ever. The people of Darfur, in Central Africa,
think that the liver is the seat of the soul, and that a man may enlarge his
soul by eating the liver of an animal. Whenever an animal is killed its liver
is taken out and eaten, but the people are most careful not to touch it with
their hands, as it is considered sacred; it is cut up in small pieces and
eaten raw, the bits being conveyed to the mouth on the point of a knife, or
the sharp point of a stick. Any one who may accidentally touch the liver is
strictly forbidden to partake of it, which prohibition is regarded as a great
misfortune for him. Women are not allowed to eat liver, because they have no
soul.

Again, the flesh and blood of dead men are commonly eaten and drunk to
inspire bravery, wisdom, or other qualities for which the men themselves were
remarkable, or which are supposed to have their special seat in the particular
part eaten. Thus among the mountain tribes of South-Eastern Africa there are
ceremonies by which the youths are formed into guilds or lodges, and among the
rites of initiation there is one which is intended to infuse courage,
intelligence, and other qualities into the novices. Whenever an enemy who has
behaved with conspicuous bravery is killed, his liver, which is considered the
seat of valour; his ears, which are supposed to be the seat of intelligence;
the skin of his forehead, which is regarded as the seat of perseverance; his
testicles, which are held to be the seat of strength; and other members, which
are viewed as the seat of other virtues, are cut from his body and baked to
cinders. The ashes are carefully kept in the horn of a bull, and, during the
ceremonies observed at circumcision, are mixed with other ingredients into a
kind of paste, which is administered by the tribal priest to the youths. By
this means the strength, valour, intelligence, and other virtues of the slain
are believed to be imparted to the eaters. When Basutos of the mountains have
killed a very brave foe, they immediately cut out his heart and eat it,
because this is supposed to give them his courage and strength in battle. When
Sir Charles M'Carthy was killed by the Ashantees in 1824, it is said that his
heart was devoured by the chiefs of the Ashantee army, who hoped by this means
to imbibe his courage. His flesh was dried and parcelled out among the lower
officers for the same purpose, and his bones were long kept at Coomassie as
national fetishes. The Nauras Indians of New Granada ate the hearts of
Spaniards when they had the opportunity, hoping thereby to make themselves as
dauntless as the dreaded Castilian chivalry. The Sioux Indians used to reduce
to powder the heart of a valiant enemy and swallow the powder, hoping thus to
appropriate the dead man's valour.

But while the human heart is thus commonly eaten for the sake of imbuing
the eater with the qualities of its original owner, it is not, as we have
already seen, the only part of the body which is consumed for this purpose.
Thus warriors of the Theddora and Ngarigo tribes of South-Eastern Australia
used to eat the hands and feet of their slain enemies, believing that in this
way they acquired some of the qualities and courage of the dead. The Kamilaroi
of New South Wales ate the liver as well as the heart of a brave man to get
his courage. In Tonquin also there is a popular superstition that the liver of
a brave man makes brave any who partake of it. With a like intent the Chinese
swallow the bile of notorious bandits who have been executed. The Dyaks of
Sarawak used to eat the palms of the hands and the flesh of the knees of the
slain in order to steady their own hands and strengthen their own knees. The
Tolalaki, notorious head-hunters of Central Celebes, drink the blood and eat
the brains of their victims that they may become brave. The Italones of the
Philippine Islands drink the blood of their slain enemies, and eat part of the
back of their heads and of their entrails raw to acquire their courage. For
the same reason the Efugaos, another tribe of the Philippines, suck the brains
of their foes. In like manner the Kai of German New Guinea eat the brains of
the enemies they kill in order to acquire their strength. Among the Kimbunda
of Western Africa, when a new king succeeds to the throne, a brave prisoner of
war is killed in order that the king and nobles may eat his flesh, and so
acquire his strength and courage. The notorious Zulu chief Matuana drank the
gall of thirty chiefs, whose people he had destroyed, in the belief that it
would make him strong. It is a Zulu fancy that by eating the centre of the
forehead and the eyebrow of an enemy they acquire the power of looking
steadfastly at a foe. Before every warlike expedition the people of Minahassa
in Celebes used to take the locks of hair of a slain foe and dabble them in
boiling water to extract the courage; this infusion of bravery was then drunk
by the warriors. In New Zealand the chief was an atua [god], but there were
powerful and powerless gods; each naturally sought to make himself one of the
former; the plan therefore adopted was to incorporate the spirits of others
with their own; thus, when a warrior slew a chief, he immediately gouged out
his eyes and swallowed them, the atua tonga, or divinity, being supposed to
reside in that organ; thus he not only killed the body, but also possessed
himself of the soul of his enemy, and consequently the more chiefs he slew the
greater did his divinity become.

It is now easy to understand why a savage should desire to partake of the
flesh of an animal or man whom he regards as divine. By eating the body of the
god he shares in the god's attributes and powers. And when the god is a
corn-god, the corn is his proper body; when he is a vine-god, the juice of the
grape is his blood; and so by eating the bread and drinking the wine the
worshipper partakes of the real body and blood of his god. Thus the drinking
of wine in the rites of a vine-god like Dionysus is not an act of revelry, it
is a solemn sacrament. Yet a time comes when reasonable men find it hard to
understand how any one in his senses can suppose that by eating bread or
drinking wine he consumes the body or blood of a deity. When we call corn
Ceres and wine Bacchus, says Cicero, we use a common figure of speech; but
do you imagine that anybody is so insane as to believe that the thing he feeds
upon is a god?

Chapter 52. Killing the Divine Animal.

1. Killing the Sacred Buzzard.

IN THE PRECEDING chapters we saw that many communities which have
progressed so far as to subsist mainly by agriculture have been in the habit
of killing and eating their farinaceous deities either in their proper form of corn,
rice, and so forth, or in the borrowed shapes of animals and men. It remains
to show that hunting and pastoral tribes, as well as agricultural peoples,
have been in the habit of killing the beings whom they worship. Among the
worshipful beings or gods, if indeed they deserve to be dignified by that
name, whom hunters and shepherds adore and kill are animals pure and simple,
not animals regarded as embodiments of other supernatural beings. Our first
example is drawn from the Indians of California, who living in a fertile
country under a serene and temperate sky, nevertheless rank near the bottom of
the savage scale. The Acagchemem tribe adored the great buzzard, and once a
year they celebrated a great festival called Panes or bird-feast in its
honour. The day selected for the festival was made known to the public on the
evening before its celebration and preparations were at once made for the
erection of a special temple (vanquech), which seems to have been a circular
or oval enclosure of stakes with the stuffed skin of a coyote or prairie-wolf
set up on a hurdle to represent the god Chinigchinich. When the temple was
ready, the bird was carried into it in solemn procession and laid on an altar
erected for the purpose. Then all the young women, whether married or single,
began to run to and fro, as if distracted, some in one direction and some in
another, while the elders of both sexes remained silent spectators of the
scene, and the captains, tricked out in paint and feathers, danced round their
adored bird. These ceremonies being concluded, they seized upon the bird and
carried it to the principal temple, all the assembly uniting in the grand
display, and the captains dancing and singing at the head of the procession.
Arrived at the temple, they killed the bird without losing a drop of its
blood. The skin was removed entire and preserved with the feathers as a relic
or for the purpose of making the festal garment or paelt. The carcase was
buried in a hole in the temple, and the old women gathered round the grave
weeping and moaning bitterly, while they threw various kinds of seeds or
pieces of food on it, crying out, Why did you run away? Would you not have
been better with us? you would have made pinole (a kind of gruel) as we do,
and if you had not run away, you would not have become a Panes, and so on.
When this ceremony was concluded, the dancing was resumed and kept up for
three days and nights. They said that the Panes was a woman who had run off
to the mountains and there been changed into a bird by the god Chinigchinich.
They believed that though they sacrificed the bird annually, she came to life
again and returned to her home in the mountains. Moreover, they thought that
as often as the bird was killed, it became multiplied; because every year all
the different Capitanes celebrated the same feast of Panes, and were firm in
the opinion that the birds sacrificed were but one and the same female.

The unity in multiplicity thus postulated by the Californians is very
noticeable and helps to explain their motive for killing the divine bird. The
notion of the life of a species as distinct from that of an individual, easy
and obvious as it seems to us, appears to be one which the Californian savage
cannot grasp. He is unable to conceive the life of the species otherwise than
as an individual life, and therefore as exposed to the same dangers and
calamities which menace and finally destroy the life of the individual.
Apparently he imagines that a species left to itself will grow old and die
like an individual, and that therefore some step must be taken to save from
extinction the particular species which he regards as divine. The only means
he can think of to avert the catastrophe is to kill a member of the species in
whose veins the tide of life is still running strong and has not yet stagnated
among the fens of old age. The life thus diverted from one channel will flow,
he fancies, more freshly and freely in a new one; in other words, the slain
animal will revive and enter on a new term of life with all the spring and
energy of youth. To us this reasoning is transparently absurd, but so too is
the custom. A similar confusion, it may be noted, between the individual life
and the life of the species was made by the Samoans. Each family had for its
god a particular species of animal; yet the death of one of these animals, for
example an owl, was not the death of the god, he was supposed to be yet
alive, and incarnate in all the owls in existence.

2. Killing the Sacred Ram

THE RUDE Californian rite which we have just considered has a close parallel
in the religion of ancient Egypt. The Thebans and all other Egyptians who
worshipped the Theban god Ammon held rams to be sacred, and would not
sacrifice them. But once a year at the festival of Ammon they killed a ram,
skinned it, and clothed the image of the god in the skin. Then they mourned
over the ram and buried it in a sacred tomb. The custom was explained by a
story that Zeus had once exhibited himself to Hercules clad in the fleece and
wearing the head of a ram. Of course the ram in this case was simply the
beast-god of Thebes, as the wolf was the beast-god of Lycopolis, and the goat
was the beast-god of Mendes. In other words, the ram was Ammon himself. On the
monuments, it is true, Ammon appears in semi-human form with the body of a man
and the head of a ram. But this only shows that he was in the usual chrysalis
state through which beast-gods regularly pass before they emerge as full-blown
anthropomorphic gods. The ram, therefore, was killed, not as a sacrifice to
Ammon, but as the god himself, whose identity with the beast is plainly shown
by the custom of clothing his image in the skin of the slain ram. The reason
for thus killing the ram-god annually may have been that which I have assigned
for the general custom of killing a god and for the special Californian custom
of killing the divine buzzard. As applied to Egypt, this explanation is
supported by the analogy of the bull-god Apis, who was not suffered to outlive
a certain term of years. The intention of thus putting a limit to the life of
the human god was, as I have argued, to secure him from the weakness and
frailty of age. The same reasoning would explain the customprobably an older
oneof putting the beast-god to death annually, as was done with the ram of
Thebes.

One point in the Theban ritualthe application of the skin to the image of
the goddeserves particular attention. If the god was at first the living ram,
his representation by an image must have originated later. But how did it
originate? One answer to this question is perhaps furnished by the practice of
preserving the skin of the animal which is slain as divine. The Californians,
as we have seen, preserved the skin of the buzzard; and the skin of the goat,
which is killed on the harvest-field as a representative of the corn-spirit,
is kept for various superstitious purposes. The skin in fact was kept as a
token or memorial of the god, or rather as containing in it a part of the
divine life, and it had only to be stuffed or stretched upon a frame to become
a regular image of him. At first an image of this kind would be renewed
annually, the new image being provided by the skin of the slain animal. But
from annual images to permanent images the transition is easy. We have seen
that the older custom of cutting a new May-tree every year was superseded by
the practice of maintaining a permanent May-pole, which was, however, annually
decked with fresh leaves and flowers, and even surmounted each year by a fresh
young tree. Similarly when the stuffed skin, as a representative of the god,
was replaced by a permanent image of him in wood, stone, or metal, the
permanent image was annually clad in the fresh skin of the slain animal. When
this stage had been reached, the custom of killing the ram came naturally to
be interpreted as a sacrifice offered to the image, and was explained by a
story like that of Ammon and Hercules.

3. Killing the Sacred Serpent

WEST AFRICA appears to furnish another example of the annual killing of a
sacred animal and the preservation of its skin. The negroes of Issapoo, in the
island of Fernando Po, regard the cobra-capella as their guardian deity, who
can do them good or ill, bestow riches or inflict disease and death. The skin
of one of these reptiles is hung tail downwards from a branch of the highest
tree in the public square, and the placing of it on the tree is an annual
ceremony. As soon as the ceremony is over, all children born within the past
year are carried out and their hands made to touch the tail of the serpent's
skin. The latter custom is clearly a way of placing the infants under the
protection of the tribal god. Similarly in Senegambia a python is expected to
visit every child of the Python clan within eight days after birth; and the
Psylli, a Snake clan of ancient Africa, used to expose their infants to snakes
in the belief that the snakes would not harm true-born children of the clan.
4. Killing the Sacred Turtles

IN THE CALIFORNIAN, Egyptian, and Fernando Po customs the worship of the
animal seems to have no relation to agriculture, and may therefore be presumed
to date from the hunting or pastoral stage of society. The same may be said of
the following custom, though the Zuni Indians of New Mexico, who practise it,
are now settled in walled villages or towns of a peculiar type, and practise
agriculture and the arts of pottery and weaving. But the Zuni custom is marked
by certain features which appear to place it in a somewhat different class
from the preceding cases. It may be well therefore to describe it at full
length in the words of an eye-witness.

With midsummer the heat became intense. My brother [i.e. adopted
Indian brother] and I sat, day after day, in the cool under-rooms of our
house,the latter [sic] busy with his quaint forge and crude appliances,
working Mexican coins over into bangles, girdles, ear-rings, buttons, and what
not, for savage ornament. Though his tools were wonderfully rude, the work he
turned out by dint of combined patience and ingenuity was remarkably
beautiful. One day as I sat watching him, a procession of fifty men went
hastily down the hill, and off westward over the plain. They were solemnly led
by a painted and shell-bedecked priest, and followed by the torch-bearing
Shu-lu-wit-si or God of Fire. After they had vanished, I asked old brother
what it all meant.

'They are going,' said he, 'to the city of Ka-ka and the home of our
others.'

Four days after, towards sunset, costumed and masked in the beautiful
paraphernalia of the Ka-k'ok-shi, or 'Good Dance,' they returned in file up
the same pathway, each bearing in his arms a basket filled with living,
squirming turtles, which he regarded and carried as tenderly as a mother would
her infant. Some of the wretched reptiles were carefully wrapped in soft
blankets, their heads and forefeet protruding,and, mounted on the backs of
the plume-bedecked pilgrims, made ludicrous but solemn caricatures of little
children in the same position. While I was at supper upstairs that evening,
the governor's brother-in-law came in. He was welcomed by the family as if a
messenger from heaven. He bore in his tremulous fingers one of the much abused
and rebellious turtles. Paint still adhered to his hands and bare feet, which
led me to infer that he had formed one of the sacred embassy.

'So you went to Ka-thlu-el-lon, did you?' I asked.

'E'e,' replied the weary man, in a voice husky with long chanting, as he
sank, almost exhausted, on a roll of skins which had been placed for him, and
tenderly laid the turtle on the floor. No sooner did the creature find itself
at liberty than it made off as fast as its lame legs would take it. Of one
accord, the family forsook dish, spoon, and drinking-cup, and grabbing from a
sacred meal-bowl whole handfuls of the contents, hurriedly followed the turtle
about the room, into dark corners, around water-jars, behind the
grinding-troughs, and out into the middle of the floor again, praying and
scattering meal on its back as they went. At last, strange to say, it
approached the foot-sore man who had brought it.

'Ha!' he exclaimed with emotion; 'see it comes to me again; ah, what
great favours the fathers of all grant me this day,' and, passing his hand
gently over the sprawling animal, he inhaled from his palm deeply and long, at
the same time invoking the favour of the gods. Then he leaned his chin upon
his hand, and with large, wistful eyes regarded his ugly captive as it
sprawled about, blinking its meal-bedimmed eyes, and clawing the smooth floor
in memory of its native element. At this juncture I ventured a question:

'Why do you not let him go, or give him some water?'

Slowly the man turned his eyes toward me, an odd mixture of pain,
indignation, and pity on his face, while the worshipful family stared at me
with holy horror.

'Poor younger brother!' he said at last, 'know you not how precious it
is? It die? It will not die; I tell you, it cannot die.'

'But it will die if you don't feed it and give it water.'

'I tell you it cannot die; it will only change houses to-morrow, and
go back to the home of its brothers. Ah, well! How should you know?' he
mused. Turning to the blinded turtle again: 'Ah! my poor dear lost child or
parent, my sister or brother to have been! Who knows which? Maybe my own
great-grandfather or mother!' And with this he fell to weeping most
pathetically, and, tremulous with sobs, which were echoed by the women and
children, he buried his face in his hands. Filled with sympathy for his grief,
however mistaken, I raised the turtle to my lips and kissed its cold shell;
then depositing it on the floor, hastily left the grief-stricken family to
their sorrows. Next day, with prayers and tender beseechings, plumes, and
offerings, the poor turtle was killed, and its flesh and bones were removed
and deposited in the little river, that it might 'return once more to eternal
life among its comrades in the dark waters of the lake of the dead.' The
shell, carefully scraped and dried, was made into a dance-rattle, and, covered
by a piece of buckskin, it still hangs from the smoke-stained rafters of my
brother's house. Once a Navajo tried to buy it for a ladle; loaded with
indignant reproaches, he was turned cut of the house. Were any one to venture
the suggestion that the turtle no longer lived, his remark would cause a flood
of tears, and he would be reminded that it had only 'changed houses and gone
to live for ever in the home of our lost others.'

In this custom we find expressed in the clearest way a belief in the
transmigration of human souls into the bodies of turtles. The theory of
transmigration is held by the Moqui Indians, who belong to the same race as
the Zunis. The Moquis are divided into totem clansthe Bear clan, Deer clan,
Wolf clan, Hare clan, and so on; they believe that the ancestors of the clans
were bears, deer, wolves, hares, and so forth; and that at death the members
of each clan become bears, deer, and so on according to the particular clan to
which they belonged. The Zuni are also divided into clans, the totems of which
agree closely with those of the Moquis, and one of their totems is the turtle.
Thus their belief in transmigration into the turtle is probably one of the
regular articles of their totem faith. What then is the meaning of killing a
turtle in which the soul of a kinsman is believed to be present? Apparently
the object is to keep up a communication with the other world in which the
souls of the departed are believed to be assembled in the form of turtles. It
is a common belief that the spirits of the dead return occasionally to their
old homes; and accordingly the unseen visitors are welcomed and feasted by the
living, and then sent upon their way. In the Zuni ceremony the dead are
fetched home in the form of turtles, and the killing of the turtles is the way
of sending back the souls to the spirit-land. Thus the general explanation
given above of the custom of killing a god seems inapplicable to the Zuni
custom, the true meaning of which is somewhat obscure. Nor is the obscurity
which hangs over the subject entirely dissipated by a later and fuller account
which we possess of the ceremony. From it we learn that the ceremony forms
part of the elaborate ritual which these Indians observe at the midsummer
solstice for the purpose of ensuring an abundant supply of rain for the crops.
Envoys are despatched to bring their otherselves, the tortoises, from the
sacred lake Kothluwalawa, to which the souls of the dead are believed to
repair. When the creatures have thus been solemnly brought to Zuni, they are
placed in a bowl of water and dances are performed beside them by men in
costume, who personate gods and goddesses. After the ceremonial the tortoises
are taken home by those who caught them and are hung by their necks to the
rafters till morning, when they are thrown into pots of boiling water. The
eggs are considered a great delicacy. The meat is seldom touched except as a
medicine, which is curative for cutaneous diseases. Part of the meat is
deposited in the river with khakwa (white shell beads) and turquoise beads
as offerings to Council of the Gods. This account at all events confirms the
inference that the tortoises are supposed to be reincarnations of the human
dead, for they are called the otherselves of the Zuni; indeed, what else
should they be than the souls of the dead in the bodies of tortoises seeing
that they come from the haunted lake? As the principal object of the prayers
uttered and of the dances performed at these midsummer ceremonies appears to
be to procure rain for the crops, it may be that the intention of bringing the
tortoises to Zuni and dancing before them is to intercede with the ancestral
spirit, incarnate in the animals, that they may be pleased to exert their
power over the waters of heaven for the benefit of their living descendants.

5. Killing the Sacred Bear

DOUBT also hangs at first sight over the meaning of the bear-sacrifice
offered by the Aino or Ainu, a primitive people who are found in the Japanese
island of Yezo or Yesso, as well as in Saghalien and the southern of the
Kurile Islands. It is not quite easy to define the attitude of the Aino
towards the bear. On the one hand they give it the name of kamui or god;
but as they apply the same word to strangers, it may mean no more than a being
supposed to be endowed with superhuman, or at all events extraordinary,
powers. Again, it is said that the bear is their chief divinity; in the
religion of the Aino the bear plays a chief part; amongst the animals it is
especially the bear which receives an idolatrous veneration; they worship it
after their fashion; there is no doubt that this wild beast inspires more of
the feeling which prompts worship than the inanimate forces of nature, and the
Aino may be distinguished as bear-worshippers. Yet, on the other hand, they
kill the bear whenever they can; in bygone years the Ainu considered
bear-hunting the most manly and useful way in which a person could possibly
spend his time; the men spend the autumn, winter, and spring in hunting deer
and bears. Part of their tribute or taxes is paid in skins, and they subsist
on the dried meat; bear's flesh is indeed one of their staple foods; they eat
it both fresh and salted; and the skins of bears furnish them with clothing.
In fact, the worship of which writers on this subject speak appears to be paid
chiefly to the dead animal. Thus, although they kill a bear whenever they can,
in the process of dissecting the carcass they endeavor to conciliate the
deity, whose representative they have slain, by making elaborate obeisances
and deprecatory salutations; when a bear has been killed the Ainu sit down
and admire it, make their salaams to it, worship it, and offer presents of
inao; when a bear is trapped or wounded by an arrow, the hunters go
through an apologetic or propitiatory ceremony. The skulls of slain bears
receive a place of honour in their huts, or are set up on sacred posts outside
the huts, and are treated with much respect: libations of millet beer, and of
sake, an intoxicating liquor, are offered to them; and they are addressed as
divine preservers or precious divinities. The skulls of foxes are also
fastened to the sacred posts outside the huts; they are regarded as charms
against evil spirits, and are consulted as oracles. Yet it is expressly said,
The live fox is revered just as little as the bear; rather they avoid it as
much as possible, considering it a wily animal. The bear can hardly,
therefore, be described as a sacred animal of the Aino, nor yet as a totem;
for they do not call themselves bears, and they kill and eat the animal
freely. However, they have a legend of a woman who had a son by a bear; and
many of them who dwell in the mountains pride themselves on being descended
from a bear. Such people are called Descendants of the bear (Kimun Kamui
sanikiri), and in the pride of their heart they will say, As for me, I am a
child of the god of the mountains; I am descended from the divine one who
rules in the mountains, meaning by the god of the mountains no other than
the bear. It is therefore possible that, as our principal authority, the Rev.
J. Batchelor, believes, the bear may have been the totem of an Aino clan; but
even if that were so it would not explain the respect shown for the animal by
the whole Aino people.

But it is the bear-festival of the Aino which concerns us here. Towards
the end of winter a bear cub is caught and brought into the village. If it is
very small, it is suckled by an Aino woman, but should there be no woman able
to suckle it, the little animal is fed from the hand or the mouth. During the
day it plays about in the hut with the children and is treated with great
affection. But when the cub grows big enough to pain people by hugging or
scratching them, he is shut up in a strong wooden cage, where he stays
generally for two or three years, fed on fish and millet porridge, till it is
time for him to be killed and eaten. But it is a peculiarly striking fact
that the young bear is not kept merely to furnish a good meal; rather he is
regarded and honoured as a fetish, or even as a sort of higher being. In Yezo
the festival is generally celebrated in September or October. Before it takes
place the Aino apologise to their gods, alleging that they have treated the
bear kindly as long as they could, now they can feed him no longer, and are
obliged to kill him. A man who gives a bear-feast invites his relations and
friends; in a small village nearly the whole community takes part in the
feast; indeed, guests from distant villages are invited and generally come,
allured by the prospect of getting drunk for nothing. The form of invitation
runs somewhat as follows: I, so and so, am about to sacrifice the dear little
divine thing who resides among the mountains. My friends and masters, come ye
to the feast; we will then unite in the great pleasure of sending the god
away. Come. When all the people are assembled in front of the cage, an orator
chosen for the purpose addresses the bear and tells it that they are about to
send it forth to its ancestors. He craves pardon for what they are about to do
to it, hopes it will not be angry, and comforts it by assuring the animal that
many of the sacred whittled sticks (inao) and plenty of cakes and wine will
be sent with it on the long journey. One speech of this sort which Mr.
Batchelor heard ran as follows: O thou divine one, thou wast sent into the
world for us to hunt. O thou precious little divinity, we worship thee; pray
hear our prayer. We have nourished thee and brought thee up with a deal of
pains and trouble, all because we love thee so. Now, as thou hast grown big,
we are about to send thee to thy father and mother. When thou comest to them
please speak well of us, and tell them how kind we have been; please come to
us again and we will sacrifice thee. Having been secured with ropes, the bear
is then let out of the cage and assailed with a shower of blunt arrows in
order to arouse it to fury. When it has spent itself in vain struggles, it is
tied up to a stake, gagged and strangled, its neck being placed between two
poles, which are then violently compressed, all the people eagerly helping to
squeeze the animal to death. An arrow is also discharged into the beast's
heart by a good marksman, but so as not to shed blood, for they think that it
would be very unlucky if any of the blood were to drip on the ground. However,
the men sometimes drink the warm blood of the bear that the courage and other
virtues it possesses may pass into them; and sometimes they besmear
themselves and their clothes with the blood in order to ensure success in
hunting. When the animal has been strangled to death, it is skinned and its
head is cut off and set in the east window of the house, where a piece of its
own flesh is placed under its snout, together with a cup of its own meat
boiled, some millet dumplings, and dried fish. Prayers are then addressed to
the dead animal; amongst other things it is sometimes invited, after going
away to its father and mother, to return into the world in order that it may
again be reared for sacrifice. When the bear is supposed to have finished
eating its own flesh, the man who presides at the feast takes the cup
containing the boiled meat, salutes it, and divides the contents between all
the company present: every person, young and old alike, must taste a little.
The cup is called the cup of offering because it has just been offered to
the dead bear. When the rest of the flesh has been cooked, it is shared out in
like manner among all the people, everybody partaking of at least a morsel;
not to partake of the feast would be equivalent to excommunication, it would
be to place the recreant outside the pale of Aino fellowship. Formerly every
particle of the bear, except the bones, had to be eaten up at the banquet, but
this rule is now relaxed. The head, on being detached from the skin, is set up
on a long pole beside the sacred wands (inao) outside of the house, where it
remains till nothing but the bare white skull is left. Skulls so set up are
worshipped not only at the time of the festival, but very often as long as
they last. The Aino assured Mr. Batchelor that they really do believe the
spirits of the worshipful animals to reside in the skulls; that is why they
address them as divine preservers and precious divinities.

The ceremony of killing the bear was witnessed by Dr. B. Scheube on the
tenth of August at Kunnui, which is a village on Volcano Bay in the island of
Yezo or Yesso. As his description of the rite contains some interesting
particulars not mentioned in the foregoing account, it may be worth while to
summarize it.

On entering the hut he found about thirty Aino present, men, women, and
children, all dressed in their best. The master of the house first offered a
libation on the fireplace to the god of the fire, and the guests followed his
example. Then a libation was offered to the house-god in his sacred corner of
the hut. Meanwhile the housewife, who had nursed the bear, sat by herself,
silent and sad, bursting now and then into tears. Her grief was obviously
unaffected, and it deepened as the festival went on. Next, the master of the
house and some of the guests went out of the hut and offered libations before
the bear's cage. A few drops were presented to the bear in a saucer, which he
at once upset. Then the women and girls danced round the cage, their faces
turned towards it, their knees slightly bent, rising and hopping on their
toes. As they danced they clapped their hands and sang a monotonous song. The
housewife and a few old women, who might have nursed many bears, danced
tearfully, stretching out their arms to the bear, and addressing it in terms
of endearment. The young folks were less affected; they laughed as well as
sang. Disturbed by the noise, the bear began to rush about his cage and howl
lamentably. Next libations were offered at the inao (inabos) or sacred
wands which stand outside of an Aino hut. These wands are about a couple of
feet high, and are whittled at the top into spiral shavings. Five new wands
with bamboo leaves attached to them had been set up for the festival. This is
regularly done when a bear is killed; the leaves mean that the animal may come
to life again. Then the bear was let out of his cage, a rope was thrown round
his neck, and he was led about in the neighbourhood of the hut. While this was
being done the men, headed by a chief, shot at the beast with arrows tipped
with wooden buttons. Dr. Scheube had to do so also. Then the bear was taken
before the sacred wands, a stick was put in his mouth, nine men knelt on him
and pressed his neck against a beam. In five minutes the animal had expired
without uttering a sound. Meantime the women and girls had taken post behind
the men, where they danced, lamenting, and beating the men who were killing
the bear. The bear's carcase was next placed on the mat before the sacred
wands; and a sword and quiver, taken from the wands, were hung round the
beast's neck. Being a she-bear, it was also adorned with a necklace and
ear-rings. Then food and drink were offered to it, in the shape of
millet-broth, millet-cakes, and a pot of sake. The men now sat down on mats
before the dead bear, offered libations to it, and drank deep. Meanwhile the
women and girls had laid aside all marks of sorrow, and danced merrily, none
more merrily than the old women. When the mirth was at its height two young
Aino, who had let the bear out of his cage, mounted the roof of the hut and
threw cakes of millet among the company, who all scrambled for them without
distinction of age or sex. The bear was next skinned and disembowelled, and
the trunk severed from the head, to which the skin was left hanging. The
blood, caught in cups, was eagerly swallowed by the men. None of the women or
children appeared to drink the blood, though custom did not forbid them to do
so. The liver was cut in small pieces and eaten raw, with salt, the women and
children getting their share. The flesh and the rest of the vitals were taken
into the house to be kept till the next day but one, and then to be divided
among the persons who had been present at the feast. Blood and liver were
offered to Dr. Scheube. While the bear was being disembowelled, the women and
girls danced the same dance which they had danced at the beginningnot,
however, round the cage, but in front of the sacred wands. At this dance the
old women, who had been merry a moment before, again shed tears freely. After
the brain had been extracted from the bear's head and swallowed with salt, the
skull, detached from the skin, was hung on a pole beside the sacred wands. The
stick with which the bear had been gagged was also fastened to the pole, and
so were the sword and quiver which had been hung on the carcase. The latter
were removed in about an hour, but the rest remained standing. The whole
company, men and women, danced noisily before the pole; and another
drinking-bout, in which the women joined, closed the festival.

Perhaps the first published account of the bear-feast of the Aino is one
which was given to the world by a Japanese writer in 1652. It has been
translated into French and runs thus: When they find a young bear, they bring
it home, and the wife suckles it. When it is grown they feed it with fish and
fowl and kill it in winter for the sake of the liver, which they esteem an
antidote to poison, the worms, colic, and disorders of the stomach. It is of a
very bitter taste, and is good for nothing if the bear has been killed in
summer. This butchery begins in the first Japanese month. For this purpose
they put the animal's head between two long poles, which are squeezed together
by fifty or sixty people, both men and women. When the bear is dead they eat
his flesh, keep the liver as a medicine, and sell the skin, which is black and
commonly six feet long, but the longest measure twelve feet. As soon as he is
skinned, the persons who nourished the beast begin to bewail him; afterwards
they make little cakes to regale those who helped them.

The Aino of Saghalien rear bear cubs and kill them with similar
ceremonies. We are told that they do not look upon the bear as a god but only
as a messenger whom they despatch with various commissions to the god of the
forest. The animal is kept for about two years in a cage, and then killed at a
festival, which always takes place in winter and at night. The day before the
sacrifice is devoted to lamentation, old women relieving each other in the
duty of weeping and groaning in front of the bear's cage. Then about the
middle of the night or very early in the morning an orator makes a long speech
to the beast, reminding him how they have taken care of him, and fed him well,
and bathed him in the river, and made him warm and comfortable. Now, he
proceeds, we are holding a great festival in your honour. Be not afraid. We
will not hurt you. We will only kill you and send you to the god of the forest
who loves you. We are about to offer you a good dinner, the best you have ever
eaten among us, and we will all weep for you together. The Aino who will kill
you is the best shot among us. There he is, he weeps and asks your
forgiveness; you will feel almost nothing, it will be done so quickly. We
cannot feed you always, as you will understand. We have done enough for you;
it is now your turn to sacrifice yourself for us. You will ask God to send us,
for the winter, plenty of otters and sables, and for the summer, seals and
fish in abundance. Do not forget our messages, we love you much, and our
children will never forget you. When the bear has partaken of his last meal
amid the general emotion of the spectators, the old women weeping afresh and
the men uttering stifled cries, he is strapped, not without difficulty and
danger, and being let out of the cage is led on leash or dragged, according to
the state of his temper, thrice round his cage, then round his master's house,
and lastly round the house of the orator. Thereupon he is tied up to a tree,
which is decked with sacred whittled sticks (inao) of the usual sort; and
the orator again addresses him in a long harangue, which sometimes lasts till
the day is beginning to break. Remember, he cries, remember! I remind you
of your whole life and of the services we have rendered you. It is now for you
to do your duty. Do not forget what I have asked of you. You will tell the
gods to give us riches, that our hunters may return from the forest laden with
rare furs and animals good to eat; that our fishers may find troops of seals
on the shore and in the sea, and that their nets may crack under the weight of
the fish. We have no hope but in you. The evil spirits laugh at us, and too
often they are unfavourable and malignant to us, but they will bow before you.
We have given you food and joy and health; now we kill you in order that you
may in return send riches to us and to our children. To this discourse the
bear, more and more surly and agitated, listens without conviction; round and
round the tree he paces and howls lamentably, till, just as the first beams of
the rising sun light up the scene, an archer speeds an arrow to his heart. No
sooner has he done so, than the marksman throws away his bow and flings
himself on the ground, and the old men and women do the same, weeping and
sobbing. Then they offer the dead beast a repast of rice and wild potatoes,
and having spoken to him in terms of pity and thanked him for what he has done
and suffered, they cut off his head and paws and keep them as sacred things. A
banquet on the flesh and blood of the bear follows. Women were formerly
excluded from it, but now they share with the men. The blood is drunk warm by
all present; the flesh is boiled, custom forbids it to be roasted. And as the
relics of the bear may not enter the house by the door, and Aino houses in
Saghalien have no windows, a man gets up on the roof and lets the flesh, the
head, and the skin down through the smoke-hole. Rice and wild potatoes are
then offered to the head, and a pipe, tobacco, and matches are considerately
placed beside it. Custom requires that the guests should eat up the whole
animal before they depart; the use of salt and pepper at the meal is
forbidden; and no morsel of the flesh may be given to the dogs. When the
banquet is over, the head is carried away into the depth of the forest and
deposited on a heap of bears' skulls, the bleached and mouldering relics of
similar festivals in the past.

The Gilyaks, a Tunguzian people of Eastern Siberia, hold a bear-festival
of the same sort once a year in January. The bear is the object of the most
refined solicitude of an entire village and plays the chief part in their
religious ceremonies. An old she-bear is shot and her cub is reared, but not
suckled, in the village. When the bear is big enough he is taken from his cage
and dragged through the village. But first they lead him to the bank of the
river, for this is believed to ensure abundance of fish to each family. He is
then taken into every house in the village, where fish, brandy, and so forth
are offered to him. Some people prostrate themselves before the beast. His
entrance into a house is supposed to bring a blessing; and if he snuffs at the
food offered to him, this also is a blessing. Nevertheless they tease and
worry, poke and tickle the animal continually, so that he is surly and
snappish. After being thus taken to every house, he is tied to a peg and shot
dead with arrows. His head is then cut off, decked with shavings, and placed
on the table where the feast is set out. Here they beg pardon of the beast and
worship him. Then his flesh is roasted and eaten in special vessels of wood
finely carved. They do not eat the flesh raw nor drink the blood, as the Aino
do. The brain and entrails are eaten last; and the skull, still decked with
shavings, is placed on a tree near the house. Then the people sing and both
sexes dance in ranks, as bears.

One of these bear-festivals was witnessed by the Russian traveller L. von
Schrenck and his companions at the Gilyak village of Tebach in January 1856.
From his detailed report of the ceremony we may gather some particulars which
are not noticed in the briefer accounts which I have just summarised. The
bear, he tells us, plays a great part in the life of all the peoples
inhabiting the region of the Amoor and Siberia as far as Kamtchatka, but among
none of them is his importance greater than among the Gilyaks. The immense
size which the animal attains in the valley of the Amoor, his ferocity whetted
by hunger, and the frequency of his appearance, all combine to make him the
most dreaded beast of prey in the country. No wonder, therefore, that the
fancy of the Gilyaks is busied with him and surrounds him, both in life and in
death, with a sort of halo of superstitious fear. Thus, for example, it is
thought that if a Gilyak falls in combat with a bear, his soul transmigrates
into the body of the beast. Nevertheless his flesh has an irresistible
attraction for the Gilyak palate, especially when the animal has been kept in
captivity for some time and fattened on fish, which gives the flesh, in the
opinion of the Gilyaks, a peculiarly delicious flavour. But in order to enjoy
this dainty with impunity they deem it needful to perform a long series of
ceremonies, of which the intention is to delude the living bear by a show of
respect, and to appease the anger of the dead animal by the homage paid to his
departed spirit. The marks of respect begin as soon as the beast is captured.
He is brought home in triumph and kept in a cage, where all the villagers take
it in turns to feed him. For although he may have been captured or purchased
by one man, he belongs in a manner to the whole village. His flesh will
furnish a common feast, and hence all must contribute to support him in his
life. The length of time he is kept in captivity depends on his age. Old bears
are kept only a few months; cubs are kept till they are full-grown. A thick
layer of fat on the captive bear gives the signal for the festival, which is
always held in winter, generally in December but sometimes in January or
February. At the festival witnessed by the Russian travellers, which lasted a
good many days, three bears were killed and eaten. More than once the animals
were led about in procession and compelled to enter every house in the
village, where they were fed as a mark of honour, and to show that they were
welcome guests. But before the beasts set out on this round of visits, the
Gilyaks played at skipping-rope in presence, and perhaps, as L. von Schrenck
inclined to believe, in honour of the animals. The night before they were
killed, the three bears were led by moonlight a long way on the ice of the
frozen river. That night no one in the village might sleep. Next day, after
the animals had been again led down the steep bank to the river, and conducted
thrice round the hole in the ice from which the women of the village drew
their water, they were taken to an appointed place not far from the village,
and shot to death with arrows. The place of sacrifice or execution was marked
as holy by being surrounded with whittled sticks, from the tops of which
shavings hung in curls. Such sticks are with the Gilyaks, as with the Aino,
the regular symbols that accompany all religious ceremonies.

When the house has been arranged and decorated for their reception, the
skins of the bears, with their heads attached to them, are brought into it,
not, however, by the door, but through a window, and then hung on a sort of
scaffold opposite the hearth on which the flesh is to be cooked. The boiling
of the bears' flesh among the Gilyaks is done only by the oldest men, whose
high privilege it is; women and children, young men and boys have no part in
it. The task is performed slowly and deliberately, with a certain solemnity.
On the occasion described by the Russian travellers the kettle was first of
all surrounded with a thick wreath of shavings, and then filled with snow, for
the use of water to cook bear's flesh is forbidden. Meanwhile a large wooden
trough, richly adorned with arabesques and carvings of all sorts, was hung
immediately under the snouts of the bears; on one side of the trough was
carved in relief a bear, on the other side a toad. When the carcases were
being cut up, each leg was laid on the ground in front of the bears, as if to
ask their leave, before being placed in the kettle; and the boiled flesh was
fished out of the kettle with an iron hook, and set in the trough before the
bears, in order that they might be the first to taste of their own flesh. As
fast, too, as the fat was cut in strips it was hung up in front of the bears,
and afterwards laid in a small wooden trough on the ground before them. Last
of all the inner organs of the beasts were cut up and placed in small vessels.
At the same time the women made bandages out of parti-coloured rags, and after
sunset these bandages were tied round the bears' snouts just below the eyes
in order to dry the tears that flowed from them.

As soon as the ceremony of wiping away poor bruin's tears had been
performed, the assembled Gilyaks set to work in earnest to devour his flesh.
The broth obtained by boiling the meat had already been partaken of. The
wooden bowls, platters, and spoons out of which the Gilyaks eat the broth and
flesh of the bears on these occasions are always made specially for the
purpose at the festival and only then; they are elaborately ornamented with
carved figures of bears and other devices that refer to the animal or the
festival, and the people have a strong superstitious scruple against parting
with them. After the bones had been picked clean they were put back in the
kettle in which the flesh had been boiled. And when the festal meal was over,
an old man took his stand at the door of the house with a branch of fir in his
hand, with which, as the people passed out, he gave a light blow to every one
who had eaten of the bear's flesh or fat, perhaps as a punishment for their
treatment of the worshipful animal. In the afternoon the women performed a
strange dance. Only one woman danced at a time, throwing the upper part of her
body into the oddest postures, while she held in her hands a branch of fir or
a kind of wooden castanets. The other women meanwhile played an accompaniment
by drumming on the beams of the house with clubs. Von Schrenk believed that
after the flesh of the bear has been eaten the bones and the skull are
solemnly carried out by the oldest people to a place in the forest not far
from the village. There all the bones except the skull are buried. After that
a young tree is felled a few inches above the ground, its stump cleft, and the
skull wedged into the cleft. When the grass grows over the spot, the skull
disappears from view, and that is the end of the bear.

Another description of the bear-festivals of the Gilyaks has been given us
by Mr. Leo Sternberg. It agrees substantially with the foregoing accounts, but
a few particulars in it may be noted. According to Mr. Sternberg, the festival
is usually held in honour of a deceased relation: the next of kin either buys
or catches a bear cub and nurtures it for two or three years till it is ready
for the sacrifice. Only certain distinguished guests (Narch-en) are
privileged to partake of the bear's flesh, but the host and members of his
clan eat a broth made from the flesh; great quantities of this broth are
prepared and consumed on the occasion. The guests of honour (Narch-en) must
belong to the clan into which the host's daughters and the other women of his
clan are married: one of these guests, usually the host's son-in-law, is
entrusted with the duty of shooting the bear dead with an arrow. The skin,
head, and flesh of the slain bear are brought into the house not through the
door but through the smoke-hole; a quiver full of arrows is laid under the
head and beside it are deposited tobacco, sugar, and other food. The soul of
the bear is supposed to carry off the souls of these things with it on the far
journey. A special vessel is used for cooking the bear's flesh, and the fire
must be kindled by a sacred apparatus of flint and steel, which belongs to the
clan and is handed down from generation to generation, but which is never used
to light fires except on these solemn occasions. Of all the many viands cooked
for the consumption of the assembled people a portion is placed in a special
vessel and set before the bear's head: this is called feeding the head.
After the bear has been killed, dogs are sacrificed in couples of male and
female. Before being throttled, they are fed and invited to go to their lord
on the highest mountain, to change their skins, and to return next year in the
form of bears. The soul of the dead bear departs to the same lord, who is also
lord of the primaeval forest; it goes away laden with the offerings that have
been made to it, and attended by the souls of the dogs and also by the souls
of the sacred whittled sticks, which figure prominently at the festival.

The Goldi, neighbours of the Gilyaks, treat the bear in much the same way.
They hunt and kill it; but sometimes they capture a live bear and keep him in
a cage, feeding him well and calling him their son and brother. Then at a
great festival he is taken from his cage, paraded about with marked
consideration, and afterwards killed and eaten. The skull, jaw-bones, and
ears are then suspended on a tree, as an antidote against evil spirits; but
the flesh is eaten and much relished, for they believe that all who partake of
it acquire a zest for the chase, and become courageous.

The Orotchis, another Tunguzian people of the region of the Amoor, hold
bear-festivals of the same general character. Any one who catches a bear cub
considers it his bounden duty to rear it in a cage for about three years, in
order at the end of that time to kill it publicly and eat the flesh with his
friends. The feasts being public, though organised by individuals, the people
try to have one in each Orotchi village every year in turn. When the bear is
taken out of his cage, he is led about by means of ropes to all the huts,
accompanied by people armed with lances, bows, and arrows. At each hut the
bear and bear-leaders are treated to something good to eat and drink. This
goes on for several days until all the huts, not only in that village but also
in the next, have been visited. The days are given up to sport and noisy
jollity. Then the bear is tied to a tree or wooden pillar and shot to death by
the arrows of the crowd, after which its flesh is roasted and eaten. Among the
Orotchis of the Tundja River women take part in the bear-feasts, while among
the Orotchis of the River Vi the women will not even touch bear's flesh.

In the treatment of the captive bear by these tribes there are features
which can hardly be distinguished from worship. Such, for example, are the
prayers offered to it both alive and dead; the offerings of food, including
portions of its own flesh, laid before the animal's skull; and the Gilyak
custom of leading the living beast to the river in order to ensure a supply of
fish, and of conducting him from house to house in order that every family may
receive his blessing, just as in Europe a May-tree or a personal
representative of the tree-spirit used to be taken from door to door in spring
for the sake of diffusing among all and sundry the fresh energies of reviving
nature. Again, the solemn participation in his flesh and blood, and
particularly the Aino custom of sharing the contents of the cup which had been
consecrated by being set before the dead beast, are strongly suggestive of a
sacrament, and the suggestion is confirmed by the Gilyak practice of reserving
special vessels to hold the flesh and cooking it on a fire kindled by a sacred
apparatus which is never employed except on these religious occasions. Indeed
our principal authority on Aino religion, the Rev. John Batchelor, frankly
describes as worship the ceremonious respect which the Aino pay to the bear,
and he affirms that the animal is undoubtedly one of their gods. Certainly the
Aino appear to apply their name for god (kamui) freely to the bear; but, as
Mr. Batchelor himself points out, that word is used with many different shades
of meaning and is applied to a great variety of objects, so that from its
application to the bear we cannot safely argue that the animal is actually
regarded as a deity. Indeed we are expressly told that the Aino of Saghalien
do not consider the bear to be a god but only a messenger to the gods, and the
message with which they charge the animal at its death bears out the
statement. Apparently the Gilyaks also look on the bear in the light of an
envoy despatched with presents to the Lord of the Mountain, on whom the
welfare of the people depends. At the same time they treat the animal as a
being of a higher order than man, in fact as a minor deity, whose presence in
the village, so long as he is kept and fed, diffuses blessings, especially by
keeping at bay the swarms of evil spirits who are constantly lying in wait for
people, stealing their goods and destroying their bodies by sickness and
disease. Moreover, by partaking of the flesh, blood, or broth of the bear, the
Gilyaks, the Aino, and the Goldi are all of opinion that they acquire some
portion of the animal's mighty powers, particularly his courage and strength.
No wonder, therefore, that they should treat so great a benefactor with marks
of the highest respect and affection.

Some light may be thrown on the ambiguous attitude of the Aino to bears by
comparing the similar treatment which they accord to other creatures. For
example, they regard the eagle-owl as a good deity who by his hooting warns
men of threatened evil and defends them against it; hence he is loved,
trusted, and devoutly worshipped as a divine mediator between men and the
Creator. The various names applied to him are significant both of his divinity
and of his mediatorship. Whenever an opportunity offers, one of these divine
birds is captured and kept in a cage, where he is greeted with the endearing
titles of Beloved god and Dear little divinity. Nevertheless the time
comes when the dear little divinity is throttled and sent away in his capacity
of mediator to take a message to the superior gods or to the Creator himself.
The following is the form of prayer addressed to the eagle-owl when it is
about to be sacrificed: Beloved deity, we have brought you up because we
loved you, and now we are about to send you to your father. We herewith offer
you food, inao, wine, and cakes; take them to your parent, and he will be
very pleased. When you come to him say, 'I have lived a long time among the
Ainu, where an Ainu father and an Ainu mother reared me. I now come to thee. I
have brought a variety of good things. I saw while living in Ainuland a great
deal of distress. I observed that some of the people were possessed by demons,
some were wounded by wild animals, some were hurt by landslides, others
suffered shipwreck, and many were attacked by disease. The people are in great
straits. My father, hear me, and hasten to look upon the Ainu and help them.'
If you do this, your father will help us.

Again, the Aino keep eagles in cages, worship them as divinities, and ask
them to defend the people from evil. Yet they offer the bird in sacrifice, and
when they are about to do so they pray to him, saying: O precious divinity, O
thou divine bird, pray listen to my words. Thou dost not belong to this world,
for thy home is with the Creator and his golden eagles. This being so, I
present thee with these inao and cakes and other precious things. Do thou
ride upon the inao and ascend to thy home in the glorious heavens. When thou
arrivest, assemble the deities of thy own kind together and thank them for us
for having governed the world. Do thou come again, I beseech thee, and rule
over us. O my precious one, go thou quietly. Once more, the Aino revere
hawks, keep them in cages, and offer them in sacrifice. At the time of killing
one of them the following prayer should be addressed to the bird: O divine
hawk, thou art an expert hunter, please cause thy cleverness to descend on
me. If a hawk is well treated in captivity and prayed to after this fashion
when he is about to be killed, he will surely send help to the hunter.

Thus the Aino hopes to profit in various ways by slaughtering the
creatures, which, nevertheless, he treats as divine. He expects them to carry
messages for him to their kindred or to the gods in the upper world; he hopes
to partake of their virtues by swallowing parts of their bodies or in other
ways; and apparently he looks forward to their bodily resurrection in this
world, which will enable him again to catch and kill them, and again to reap
all the benefits which he has already derived from their slaughter. For in the
prayers addressed to the worshipful bear and the worshipful eagle before they
are knocked on the head the creatures are invited to come again, which seems
clearly to point to a faith in their future resurrection. If any doubt could
exist on this head, it would be dispelled by the evidence of Mr. Batchelor,
who tells us that the Aino are firmly convinced that the spirits of birds and
animals killed in hunting or offered in sacrifice come and live again upon the
earth clothed with a body; and they believe, further, that they appear here
for the special benefit of men, particularly Ainu hunters. The Aino, Mr.
Batchelor tells us, confessedly slays and eats the beast that another may
come in its place and be treated in like manner; and at the time of
sacrificing the creatures prayers are said to them which form a request that
they will come again and furnish viands for another feast, as if it were an
honour to them to be thus killed and eaten, and a pleasure as well. Indeed
such is the people's idea. These last observations, as the context shows,
refer especially to the sacrifice of bears.

Thus among the benefits which the Aino anticipates from the slaughter of
the worshipful animals not the least substantial is that of gorging himself on
their flesh and blood, both on the present and on many a similar occasion
hereafter; and that pleasing prospect again is derived from his firm faith in
the spiritual immortality and bodily resurrection of the dead animals. A like
faith is shared by many savage hunters in many parts of the world and has
given rise to a variety of quaint customs, some of which will be described
presently. Meantime it is not unimportant to observe that the solemn festivals
at which the Aino, the Gilyaks, and other tribes slaughter the tame caged
bears with demonstrations of respect and sorrow, are probably nothing but an
extension or glorification of similar rites which the hunter performs over any
wild bear which he chances to kill in the forest. Indeed with regard to the
Gilyaks we are expressly informed that this is the case. If we would
understand the meaning of the Gilyak ritual, says Mr. Sternberg, we must
above all remember that the bear-festivals are not, as is usually but falsely
assumed, celebrated only at the killing of a house-bear but are held on every
occasion when a Gilyak succeeds in slaughtering a bear in the chase. It is
true that in such cases the festival assumes less imposing dimensions, but in
its essence it remains the same. When the head and skin of a bear killed in
the forest are brought into the village, they are accorded a triumphal
reception with music and solemn ceremonial. The head is laid on a consecrated
scaffold, fed, and treated with offerings, just as at the killing of a
house-bear; and the guests of honour (Narch-en) are also assembled. So, too,
dogs are sacrificed, and the bones of the bear are preserved in the same place
and with the same marks of respect as the bones of a house-bear. Hence the
great winter festival is only an extension of the rite which is observed at
the slaughter of every bear.

Thus the apparent contradiction in the practice of these tribes, who
venerate and almost deify the animals which they habitually hunt, kill, and
eat, is not so flagrant as at first sight it appears to us: the people have
reasons, and some very practical reasons, for acting as they do. For the
savage is by no means so illogical and unpractical as to superficial observers
he is apt to seem; he has thought deeply on the questions which immediately
concern him, he reasons about them, and though his conclusions often diverge
very widely from ours, we ought not to deny him the credit of patient and
prolonged meditation on some fundamental problems of human existence. In the
present case, if he treats bears in general as creatures wholly subservient to
human needs and yet singles out certain individuals of the species for homage
which almost amounts to deification, we must not hastily set him down as
irrational and inconsistent, but must endeavour to place ourselves at his
point of view, to see things as he sees them, and to divest ourselves of the
prepossessions which tinge so deeply our own views of the world. If we do so,
we shall probably discover that, however absurd his conduct may appear to us,
the savage nevertheless generally acts on a train of reasoning which seems to
him in harmony with the facts of his limited experience. This I propose to
illustrate in the following chapter, where I shall attempt to show that the
solemn ceremonial of the bear-festival among the Ainos and other tribes of
North-eastern Asia is only a particularly striking example of the respect
which on the principles of his rude philosophy the savage habitually pays to
the animals which he kills and eats.

Chapter 53. The Propitiation of Wild Animals By Hunters

THE EXPLANATION of life by the theory of an indwelling and practically
immortal soul is one which the savage does not confine to human beings but
extends to the animate creation in general. In so doing he is more liberal and
perhaps more logical than the civilised man, who commonly denies to animals
that privilege of immortality which he claims for himself. The savage is not
so proud; he commonly believes that animals are endowed with feelings and
intelligence like those of men, and that, like men, they possess souls which
survive the death of their bodies either to wander about as disembodied
spirits or to be born again in animal form.

Thus to the savage, who regards all living creatures as practically on a
footing of equality with man, the act of killing and eating an animal must
wear a very different aspect from that which the same act presents to us, who
regard the intelligence of animals as far inferior to our own and deny them
the possession of immortal souls. Hence on the principles of his rude
philosophy the primitive hunter who slays an animal believes himself exposed
to the vengeance either of its disembodied spirit or of all the other animals
of the same species, whom he considers as knit together, like men, by the ties
of kin and the obligations of the blood feud, and therefore as bound to resent
the injury done to one of their number. Accordingly the savage makes it a rule
to spare the life of those animals which he has no pressing motive for
killing, at least such fierce and dangerous animals as are likely to exact a
bloody vengeance for the slaughter of one of their kind. Crocodiles are
animals of this sort. They are only found in hot countries, where, as a rule,
food is abundant and primitive man has therefore little reason to kill them
for the sake of their tough and unpalatable flesh. Hence it is a custom with
some savages to spare crocodiles, or rather only to kill them in obedience to
the law of blood feud, that is, as a retaliation for the slaughter of men by
crocodiles. For example, the Dyaks of Borneo will not kill a crocodile unless
a crocodile has first killed a man. For why, say they, should they commit an
act of aggression, when he and his kindred can so easily repay them? But
should the alligator take a human life, revenge becomes a sacred duty of the
living relatives, who will trap the man-eater in the spirit of an officer of
justice pursuing a criminal. Others, even then, hang back, reluctant to
embroil themselves in a quarrel which does not concern them. The man-eating
alligator is supposed to be pursued by a righteous Nemesis; and whenever one
is caught they have a profound conviction that it must be the guilty one, or
his accomplice.

Like the Dyaks, the natives of Madagascar never kill a crocodile except
in retaliation for one of their friends who has been destroyed by a crocodile.
They believe that the wanton destruction of one of these reptiles will be
followed by the loss of human life, in accordance with the principle of lex
talionis. The people who live near the lake Itasy in Madagascar make a
yearly proclamation to the crocodiles, announcing that they will revenge the
death of some of their friends by killing as many crocodiles in return, and
warning all well-disposed crocodiles to keep out of the way, as they have no
quarrel with them, but only with their evil-minded relations who have taken
human life. Various tribes of Madagascar believe themselves to be descended
from crocodiles, and accordingly they view the scaly reptile as, to all
intents and purposes, a man and a brother. If one of the animals should so far
forget himself as to devour one of his human kinsfolk, the chief of the tribe,
or in his absence an old man familiar with the tribal customs, repairs at the
head of the people to the edge of the water, and summons the family of the
culprit to deliver him up to the arm of justice. A hook is then baited and
cast into the river or lake. Next day the guilty brother, or one of his
family, is dragged ashore, and after his crime has been clearly brought home
to him by a strict interrogation, he is sentenced to death and executed. The
claims of justice being thus satisfied and the majesty of the law fully
vindicated, the deceased crocodile is lamented and buried like a kinsman; a
mound is raised over his relics and a stone marks the place of his head.

Again, the tiger is another of those dangerous beasts whom the savage
prefers to leave alone, lest by killing one of the species he should excite
the hostility of the rest. No consideration will induce a Sumatran to catch or
wound a tiger except in self-defence or immediately after a tiger has
destroyed a friend or relation. When a European has set traps for tigers, the
people of the neighbourhood have been known to go by night to the place and
explain to the animals that the traps are not set by them nor with their
consent. The inhabitants of the hills near Rajamahall, in Bengal, are very
averse to killing a tiger, unless one of their kinsfolk has been carried off
by one of the beasts. In that case they go out for the purpose of hunting and
slaying a tiger; and when they have succeeded they lay their bows and arrows
on the carcase and invoke God, declaring that they slew the animal in
retaliation for the loss of a kinsman. Vengeance having been thus taken, they
swear not to attack another tiger except under similar provocation.


The Indians of Carolina would not molest snakes when they came upon them,
but would pass by on the other side of the path, believing that if they were
to kill a serpent, the reptile's kindred would destroy some of their brethren,
friends, or relations in return. So the Seminole Indians spared the
rattlesnake, because they feared that the soul of the dead rattlesnake would
incite its kinsfolk to take vengeance. The Cherokee regard the rattlesnake as
the chief of the snake tribe and fear and respect him accordingly. Few
Cherokee will venture to kill a rattlesnake, unless they cannot help it, and
even then they must atone for the crime by craving pardon of the snake's ghost
either in their own person or through the mediation of a priest, according to
a set formula. If these precautions are neglected, the kinsfolk of the dead
snake will send one of their number as an avenger of blood, who will track
down the murderer and sting him to death. No ordinary Cherokee dares to kill a
wolf, if he can possibly help it; for he believes that the kindred of the
slain beast would surely avenge its death, and that the weapon with which the
deed had been done would be quite useless for the future, unless it were
cleaned and exorcised by a medicine-man. However, certain persons who know the
proper rites of atonement for such a crime can kill wolves with impunity, and
they are sometimes hired to do so by people who have suffered from the raids
of the wolves on their cattle or fish-traps. In Jebel-Nuba, a district of the
Eastern Sudan, it is forbidden to touch the nests or remove the young of a
species of black birds, resembling our blackbirds, because the people believe
that the parent birds would avenge the wrong by causing a stormy wind to blow,
which would destroy the harvest.

But the savage clearly cannot afford to spare all animals. He must either
eat some of them or starve, and when the question thus comes to be whether he
or the animal must perish, he is forced to overcome his superstitious scruples
and take the life of the beast. At the same time he does all he can to appease
his victims and their kinsfolk. Even in the act of killing them he testifies
his respect for them, endeavours to excuse or even conceal his share in
procuring their death, and promises that their remains will be honourably
treated. By thus robbing death of its terrors, he hopes to reconcile his
victims to their fate and to induce their fellows to come and be killed also.
For example, it was a principle with the Kamtchatkans never to kill a land or
sea animal without first making excuses to it and begging that the animal
would not take it ill. Also they offered it cedarnuts and so forth, to make it
think that it was not a victim but a guest at a feast. They believed that this
hindered other animals of the same species from growing shy. For instance,
after they had killed a bear and feasted on its flesh, the host would bring
the bear's head before the company, wrap it in grass, and present it with a
variety of trifles. Then he would lay the blame of the bear's death on the
Russians, and bid the beast wreak his wrath upon them. Also he would ask the
bear to inform the other bears how well he had been treated, that they too
might come without fear. Seals, sea-lions, and other animals were treated by
the Kamtchatkans with the same ceremonious respect. Moreover, they used to
insert sprigs of a plant resembling bear's wort in the mouths of the animals
they killed; after which they would exhort the grinning skulls to have no fear
but to go and tell it to their fellows, that they also might come and be
caught and so partake of this splendid hospitality. When the Ostiaks have
hunted and killed a bear, they cut off its head and hang it on a tree. Then
they gather round in a circle and pay it divine honours. Next they run towards
the carcase uttering lamentations and saying, Who killed you? It was the
Russians. Who cut off your head? It was a Russian axe. Who skinned you? It was
a knife made by a Russian. They explain, too, that the feathers which sped
the arrow on its flight came from the wing of a strange bird, and that they
did nothing but let the arrow go. They do all this because they believe that
the wandering ghost of the slain bear would attack them on the first
opportunity, if they did not thus appease it. Or they stuff the skin of the
slain bear with hay; and after celebrating their victory with songs of mockery
and insult, after spitting on and kicking it, they set it up on its hind legs,
and then, for a considerable time, they bestow on it all the veneration due
to a guardian god. When a party of Koryak have killed a bear or a wolf, they
skin the beast and dress one of themselves in the skin. Then they dance round
the skin-clad man, saying that it was not they who killed the animal, but some
one else, generally a Russian. When they kill a fox they skin it, wrap the
body in grass, and bid him go tell his companions how hospitably he has been
received, and how he has received a new cloak instead of his old one. A fuller
account of the Koryak ceremonies is given by a more recent writer. He tells us
that when a dead bear is brought to the house, the women come out to meet it,
dancing with firebrands. The bear-skin is taken off along with the head; and
one of the women puts on the skin, dances in it, and entreats the bear not to
be angry, but to be kind to the people. At the same time they offer meat on a
wooden platter to the dead beast, saying, Eat, friend. Afterwards a ceremony
is performed for the purpose of sending the dead bear, or rather his spirit,
away back to his home. He is provided with provisions for the journey in the
shape of puddings or reindeer-flesh packed in a grass bag. His skin is stuffed
with grass and carried round the house, after which he is supposed to depart
towards the rising sun. The intention of the ceremonies is to protect the
people from the wrath of the slain bear and his kinsfolk, and so to ensure
success in future bear-hunts. The Finns used to try to persuade a slain bear
that he had not been killed by them, but had fallen from a tree, or met his
death in some other way; moreover, they held a funeral festival in his honour,
at the close of which bards expatiated on the homage that had been paid to
him, urging him to report to the other bears the high consideration with which
he had been treated, in order that they also, following his example, might
come and be slain. When the Lapps had succeeded in killing a bear with
impunity, they thanked him for not hurting them and for not breaking the clubs
and spears which had given him his death wounds; and they prayed that he would
not visit his death upon them by sending storms or in any other way. His flesh
then furnished a feast.

The reverence of hunters for the bear whom they regularly kill and eat may
thus be traced all along the northern region of the Old World from Bering's
Straits to Lappland. It reappears in similar forms in North America. With the
American Indians a bear hunt was an important event for which they prepared by
long fasts and purgations. Before setting out they offered expiatory
sacrifices to the souls of bears slain in previous hunts, and besought them to
be favourable to the hunters. When a bear was killed the hunter lit his pipe,
and putting the mouth of it between the bear's lips, blew into the bowl,
filling the beast's mouth with smoke. Then he begged the bear not to be angry
at having been killed, and not to thwart him afterwards in the chase. The
carcase was roasted whole and eaten; not a morsel of the flesh might be left
over. The head, painted red and blue, was hung on a post and addressed by
orators, who heaped praise on the dead beast. When men of the Bear clan in the
Ottawa tribe killed a bear, they made him a feast of his own flesh, and
addressed him thus: Cherish us no grudge because we have killed you. You have
sense; you see that our children are hungry. They love you and wish to take
you into their bodies. Is it not glorious to be eaten by the children of a
chief? Amongst the Nootka Indians of British Columbia, when a bear had been
killed, it was brought in and seated before the head chief in an upright
posture, with a chief's bonnet, wrought in figures, on its head, and its fur
powdered over with white down. A tray of provisions was then set before it,
and it was invited by words and gestures to eat. After that the animal was
skinned, boiled, and eaten.

A like respect is testified for other dangerous creatures by the hunters
who regularly trap and kill them. When Caffre hunters are in the act of
showering spears on an elephant, they call out, Don't kill us, great captain;
don't strike or tread upon us, mighty chief. When he is dead they make their
excuses to him, pretending that his death was a pure accident. As a mark of
respect they bury his trunk with much solemn ceremony; for they say that the
elephant is a great lord; his trunk is his hand. Before the Amaxosa Caffres
attack an elephant they shout to the animal and beg him to pardon them for the
slaughter they are about to perpetrate, professing great submission to his
person and explaining clearly the need they have of his tusks to enable them
to procure beads and supply their wants. When they have killed him they bury
in the ground, along with the end of his trunk, a few of the articles they
have obtained for the ivory, thus hoping to avert some mishap that would
otherwise befall them. Amongst some tribes of Eastern Africa, when a lion is
killed, the carcase is brought before the king, who does homage to it by
prostrating himself on the ground and rubbing his face on the muzzle of the
beast. In some parts of Western Africa if a negro kills a leopard he is bound
fast and brought before the chiefs for having killed one of their peers. The
man defends himself on the plea that the leopard is chief of the forest and
therefore a stranger. He is then set at liberty and rewarded. But the dead
leopard, adorned with a chief's bonnet, is set up in the village, where
nightly dances are held in its honour. The Baganda greatly fear the ghosts of
buffaloes which they have killed, and they always appease these dangerous
spirits. On no account will they bring the head of a slain buffalo into a
village or into a garden of plantains: they always eat the flesh of the head
in the open country. Afterwards they place the skull in a small hut built for
the purpose, where they pour out beer as an offering and pray to the ghost to
stay where he is and not to harm them.

Another formidable beast whose life the savage hunter takes with joy, yet
with fear and trembling, is the whale. After the slaughter of a whale the
maritime Koryak of North-eastern Siberia hold a communal festival, the
essential part of which is based on the conception that the whale killed has
come on a visit to the village; that it is staying for some time, during which
it is treated with great respect; that it then returns to the sea to repeat
its visit the following year; that it will induce its relatives to come along,
telling them of the hospitable reception that has been accorded to it.
According to the Koryak ideas, the whales, like all other animals, constitute
one tribe, or rather family, of related individuals, who live in villages like
the Koryak. They avenge the murder of one of their number, and are grateful
for kindnesses that they may have received. When the inhabitants of the Isle
of St. Mary, to the north of Madagascar, go a-whaling, they single out the
young whales for attack and humbly beg the mother's pardon, stating the
necessity that drives them to kill her progeny, and requesting that she will
be pleased to go below while the deed is doing, that her maternal feelings may
not be outraged by witnessing what must cause her so much uneasiness. An
Ajumba hunter having killed a female hippopotamus on Lake Azyingo in West
Africa, the animal was decapitated and its quarters and bowels removed. Then
the hunter, naked, stepped into the hollow of the ribs, and kneeling down in
the bloody pool washed his whole body with the blood and excretions of the
animal, while he prayed to the soul of the hippopotamus not to bear him a
grudge for having killed her and so blighted her hopes of future maternity;
and he further entreated the ghost not to stir up other hippopotamuses to
avenge her death by butting at and capsizing his canoe.

The ounce, a leopard-like creature, is dreaded for its depredations by the
Indians of Brazil. When they have caught one of these animals in a snare, they
kill it and carry the body home to the village. There the women deck the
carcase with feathers of many colours, put bracelets on its legs, and weep
over it, saying, I pray thee not to take vengeance on our little ones for
having been caught and killed through thine own ignorance. For it was not we
who deceived thee, it was thyself. Our husbands only set the trap to catch
animals that are good to eat; they never thought to take thee in it.
Therefore, let not thy soul counsel thy fellows to avenge thy death on our
little ones! When a Blackfoot Indian has caught eagles in a trap and killed
them, he takes them home to a special lodge, called the eagles' lodge, which
has been prepared for their reception outside of the camp. Here he sets the
birds in a row on the ground, and propping up their heads on a stick, puts a
piece of dried meat in each of their mouths in order that the spirits of the
dead eagles may go and tell the other eagles how well they are being treated
by the Indians. So when Indian hunters of the Orinoco region have killed an
animal, they open its mouth and pour into it a few drops of the liquor they
generally carry with them, in order that the soul of the dead beast may inform
its fellows of the welcome it has met with, and that they too, cheered by the
prospect of the same kind reception, may come with alacrity to be killed. When
a Teton Indian is on a journey, and he meets a grey spider or a spider with
yellow legs, he kills it, because some evil would befall him if he did not.
But he is very careful not to let the spider know that he kills it, for if the
spider knew, his soul would go and tell the other spiders, and one of them
would be sure to avenge the death of his relation. So in crushing the insect,
the Indian says, O Grandfather Spider, the Thunder-beings kill you. And the
spider is crushed at once and believes what is told him. His soul probably
runs and tells the other spiders that the Thunder-beings have killed him; but
no harm comes of that. For what can grey or yellow-legged spiders do to the
Thunder-beings?

But it is not merely dangerous creatures with whom the savage desires to
keep on good terms. It is true that the respect which he pays to wild beasts
is in some measure proportioned to their strength and ferocity. Thus the
savage Stiens of Cambodia, believing that all animals have souls which roam
about after their death, beg an animal's pardon when they kill it, lest its
soul should come and torment them. Also they offer it sacrifices, but these
sacrifices are proportioned to the size and strength of the animal. The
ceremonies which they observe at the death of an elephant are conducted with
much pomp and last seven days. Similar distinctions are drawn by North
American Indians. The bear, the buffalo, and the beaver are manidos
[divinities] which furnish food. The bear is formidable, and good to eat. They
render ceremonies to him, begging him to allow himself to be eaten, although
they know he has no fancy for it. We kill you, but you are not annihilated.
His head and paws are objects of homage . Other animals are treated similarly
from similar reasons . Many of the animal manidos, not being dangerous, are
often treated with contemptthe terrapin, the weasel, polecat, etc. The
distinction is instructive. Animals which are feared, or are good to eat, or
both, are treated with ceremonious respect; those which are neither formidable
nor good to eat are despised. We have had examples of reverence paid to
animals which are both feared and eaten. It remains to prove that similar
respect is shown to animals which, without being feared, are either eaten or
valued for their skins.

When Siberian sable-hunters have caught a sable, no one is allowed to see
it, and they think that if good or evil be spoken of the captured sable no
more sables will be caught. A hunter has been known to express his belief that
the sables could hear what was said of them as far off as Moscow. He said that
the chief reason why the sable hunt was now so unproductive was that some live
sables had been sent to Moscow. There they had been viewed with astonishment
as strange animals, and the sables cannot abide that. Another, though minor,
cause of the diminished take of sables was, he alleged, that the world is now
much worse than it used to be, so that nowadays a hunter will sometimes hide
the sable which he has got instead of putting it into the common stock. This
also, said he, the sables cannot abide. Alaskan hunters preserve the bones of
sables and beavers out of reach of the dogs for a year and then bury them
carefully, lest the spirits who look after the beavers and sables should
consider that they are regarded with contempt, and hence no more should be
killed or trapped. The Canadian Indians were equally particular not to let
their dogs gnaw the bones, or at least certain of the bones, of beavers. They
took the greatest pains to collect and preserve these bones, and, when the
beaver had been caught in a net, they threw them into the river. To a Jesuit
who argued that the beavers could not possibly know what became of their
bones, the Indians replied, You know nothing about catching beavers and yet
you will be prating about it. Before the beaver is stone dead, his soul takes
a turn in the hut of the man who is killing him and makes a careful note of
what is done with his bones. If the bones are given to the dogs, the other
beavers would get word of it and would not let themselves be caught. Whereas,
if their bones are thrown into the fire or a river, they are quite satisfied;
and it is particularly gratifying to the net which caught them. Before
hunting the beaver they offered a solemn prayer to the Great Beaver, and
presented him with tobacco; and when the chase was over, an orator pronounced
a funeral oration over the dead beavers. He praised their spirit and wisdom.
You will hear no more, said he, the voice of the chieftains who commanded
you and whom you chose from among all the warrior beavers to give you laws.
Your language, which the medicine-men understand perfectly, will be heard no
more at the bottom of the lake. You will fight no more battles with the
otters, your cruel foes. No, beavers! But your skins shall serve to buy arms;
we will carry your smoked hams to our children; we will keep the dogs from
eating your bones, which are so hard.

The elan, deer, and elk were treated by the American Indians with the same
punctilious respect, and for the same reason. Their bones might not be given
to the dogs nor thrown into the fire, nor might their fat be dropped upon the
fire, because the souls of the dead animals were believed to see what was done
to their bodies and to tell it to the other beasts, living and dead. Hence, if
their bodies were illused, the animals of that species would not allow
themselves to be taken, neither in this world nor in the world to come. Among
the Chiquites of Paraguay a sick man would be asked by the medicine-man
whether he had not thrown away some of the flesh of the deer or turtle, and if
he answered yes, the medicine-man would say, That is what is killing you. The
soul of the deer or turtle has entered into your body to avenge the wrong you
did it. The Canadian Indians would not eat the embryos of the elk, unless at
the close of the hunting season; otherwise the mother-elks would be shy and
refuse to be caught.

In the Timor-laut islands of the Indian Archipelago the skulls of all the
turtles which a fisherman has caught are hung up under his house. Before he
goes out to catch another, he addresses himself to the skull of the last
turtle that he killed, and having inserted betel between its jaws, he prays
the spirit of the dead animal to entice its kinsfolk in the sea to come and be
caught. In the Poso district of Central Celebes hunters keep the jawbones of
deer and wild pigs which they have killed and hang them up in their houses
near the fire. Then they say to the jawbones, Ye cry after your comrades,
that your grandfathers, or nephews, or children may not go away. Their notion
is that the souls of the dead deer and pigs tarry near their jawbones and
attract the souls of living deer and pigs, which are thus drawn into the toils
of the hunter. Thus the wily savage employs dead animals as decoys to lure
living animals to their doom.

The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco love to hunt the ostrich, but when
they have killed one of these birds and are bringing home the carcase to the
village, they take steps to outwit the resentful ghost of their victim. They
think that when the first natural shock of death is passed, the ghost of the
ostrich pulls himself together and makes after his body. Acting on this sage
calculation, the Indians pluck feathers from the breast of the bird and strew
them at intervals along the track. At every bunch of feathers the ghost stops
to consider, Is this the whole of my body or only a part of it? The doubt
gives him pause, and when at last he has made up his mind fully at all the
bunches, and has further wasted valuable time by the zigzag course which he
invariably pursues in going from one to another, the hunters are safe at home,
and the bilked ghost may stalk in vain round about the village, which he is
too timid to enter.

The Esquimaux about Bering Strait believe that the souls of dead
sea-beasts, such as seals, walrus, and whales, remain attached to their
bladders, and that by returning the bladders to the sea they can cause the
souls to be reincarnated in fresh bodies and so multiply the game which the
hunters pursue and kill. Acting on this belief every hunter carefully removes
and preserves the bladders of all the sea-beasts that he kills; and at a
solemn festival held once a year in winter these bladders, containing the
souls of all the sea-beasts that have been killed throughout the year, are
honoured with dances and offerings of food in the public assembly-room, after
which they are taken out on the ice and thrust through holes into the water;
for the simple Esquimaux imagine that the souls of the animals, in high good
humour at the kind treatment they have experienced, will thereafter be born
again as seals, walrus, and whales, and in that form will flock willingly to
be again speared, harpooned, or otherwise done to death by the hunters.

For like reasons, a tribe which depends for its subsistence, chiefly or in
part, upon fishing is careful to treat the fish with every mark of honour and
respect. The Indians of Peru adored the fish that they caught in greatest
abundance; for they said that the first fish that was made in the world above
(for so they named Heaven) gave birth to all other fish of that species, and
took care to send them plenty of its children to sustain their tribe. For this
reason they worshipped sardines in one region, where they killed more of them
than of any other fish; in others, the skate; in others, the dogfish; in
others, the golden fish for its beauty; in others, the crawfish; in others,
for want of larger gods, the crabs, where they had no other fish, or where
they knew not how to catch and kill them. In short, they had whatever fish was
most serviceable to them as their gods. The Kwakiutl Indians of British
Columbia think that when a salmon is killed its soul returns to the salmon
country. Hence they take care to throw the bones and offal into the sea, in
order that the soul may reanimate them at the resurrection of the salmon.
Whereas if they burned the bones the soul would be lost, and so it would be
quite impossible for that salmon to rise from the dead. In like manner the
Ottawa Indians of Canada, believing that the souls of dead fish passed into
other bodies of fish, never burned fish bones, for fear of displeasing the
souls of the fish, who would come no more to the nets. The Hurons also
refrained from throwing fish bones into the fire, lest the souls of the fish
should go and warn the other fish not to let themselves be caught, since the
Hurons would burn their bones. Moreover, they had men who preached to the fish
and persuaded them to come and be caught. A good preacher was much sought
after, for they thought that the exhortations of a clever man had a great
effect in drawing the fish to the nets. In the Huron fishing village where the
French missionary Sagard stayed, the preacher to the fish prided himself very
much on his eloquence, which was of a florid order. Every evening after
supper, having seen that all the people were in their places and that a strict
silence was observed, he preached to the fish. His text was that the Hurons
did not burn fish bones. Then enlarging on this theme with extraordinary
unction, he exhorted and conjured and invited and implored the fish to come
and be caught and to be of good courage and to fear nothing, for it was all to
serve their friends who honoured them and did not burn their bones. The
natives of the Duke of York Island annually decorate a canoe with flowers and
ferns, lade it, or are supposed to lade it, with shell-money, and set it
adrift to compensate the fish for their fellows who have been caught and
eaten. It is especially necessary to treat the first fish caught with
consideration in order to conciliate the rest of the fish, whose conduct may
be supposed to be influenced by the reception given to those of their kind
which were the first to be taken. Accordingly the Maoris always put back into
the sea the first fish caught, with a prayer that it may tempt other fish to
come and be caught.

Still more stringent are the precautions taken when the fish are the first
of the season. On salmon rivers, when the fish begin to run up the stream in
spring, they are received with much deference by tribes who, like the Indians
of the Pacific Coast of North America, subsist largely upon a fish diet. In
British Columbia the Indians used to go out to meet the first fish as they
came up the river: They paid court to them, and would address them thus: 'You
fish, you fish; you are all chiefs, you are; you are all chiefs.' Amongst the
Tlingit of Alaska the first halibut of the season is carefully handled and
addressed as a chief, and a festival is given in his honour, after which the
fishing goes on. In spring, when the winds blow soft from the south and the
salmon begin to run up the Klamath river, the Karoks of California dance for
salmon, to ensure a good catch. One of the Indians, called the Kareya or
God-man, retires to the mountains and fasts for ten days. On his return the
people flee, while he goes to the river, takes the first salmon of the catch,
eats some of it, and with the rest kindles the sacred fire in the sweating
house. No Indian may take a salmon before this dance is held, nor for ten
days after it, even if his family are starving. The Karoks also believe that
a fisherman will take no salmon if the poles of which his spearing-booth is
made were gathered on the river-side, where the salmon might have seen them.
The poles must be brought from the top of the highest mountain. The fisherman
will also labour in vain if he uses the same poles a second year in booths or
weirs, because the old salmon will have told the young ones about them. There
is a favourite fish of the Aino which appears in their rivers about May and
June. They prepare for the fishing by observing rules of ceremonial purity,
and when they have gone out to fish, the women at home must keep strict
silence or the fish would hear them and disappear. When the first fish is
caught he is brought home and passed through a small opening at the end of the
hut, but not through the door; for if he were passed through the door, the
other fish would certainly see him and disappear. This may partly explain the
custom observed by other savages of bringing game in certain cases into their
huts, not by the door, but by the window, the smoke-hole, or by a special
opening at the back of the hut.

With some savages a special reason for respecting the bones of game, and
generally of the animals which they eat, is a belief that, if the bones are
preserved, they will in course of time be reclothed with flesh, and thus the
animal will come to life again. It is, therefore, clearly for the interest of
the hunter to leave the bones intact since to destroy them would be to
diminish the future supply of game. Many of the Minnetaree Indians believe
that the bones of those bisons which they have slain and divested of flesh
rise again clothed with renewed flesh, and quickened with life, and become
fat, and fit for slaughter the succeeding June. Hence on the western prairies
of America, the skulls of buffaloes may be seen arranged in circles and
symmetrical piles, awaiting the resurrection. After feasting on a dog, the
Dacotas carefully collect the bones, scrape, wash, and bury them, partly, as
it is said, to testify to the dog-species, that in feasting upon one of their
number no disrespect was meant to the species itself, and partly also from a
belief that the bones of the animal will rise and reproduce another. In
sacrificing an animal the Lapps regularly put aside the bones, eyes, ears,
heart, lungs, sexual parts (if the animal was a male), and a morsel of flesh
from each limb. Then, after eating the remainder of the flesh, they laid the
bones and the rest in anatomical order in a coffin and buried them with the
usual rites, believing that the god to whom the animal was sacrificed would
reclothe the bones with flesh and restore the animal to life in Jabme-Aimo,
the subterranean world of the dead. Sometimes, as after feasting on a bear,
they seem to have contented themselves with thus burying the bones. Thus the
Lapps expected the resurrection of the slain animal to take place in another
world, resembling in this respect the Kamtchatkans, who believed that every
creature, down to the smallest fly, would rise from the dead and live
underground. On the other hand, the North American Indians looked for the
resurrection of the animals in the present world. The habit, observed
especially by Mongolian peoples, of stuffing the skin of a sacrificed animal,
or stretching it on a framework, points rather to a belief in a resurrection
of the latter sort. The objection commonly entertained by primitive peoples to
break the bones of the animals which they have eaten or sacrificed may be
based either on a belief in the resurrection of the animals, or on a fear of
intimidating other creatures of the same species and offending the ghosts of
the slain animals. The reluctance of North American Indians and Esquimaux to
let dogs gnaw the bones of animals is perhaps only a precaution to prevent the
bones from being broken.

But after all the resurrection of dead game may have its inconveniences,
and accordingly some hunters take steps to prevent it by hamstringing the
animal so as to prevent it or its ghost from getting up and running away. This
is the motive alleged for the practice by Koui hunters in Laos; they think
that the spells which they utter in the chase may lose their magical virtue,
and that the slaughtered animal may consequently come to life again and
escape. To prevent that catastrophe they therefore hamstring the beast as soon
as they have butchered it. When an Esquimau of Alaska has killed a fox, he
carefully cuts the tendons of all the animal's legs in order to prevent the
ghost from reanimating the body and walking about. But hamstringing the
carcase is not the only measure which the prudent savage adopts for the sake
of disabling the ghost of his victim. In old days, when the Aino went out
hunting and killed a fox first, they took care to tie its mouth up tightly in
order to prevent the ghost of the animal from sallying forth and warning its
fellows against the approach of the hunter. The Gilyaks of the Amoor River put
out the eyes of the seals they have killed, lest the ghosts of the slain
animals should know their slayers and avenge their death by spoiling the
seal-hunt.

Besides the animals which primitive man dreads for their strength and
ferocity, and those which he reveres on account of the benefits which he
expects from them, there is another class of creatures which he sometimes
deems it necessary to conciliate by worship and sacrifice. These are the
vermin that infest his crops and his cattle. To rid himself of these deadly
foes the farmer has recourse to many superstitious devices, of which, though
some are meant to destroy or intimidate the vermin, others aim at propitiating
them and persuading them by fair means to spare the fruits of the earth and
the herds. Thus Esthonian peasants, in the island of Oesel, stand in great awe
of the weevil, an insect which is exceedingly destructive to the grain. They
give it a fine name, and if a child is about to kill a weevil they say, Don't
do it; the more we hurt him, the more he hurts us. If they find a weevil they
bury it in the earth instead of killing it. Some even put the weevil under a
stone in the field and offer corn to it. They think that thus it is appeased
and does less harm. Amongst the Saxons of Transylvania, in order to keep
sparrows from the corn, the sower begins by throwing the first handful of seed
backwards over his head, saying, That is for you, sparrows. To guard the
corn against the attacks of leaf-flies he shuts his eyes and scatters three
handfuls of oats in different directions. Having made this offering to the
leaf-flies he feels sure that they will spare the corn. A Transylvanian way of
securing the crops against all birds, beasts, and insects, is this: after he
has finished sowing, the sower goes once more from end to end of the field
imitating the gesture of sowing, but with an empty hand. As he does so he
says, I sow this for the animals; I sow it for every thing that flies and
creeps, that walks and stands, that sings and springs, in the name of God the
Father, etc. The following is a German way of freeing a garden from
caterpillars. After sunset or at midnight the mistress of the house, or
another female member of the family, walks all round the garden dragging a
broom after her. She may not look behind her, and must keep murmuring, Good
evening, Mother Caterpillar, you shall come with your husband to church. The
garden gate is left open till the following morning.

Sometimes in dealing with vermin the farmer aims at hitting a happy mean
between excessive rigour on the one hand and weak indulgence on the other;
kind but firm, he tempers severity with mercy. An ancient Greek treatise on
farming advises the husbandman who would rid his lands of mice to act thus:
Take a sheet of paper and write on it as follows: 'I adjure you, ye mice here
present, that ye neither injure me nor suffer another mouse to do so. I give
you yonder field' (here you specify the field); 'but if ever I catch you here
again, by the Mother of the Gods I will rend you in seven pieces.' Write this,
and stick the paper on an unhewn stone in the field before sunrise, taking
care to keep the written side up. In the Ardennes they say that to get rid of
rats you should repeat the following words: Erat verbum, apud Deum vestrum.
Male rats and female rats, I conjure you, by the great God, to go out of my
house, out of all my habitations, and to betake yourselves to such and such a
place, there to end your days. Decretis, reversis et desembarassis virgo
potens, clemens, justitiae. Then write the same words on pieces of paper,
fold them up, and place one of them under the door by which the rats are to go
forth, and the other on the road which they are to take. This exorcism should
be performed at sunrise. Some years ago an American farmer was reported to
have written a civil letter to the rats, telling them that his crops were
short, that he could not afford to keep them through the winter, that he had
been very kind to them, and that for their own good he thought they had better
leave him and go to some of his neighbours who had more grain. This document
he pinned to a post in his barn for the rats to read.

Sometimes the desired object is supposed to be attained by treating with
high distinction one or two chosen individuals of the obnoxious species, while
the rest are pursued with relentless rigour. In the East Indian island of
Bali, the mice which ravage the rice-fields are caught in great numbers, and
burned in the same way that corpses are burned. But two of the captured mice
are allowed to live, and receive a little packet of white linen. Then the
people bow down before them, as before gods, and let them go. When the farms
of the Sea Dyaks or Ibans of Sarawak are much pestered by birds and insects,
they catch a specimen of each kind of vermin (one sparrow, one grasshopper,
and so on), put them in a tiny boat of bark well-stocked with provisions, and
then allow the little vessel with its obnoxious passengers to float down the
river. If that does not drive the pests away, the Dyaks resort to what they
deem a more effectual mode of accomplishing the same purpose. They make a clay
crocodile as large as life and set it up in the fields, where they offer it
food, rice-spirit, and cloth, and sacrifice a fowl and a pig before it.
Mollified by these attentions, the ferocious animal very soon gobbles up all
the creatures that devour the crops. In Albania, if the fields or vineyards
are ravaged by locusts or beetles, some of the women will assemble with
dishevelled hair, catch a few of the insects, and march with them in a funeral
procession to a spring or stream, in which they drown the creatures. Then one
of the women sings, O locusts and beetles who have left us bereaved, and the
dirge is taken up and repeated by all the women in chorus. Thus by celebrating
the obsequies of a few locusts and beetles, they hope to bring about the death
of them all. When caterpillars invaded a vineyard or field in Syria, the
virgins were gathered, and one of the caterpillars was taken and a girl made
its mother. Then they bewailed and buried it. Thereafter they conducted the
mother to the place where the caterpillars were, consoling her, in order
that all the caterpillars might leave the garden.

Chapter 54. Types of Animal Sacrament.

1. The Egyptian and the Aino Types of Sacrament

WE are now perhaps in a position to understand the ambiguous behaviour of
the Aino and Gilyaks towards the bear. It has been shown that the sharp line
of demarcation which we draw between mankind and the lower animals does not
exist for the savage. To him many of the other animals appear as his equals or
even his superiors, not merely in brute force but in intelligence; and if
choice or necessity leads him to take their lives, he feels bound, out of
regard to his own safety, to do it in a way which will be as inoffensive as
possible not merely to the living animal, but to its departed spirit and to
all the other animals of the same species, which would resent an affront put
upon one of their kind much as a tribe of savages would revenge an injury or
insult offered to a tribesman. We have seen that among the many devices by
which the savage seeks to atone for the wrong done by him to his animal
victims one is to show marked deference to a few chosen individuals of the
species, for such behaviour is apparently regarded as entitling him to
exterminate with impunity all the rest of the species upon which he can lay
hands. This principle perhaps explains the attitude, at first sight puzzling
and contradictory, of the Aino towards the bear. The flesh and skin of the
bear regularly afford them food and clothing; but since the bear is an
intelligent and powerful animal, it is necessary to offer some satisfaction or
atonement to the bear species for the loss which it sustains in the death of
so many of its members. This satisfaction or atonement is made by rearing
young bears, treating them, so long as they live, with respect, and killing
them with extraordinary marks of sorrow and devotion. So the other bears are
appeased, and do not resent the slaughter of their kind by attacking the
slayers or deserting the country, which would deprive the Aino of one of their
means of subsistence.

Thus the primitive worship of animals conforms to two types, which are in
some respects the converse of each other. On the one hand, animals are
worshipped, and are therefore neither killed nor eaten. On the other hand,
animals are worshipped because they are habitually killed and eaten. In both
types of worship the animal is revered on account of some benefit, positive or
negative, which the savage hopes to receive from it. In the former worship the
benefit comes either in the positive shape of protection, advice, and help
which the animal affords the man, or in the negative shape of abstinence from
injuries which it is in the power of the animal to inflict. In the latter
worship the benefit takes the material form of the animal's flesh and skin.
The two types of worship are in some measure antithetical: in the one, the
animal is not eaten because it is revered; in the other, it is revered because
it is eaten. But both may be practised by the same people, as we see in the
case of the North American Indians, who, while they apparently revere and
spare their totem animals, also revere the animals and fish upon which they
subsist. The aborigines of Australia have totemism in the most primitive form
known to us; but there is no clear evidence that they attempt, like the North
American Indians, to conciliate the animals which they kill and eat. The means
which the Australians adopt to secure a plentiful supply of game appear to be
primarily based, not on conciliation, but on sympathetic magic, a principle to
which the North American Indians also resort for the same purpose. Hence, as
the Australians undoubtedly represent a ruder and earlier stage of human
progress than the American Indians, it would seem that before hunters think of
worshipping the game as a means of ensuring an abundant supply of it, they
seek to attain the same end by sympathetic magic. This, again, would showwhat
there is good reason for believingthat sympathetic magic is one of the
earliest means by which man endeavours to adapt the agencies of nature to his
needs.

Corresponding to the two distinct types of animal worship, there are two
distinct types of the custom of killing the animal god. On the one hand, when
the revered animal is habitually spared, it is nevertheless killedand
sometimes eatenon rare and solemn occasions. Examples of this custom have
been already given and an explanation of them offered. On the other hand, when
the revered animal is habitually killed, the slaughter of any one of the
species involves the killing of the god, and is atoned for on the spot by
apologies and sacrifices, especially when the animal is a powerful and
dangerous one; and, in addition to this ordinary and everyday atonement, there
is a special annual atonement, at which a select individual of the species is
slain with extraordinary marks of respect and devotion. Clearly the two types
of sacramental killingthe Egyptian and the Aino types, as we may call them
for distinctionare liable to be confounded by an observer; and, before we can
say to which type any particular example belongs, it is necessary to ascertain
whether the animal sacramentally slain belongs to a species which is
habitually spared, or to one which is habitually killed by the tribe. In the
former case the example belongs to the Egyptian type of sacrament, in the
latter to the Aino type.

The practice of pastoral tribes appears to furnish examples of both types
of sacrament. Pastoral tribes, says Adolf Bastian, being sometimes obliged
to sell their herds to strangers who may handle the bones disrespectfully,
seek to avert the danger which such a sacrilege would entail by consecrating
one of the herd as an object of worship, eating it sacramentally in the family
circle with closed doors, and afterwards treating the bones with all the
ceremonious respect which, strictly speaking, should be accorded to every head
of cattle, but which, being punctually paid to the representative animal, is
deemed to be paid to all. Such family meals are found among various peoples,
especially those of the Caucasus. When amongst the Abchases the shepherds in
spring eat their common meal with their loins girt and their staves in their
hands, this may be looked upon both as a sacrament and as an oath of mutual
help and support. For the strongest of all oaths is that which is accompanied
with the eating of a sacred substance, since the perjured person cannot
possibly escape the avenging god whom he has taken into his body and
assimilated. This kind of sacrament is of the Aino or expiatory type, since
it is meant to atone to the species for the possible ill-usage of individuals.
An expiation, similar in principle but different in details, is offered by the
Kalmucks to the sheep, whose flesh is one of their staple foods. Rich Kalmucks
are in the habit of consecrating a white ram under the title of the ram of
heaven or the ram of the spirit. The animal is never shorn and never sold;
but when it grows old and its owner wishes to consecrate a new one, the old
ram must be killed and eaten at a feast to which the neighbours are invited.
On a lucky day, generally in autumn when the sheep are fat, a sorcerer kills
the old ram, after sprinkling it with milk. Its flesh is eaten; the skeleton,
with a portion of the fat, is burned on a turf altar; and the skin, with the
head and feet, is hung up.

An example of a sacrament of the Egyptian type is furnished by the Todas,
a pastoral people of Southern India, who subsist largely upon the milk of
their buffaloes. Amongst them the buffalo is to a certain degree held sacred
and is treated with great kindness, even with a degree of adoration, by the
people. They never eat the flesh of the cow buffalo, and as a rule abstain
from the flesh of the male. But to the latter rule there is a single
exception. Once a year all the adult males of the village join in the ceremony
of killing and eating a very young male calfseemingly under a month old. They
take the animal into the dark recesses of the village wood, where it is killed
with a club made from the sacred tree of the Todas (the Millingtonia). A
sacred fire having been made by the rubbing of sticks, the flesh of the calf
is roasted on the embers of certain trees, and is eaten by the men alone,
women being excluded from the assembly. This is the only occasion on which the
Todas eat buffalo flesh. The Madi or Moru tribe of Central Africa, whose chief
wealth is their cattle, though they also practise agriculture, appear to kill
a lamb sacramentally on certain solemn occasions. The custom is thus described
by Dr. Felkin: A remarkable custom is observed at stated timesonce a year, I
am led to believe. I have not been able to ascertain what exact meaning is
attached to it. It appears, however, to relieve the people's minds, for
beforehand they evince much sadness, and seem very joyful when the ceremony is
duly accomplished. The following is what takes place: A large concourse of
people of all ages assemble, and sit down round a circle of stones, which is
erected by the side of a road (really a narrow path). A very choice lamb is
then fetched by a boy, who leads it four times round the assembled people. As
it passes they pluck off little bits of its fleece and place them in their
hair, or on to some other part of their body. The lamb is then led up to the
stones, and there killed by a man belonging to a kind of priestly order, who
takes some of the blood and sprinkles it four times over the people. He then
applies it individually. On the children he makes a small ring of blood over
the lower end of the breast bone, on women and girls he makes a mark above the
breasts, and the men he touches on each shoulder. He then proceeds to explain
the ceremony, and to exhort the people to show kindness . When this
discourse, which is at times of great length, is over, the people rise, each
places a leaf on or by the circle of stones, and then they depart with signs
of great joy. The lamb's skull is hung on a tree near the stones, and its
flesh is eaten by the poor. This ceremony is observed on a small scale at
other times. If a family is in any great trouble, through illness or
bereavement, their friends and neighbours come together and a lamb is killed;
this is thought to avert further evil. The same custom prevails at the grave
of departed friends, and also on joyful occasions, such as the return of a son
home after a very prolonged absence. The sorrow thus manifested by the people
at the annual slaughter of the lamb seems to show that the lamb slain is a
sacred or divine animal, whose death is mourned by his worshippers, just as
the death of the sacred buzzard was mourned by the Californians and the death
of the Theban ram by the Egyptians. The smearing each of the worshippers with
the blood of the lamb is a form of communion with the divinity; the vehicle of
the divine life is applied externally instead of being taken internally, as
when the blood is drunk or the flesh eaten.

2. Processions with Sacred Animals

THE FORM of communion in which the sacred animal is taken from house to
house, that all may enjoy a share of its divine influence, has been
exemplified by the Gilyak custom of promenading the bear through the village
before it is slain. A similar form of communion with the sacred snake is
observed by a Snake tribe in the Punjaub. Once a year in the month of
September the snake is worshipped by all castes and religions for nine days
only. At the end of August the Mirasans, especially those of the Snake tribe,
make a snake of dough which they paint black and red, and place on a winnowing
basket. This basket they carry round the village, and on entering any house
they say: God be with you all! May every ill be far! May our patron's
(Gugga's) word thrive! Then they present the basket with the snake, saying:
A small cake of flour: a little bit of butter: if you obey the snake, you and
yours shall thrive! Strictly speaking, a cake and butter should be given, but
it is seldom done. Every one, however, gives something, generally a handful of
dough or some corn. In houses where there is a new bride or whence a bride has
gone, or where a son has been born, it is usual to give a rupee and a quarter,
or some cloth. Sometimes the bearers of the snake also sing:

Give the snake a piece of cloth, and he will send a lively bride!

When every house has been thus visited, the dough snake is buried and a small
grave is erected over it. Thither during the nine days of September the women
come to worship. They bring a basin of curds, a small portion of which they
offer at the snake's grave, kneeling on the ground and touching the earth with
their foreheads. Then they go home and divide the rest of the curds among the
children. Here the dough snake is clearly a substitute for a real snake.
Indeed, in districts where snakes abound the worship is offered, not at the
grave of the dough snake, but in the jungles where snakes are known to be.
Besides this yearly worship, performed by all the people, the members of the
Snake tribe worship in the same way every morning after a new moon. The Snake
tribe is not uncommon in the Punjaub. Members of it will not kill a snake, and
they say that its bite does not hurt them. If they find a dead snake, they put
clothes on it and give it a regular funeral.

Ceremonies closely analogous to this Indian worship of the snake have
survived in Europe into recent times, and doubtless date from a very primitive
paganism. The best-known example is the hunting of the wren. By many
European peoplesthe ancient Greeks and Romans, the modern Italians,
Spaniards, French, Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, English, and Welshthe wren
has been designated the king, the little king, the king of birds, the hedge
king, and so forth, and has been reckoned amongst those birds which it is
extremely unlucky to kill. In England it is supposed that if any one kills a
wren or harries its nest, he will infallibly break a bone or meet with some
dreadful misfortune within the year; sometimes it is thought that the cows
will give bloody milk. In Scotland the wren is called the Lady of Heaven's
hen, and boys say:

Malisons, malisons, mair than ten,
That harry the Ladye of Heaven's hen!

At Saint Donan, in Brittany, people believe that if children touch the young
wrens in the nest, they will suffer from the fire of St. Lawrence, that is,
from pimples on the face, legs, and so on. In other parts of France it is
thought that if a person kills a wren or harries its nest, his house will be
struck by lightning, or that the fingers with which he did the deed will
shrivel up and drop off, or at least be maimed, or that his cattle will suffer
in their feet.

Notwithstanding such beliefs, the custom of annually killing the wren has
prevailed widely both in this country and in France. In the Isle of Man down
to the eighteenth century the custom was observed on Christmas Eve, or rather
Christmas morning. On the twenty-fourth of December, towards evening, all the
servants got a holiday; they did not go to bed all night, but rambled about
till the bells rang in all the churches at midnight. When prayers were over,
they went to hunt the wren, and having found one of these birds they killed it
and fastened it to the top of a long pole with its wings extended. Thus they
carried it in procession to every house chanting the following rhyme:

We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,
We hunted the wren for Jack of the Can,
We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,
We hunted the wren for every one.

When they had gone from house to house and collected all the money they
could, they laid the wren on a bier and carried it in procession to the parish
churchyard, where they made a grave and buried it with the utmost solemnity,
singing dirges over her in the Manks language, which they call her knell;
after which Christmas begins. The burial over, the company outside the
churchyard formed a circle and danced to music.

A writer of the eighteenth century says that in Ireland the wren is still
hunted and killed by the peasants on Christmas Day, and on the following (St.
Stephen's Day) he is carried about, hung by the leg, in the centre of two
hoops, crossing each other at right angles, and a procession made in every
village, of men, women, and children, singing an Irish catch, importing him to
be the king of all birds. Down to the present time the hunting of the wren
still takes place in parts of Leinster and Connaught. On Christmas Day or St.
Stephen's Day the boys hunt and kill the wren, fasten it in the middle of a
mass of holly and ivy on the top of a broomstick, and on St. Stephen's Day go
about with it from house to house, singing:

The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St. Stephen's Day was caught in the furze;
Although he is little, his family's great,
I pray you, good landlady, give us a treat.

Money or food (bread, butter, eggs, etc.) were given them, upon which they
feasted in the evening.

In the first half of the nineteenth century similar customs were still
observed in various parts of the south of France. Thus at Carcassone, every
year on the first Sunday of December the young people of the street Saint Jean
used to go out of the town armed with sticks, with which they beat the bushes,
looking for wrens. The first to strike down one of these birds was proclaimed
King. Then they returned to the town in procession, headed by the King, who
carried the wren on a pole. On the evening of the last day of the year the
King and all who had hunted the wren marched through the streets of the town
to the light of torches, with drums beating and fifes playing in front of
them. At the door of every house they stopped, and one of them wrote with
chalk on the door vive le roi! with the number of the year which was about
to begin. On the morning of Twelfth Day the King again marched in procession
with great pomp, wearing a crown and a blue mantle and carrying a sceptre. In
front of him was borne the wren fastened to the top of a pole, which was
adorned with a verdant wreath of olive, of oak, and sometimes of mistletoe
grown on an oak. After hearing high mass in the parish church of St. Vincent,
surrounded by his officers and guards, the King visited the bishop, the mayor,
the magistrates, and the chief inhabitants, collecting money to defray the
expenses of the royal banquet which took place in the evening and wound up
with a dance.

The parallelism between this custom of hunting the wren and some of
those which we have considered, especially the Gilyak procession with the
bear, and the Indian one with the snake, seems too close to allow us to doubt
that they all belong to the same circle of ideas. The worshipful animal is
killed with special solemnity once a year; and before or immediately after
death he is promenaded from door to door, that each of his worshippers may
receive a portion of the divine virtues that are supposed to emanate from the
dead or dying god. Religious processions of this sort must have had a great
place in the ritual of European peoples in prehistoric times, if we may judge
from the numerous traces of them which have survived in folk-custom. For
example, on the last day of the year, or Hogmanay as it was called, it used to
be customary in the Highlands of Scotland for a man to dress himself up in a
cow's hide and thus attired to go from house to house, attended by young
fellows, each of them armed with a staff, to which a bit of raw hide was tied.
Round every house the hide-clad man used to run thrice deiseal, that is,
according to the course of the sun, so as to keep the house on his right hand;
while the others pursued him, beating the hide with their staves and thereby
making a loud noise like the beating of a drum. In this disorderly procession
they also struck the walls of the house. On being admitted, one of the party,
standing within the threshold, pronounced a blessing on the family in these
words: May God bless the house and all that belongs to it, cattle, stones,
and timber! In plenty of meat, of bed and body clothes, and health of men may
it ever abound! Then each of the party singed in the fire a little bit of the
hide which was tied to his staff; and having done so he applied the singed
hide to the nose of every person and of every domestic animal belonging to the
house. This was imagined to secure them from diseases and other misfortunes,
particularly from witchcraft, throughout the ensuing year. The whole ceremony
was called calluinn because of the great noise made in beating the hide. It
was observed in the Hebrides, including St. Kilda, down to the second half of
the eighteenth century at least, and it seems to have survived well into the
nineteenth century.

Chapter 55. The Transference of Evil.

1. The Transference to Inanimate Objects

WE have now traced the practice of killing a god among peoples in the
hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages of society; and I have attempted to
explain the motives which led men to adopt so curious a custom. One aspect of
the custom still remains to be noticed. The accumulated misfortunes and sins
of the whole people are sometimes laid upon the dying god, who is supposed to
bear them away for ever, leaving the people innocent and happy. The notion
that we can transfer our guilt and sufferings to some other being who will
bear them for us is familiar to the savage mind. It arises from a very obvious
confusion between the physical and the mental, between the material and the
immaterial. Because it is possible to shift a load of wood, stones, or what
not, from our own back to the back of another, the savage fancies that it is
equally possible to shift the burden of his pains and sorrows to another, who
will suffer them in his stead. Upon this idea he acts, and the result is an
endless number of very unamiable devices for palming off upon some one else
the trouble which a man shrinks from bearing himself. In short, the principle
of vicarious suffering is commonly understood and practised by races who stand
on a low level of social and intellectual culture. In the following pages I
shall illustrate the theory and the practice as they are found among savages
in all their naked simplicity, undisguised by the refinements of metaphysics
and the subtleties of theology.

The devices to which the cunning and selfish savage resorts for the sake
of easing himself at the expense of his neighbour are manifold; only a few
typical examples out of a multitude can be cited. At the outset it is to be
observed that the evil of which a man seeks to rid himself need not be
transferred to a person; it may equally well be transferred to an animal or a
thing, though in the last case the thing is often only a vehicle to convey the
trouble to the first person who touches it. In some of the East Indian islands
they think that epilepsy can be cured by striking the patient on the face with
the leaves of certain trees and then throwing them away. The disease is
believed to have passed into the leaves, and to have been thrown away with
them. To cure toothache some of the Australian blacks apply a heated
spear-thrower to the cheek. The spear-thrower is then cast away, and the
toothache goes with it in the shape of a black stone called karriitch.
Stones of this kind are found in old mounds and sandhills. They are carefully
collected and thrown in the direction of enemies in order to give them
toothache. The Bahima, a pastoral people of Uganda, often suffer from
deep-seated abscesses: their cure for this is to transfer the disease to some
other person by obtaining herbs from the medicine-man, rubbing them over the
place where the swelling is, and burying them in the road where people
continually pass; the first person who steps over these buried herbs contracts
the disease, and the original patient recovers.

Sometimes in case of sickness the malady is transferred to an effigy as a
preliminary to passing it on to a human being. Thus among the Baganda the
medicine-man would sometimes make a model of his patient in clay; then a
relative of the sick man would rub the image over the sufferer's body and
either bury it in the road \??\ it in the grass by the wayside. The first
person who stepped over the image or passed by it would catch the disease.
Sometimes the effigy was made out of a plantain-flower tied up so as to look
like a person; it was used in the same way as the clay figure. But the use of
images for this maleficent purpose was a capital crime; any person caught in
the act of burying one of them in the public road would surely have been put
to death.

In the western district of the island of Timor, when men or women are
making long and tiring journeys, they fan themselves with leafy branches,
which they afterwards throw away on particular spots where their forefathers
did the same before them. The fatigue which they felt is thus supposed to have
passed into the leaves and to be left behind. Others use stones instead of
leaves. Similarly in the Babar Archipelago tired people will strike themselves
with stones, believing that they thus transfer to the stones the weariness
which they felt in their own bodies. They then throw away the stones in places
which are specially set apart for the purpose. A like belief and practice in
many distant parts of the world have given rise to those cairns or heaps of
sticks and leaves which travellers often observe beside the path, and to which
every passing native adds his contribution in the shape of a stone, or stick,
or leaf. Thus in the Solomon and Banks' Islands the natives are wont to throw
sticks, stones, or leaves upon a heap at a place of steep descent, or where a
difficult path begins, saying, There goes my fatigue. The act is not a
religious rite, for the thing thrown on the heap is not an offering to
spiritual powers, and the words which accompany the act are not a prayer. It
is nothing but a magical ceremony for getting rid of fatigue, which the simple
savage fancies he can embody in a stick, leaf, or stone, and so cast it from
him.
2. The Transference to Animals

ANIMALS are often employed as a vehicle for carrying away or transferring
the evil. When a Moor has a headache he will sometimes take a lamb or a goat
and beat it till it falls down, believing that the headache will thus be
transferred to the animal. In Morocco most wealthy Moors keep a wild boar in
their stables, in order that the jinn and evil spirits may be diverted from
the horses and enter into the boar. Amongst the Caffres of South Africa, when
other remedies have failed, natives sometimes adopt the custom of taking a
goat into the presence of a sick man, and confess the sins of the kraal over
the animal. Sometimes a few drops of blood from the sick man are allowed to
fall on the head of the goat, which is turned out into an uninhabited part of
the veldt. The sickness is supposed to be transferred to the animal, and to
become lost in the desert. In Arabia, when the plague is raging, the people
will sometimes lead a camel through all the quarters of the town in order that
the animal may take the pestilence on itself. Then they strangle it in a
sacred place and imagine that they have rid themselves of the camel and of the
plague at one blow. It is said that when smallpox is raging the savages of
Formosa will drive the demon of disease into a sow, then cut off the animal's
ears and burn them or it, believing that in this way they rid themselves of
the plague.

Amongst the Malagasy the vehicle for carrying away evils is called a
faditra. The faditra is anything selected by the sikidy [divining board]
for the purpose of taking away any hurtful evils or diseases that might prove
injurious to an individual's happiness, peace, or prosperity. The faditra may
be either ashes, cut money, a sheep, a pumpkin, or anything else the sikidy
may choose to direct. After the particular article is appointed, the priest
counts upon it all the evils that may prove injurious to the person for whom
it is made, and which he then charges the faditra to take away for ever. If
the faditra be ashes, it is blown, to be carried away by the wind. If it be
cut money, it is thrown to the bottom of deep water, or where it can never be
found. If it be a sheep, it is carried away to a distance on the shoulders of
a man, who runs with all his might, mumbling as he goes, as if in the greatest
rage against the faditra, for the evils it is bearing away. If it be a
pumpkin, it is carried on the shoulders to a little distance, and there dashed
upon the ground with every appearance of fury and indignation. A Malagasy was
informed by a diviner that he was doomed to a bloody death, but that possibly
he might avert his fate by performing a certain rite. Carrying a small vessel
full of blood upon his head, he was to mount upon the back of a bullock; while
thus mounted, he was to spill the blood upon the bullock's head, and then send
the animal away into the wilderness, whence it might never return.

The Bataks of Sumatra have a ceremony which they call making the curse to
fly away. When a woman is childless, a sacrifice is offered to the gods of
three grasshoppers, representing a head of cattle, a buffalo, and a horse.
Then a swallow is set free, with a prayer that the curse may fall upon the
bird and fly away with it. The entrance into a house of an animal which does
not generally seek to share the abode of man is regarded by the Malays as
ominous of misfortune. If a wild bird flies into a house, it must be carefully
caught and smeared with oil, and must then be released in the open air, a
formula being recited in which it is bidden to fly away with all the ill-luck
and misfortunes of the occupier. In antiquity Greek women seem to have done
the same with swallows which they caught in the house: they poured oil on them
and let them fly away, apparently for the purpose of removing ill-luck from
the household. The Huzuls of the Carpathians imagine that they can transfer
freckles to the first swallow they see in spring by washing their face in
flowing water and saying, Swallow, swallow, take my freckles, and give me
rosy cheeks.

Among the Badagas of the Neilgherry Hills in Southern India, when a death
has taken place, the sins of the deceased are laid upon a buffalo calf. For
this purpose the people gather round the corpse and carry it outside of the
village. There an elder of the tribe, standing at the head of the corpse,
recites or chants a long list of sins such as any Badaga may commit, and the
people repeat the last word of each line after him. The confession of sins is
thrice repeated. By a conventional mode of expression, the sum total of sins
a man may do is said to be thirteen hundred. Admitting that the deceased has
committed them all, the performer cries aloud, 'Stay not their flight to God's
pure feet.' As he closes, the whole assembly chants aloud 'Stay not their
flight.' Again the performer enters into details, and cries, 'He killed the
crawling snake. It is a sin.' In a moment the last word is caught up, and all
the people cry 'It is a sin.' As they shout, the performer lays his hand upon
the calf. The sin is transferred to the calf. Thus the whole catalogue is gone
through in this impressive way. But this is not enough. As the last shout 'Let
all be well' dies away, the performer gives place to another, and again
confession is made, and all the people shout 'It is a sin.' A third time it is
done. Then, still in solemn silence, the calf is let loose. Like the Jewish
scapegoat, it may never be used for secular work. At a Badaga funeral
witnessed by the Rev. A. C. Clayton the buffalo calf was led thrice round the
bier, and the dead man's hand was laid on its head. By this act, the calf was
supposed to receive all the sins of the deceased. It was then driven away to a
great distance, that it might contaminate no one, and it was said that it
would never be sold, but looked on as a dedicated sacred animal. The idea of
this ceremony is, that the sins of the deceased enter the calf, or that the
task of his absolution is laid on it. They say that the calf very soon
disappears, and that it is never heard of.

3. The Transference to Men

AGAIN, men sometimes play the part of scapegoat by diverting to themselves
the evils that threaten others. When a Cingalese is dangerously ill, and the
physicians can do nothing, a devil-dancer is called in, who by making
offerings to the devils, and dancing in the masks appropriate to them,
conjures these demons of disease, one after the other, out of the sick man's
body and into his own. Having thus successfully extracted the cause of the
malady, the artful dancer lies down on a bier, and shamming death is carried
to an open place outside the village. Here, being left to himself, he soon
comes to life again, and hastens back to claim his reward. In 1590 a Scotch
which of the name of Agnes Sampson was convicted of curing a certain Robert
Kers of a disease laid upon him by a westland warlock when he was at
Dumfries, whilk sickness she took upon herself, and kept the same with great
groaning and torment till the morn, at whilk time there was a great din heard
in the house. The noise was made by the witch in her efforts to shift the
disease, by means of clothes, from herself to a cat or dog. Unfortunately the
attempt partly miscarried. The disease missed the animal and hit Alexander
Douglas of Dalkeith, who dwined and died of it, while the original patient,
Robert Kers, was made whole.

In one part of New Zealand an expiation for sin was felt to be
necessary; a service was performed over an individual, by which all the sins
of the tribe were supposed to be transferred to him, a fern stalk was
previously tied to his person, with which he jumped into the river, and there
unbinding, allowed it to float away to the sea, bearing their sins with it.
In great emergencies the sins of the Rajah of Manipur used to be transferred
to somebody else, usually to a criminal, who earned his pardon by his
vicarious sufferings. To effect the transference the Rajah and his wife, clad
in fine robes, bathed on a scaffold erected in the bazaar, while the criminal
crouched beneath it. With the water which dripped from them on him their sins
also were washed away and fell on the human scapegoat. To complete the
transference the Rajah and his wife made over their fine robes to their
substitute, while they themselves, clad in new raiment, mixed with the people
till evening. In Travancore, when a Rajah is near his end, they seek out a
holy Brahman, who consents to take upon himself the sins of the dying man in
consideration of the sum of ten thousand rupees. Thus prepared to immolate
himself on the altar of duty, the saint is introduced into the chamber of
death, and closely embraces the dying Rajah, saying to him, O King, I
undertake to bear all your sins and diseases. May your Highness live long and
reign happily. Having thus taken to himself the sins of the sufferer, he is
sent away from the country and never more allowed to return. At Utch Kurgan in
Turkestan Mr. Schuyler saw an old man who was said to get his living by taking
on himself the sins of the dead, and thenceforth devoting his life to prayer
for their souls.

In Uganda, when an army had returned from war, and the gods warned the
king by their oracles that some evil had attached itself to the soldiers, it
was customary to pick out a woman slave from the captives, together with a
cow, a goat, a fowl, and a dog from the booty, and to send them back under a
strong guard to the borders of the country from which they had come. There
their limbs were broken and they were left to die; for they were too crippled
to crawl back to Uganda. In order to ensure the transference of the evil to
these substitutes, bunches of grass were rubbed over the people and cattle and
then tied to the victims. After that the army was pronounced clean and was
allowed to return to the capital. So on his accession a new king of Uganda
used to wound a man and send him away as a scapegoat to Bunyoro to carry away
any uncleanliness that might attach to the king or queen.

4. The Transference of Evil in Europe

THE EXAMPLES of the transference of evil hitherto adduced have been mostly
drawn from the customs of savage or barbarous peoples. But similar attempts to
shift the burden of disease, misfortune, and sin from one's self to another
person, or to an animal or thing, have been common also among the civilised
nations of Europe, both in ancient and modern times. A Roman cure for fever
was to pare the patient's nails, and stick the parings with wax on a
neighbour's door before sunrise; the fever then passed from the sick man to
his neighbour. Similar devices must have been resorted to by the Greeks; for
in laying down laws for his ideal state, Plato thinks it too much to expect
that men should not be alarmed at finding certain wax figures adhering to
their doors or to the tombstones of their parents, or lying at cross-roads. In
the fourth century of our era Marcellus of Bordeaux prescribed a cure for
warts, which has still a great vogue among the superstitious in various parts
of Europe. You are to touch your warts with as many little stones as you have
warts; then wrap the stones in an ivy leaf, and throw them away in a
thoroughfare. Whoever picks them up will get the warts, and you will be rid of
them. People in the Orkney Islands will sometimes wash a sick man, and then
throw the water down at a gateway, in the belief that the sickness will leave
the patient and be transferred to the first person who passes through the
gate. A Bavarian cure for fever is to write upon a piece of paper, Fever,
stay away, I am not at home, and to put the paper in somebody's pocket. The
latter then catches the fever, and the patient is rid of it. A Bohemian
prescription for the same malady is this. Take an empty pot, go with it to a
cross-road, throw it down, and run away. The first person who kicks against
the pot will catch your fever, and you will be cured.

Often in Europe, as among savages, an attempt is made to transfer a pain
or malady from a man to an animal. Grave writers of antiquity recommended
that, if a man be stung by a scorpion, he should sit upon an ass with his face
to the tail, or whisper in the animal's ear, A scorpion has stung me; in
either case, they thought, the pain would be transferred from the man to the
ass. Many cures of this sort are recorded by Marcellus. For example, he tells
us that the following is a remedy for toothache. Standing booted under the
open sky on the ground, you catch a frog by the head, spit into its mouth, ask
it to carry away the ache, and then let it go. But the ceremony must be
performed on a lucky day and at a lucky hour. In Cheshire the ailment known as
aphtha or thrush, which affects the mouth or throat of infants, is not
uncommonly treated in much the same manner. A young frog is held for a few
moments with its head inside the mouth of the sufferer, whom it is supposed to
relieve by taking the malady to itself. I assure you, said an old woman who
had often superintended such a cure, we used to hear the poor frog whooping
and coughing, mortal bad, for days after; it would have made your heart ache
to hear the poor creature coughing as it did about the garden. A
Northamptonshire, Devonshire, and Welsh cure for a cough is to put a hair of
the patient's head between two slices of buttered bread and give the sandwich
to a dog. The animal will thereupon catch the cough and the patient will lose
it. Sometimes an ailment is transferred to an animal by sharing food with it.
Thus in Oldenburg, if you are sick of a fever you set a bowl of sweet milk
before a dog and say, Good luck, you hound! may you be sick and I be sound!
Then when the dog has lapped some of the milk, you take a swig at the bowl;
and then the dog must lap again, and then you must swig again; and when you
and the dog have done it the third time, he will have the fever and you will
be quit of it.

A Bohemian cure for fever is to go out into the forest before the sun is
up and look for a snipe's nest. When you have found it, take out one of the
young birds and keep it beside you for three days. Then go back into the wood
and set the snipe free. The fever will leave you at once. The snipe has taken
it away. So in Vedic times the Hindoos of old sent consumption away with a
blue jay. They said, O consumption, fly away, fly away with the blue jay!
With the wild rush of the storm and the whirlwind, oh, vanish away! In the
village of Llandegla in Wales there is a church dedicated to the virgin martyr
St. Tecla, where the falling sickness is, or used to be, cured by being
transferred to a fowl. The patient first washed his limbs in a sacred well
hard by, dropped fourpence into it as an offering, walked thrice round the
well, and thrice repeated the Lord's prayer. Then the fowl, which was a cock
or a hen according as the patient was a man or a woman, was put into a basket
and carried round first the well and afterwards the church. Next the sufferer
entered the church and lay down under the communion table till break of day.
After that he offered sixpence and departed, leaving the fowl in the church.
If the bird died, the sickness was supposed to have been transferred to it
from the man or woman, who was now rid of the disorder. As late as 1855 the
old parish clerk of the village remembered quite well to have seen the birds
staggering about from the effects of the fits which had been transferred to
them.

Often the sufferer seeks to shift his burden of sickness or ill-luck to
some inanimate object. In Athens there is a little chapel of St. John the
Baptist built against an ancient column. Fever patients resort thither, and by
attaching a waxed thread to the inner side of the column believe that they
transfer the fever from themselves to the pillar. In the Mark of Brandenburg
they say that if you suffer from giddiness you should strip yourself naked and
run thrice round a flax-field after sunset; in that way the flax will get the
giddiness and you will be rid of it.

But perhaps the thing most commonly employed in Europe as a receptacle for
sickness and trouble of all sorts is a tree or bush. A Bulgarian cure for
fever is to run thrice around a willow-tree at sunrise, crying, The fever
shall shake thee, and the sun shall warm me. In the Greek island of Karpathos
the priest ties a red thread round the neck of a sick person. Next morning the
friends of the patient remove the thread and go out to the hillside, where
they tie the thread to a tree, thinking that they thus transfer the sickness
to the tree. Italians attempt to cure fever in like manner by tethering it to
a tree The sufferer ties a thread round his left wrist at night, and hangs the
thread on a tree next morning. The fever is thus believed to be tied up to the
tree, and the patient to be rid of it; but he must be careful not to pass by
that tree again, otherwise the fever would break loose from its bonds and
attack him afresh. A Flemish cure for the ague is to go early in the morning
to an old willow, tie three knots in one of its branches, say, Good-morrow,
Old One, I give thee the cold; good-morrow, Old One, then turn and run away
without looking round. In Sonnenberg, if you would rid yourself of gout you
should go to a young fir-tree and tie a knot in one of its twigs, saying, God
greet thee, noble fir. I bring thee my gout. Here will I tie a knot and bind
my gout into it. In the name, etc.

Another way of transferring gout from a man to a tree is this. Pare the
nails of the sufferer's fingers and clip some hairs from his legs. Bore a hole
in an oak, stuff the nails and hair in the hole, stop up the hole again, and
smear it with cow's dung. If, for three months thereafter, the patient is free
of gout, you may be sure the oak has it in his stead. In Cheshire if you would
be rid of warts, you have only to rub them with a piece of bacon, cut a slit
in the bark of an ash-tree, and slip the bacon under the bark. Soon the warts
will disappear from your hand, only however to reappear in the shape of rough
excrescences or knobs on the bark of the tree. At Berkhampstead, in
Hertfordshire, there used to be certain oak-trees which were long celebrated
for the cure of ague. The transference of the malady to the tree was simple
but painful. A lock of the sufferer's hair was pegged into an oak; then by a
sudden wrench he left his hair and his ague behind him in the tree.

Chapter 56. The Public Expulsion of Evils.

1. The Omnipresence of Demons

IN THE FOREGOING chapter the primitive principle of the transference of ills
to another person, animal, or thing was explained and illustrated. But similar
means have been adopted to free a whole community from diverse evils that
afflict it. Such attempts to dismiss at once the accumulated sorrows of a
people are by no means rare or exceptional; on the contrary they have been
made in many lands, and from being occasional they tend to become periodic and
annual.

It needs some effort on our part to realise the frame of mind which
prompts these attempts. Bred in a philosophy which strips nature of
personality and reduces it to the unknown cause of an orderly series of
impressions on our senses, we find it hard to put ourselves in the place of
the savage, to whom the same impressions appear in the guise of spirits or the
handiwork of spirits. For ages the army of spirits, once so near, has been
receding farther and farther from us, banished by the magic wand of science
from hearth and home, from ruined cell and ivied tower, from haunted glade and
lonely mere, from the riven murky cloud that belches forth the lightning, and
from those fairer clouds that pillow the silvery moon or fret with flakes of
burning red the golden eve. The spirits are gone even from their last
stronghold in the sky, whose blue arch no longer passes, except with children,
for the screen that hides from mortal eyes the glories of the celestial world.
Only in poets' dreams or impassioned flights of oratory is it given to catch a
glimpse of the last flutter of the standards of the retreating host, to hear
the beat of their invisible wings, the sound of their mocking laughter, or the
swell of angel music dying away in the distance. Far otherwise is it with the
savage. To his imagination the world still teems with those motley beings whom
a more sober philosophy has discarded. Fairies and goblins, ghosts and demons,
still hover about him both waking and sleeping. They dog his footsteps, dazzle
his senses, enter into him, harass and deceive and torment him in a thousand
freakish and mischievous ways. The mishaps that befall him, the losses he
sustains, the pains he has to endure, he commonly sets down, if not to the
magic of his enemies, to the spite or anger or caprice of the spirits. Their
constant presence wearies him, their sleepless malignity exasperates him; he
longs with an unspeakable longing to be rid of them altogether, and from time
to time, driven to bay, his patience utterly exhausted, he turns fiercely on
his persecutors and makes a desperate effort to chase the whole pack of them
from the land, to clear the air of their swarming multitudes, that he may
breathe more freely and go on his way unmolested, at least for a time. Thus it
comes about that the endeavour of primitive people to make a clean sweep of
all their troubles generally takes the form of a grand hunting out and
expulsion of devils or ghosts. They think that if they can only shake off
these their accursed tormentors, they will make a fresh start in life, happy
and innocent; the tales of Eden and the old poetic golden age will come true
again.

2. The Occasional Expulsion ofEvils

WE can therefore understand why those general clearances of evil, to which
from time to time the savage resorts, should commonly take the form of a
forcible expulsion of devils. In these evil spirits primitive man sees the
cause of many if not of most of his troubles, and he fancies that if he can
only deliver himself from them, things will go better with him. The public
attempts to expel the accumulated ills of a whole community may be divided
into two classes, according as the expelled evils are immaterial and invisible
or are embodied in a material vehicle or scape-goat. The former may be called
the direct or immediate expulsion of evils; the latter the indirect or mediate
expulsion, or the expulsion by scapegoat. We begin with examples of the
former.

In the island of Rook, between New Guinea and New Britain, when any
misfortune has happened, all the people run together, scream, curse, howl, and
beat the air with sticks to drive away the devil, who is supposed to be the
author of the mishap. From the spot where the mishap took place they drive him
step by step to the sea, and on reaching the shore they redouble their shouts
and blows in order to expel him from the island. He generally retires to the
sea or to the island of Lottin. The natives of New Britain ascribe sickness,
drought, the failure of crops, and in short all misfortunes, to the influence
of wicked spirits. So at times when many people sicken and die, as at the
beginning of the rainy season, all the inhabitants of a district, armed with
branches and clubs, go out by moonlight to the fields, where they beat and
stamp on the ground with wild howls till morning, believing that this drives
away the devils; and for the same purpose they rush through the village with
burning torches. The natives of New Caledonia are said to believe that all
evils are caused by a powerful and malignant spirit; hence in order to rid
themselves of him they will from time to time dig a great pit, round which the
whole tribe gathers. After cursing the demon, they fill up the pit with earth,
and trample on the top with loud shouts. This they call burying the evil
spirit. Among the Dieri tribe of Central Australia, when a serious illness
occurs, the medicine-men expel Cootchie or the devil by beating the ground in
and outside of the camp with the stuffed tail of a kangaroo, until they have
chased the demon away to some distance from the camp.

When a village has been visited by a series of disasters or a severe
epidemic, the inhabitants of Minahassa in Celebes lay the blame upon the
devils who are infesting the village and who must be expelled from it.
Accordingly, early one morning all the people, men, women, and children, quit
their homes, carrying their household goods with them, and take up their
quarters in temporary huts which have been erected outside the village. Here
they spend several days, offering sacrifices and preparing for the final
ceremony. At last the men, some wearing masks, others with their faces
blackened, and so on, but all armed with swords, guns, pikes, or brooms, steal
cautiously and silently back to the deserted village. Then, at a signal from
the priest, they rush furiously up and down the streets and into and under the
houses (which are raised on piles above the ground), yelling and striking on
walls, doors, and windows, to drive away the devils. Next, the priests and the
rest of the people come with the holy fire and march nine times round each
house and thrice round the ladder that leads up to it, carrying the fire with
them. Then they take the fire into the kitchen, where it must burn for three
days continuously. The devils are now driven away, and great and general is
the joy.

The Alfoors of Halmahera attribute epidemics to the devil who comes from
other villages to carry them off. So, in order to rid the village of the
disease, the sorcerer drives away the devil. From all the villagers he
receives a costly garment and places it on four vessels, which he takes to the
forest and leaves at the spot where the devil is supposed to be. Then with
mocking words he bids the demon abandon the place. In the Kei Islands to the
south-west of New Guinea, the evil spirits, who are quite distinct from the
souls of the dead, form a mighty host. Almost every tree and every cave is the
lodging-place of one of these fiends, who are moreover extremely irascible and
apt to fly out on the smallest provocation. They manifest their displeasure by
sending sickness and other calamities. Hence in times of public misfortune, as
when an epidemic is raging, and all other remedies have failed, the whole
population go forth with the priest at their head to a place at some distance
from the village. Here at sunset they erect a couple of poles with a cross-bar
between them, to which they attach bags of rice, wooden models of pivot-guns,
gongs, bracelets, and so on. Then, when everybody has taken his place at the
poles and a death-like silence reigns, the priest lifts up his voice and
addresses the spirits in their own language as follows: Ho! ho! ho! ye evil
spirits who dwell in the trees, ye evil spirits who live in the grottoes, ye
evil spirits who lodge in the earth, we give you these pivot-guns, these
gongs, etc. Let the sickness cease and not so many people die of it. Then
everybody runs home as fast as their legs can carry them.

In the island of Nias, when a man is seriously ill and other remedies have
been tried in vain, the sorcerer proceeds to exorcise the devil who is causing
the illness. A pole is set up in front of the house, and from the top of the
pole a rope of palm-leaves is stretched to the roof of the house. Then the
sorcerer mounts the roof with a pig, which he kills and allows to roll from
the roof to the ground. The devil, anxious to get the pig, lets himself down
hastily from the roof by the rope of palm-leaves, and a good spirit, invoked
by the sorcerer, prevents him from climbing up again. If this remedy fails, it
is believed that other devils must still be lurking in the house. So a general
hunt is made after them. All the doors and windows in the house are closed,
except a single dormer-window in the roof. The men, shut up in the house, hew
and slash with their swords right and left to the clash of gongs and the
rub-a-dub of drums. Terrified at this onslaught, the devils escape by the
dormer-window, and sliding down the rope of palm-leaves take themselves off.
As all the doors and windows, except the one in the roof, are shut, the devils
cannot get into the house again. In the case of an epidemic, the proceedings
are similar. All the gates of the village, except one, are closed; every voice
is raised, every gong and drum beaten, every sword brandished. Thus the devils
are driven out and the last gate is shut behind them. For eight days
thereafter the village is in a state of siege, no one being allowed to enter
it.

When cholera has broken out in a Burmese village the able-bodied men
scramble on the roofs and lay about them with bamboos and billets of wood,
while all the rest of the population, old and young, stand below and thump
drums, blow trumpets, yell, scream, beat floors, walls, tin pans, everything
to make a din. This uproar, repeated on three successive nights, is thought to
be very effective in driving away the cholera demons. When smallpox first
appeared amongst the Kumis of South-Eastern India, they thought it was a devil
come from Aracan. The villages were placed in a state of siege, no one being
allowed to leave or enter them. A monkey was killed by being dashed on the
ground, and its body was hung at the village gate. Its blood, mixed with small
river pebbles, was sprinkled on the houses, the threshold of every house was
swept with the monkey's tail, and the fiend was adjured to depart.

When an epidemic is raging on the Gold Coast of West Africa, the people
will sometimes turn out, armed with clubs and torches, to drive the evil
spirits away. At a given signal the whole population begin with frightful
yells to beat in every corner of the houses, then rush like mad into the
streets waving torches and striking frantically in the empty air. The uproar
goes on till somebody reports that the cowed and daunted demons have made good
their escape by a gate of the town or village; the people stream out after
them, pursue them for some distance into the forest, and warn them never to
return. The expulsion of the devils is followed by a general massacre of all
the cocks in the village or town, lest by their unseasonable crowing they
should betray to the banished demons the direction they must take to return to
their old homes. When sickness was prevalent in a Huron village, and all other
remedies had been tried in vain, the Indians had recourse to the ceremony
called Lonouyroya, which is the principal invention and most proper means,
so they say, to expel from the town or village the devils and evil spirits
which cause, induce, and import all the maladies and infirmities which they
suffer in body and mind. Accordingly, one evening the men would begin to rush
like madmen about the village, breaking and upsetting whatever they came
across in the wigwams. They threw fire and burning brands about the streets,
and all night long they ran howling and singing without cessation. Then they
all dreamed of something, a knife, dog, skin, or whatever it might be, and
when morning came they went from wigwam to wigwam asking for presents. These
they received silently, till the particular thing was given them which they
had dreamed about. On receiving it they uttered a cry of joy and rushed from
the hut, amid the congratulations of all present. The health of those who
received what they had dreamed of was believed to be assured; whereas those
who did not get what they had set their hearts upon regarded their fate as
sealed.

Sometimes, instead of chasing the demon of disease from their homes,
savages prefer to leave him in peaceable possession, while they themselves
take to flight and attempt to prevent him from following in their tracks. Thus
when the Patagonians were attacked by small-pox, which they attributed to the
machinations of an evil spirit, they used to abandon their sick and flee,
slashing the air with their weapons and throwing water about in order to keep
off the dreadful pursuer; and when after several days' march they reached a
place where they hoped to be beyond his reach, they used by way of precaution
to plant all their cutting weapons with the sharp edges turned towards the
quarter from which they had come, as if they were repelling a charge of
cavalry. Similarly, when the Lules or Tonocotes Indians of the Gran Chaco were
attacked by an epidemic, they regularly sought to evade it by flight, but in
so doing they always followed a sinuous, not a straight, course; because they
said that when the disease made after them he would be so exhausted by the
turnings and windings of the route that he would never be able to come up with
them. When the Indians of New Mexico were decimated by smallpox or other
infectious disease, they used to shift their quarters every day, retreating
into the most sequestered parts of the mountains and choosing the thorniest
thickets they could find, in the hope that the smallpox would be too afraid of
scratching himself on the thorns to follow them. When some Chins on a visit to
Rangoon were attacked by cholera, they went about with drawn swords to scare
away the demon, and they spent the day hiding under bushes so that he might
not be able to find them.

3. The Periodic Expulsion ofEvils

THE EXPULSION of evils, from being occasional, tends to become periodic. It
comes to be thought desirable to have a general riddance of evil spirits at
fixed times, usually once a year, in order that the people may make a fresh
start in life, freed from all the malignant influences which have been long
accumulating about them. Some of the Australian blacks annually expelled the
ghosts of the dead from their territory. The ceremony was witnessed by the
Rev. W. Ridley on the banks of the River Barwan. A chorus of twenty, old and
young, were singing and beating time with boomerangs . Suddenly, from under a
sheet of bark darted a man with his body whitened by pipeclay, his head and
face coloured with lines of red and yellow, and a tuft of feathers fixed by
means of a stick two feet above the crown of his head. He stood twenty minutes
perfectly still, gazing upwards. An aboriginal who stood by told me he was
looking for the ghosts of dead men. At last he began to move very slowly, and
soon rushed to and fro at full speed, flourishing a branch as if to drive away
some foes invisible to us. When I thought this pantomime must be almost over,
ten more, similarly adorned, suddenly appeared from behind the trees, and the
whole party joined in a brisk conflict with their mysterious assailants.  At
last, after some rapid evolutions in which they put forth all their strength,
they rested from the exciting toil which they had kept up all night and for
some hours after sunrise; they seemed satisfied that the ghosts were driven
away for twelve months. They were performing the same ceremony at every
station along the river, and I am told it is an annual custom.

Certain seasons of the year mark themselves naturally out as appropriate
moments for a general expulsion of devils. Such a moment occurs towards the
close of an Arctic winter, when the sun reappears on the horizon after an
absence of weeks or months. Accordingly, at Point Barrow, the most northerly
extremity of Alaska, and nearly of America, the Esquimaux choose the moment of
the sun's reappearance to hunt the mischievous spirit Tua from every house.
The ceremony was witnessed by the members of the United States Polar
Expedition, who wintered at Point Barrow. A fire was built in front of the
council-house, and an old woman was posted at the entrance to every house. The
men gathered round the council-house while the young women and girls drove the
spirit out of every house with their knives, stabbing viciously under the bunk
and deer-skins, and calling upon Tua to be gone. When they thought he had
been driven out of every hole and corner, they thrust him down through the
hole in the floor and chased him into the open air with loud cries and frantic
gestures. Meanwhile the old woman at the entrance of the house made passes
with a long knife in the air to keep him from returning. Each party drove the
spirit towards the fire and invited him to go into it. All were by this time
drawn up in a semicircle round the fire, when several of the leading men made
specific charges against the spirit; and each after his speech brushed his
clothes violently, calling on the spirit to leave him and go into the fire.
Two men now stepped forward with rifles loaded with blank cartridges, while a
third brought a vessel of urine and flung it on the flames. At the same time
one of the men fired a shot into the fire; and as the cloud of steam rose it
received the other shot, which was supposed to finish Tuna for the time
being.

In late autumn, when storms rage over the land and break the icy fetters
by which the frozen sea is as yet but slightly bound, when the loosened floes
are driven against each other and break with loud crashes, and when the cakes
of ice are piled in wild disorder one upon another, the Esquimaux of Baffin
Land fancy they hear the voices of the spirits who people the mischief-laden
air. Then the ghosts of the dead knock wildly at the huts, which they cannot
enter, and woe to the hapless wight whom they catch; he soon sickens and dies.
Then the phantom of a huge hairless dog pursues the real dogs, which expire in
convulsions and cramps at sight of him. All the countless spirits of evil are
abroad striving to bring sickness and death, foul weather and failure in
hunting on the Esquimaux. Most dreaded of all these spectral visitants are
Sedna, mistress of the nether world, and her father, to whose share dead
Esquimaux fall. While the other spirits fill the air and the water, she rises
from under ground. It is then a busy season for the wizards. In every house
you may hear them singing and praying, while they conjure the spirits, seated
in a mystic gloom at the back of the hut, which is dimly lit by a lamp burning
low. The hardest task of all is to drive away Sedna, and this is reserved for
the most powerful enchanter. A rope is coiled on the floor of a large hut in
such a way as to leave a small opening at the top, which represents the
breathing hole of a seal. Two enchanters stand beside it, one of them grasping
a spear as if he were watching a seal-hole in winter, the other holding the
harpoon-line. A third sorcerer sits at the back of the hut chanting a magic
song to lure Sedna to the spot. Now she is heard approaching under the floor
of the hut, breathing heavily; now she emerges at the hole; now she is
harpooned and sinks away in angry haste, dragging the harpoon with her, while
the two men hold on to the line with all their might. The struggle is severe,
but at last by a desperate wrench she tears herself away and returns to her
dwelling in Adlivun. When the harpoon is drawn up out of the hole it is found
to be splashed with blood, which the enchanters proudly exhibit as a proof of
their prowess. Thus Sedna and the other evil spirits are at last driven away,
and next day a great festival is celebrated by old and young in honour of the
event. But they must still be cautious, for the wounded Sedna is furious and
will seize any one she may find outside of his hut; so they all wear amulets
on the top of their hoods to protect themselves against her. These amulets
consist of pieces of the first garments that they wore after birth.

The Iroquois inaugurated the new year in January, February, or March (the
time varied) with a festival of dreams like that which the Hurons observed
on special occasions. The whole ceremonies lasted several days, or even weeks,
and formed a kind of saturnalia. Men and women, variously disguised, went from
wigwam to wigwam smashing and throwing down whatever they came across. It was
a time of general license; the people were supposed to be out of their senses,
and therefore not to be responsible for what they did. Accordingly, many
seized the opportunity of paying off old scores by belabouring obnoxious
persons, drenching them with ice-cold water, and covering them with filth or
hot ashes. Others seized burning brands or coals and flung them at the heads
of the first persons they met. The only way of escaping from these persecutors
was to guess what they had dreamed of. On one day of the festival the ceremony
of driving away evil spirits from the village took place. Men clothed in the
skins of wild beasts, their faces covered with hideous masks, and their hands
with the shell of the tortoise, went from hut to hut making frightful noises;
in every hut they took the fuel from the fire and scattered the embers and
ashes about the floor with their hands. The general confession of sins which
preceded the festival was probably a preparation for the public expulsion of
evil influences; it was a way of stripping the people of their moral burdens,
that these might be collected and cast out.

In September the Incas of Peru celebrated a festival called Situa, the
object of which was to banish from the capital and its vicinity all disease
and trouble. The festival fell in September because the rains begin about this
time, and with the first rains there was generally much sickness. As a
preparation for the festival the people fasted on the first day of the moon
after the autumnal equinox. Having fasted during the day, and the night being
come, they baked a coarse paste of maize. This paste was made of two sorts.
One was kneaded with the blood of children aged from five to ten years, the
blood being obtained by bleeding the children between the eyebrows. These two
kinds of paste were baked separately, because they were for different uses.
Each family assembled at the house of the eldest brother to celebrate the
feast; and those who had no elder brother went to the house of their next
relation of greater age. On the same night all who had fasted during the day
washed their bodies, and taking a little of the blood-kneaded paste, rubbed it
over their head, face, breast, shoulders, arms and legs. They did this in
order that the paste might take away all their infirmities. After this the
head of the family anointed the threshold with the same paste, and left it
there as a token that the inmates of the house had performed their ablutions
and cleansed their bodies. Meantime the High Priest performed the same
ceremonies in the temple of the Sun. As soon as the Sun rose, all the people
worshipped and besought him to drive all evils out of the city, and then they
broke their fast with the paste that had been kneaded without blood. When they
had paid their worship and broken their fast, which they did at a stated hour,
in order that all might adore the Sun as one man, an Inca of the blood royal
came forth from the fortress, as a messenger of the Sun, richly dressed, with
his mantle girded round his body, and a lance in his hand. The lance was
decked with feathers of many hues, extending from the blade to the socket, and
fastened with rings of gold. He ran down the hill from the fortress
brandishing his lance, till he reached the centre of the great square, where
stood the golden urn, like a fountain, that was used for the sacrifice of the
fermented juice of the maize. Here four other Incas of the blood royal awaited
him, each with a lance in his hand, and his mantle girded up to run. The
messenger touched their four lances with his lance, and told them that the Sun
bade them, as his messengers, drive the evils out of the city. The four Incas
then separated and ran down the four royal roads which led out of the city to
the four quarters of the world. While they ran, all the people, great and
small, came to the doors of their houses, and with great shouts of joy and
gladness shook their clothes, as if they were shaking off dust, while they
cried, Let the evils be gone. How greatly desired has this festival been by
us. O Creator of all things, permit us to reach another year, that we may see
another feast like this. After they had shaken their clothes, they passed
their hands over their heads, faces, arms, and legs, as if in the act of
washing. All this was done to drive the evils out of their houses, that the
messengers of the Sun might banish them from the city; and it was done not
only in the streets through which the Incas ran, but generally in all quarters
of the city. Moreover, they all danced, the Inca himself amongst them, and
bathed in the rivers and fountains, saying that their maladies would come out
of them. Then they took great torches of straw, bound round with cords. These
they lighted, and passed from one to the other, striking each other with them,
and saying, Let all harm go away. Meanwhile the runners ran with their
lances for a quarter of a league outside the city, where they found four other
Incas ready, who received the lances from their hands and ran with them. Thus
the lances were carried by relays of runners for a distance of five or six
leagues, at the end of which the runners washed themselves and their weapons
in rivers, and set up the lances, in sign of a boundary within which the
banished evils might not return.

The negroes of Guinea annually banish the devil from all their towns with
much ceremony at a time set apart for the purpose. At Axim, on the Gold Coast,
this annual expulsion is preceded by a feast of eight days, during which mirth
and jollity, skipping, dancing, and singing prevail, and a perfect lampooning
liberty is allowed, and scandal so highly exalted, that they may freely sing
of all the faults, villanies, and frauds of their superiors as well as
inferiors, without punishment, or so much as the least interruption. On the
eighth day they hunt out the devil with a dismal cry, running after him and
pelting him with sticks, stones, and whatever comes to hand. When they have
driven him far enough out of the town, they all return. In this way he is
expelled from more than a hundred towns at the same time. To make sure that he
does not return to their houses, the women wash and scour all their wooden and
earthen vessels, to free them from all uncleanness and the devil.

At Cape Coast Castle, on the Gold Coast, the ceremony was witnessed on the
ninth of October, 1844, by an Englishman, who has described it as follows:
To-night the annual custom of driving the evil spirit, Abonsam, out of the
town has taken place. As soon as the eight o'clock gun fired in the fort the
people began firing muskets in their houses, turning all their furniture out
of doors, beating about in every corner of the rooms with sticks, etc., and
screaming as loudly as possible, in order to frighten the devil. Being driven
out of the houses, as they imagine, they sallied forth into the streets,
throwing lighted torches about, shouting, screaming, beating sticks together,
rattling old pans, making the most horrid noise, in order to drive him out of
the town into the sea. The custom is preceded by four weeks' dead silence; no
gun is allowed to be fired, no drum to be beaten, no palaver to be made
between man and man. If, during these weeks, two natives should disagree and
make a noise in the town, they are immediately taken before the king and fined
heavily. If a dog or pig, sheep or goat be found at large in the street, it
may be killed, or taken by anyone, the former owner not being allowed to
demand any compensation. This silence is designed to deceive Abonsam, that,
being off his guard, he may be taken by surprise, and frightened out of the
place. If anyone die during the silence, his relatives are not allowed to weep
until the four weeks have been completed.

Sometimes the date of the annual expulsion of devils is fixed with
reference to the agricultural seasons. Thus among the Hos of Togoland, in West
Africa, the expulsion is performed annually before the people partake of the
new yams. The chiefs summon the priests and magicians and tell them that the
people are now to eat the new yams and be merry, therefore they must cleanse
the town and remove the evils. Accordingly the evil spirits, witches, and all
the ills that infest the people are conjured into bundles of leaves and
creepers, fastened to poles, which are carried away and set up in the earth on
various roads outside the town. During the following night no fire may be lit
and no food eaten. Next morning the women sweep out their hearths and houses,
and deposit the sweepings on broken wooden plates. Then the people pray,
saying, All ye sicknesses that are in our body and plague us, we are come
to-day to throw you out. Thereupon they run as fast as they can in the
direction of Mount Adaklu, smiting their mouths and screaming, Out to-day!
Out to-day! That which kills anybody, out to-day! Ye evil spirits, out to-day!
and all that causes our heads to ache, out to-day! Anlo and Adaklu are the
places whither all ill shall betake itself! When they have come to a certain
tree on Mount Adaklu, they throw everything away and return home.

At Kiriwina, in South-Eastern New Guinea, when the new yams had been
harvested, the people feasted and danced for many days, and a great deal of
property, such as armlets, native money, and so forth, was displayed
conspicuously on a platform erected for the purpose. When the festivities were
over, all the people gathered together and expelled the spirits from the
village by shouting, beating the posts of the houses, and overturning
everything under which a wily spirit might be supposed to lurk. The
explanation which the people gave to a missionary was that they had
entertained and feasted the spirits and provided them with riches, and it was
now time for them to take their departure. Had they not seen the dances, and
heard the songs, and gorged themselves on the souls of the yams, and
appropriated the souls of the money and all the other fine things set out on
the platform? What more could the spirits want? So out they must go.

Among the Hos of North-Eastern India the great festival of the year is the
harvest home, held in January, when the granaries are full of grain, and the
people, to use their own expression, are full of devilry. They have a strange
notion that at this period, men and women are so overcharged with vicious
propensities, that it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the person to
let off steam by allowing for a time full vent to the passions. The
ceremonies open with a sacrifice to the village god of three fowls, a cock and
two hens, one of which must be black. Along with them are offered flowers of
the palas tree (Butea frondosa), bread made from rice-flour, and sesamum
seeds. These offerings are presented by the village priest, who prays that
during the year about to begin they and their children may be preserved from
all misfortune and sickness, and that they may have seasonable rain and good
crops. Prayer is also made in some places for the souls of the dead. At this
time an evil spirit is supposed to infest the place, and to get rid of it men,
women, and children go in procession round and through every part of the
village with sticks in their hands, as if beating for game, singing a wild
chant, and shouting vociferously, till they feel assured that the evil spirit
must have fled. Then they give themselves up to feasting and drinking
rice-beer, till they are in a fit state for the wild debauch which follows.
The festival now becomes a saturnale, during which servants forget their duty
to their masters, children their reverence for parents, men their respect for
women, and women all notions of modesty, delicacy, and gentleness; they become
raging bacchantes. Usually the Hos are quiet and reserved in manner, decorous
and gentle to women. But during this festival their natures appear to undergo
a temporary change. Sons and daughters revile their parents in gross language,
and parents their children; men and women become almost like animals in the
indulgence of their amorous propensities. The Mundaris, kinsmen and
neighbours of the Hos, keep the festival in much the same manner. The
resemblance to a Saturnale is very complete, as at this festival the farm
labourers are feasted by their masters, and allowed the utmost freedom of
speech in addressing them. It is the festival of the harvest home; the
termination of one year's toil, and a slight respite from it before they
commence again.

Amongst some of the Hindoo Koosh tribes, as among the Hos and Mundaris,
the expulsion of devils takes place after harvest. When the last crop of
autumn has been got in, it is thought necessary to drive away evil spirits
from the granaries. A kind of porridge is eaten, and the head of the family
takes his matchlock and fires it into the floor. Then, going outside, he sets
to work loading and firing till his powder-horn is exhausted, while all his
neighbours are similarly employed. The next day is spent in rejoicings. In
Chitral this festival is called devil-driving. On the other hand the Khonds
of India expel the devils at seed-time instead of at harvest. At this time
they worship Pitteri Pennu, the god of increase and of gain in every shape. On
the first day of the festival a rude car is made of a basket set upon a few
sticks, tied upon the bamboo rollers for wheels. The priest takes this car
first to the house of the lineal head of the tribe, to whom precedence is
given in all ceremonies connected with agriculture. Here he receives a little
of each kind of seed and some feathers. He then takes the car to all the other
houses in the village, each of which contributes the same things. Lastly, the
car is conducted to a field without the village, attended by all the young
men, who beat each other and strike the air violently with long sticks. The
seed thus carried out is called the share of the evil spirits, spoilers of
the seed. These are considered to be driven out with the car; and when it
and its contents are abandoned to them, they are held to have no excuse for
interfering with the rest of the seed-corn.

The people of Bali, an island to the east of Java, have periodical
expulsions of devils upon a great scale. Generally the time chosen for the
expulsion is the day of the dark moon in the ninth month. When the demons
have been long unmolested the country is said to be warm, and the priest
issues orders to expel them by force, lest the whole of Bali should be
rendered uninhabitable. On the day appointed the people of the village or
district assemble at the principal temple. Here at a cross-road offerings are
set out for the devils. After prayers have been recited by the priests, the
blast of a horn summons the devils to partake of the meal which has been
prepared for them. At the same time a number of men step forward and light
their torches at the holy lamp which burns before the chief priest.
Immediately afterwards, followed by the bystanders, they spread in all
directions and march through the streets and lanes crying, Depart! go away!
Wherever they pass, the people who have stayed at home hasten, by a deafening
clatter on doors, beams, rice-blocks, and so forth, to take their share in the
expulsion of devils. Thus chased from the houses, the fiends flee to the
banquet which has been set out for them; but here the priest receives them
with curses which finally drive them from the district. When the last devil
has taken his departure, the uproar is succeeded by a dead silence, which
lasts during the next day also. The devils, it is thought, are anxious to
return to their old homes, and in order to make them think that Bali is not
Bali but some desert island, no one may stir from his own abode for
twenty-four hours. Even ordinary household work, including cooking, is
discontinued. Only the watchmen may show themselves in the streets. Wreaths of
thorns and leaves are hung at all the entrances to warn strangers from
entering. Not till the third day is this state of siege raised, and even then
it is forbidden to work at the rice-fields or to buy and sell in the market.
Most people still stay at home, whiling away the time with cards and dice.

In Tonquin a theckydaw or general expulsion of maleyolent spirits
commonly took place once a year, especially if there was a great mortality
amongst men, the elephants or horses of the general's stable, or the cattle of
the country, the cause of which they attribute to the malicious spirits of
such men as have been put to death for treason, rebellion, and conspiring the
death of the king, general, or princes, and that in revenge of the punishment
they have suffered, they are bent to destroy everything and commit horrible
violence. To prevent which their superstition has suggested to them the
institution of this theckydaw, as a proper means to drive the devil away,
and purge the country of evil spirits. The day appointed for the ceremony was
generally the twenty-fifth of February, one month after the beginning of the
new year, which fell on the twenty-fifth of January. The intermediate month
was a season of feasting, merry-making of all kinds, and general licence.
During the whole month the great seal was kept shut up in a box, face
downwards, and the law was, as it were, laid asleep. All courts of justice
were closed; debtors could not be seized; small crimes, such as petty larceny,
fighting, and assault, escaped with impunity; only treason and murder were
taken account of and the malefactors detained till the great seal should come
into operation again. At the close of the saturnalia the wicked spirits were
driven away. Great masses of troops and artillery having been drawn up with
flying colours and all the pomp of war, the general beginneth then to offer
meat offerings to the criminal devils and malevolent spirits (for it is usual
and customary likewise amongst them to feast the condemned before their
execution), inviting them to eat and drink, when presently he accuses them in
a strange language, by characters and figures, etc., of many offences and
crimes committed by them, as to their having disquieted the land, killed his
elephants and horses, etc., for all which they justly deserve to be chastised
and banished the country. Whereupon three great guns are fired as the last
signal; upon which all the artillery and musquets are discharged, that, by
their most terrible noise the devils may be driven away; and they are so blind
as to believe for certain, that they really and effectually put them to
flight.

In Cambodia the expulsion of evil spirits took place in March. Bits of
broken statues and stones, considered as the abode of the demons, were
collected and brought to the capital. Here as many elephants were collected as
could be got together. On the evening of the full moon volleys of musketry
were fired and the elephants charged furiously to put the devils to flight.
The ceremony was performed on three successive days. In Siam the banishment of
demons is annually carried into effect on the last day of the old year. A
signal gun is fired from the palace; it is answered from the next station, and
so on from station to station, till the firing has reached the outer gate of
the city. Thus the demons are driven out step by step. As soon as this is done
a consecrated rope is fastened round the circuit of the city walls to prevent
the banished demons from returning. The rope is made of tough couch-grass and
is painted in alternate stripes of red, yellow, and blue.

Annual expulsions of demons, witches, or evil influences appear to have
been common among the heathen of Europe, if we may judge from the relics of
such customs among their descendants at the present day. Thus among the
heathen Wotyaks, a Finnish people of Eastern Russia, all the young girls of
the village assemble on the last day of the year or on New Year's Day, armed
with sticks, the ends of which are split in nine places. With these they beat
every corner of the house and yard, saying, We are driving Satan out of the
village. Afterwards the sticks are thrown into the river below the village,
and as they float down stream Satan goes with them to the next village, from
which he must be driven out in turn. In some villages the expulsion is managed
otherwise. The unmarried men receive from every house in the village groats,
flesh, and brandy. These they take to the fields, light a fire under a
fir-tree, boil the groats, and eat of the food they have brought with them,
after pronouncing the words, Go away into the wilderness, come not into the
house. Then they return to the village and enter every house where there are
young women. They take hold of the young women and throw them into the snow,
saying, May the spirits of disease leave you. The remains of the groats and
the other food are then distributed among all the houses in proportion to the
amount that each contributed, and each family consumes its share. According to
a Wotyak of the Malmyz district the young men throw into the snow whomever
they find in the houses, and this is called driving out Satan; moreover,
some of the boiled groats are cast into the fire with the words, O god,
afflict us not with sickness and pestilence, give us not up as a prey to the
spirits of the wood. But the most antique form of the ceremony is that
observed by the Wotyaks of the Kasan Government. First of all a sacrifice is
offered to the Devil at noon. Then all the men assemble on horseback in the
centre of the village, and decide with which house they shall begin. When this
question, which often gives rise to hot disputes, is settled, they tether
their horses to the paling, and arm themselves with whips, clubs of lime-wood
and bundles of lighted twigs. The lighted twigs are believed to have the
greatest terrors for Satan. Thus armed, they proceed with frightful cries to
beat every corner of the house and yard, then shut the door, and spit at the
ejected fiend. So they go from house to house, till the Devil has been driven
from every one. Then they mount their horses and ride out of the village,
yelling wildly and brandishing their clubs in every direction. Outside of the
village they fling away the clubs and spit once more at the Devil. The
Cheremiss, another Finnish people of Eastern Russia, chase Satan from their
dwellings by beating the walls with cudgels of lime-wood. For the same purpose
they fire guns, stab the ground with knives, and insert burning chips of wood
in the crevices. Also they leap over bonfires, shaking out their garments as
they do so; and in some districts they blow on long trumpets of lime-tree bark
to frighten him away. When he has fled to the wood, they pelt the trees with
some of the cheese-cakes and eggs which furnished the feast.

In Christian Europe the old heathen custom of expelling the powers of evil
at certain times of the year has survived to modern times. Thus in some
villages of Calabria the month of March is inaugurated with the expulsion of
the witches. It takes place at night to the sound of the church bells, the
people running about the streets and crying, March is come. They say that
the witches roam about in March, and the ceremony is repeated every Friday
evening during the month. Often, as might have been anticipated, the ancient
pagan rite has attached itself to church festivals. In Albania on Easter Eve
the young people light torches of resinous wood and march in procession,
swinging them, through the village. At last they throw the torches into the
river, crying, Ha, Kore! we throw you into the river, like these torches,
that you may never return. Silesian peasants believe that on Good Friday the
witches go their rounds and have great power for mischief. Hence about Oels,
near Strehlitz, the people on that day arm themselves with old brooms and
drive the witches from house and home, from farmyard and cattle-stall, making
a great uproar and clatter as they do so.

In Central Europe the favourite time for expelling the witches is, or was,
Walpurgis Night, the Eve of May Day, when the baleful powers of these
mischievous beings were supposed to be at their height. In the Tyrol, for
example, as in other places, the expulsion of the powers of evil at this
season goes by the name of Burning out the Witches. It takes place on May
Day, but people have been busy with their preparations for days before. On a
Thursday at midnight bundles are made up of resinous splinters, black and red
spotted hemlock, caperspurge, rosemary, and twigs of the sloe. These are kept
and burned on May Day by men who must first have received plenary absolution
from the Church. On the last three days of April all the houses are cleansed
and fumigated with juniper berries and rue. On May Day, when the evening bell
has rung and the twilight is falling, the ceremony of Burning out the
Witches begins. Men and boys make a racket with whips, bells, pots, and pans;
the women carry censers; the dogs are unchained and run barking and yelping
about. As soon as the church bells begin to ring, the bundles of twigs,
fastened on poles, are set on fire and the incense is ignited. Then all the
house-bells and dinner-bells are rung, pots and pans are clashed, dogs bark,
every one must make a noise. And amid this hubbub all scream at the pitch of
their voices:

Witch flee, flee from here, or it will go ill with thee.

Then they run seven times round the houses, the yards, and the village. So
the witches are smoked out of their lurking-places and driven away. The custom
of expelling the witches on Walpurgis Night is still, or was down to recent
years, observed in many parts of Bavaria and among the Germans of Bohemia.
Thus in the Bhmer-wald Mountains all the young fellows of the village
assemble after sunset on some height, especially at a cross-road, and crack
whips for a while in unison with all their strength. This drives away the
witches; for so far as the sound of the whips is heard, these maleficent
beings can do no harm. In some places, while the young men are cracking their
whips, the herdsmen wind their horns, and the long-drawn notes, heard far off
in the silence of night, are very effectual for banning the witches.

Another witching time is the period of twelve days between Christmas and
Epiphany. Hence in some parts of Silesia the people burn pine-resin all night
long between Christmas and the New Year in order that the pungent smoke may
drive witches and evil spirits far away from house and homestead; and on
Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve they fire shots over fields and meadows, into
shrubs and trees, and wrap straw round the fruit-trees, to prevent the spirits
from doing them harm. On New Year's Eve, which is Saint Sylvester's Day,
Bohemian lads, armed with guns, form themselves into circles and fire thrice
into the air. This is called Shooting the Witches and is supposed to
frighten the witches away. The last of the mystic twelve days is Epiphany or
Twelfth Night, and it has been selected as a proper season for the expulsion
of the powers of evil in various parts of Europe. Thus at Brunnen, on the Lake
of Lucerne, boys go about in procession on Twelfth Night carrying torches and
making a great noise with horns, bells, whips, and so forth to frighten away
two female spirits of the wood, Strudeli and Strtteli. The people think that
if they do not make enough noise, there will be little fruit that year. Again,
in Labruguire, a canton of Southern France, on the eve of Twelfth Day the
people run through the streets, jangling bells, clattering kettles, and doing
everything to make a discordant noise. Then by the light of torches and
blazing faggots they set up a prodigious hue and cry, an ear-splitting uproar,
hoping thereby to chase all the wandering ghosts and devils from the town.

Chapter 57. Public Scapegoats.

1. The Expulsion of Embodied Evils

THUS far we have dealt with that class of the general expulsion of evils
which I have called direct or immediate. In this class the evils are
invisible, at least to common eyes, and the mode of deliverance consists for
the most part in beating the empty air and raising such a hubbub as may scare
the mischievous spirits and put them to flight. It remains to illustrate the
second class of expulsions, in which the evil influences are embodied in a
visible form or are at least supposed to be loaded upon a material medium,
which acts as a vehicle to draw them off from the people, village, or town.

The Pomos of California celebrate an expulsion of devils every seven
years, at which the devils are represented by disguised men. Twenty or thirty
men array themselves in harlequin rig and barbaric paint, and put vessels of
pitch on their heads; then they secretly go out into the surrounding
mountains. These are to personify the devils. A herald goes up to the top of
the assembly-house, and makes a speech to the multitude. At a signal agreed
upon in the evening the masqueraders come in from the mountains, with the
vessels of pitch flaming on their heads, and with all the frightful
accessories of noise, motion, and costume which the savage mind can devise in
representation of demons. The terrified women and children flee for life, the
men huddle them inside a circle, and, on the principle of fighting the devil
with fire, they swing blazing firebrands in the air, yell, whoop, and make
frantic dashes at the marauding and bloodthirsty devils, so creating a
terrific spectacle, and striking great fear into the hearts of the assembled
hundreds of women, who are screaming and fainting and clinging to their
valorous protectors. Finally the devils succeed in getting into the
assembly-house, and the bravest of the men enter and hold a parley with them.
As a conclusion of the whole farce, the men summon courage, the devils are
expelled from the assembly-house, and with a prodigious row and racket of sham
fighting are chased away into the mountains. In spring, as soon as the
willow-leaves were full grown on the banks of the river, the Mandan Indians
celebrated their great annual festival, one of the features of which was the
expulsion of the devil. A man, painted black to represent the devil, entered
the village from the prairie, chased and frightened the women, and acted the
part of a buffalo bull in the buffalo dance, the object of which was to ensure
a plentiful supply of buffaloes during the ensuing year. Finally he was chased
from the village, the women pursuing him with hisses and gibes, beating him
with sticks, and pelting him with dirt.

Some of the native tribes of Central Queensland believe in a noxious being
called Molonga, who prowls unseen and would kill men and violate women if
certain ceremonies were not performed. These ceremonies last for five nights
and consist of dances, in which only men, fantastically painted and adorned,
take part. On the fifth night Molonga himself, personified by a man tricked
out with red ochre and feathers and carrying a long feather-tipped spear,
rushes forth from the darkness at the spectators and makes as if he would run
them through. Great is the excitement, loud are the shrieks and shouts, but
after another feigned attack the demon vanishes in the gloom. On the last
night of the year the palace of the Kings of Cambodia is purged of devils. Men
painted as fiends are chased by elephants about the palace courts. When they
have been expelled, a consecrated thread of cotton is stretched round the
palace to keep them out. In Munzerabad, a district of Mysore in Southern
India, when cholera or smallpox has broken out in a parish, the inhabitants
assemble and conjure the demon of the disease into a wooden image, which they
carry, generally at midnight, into the next parish. The inhabitants of that
parish in like manner pass the image on to their neighbours, and thus the
demon is expelled from one village after another, until he comes to the bank
of a river into which he is finally thrown.

Oftener, however, the expelled demons are not represented at all, but are
understood to be present invisibly in the material and visible vehicle which
conveys them away. Here, again, it will be convenient to distinguish between
occasional and periodical expulsions. We begin with the former.

2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle

THE VEHICLE which conveys away the demons may be of various kinds. A
common one is a little ship or boat. Thus, in the southern district of the island of
Ceram, when a whole village suffers from sickness, a small ship is made and
filled with rice, tobacco, eggs, and so forth, which have been contributed by
all the people. A little sail is hoisted on the ship. When all is ready, a man
calls out in a very loud voice, O all ye sicknesses, ye smallpoxes, agues,
measles, etc., who have visited us so long and wasted us so sorely, but who
now cease to plague us, we have made ready this ship for you, and we have
furnished you with provender sufficient for the voyage. Ye shall have no lack
of food nor of betel-leaves nor of areca nuts nor of tobacco. Depart, and sail
away from us directly; never come near us again; but go to a land which is far
from here. Let all the tides and winds waft you speedily thither, and so
convey you thither that for the time to come we may live sound and well, and
that we may never see the sun rise on you again. Then ten or twelve men carry
the vessel to the shore, and let it drift away with the land-breeze, feeling
convinced that they are free from sickness for ever, or at least till the next
time. If sickness attacks them again, they are sure it is not the same
sickness, but a different one, which in due time they dismiss in the same
manner. When the demon-laden bark is lost to sight, the bearers return to the
village, whereupon a man cries out, The sicknesses are now gone, vanished,
expelled, and sailed away. At this all the people come running out of their
houses, passing the word from one to the other with great joy, beating on
gongs and on tinkling instruments.

Similar ceremonies are commonly resorted to in other East Indian islands.
Thus in Timor-laut, to mislead the demons who are causing sickness, a small
proa, containing the image of a man and provisioned for a long voyage, is
allowed to drift away with wind and tide. As it is being launched, the people
cry, O sickness, go from here; turn back; what do you here in this poor
land? Three days after this ceremony a pig is killed, and part of the flesh
is offered to Dudilaa, who lives in the sun. One of the oldest men says, Old
sir, I beseech you make well the grand-children, children, women, and men,
that we may be able to eat pork and rice and to drink palmwine. I will keep my
promise. Eat your share, and make all the people in the village well. If the
proa is stranded at any inhabited spot, the sickness will break out there.
Hence a stranded proa excites much alarm amongst the coast population, and
they immediately burn it, because demons fly from fire. In the island of Buru
the proa which carries away the demons of disease is about twenty feet long,
rigged out with sails, oars, anchor, and so on, and well stocked with
provisions. For a day and a night the people beat gongs and drums, and rush
about to frighten the demons. Next morning ten stalwart young men strike the
people with branches, which have been previously dipped in an earthen pot of
water. As soon as they have done so, they run down to the beach, put the
branches on board the proa, launch another boat in great haste, and tow the
disease-burdened bark far out to sea. There they cast it off, and one of them
calls out, Grandfather Smallpox, go awaygo willingly awaygo visit another
land; we have made you food ready for the voyage, we have now nothing more to
give. When they have landed, all the people bathe together in the sea. In
this ceremony the reason for striking the people with the branches is clearly
to rid them of the disease-demons, which are then supposed to be transferred
to the branches. Hence the haste with which the branches are deposited in the
proa and towed away to sea. So in the inland districts of Ceram, when smallpox
or other sickness is raging, the priest strikes all the houses with
consecrated branches, which are then thrown into the river, to be carried down
to the sea; exactly as amongst the Wotyaks of Russia the sticks which have
been used for expelling the devils from the village are thrown into the river,
that the current may sweep the baleful burden away. The plan of putting
puppets in the boat to represent sick persons, in order to lure the demons
after them, is not uncommon. For example, most of the pagan tribes on the
coast of Borneo seek to drive away epidemic disease as follows. They carve one
or more rough human images from the pith of the sago palm and place them on a
small raft or boat or full-rigged Malay ship together with rice and other
food. The boat is decked with blossoms of the areca palm and with ribbons made
from its leaves, and thus adorned the little craft is allowed to float out to
sea with the ebb-tide, bearing, as the people fondly think or hope, the
sickness away with it.

Often the vehicle which carries away the collected demons or ills of a
whole community is an animal or scapegoat. In the Central Provinces of India,
when cholera breaks out in a village, every one retires after sunset to his
house. The priests then parade the streets, taking from the roof of each house
a straw, which is burnt with an offering of rice, ghee, and turmeric, at some
shrine to the east of the village. Chickens daubed with vermilion are driven
away in the direction of the smoke, and are believed to carry the disease with
them. If they fail, goats are tried, and last of all pigs. When cholera rages
among the Bhars, Mallans, and Kurmis of India, they take a goat or a
buffaloin either case the animal must be a female, and as black as
possiblethen having tied some grain, cloves, and red lead in a yellow cloth
on its back they turn it out of the village. The animal is conducted beyond
the boundary and not allowed to return. Sometimes the buffalo is marked with a
red pigment and driven to the next village, where he carries the plague with
him.

Amongst the Dinkas, a pastoral people of the White Nile, each family
possesses a sacred cow. When the country is threatened with war, famine, or
any other public calamity, the chiefs of the village require a particular
family to surrender their sacred cow to serve as a scapegoat. The animal is
driven by the women to the brink of the river and across it to the other bank,
there to wander in the wilderness and fall a prey to ravening beasts. Then the
women return in silence and without looking behind them; were they to cast a
backward glance, they imagine that the ceremony would have no effect. In 1857,
when the Aymara Indians of Bolivia and Peru were suffering from a plague, they
loaded a black llama with the clothes of the plague-stricken people, sprinkled
brandy on the clothes, and then turned the animal loose on the mountains,
hoping that it would carry the pest away with it.

Occasionally the scapegoat is a man. For example, from time to time the
gods used to warn the King of Uganda that his foes the Banyoro were working
magic against him and his people to make them die of disease. To avert such a
catastrophe the king would send a scapegoat to the frontier of Bunyoro, the
land of the enemy. The scapegoat consisted of either a man and a boy or a
woman and her child, chosen because of some mark or bodily defect, which the
gods had noted and by which the victims were to be recognised. With the human
victims were sent a cow, a goat, a fowl, and a dog; and a strong guard
escorted them to the land which the god had indicated. There the limbs of the
victims were broken and they were left to die a lingering death in the enemy's
country, being too crippled to crawl back to Uganda. The disease or plague was
thought to have been thus transferred to the victims and to have been conveyed
back in their persons to the land from which it came.

Some of the aboriginal tribes of China, as a protection against
pestilence, select a man of great muscular strength to act the part of
scapegoat. Having besmeared his face with paint, he performs many antics with
the view of enticing all pestilential and noxious influences to attach
themselves to him only. He is assisted by a priest. Finally the scapegoat,
hotly pursued by men and women beating gongs and tom-toms, is driven with
great haste out of the town or village. In the Punjaub a cure for the murrain
is to hire a man of the Chamar caste, turn his face away from the village,
brand him with a red-hot sickle, and let him go out into the jungle taking the
murrain with him. He must not look back.

3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle

THE MEDIATE expulsion of evils by means of a scapegoat or other material
vehicle, like the immediate expulsion of them in invisible form, tends to
become periodic, and for a like reason. Thus every year, generally in March,
the people of Leti, Moa, and Lakor, islands of the Indian Archipelago, send
away all their diseases to sea. They make a proa about six feet long, rig it
with sails, oars, rudder, and other gear, and every family deposits in its
some rice, fruit, a fowl, two eggs, insects that ravage the fields, and so on.
Then they let it drift away to sea, saying, Take away from here all kinds of
sickness, take them to other islands, to other lands, distribute them in
places that lie eastward, where the sun rises. The Biajas of Borneo annually
send to sea a little bark laden with the sins and misfortunes of the people.
The crew of any ship that falls in with the ill-omened bark at sea will suffer
all the sorrows with which it is laden. A like custom is annually observed by
the Dusuns of the Tuaran district in British North Borneo. The ceremony is the
most important of the whole year. Its aim is to bring good luck to the village
during the ensuing year by solemnly expelling all the evil spirits that may
have collected in or about the houses throughout the last twelve months. The
task of routing out the demons and banishing them devolves chiefly on women.
Dressed in their finest array, they go in procession through the village. One
of them carries a small sucking pig in a basket on her back; and all of them
bear wands, with which they belabour the little pig at the appropriate moment;
its squeals help to attract the vagrant spirits. At every house the women
dance and sing, clashing castanets or cymbals of brass and jingling bunches of
little brass bells in both hands. When the performance has been repeated at
every house in the village, the procession defiles down to the river, and all
the evil spirits, which the performers have chased from the houses, follow
them to the edge of the water. There a raft has been made ready and moored to
the bank. It contains offerings of food, cloth, cooking-pots, and swords; and
the deck is crowded with figures of men, women, animals, and birds, all made
out of the leaves of the sago palm. The evil spirits now embark on the raft,
and when they are all aboard, it is pushed off and allowed to float down with
the current, carrying the demons with it. Should the raft run aground near the
village, it is shoved off with all speed, lest the invisible passengers should
seize the opportunity of landing and returning to the village. Finally, the
sufferings of the little pig, whose squeals served to decoy the demons from
their lurking-places, are terminated by death, for it is killed and its
carcase thrown away.

Every year, at the beginning of the dry season, the Nicobar Islanders
carry the model of a ship through their villages. The devils are chased out of
the huts, and driven on board the little ship, which is then launched and
suffered to sail away with the wind. The ceremony has been described by a
catechist, who witnessed it at Car Nicobar in July 1897. For three days the
people were busy preparing two very large floating cars, shaped like canoes,
fitted with sails, and loaded with certain leaves, which possessed the
valuable property of expelling devils. While the young people were thus
engaged, the exorcists and the elders sat in a house singing songs by turns;
but often they would come forth, pace the beach armed with rods, and forbid
the devil to enter the village. The fourth day of the solemnity bore a name
which means Expelling the Devil by Sails. In the evening all the villagers
assembled, the women bringing baskets of ashes and bunches of devil-expelling
leaves. These leaves were then distributed to everybody, old and young. When
all was ready, a band of robust men, attended by a guard of exorcists, carried
one of the cars down to the sea on the right side of the village graveyard,
and set it floating in the water. As soon as they had returned, another band
of men carried the other car to the beach and floated it similarly in the sea
to the left of the graveyard. The demon-laden barks being now launched, the
women threw ashes from the shore, and the whole crowd shouted, saying, Fly
away, devil, fly away, never come again! The wind and the tide being
favourable, the canoes sailed quickly away; and that night all the people
feasted together with great joy, because the devil had departed in the
direction of Chowra. A similar expulsion of devils takes place once a year in
other Nicobar villages; but the ceremonies are held at different times in
different places.

Amongst many of the aboriginal tribes of China, a great festival is
celebrated in the third month of every year. It is held by way of a general
rejoicing over what the people believe to be a total annihilation of the ills
of the past twelve months. The destruction is supposed to be effected in the
following way. A large earthenware jar filled with gunpowder, stones, and bits
of iron is buried in the earth. A train of gunpowder, communicating with the
jar, is then laid; and a match being applied, the jar and its contents are
blown up. The stones and bits of iron represent the ills and disasters of the
past year, and the dispersion of them by the explosion is believed to remove
the ills and disasters themselves. The festival is attended with much
revelling and drunkenness.

At Old Calabar on the coast of Guinea, the devils and ghosts are, or used
to be, publicly expelled once in two years. Among the spirits thus driven from
their haunts are the souls of all the people who died since the last
lustration of the town. About three weeks or a month before the expulsion,
which according to one account takes place in the month of November, rude
effigies representing men and animals, such as crocodiles, leopards,
elephants, bullocks, and birds, are made of wicker-work or wood, and being
hung with strips of cloth and bedizened with gew-gaws, are set before the door
of every house. About three o'clock in the morning of the day appointed for
the ceremony the whole population turns out into the streets, and proceeds
with a deafening uproar and in a state of the wildest excitement to drive all
lurking devils and ghosts into the effigies, in order that they may be
banished with them from the abodes of men. For this purpose bands of people
roam through the streets knocking on doors, firing guns, beating drums,
blowing on horns, ringing bells, clattering pots and pans, shouting and
hallooing with might and main, in short making all the noise it is possible
for them to raise. The hubbub goes on till the approach of dawn, when it
gradually subsides and ceases altogether at sunrise. By this time the houses
have been thoroughly swept, and all the frightened spirits are supposed to
have huddled into the effigies or their fluttering drapery. In these wicker
figures are also deposited the sweepings of the houses and the ashes of
yesterday's fires. Then the demon-laden images are hastily snatched up,
carried in tumultuous procession down to the brink of the river, and thrown
into the water to the tuck of drums. The ebb-tide bears them away seaward, and
thus the town is swept clean of ghosts and devils for another two years.

Similar annual expulsions of embodied evils are not unknown in Europe. On
the evening of Easter Sunday the gypsies of Southern Europe take a wooden
vessel like a band-box, which rests cradle-wise on two cross pieces of wood.
In this they place herbs and simples, together with the dried carcase of a
snake, or lizard, which every person present must first have touched with his
fingers. The vessel is then wrapt in white and red wool, carried by the oldest
man from tent to tent, and finally thrown into running water, not, however,
before every member of the band has spat into it once, and the sorceress has
uttered some spells over it. They believe that by performing this ceremony
they dispel all the illnesses that would otherwise have afflicted them in the
course of the year; and that if any one finds the vessel and opens it out of
curiosity, he and his will be visited by all the maladies which the others
have escaped.

The scapegoat by means of which the accumulated ills of a whole year are
publicly expelled is sometimes an animal. For example, among the Garos of
Assam, besides the sacrifices for individual cases of illness, there are
certain ceremonies which are observed once a year by a whole community or
village, and are intended to safeguard its members from dangers of the forest,
and from sickness and mishap during the coming twelve months. The principal of
these is the Asongtata ceremony. Close to the outskirts of every big village a
number of stones may be noticed stuck into the ground, apparently without
order or method. These are known by the name of asong, and on them is
offered the sacrifice which the Asongtata demands. The sacrifice of a goat
takes place, and a month later, that of a langur (Entellus monkey) or a
bamboo-rat is considered necessary. The animal chosen has a rope fastened
round its neck and is led by two men, one on each side of it, to every house
in the village. It is taken inside each house in turn, the assembled
villagers, meanwhile, beating the walls from the outside, to frighten and
drive out any evil spirits which may have taken up their residence within. The
round of the village having been made in this manner, the monkey or rat is led
to the outskirts of the village, killed by a blow of a dao, which
disembowels it, and then crucified on bamboos set up in the ground. Round the
crucified animal long, sharp bamboo stakes are placed, which form chevaux de
frise round about it. These commemorate the days when such defences
surrounded the villages on all sides to keep off human enemies, and they are
now a symbol to ward off sickness and dangers to life from the wild animals of
the forest. The langur required for the purpose is hunted down some days
before, but should it be found impossible to catch one, a brown monkey may
take its place; a hulock may not be used. Here the crucified ape or rat is
the public scapegoat, which by its vicarious sufferings and death relieves the
people from all sickness and mishap in the coming year.

Again, on one day of the year the Bhotiyas of Juhar, in the Western
Himalayas, take a dog, intoxicate him with spirits and bhang or hemp, and
having fed him with sweetmeats, lead him round the village and let him loose.
They then chase and kill him with sticks and stones, and believe that, when
they have done so, no disease or misfortune will visit the village during the
year. In some parts of Breadalbane it was formerly the custom on New Year's
Day to take a dog to the door, give him a bit of bread, and drive him out,
saying, Get away, you dog! Whatever death of men or loss of cattle would
happen in this house to the end of the present year, may it all light on your
head! On the Day of Atonement, which was the tenth day of the seventh month,
the Jewish high-priest laid both his hands on the head of a live goat,
confessed over it all the iniquities of the Children of Israel, and, having
thereby transferred the sins of the people to the beast, sent it away into the
wilderness.

The scapegoat upon whom the sins of the people are periodically laid, may
also be a human being. At Onitsha, on the Niger, two human beings used to be
annually sacrificed to take away the sins of the land. The victims were
purchased by public subscription. All persons who, during the past year, had
fallen into gross sins, such as incendiarism, theft, adultery, witchcraft, and
so forth, were expected to contribute 28 ngugas, or a little over 2. The
money thus collected was taken into the interior of the country and expended
in the purchase of two sickly persons to be offered as a sacrifice for all
these abominable crimesone for the land and one for the river. A man from a
neighbouring town was hired to put them to death. On the twenty-seventh of
February 1858 the Rev. J. C. Taylor witnessed the sacrifice of one of these
victims. The sufferer was a woman, about nineteen or twenty years of age. They
dragged her alive along the ground, face downwards, from the king's house to
the river, a distance of two miles, the crowds who accompanied her crying,
Wickedness! wickedness! The intention was to take away the iniquities of
the land. The body was dragged along in a merciless manner, as if the weight
of all their wickedness was thus carried away. Similar customs are said to be
still secretly practised every year by many tribes in the delta of the Niger
in spite of the vigilance of the British Government. Among the Yoruba negroes
of West Africa the human victim chosen for sacrifice, and who may be either a
freeborn or a slave, a person of noble or wealthy parentage, or one of humble
birth, is, after he has been chosen and marked out for the purpose, called an
Oluwo. He is always well fed and nourished and supplied with whatever he
should desire during the period of his confinement. When the occasion arrives
for him to be sacrificed and offered up, he is commonly led about and paraded
through the streets of the town or city of the Sovereign who would sacrifice
him for the well-being of his government and of every family and individual
under it, in order that he might carry off the sin, guilt, misfortune and
death of all without exception. Ashes and chalk would be employed to hide his
identity by the one being freely thrown over his head, and his face painted
with the latter, whilst individuals would often rush out of their houses to
lay their hands upon him that they might thus transfer to him their sin,
guilt, trouble, and death. This parade over, he is taken to an inner
sanctuary and beheaded. His last words or dying groans are the signal for an
outburst of joy among the people assembled outside, who believe that the
sacrifice has been accepted and the divine wrath appeased.

In Siam it used to be the custom on one day of the year to single out a
woman broken down by debauchery, and carry her on a litter through all the
streets to the music of drums and hautboys. The mob insulted her and pelted
her with dirt; and after having carried her through the whole city, they threw
her on a dunghill or a hedge of thorns outside the ramparts, forbidding her
ever to enter the walls again. They believed that the woman thus drew upon
herself all the malign influences of the air and of evil spirits. The Bataks
of Sumatra offer either a red horse or a buffalo as a public sacrifice to
purify the land and obtain the favour of the gods. Formerly, it is said, a man
was bound to the same stake as the buffalo, and when they killed the animal,
the man was driven away; no one might receive him, converse with him, or give
him food. Doubtless he was supposed to carry away the sins and misfortunes of
the people.

Sometimes the scapegoat is a divine animal. The people of Malabar share
the Hindoo reverence for the cow, to kill and eat which they esteem to be a
crime as heinous as homicide or wilful murder. Nevertheless the Bramans
transfer the sins of the people into one or more Cows, which are then carry'd
away, both the Cows and the Sins wherewith these Beasts are charged, to what
place the Braman shall appoint. When the ancient Egyptians sacrificed a bull,
they invoked upon its head all the evils that might otherwise befall
themselves and the land of Egypt, and thereupon they either sold the bull's
head to the Greeks or cast it into the river. Now, it cannot be said that in
the times known to us the Egyptians worshipped bulls in general, for they seem
to have commonly killed and eaten them. But a good many circumstances point to
the conclusion that originally all cattle, bulls as well as cows, were held
sacred by the Egyptians. For not only were all cows esteemed holy by them and
never sacrificed, but even bulls might not be sacrificed unless they had
certain natural marks; a priest examined every bull before it was sacrificed;
if it had the proper marks, he put his seal on the animal in token that it
might be sacrificed; and if a man sacrificed a bull which had not been sealed,
he was put to death. Moreover, the worship of the black bulls Apis and Mnevis,
especially the former, played an important part in Egyptian religion; all
bulls that died a natural death were carefully buried in the suburbs of the
cities, and their bones were afterwards collected from all parts of Egypt and
interred in a single spot; and at the sacrifice of a bull in the great rites
of Isis all the worshippers beat their breasts and mourned. On the whole,
then, we are perhaps entitled to infer that bulls were originally, as cows
were always, esteemed sacred by the Egyptians, and that the slain bull upon
whose head they laid the misfortunes of the people was once a divine
scapegoat. It seems not improbable that the lamb annually slain by the Madis
of Central Africa is a divine scapegoat, and the same supposition may partly
explain the Zuni sacrifice of the turtle.

Lastly, the scapegoat may be a divine man. Thus, in November the Gonds of
India worship Ghansyam Deo, the protector of the crops, and at the festival
the god himself is said to descend on the head of one of the worshippers, who
is suddenly seized with a kind of fit and, after staggering about, rushes off
into the jungle, where it is believed that, if left to himself, he would die
mad. However, they bring him back, but he does not recover his senses for one
or two days. The people think that one man is thus singled out as a scapegoat
for the sins of the rest of the village. In the temple of the Moon the
Albanians of the Eastern Caucasus kept a number of sacred slaves, of whom many
were inspired and prophesied. When one of these men exhibited more than usual
symptoms of inspiration or insanity, and wandered solitary up and down the
woods, like the Gond in the jungle, the high priest had him bound with a
sacred chain and maintained him in luxury for a year. At the end of the year
he was anointed with unguents and led forth to be sacrificed. A man whose
business it was to slay these human victims and to whom practice had given
dexterity, advanced from the crowd and thrust a sacred spear into the victim's
side, piercing his heart. From the manner in which the slain man fell, omens
were drawn as to the welfare of the commonwealth. Then the body was carried to
a certain spot where all the people stood upon it as a purificatory ceremony.
This last circumstance clearly indicates that the sins of the people were
transferred to the victim, just as the Jewish priest transferred the sins of
the people to the scapegoat by laying his hands on the animal's head; and
since the man was believed to be possessed by the divine spirit, we have here
an undoubted example of a man-god slain to take away the sins and misfortunes
of the people.

In Tibet the ceremony of the scapegoat presents some remarkable features.
The Tibetan new year begins with the new moon which appears about the
fifteenth of February. For twenty-three days afterwards the government of
Lhasa, the capital, is taken out of the hands of the ordinary rulers and
entrusted to the monk of the Debang monastery who offers to pay the highest
sum for the privilege. The successful bidder is called the Jalno, and he
announces his accession to power in person, going through the streets of Lhasa
with a silver stick in his hand. Monks from all the neighbouring monasteries
and temples assemble to pay him homage. The Jalno exercises his authority in
the most arbitrary manner for his own benefit, as all the fines which he
exacts are his by purchase. The profit he makes is about ten times the amount
of the purchase money. His men go about the streets in order to discover any
conduct on the part of the inhabitants that can be found fault with. Every
house in Lhasa is taxed at this time, and the slightest offence is punished
with unsparing rigour by fines. This severity of the Jalno drives all working
classes out of the city till the twenty-three days are over. But if the laity
go out, the clergy come in. All the Buddhist monasteries of the country for
miles round about open their gates and disgorge their inmates. All the roads
that lead down into Lhasa from the neighbouring mountains are full of monks
hurrying to the capital, some on foot, some on horseback, some riding asses or
lowing oxen, all carrying their prayer-books and culinary utensils. In such
multitudes do they come that the streets and squares of the city are
encumbered with their swarms, and incarnadined with their red cloaks. The
disorder and confusion are indescribable. Bands of the holy men traverse the
streets chanting prayers, or uttering wild cries. They meet, they jostle, they
quarrel, they fight; bloody noses, black eyes, and broken heads are freely
given and received. All day long, too, from before the peep of dawn till after
darkness has fallen, these red-cloaked monks hold services in the dim
incense-laden air of the great Machindranath temple, the cathedral of Lhasa;
and thither they crowd thrice a day to receive their doles of tea and soup and
money. The cathedral is a vast building, standing in the centre of the city,
and surrounded by bazaars and shops. The idols in it are richly inlaid with
gold and precious stones.

Twenty-four days after the Jalno has ceased to have authority, he assumes
it again, and for ten days acts in the same arbitrary manner as before. On the
first of the ten days the priests again assemble at the cathedral, pray to the
gods to prevent sickness and other evils among the people, and, as a
peace-offering, sacrifice one man. The man is not killed purposely, but the
ceremony he undergoes often proves fatal. Grain is thrown against his head,
and his face is painted half white, half black. Thus grotesquely disguised,
and carrying a coat of skin on his arm, he is called the King of the Years,
and sits daily in the market-place, where he helps himself to whatever he
likes and goes about shaking a black yak's tail over the people, who thus
transfer their bad luck to him. On the tenth day, all the troops in Lhasa
march to the great temple and form in line before it. The King of the Years is
brought forth from the temple and receives small donations from the assembled
multitude. He then ridicules the Jalno, saying to him, What we perceive
through the five senses is no illusion. All you teach is untrue, and the
like. The Jalno, who represents the Grand Lama for the time being, contests
these heretical opinions; the dispute waxes warm, and at last both agree to
decide the questions at issue by a cast of the dice, the Jalno offering to
change places with the scapegoat should the throw be against him. If the King
of the Years wins, much evil is prognosticated; but if the Jalno wins, there
is great rejoicing, for it proves that his adversary has been accepted by the
gods as a victim to bear all the sins of the people of Lhasa. Fortune,
however, always favours the Jalno, who throws sixes with unvarying success,
while his opponent turns up only ones. Nor is this so extraordinary as at
first sight it might appear; for the Jalno's dice are marked with nothing but
sixes and his adversary's with nothing but ones. When he sees the finger of
Providence thus plainly pointed against him, the King of the Years is
terrified and flees away upon a white horse, with a white dog, a white bird,
salt, and so forth, which have all been provided for him by the government.
His face is still painted half white and half black, and he still wears his
leathern coat. The whole populace pursues him, hooting, yelling, and firing
blank shots in volleys after him. Thus driven out of the city, he is detained
for seven days in the great chamber of horrors at the Samyas monastery,
surrounded by monstrous and terrific images of devils and skins of huge
serpents and wild beasts. Thence he goes away into the mountains of Chetang,
where he has to remain an outcast for several months or a year in a narrow
den. If he dies before the time is out, the people say it is an auspicious
omen; but if he survives, he may return to Lhasa and play the part of
scapegoat over again the following year.

This quaint ceremonial, still annually observed in the secluded capital of
Buddhismthe Rome of Asiais interesting because it exhibits, in a clearly
marked religious stratification, a series of divine redeemers themselves
redeemed, of vicarious sacrifices vicariously atoned for, of gods undergoing a
process of fossilisation, who, while they retain the privileges, have
disburdened themselves of the pains and penalties of divinity. In the Jalno we
may without undue straining discern a successor of those temporary kings,
those mortal gods, who purchase a short lease of power and glory at the price
of their lives. That he is the temporary substitute of the Grand Lama is
certain; that he is, or was once, liable to act as scapegoat for the people is
made nearly certain by his offer to change places with the real scapegoatthe
King of the Yearsif the arbitrament of the dice should go against him. It is
true that the conditions under which the question is now put to the hazard
have reduced the offer to an idle form. But such forms are no mere mushroom
growths, springing up of themselves in a night. If they are now lifeless
formalities, empty husks devoid of significance, we may be sure that they once
had a life and a meaning; if at the present day they are blind alleys leading
nowhere, we may be certain that in former days they were paths that led
somewhere, if only to death. That death was the goal to which of old the
Tibetan scapegoat passed after his brief period of licence in the
market-place, is a conjecture that has much to commend it. Analogy suggests
it; the blank shots fired after him, the statement that the ceremony often
proves fatal, the belief that his death is a happy omen, all confirm it. We
need not wonder then that the Jalno, after paying so dear to act as
deputy-deity for a few weeks, should have preferred to die by deputy rather
than in his own person when his time was up. The painful but necessary duty
was accordingly laid on some poor devil, some social outcast, some wretch with
whom the world had gone hard, who readily agreed to throw away his life at the
end of a few days if only he might have his fling in the meantime. For observe
that while the time allowed to the original deputythe Jalnowas measured by
weeks, the time allowed to the deputy's deputy was cut down to days, ten days
according to one authority, seven days according to another. So short a rope
was doubtless thought a long enough tether for so black or sickly a sheep; so
few sands in the hour-glass, slipping so fast away, sufficed for one who had
wasted so many precious years. Hence in the jack-pudding who now masquerades
with motley countenance in the market-place of Lhasa, sweeping up misfortune
with a black yak's tail, we may fairly see the substitute of a substitute, the
vicar of a vicar, the proxy on whose back the heavy burden was laid when it
had been lifted from nobler shoulders. But the clue, if we have followed it
aright, does not stop at the Jalno; it leads straight back to the pope of
Lhasa himself, the Grand Lama, of whom the Jalno is merely the temporary
vicar. The analogy of many customs in many lands points to the conclusion
that, if this human divinity stoops to resign his ghostly power for a time
into the hands of a substitute, it is, or rather was once, for no other reason
than that the substitute might die in his stead. Thus through the mist of ages
unillumined by the lamp of history, the tragic figure of the pope of
BuddhismGod's vicar on earth for Asialooms dim and sad as the man-god who
bore his people's sorrows, the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the
sheep.

4. On Scapegoats in General

THE FOREGOING survey of the custom of publicly expelling the accumulated
evils of a village or town or country suggests a few general observations.

In the first place, it will not be disputed that what I have called the
immediate and the mediate expulsions of evil are identical in intention; in
other words, that whether the evils are conceived of as invisible or as
embodied in a material form, is a circumstance entirely subordinate to the
main object of the ceremony, which is simply to effect a total clearance of
all the ills that have been infesting a people. If any link were wanting to
connect the two kinds of expulsion, it would be furnished by such a practice
as that of sending the evils away in a litter or a boat. For here, on the one
hand, the evils are invisible and intangible; and, on the other hand, there is
a visible and tangible vehicle to convey them away. And a scapegoat is nothing
more than such a vehicle.

In the second place, when a general clearance of evils is resorted to
periodically, the interval between the celebrations of the ceremony is
commonly a year, and the time of year when the ceremony takes place usually
coincides with some well-marked change of season, such as the beginning or end
of winter in the arctic and temperate zones, and the beginning or end of the
rainy season in the tropics. The increased mortality which such climatic
changes are apt to produce, especially amongst ill-fed, ill-clothed, and
ill-housed savages, is set down by primitive man to the agency of demons, who
must accordingly be expelled. Hence, in the tropical regions of New Britain
and Peru, the devils are or were driven out at the beginning of the rainy
season; hence, on the dreary coasts of Baffin Land, they are banished at the
approach of the bitter Arctic winter. When a tribe has taken to husbandry, the
time for the general expulsion of devils is naturally made to agree with one
of the great epochs of the agricultural year, as sowing, or harvest; but, as
these epochs themselves naturally coincide with changes of season, it does not
follow that the transition from the hunting or pastoral to the agricultural
life involves any alteration in the time of celebrating this great annual
rite. Some of the agricultural communities of India and the Hindoo Koosh, as
we have seen, hold their general clearance of demons at harvest, others at
sowing-time. But, at whatever season of the year it is held, the general
expulsion of devils commonly marks the beginning of the new year. For, before
entering on a new year, people are anxious to rid themselves of the troubles
that have harassed them in the past; hence it comes about that in so many
communities the beginning of the new year is inaugurated with a solemn and
public banishment of evil spirits.

In the third place, it is to be observed that this public and periodic
expulsion of devils is commonly preceded or followed by a period of general
license, during which the ordinary restraints of society are thrown aside, and
all offences, short of the gravest, are allowed to pass unpunished. In Guinea
and Tonquin the period of license precedes the public expulsion of demons; and
the suspension of the ordinary government in Lhasa previous to the expulsion
of the scapegoat is perhaps a relic of a similar period of universal license.
Amongst the Hos of India the period of license follows the expulsion of the
devil. Amongst the Iroquois it hardly appears whether it preceded or followed
the banishment of evils. In any case, the extraordinary relaxation of all
ordinary rules of conduct on such occasions is doubtless to be explained by
the general clearance of evils which precedes or follows it. On the one hand,
when a general riddance of evil and absolution from all sin is in immediate
prospect, men are encouraged to give the rein to their passions, trusting that
the coming ceremony will wipe out the score which they are running up so fast.
On the other hand, when the ceremony has just taken place, men's minds are
freed from the oppressive sense, under which they generally labour, of an
atmosphere surcharged with devils; and in the first revulsion of joy they
overleap the limits commonly imposed by custom and morality. When the ceremony
takes place at harvest-time, the elation of feeling which it excites is
further stimulated by the state of physical wellbeing produced by an abundant
supply of food.

Fourthly, the employment of a divine man or animal as a scapegoat is
especially to be noted; indeed, we are here directly concerned with the custom
of banishing evils only in so far as these evils are believed to be
transferred to a god who is afterwards slain. It may be suspected that the
custom of employing a divine man or animal as a public scapegoat is much more
widely diffused than appears from the examples cited. For, as has already been
pointed out, the custom of killing a god dates from so early a period of human
history that in later ages, even when the custom continues to be practised, it
is liable to be misinterpreted. The divine character of the animal or man is
forgotten, and he comes to be regarded merely as an ordinary victim. This is
especially likely to be the case when it is a divine man who is killed. For
when a nation becomes civilised, if it does not drop human sacrifices
altogether, it at least selects as victims only such wretches as would be put
to death at any rate. Thus the killing of a god may sometimes come to be
confounded with the execution of a criminal.

If we ask why a dying god should be chosen to take upon himself and carry
away the sins and sorrows of the people, it may be suggested that in the
practice of using the divinity as a scapegoat we have a combination of two
customs which were at one time distinct and independent. On the one hand we
have seen that it has been customary to kill the human or animal god in order
to save his divine life from being weakened by the inroads of age. On the
other hand we have seen that it has been customary to have a general expulsion
of evils and sins once a year. Now, if it occurred to people to combine these
two customs, the result would be the employment of the dying god as a
scapegoat. He was killed, not originally to take away sin, but to save the
divine life from the degeneracy of old age; but, since he had to be killed at
any rate, people may have thought that they might as well seize the
opportunity to lay upon him the burden of their sufferings and sins, in order
that he might bear it away with him to the unknown world beyond the grave.

The use of the divinity as a scapegoat clears up the ambiguity which, as
we saw, appears to hang about the European folk-custom of carrying out
Death. Grounds have been shown for believing that in this ceremony the
so-called Death was originally the spirit of vegetation, who was annually
slain in spring, in order that he might come to life again with all the vigour
of youth. But, as I pointed out, there are certain features in the ceremony
which are not explicable on this hypothesis alone. Such are the marks of joy
with which the effigy of Death is carried out to be buried or burnt, and the
fear and abhorrence of it manifested by the bearers. But these features become
at once intelligible if we suppose that the Death was not merely the dying god
of vegetation, but also a public scapegoat, upon whom were laid all the evils
that had afflicted the people during the past year. Joy on such an occasion is
natural and appropriate; and if the dying god appears to be the object of that
fear and abhorrence which are properly due not to himself, but to the sins and
misfortunes with which he is laden, this arises merely from the difficulty of
distinguishing, or at least of marking the distinction, between the bearer and
the burden. When the burden is of a baleful character, the bearer of it will
be feared and shunned just as much as if he were himself instinct with those
dangerous properties of which, as it happens, he is only the vehicle.
Similarly we have seen that disease-laden and sin-laden boats are dreaded and
shunned by East Indian peoples. Again, the view that in these popular customs
the Death is a scapegoat as well as a representative of the divine spirit of
vegetation derives some support from the circumstance that its expulsion is
always celebrated in spring and chiefly by Slavonic peoples. For the Slavonic
year began in spring; and thus, in one of its aspects, the ceremony of
carrying out Death would be an example of the widespread custom of expelling
the accumulated evils of the old year before entering on a new one.

Chapter 58. Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity.

1. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Rome

WE are now prepared to notice the use of the human scapegoat in classical
antiquity. Every year on the fourteenth of March a man clad in skins was led
in procession through the streets of Rome, beaten with long white rods, and
driven out of the city. He was called Mamurius Veturius, that is, the old
Mars, and as the ceremony took place on the day preceding the first full moon
of the old Roman year (which began on the first of March), the skin-clad man
must have represented the Mars of the past year, who was driven out at the
beginning of a new one. Now Mars was originally not a god of war but of
vegetation. For it was to Mars that the Roman husbandman prayed for the
prosperity of his corn and his vines, his fruit-trees and his copses; it was
to Mars that the priestly college of the Arval Brothers, whose business it was
to sacrifice for the growth of the crops, addressed their petitions almost
exclusively; and it was to Mars, as we saw, that a horse was sacrificed in
October to secure an abundant harvest. Moreover, it was to Mars, under his
title of Mars of the woods (Mars Silvanus), that farmers offered sacrifice
for the welfare of their cattle. We have already seen that cattle are commonly
supposed to be under the special patronage of tree-gods. Once more, the
consecration of the vernal month of March to Mars seems to point him out as
the deity of the sprouting vegetation. Thus the Roman custom of expelling the
old Mars at the beginning of the new year in spring is identical with the
Slavonic custom of carrying out Death, if the view here taken of the latter
custom is correct. The similarity of the Roman and Slavonic customs has been
already remarked by scholars, who appear, however, to have taken Mamurius
Veturius and the corresponding figures in the Slavonic ceremonies to be
representatives of the old year rather than of the old god of vegetation. It
is possible that ceremonies of this kind may have come to be thus interpreted
in later times even by the people who practised them. But the personification
of a period of time is too abstract an idea to be primitive. However, in the
Roman, as in the Slavonic, ceremony, the representative of the god appears to
have been treated not only as a deity of vegetation but also as a scapegoat.
His expulsion implies this; for there is no reason why the god of vegetation,
as such, should be expelled the city. But it is otherwise if he is also a
scapegoat; it then becomes necessary to drive him beyond the boundaries, that
he may carry his sorrowful burden away to other lands. And, in fact, Mamurius
Veturius appears to have been driven away to the land of the Oscans, the
enemies of Rome.

2. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece

THE ANCIENT Greeks were also familiar with the use of a human scapegoat. In
Plutarch's native town of Chaeronea a ceremony of this kind was performed by
the chief magistrate at the Town Hall, and by each householder at his own
home. It was called the expulsion of hunger. A slave was beaten with rods of
the agnus castus, and turned out of doors with the words, Out with hunger,
and in with wealth and health. When Plutarch held the office of chief
magistrate of his native town he performed this ceremony at the Town Hall, and
he has recorded the discussion to which the custom afterwards gave rise.

But in civilised Greece the custom of the scapegoat took darker forms than
the innocent rite over which the amiable and pious Plutarch presided. Whenever
Marseilles, one of the busiest and most brilliant of Greek colonies, was
ravaged by a plague, a man of the poorer classes used to offer himself as a
scapegoat. For a whole year he was maintained at the public expense, being fed
on choice and pure food. At the expiry of the year he was dressed in sacred
garments, decked with holy branches, and led through the whole city, while
prayers were uttered that all the evils of the people might fall on his head.
He was then cast out of the city or stoned to death by the people outside of
the walls. The Athenians regularly maintained a number of degraded and useless
beings at the public expense; and when any calamity, such as plague, drought,
or famine, befell the city, they sacrificed two of these outcast scapegoats.
One of the victims was sacrificed for the men and the other for the women. The
former wore round his neck a string of black, the latter a string of white
figs. Sometimes, it seems, the victim slain on behalf of the women was a
woman. They were led about the city and then sacrificed, apparently by being
stoned to death outside the city. But such sacrifices were not confined to
extraordinary occasions of public calamity; it appears that every year, at the
festival of the Thargelia in May, two victims, one for the men and one for the
women, were led out of Athens and stoned to death. The city of Abdera in
Thrace was publicly purified once a year, and one of the burghers, set apart
for the purpose, was stoned to death as a scapegoat or vicarious sacrifice for
the life of all the others; six days before his execution he was
excommunicated, in order that he alone might bear the sins of all the
people.

From the Lover's Leap, a white bluff at the southern end of their island,
the Leucadians used annually to hurl a criminal into the sea as a scapegoat.
But to lighten his fall they fastened live birds and feathers to him, and a
flotilla of small boats waited below to catch him and convey him beyond the
boundary. Probably these humane precautions were a mitigation of an earlier
custom of flinging the scapegoat into the sea to drown. The Leucadian ceremony
took place at the time of a sacrifice to Apollo, who had a temple or sanctuary
on the spot. Elsewhere it was customary to cast a young man every year into
the sea, with the prayer, Be thou our offscouring. This ceremony was
supposed to rid the people of the evils by which they were beset, or according
to a somewhat different interpretation it redeemed them by paying the debt
they owed to the sea-god. As practised by the Greeks of Asia Minor in the
sixth century before our era, the custom of the scapegoat was as follows. When
a city suffered from plague, famine, or other public calamity, an ugly or
deformed person was chosen to take upon himself all the evils which afflicted
the community. He was brought to a suitable place, where dried figs, a barley
loaf, and cheese were put into his hand. These he ate. Then he was beaten
seven times upon his genital organs with squills and branches of the wild fig
and other wild trees, while the flutes played a particular tune. Afterwards he
was burned on a pyre built of the wood of forest trees; and his ashes were
cast into the sea. A similar custom appears to have been annually celebrated
by the Asiatic Greeks at the harvest festival of the Thargelia.

In the ritual just described the scourging of the victim with squills,
branches of the wild fig, and so forth, cannot have been intended to aggravate
his sufferings, otherwise any stick would have been good enough to beat him
with. The true meaning of this part of the ceremony has been explained by W.
Mannhardt. He points out that the ancients attributed to squills a magical
power of averting evil influences, and that accordingly they hung them up at
the doors of their houses and made use of them in purificatory rites. Hence
the Arcadian custom of whipping the image of Pan with squills at a festival,
or whenever the hunters returned empty-handed, must have been meant, not to
punish the god, but to purify him from the harmful influences which were
impeding him in the exercise of his divine functions as a god who should
supply the hunter with game. Similarly the object of beating the human
scapegoat on the genital organs with squills and so on, must have been to
release his reproductive energies from any restraint or spell under which they
might be laid by demoniacal or other malignant agency; and as the Thargelia at
which he was annually sacrificed was an early harvest festival celebrated in
May, we must recognise in him a representative of the creative and fertilising
god of vegetation. The representative of the god was annually slain for the
purpose I have indicated, that of maintaining the divine life in perpetual
vigour, untainted by the weakness of age; and before he was put to death it
was not unnatural to stimulate his reproductive powers in order that these
might be transmitted in full activity to his successor, the new god or new
embodiment of the old god, who was doubtless supposed immediately to take the
place of the one slain. Similar reasoning would lead to a similar treatment of
the scapegoat on special occasions, such as drought or famine. If the crops
did not answer to the expectation of the husbandman, this would be attributed
to some failure in the generative powers of the god whose function it was to
produce the fruits of the earth. It might be thought that he was under a spell
or was growing old and feeble. Accordingly he was slain in the person of his
representative, with all the ceremonies already described, in order that, born
young again, he might infuse his own youthful vigour into the stagnant
energies of nature. On the same principle we can understand why Mamurius
Veturius was beaten with rods, why the slave at the Chaeronean ceremony was
beaten with the agnus castus (a tree to which magical properties were
ascribed), why the effigy of Death in some parts of Europe is assailed with
sticks and stones, and why at Babylon the criminal who played the god scourged
before he was crucified. The purpose of the scourging was not to intensify the
agony of the divine sufferer, but on the contrary to dispel any malignant
influences by which at the supreme moment he might conceivably be beset.

Thus far I have assumed that the human victims at the Thargelia
represented the spirits of vegetation in general, but it has been well
remarked by Mr. W. R. Paton that these poor wretches seem to have masqueraded
as the spirits of fig-trees in particular. He points out that the process of
caprification, as it is called, that is, the artificial fertilisation of the
cultivated fig-trees by hanging strings of wild figs among the boughs, takes
place in Greece and Asia Minor in June about a month after the date of the
Thargelia, and he suggests that the hanging of the black and white figs round
the necks of the two human victims, one of whom represented the men and the
other the women, may have been a direct imitation of the process of
caprification designed, on the principle of imitative magic, to assist the
fertilisation of the fig-trees. And since caprification is in fact a marriage
of the male fig-tree with the female fig-tree, Mr. Paton further supposes that
the loves of the trees may, on the same principle of imitative magic, have
been simulated by a mock or even a real marriage between the two human
victims, one of whom appears sometimes to have been a woman. On this view the
practice of beating the human victims on their genitals with branches of wild
fig-trees and with squills was a charm intended to stimulate the generative
powers of the man and woman who for the time being personated the male and the
female fig-trees respectively, and who by their union in marriage, whether
real or pretended, were believed to help the trees to bear fruit.

The interpretation which I have adopted of the custom of beating the human
scapegoat with certain plants is supported by many analogies. Thus among the
Kai of German New Guinea, when a man wishes to make his banana shoots bear
fruit quickly, he beats them with a stick cut from a banana-tree which has
already borne fruit. Here it is obvious that fruitfulness is believed to
inhere in a stick cut from a fruitful tree and to be imparted by contact to
the young banana plants. Similarly in New Caledonia a man will beat his taro
plants lightly with a branch, saying as he does so, I beat this taro that it
may grow, after which he plants the branch in the ground at the end of the
field. Among the Indians of Brazil at the mouth of the Amazon, when a man
wishes to increase the size of his generative organ, he strikes it with the
fruit of a white aquatic plant called aninga, which grows luxuriantly on the
banks of the river. The fruit, which is inedible, resembles a banana, and is
clearly chosen for this purpose on account of its shape. The ceremony should
be performed three days before or after the new moon. In the county of Bekes,
in Hungary, barren women are fertilised by being struck with a stick which has
first been used to separate pairing dogs. Here a fertilising virtue is clearly
supposed to be inherent in the stick and to be conveyed by contact to the
women. The Toradjas of Central Celebes think that the plant Dracaena
terminalis has a strong soul, because when it is lopped, it soon grows up
again. Hence when a man is ill, his friends will sometimes beat him on the
crown of the head with Dracaena leaves in order to strengthen his weak soul
with the strong soul of the plant.

These analogies, accordingly, support the interpretation which, following
my predecessors W. Mannhardt and Mr. W. R. Paton, I have given of the beating
inflicted on the human victims at the Greek harvest festival of the Thargelia.
That beating, being administered to the generative organs of the victims by
fresh green plants and branches, is most naturally explained as a charm to
increase the reproductive energies of the men or women either by communicating
to them the fruitfulness of the plants and branches, or by ridding them of the
maleficent influences; and this interpretation is confirmed by the observation
that the two victims represented the two sexes, one of them standing for the
men in general and the other for the women. The season of the year when the
ceremony was performed, namely the time of the corn harvest, tallies well with
the theory that the rite had an agricultural significance. Further, that it
was above all intended to fertilise the fig-trees is strongly suggested by the
strings of black and white figs which were hung round the necks of the
victims, as well as by the blows which were given their genital organs with
the branches of a wild fig-tree; since this procedure closely resembles the
procedure which ancient and modern husbandmen in Greek lands have regularly
resorted to for the purpose of actually fertilising their fig-trees. When we
remember what an important part the artificial fertilisation of the date
palm-tree appears to have played of old not only in the husbandry but in the
religion of Mesopotamia, there seems no reason to doubt that the artificial
fertilisation of the fig-tree may in like manner have vindicated for itself a
place in the solemn ritual of Greek religion.

If these considerations are just, we must apparently conclude that while
the human victims at the Thargelia certainly appear in later classical times
to have figured chiefly as public scapegoats, who carried away with them the
sins, misfortunes, and sorrows of the whole people, at an earlier time they
may have been looked on as embodiments of vegetation, perhaps of the corn but
particularly of the fig-trees; and that the beating which they received and
the death which they died were intended primarily to brace and refresh the
powers of vegetation then beginning to droop and languish under the torrid
heat of the Greek summer.

The view here taken of the Greek scapegoat, if it is correct, obviates an
objection which might otherwise be brought against the main argument of this
book. To the theory that the priest of Aricia was slain as a representative of
the spirit of the grove, it might have been objected that such a custom has no
analogy in classical antiquity. But reasons have now been given for believing
that the human being periodically and occasionally slain by the Asiatic Greeks
was regularly treated as an embodiment of a divinity of vegetation. Probably
the persons whom the Athenians kept to be sacrificed were similarly treated as
divine. That they were social outcasts did not matter. On the primitive view a
man is not chosen to be the mouth-piece or embodiment of a god on account of
his high moral qualities or social rank. The divine afflatus descends equally
on the good and the bad, the lofty and the lowly. If then the civilised Greeks
of Asia and Athens habitually sacrificed men whom they regarded as incarnate
gods, there can be no inherent improbability in the supposition that at the
dawn of history a similar custom was observed by the semibarbarous Latins in
the Arician Grove.

But to clinch the argument, it is clearly desirable to prove that the
custom of putting to death a human representative of a god was known and
practised in ancient Italy elsewhere than in the Arician Grove. This proof I
now propose to adduce.

3. The Roman Saturnalia

WE have seen that many peoples have been used to observe an annual period of
license, when the customary restraints of law and morality are thrown aside,
when the whole population give themselves up to extravagant mirth and jollity,
and when the darker passions find a vent which would never be allowed them in
the more staid and sober course of ordinary life. Such outbursts of the
pent-up forces of human nature, too often degenerating into wild orgies of
lust and crime, occur most commonly at the end of the year, and are frequently
associated, as I have had occasion to point out, with one or other of the
agricultural seasons, especially with the time of sowing or of harvest. Now,
of all these periods of license the one which is best known and which in
modern language has given its name to the rest, is the Saturnalia. This famous
festival fell in December, the last month of the Roman year, and was popularly
supposed to commemorate the merry reign of Saturn, the god of sowing and of
husbandry, who lived on earth long ago as a righteous and beneficent king of
Italy, drew the rude and scattered dwellers on the mountains together, taught
them to till the ground, gave them laws, and ruled in peace. His reign was the
fabled Golden Age: the earth brought forth abundantly: no sound of war or
discord troubled the happy world: no baleful love of lucre worked like poison
in the blood of the industrious and contented peasantry. Slavery and private
property were alike unknown: all men had all things in common. At last the
good god, the kindly king, vanished suddenly; but his memory was cherished to
distant ages, shrines were reared in his honour, and many hills and high
places in Italy bore his name. Yet the bright tradition of his reign was
crossed by a dark shadow: his altars are said to have been stained with the
blood of human victims, for whom a more merciful age afterwards substituted
effigies. Of this gloomy side of the god's religion there is little or no
trace in the descriptions which ancient writers have left us of the
Saturnalia. Feasting and revelry and all the mad pursuit of pleasure are the
features that seem to have especially marked this carnival of antiquity, as it
went on for seven days in the streets and public squares and houses of ancient
Rome from the seventeenth to the twenty-third of December.

But no feature of the festival is more remarkable, nothing in it seems to
have struck the ancients themselves more than the license granted to slaves at
this time. The distinction between the free and the servile classes was
temporarily abolished. The slave might rail at his master, intoxicate himself
like his betters, sit down at table with them, and not even a word of reproof
would be administered to him for conduct which at any other season might have
been punished with stripes, imprisonment, or death. Nay, more, masters
actually changed places with their slaves and waited on them at table; and not
till the serf had done eating and drinking was the board cleared and dinner
set for his master. So far was this inversion of ranks carried, that each
household became for a time a mimic republic in which the high offices of
state were discharged by the slaves, who gave their orders and laid down the
law as if they were indeed invested with all the dignity of the consulship,
the praetorship, and the bench. Like the pale reflection of power thus
accorded to bondsmen at the Saturnalia was the mock kingship for which freemen
cast lots at the same season. The person on whom the lot fell enjoyed the
title of king, and issued commands of a playful and ludicrous nature to his
temporary subjects. One of them he might order to mix the wine, another to
drink, another to sing, another to dance, another to speak in his own
dispraise, another to carry a flute-girl on his back round the house.

Now, when we remember that the liberty allowed to slaves at this festive
season was supposed to be an imitation of the state of society in Saturn's
time, and that in general the Saturnalia passed for nothing more or less than
a temporary revival or restoration of the reign of that merry monarch, we are
tempted to surmise that the mock king who presided over the revels may have
originally represented Saturn himself. The conjecture is strongly confirmed,
if not established, by a very curious and interesting account of the way in
which the Saturnalia was celebrated by the Roman soldiers stationed on the
Danube in the reign of Maximian and Diocletian. The account is preserved in a
narrative of the martyrdom of St. Dasius, which was unearthed from a Greek
manuscript in the Paris library, and published by Professor Franz Cumont of
Ghent. Two briefer descriptions of the event and of the custom are contained
in manuscripts at Milan and Berlin; one of them had already seen the light in
an obscure volume printed at Urbino in 1727, but its importance for the
history of the Roman religion, both ancient and modern, appears to have been
overlooked until Professor Cumont drew the attention of scholars to all three
narratives by publishing them together some years ago. According to these
narratives, which have all the appearance of being authentic, and of which the
longest is probably based on official documents, the Roman soldiers at
Durostorum in Lower Moesia celebrated the Saturnalia year by year in the
following manner. Thirty days before the festival they chose by lot from
amongst themselves a young and handsome man, who was then clothed in royal
attire to resemble Saturn. Thus arrayed and attended by a multitude of
soldiers he went about in public with full license to indulge his passions and
to taste of every pleasure, however base and shameful. But if his reign was
merry, it was short and ended tragically; for when the thirty days were up and
the festival of Saturn had come, he cut his own throat on the altar of the god
whom he personated. In the year A.D. 303 the lot fell upon the Christian
soldier Dasius, but he refused to play the part of the heathen god and soil
his last days by debauchery. The threats and arguments of his commanding
officer Bassus failed to shake his constancy, and accordingly he was beheaded,
as the Christian martyrologist records with minute accuracy, at Durostorum by
the soldier John on Friday the twentieth day of November, being the
twenty-fourth day of the moon, at the fourth hour.

Since this narrative was published by Professor Cumont, its historical
character, which had been doubted or denied, has received strong confirmation
from an interesting discovery. In the crypt of the cathedral which crowns the
promontory of Ancona there is preserved, among other remarkable antiquities, a
white marble sarcophagus bearing a Greek inscription, in characters of the age
of Justinian, to the following effect: Here lies the holy martyr Dasius,
brought from Durostorum. The sarcophagus was transferred to the crypt of the
cathedral in 1848 from the church of San Pellegrino, under the high altar of
which, as we learn from a Latin inscription let into the masonry, the martyr's
bones still repose with those of two other saints. How long the sarcophagus
was deposited in the church of San Pellegrino, we do not know; but it is
recorded to have been there in the year 1650. We may suppose that the saint's
relics were transferred for safety to Ancona at some time in the troubled
centuries which followed his martyrdom, when Moesia was occupied and ravaged
by successive hordes of barbarian invaders. At all events it appears certain
from the independent and mutually confirmatory evidence of the martyrology and
the monuments that Dasius was no mythical saint, but a real man, who suffered
death for his faith at Durostorum in one of the early centuries of the
Christian era. Finding the narrative of the nameless martyrologist thus
established as to the principal fact recorded, namely, the martyrdom of St.
Dasius, we may reasonably accept his testimony as to the manner and cause of
the martyrdom, all the more because his narrative is precise, circumstantial,
and entirely free from the miraculous element. Accordingly I conclude that the
account which he gives of the celebration of the Saturnalia among the Roman
soldiers is trustworthy.

This account sets in a new and lurid light the office of the King of the
Saturnalia, the ancient Lord of Misrule, who presided over the winter revels
at Rome in the time of Horace and Tacitus. It seems to prove that his business
had not always been that of a mere harlequin or merry-andrew whose only care
was that the revelry should run high and the fun grow fast and furious, while
the fire blazed and crackled on the hearth, while the streets swarmed with
festive crowds, and through the clear frosty air, far away to the north,
Soracte showed his coronal of snow. When we compare this comic monarch of the
gay, the civilised metropolis with his grim counterpart of the rude camp on
the Danube, and when we remember the long array of similar figures, ludicrous
yet tragic, who in other ages and in other lands, wearing mock crowns and
wrapped in sceptred palls, have played their little pranks for a few brief
hours or days, then passed before their time to a violent death, we can hardly
doubt that in the King of the Saturnalia at Rome, as he is depicted by
classical writers, we see only a feeble emasculated copy of that original,
whose strong features have been fortunately preserved for us by the obscure
author of the Martyrdom of St. Dasius. In other words, the martyrologist's
account of the Saturnalia agrees so closely with the accounts of similar rites
elsewhere which could not possibly have been known to him, that the
substantial accuracy of his description may be regarded as established; and
further, since the custom of putting a mock king to death as a representative
of a god cannot have grown out of a practice of appointing him to preside over
a holiday revel, whereas the reverse may very well have happened, we are
justified in assuming that in an earlier and more barbarous age it was the
universal practice in ancient Italy, wherever the worship of Saturn prevailed,
to choose a man who played the part and enjoyed all the traditionary
privileges of Saturn for a season, and then died, whether by his own or
another's hand, whether by the knife or the fire or on the gallows-tree, in
the character of the good god who gave his life for the world. In Rome itself
and other great towns the growth of civilisation had probably mitigated this
cruel custom long before the Augustan age, and transformed it into the
innocent shape it wears in the writings of the few classical writers who
bestow a passing notice on the holiday King of the Saturnalia. But in remoter
districts the older and sterner practice may long have survived; and even if
after the unification of Italy the barbarous usage was suppressed by the Roman
government, the memory of it would be handed down by the peasants and would
tend from time to time, as still happens with the lowest forms of superstition
among ourselves, to lead to a recrudescence of the practice, especially among
the rude soldiery on the outskirts of the empire over whom the once iron hand
of Rome was beginning to relax its grasp.

The resemblance between the Saturnalia of ancient and the Carnival of
modern Italy has often been remarked; but in the light of all the facts that
have come before us, we may well ask whether the resemblance does not amount
to identity. We have seen that in Italy, Spain, and France, that is, in the
countries where the influence of Rome has been deepest and most lasting, a
conspicuous feature of the Carnival is a burlesque figure personifying the
festive season, which after a short career of glory and dissipation is
publicly shot, burnt, or otherwise destroyed, to the feigned grief or genuine
delight of the populace. If the view here suggested of the Carnival is
correct, this grotesque personage is no other than a direct successor of the
old King of the Saturnalia, the master of the revels, the real man who
personated Saturn and, when the revels were over, suffered a real death in his
assumed character. The King of the Bean on Twelfth Night and the mediaeval
Bishop of Fools, Abbot of Unreason, or Lord of Misrule are figures of the same
sort and may perhaps have had a similar origin. Whether that was so or not, we
may conclude with a fair degree of probability that if the King of the Wood at
Aricia lived and died as an incarnation of a sylvan deity, he had of old a
parallel at Rome in the men who, year by year, were slain in the character of
King Saturn, the god of the sown and sprouting seed.

Chapter 59. Killing the God in Mexico

BY NO PEOPLE does the custom of sacrificing the human representative of a
god appear to have been observed so commonly and with so much solemnity as by
the Aztecs of ancient Mexico. With the ritual of these remarkable sacrifices
we are well acquainted, for it has been fully described by the Spaniards who
conquered Mexico in the sixteenth century, and whose curiosity was naturally
excited by the discovery in this distant region of a barbarous and cruel
religion which presented many curious points of analogy to the doctrine and
ritual of their own church. They took a captive, says the Jesuit Acosta,
such as they thought good; and afore they did sacrifice him unto their idols,
they gave him the name of the idol, to whom he should be sacrificed, and
apparelled him with the same ornaments like their idol, saying, that he did
represent the same idol. And during the time that this representation lasted,
which was for a year in some feasts, in others six months, and in others less,
they reverenced and worshipped him in the same manner as the proper idol; and
in the meantime he did eat, drink, and was merry. When he went through the
streets, the people came forth to worship him, and every one brought him an
alms, with children and sick folks, that he might cure them, and bless them,
suffering him to do all things at his pleasure, only he was accompanied with
ten or twelve men lest he should fly. And he (to the end he might be
reverenced as he passed) sometimes sounded upon a small flute, that the people
might prepare to worship him. The feast being come, and he grown fat, they
killed him, opened him, and ate him, making a solemn sacrifice of him.

This general description of the custom may now be illustrated by
particular examples. Thus at the festival called Toxcatl, the greatest
festival of the Mexican year, a young man was annually sacrificed in the
character of Tezcatlipoca, the god of gods, after having been maintained and
worshipped as that great deity in person for a whole year. According to the
old Franciscan monk Sahagun, our best authority on the Aztec religion, the
sacrifice of the human god fell at Easter or a few days later, so that, if he
is right, it would correspond in date as well as in character to the Christian
festival of the death and resurrection of the Redeemer. More exactly he tells
us that the sacrifice took place on the first day of the fifth Aztec month,
which according to him began on the twenty-third or twenty-seventh day of
April.

At this festival the great god died in the person of one human
representative and came to life again in the person of another, who was
destined to enjoy the fatal honour of divinity for a year and to perish, like
all his predecessors, at the end of it. The young man singled out for this
high dignity was carefully chosen from among the captives on the ground of his
personal beauty. He had to be of unblemished body, slim as a reed and straight
as a pillar, neither too tall nor too short. If through high living he grew
too fat, he was obliged to reduce himself by drinking salt water. And in order
that he might behave in his lofty station with becoming grace and dignity he
was carefully trained to comport himself like a gentleman of the first
quality, to speak correctly and elegantly, to play the flute, to smoke cigars
and to snuff at flowers with a dandified air. He was honourably lodged in the
temple, where the nobles waited on him and paid him homage, bringing him meat
and serving him like a prince. The king himself saw to it that he was
apparelled in gorgeous attire, for already he esteemed him as a god. Eagle
down was gummed to his head and white cock's feathers were stuck in his hair,
which drooped to his girdle. A wreath of flowers like roasted maize crowned
his brows, and a garland of the same flowers passed over his shoulders and
under his armpits. Golden ornaments hung from his nose, golden armlets adorned
his arms, golden bells jingled on his legs at every step he took; earrings of
turquoise dangled from his ears, bracelets of turquoise bedecked his wrists;
necklaces of shells encircled his neck and depended on his breast; he wore a
mantle of network, and round his middle a rich waistcloth. When this
bejewelled exquisite lounged through the streets playing on his flute, puffing
at a cigar, and smelling at a nosegay, the people whom he met threw themselves
on the earth before him and prayed to him with sighs and tears, taking up the
dust in their hands and putting it in their mouths in token of the deepest
humiliation and subjection. Women came forth with children in their arms and
presented them to him, saluting him as a god. For he passed for our Lord God;
the people acknowledged him as the Lord. All who thus worshipped him on his
passage he saluted gravely and courteously. Lest he should flee, he was
everywhere attended by a guard of eight pages in the royal livery, four of
them with shaven crowns like the palace-slaves, and four of them with the
flowing locks of warriors; and if he contrived to escape, the captain of the
guard had to take his place as the representative of the god and to die in his
stead. Twenty days before he was to die, his costume was changed, and four
damsels delicately nurtured and bearing the names of four goddessesthe
Goddess of Flowers, the Goddess of the Young Maize, the Goddess Our Mother
among the Water, and the Goddess of Saltwere given him to be his brides, and
with them he consorted. During the last five days divine honours were showered
on the destined victim. The king remained in his palace while the whole court
went after the human god. Solemn banquets and dances followed each other in
regular succession and at appointed places. On the last day the young man,
attended by his wives and pages, embarked in a canoe covered with a royal
canopy and was ferried across the lake to a spot where a little hill rose from
the edge of the water. It was called the Mountain of Parting, because there
his wives bade him a last farewell. Then, accompanied only by his pages, he
repaired to a small and lonely temple by the wayside. Like the Mexican temples
in general, it was built in the form of a pyramid; and as the young man
ascended the stairs he broke at every step one of the flutes on which he had
played in the days of his glory. On reaching the summit he was seized and held
down by the priests on his back upon a block of stone, while one of them cut
open his breast, thrust his hand into the wound, and wrenching out his heart
held it up in sacrifice to the sun. The body of the dead god was not, like the
bodies of common victims, sent rolling down the steps of the temple, but was
carried down to the foot, where the head was cut off and spitted on a pike.
Such was the regular end of the man who personated the greatest god of the
Mexican pantheon.

The honour of living for a short time in the character of a god and dying
a violent death in the same capacity was not restricted to men in Mexico;
women were allowed, or rather compelled, to enjoy the glory and to share the
doom as representatives of goddesses. Thus at a great festival in September,
which was preceded by a strict fast of seven days, they sanctified a young
slave girl of twelve or thirteen years, the prettiest they could find, to
represent the Maize Goddess Chicomecohuatl. They invested her with the
ornaments of the goddess, putting a mitre on her head and maize-cobs round her
neck and in her hands, and fastening a green feather upright on the crown of
her head to imitate an ear of maize. This they did, we are told, in order to
signify that the maize was almost ripe at the time of the festival, but
because it was still tender they chose a girl of tender years to play the part
of the Maize Goddess. The whole long day they led the poor child in all her
finery, with the green plume nodding on her head, from house to house dancing
merrily to cheer people after the dulness and privations of the fast.

In the evening all the people assembled at the temple, the courts of which
they lit up by a multitude of lanterns and candles. There they passed the
night without sleeping, and at midnight, while the trumpets, flutes, and horns
discoursed solemn music, a portable framework or palanquin was brought forth,
bedecked with festoons of maize-cobs and peppers and filled with seeds of all
sorts. This the bearers set down at the door of the chamber in which the
wooden image of the goddess stood. Now the chamber was adorned and wreathed,
both outside and inside, with wreaths of maize-cobs, peppers, pumpkins, roses,
and seeds of every kind, a wonder to behold; the whole floor was covered deep
with these verdant offerings of the pious. When the music ceased, a solemn
procession came forth of priests and dignitaries, with flaring lights and
smoking censers, leading in their midst the girl who played the part of the
goddess. Then they made her mount the framework, where she stood upright on
the maize and peppers and pumpkins with which it was strewed, her hands
resting on two bannisters to keep her from falling. Then the priests swung the
smoking censers round her; the music struck up again, and while it played, a
great dignitary of the temple suddenly stepped up to her with a razor in his
hand and adroitly shore off the green feather she wore on her head, together
with the hair in which it was fastened, snipping the lock off by the root. The
feather and the hair he then presented to the wooden image of the goddess with
great solemnity and elaborate ceremonies, weeping and giving her thanks for
the fruits of the earth and the abundant crops which she had bestowed on the
people that year; and as he wept and prayed, all the people, standing in the
courts of the temple, wept and prayed with him. When that ceremony was over,
the girl descended from the framework and was escorted to the place where she
was to spend the rest of the night. But all the people kept watch in the
courts of the temple by the light of torches till break of day.

The morning being come, and the courts of the temple being still crowded
by the multitude, who would have deemed it sacrilege to quit the precincts,
the priests again brought forth the damsel attired in the costume of the
goddess, with the mitre on her head and the cobs of maize about her neck.
Again she mounted the portable framework or palanquin and stood on it,
supporting herself by her hands on the bannisters. Then the elders of the
temple lifted it on their shoulders, and while some swung burning censers and
others played on instruments or sang, they carried it in procession through
the great courtyard to the hall of the god Huitzilopochtli and then back to
the chamber, where stood the wooden image of the Maize Goddess, whom the girl
personated. There they caused the damsel to descend from the palanquin and to
stand on the heaps of corn and vegetables that had been spread in profusion on
the floor of the sacred chamber. While she stood there all the elders and
nobles came in a line, one behind the other, carrying saucers full of dry and
clotted blood which they had drawn from their ears by way of penance during
the seven days' fast. One by one they squatted on their haunches before her,
which was the equivalent of falling on their knees with us, and scraping the
crust of blood from the saucer cast it down before her as an offering in
return for the benefits which she, as the embodiment of the Maize Goddess, had
conferred upon them. When the men had thus humbly offered their blood to the
human representative of the goddess, the women, forming a long line, did so
likewise, each of them dropping on her hams before the girl and scraping her
blood from the saucer. The ceremony lasted a long time, for great and small,
young and old, all without exception had to pass before the incarnate deity
and make their offering. When it was over, the people returned home with glad
hearts to feast on flesh and viands of every sort as merrily, we are told, as
good Christians at Easter partake of meat and other carnal mercies after the
long abstinence of Lent. And when they had eaten and drunk their fill and
rested after the night watch, they returned quite refreshed to the temple to
see the end of the festival. And the end of the festival was this. The
multitude being assembled, the priests solemnly incensed the girl who
personated the goddess; then they threw her on her back on the heap of corn
and seeds, cut off her head, caught the gushing blood in a tub, and sprinkled
the blood on the wooden image of the goddess, the walls of the chamber, and
the offerings of corn, peppers, pumpkins, seeds, and vegetables which cumbered
the floor. After that they flayed the headless trunk, and one of the priests
made shift to squeeze himself into the bloody skin. Having done so they clad
him in all the robes which the girl had worn; they put the mitre on his head,
the necklace of golden maize-cobs about his neck, the maize-cobs of feathers
and gold in his hands; and thus arrayed they led him forth in public, all of
them dancing to the tuck of drum, while he acted as fugleman, skipping and
posturing at the head of the procession as briskly as he could be expected to
do, incommoded as he was by the tight and clammy skin of the girl and by her
clothes, which must have been much too small for a grown man.

In the foregoing custom the identification of the young girl with the
Maize Goddess appears to be complete. The golden maize-cobs which she wore
round her neck, the artificial maize-cobs which she carried in her hands, the
green feather which was stuck in her hair in imitation (we are told) of a
green ear of maize, all set her forth as a personification of the corn-spirit;
and we are expressly informed that she was specially chosen as a young girl to
represent the young maize, which at the time of the festival had not yet fully
ripened. Further, her identification with the corn and the corn-goddess was
clearly announced by making her stand on the heaps of maize and there receive
the homage and blood-offerings of the whole people, who thereby returned her
thanks for the benefits which in her character of a divinity she was supposed
to have conferred upon them. Once more, the practice of beheading her on a
heap of corn and seeds and sprinkling her blood, not only on the image of the
Maize Goddess, but on the piles of maize, peppers, pumpkins, seeds, and
vegetables, can seemingly have had no other object but to quicken and
strengthen the crops of corn and the fruits of the earth in general by
infusing into their representatives the blood of the Corn Goddess herself. The
analogy of this Mexican sacrifice, the meaning of which appears to be
indisputable, may be allowed to strengthen the interpretation which I have
given of other human sacrifices offered for the crops. If the Mexican girl,
whose blood was sprinkled on the maize, indeed personated the Maize Goddess,
it becomes more than ever probable that the girl whose blood the Pawnees
similarly sprinkled on the seed corn personated in like manner the female
Spirit of the Corn; and so with the other human beings whom other races have
slaughtered for the sake of promoting the growth of the crops.

Lastly, the concluding act of the sacred drama, in which the body of the
dead Maize Goddess was flayed and her skin worn, together with all her sacred
insignia, by a man who danced before the people in this grim attire, seems to
be best explained on the hypothesis that it was intended to ensure that the
divine death should be immediately followed by the divine resurrection. If
that was so, we may infer with some degree of probability that the practice of
killing a human representative of a deity has commonly, perhaps always, been
regarded merely as a means of perpetuating the divine energies in the fulness
of youthful vigour, untainted by the weakness and frailty of age, from which
they must have suffered if the deity had been allowed to die a natural death.

These Mexican rites suffice to prove that human sacrifices of the sort I
suppose to have prevailed at Aricia were, as a matter of fact, regularly
offered by a people whose level of culture was probably not inferior, if
indeed it was not distinctly superior, to that occupied by the Italian races
at the early period to which the origin of the Arician priesthood must be
referred. The positive and indubitable evidence of the prevalence of such
sacrifices in one part of the world may reasonably be allowed to strengthen
the probability of their prevalence in places for which the evidence is less
full and trustworthy. Taken all together, the facts which we have passed in
review seem to show that the custom of killing men whom their worshippers
regard as divine has prevailed in many parts of the world.

Chapter 60. Between Heaven and Earth.

1. Not to touch the Earth
AT THE OUTSET of this book two questions were proposed for answer: Why had
the priest of Aricia to slay his predecessor? And why, before doing so, had he
to pluck the Golden Bough? Of these two questions the first has now been
answered. The priest of Aricia, if I am right, was one of those sacred kings
or human divinities on whose life the welfare of the community and even the
course of nature in general are believed to be intimately dependent. It does
not appear that the subjects or worshippers of such a spiritual potentate form
to themselves any very clear notion of the exact relationship in which they
stand to him; probably their ideas on the point are vague and fluctuating, and
we should err if we attempted to define the relationship with logical
precision. All that the people know, or rather imagine, is that somehow they
themselves, their cattle, and their crops are mysteriously bound up with their
divine king, so that according as he is well or ill the community is healthy
or sickly, the flocks and herds thrive or languish with disease, and the
fields yield an abundant or a scanty harvest. The worst evil which they can
conceive of is the natural death of their ruler, whether he succumb to
sickness or old age, for in the opinion of his followers such a death would
entail the most disastrous consequences on themselves and their possessions;
fatal epidemics would sweep away man and beast, the earth would refuse her
increase, nay, the very frame of nature itself might be dissolved. To guard
against these catastrophes it is necessary to put the king to death while he
is still in the full bloom of his divine manhood, in order that his sacred
life, transmitted in unabated force to his successor, may renew its youth, and
thus by successive transmissions through a perpetual line of vigorous
incarnations may remain eternally fresh and young, a pledge and security that
men and animals shall in like manner renew their youth by a perpetual
succession of generations, and that seedtime and harvest, and summer and
winter, and rain and sunshine shall never fail. That, if my conjecture is
right, was why the priest of Aricia, the King of the Wood at Nemi, had
regularly to perish by the sword of his successor.

But we have still to ask, What was the Golden Bough? and why had each
candidate for the Arician priesthood to pluck it before he could slay the
priest? These questions I will now try to answer.

It will be well to begin by noticing two of those rules or taboos by
which, as we have seen, the life of divine kings or priests is regulated. The
first of the rules to which I would call the reader's attention is that the
divine personage may not touch the ground with his foot. This rule was
observed by the supreme pontiff of the Zapotecs in Mexico; he profaned his
sanctity if he so much as touched the ground with his foot. Montezuma, emperor
of Mexico, never set foot on the ground; he was always carried on the
shoulders of noblemen, and if he lighted anywhere they laid rich tapestry for
him to walk upon. For the Mikado of Japan to touch the ground with his foot
was a shameful degradation; indeed, in the sixteenth century, it was enough to
deprive him of his office. Outside his palace he was carried on men's
shoulders; within it he walked on exquisitely wrought mats. The king and queen
of Tahiti might not touch the ground anywhere but within their hereditary
domains; for the ground on which they trod became sacred. In travelling from
place to place they were carried on the shoulders of sacred men. They were
always accompanied by several pairs of these sanctified attendants; and when
it became necessary to change their bearers, the king and queen vaulted on to
the shoulders of their new bearers without letting their feet touch the
ground. It was an evil omen if the king of Dosuma touched the ground, and he
had to perform an expiatory ceremony. Within his palace the king of Persia
walked on carpets on which no one else might tread; outside of it he was never
seen on foot but only in a chariot or on horseback. In old days the king of
Siam never set foot upon the earth, but was carried on a throne of gold from
place to place. Formerly neither the kings of Uganda, nor their mothers, nor
their queens might walk on foot outside of the spacious enclosures in which
they lived. Whenever they went forth they were carried on the shoulders of men
of the Buffalo clan, several of whom accompanied any of these royal personages
on a journey and took it in turn to bear the burden. The king sat astride the
bearer's neck with a leg over each shoulder and his feet tucked under the
bearer's arms. When one of these royal carriers grew tired he shot the king
onto the shoulders of a second man without allowing the royal feet to touch
the ground. In this way they went at a great pace and travelled long distances
in a day, when the king was on a journey. The bearers had a special hut in the
king's enclosure in order to be at hand the moment they were wanted. Among the
Bakuba, or rather Bushongo, a nation in the southern region of the Congo, down
to a few years ago persons of the royal blood were forbidden to touch the
ground; they must sit on a hide, a chair, or the back of a slave, who crouched
on hands and feet; their feet rested on the feet of others. When they
travelled they were carried on the backs of men; but the king journeyed in a
litter supported on shafts. Among the Ibo people about Awka, in Southern
Nigeria, the priest of the Earth has to observe many taboos; for example, he
may not see a corpse, and if he meets one on the road he must hide his eyes
with his wristlet. He must abstain from many foods, such as eggs, birds of all
sorts, mutton, dog, bush-buck, and so forth. He may neither wear nor touch a
mask, and no masked man may enter his house. If a dog enters his house, it is
killed and thrown out. As priest of the Earth he may not sit on the bare
ground, nor eat things that have fallen on the ground, nor may earth be thrown
at him. According to ancient Brahmanic ritual a king at his inauguration trod
on a tiger's skin and a golden plate; he was shod with shoes of boar's skin,
and so long as he lived thereafter he might not stand on the earth with his
bare feet.

But besides persons who are permanently sacred or tabooed and are
therefore permanently forbidden to touch the ground with their feet, there are
others who enjoy the character of sanctity or taboo only on certain occasions,
and to whom accordingly the prohibition in question only applies at the
definite seasons during which they exhale the odour of sanctity. Thus among
the Kayans or Bahaus of Central Borneo, while the priestesses are engaged in
the performance of certain rites they may not step on the ground, and boards
are laid for them to tread on. Warriors, again, on the war-path are
surrounded, so to say, by an atmosphere of taboo; hence some Indians of North
America might not sit on the bare ground the whole time they were out on a
warlike expedition. In Laos the hunting of elephants gives rise to many
taboos; one of them is that the chief hunter may not touch the earth with his
foot. Accordingly, when he alights from his elephant, the others spread a
carpet of leaves for him to step upon.

Apparently holiness, magical virtue, taboo, or whatever we may call that
mysterious quality which is supposed to pervade sacred or tabooed persons, is
conceived by the primitive philosopher as a physical substance or fluid, with
which the sacred man is charged just as a Leyden jar is charged with
electricity; and exactly as the electricity in the jar can be discharged by
contact with a good conductor, so the holiness or magical virtue in the man
can be discharged and drained away by contact with the earth, which on this
theory serves as an excellent conductor for the magical fluid. Hence in order
to preserve the charge from running to waste, the sacred or tabooed personage
must be carefully prevented from touching the ground; in electrical language
he must be insulated, if he is not to be emptied of the precious substance or
fluid with which he, as a vial, is filled to the brim. And in many cases
apparently the insulation of the tabooed person is recommended as a precaution
not merely for his own sake but for the sake of others; for since the virtue
of holiness or taboo is, so to say, a powerful explosive which the smallest
touch may detonate, it is necessary in the interest of the general safety to
keep it within narrow bounds, lest breaking out it should blast, blight, and
destroy whatever it comes into contact with.

2. Not to see the Sun

THE SECOND rule to be here noted is that the sun may not shine upon the
divine person. This rule was observed both by the Mikado and by the pontiff of
the Zapotecs. The latter was looked upon as a god whom the earth was not
worthy to hold, nor the sun to shine upon. The Japanese would not allow that
the Mikado should expose his sacred person to the open air, and the sun was
not thought worthy to shine on his head. The Indians of Granada, in South
America, kept those who were to be rulers or commanders, whether men or
women, locked up for several years when they were children, some of them seven
years, and this so close that they were not to see the sun, for if they should
happen to see it they forfeited their lordship, eating certain sorts of food
appointed; and those who were their keepers at certain times went into their
retreat or prison and scourged them severely. Thus, for example, the heir to
the throne of Bogota, who was not the son but the sister's son of the king,
had to undergo a rigorous training from his infancy; he lived in complete
retirement in a temple, where he might not see the sun nor eat salt nor
converse with a woman; he was surrounded by guards who observed his conduct
and noted all his actions; if he broke a single one of the rules laid down for
him, he was deemed infamous and forfeited all his rights to the throne. So,
too, the heir to the kingdom of Sogamoso, before succeeding to the crown, had
to fast for seven years in the temple, being shut up in the dark and not
allowed to see the sun or light. The prince who was to become Inca of Peru had
to fast for a month without seeing light.

3. The Seclusion of Girls at Puberty

NOW it is remarkable that the foregoing two rulesnot to touch the ground
and not to see the sunare observed either separately or conjointly by girls
at puberty in many parts of the world. Thus amongst the negroes of Loango
girls at puberty are confined in separate huts, and they may not touch the
ground with any part of their bare body. Among the Zulus and kindred tribes of
South Africa, when the first signs of puberty show themselves while a girl is
walking, gathering wood, or working in the field, she runs to the river and
hides herself among the reeds for the day, so as not to be seen by men. She
covers her head carefully with her blanket that the sun may not shine on it
and shrivel her up into a withered skeleton, as would result from exposure to
the sun's beams. After dark she returns to her home and is secluded in a hut
for some time. With the Awa-nkonde, a tribe at the northern end of Lake
Nyassa, it is a rule that after her first menstruation a girl must be kept
apart, with a few companions of her own sex, in a darkened house. The floor is
covered with dry banana leaves, but no fire may be lit in the house, which is
called the house of the Awasungu, that is, of maidens who have no hearts.

In New Ireland girls are confined for four or five years in small cages,
being kept in the dark and not allowed to set foot on the ground. The custom
has been thus described by an eye-witness. I heard from a teacher about some
strange custom connected with some of the young girls here, so I asked the
chief to take me to the house where they were. The house was about twenty-five
feet in length, and stood in a reed and bamboo enclosure, across the entrance
to which a bundle of dried grass was suspended to show that it was strictly
'tabu.' Inside the house were three conical structures about seven or eight
feet in height, and about ten or twelve feet in circumference at the bottom,
and for about four feet from the ground, at which point they tapered off to a
point at the top. These cages were made of the broad leaves of the
pandanus-tree, sewn quite close together so that no light and little or no air
could enter. On one side of each is an opening which is closed by a double
door of plaited cocoa-nut tree and pandanus-tree leaves. About three feet from
the ground there is a stage of bamboos which forms the floor. In each of these
cages we were told there was a young woman confined, each of whom had to
remain for at least four or five years, without ever being allowed to go
outside the house. I could scarcely credit the story when I heard it; the
whole thing seemed too horrible to be true. I spoke to the chief, and told him
that I wished to see the inside of the cages, and also to see the girls that I
might make them a present of a few beads. He told me that it was 'tabu,'
forbidden for any men but their own relations to look at them; but I suppose
the promised beads acted as an inducement, and so he sent away for some old
lady who had charge, and who alone is allowed to open the doors. While we were
waiting we could hear the girls talking to the chief in a querulous way as if
objecting to something or expressing their fears. The old woman came at length
and certainly she did not seem a very pleasant jailor or guardian; nor did she
seem to favour the request of the chief to allow us to see the girls, as she
regarded us with anything but pleasant looks. However, she had to undo the
door when the chief told her to do so, and then the girls peeped out at us,
and, when told to do so, they held out their hands for the beads. I, however,
purposely sat at some distance away and merely held out the beads to them, as
I wished to draw them quite outside, that I might inspect the inside of the
cages. This desire of mine gave rise to another difficulty, as these girls
were not allowed to put their feet to the ground all the time they were
confined in these places. However, they wished to get the beads, and so the
old lady had to go outside and collect a lot of pieces of wood and bamboo,
which she placed on the ground, and then going to one of the girls, she helped
her down and held her hand as she stepped from one piece of wood to another
until she came near enough to get the beads I held out to her. I then went to
inspect the inside of the cage out of which she had come, but could scarely
put my head inside of it, the atmosphere was so hot and stifling. It was clean
and contained nothing but a few short lengths of bamboo for holding water.
There was only room for the girl to sit or lie down in a crouched position on
the bamboo platform, and when the doors are shut it must be nearly or quite
dark inside. The girls are never allowed to come out except once a day to
bathe in a dish or wooden bowl placed close to each cage. They say that they
perspire profusely. They are placed in these stifling cages when quite young,
and must remain there until they are young women, when they are taken out and
have each a great marriage feast provided for them. One of them was about
fourteen or fifteen years old, and the chief told us that she had been there
for five years, but would soon be taken out now. The other two were about
eight and ten years old, and they have to stay there for several years
longer.

In Kabadi, a district of British New Guinea, daughters of chiefs, when
they are about twelve or thirteen years of age, are kept indoors for two or
three years, never being allowed, under any pretence, to descend from the
house, and the house is so shaded that the sun cannot shine on them. Among
the Yabim and Bukaua, two neighbouring and kindred tribes on the coast of
Northern New Guinea, a girl at puberty is secluded for some five or six weeks
in an inner part of the house; but she may not sit on the floor, lest her
uncleanliness should cleave to it, so a log of wood is placed for her to squat
on. Moreover, she may not touch the ground with her feet; hence if she is
obliged to quit the house for a short time, she is muffled up in mats and
walks on two halves of a coco-nut shell, which are fastened like sandals to
her feet by creeping plants. Among the Ot Danoms of Borneo girls at the age of
eight or ten years are shut up in a little room or cell of the house, and cut
off from all intercourse with the world for a long time. The cell, like the
rest of the house, is raised on piles above the ground, and is lit by a single
small window opening on a lonely place, so that the girl is in almost total
darkness. She may not leave the room on any pretext whatever, not even for the
most necessary purposes. None of her family may see her all the time she is
shut up, but a single slave woman is appointed to wait on her. During her
lonely confinement, which often lasts seven years, the girl occupies herself
in weaving mats or with other handiwork. Her bodily growth is stunted by the
long want of exercise, and when, on attaining womanhood, she is brought out,
her complexion is pale and wax-like. She is now shown the sun, the earth, the
water, the trees, and the flowers, as if she were newly born. Then a great
feast is made, a slave is killed, and the girl is smeared with his blood. In
Ceram girls at puberty were formerly shut up by themselves in a hut which was
kept dark. In Yap, one of the Caroline Islands, should a girl be overtaken by
her first menstruation on the public road, she may not sit down on the earth,
but must beg for a coco-nut shell to put under her. She is shut up for several
days in a small hut at a distance from her parents' house, and afterwards she
is bound to sleep for a hundred days in one of the special houses which are
provided for the use of menstruous women.

In the island of Mabuiag, Torres Straits, when the signs of puberty appear
on a girl, a circle of bushes is made in a dark corner of the house. Here,
decked with shoulder-belts, armlets, leglets just below the knees, and
anklets, wearing a chaplet on her head, and shell ornaments in her ears, on
her chest, and on her back, she squats in the midst of the bushes, which are
piled so high round about her that only her head is visible. In this state of
seclusion she must remain for three months. All this time the sun may not
shine upon her, but at night she is allowed to slip out of the hut, and the
bushes that hedge her in are then changed. She may not feed herself or handle
food, but is fed by one or two old women, her maternal aunts, who are
especially appointed to look after her. One of these women cooks food for her
at a special fire in the forest. The girl is forbidden to eat turtle or turtle
eggs during the season when the turtles are breeding; but no vegetable food is
refused her. No man, not even her own father, may come into the house while
her seclusion lasts; for if her father saw her at this time he would certainly
have bad luck in his fishing, and would probably smash his canoe the very next
time he went out in it. At the end of the three months she is carried down to
a freshwater creek by her attendants, hanging on to their shoulders in such a
way that her feet do not touch the ground, while the women of the tribe form a
ring round her, and thus escort her to the beach. Arrived at the shore, she is
stripped of her ornaments, and the bearers stagger with her into the creek,
where they immerse her, and all the other women join in splashing water over
both the girl and her bearers. When they come out of the water one of the two
attendants makes a heap of grass for her charge to squat upon. The other runs
to the reef, catches a small crab, tears off its claws, and hastens back with
them to the creek. Here in the meantime a fire has been kindled, and the claws
are roasted at it. The girl is then fed by her attendants with the roasted
claws. After that she is freshly decorated, and the whole party marches back
to the village in a single rank, the girl walking in the centre between her
two old aunts, who hold her by the wrists. The husbands of her aunts now
receive her and lead her into the house of one of them, where all partake of
food, and the girl is allowed once more to feed herself in the usual manner. A
dance follows, in which the girl takes a prominent part, dancing between the
husbands of the two aunts who had charge of her in her retirement.

Among the Yaraikanna tribe of Cape York Peninsula, in Northern Queensland,
a girl at puberty is said to live by herself for a month or six weeks; no man
may see her, though any woman may. She stays in a hut or shelter specially
made for her, on the floor of which she lies supine. She may not see the sun,
and towards sunset she must keep her eyes shut until the sun has gone down,
otherwise it is thought that her nose will be diseased. During her seclusion
she may eat nothing that lives in salt water, or a snake would kill her. An
old woman waits upon her and supplies her with roots, yams, and water. Some
Australian tribes are wont to bury their girls at such seasons more or less
deeply in the ground, perhaps in order to hide them from the light of the sun.

Among the Indians of California a girl at her first menstruation was
thought to be possessed of a particular degree of supernatural power, and this
was not always regarded as entirely defiling or malevolent. Often, however,
there was a strong feeling of the power of evil inherent in her condition. Not
only was she secluded from her family and the community, but an attempt was
made to seclude the world from her. One of the injunctions most strongly laid
upon her was not to look about her. She kept her head bowed and was forbidden
to see the world and the sun. Some tribes covered her with a blanket. Many of
the customs in this connection resembled those of the North Pacific Coast most
strongly, such as the prohibition to the girl to touch or scratch her head
with her hand, a special implement being furnished her for the purpose.
Sometimes she could eat only when fed and in other cases fasted altogether.

Among the Chinook Indians who inhabited the coast of Washington State,
when a chief's daughter attained to puberty, she was hidden for five days from
the view of the people; she might not look at them nor at the sky, nor might
she pick berries. It was believed that if she were to look at the sky, the
weather would be bad; that if she picked berries, it would rain; and that when
she hung her towel of cedar-bark on a spruce-tree, the tree withered up at
once. She went out of the house by a separate door and bathed in a creek far
from the village. She fasted for some days, and for many days more she might
not eat fresh food.

Amongst the Aht or Nootka Indians of Vancouver Island, when girls reach
puberty they are placed in a sort of gallery in the house and are there
surrounded completely with mats, so that neither the sun nor any fire can be
seen. In this cage they remain for several days. Water is given them, but no
food. The longer a girl remains in this retirement the greater honour is it to
the parents; but she is disgraced for life if it is known that she has seen
fire or the sun during this initiatory ordeal. Pictures of the mythical
thunder-bird are painted on the screens behind which she hides. During her
seclusion she may neither move nor lie down, but must always sit in a
squatting posture. She may not touch her hair with her hands, but is allowed
to scratch her head with a comb or a piece of bone provided for the purpose.
To scratch her body is also forbidden, as it is believed that every scratch
would leave a scar. For eight months after reaching maturity she may not eat
any fresh food, particularly salmon; moreover, she must eat by herself, and
use a cup and dish of her own.

In the Tsetsaut tribe of British Columbia a girl at puberty wears a large
hat of skin which comes down over her face and screens it from the sun. It is
believed that if she were to expose her face to the sun or to the sky, rain
would fall. The hat protects her face also against the fire, which ought not
to strike her skin; to shield her hands she wears mittens. In her mouth she
carries the tooth of an animal to prevent her own teeth from becoming hollow.
For a whole year she may not see blood unless her face is blackened; otherwise
she would grow blind. For two years she wears the hat and lives in a hut by
herself, although she is allowed to see other people. At the end of two years
a man takes the hat from her head and throws it away. In the Bilqula or Bella
Coola tribe of British Columbia, when a girl attains puberty she must stay in
the shed which serves as her bedroom, where she has a separate fireplace. She
is not allowed to descend to the main part of the house, and may not sit by
the fire of the family. For four days she is bound to remain motionless in a
sitting posture. She fasts during the day, but is allowed a little food and
drink very early in the morning. After the four days' seclusion she may leave
her room, but only through a separate opening cut in the floor, for the houses
are raised on piles. She may not yet come into the chief room. In leaving the
house she wears a large hat which protects her face against the rays of the
sun. It is believed that if the sun were to shine on her face her eyes would
suffer. She may pick berries on the hills, but may not come near the river or
sea for a whole year. Were she to eat fresh salmon she would lose her senses,
or her mouth would be changed into a long beak.

Amongst the Tlingit (Thlinkeet) or Kolosh Indians of Alaska, when a girl
showed signs of womanhood she used to be confined to a little hut or cage,
which was completely blocked up with the exception of a small air-hole. In
this dark and filthy abode she had to remain a year, without fire, exercise,
or associates. Only her mother and a female slave might supply her with
nourishment. Her food was put in at the little window; she had to drink out of
the wing-bone of a white-headed eagle. The time of her seclusion was
afterwards reduced in some places to six or three months or even less. She had
to wear a sort of hat with long flaps, that her gaze might not pollute the
sky; for she was thought unfit for the sun to shine upon, and it was imagined
that her look would destroy the luck of a hunter, fisher, or gambler, turn
things to stone, and do other mischief. At the end of her confinement her old
clothes were burnt, new ones were made, and a feast was given, at which a slit
was cut in her under lip parallel to the mouth, and a piece of wood or shell
was inserted to keep the aperture open. Among the Koniags, an Esquimau people
of Alaska, a girl at puberty was placed in a small hut in which she had to
remain on her hands and feet for six months; then the hut was enlarged a
little so as to allow her to straighten her back, but in this posture she had
to remain for six months more. All this time she was regarded as an unclean
being with whom no one might hold intercourse.

When symptoms of puberty appeared on a girl for the first time, the
Guaranis of Southern Brazil, on the borders of Paraguay, used to sew her up in
her hammock, leaving only a small opening in it to allow her to breathe. In
this condition, wrapt up and shrouded like a corpse, she was kept for two or
three days or so long as the symptoms lasted, and during this time she had to
observe a most rigorous fast. After that she was entrusted to a matron, who
cut the girl's hair and enjoined her to abstain most strictly from eating
flesh of any kind until her hair should be grown long enough to hide her ears.
In similar circumstances the Chiriguanos of South-eastern Bolivia hoisted the
girl in her hammock to the roof, where she stayed for a month: the second
month the hammock was let half-way down from the roof; and in the third month
old women, armed with sticks, entered the hut and ran about striking
everything they met, saying they were hunting the snake that had wounded the
girl.

Among the Matacos or Mataguayos, an Indian tribe of the Gran Chaco, a girl
at puberty has to remain in seclusion for some time. She lies covered up with
branches or other things in a corner of the hut, seeing no one and speaking to
no one, and during this time she may eat neither flesh nor fish. Meantime a
man beats a drum in front of the house. Among the Yuracares, an Indian tribe
of Eastern Bolivia, when a girl perceives the signs of puberty, her father
constructs a little hut of palm leaves near the house. In this cabin he shuts
up his daughter so that she cannot see the light, and there she remains
fasting rigorously for four days.

Amongst the Macusis of British Guiana, when a girl shows the first signs
of puberty, she is hung in a hammock at the highest point of the hut. For the
first few days she may not leave the hammock by day, but at night she must
come down, light a fire, and spend the night beside it, else she would break
out in sores on her neck, throat, and other parts of her body. So long as the
symptoms are at their height, she must fast rigorously. When they have abated,
she may come down and take up her abode in a little compartment that is made
for her in the darkest corner of the hut. In the morning she may cook her
food, but it must be at a separate fire and in a vessel of her own. After
about ten days the magician comes and undoes the spell by muttering charms and
breathing on her and on the more valuable of the things with which she has
come in contact. The pots and drinking-vessels which she used are broken and
the fragments buried. After her first bath, the girl must submit to be beaten
by her mother with thin rods without uttering a cry. At the end of the second
period she is again beaten, but not afterwards. She is now clean, and can
mix again with people. Other Indians of Guiana, after keeping the girl in her
hammock at the top of the hut for a month, expose her to certain large ants,
whose bite is very painful. Sometimes, in addition to being stung with ants,
the sufferer has to fast day and night so long as she remains slung up on high
in her hammock, so that when she comes down she is reduced to a skeleton.

When a Hindoo maiden reaches maturity she is kept in a dark room for four
days, and is forbidden to see the sun. She is regarded as unclean; no one may
touch her. Her diet is restricted to boiled rice, milk, sugar, curd, and
tamarind without salt. On the morning of the fifth day she goes to a
neighbouring tank, accompanied by five women whose husbands are alive. Smeared
with turmeric water, they all bathe and return home, throwing away the mat and
other things that were in the room. The Rarhi Brahmans of Bengal compel a girl
at puberty to live alone, and do not allow her to see the face of any male.
For three days she remains shut up in a dark room, and has to undergo certain
penances. Fish, flesh, and sweetmeats are forbidden her; she must live upon
rice and ghee. Among the Tiyans of Malabar a girl is thought to be polluted
for four days from the beginning of her first menstruation. During this time
she must keep to the north side of the house, where she sleeps on a grass mat
of a particular kind, in a room festooned with garlands of young coco-nut
leaves. Another girl keeps her company and sleeps with her, but she may not
touch any other person, tree or plant. Further, she may not see the sky, and
woe betide her if she catches sight of a crow or a cat! Her diet must be
strictly vegetarian, without salt, tamarinds, or chillies. She is armed
against evil spirits by a knife, which is placed on the mat or carried on her
person.

In Cambodia a girl at puberty is put to bed under a mosquito curtain,
where she should stay a hundred days. Usually, however, four, five, ten, or
twenty days are thought enough; and even this, in a hot climate and under the
close meshes of the curtain, is sufficiently trying. According to another
account, a Cambodian maiden at puberty is said to enter into the shade.
During her retirement, which, according to the rank and position of her
family, may last any time from a few days to several years, she has to observe
a number of rules, such as not to be seen by a strange man, not to eat flesh
or fish, and so on. She goes nowhere, not even to the pagoda. But this state
of seclusion is discontinued during eclipses; at such times she goes forth and
pays her devotions to the monster who is supposed to cause eclipses by
catching the heavenly bodies between his teeth. This permission to break her
rule of retirement and appear abroad during an eclipse seems to show how
literally the injunction is interpreted which forbids maidens entering on
womanhood to look upon the sun.

A superstition so widely diffused as this might be expected to leave
traces in legends and folk-tales. And it has done so. The old Greek story of
Danae, who was confined by her father in a subterranean chamber or a brazen
tower, but impregnated by Zeus, who reached her in the shape of a shower of
gold, perhaps belongs to this class of tales. It has its counterpart in the
legend which the Kirghiz of Siberia tell of their ancestry. A certain Khan had
a fair daughter, whom he kept in a dark iron house, that no man might see her.
An old woman tended her; and when the girl was grown to maidenhood she asked
the old woman, Where do you go so often? My child, said the old dame,
there is a bright world. In that bright world your father and mother live,
and all sorts of people live there. That is where I go. The maiden said,
Good mother, I will tell nobody, but show me that bright world. So the old
woman took the girl out of the iron house. But when she saw the bright world,
the girl tottered and fainted; and the eye of God fell upon her, and she
conceived. Her angry father put her in a golden chest and sent her floating
away (fairy gold can float in fairyland) over the wide sea. The shower of gold
in the Greek story, and the eye of God in the Kirghiz legend, probably stand
for sunlight and the sun. The idea that women may be impregnated by the sun is
not uncommon in legends, and there are even traces of it in marriage customs.

4. Reasons for the Seclusion of Girls at Puberty

THE MOTIVE for the restraints so commonly imposed on girls at puberty is the
deeply engrained dread which primitive man universally entertains of
menstruous blood. He fears it at all times but especially on its first
appearance; hence the restrictions under which women lie at their first
menstruation are usually more stringent than those which they have to observe
at any subsequent recurrence of the mysterious flow. Some evidence of the fear
and of the customs based on it has been cited in an earlier part of this work;
but as the terror, for it is nothing less, which the phenomenon periodically
strikes into the mind of the savage has deeply influenced his life and
institutions, it may be well to illustrate the subject with some further
examples.

Thus in the Encounter Bay tribe of South Australia there is, or used to
be, a superstition which obliges a woman to separate herself from the camp at
the time of her monthly illness, when if a young man or boy should approach,
she calls out, and he immediately makes a circuit to avoid her. If she is
neglectful upon this point, she exposes herself to scolding, and sometimes to
severe beating by her husband or nearest relation, because the boys are told
from their infancy, that if they see the blood they will early become
grey-headed, and their strength will fail prematurely. The Dieri of Central
Australia believe that if women at these times were to eat fish or bathe in a
river, the fish would all die and the water would dry up. The Arunta of the
same region forbid menstruous women to gather the irriakura bulbs, which
form a staple article of diet for both men and women. They think that were a
woman to break this rule, the supply of bulbs would fail.

In some Australian tribes the seclusion of menstruous women was even more
rigid, and was enforced by severer penalties than a scolding or a beating.
Thus there is a regulation relating to camps in the Wakelbura tribe which
forbids the women coming into the encampment by the same path as the men. Any
violation of this rule would in a large camp be punished with death. The
reason for this is the dread with which they regard the menstrual period of
women. During such a time, a woman is kept entirely away from the camp, half a
mile at least. A woman in such a condition has boughs of some tree of her
totem tied round her loins, and is constantly watched and guarded, for it is
thought that should any male be so unfortunate as to see a woman in such a
condition, he would die. If such a woman were to let herself be seen by a man,
she would probably be put to death. When the woman has recovered, she is
painted red and white, her head covered with feathers, and returns to the
camp.

In Muralug, one of the Torres Straits Islands, a menstruous woman may not
eat anything that lives in the sea, else the natives believe that the
fisheries would fail. In Galela, to the west of New Guinea, women at their
monthly periods may not enter a tobacco-field, or the plants would be attacked
by disease. The Minangkabauers of Sumatra are persuaded that if a woman in her
unclean state were to go near a rice-field, the crop would be spoiled.

The Bushmen of South Africa think that, by a glance of a girl's eye at the
time when she ought to be kept in strict retirement, men become fixed in
whatever positions they happen to occupy, with whatever they were holding in
their hands, and are changed into trees that talk. Cattle-rearing tribes of
South Africa hold that their cattle would die if the milk were drunk by a
menstruous woman; and they fear the same disaster if a drop of her blood were
to fall on the ground and the oxen were to pass over it. To prevent such a
calamity women in general, not menstruous women only, are forbidden to enter
the cattle enclosure; and more than that, they may not use the ordinary paths
in entering the village or in passing from one hut to another. They are
obliged to make circuitous tracks at the back of the huts in order to avoid
the ground in the middle of the village where the cattle stand or lie down.
These women's tracks may be seen at every Caffre village. Among the Baganda,
in like manner, no menstruous woman might drink milk or come into contact with
any milk-vessel; and she might not touch anything that belonged to her
husband, nor sit on his mat, nor cook his food. If she touched anything of his
at such a time it was deemed equivalent to wishing him dead or to actually
working magic for his destruction. Were she to handle any article of his, he
would surely fall ill; were she to touch his weapons, he would certainly be
killed in the next battle. Further, the Baganda would not suffer a menstruous
woman to visit a well; if she did so, they feared that the water would dry up,
and that she herself would fall sick and die, unless she confessed her fault
and the medicine-man made atonement for her. Among the Akikuyu of British East
Africa, if a new hut is built in a village and the wife chances to menstruate
in it on the day she lights the first fire there, the hut must be broken down
and demolished the very next day. The woman may on no account sleep a second
night in it; there is a curse both on her and on it.

According to the Talmud, if a woman at the beginning of her period passes
between two men, she thereby kills one of them. Peasants of the Lebanon think
that menstruous women are the cause or many misfortunes; their shadow causes
flowers to wither and trees to perish, it even arrests the movements of
serpents; if one of them mounts a horse, the animal might die or at least be
disabled for a long time.

The Guayquiries of the Orinoco believe that when a woman has her courses,
everything upon which she steps will die, and that if a man treads on the
place where she has passed, his legs will immediately swell up. Among the
Bri-bri Indians of Costa Rica a married woman at her periods uses for plates
only banana leaves, which, when she has done with them, she throws away in a
sequestered spot; for should a cow find and eat them, the animal would waste
away and perish. Also she drinks only out of a special vessel, because any
person who should afterwards drink out of the same vessel would infallibly
pine away and die.

Among most tribes of North American Indians the custom was that women in
their courses retired from the camp or the village and lived during the time
of their uncleanness in special huts or shelters which were appropriated to
their use. There they dwelt apart, eating and sleeping by themselves, warming
themselves at their own fires, and strictly abstaining from all communications
with men, who shunned them just as if they were stricken with the plague.

Thus, to take examples, the Creek and kindred Indians of the United States
compelled women at menstruation to live in separate huts at some distance from
the village. There the women had to stay, at the risk of being surprised and
cut off by enemies. It was thought a most horrid and dangerous pollution to
go near the women at such times; and the danger extended to enemies who, if
they slew the women, had to cleanse themselves from the pollution by means of
certain sacred herbs and roots. The Stseelis Indians of British Columbia
imagined that if a menstruous woman were to step over a bundle of arrows, the
arrows would thereby be rendered useless and might even cause the death of
their owner; and similarly that if she passed in front of a hunter who carried
a gun, the weapon would never shoot straight again. Among the Chippeways and
other Indians of the Hudson Bay Territory, menstruous women are excluded from
the camp, and take up their abode in huts of branches. They wear long hoods,
which effectually conceal the head and breast. They may not touch the
household furniture nor any objects used by men; for their touch is supposed
to defile them, so that their subsequent use would be followed by certain
mischief or misfortune, such as disease or death. They must drink out of a
swan's bone. They may not walk on the common paths nor cross the tracks of
animals. They are never permitted to walk on the ice of rivers or lakes, or
near the part where the men are hunting beaver, or where a fishing-net is set,
for fear of averting their success. They are also prohibited at those times
from partaking of the head of any animal, and even from walking in or crossing
the track where the head of a deer, moose, beaver, and many other animals have
lately been carried, either on a sledge or on the back. To be guilty of a
violation of this custom is considered as of the greatest importance; because
they firmly believe that it would be a means of preventing the hunter from
having an equal success in his future excursions. So the Lapps forbid women
at menstruation to walk on that part of the shore where the fishers are in the
habit of setting out their fish; and the Esquimaux of Bering Strait believe
that if hunters were to come near women in their courses they would catch no
game. For a like reason the Carrier Indians will not suffer a menstruous woman
to cross the tracks of animals; if need be, she is carried over them. They
think that if she waded in a stream or a lake, the fish would die.

Amongst the civilised nations of Europe the superstitions which cluster
round this mysterious aspect of woman's nature are not less extravagant than
those which prevail among savages. In the oldest existing cyclopaediathe
Natural History of Plinythe list of dangers apprehended from menstruation
is longer than any furnished by mere barbarians. According to Pliny, the touch
of a menstruous woman turned wine to vinegar, blighted crops, killed
seedlings, blasted gardens, brought down the fruit from trees, dimmed mirrors,
blunted razors, rusted iron and brass (especially at the waning of the moon),
killed bees, or at least drove them from their hives, caused mares to
miscarry, and so forth. Similarly, in various parts of Europe, it is still
believed that if a woman in her courses enters a brewery the beer will turn
sour; if she touches beer, wine, vinegar, or milk, it will go bad; if she
makes jam, it will not keep; if she mounts a mare, it will miscarry; if she
touches buds, they will wither; if she climbs a cherry tree, it will die. In
Brunswick people think that if a menstruous woman assists at the killing of a
pig, the pork will putrefy. In the Greek island of Calymnos a woman at such
times may not go to the well to draw water, nor cross a running stream, nor
enter the sea. Her presence in a boat is said to raise storms.

Thus the object of secluding women at menstruation is to neutralise the
dangerous influences which are supposed to emanate from them at such times.
That the danger is believed to be especially great at the first menstruation
appears from the unusual precautions taken to isolate girls at this crisis.
Two of these precautions have been illustrated above, namely, the rules that
the girls may not touch the ground nor see the sun. The general effect of
these rules is to keep her suspended, so to say, between heaven and earth.
Whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to the roof, as in South
America, or raised above the ground in a dark and narrow cage, as in New
Ireland, she may be considered to be out of the way of doing mischief, since,
being shut off both from the earth and from the sun, she can poison neither of
these great sources of life by her deadly contagion. In short, she is rendered
harmless by being, in electrical language, insulated. But the precautions thus
taken to isolate or insulate the girl are dictated by a regard for her own
safety as well as for the safety of others. For it is thought that she herself
would suffer if she were to neglect the prescribed regimen. Thus Zulu girls,
as we have seen, believe that they would shrivel to skeletons if the sun were
to shine on them at puberty, and the Macusis imagine that, if a young woman
were to transgress the rules, she would suffer from sores on various parts of
her body. In short, the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force which,
if not kept within bounds, may prove destructive both to herself and to all
with whom she comes in contact. To repress this force within the limits
necessary for the safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in
question.

The same explanation applies to the observance of the same rules by divine
kings and priests. The uncleanness, as it is called, of girls at puberty and
the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive mind, differ materially from
each other. They are only different manifestations of the same mysterious
energy which, like energy in general, is in itself neither good nor bad, but
becomes beneficent or maleficent according to its application. Accordingly,
if, like girls at puberty, divine personages may neither touch the ground nor
see the sun, the reason is, on the one hand, a fear lest their divinity might,
at contact with earth or heaven, discharge itself with fatal violence on
either; and, on the other hand, an apprehension that the divine being, thus
drained of his ethereal virtue, might thereby be incapacitated for the future
performance of those magical functions, upon the proper discharge of which the
safety of the people and even of the world is believed to hang. Thus the rules
in question fall under the head of the taboos which we examined in an earlier
part of this book; they are intended to preserve the life of the divine person
and with it the life of his subjects and worshippers. Nowhere, it is thought,
can his precious yet dangerous life be at once so safe and so harmless as when
it is neither in heaven nor in earth, but, as far as possible, suspended
between the two.

Chapter 61. The Myth of Balder

A DEITY whose life might in a sense be said to be neither in heaven nor on
earth but between the two, was the Norse Balder, the good and beautiful god,
the son of the great god Odin, and himself the wisest, mildest, best beloved
of all the immortals. The story of his death, as it is told in the younger or
prose Edda, runs thus. Once on a time Balder dreamed heavy dreams which
seemed to forebode his death. Thereupon the gods held a council and resolved
to make him secure against every danger. So the goddess Frigg took an oath
from fire and water, iron and all metals, stones and earth, from trees,
sicknesses and poisons, and from all four-footed beasts, birds, and creeping
things, that they would not hurt Balder. When this was done Balder was deemed
invulnerable; so the gods amused themselves by setting him in their midst,
while some shot at him, others hewed at him, and others threw stones at him.
But whatever they did, nothing could hurt him; and at this they were all glad.
Only Loki, the mischief-maker, was displeased, and he went in the guise of an
old woman to Frigg, who told him that the weapons of the gods could not wound
Balder, since she had made them all swear not to hurt him. Then Loki asked,
Have all things sworn to spare Balder? She answered, East of Walhalla grows
a plant called mistletoe; it seemed to me too young to swear. So Loki went
and pulled the mistletoe and took it to the assembly of the gods. There he
found the blind god Hother standing at the outside of the circle. Loki asked
him, Why do you not shoot at Balder? Hother answered, Because I do not see
where he stands; besides I have no weapon. Then said Loki, Do like the rest
and show Balder honour, as they all do. I will show you where he stands, and
do you shoot at him with this twig. Hother took the mistletoe and threw it at
Balder, as Loki directed him. The mistletoe struck Balder and pierced him
through and through, and he fell down dead. And that was the greatest
misfortune that ever befell gods and men. For a while the gods stood
speechless, then they lifted up their voices and wept bitterly. They took
Balder's body and brought it to the sea-shore. There stood Balder's ship; it
was called Ringhorn, and was the hugest of all ships. The gods wished to
launch the ship and to burn Balder's body on it, but the ship would not stir.
So they sent for a giantess called Hyrrockin. She came riding on a wolf and
gave the ship such a push that fire flashed from the rollers and all the earth
shook. Then Balder's body was taken and placed on the funeral pile upon his
ship. When his wife Nanna saw that, her heart burst for sorrow and she died.
So she was laid on the funeral pile with her husband, and fire was put to it.
Balder's horse, too, with all its trappings, was burned on the pile.

Whether he was a real or merely a mythical personage, Balder was
worshipped in Norway. On one of the bays of the beautiful Sogne Fiord, which
penetrates far into the depths of the solemn Norwegian mountains, with their
sombre pine-forests and their lofty cascades dissolving into spray before they
reach the dark water of the fiord far below, Balder had a great sanctuary. It
was called Balder's Grove. A palisade enclosed the hallowed ground, and within
it stood a spacious temple with the images of many gods, but none of them was
worshipped with such devotion as Balder. So great was the awe with which the
heathen regarded the place that no man might harm another there, nor steal his
cattle, nor defile himself with women. But women cared for the images of the
gods in the temple; they warmed them at the fire, anointed them with oil, and
dried them with cloths.

Whatever may be thought of an historical kernel underlying a mythical husk
in the legend of Balder, the details of the story suggest that it belongs to
that class of myths which have been dramatised an ritual, or, to put it
otherwise, which have been performed as magical ceremonies for the sake of
producing those natural effects which they describe in figurative language. A
myth is never so graphic and precise in its details as when it is, so to
speak, the book of the words which are spoken and acted by the performers of
the sacred rite. That the Norse story of Balder was a myth of this sort will
become probable if we can prove that ceremonies resembling the incidents in
the tale have been performed by Norsemen and other European peoples. Now the
main incidents in the tale are twofirst, the pulling of the mistletoe, and
second, the death and burning of the god; and both of them may perhaps be
found to have had their counterparts in yearly rites observed, whether
separately or conjointly, by people in various parts of Europe. These rites
will be described and discussed in the following chapters. We shall begin with
the annual festivals of fire and shall reserve the pulling of the mistletoe
for consideration later on.

Chapter 62. The Fire-Festivals of Europe.

1. The Fire-festivals in general

ALL over Europe the peasants have been accustomed from time immemorial to
kindle bonfires on certain days of the year, and to dance round or leap over
them. Customs of this kind can be traced back on historical evidence to the
Middle Ages, and their analogy to similar customs observed in antiquity goes
with strong internal evidence to prove that their origin must be sought in a
period long prior to the spread of Christianity. Indeed the earliest proof of
their observance in Northern Europe is furnished by the attempts made by
Christian synods in the eighth century to put them down as heathenish rites.
Not uncommonly effigies are burned in these fires, or a pretence is made of
burning a living person in them; and there are grounds for believing that
anciently human beings were actually burned on these occasions. A brief view
of the customs in question will bring out the traces of human sacrifice, and
will serve at the same time to throw light on their meaning.

The seasons of the year when these bonfires are most commonly lit are
spring and midsummer; but in some places they are kindled also at the end of
autumn or during the course of the winter, particularly on Hallow E'en (the
thirty-first of October), Christmas Day, and the Eve of Twelfth Day. Space
forbids me to describe all these festivals at length; a few specimens must
serve to illustrate their general character. We shall begin with the
fire-festivals of spring, which usually fall on the first Sunday of Lent
(Quadragesima or Invocavit), Easter Eve, and May Day.

2. The Lenten Fires

THE CUSTOM of kindling bonfires on the first Sunday in Lent has prevailed in
Belgium, the north of France, and many parts of Germany. Thus in the Belgian
Ardennes for a week or a fortnight before the day of the great fire, as it
is called, children go about from farm to farm collecting fuel. At Grand
Halleux any one who refuses their request is pursued next day by the children,
who try to blacken his face with the ashes of the extinct fire. When the day
has come, they cut down bushes, especially juniper and broom, and in the
evening great bonfires blaze on all the heights. It is a common saying that
seven bonfires should be seen if the village is to be safe from
conflagrations. If the Meuse happens to be frozen hard at the time, bonfires
are lit also on the ice. At Grand Halleux they set up a pole called makral,
or the witch, in the midst of the pile, and the fire is kindled by the man
who was last married in the village. In the neighbourhood of Morlanwelz a
straw man is burnt in the fire. Young people and children dance and sing round
the bonfires, and leap over the embers to secure good crops or a happy
marriage within the year, or as a means of guarding themselves against colic.
In Brabant on the same Sunday, down to the beginning of the nineteenth
century, women and men disguised in female attire used to go with burning
torches to the fields, where they danced and sang comic songs for the purpose,
as they alleged, of driving away the wicked sower, who is mentioned in the
Gospel for the day. At Pturages, in the province of Hainaut, down to about
1840 the custom was observed under the name of Escouvion or Scouvion.
Every year on the first Sunday of Lent, which was called the Day of the Little
Scouvion, young folks and children used to run with lighted torches through
the gardens and orchards. As they ran they cried at the pitch of their voices:

Bear apples, bear pears, and cherries all black
To Scouvion!

At these words the torch-bearer whirled his blazing brand and hurled it
among the branches of the apple-trees, the pear-trees, and the cherry-trees.
The next Sunday was called the Day of the Great Scouvion, and the same race
with lighted torches among the trees of the orchards was repeated in the
afternoon till darkness fell.

In the French department of the Ardennes the whole village used to dance
and sing around the bonfires which were lighted on the first Sunday in Lent.
Here, too, it was the person last married, sometimes a man and sometimes a
woman, who put the match to the fire. The custom is still kept up very
commonly in the district. Cats used to be burnt in the fire or roasted to
death by being held over it; and while they were burning the shepherds drove
their flocks through the smoke and flames as a sure means of guarding them
against sickness and witchcraft. In some communes it was believed that the
livelier the dance round the fire, the better would be the crops that year.

In the French province of Franche-Comt, to the west of the Jura
Mountains, the first Sunday of Lent is known as the Sunday of the Firebrands
(Brandons), on account of the fires which it is customary to kindle on that
day. On the Saturday or the Sunday the village lads harness themselves to a
cart and drag it about the streets, stopping at the doors of the houses where
there are girls and begging fora faggot. When they have got enough, they cart
the fuel to a spot at some little distance from the village, pile it up, and
set it on fire. All the people of the parish come out to see the bonfire. In
some villages, when the bells have rung the Angelus, the signal for the
observance is given by cries of, To the fire! to the fire! Lads, lasses, and
children dance round the blaze, and when the flames have died down they vie
with each other in leaping over the red embers. He or she who does so without
singeing his or her garments will be married within the year. Young folk also
carry lighted torches about the streets or the fields, and when they pass an
orchard they cry out, More fruit than leaves! Down to recent years at
Laviron, in the department of Doubs, it was the young married couples of the
year who had charge of the bonfires. In the midst of the bonfire a pole was
planted with a wooden figure of a cock fastened to the top. Then there were
races, and the winner received the cock as a prize.

In Auvergne fires are everywhere kindled on the evening of the first
Sunday in Lent. Every village, every hamlet, even every ward, every isolated
farm has its bonfire or figo, as it is called, which blazes up as the shades
of night are falling. The fires may be seen flaring on the heights and in the
plains; the people dance and sing round about them and leap through the
flames. Then they proceed to the ceremony of the Grannas-mias. A
granno-mio is a torch of straw fastened to the top of a pole. When the pyre
is half consumed, the bystanders kindle the torches at the expiring flames and
carry them into the neighbouring orchards, fields, and gardens, wherever there
are fruit-trees. As they march they sing at the top of their voices, Granno
my friend, Granno my father, Granno my mother. Then they pass the burning
torches under the branches of every tree, singing.

Brando, brandounci tsaque brantso, in plan panei!

that is, Firebrand burn; every branch a basketful! In some villages the
people also run across the sown fields and shake the ashes of the torches on
the ground; also they put some of the ashes in the fowls' nests, in order that
the hens may lay plenty of eggs throughout the year. When all these ceremonies
have been performed, everybody goes home and feasts; the special dishes of the
evening are fritters and pancakes. Here the application of the fire to the
fruit-trees, to the sown fields, and to the nests of the poultry is clearly a
charm intended to ensure fertility; and the Granno to whom the invocations are
addressed, and who gives his name to the torches, may possibly be, as Dr.
Pommerol suggests, no other than the ancient Celtic god Grannus, whom the
Romans identified with Apollo, and whose worship is attested by inscriptions
found not only in France but in Scotland and on the Danube.

The custom of carrying lighted torches of straw (brandons) about the
orchards and fields to fertilise them on the first Sunday of Lent seems to
have been common in France, whether it was accompanied with the practice of
kindling bonfires or not. Thus in the province of Picardy on the first Sunday
of Lent people carried torches through the fields, exorcising the field-mice,
the darnel, and the smut. They imagined that they did much good to the gardens
and caused the onions to grow large. Children ran about the fields, torch in
hand, to make the land more fertile. At Verges, a village between the Jura
and the Combe d'Ain, the torches at this season were kindled on the top of a
mountain, and the bearers went to every house in the village, demanding
roasted peas and obliging all couples who had been married within the year to
dance. In Berry, a district of Central France, it appears that bonfires are
not lighted on this day, but when the sun has set the whole population of the
villages, armed with blazing torches of straw, disperse over the country and
scour the fields, the vineyards, and the orchards. Seen from afar, the
multitude of moving lights, twinkling in the darkness, appear like
will-o'-the-wisps chasing each other across the plains, along the hillsides,
and down the valleys. While the men wave their flambeaus about the branches of
the fruit-trees, the women and children tie bands of wheaten-straw round the
tree-trunks. The effect of the ceremony is supposed to be to avert the various
plagues from which the fruits of the earth are apt to suffer; and the bands of
straw fastened round the stems of the trees are believed to render them
fruitful.

In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland at the same season similar customs
have prevailed. Thus in the Eifel Mountains, Rhenish Prussia, on the first
Sunday in Lent young people used to collect straw and brushwood from house to
house. These they carried to an eminence and piled up round a tall, slim
beech-tree, to which a piece of wood was fastened at right angles to form a
cross. The structure was known as the hut or castle. Fire was set to it
and the young people marched round the blazing castle bareheaded, each
carrying a lighted torch and praying aloud. Sometimes a straw-man was burned
in the hut. People observed the direction in which the smoke blew from the
fire. If it blew towards the corn-fields, it was a sign that the harvest would
be abundant. On the same day, in some parts of the Eifel, a great wheel was
made of straw and dragged by three horses to the top of the hill. Thither the
village boys marched at nightfall, set fire to the wheel, and sent it rolling
down the slope. At Oberstattfeld the wheel had to be provided by the young man
who was last married. About Echternach in Luxemburg the same ceremony is
called burning the witch. At Voralberg in the Tyrol, on the first Sunday in
Lent, a slender young fir-tree is surrounded with a pile of straw and
firewood. To the top of the tree is fastened a human figure called the
witch, made of old clothes and stuffed with gunpowder. At night the whole is
set on fire and boys and girls dance round it, swinging torches and singing
rhymes in which the words corn in the winnowing-basket, the plough in the
earth may be distinguished. In Swabia on the first Sunday in Lent a figure
called the witch or the old wife or winter's grandmother is made up of
clothes and fastened to a pole. This is stuck in the middle of a pile of wood,
to which fire is applied. While the witch is burning, the young people throw
blazing discs into the air. The discs are thin round pieces of wood, a few
inches in diameter, with notched edges to imitate the rays of the sun or
stars. They have a hole in the middle, by which they are attached to the end
of a wand. Before the disc is thrown it is set on fire, the wand is swung to
and fro, and the impetus thus communicated to the disc is augmented by dashing
the rod sharply against a sloping board. The burning disc is thus thrown off,
and mounting high into the air, describes a long fiery curve before it reaches
the ground. The charred embers of the burned witch and discs are taken home
and planted in the flax-fields the same night, in the belief that they will
keep vermin from the fields. In the Rhn Mountains, situated on the borders of
Hesse and Bavaria, the people used to march to the top of a hill or eminence
on the first Sunday in Lent. Children and lads carried torches, brooms daubed
with tar, and poles swathed in straw. A wheel, wrapt in combustibles, was
kindled and rolled down the hill; and the young people rushed about the fields
with their burning torches and brooms, till at last they flung them in a heap,
and standing round them, struck up a hymn or a popular song. The object of
running about the fields with the blazing torches was to drive away the
wicked sower. Or it was done in honour of the Virgin, that she might preserve
the fruits of the earth throughout the year and bless them. In neighbouring
villages of Hesse, between the Rhn and the Vogel Mountains, it is thought
that wherever the burning wheels roll, the fields will be safe from hail and
strom.

In Switzerland, also, it is or used to be customary to kindle bonfires on
high places on the evening of the first Sunday in Lent, and the day is
therefore popularly known as Spark Sunday. The custom prevailed, for example,
throughout the canton of Lucerne. Boys went about from house to house begging
for wood and straw, then piled the fuel on a conspicuous mountain or hill
round about a pole, which bore a straw effigy called the witch. At nightfall
the pile was set on fire, and the young folks danced wildly round it, some of
them cracking whips or ringing bells; and when the fire burned low enough,
they leaped over it. This was called burning the witch. In some parts of the
canton also they used to wrap old wheels in straw and thorns, put a light to
them, and send them rolling and blazing down hill. The more bonfires could be
seen sparkling and flaring in the darkness, the more fruitful was the year
expected to be; and the higher the dancers leaped beside or over the fire, the
higher, it was thought, would grow the flax. In some districts it was the last
married man or woman who must kindle the bonfire.

It seems hardly possible to separate from these bonfires, kindled on the
first Sunday in Lent, the fires in which, about the same season, the effigy
called Death is burned as part of the ceremony of carrying out Death. We
have seen that at Spachendorf, in Austrian Silesia, on the morning of Rupert's
Day (Shrove Tuesday?), a straw-man, dressed in a fur coat and a fur cap, is
laid in a hole outside the village and there burned, and that while it is
blazing every one seeks to snatch a fragment of it, which he fastens to a
branch of the highest tree in his garden or buries in his field, believing
that this will make the crops to grow better. The ceremony is known as the
burying of Death. Even when the straw-man is not designated as Death, the
meaning of the observance is probably the same; for the name Death, as I have
tried to show, does not express the original intention of the ceremony. At
Cobern in the Eifel Mountains the lads make up a straw-man on Shrove Tuesday.
The effigy is formally tried and accused of having perpetrated all the thefts
that have been committed in the neighbourhood throughout the year. Being
condemned to death, the straw-man is led through the village, shot, and burned
upon a pyre. They dance round the blazing pile, and the last bride must leap
over it. In Oldenburg on the evening of Shrove Tuesday people used to make
long bundles of straw, which they set on fire, and then ran about the fields
waving them, shrieking, and singing wild songs. Finally they burned a
straw-man on the field. In the district of Dsseldorf the straw-man burned on
Shrove Tuesday was made of an unthreshed sheaf of corn. On the first Monday
after the spring equinox the urchins of Zurich drag a straw-man on a little
cart through the streets, while at the same time the girls carry about a
May-tree. When vespers ring, the straw-man is burned. In the district of
Aachen on Ash Wednesday, a man used to be encased in peas-straw and taken to
an appointed place. Here he slipped quietly out of his straw casing, which was
then burned, the children thinking that it was the man who was being burned.
In the Val di Ledro (Tyrol) on the last day of the Carnival a figure is made
up of straw and brushwood and then burned. The figure is called the Old Woman,
and the ceremony burning the Old Woman.

3. The Easter Fires

ANOTHER occasion on which these fire-festivals are held is Easter Eve, the
Saturday before Easter Sunday. On that day it has been customary in Catholic
countries to extinguish all the lights in the churches, and then to make a new
fire, sometimes with flint and steel, sometimes with a burning-glass. At this
fire is lit the great Paschal or Easter candle, which is then used to rekindle
all the extinguished lights in the church. In many parts of Germany a bonfire
is also kindled, by means of the new fire, on some open space near the church.
It is consecrated, and the people bring sticks of oak, walnut, and beech,
which they char in the fire, and then take home with them. Some of these
charred sticks are thereupon burned at home in a newly-kindled fire, with a
prayer that God will preserve the homestead from fire, lightning, and hail.
Thus every house receives new fire. Some of the sticks are kept throughout
the year and laid on the hearth-fire during heavy thunder-storms to prevent
the house from being struck by lightning, or they are inserted in the roof
with the like intention. Others are placed in the fields, gardens, and
meadows, with a prayer that God will keep them from blight and hail. Such
fields and gardens are thought to thrive more than others; the corn and the
plants that grow in them are not beaten down by hail, nor devoured by mice,
vermin, and beetles; no witch harms them, and the ears of corn stand close and
full. The charred sticks are also applied to the plough. The ashes of the
Easter bonfire, together with the ashes of the consecrated palm-branches, are
mixed with the seed at sowing. A wooden figure called Judas is sometimes
burned in the consecrated bonfire, and even where this custom has been
abolished the bonfire itself in some places goes by the name of the burning
of Judas.

The essentially pagan character of the Easter fire festival appears
plainly both from the mode in which it is celebrated by the peasants and from
the superstitious beliefs which they associate with it. All over Northern and
Central Germany, from Altmark and Anhalt on the east, through Brunswick,
Hanover, Oldenburg, the Harz district, and Hesse to Westphalia the Easter
bonfires still blaze simultaneously on the hill-tops. As many as forty may
sometimes be counted within sight at once. Long before Easter the young people
have been busy collecting firewood; every farmer contributes, and tar-barrels,
petroleum cases, and so forth go to swell the pile. Neighbouring villages vie
with each other as to which shall send up the greatest blaze. The fires are
always kindled, year after year, on the same hill, which accordingly often
takes the name of Easter Mountain. It is a fine spectacle to watch from some
eminence the bonfires flaring up one after another on the neighbouring
heights. As far as their light reaches, so far, in the belief of the peasants,
the fields will be fruitful, and the houses on which they shine will be safe
from conflagration or sickness. At Volkmarsen and other places in Hesse the
people used to observe which way the wind blew the flames, and then they sowed
flax seed in that direction, confident that it would grow well. Brands taken
from the bonfires preserve houses from being struck by lightning; and the
ashes increase the fertility of the fields, protect them from mice, and mixed
with the drinking-water of cattle make the animals thrive and ensure them
against plague. As the flames die down, young and old leap over them, and
cattle are sometimes driven through the smouldering embers. In some places
tar-barrels or wheels wrapt in straw used to be set on fire, and then sent
rolling down the hillside. In others the boys light torches and wisps of straw
at the bonfires and rush about brandishing them in their hands.

In Mnsterland these Easter fires are always kindled upon certain definite
hills, which are hence known as Easter or Paschal Mountains. The whole
community assembles about the fire. The young men and maidens, singing Easter
hymns, march round and round the fire, till the blaze dies down. Then the
girls jump over the fire in a line, one after the other, each supported by two
young men who hold her hands and run beside her. In the twilight boys with
blazing bundles of straw run over the fields to make them fruitful. At
Delmenhorst, in Oldenburg, it used to be the custom to cut down two trees,
plant them in the ground side by side, and pile twelve tar-barrels against
each. Brush-wood was then heaped about the trees, and on the evening of Easter
Saturday the boys, after rushing about with blazing bean-poles in their hands,
set fire to the whole. At the end of the ceremony the urchins tried to blacken
each other and the clothes of grown-up people. In the Altmark it is believed
that as far as the blaze of the Easter bonfire is visible, the corn will grow
well throughout the year, and no conflagration will break out. At Braunrde,
in the Harz Mountains, it was the custom to burn squirrels in the Easter
bonfire. In the Altmark, bones were burned in it.

Near Forchheim, in Upper Franken, a straw-man called the Judas used to be
burned in the churchyards on Easter Saturday. The whole village contributed
wood to the pyre on which he perished, and the charred sticks were afterwards
kept and planted in the fields on Walpurgis Day (the first of May) to preserve
the wheat from blight and mildew. About a hundred years ago or more the custom
at Althenneberg, in Upper Bavaria, used to be as follows. On the afternoon of
Easter Saturday the lads collected wood, which they piled in a cornfield,
while in the middle of the pile they set up a tall wooden cross all swathed in
straw. After the evening service they lighted their lanterns at the
consecrated candle in the church, and ran with them at full speed to the pyre,
each striving to get there first. The first to arrive set fire to the heap. No
woman or girl might come near the bonfire, but they were allowed to watch it
from a distance. As the flames rose the men and lads rejoiced and made merry,
shouting, We are burning the Judas! The man who had been the first to reach
the pyre and to kindle it was rewarded on Easter Sunday by the women, who gave
him coloured eggs at the church door. The object of the whole ceremony was to
keep off the hail. At other villages of Upper Bavaria the ceremony, which took
place between nine and ten at night on Easter Saturday, was called burning
the Easter Man. On a height about a mile from the village the young fellows
set up a tall cross enveloped in straw, so that it looked like a man with his
arms stretched out. This was the Easter Man. No lad under eighteen years of
age might take part in the ceremony. One of the young men stationed himself
beside the Easter Man, holding in his hand a consecrated taper which he had
brought from the church and lighted. The rest stood at equal intervals in a
great circle round the cross. At a given signal they raced thrice round the
circle, and then at a second signal ran straight at the cross and at the lad
with the lighted taper beside it; the one who reached the goal first had the
right of setting fire to the Easter Man. Great was the jubilation while he was
burning. When he had been consumed in the flames, three lads were chosen from
among the rest, and each of the three drew a circle on the ground with a stick
thrice round the ashes. Then they all left the spot. On Easter Monday the
villagers gathered the ashes and strewed them on their fields; also they
planted in the fields palmbranches which had been consecrated on Palm Sunday,
and sticks which had been charred and hallowed on Good Friday, all for the
purpose of protecting their fields against showers of hail. In some parts of
Swabia the Easter fires might not be kindled with iron or steel or flint, but
only by the friction of wood.

The custom of the Easter fires appears to have prevailed all over Central
and Western Germany from north to south. We find it also in Holland, where the
fires were kindled on the highest eminences, and the people danced round them
and leaped through the flames or over the glowing embers. Here too, as often
in Germany, the materials for the bonfire were collected by the young folk
from door to door. In many parts of Sweden firearms are discharged in all
directions on Easter Eve, and huge bonfires are lighted on hills and
eminences. Some people think that the intention is to keep off the Troll and
other evil spirits who are especially active at this season.

4. The Beltane Fires

IN THE CENTRAL Highlands of Scotland bonfires, known as the Beltane fires,
were formerly kindled with great ceremony on the first of May, and the traces
of human sacrifices at them were particularly clear and unequivocal. The
custom of lighting the bonfires lasted in various places far into the
eighteenth century, and the descriptions of the ceremony by writers of that
period present such a curious and interesting picture of ancient heathendom
surviving in our own country that I will reproduce them in the words of their
authors. The fullest of the descriptions is the one bequeathed to us by John
Ramsay, laird of Ochtertyre, near Crieff, the patron of Burns and the friend
of Sir Walter Scott. He says: But the most considerable of the Druidical
festivals is that of Beltane, or May-day, which was lately observed in some
parts of the Highlands with extraordinary ceremonies.  Like the other public
worship of the Druids, the Beltane feast seems to have been performed on hills
or eminences. They thought it degrading to him whose temple is the universe,
to suppose that he would dwell in any house made with hands. Their sacrifices
were therefore offered in the open air, frequently upon the tops of hills,
where they were presented with the grandest views of nature, and were nearest
the seat of warmth and order. And, according to tradition, such was the manner
of celebrating this festival in the Highlands within the last hundred years.
But since the decline of superstition, it has been celebrated by the people of
each hamlet on some hill or rising ground around which their cattle were
pasturing. Thither the young folks repaired in the morning, and cut a trench,
on the summit of which a seat of turf was formed for the company. And in the
middle a pile of wood or other fuel was placed, which of old they kindled with
tein-eigini.e., forced-fire or need-fire. Although, for many years
past, they have been contented with common fire, yet we shall now describe the
process, because it will hereafter appear that recourse is still had to the
tein-eigin upon extraordinary emergencies.

The night before, all the fires in the country were carefully
extinguished, and next morning the materials for exciting this sacred fire
were prepared. The most primitive method seems to be that which was used in
the islands of Skye, Mull, and Tiree. A well-seasoned plank of oak was
procured, in the midst of which a hole was bored. A wimble of the same timber
was then applied, the end of which they fitted to the hole. But in some parts
of the mainland the machinery was different. They used a frame of green wood,
of a square form, in the centre of which was an axle-tree. In some places
three times three persons, in others three times nine, were required for
turning round by turns the axle-tree or wimble. If any of them had been guilty
of murder, adultery, theft, or other atrocious crime, it was imagined either
that the fire would not kindle, or that it would be devoid of its usual
virtue. So soon as any sparks were emitted by means of the violent friction,
they applied a species of agaric which grows on old birch-trees, and is very
combustible. This fire had the appearance of being immediately derived from
heaven, and manifold were the virtues ascribed to it. They esteemed it a
preservative against witch-craft, and a sovereign remedy against malignant
diseases, both in the human species and in cattle; and by it the strongest
poisons were supposed to have their nature changed.

After kindling the bonfire with the tein-eigin the company prepared
their victuals. And as soon as they had finished their meal, they amused
themselves a while in singing and dancing round the fire. Towards the close of
the entertainment, the person who officiated as master of the feast produced a
large cake baked with eggs and scalloped round the edge, called am bonnach
bea-tinei.e., the Beltane cake. It was divided into a number of pieces,
and distributed in great form to the company. There was one particular piece
which whoever got was called cailleach beal-tine i.e., the Beltane
carline, a term of great reproach. Upon his being known, part of the company
laid hold of him and made a show of putting him into the fire; but the
majority interposing, he was rescued. And in some places they laid him flat on
the ground, making as if they would quarter him. Afterwards, he was pelted
with egg-shells, and retained the odious appellation during the whole year.
And while the feast was fresh in people's memory, they affected to speak of
the cailleach beal-tine as dead.

In the parish of Callander, a beautiful district of Western Perthshire,
the Beltane custom was still in vogue towards the end of the eighteenth
century. It has been described as follows by the parish minister of the time:
Upon the first day of May, which is called Beltan, or Baltein day, all
the boys in a township or hamlet, meet in the moors. They cut a table in the
green sod, of a round figure, by casting a trench in the ground, of such
circumference as to hold the whole company. They kindle a fire, and dress a
repast of eggs and milk in the consistence of a custard. They knead a cake of
oatmeal, which is toasted at the embers against a stone. After the custard is
eaten up, they divide the cake into so many portions, as similar as possible
to one another in size and shape, as there are persons in the company. They
daub one of these portions all over with charcoal, until it be perfectly
black. They put all the bits of the cake into a bonnet. Every one, blindfold,
draws out a portion. He who holds the bonnet, is entitled to the last bit.
Whoever draws the black bit, is the devoted person who is to be sacrificed
to Baal, whose favour they mean to implore, in rendering the year productive
of the sustenance of man and beast. There is little doubt of these inhuman
sacrifices having been once offered in this country, as well as in the east,
although they now pass from the act of sacrificing, and only compel the
devoted person to leap three times through the flames; with which the
ceremonies of this festival are closed.

Thomas Pennant, who travelled in Perthshire in the year 1769, tells us
that on the first of May, the herdsmen of every village hold their Bel-tien,
a rural sacrifice. They cut a square trench on the ground, leaving the turf in
the middle; on that they make a fire of wood, on which they dress a large
caudle of eggs, butter, oatmeal and milk; and bring besides the ingredients of
the caudle, plenty of beer and whisky; for each of the company must contribute
something. The rites begin with spilling some of the caudle on the ground, by
way of libation: on that every one takes a cake of oatmeal, upon which are
raised nine square knobs, each dedicated to some particular being, the
supposed preserver of their flocks and herds, or to some particular animal,
the real destroyer of them: each person then turns his face to the fire,
breaks off a knob, and flinging it over his shoulders, says, 'This I give to
thee, preserve thou my horses; this to thee, preserve thou my sheep; and so
on.' After that, they use the same ceremony to the noxious animals: 'This I
give to thee, O fox! spare thou my lambs; this to thee, O hooded crow! this to
thee, O eagle!' When the ceremony is over, they dine on the caudle; and after
the feast is finished, what is left is hid by two persons deputed for that
purpose; but on the next Sunday they reassemble, and finish the reliques of
the first entertainment.

Another writer of the eighteenth century has described the Beltane
festival as it was held in the parish of Logierait in Perthshire. He says: On
the first of May, O.S., a festival called Beltan is annually held here. It
is chiefly celebrated by the cow-herds, who assemble by scores in the fields,
to dress a dinner for themselves, of boiled milk and eggs. These dishes they
eat with a sort of cakes baked for the occasion, and having small lumps in the
form of nipples, raised all over the surface. In this last account no
mention is made of bonfires, but they were probably lighted, for a
contemporary writer informs us that in the parish of Kirkmichael, which
adjoins the parish of Logierait on the east, the custom of lighting a fire in
the fields and baking a consecrated cake on the first of May was not quite
obsolete in his time. We may conjecture that the cake with knobs was formerly
used for the purpose of determining who should be the Beltane carline or
victim doomed to the flames. A trace of this custom survived, perhaps, in the
custom of baking oatmeal cakes of a special kind and rolling them down hill
about noon on the first of May; for it was thought that the person whose cake
broke as it rolled would die or be unfortunate within the year. These cakes,
or bannocks as we call them in Scotland, were baked in the usual way, but they
were washed over with a thin batter composed of whipped egg, milk or cream,
and a little oatmeal. This custom appears to have prevailed at or near
Kingussie in Inverness-shire.

In the north-east of Scotland the Beltane fires were still kindled in the
latter half of the eighteenth century; the herdsmen of several farms used to
gather dry wood, kindle it, and dance three times southways about the
burning pile. But in this region, according to a later authority, the Beltane
fires were lit not on the first but on the second of May, Old Style. They were
called bone-fires. The people believed that on that evening and night the
witches were abroad and busy casting spells on cattle and stealing cows' milk.
To counteract their machinations, pieces of rowan-tree and woodbine, but
especially of rowan-tree, were placed over the doors of the cow-houses, and
fires were kindled by every farmer and cottar. Old thatch, straw, furze, or
broom was piled in a heap and set on fire a little after sunset. While some of
the bystanders kept tossing the blazing mass, others hoisted portions of it on
pitchforks or poles and ran hither and thither, holding them as high as they
could. Meantime the young people danced round the fire or ran through the
smoke shouting, Fire! blaze and burn the witches; fire! fire! burn the
witches. In some districts a large round cake of oat or barley meal was
rolled through the ashes. When all the fuel was consumed, the people scattered
the ashes far and wide, and till the night grew quite dark they continued to
run through them, crying, Fire! burn the witches.

In the Hebrides the Beltane bannock is smaller than that made at St.
Michael's, but is made in the same way; it is no longer made in Uist, but
Father Allan remembers seeing his grandmother make one about twenty-five years
ago. There was also a cheese made, generally on the first of May, which was
kept to the next Beltane as a sort of charm against the bewitching of
milk-produce. The Beltane customs seem to have been the same as elsewhere.
Every fire was put out and a large one lit on the top of the hill, and the
cattle driven round it sunwards (dessil), to keep off murrain all the year.
Each man would take home fire wherewith to kindle his own.

In Wales also the custom of lighting Beltane fires at the beginning of May
used to be observed, but the day on which they were kindled varied from the
eve of May Day to the third of May. The flame was sometimes elicited by the
friction of two pieces of oak, as appears from the following description. The
fire was done in this way. Nine men would turn their pockets inside out, and
see that every piece of money and all metals were off their persons. Then the
men went into the nearest woods, and collected sticks of nine different kinds
of trees. These were carried to the spot where the fire had to be built. There
a circle was cut in the sod, and the sticks were set crosswise. All around the
circle the people stood and watched the proceedings. One of the men would then
take two bits of oak, and rub them together until a flame was kindled. This
was applied to the sticks, and soon a large fire was made. Sometimes two fires
were set up side by side. These fires, whether one or two, were called
coelcerth or bonfire. Round cakes of oatmeal and brown meal were split in
four, and placed in a small flour-bag, and everybody present had to pick out a
portion. The last bit in the bag fell to the lot of the bag-holder. Each
person who chanced to pick up a piece of brown-meal cake was compelled to leap
three times over the flames, or to run thrice between the two fires, by which
means the people thought they were sure of a plentiful harvest. Shouts and
screams of those who had to face the ordeal could be heard ever so far, and
those who chanced to pick the oatmeal portions sang and danced and clapped
their hands in approval, as the holders of the brown bits leaped three times
over the flames, or ran three times between the two fires.

The belief of the people that by leaping thrice over the bonfires or
running thrice between them they ensured a plentiful harvest is worthy of
note. The mode in which this result was supposed to be brought about is
indicated by another writer on Welsh folk-lore, according to whom it used to
be held that the bonfires lighted in May or Midsummer protected the lands
from sorcery, so that good crops would follow. The ashes were also considered
valuable as charms. Hence it appears that the heat of the fires was thought
to fertilise the fields, not directly by quickening the seeds in the ground,
but indirectly by counteracting the baleful influence of witchcraft or perhaps
by burning up the persons of the witches.

The Beltane fires seem to have been kindled also in Ireland, for Cormac,
or somebody in his name, says that belltaine, May-day, was so called from
the 'lucky fire,' or the 'two fires,' which the druids of Erin used to make on
that day with great incantations; and cattle, he adds, used to be brought to
those fires, or to be driven between them, as a safeguard against the diseases
of the year. The custom of driving cattle through or between fires on May Day
or the eve of May Day persisted in Ireland down to a time within living
memory.

The first of May is a great popular festival in the more midland and
southern parts of Sweden. On the eve of the festival huge bonfires, which
should be lighted by striking two flints together, blaze on all the hills and
knolls. Every large hamlet has its own fire, round which the young people
dance in a ring. The old folk notice whether the flames incline to the north
or to the south. In the former case, the spring will be cold and backward; in
the latter, it will be mild and genial. In Bohemia, on the eve of May Day,
young people kindle fires on hills and eminences, at crossways, and in
pastures, and dance round them. They leap over the glowing embers or even
through the flames. The ceremony is called burning the witches. In some
places an effigy representing a witch used to be burnt in the bonfire. We have
to remember that the eve of May Day is the notorious Walpurgis Night, when the
witches are everywhere speeding unseen through the air on their hellish
errands. On this witching night children in Voigtland also light bonfires on
the heights and leap over them. Moreover, they wave burning brooms or toss
them into the air. So far as the light of the bonfire reaches, so far will a
blessing rest on the fields. The kindling of the fires on Walpurgis Night is
called driving away the witches. The custom of kindling fires on the eve of
May Day (Walpurgis Night) for the purpose of burning the witches is, or used
to be, widespread in the Tyrol, Moravia, Saxony and Silesia.

5. The Midsummer Fires

BUT THE SEASON at which these firefestivals have been most generally held
all over Europe is the summer solstice, that is Midsummer Eve (the
twenty-third of June) or Midsummer day (the twenty-fourth of June). A faint
tinge of Christianity has been given to them by naming Midsummer Day after St.
John the Baptist, but we cannot doubt that the celebration dates from a time
long before the beginning of our era. The summer solstice, or Midsummer Day,
is the great turning-point in the sun's career, when, after climbing higher
and higher day by day in the sky, the luminary stops and thenceforth retraces
his steps down the heavenly road. Such a moment could not but be regarded with
anxiety by primitive man so soon as he began to observe and ponder the courses
of the great lights across the celestial vault; and having still to learn his
own powerlessness in face of the vast cyclic changes of nature, he may have
fancied that he could help the sun in his seeming declinecould prop his
failing steps and rekindle the sinking flame of the red lamp in his feeble
hand. In some such thoughts as these the midsummer festivals of our European
peasantry may perhaps have taken their rise. Whatever their origin, they have
prevailed all over this quarter of the globe, from Ireland on the west to
Russia on the east, and from Norway and Sweden on the north to Spain and
Greece on the south. According to a medival writer, the three great features
of the midsummer celebration were the bonfires, the procession with torches
round the fields, and the custom of rolling a wheel. He tells us that boys
burned bones and filth of various kinds to make a foul smoke, and that the
smoke drove away certain noxious dragons which at this time, excited by the
summer heat, copulated in the air and poisoned the wells and rivers by
dropping their seed into them; and he explains the custom of trundling a wheel
to mean that the sun, having now reached the highest point in the ecliptic,
begins thenceforward to descend.

The main features of the midsummer fire-festival resemble those which we
have found to characterise the vernal festivals of fire. The similarity of the
two sets of ceremonies will plainly appear from the following examples.

A writer of the first half of the sixteenth century informs us that in
almost every village and town of Germany public bonfires were kindled on the
Eve of St. John, and young and old, of both sexes, gathered about them and
passed the time in dancing and singing. People on this occasion wore chaplets
of mugwort and vervain, and they looked at the fire through bunches of
larkspur which they held in their hands, believing that this would preserve
their eyes in a healthy state throughout the year. As each departed, he threw
the mugwort and vervain into the fire, saying, May all my ill-luck depart and
be burnt up with these. At Lower Konz, a village situated on a hillside
overlooking the Moselle, the midsummer festival used to be celebrated as
follows. A quantity of straw was collected on the top of the steep Stromberg
Hill. Every inhabitant, or at least every householder, had to contribute his
share of straw to the pile. At nightfall the whole male population, men and
boys, mustered on the top of the hill; the women and girls were not allowed to
join them, but had to take up their position at a certain spring half-way down
the slope. On the summit stood a huge wheel completely encased in some of the
straw which had been jointly contributed by the villagers; the rest of the
straw was made into torches. From each side of the wheel the axle-tree
projected about three feet, thus furnishing handles to the lads who were to
guide it in its descent. The mayor of the neighbouring town of Sierck, who
always received a basket of cherries for his services, gave the signal; a
lighted torch was applied to the wheel, and as it burst into flame, two young
fellows, strong-limbed and swift of foot, seized the handles and began running
with it down the slope. A great shout went up. Every man and boy waved a
blazing torch in the air, and took care to keep it alight so long as the wheel
was trundling down the hill. The great object of the young men who guided the
wheel was to plunge it blazing into the water of the Moselle; but they rarely
succeeded in their efforts, for the vineyards which cover the greater part of
the declivity impeded their progress, and the wheel was often burned out
before it reached the river. As it rolled past the women and girls at the
spring, they raised cries of joy which were answered by the men on the top of
the mountain; and the shouts were echoed by the inhabitants of neighbouring
villages who watched the spectacle from their hills on the opposite bank of
the Moselle. If the fiery wheel was successfully conveyed to the bank of the
river and extinguished in the water, the people looked for an abundant vintage
that year, and the inhabitants of Konz had the right to exact a waggon-load of
white wine from the surrounding vineyards. On the other hand, they believed
that, if they neglected to perform the ceremony, the cattle would be attacked
by giddiness and convulsions and would dance in their stalls.

Down at least to the middle of the nineteenth century the midsummer fires
used to blaze all over Upper Bavaria. They were kindled especially on the
mountains, but also far and wide in the lowlands, and we are told that in the
darkness and stillness of night the moving groups, lit up by the flickering
glow of the flames, presented an impressive spectacle. Cattle were driven
through the fire to cure the sick animals and to guard such as were sound
against plague and harm of every kind throughout the year. Many a householder
on that day put out the fire on the domestic hearth and rekindled it by means
of a brand taken from the midsummer bonfire. The people judged of the height
to which the flax would grow in the year by the height to which the flames of
the bonfire rose; and whoever leaped over the burning pile was sure not to
suffer from backache in reaping the corn at harvest. In many parts of Bavaria
it was believed that the flax would grow as high as the young people leaped
over the fire. In others the old folk used to plant three charred sticks from
the bonfire in the fields, believing that this would make the flax grow tall.
Elsewhere an extinguished brand was put in the roof of the house to protect it
against fire. In the towns about Wrzburg the bonfires used to be kindled in
the market-places, and the young people who jumped over them wore garlands of
flowers, especially of mugwort and vervain, and carried sprigs of larkspur in
their hands. They thought that such as looked at the fire holding a bit of
larkspur before their face would be troubled by no malady of the eyes
throughout the year. Further, it was customary at Wrzburg, in the sixteenth
century, for the bishop's followers to throw burning discs of wood into the
air from a mountain which overhangs the town. The discs were discharged by
means of flexible rods, and in their flight through the darkness presented the
appearance of fiery dragons.

Similarly in Swabia, lads and lasses, hand in hand, leap over the
midsummer bonfire, praying that the hemp may grow three ells high, and they
set fire to wheels of straw and send them rolling down the hill. Sometimes, as
the people sprang over the midsummer bonfire they cried out, Flax, flax! may
the flax this year grow seven ells high! At Rottenburg a rude effigy in human
form, called the Angelman, used to be enveloped in flowers and then burnt in
the midsummer fire by boys, who afterwards leaped over the glowing embers.

So in Baden the children collected fuel from house to house for the
midsummer bonfire on St. John's Day; and lads and lasses leaped over the fire
in couples. Here, as elsewhere, a close connexion was traced between these
bonfires and the harvest. In some places it was thought that those who leaped
over the fires would not suffer from backache at reaping. Sometimes, as the
young folk sprang over the flames, they cried, Grow, that the hemp may be
three ells high! This notion that the hemp or the corn would grow as high as
the flames blazed or as the people jumped over them, seems to have been
widespread in Baden. It was held that the parents of the young people who
bounded highest over the fire would have the most abundant harvest; and on the
other hand, if a man contributed nothing to the bonfire, it was imagined that
there would be no blessing on his crops, and that his hemp in particular would
never grow. At Edersleben, near Sangerhausen, a high pole was planted in the
ground and a tarbarrel was hung from it by a chain which reached to the
ground. The barrel was then set on fire and swung round the pole amid shouts
of joy.

In Denmark and Norway also midsummer fires were kindled on St. John's Eve
on roads, open spaces, and hills. People in Norway thought that the fires
banished sickness from among the cattle. Even yet the fires are said to be
lighted all over Norway on Midsummer Eve. They are kindled in order to keep
off the witches, who are said to be flying from all parts that night to the
Blocksberg, where the big witch lives. In Sweden the Eve of St. John (St.
Hans) is the most joyous night of the whole year. Throughout some parts of the
country, especially in the provinces of Bohus and Scania and in districts
bordering on Norway, it is celebrated by the frequent discharge of firearms
and by huge bonfires, formerly called Balder's Balefires (Balder's Balar),
which are kindled at dusk on hills and eminences and throw a glare of light
over the surrounding landscape. The people dance round the fires and leap over
or through them. In parts of Norrland on St. John's Eve the bonfires are lit
at the cross-roads. The fuel consists of nine different sorts of wood, and the
spectators cast into the flames a kind of toad-stool (Bran) in order to
counteract the power of the Trolls and other evil spirits, who are believed to
be abroad that night; for at that mystic season the mountains open and from
their cavernous depths the uncanny crew pours forth to dance and disport
themselves for a time. The peasants believe that should any of the Trolls be
in the vicinity they will show themselves; and if an animal, for example a he
or she goat, happens to be seen near the blazing, crackling pile, the peasants
are firmly persuaded that it is no other than the Evil One in person. Further,
it deserves to be remarked that in Sweden St. John's Eve is a festival of
water as well as of fire; for certain holy springs are then supposed to be
endowed with wonderful medicinal virtues, and many sick people resort to them
for the healing of their infirmities.

In Austria the midsummer customs and superstitions resemble those of
Germany. Thus in some parts of the Tyrol bonfires are kindled and burning
discs hurled into the air. In the lower valley of the Inn a tatterdemalion
effigy is carted about the village on Midsummer Day and then burned. He is
called the Lotter, which has been corrupted into Luther. At Ambras, one of
the villages where Martin Luther is thus burned in effigy, they say that if
you go through the village between eleven and twelve on St. John's Night and
wash yourself in three wells, you will see all who are to die in the following
year. At Gratz on St. John's Eve (the twenty-third of June) the common people
used to make a puppet called the Tatermann, which they dragged to the
bleaching ground, and pelted with burning besoms till it took fire. At Reutte,
in the Tyrol, people believed that the flax would grow as high as they leaped
over the midsummer bonfire, and they took pieces of charred wood from the fire
and stuck them in their flax-fields the same night, leaving them there till
the flax harvest had been got in. In Lower Austria bonfires are kindled on the
heights, and the boys caper round them, brandishing lighted torches drenched
in pitch. Whoever jumps thrice across the fire will not suffer from fever
within the year. Cart-wheels are often smeared with pitch, ignited, and sent
rolling and blazing down the hillsides.

All over Bohemia bonfires still burn on Midsummer Eve. In the afternoon
boys go about with handcarts from house to house collecting fuel and
threatening with evil consequences the curmudgeons who refuse them a dole.
Sometimes the young men fell a tall straight fir in the woods and set it up on
a height, where the girls deck it with nosegays, wreaths of leaves, and red
ribbons. Then brushwood is piled about it, and at nightfall the whole is set
on fire. While the flames break out, the young men climb the tree and fetch
down the wreaths which the girls had placed on it. After that lads and lasses
stand on opposite sides of the fire and look at one another through the
wreaths to see whether they will be true to each other and marry within the
year. Also the girls throw the wreaths across the flames to the men, and woe
to the awkward swain who fails to catch the wreath thrown him by his
sweetheart. When the blaze has died down, each couple takes hands and leaps
thrice across the fire. He or she who does so will be free from ague
throughout the year, and the flax will grow as high as the young folks leap. A
girl who sees nine bonfires on Midsummer Eve will marry before the year is
out. The singed wreaths are carried home and carefully preserved throughout
the year. During thunderstorms a bit of the wreath is burned on the hearth
with a prayer; some of it is given to kine that are sick or calving, and some
of it serves to fumigate house and cattle-stall, that man and beast may keep
hale and well. Sometimes an old cart-wheel is smeared with resin, ignited, and
sent rolling down the hill. Often the boys collect all the worn-out besoms
they can get hold of, dip them in pitch, and having set them on fire wave them
about or throw them high into the air. Or they rush down the hillside in
troops, brandishing the flaming brooms and shouting. The stumps of the brooms
and embers from the fire are preserved and stuck in cabbage gardens to protect
the cabbages from caterpillars and gnats. Some people insert charred sticks
and ashes from the midsummer bonfire in their sown fields and meadows, in
their gardens and the roofs of their houses, as a talisman against lightning
and foul weather; or they fancy that the ashes placed in the roof will prevent
any fire from breaking out in the house. In some districts they crown or gird
themselves with mugwort while the midsummer fire is burning, for this is
supposed to be a protection against ghosts, witches, and sickness; in
particular, a wreath of mugwort is a sure preventive of sore eyes. Sometimes
the girls look at the bonfires through garlands of wild flowers, praying the
fire to strengthen their eyes and eyelids. She who does this thrice will have
no sore eyes all that year. In some parts of Bohemia they used to drive the
cows through the midsummer fire to guard them against witchcraft.

In Slavonic countries, also, the midsummer festival is celebrated with
similar rites. We have already seen that in Russia on the Eve of St. John
young men and maidens jump over a bonfire in couples carrying a straw effigy
of Kupalo in their arms. In some parts of Russia an image of Kupalo is burnt
or thrown into a stream on St. John's Night. Again, in some districts of
Russia the young folk wear garlands of flowers and girdles of holy herbs when
they spring through the smoke or flames; and sometimes they drive the cattle
also through the fire in order to protect the animals against wizards and
witches, who are then ravenous after milk. In Little Russia a stake is driven
into the ground on St. John's Night, wrapt in straw, and set on fire. As the
flames rise the peasant women throw birchen boughs into them, saying, May my
flax be as tall as this bough! In Ruthenia the bonfires are lighted by a
flame procured by the friction of wood. While the elders of the party are
engaged in thus churning the fire, the rest maintain a respectful silence;
but when the flame bursts from the wood, they break forth into joyous songs.
As soon as the bonfires are kindled, the young people take hands and leap in
pairs through the smoke, if not through the flames; and after that the cattle
in their turn are driven through the fire.

In many parts of Prussia and Lithuania great fires are kindled on
Midsummer Eve. All the heights are ablaze with them, as far as the eye can
see. The fires are supposed to be a protection against witchcraft, thunder,
hail, and cattle disease, especially if next morning the cattle are driven
over the places where the fires burned. Above all, the bonfires ensure the
farmer against the arts of witches, who try to steal the milk from his cows by
charms and spells. That is why next morning you may see the young fellows who
lit the bonfire going from house to house and receiving jugfuls of milk. And
for the same reason they stick burs and mugwort on the gate or the hedge
through which the cows go to pasture, because that is supposed to be a
preservative against witchcraft. In Masuren, a district of Eastern Prussia
inhabited by a branch of the Polish family, it is the custom on the evening of
Midsummer Day to put out all the fires in the village. Then an oaken stake is
driven into the ground and a wheel is fixed on it as on an axle. This wheel
the villagers, working by relays, cause to revolve with great rapidity till
fire is produced by friction. Every one takes home a lighted brand from the
new fire and with it rekindles the fire on the domestic hearth. In Serbia on
Midsummer Eve herdsmen light torches of birch bark and march round the
sheepfolds and cattle-stalls; then they climb the hills and there allow the
torches to burn out.

Among the Magyars in Hungary the midsummer fire-festival is marked by the
same features that meet us in so many parts of Europe. On Midsummer Eve in
many places it is customary to kindle bonfires on heights and to leap over
them, and from the manner in which the young people leap the bystanders
predict whether they will marry soon. On this day also many Hungarian
swineherds make fire by rotating a wheel round a wooden axle wrapt in hemp,
and through the fire thus made they drive their pigs to preserve them from
sickness.

The Esthonians of Russia, who, like the Magyars, belong to the great
Turanian family of mankind, also celebrate the summer solstice in the usual
way. They think that the St. John's fire keeps witches from the cattle, and
they say that he who does not come to it will have his barley full of thistles
and his oats full of weeds. In the Esthonian island of Oesel, while they throw
fuel into the midsummer fire, they call out, Weeds to the fire, flax to the
field, or they fling three billets into the flames, saying, Flax grow long!
And they take charred sticks from the bonfire home with them and keep them to
make the cattle thrive. In some parts of the island the bonfire is formed by
piling brushwood and other combustibles round a tree, at the top of which a
flag flies. Whoever succeeds in knocking down the flag with a pole before it
begins to burn will have good luck. Formerly the festivities lasted till
daybreak, and ended in scenes of debauchery which looked doubly hideous by the
growing light of a summer morning.

When we pass from the east to the west of Europe we still find the summer
solstice celebrated with rites of the same general character. Down to about
the middle of the nineteenth century the custom of lighting bonfires at
midsummer prevailed so commonly in France that there was hardly a town or a
village, we are told, where they were not kindled. People danced round and
leaped over them, and took charred sticks from the bonfire home with them to
protect the houses against lightning, conflagrations, and spells.

In Brittany, apparently, the custom of the midsummer bonfires is kept up
to this day. When the flames have died down, the whole assembly kneels round
about the bonfire and an old man prays aloud. Then they all rise and march
thrice round the fire; at the third turn they stop and every one picks up a
pebble and throws it on the burning pile. After that they disperse. In
Brittany and Berry it is believed that a girl who dances round nine midsummer
bonfires will marry within the year. In the valley of the Orne the custom was
to kindle the bonfire just at the moment when the sun was about to dip below
the horizon; and the peasants drove their cattle through the fires to protect
them against witchcraft, especially against the spells of witches and wizards
who attempted to steal the milk and butter. At Jumiges in Normandy, down to
the first half of the nineteenth century, the midsummer festival was marked by
certain singular features which bore the stamp of a very high antiquity. Every
year, on the twenty-third of June, the Eve of St. John, the Brotherhood of the
Green Wolf chose a new chief or master, who had always to be taken from the
hamlet of Conihout. On being elected, the new head of the brotherhood assumed
the title of the Green Wolf, and donned a peculiar costume consisting of a
long green mantle and a very tall green hat of a conical shape and without a
brim. Thus arrayed he stalked solemnly at the head of the brothers, chanting
the hymn of St. John, the crucifix and holy banner leading the way, to a place
called Chouquet. Here the procession was met by the priest, precentors, and
choir, who conducted the brotherhood to the parish church. After hearing mass
the company adjourned to the house of the Green Wolf, where a simple repast
was served up to them. At night a bonfire was kindled to the sound of
hand-bells by a young man and a young woman, both decked with flowers. Then
the Green Wolf and his brothers, with their hoods down on their shoulders and
holding each other by the hand, ran round the fire after the man who had been
chosen to be the Green Wolf of the following year. Though only the first and
the last man of the chain had a hand free, their business was to surround and
seize thrice the future Green Wolf, who in his efforts to escape belaboured
the brothers with a long wand which he carried. When at last they succeeded in
catching him they carried him to the burning pile and made as if they would
throw him on it. This ceremony over, they returned to the house of the Green
Wolf, where a supper, still of the most meagre fare, was set before them. Up
till midnight a sort of religious solemnity prevailed. But at the stroke of
twelve all this was changed. Constraint gave way to license; pious hymns were
replaced by Bacchanalian ditties, and the shrill quavering notes of the
village fiddle hardly rose above the roar of voices that went up from the
merry brotherhood of the Green Wolf. Next day, the twenty-fourth of June or
Midsummer Day, was celebrated by the same personages with the same noisy
gaiety. One of the ceremonies consisted in parading, to the sound of musketry,
an enormous loaf of consecrated bread, which, rising in tiers, was surmounted
by a pyramid of verdure adorned with ribbons. After that the holy hand-bells,
deposited on the step of the altar, were entrusted as insignia of office to
the man who was to be the Green Wolf next year.

At Chteau-Thierry, in the department of Aisne, the custom of lighting
bonfires and dancing round them at the midsummer festival of St. John lasted
down to about 1850; the fires were kindled especially when June had been
rainy, and the people thought that the lighting of the bonfires would cause
the rain to cease. In the Vosges it is still customary to kindle bonfires upon
the hill-tops on Midsummer Eve; the people believe that the fires help to
preserve the fruits of the earth and ensure good crops.

Bonfires were lit in almost all the hamlets of Poitou on the Eve of St.
John. People marched round them thrice, carrying a branch of walnut in their
hand. Shepherdesses and children passed sprigs of mullein (verbascum) and
nuts across the flames; the nuts were supposed to cure toothache, and the
mullein to protect the cattle from sickness and sorcery. When the fire died
down people took some of the ashes home with them, either to keep them in the
house as a preservative against thunder or to scatter them on the fields for
the purpose of destroying corn-cockles and darnel. In Poitou also it used to
be customary on the Eve of St. John to trundle a blazing wheel wrapt in straw
over the fields to fertilise them.

In the mountainous part of Comminges, a province of Southern France, the
midsummer fire is made by splitting open the trunk of a tall tree, stuffing
the crevice with shavings, and igniting the whole. A garland of flowers is
fastened to the top of the tree, and at the moment when the fire is lighted
the man who was last married has to climb up a ladder and bring the flowers
down. In the flat parts of the same district the materials of the midsummer
bonfires consist of fuel piled in the usual way; but they must be put together
by men who have been married since the last midsummer festival, and each of
these benedicts is obliged to lay a wreath of flowers on the top of the pile.

In Provence the midsummer fires are still popular. Children go from door
to door begging for fuel, and they are seldom sent empty away. Formerly the
priest, the mayor, and the aldermen used to walk in procession to the bonfire,
and even deigned to light it; after which the assembly marched thrice round
the burning pile. At Aix a nominal king, chosen from among the youth for his
skill in shooting at a popinjay, presided over the midsummer festival. He
selected his own officers, and escorted by a brilliant train marched to the
bonfire, kindled it, and was the first to dance round it. Next day he
distributed largesse to his followers. His reign lasted a year, during which
he enjoyed certain privileges. He was allowed to attend the mass celebrated by
the commander of the Knights of St. John on St. John's Day; the right of
hunting was accorded to him, and soldiers might not be quartered in his house.
At Marseilles also on this day one of the guilds chose a king of the badache
or double axe; but it does not appear that he kindled the bonfire, which is
said to have been lighted with great ceremony by the prfet and other
authorities.

In Belgium the custom of kindling the midsummer bonfires has long
disappeared from the great cities, but it is still kept up in rural districts
and small towns. In that country the Eve of St. Peter's Day (the twenty-ninth
of June) is celebrated by bonfires and dances exactly like those which
commemorate St. John's Eve. Some people say that the fires of St. Peter, like
those of St. John, are lighted in order to drive away dragons. In French
Flanders down to 1789 a straw figure representing a man was always burned in
the midsummer bonfire, and the figure of a woman was burned on St. Peter's
Day, the twenty-ninth of June. In Belgium people jump over the midsummer
bonfires as a preventive of colic, and they keep the ashes at home to hinder
fire from breaking out.

The custom of lighting bonfires at midsummer has been observed in many
parts of our own country, and as usual people danced round and leaped over
them. In Wales three or nine different kinds of wood and charred faggots
carefully preserved from the last midsummer were deemed necessary to build the
bonfire, which was generally done on rising ground. In the Vale of Glamorgan a
cart-wheel swathed in straw used to be ignited and sent rolling down the hill.
If it kept alight all the way down and blazed for a long time, an abundant
harvest was expected. On Midsummer Eve people in the Isle of Man were wont to
light fires to the windward of every field, so that the smoke might pass over
the corn; and they folded their cattle and carried blazing furze or gorse
round them several times. In Ireland cattle, especially barren cattle, were
driven through the midsummer fires, and the ashes were thrown on the fields to
fertilise them, or live coals were carried into them to prevent blight. In
Scotland the traces of midsummer fires are few; but at that season in the
highlands of Perthshire cowherds used to go round their folds thrice, in the
direction of the sun, with lighted torches. This they did to purify the flocks
and herds and to keep them from falling sick.

The practice of lighting bonfires on Midsummer Eve and dancing or leaping
over them is, or was till recently, common all over Spain and in some parts of
Italy and Sicily. In Malta great fires are kindled in the streets and squares
of the towns and villages on the Eve of St. John (Midsummer Eve); formerly the
Grand Master of the Order of St. John used on that evening to set fire to a
heap of pitch barrels placed in front of the sacred Hospital. In Greece, too,
the custom of kindling fires on St. John's Eve and jumping over them is said
to be still universal. One reason assigned for it is a wish to escape from the
fleas. According to another account, the women cry out, as they leap over the
fire, I leave my sins behind me. In Lesbos the fires on St. John's Eve are
usually lighted by threes, and the people spring thrice over them, each with a
stone on his head, saying, I jump the hare's fire, my head a stone! In
Calymnos the midsummer fire is supposed to ensure abundance in the coming year
as well as deliverance from fleas. The people dance round the fires singing,
with stones on their heads, and then jump over the blaze or the glowing
embers. When the fire is burning low, they throw the stones into it; and when
it is nearly out, they make crosses on their legs and then go straightway and
bathe in the sea.

The custom of kindling bonfires on Midsummer Day or on Midsummer Eve is
widely spread among the Mohammedan peoples of North Africa, particularly in
Morocco and Algeria; it is common both to the Berbers and to many of the Arabs
or Arabic-speaking tribes. In these countries Midsummer Day (the twenty-fourth
of June, Old Style) is called l'nsara. The fires are lit in the courtyards,
at cross-roads, in the fields, and sometimes on the threshing-floors. Plants
which in burning give out a thick smoke and an aromatic smell are much sought
after for fuel on these occasions; among the plants used for the purpose are
giant-fennel, thyme, rue, chervil-seed, camomile, geranium, and penny-royal.
People expose themselves, and especially their children, to the smoke, and
drive it towards the orchards and the crops. Also they leap across the fires;
in some places everybody ought to repeat the leap seven times. Moreover they
take burning brands from the fires and carry them through the houses in order
to fumigate them. They pass things through the fire, and bring the sick into
contact with it, while they utter prayers for their recovery. The ashes of the
bonfires are also reputed to possess beneficial properties; hence in some
places people rub their hair or their bodies with them. In some places they
think that by leaping over the fires they rid themselves of all misfortune,
and that childless couples thereby obtain offspring. Berbers of the Rif
province, in Northern Morocco, make great use of fires at midsummer for the
good of themselves, their cattle, and their fruit-trees. They jump over the
bonfires in the belief that this will preserve them in good health, and they
light fires under fruit-trees to keep the fruit from falling untimely. And
they imagine that by rubbing a paste of the ashes on their hair they prevent
the hair from falling off their heads. In all these Moroccan customs, we are
told, the beneficial effect is attributed wholly to the smoke, which is
supposed to be endued with a magical quality that removes misfortune from men,
animals, fruit-trees and crops.

The celebration of a midsummer festival by Mohammedan peoples is
particularly remarkable, because the Mohammedan calendar, being purely lunar
and uncorrected by intercalation, necessarily takes no note of festivals which
occupy fixed points in the solar year; all strictly Mohammedan feasts, being
pinned to the moon, slide gradually with that luminary through the whole
period of the earth's revolution about the sun. This fact of itself seems to
prove that among the Mohammedan peoples of Northern Africa, as among the
Christian peoples of Europe, the midsummer festival is quite independent of
the religion which the people publicly profess, and is a relic of a far older
paganism.

6. The Hallowe'en Fires

FROM THE FOREGOING survey we may infer that among the heathen forefathers of
the European peoples the most popular and widespread fire-festival of the year
was the great celebration of Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day. The coincidence
of the festival with the summer solstice can hardly be accidental. Rather we
must suppose that our pagan ancestors purposely timed the ceremony of fire on
earth to coincide with the arrival of the sun at the highest point of his
course in the sky. If that was so, it follows that the old founders of the
midsummer rites had observed the solstices or turning-points of the sun's
apparent path in the sky, and that they accordingly regulated their festal
calendar to some extent by astronomical considerations.

But while this may be regarded as fairly certain for what we may call the
aborigines throughout a large part of the continent, it appears not to have
been true of the Celtic peoples who inhabited the Land's End of Europe, the
islands and promontories that stretch out into the Atlantic Ocean on the
North-West. The principal fire-festivals of the Celts, which have survived,
though in a restricted area and with diminished pomp, to modern times and even
to our own day, were seemingly timed without any reference to the position of
the sun in the heaven. They were two in number, and fell at an interval of six
months, one being celebrated on the eve of May Day and the other on Allhallow
Even or Hallowe'en, as it is now commonly called, that is, on the thirty-first
of October, the day preceding All Saints' or Allhallows' Day. These dates
coincide with none of the four great hinges on which the solar year revolves,
to wit, the solstices and the equinoxes. Nor do they agree with the principal
seasons of the agricultural year, the sowing in spring and the reaping in
autumn. For when May Day comes, the seed has long been committed to the earth;
and when November opens, the harvest has long been reaped and garnered, the
fields lie bare, the fruit-trees are stripped, and even the yellow leaves are
fast fluttering to the ground. Yet the first of May and the first of November
mark turning-points of the year in Europe; the one ushers in the genial heat
and the rich vegetation of summer, the other heralds, if it does not share,
the cold and barrenness of winter. Now these particular points of the year, as
has been well pointed out by a learned and ingenious writer, while they are of
comparatively little moment to the European husbandman, do deeply concern the
European herdsman; for it is on the approach of summer that he drives his
cattle out into the open to crop the fresh grass, and it is on the approach of
winter that he leads them back to the safety and shelter of the stall.
Accordingly it seems not improbable that the Celtic bisection of the year into
two halves at the beginning of May and the beginning of November dates from a
time when the Celts were mainly a pastoral people, dependent for their
subsistence on their herds, and when accordingly the great epochs of the year
for them were the days on which the cattle went forth from the homestead in
early summer and returned to it again in early winter. Even in Central Europe,
remote from the region now occupied by the Celts, a similar bisection of the
year may be clearly traced in the great popularity, on the one hand, of May
Day and its Eve (Walpurgis Night), and, on the other hand, of the Feast of All
Souls at the beginning of November, which under a thin Christian cloak
conceals an ancient pagan festival of the dead. Hence we may conjecture that
everywhere throughout Europe the celestial division of the year according to
the solstices was preceded by what we may call a terrestrial division of the
year according to the beginning of summer and the beginning of winter.

Be that as it may, the two great Celtic festivals of May Day and the first
of November or, to be more accurate, the Eves of these two days, closely
resemble each other in the manner of their celebration and in the
superstitions associated with them, and alike, by the antique character
impressed upon both, betray a remote and purely pagan origin. The festival of
May Day or Beltane, as the Celts called it, which ushered in summer, has
already been described; it remains to give some account of the corresponding
festival of Hallowe'en, which announced the arrival of winter.

Of the two feasts Hallowe'en was perhaps of old the more important, since
the Celts would seem to have dated the beginning of the year from it rather
than from Beltane. In the Isle of Man, one of the fortresses in which the
Celtic language and lore longest held out against the siege of the Saxon
invaders, the first of November, Old Style, has been regarded as New Year's
day down to recent times. Thus Manx mummers used to go round on Hallowe'en
(Old Style), singing, in the Manx language, a sort of Hogmanay song which
began To-night is New Year's Night, Hogunnaa! In ancient Ireland, a new
fire used to be kindled every year on Hallowe'en or the Eve of Samhain, and
from this sacred flame all the fires in Ireland were rekindled. Such a custom
points strongly to Samhain or All Saints' Day (the first of November) as New
Year's Day; since the annual kindling of a new fire takes place most naturally
at the beginning of the year, in order that the blessed influence of the fresh
fire may last throughout the whole period of twelve months. Another
confirmation of the view that the Celts dated their year from the first of
November is furnished by the manifold modes of divination which were commonly
resorted to by Celtic peoples on Hallowe'en for the purpose of ascertaining
their destiny, especially their fortune in the coming year; for when could
these devices for prying into the future be more reasonably put in practice
than at the beginning of the year? As a season of omens and auguries
Hallowe'en seems to have far surpassed Beltane in the imagination of the
Celts; from which we may with some probability infer that they reckoned their
year from Hallowe'en rather than Beltane. Another circumstance of great moment
which points to the same conclusion is the association of the dead with
Hallowe'en. Not only among the Celts but throughout Europe, Hallowe'en, the
night which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to have been of
old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit
their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort
themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour
by their affectionate kinsfolk. It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the
approach of winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare
fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of the cottage with its
familiar fireside. Did not the lowing kine then troop back from the summer
pastures in the forests and on the hills to be fed and cared for in the
stalls, while the bleak winds whistled among the swaying boughs and the
snow-drifts deepened in the hollows? and could the good-man and the good-wife
deny to the spirits of their dead the welcome which they gave to the cows?

But it is not only the souls of the departed who are supposed to be
hovering unseen on the day when autumn to winter resigns the pale year.
Witches then speed on their errands of mischief, some sweeping through the air
on besoms, others galloping along the roads on tabby-cats, which for that
evening are turned into coal-black steeds. The fairies, too, are all let
loose, and hobgoblins of every sort roam freely about.

Yet while a glamour of mystery and awe has always clung to Hallowe'en in
the minds of the Celtic peasantry, the popular celebration of the festival has
been, at least in modern times, by no means of a prevailing gloomy cast; on
the contrary it has been attended by picturesque features and merry pastimes,
which rendered it the gayest night of all the year. Amongst the things which
in the Highlands of Scotland contributed to invest the festival with a
romantic beauty were the bonfires which used to blaze at frequent intervals on
the heights. On the last day of autumn children gathered ferns, tar-barrels,
the long thin stalks called ginisg, and everything suitable for a bonfire.
These were placed in a heap on some eminence near the house, and in the
evening set fire to. The fires were called Samhnagan. There was one for each
house, and it was an object of ambition who should have the biggest. Whole
districts were brilliant with bonfires, and their glare across a Highland
loch, and from many eminences, formed an exceedingly picturesque scene. Like
the Beltane fires on the first of May, the Hallowe'en bonfires seem to have
been kindled most commonly in the Perthshire Highlands. In the parish of
Callander they still blazed down to near the end of the eighteenth century.
When the fire had died down, the ashes were carefully collected in the form of
a circle, and a stone was put in, near the circumference, for every person of
the several families interested in the bonfire. Next morning, if any of these
stones was found to be displaced or injured, the people made sure that the
person represented by it was fey or devoted, and that he could not live
twelve months from that day. At Balquhidder down to the latter part of the
nineteenth century each household kindled its bonfire at Hallowe'en, but the
custom was chiefly observed by children. The fires were lighted on any high
knoll near the house; there was no dancing round them. Hallowe'en fires were
also lighted in some districts of the north-east of Scotland, such as Buchan.
Villagers and farmers alike must have their fire. In the villages the boys
went from house to house and begged a peat from each householder, usually with
the words, Ge's a peat t' burn the witches. When they had collected enough
peats, they piled them in a heap, together with straw, furze, and other
combustible materials, and set the whole on fire. Then each of the youths, one
after another, laid himself down on the ground as near to the fire as he could
without being scorched, and thus lying allowed the smoke to roll over him. The
others ran through the smoke and jumped over their prostrate comrade. When the
heap was burned down, they scattered the ashes, vying with each other who
should scatter them most.

In the northern part of Wales it used to be customary for every family to
make a great bonfire called Coel Coeth on Hallowe'en. The fire was kindled
on the most conspicuous spot near the house; and when it had nearly gone out
every one threw into the ashes a white stone, which he had first marked. Then
having said their prayers round the fire, they went to bed. Next morning, as
soon as they were up, they came to search out the stones, and if any one of
them was found to be missing, they had a notion that the person who threw it
would die before he saw another Hallowe'en. According to Sir John Rhys, the
habit of celebrating Hallowe'en by lighting bonfires on the hills is perhaps
not yet extinct in Wales, and men still living can remember how the people who
assisted at the bonfires would wait till the last spark was out and then would
suddenly take to their heels, shouting at the top of their voices, The
cropped black sow seize the hindmost! The saying, as Sir John Rhys justly
remarks, implies that originally one of the company became a victim in dead
earnest. Down to the present time the saying is current in Carnarvonshire,
where allusions to the cutty black sow are still occasionally made to frighten
children. We can now understand why in Lower Brittany every person throws a
pebble into the midsummer bonfire. Doubtless there, as in Wales and the
Highlands of Scotland, omens of life and death have at one time or other been
drawn from the position and state of the pebbles on the morning of All Saints'
Day. The custom, thus found among three separate branches of the Celtic stock,
probably dates from a period before their dispersion, or at least from a time
when alien races had not yet driven home the wedges of separation between
them.

In the Isle of Man also, another Celtic country, Hallowe'en was celebrated
down to modern times by the kindling of fires, accompanied with all the usual
ceremonies designed to prevent the baneful influence of fairies and witches.

7. The Midwinter Fires

IF THE HEATHEN of ancient Europe celebrated, as we have good reason to
believe, the season of Midsummer with a great festival of fire, of which the
traces have survived in many places down to our own time, it is natural to
suppose that they should have observed with similar rites the corresponding
season of Midwinter; for Midsummer and Midwinter, or, in more technical
language, the summer solstice and the winter solstice, are the two great
turningpoints in the sun's apparent course through the sky, and from the
standpoint of primitive man nothing might seem more appropriate than to kindle
fires on earth at the two moments when the fire and heat of the great luminary
in heaven begin to wane or to wax.

In modern Christendom the ancient fire-festival of the winter solstice
appears to survive, or to have survived down to recent years, in the old
custom of the Yule log, clog, or block, as it was variously called in England.
The custom was widespread in Europe, but seems to have flourished especially
in England, France, and among the South Slavs; at least the fullest accounts
of the custom come from these quarters. That the Yule log was only the winter
counterpart of the midsummer bonfire, kindled within doors instead of in the
open air on account of the cold and inclement weather of the season, was
pointed out long ago by our English antiquary John Brand; and the view is
supported by the many quaint superstitions attaching to the Yule log,
superstitions which have no apparent connexion with Christianity but carry
their heathen origin plainly stamped upon them. But while the two solstitial
celebrations were both festivals of fire, the necessity or desirability of
holding the winter celebration within doors lent it the character of a private
or domestic festivity, which contrasts strongly with the publicity of the
summer celebration, at which the people gathered on some open space or
conspicuous height, kindled a huge bonfire in common, and danced and made
merry round it together.

Down to about the middle of the nineteenth century the old rite of the
Yule log was kept up in some parts of Central Germany. Thus in the valleys of
the Sieg and Lahn the Yule log, a heavy block of oak, was fitted into the
floor of the hearth, where, though it glowed under the fire, it was hardly
reduced to ashes within a year. When the new log was laid next year, the
remains of the old one were ground to powder and strewed over the fields
during the Twelve Nights, which was supposed to promote the growth of the
crops. In some villages of Westphalia, the practice was to withdraw the Yule
log (Christbrand) from the fire so soon as it was slightly charred; it was
then kept carefully to be replaced on the fire whenever a thunderstorm broke,
because the people believed that lightning would not strike a house in which
the Yule log was smouldering. In other villages of Westphalia the old custom
was to tie up the Yule log in the last sheaf cut at harvest.

In several provinces of France, and particularly in Provence, the custom
of the Yule log or trfoir, as it was called in many places, was long
observed. A French writer of the seventeenth century denounces as
superstitious the belief that a log called the trfoir or Christmas brand,
which you put on the fire for the first time on Christmas Eve and continue to
put on the fire for a little while every day till Twelfth Night, can, if kept
under the bed, protect the house for a whole year from fire and thunder; that
it can prevent the inmates from having chilblains on their heels in winter;
that it can cure the cattle of many maladies; that if a piece of it be steeped
in the water which cows drink it helps them to calve; and lastly that if the
ashes of the log be strewn on the fields it can save the wheat from mildew.

In some parts of Flanders and France the remains of the Yule log were
regularly kept in the house under a bed as a protection against thunder and
lightning; in Berry, when thunder was heard, a member of the family used to
take a piece of the log and throw it on the fire, which was believed to avert
the lightning. Again, in Perigord, the charcoal and ashes are carefully
collected and kept for healing swollen glands; the part of the trunk which has
not been burnt in the fire is used by ploughmen to make the wedge for their
plough, because they allege that it causes the seeds to thrive better; and the
women keep pieces of it till Twelfth Night for the sake of their chickens.
Some people imagine that they will have as many chickens as there are sparks
that fly out of the brands of the log when they shake them; and others place
the extinct brands under the bed to drive away vermin. In various parts of
France the charred log is thought to guard the house against sorcery as well
as against lightning.

In England the customs and beliefs concerning the Yule log used to be
similar. On the night of Christmas Eve, says the antiquary John Brand, our
ancestors were wont to light up candles of an uncommon size, called Christmas
Candles, and lay a log of wood upon the fire, called a Yule-clog or
Christmas-block, to illuminate the house, and, as it were, to turn night into
day. The old custom was to light the Yule log with a fragment of its
predecessor, which had been kept throughout the year for the purpose; where it
was so kept, the fiend could do no mischief. The remains of the log were also
supposed to guard the house against fire and lightning.

To this day the ritual of bringing in the Yule log is observed with much
solemnity among the Southern Slavs, especially the Serbians. The log is
usually a block of oak, but sometimes of olive or beech. They seem to think
that they will have as many calves, lambs, pigs, and kids as they strike
sparks out of the burning log. Some people carry a piece of the log out to the
fields to protect them against hail. In Albania down to recent years it was a
common custom to burn a Yule log at Christmas, and the ashes of the fire were
scattered on the fields to make them fertile. The Huzuls, a Slavonic people of
the Carpathians, kindle fire by the friction of wood on Christmas Eve (Old
Style, the fifth of January) and keep it burning till Twelfth Night.

It is remarkable how common the belief appears to have been that the
remains of the Yule log, if kept throughout the year, had power to protect the
house against fire and especially against lightning. As the Yule log was
frequently of oak, it seems possible that this belief may be a relic of the
old Aryan creed which associated the oak-tree with the god of thunder. Whether
the curative and fertilising virtues ascribed to the ashes of the Yule log,
which are supposed to heal cattle as well as men, to enable cows to calve, and
to promote the fruitfulness of the earth, may not be derived from the same
ancient source, is a question which deserves to be considered.

8. The Need-fire

THE FIRE-FESTIVALS hitherto described are all celebrated periodically at
certain stated times of the year. But besides these regularly recurring
celebrations the peasants in many parts of Europe have been wont from time
immemorial to resort to a ritual of fire at irregular intervals in seasons of
distress and calamity, above all when their cattle were attacked by epidemic
disease. No account of the popular European fire-festivals would be complete
without some notice of these remarkable rites, which have all the greater
claim on our attention because they may perhaps be regarded as the source and
origin of all the other fire-festivals; certainly they must date from a very
remote antiquity. The general name by which they are known among the Teutonic
peoples is need-fire. Sometimes the need-fire was known as wild fire, to
distinguish it no doubt from the tame fire produced by more ordinary methods.
Among Slavonic peoples it is called living fire.

The history of the custom can be traced from the early Middle Ages, when
it was denounced by the Church as a heathen superstition, down to the first
half of the nineteenth century, when it was still occasionally practised in
various parts of Germany, England, Scotland, and Ireland. Among Slavonic
peoples it appears to have lingered even longer. The usual occasion for
performing the rite was an outbreak of plague or cattle-disease, for which the
need-fire was believed to be an infallible remedy. The animals which were
subjected to it included cows, pigs, horses, and sometimes geese. As a
necessary preliminary to the kindling of the need-fire all other fires and
lights in the neighbourhood were extinguished, so that not so much as a spark
remained alight; for so long as even a night-light burned in a house, it was
imagined that the need-fire could not kindle. Sometimes it was deemed enough
to put out all the fires in the village; but sometimes the extinction extended
to neighbouring villages or to a whole parish. In some parts of the Highlands
of Scotland the rule was that all householders who dwelt within the two
nearest running streams should put out their lights and fires on the day
appointed. Usually the need-fire was made in the open air, but in some parts
of Serbia it was kindled in a dark room; sometimes the place was a cross-way
or a hollow in a road. In the Highlands of Scotland the proper places for
performing the rite seem to have been knolls or small islands in rivers.

The regular method of producing the need-fire was by the friction of two
pieces of wood; it might not be struck by flint and steel. Very exceptionally
among some South Slavs we read of a practice of kindling a need-fire by
striking a piece of iron on an anvil. Where the wood to be employed is
specified, it is generally said to be oak; but on the Lower Rhine the fire was
kindled by the friction of oak-wood or fir-wood. In Slavonic countries we hear
of poplar, pear, and cornel wood being used for the purpose. Often the
material is simply described as two pieces of dry wood. Sometimes nine
different kinds of wood were deemed necessary, but rather perhaps to be burned
in the bonfire than to be rubbed together for the production of the need-fire.
The particular mode of kindling the need-fire varied in different districts; a
very common one was this. Two poles were driven into the ground about a foot
and a half from each other. Each pole had in the side facing the other a
socket into which a smooth cross-piece or roller was fitted. The sockets were
stuffed with linen, and the two ends of the roller were rammed tightly into
the sockets. To make it more inflammable the roller was often coated with tar.
A rope was then wound round the roller, and the free ends at both sides were
gripped by two or more persons, who by pulling the rope to and fro caused the
roller to revolve rapidly, till through the friction the linen in the sockets
took fire. The sparks were immediately caught in tow or oakum and waved about
in a circle until they burst into a bright glow, when straw was applied to it,
and the blazing straw used to kindle the fuel that had been stacked to make
the bonfire. Often a wheel, sometimes a cart-wheel or even a spinning-wheel,
formed part of the mechanism; in Aberdeenshire it was called the muckle
wheel; in the island of Mull the wheel was turned from east to west over nine
spindles of oak-wood. Sometimes we are merely told that two wooden planks were
rubbed together. Sometimes it was prescribed that the cart-wheel used for
fire-making and the axle on which it turned should both be new. Similarly it
was said that the rope which turned the roller should be new; if possible it
should be woven of strands taken from a gallows rope with which people had
been hanged, but this was a counsel of perfection rather than a strict
necessity.

Various rules were also laid down as to the kind of persons who might or
should make the need-fire. Sometimes it was said that the two persons who
pulled the rope which twirled the roller should always be brothers or at least
bear the same baptismal name; sometimes it was deemed sufficient if they were
both chaste young men. In some villages of Brunswick people thought that if
everybody who lent a hand in kindling the need-fire did not bear the same
Christian name, they would labour in vain. In Silesia the tree employed to
produce the need-fire used to be felled by a pair of twin brothers. In the
western islands of Scotland the fire was kindled by eighty-one married men,
who rubbed two great planks against each other, working in relays of nine; in
North Uist the nine times nine who made the fire were all first-begotten sons,
but we are not told whether they were married or single. Among the Serbians
the need-fire is sometimes kindled by a boy and girl between eleven and
fourteen years of age, who work stark naked in a dark room; sometimes it is
made by an old man and an old woman also in the dark. In Bulgaria, too, the
makers of need-fire strip themselves of their clothes; in Caithness they
divested themselves of all kinds of metal. If after long rubbing of the wood
no fire was elicited they concluded that some fire must still be burning in
the village; so a strict search was made from house to house, any fire that
might be found was put out, and the negligent householder punished or
upbraided; indeed a heavy fine might be inflicted on him.

When the need-fire was at last kindled, the bonfire was lit from it, and
as soon as the blaze had somewhat died down, the sick animals were driven over
the glowing embers, sometimes in a regular order of precedence, first the
pigs, next the cows, and last of all the horses. Sometimes they were driven
twice or thrice through the smoke and flames, so that occasionally some of
them were scorched to death. As soon as all the beasts were through, the young
folk would rush wildly at the ashes and cinders, sprinkling and blackening
each other with them; those who were most blackened would march in triumph
behind the cattle into the village and would not wash themselves for a long
time. From the bonfire people carried live embers home and used them to
rekindle the fires in their houses. These brands, after being extinguished in
water, they sometimes put in the managers at which the cattle fed, and kept
them there for a while. Ashes from the need-fire were also strewed on the
fields to protect the crops against vermin; sometimes they were taken home to
be employed as remedies in sickness, being sprinkled on the ailing part or
mixed in water and drunk by the patient. In the western islands of Scotland
and on the adjoining mainland, as soon as the fire on the domestic hearth had
been rekindled from the need-fire a pot full of water was set on it, and the
water thus heated was afterwards sprinkled upon the people infected with the
plague or upon the cattle that were tainted by the murrain. Special virtue was
attributed to the smoke of the bonfire; in Sweden fruit-trees and nets were
fumigated with it, in order that the trees might bear fruit and the nets catch
fish. In the Highlands of Scotland the need-fire was accounted a sovereign
remedy for witchcraft. In the island of Mull, when the fire was kindled as a
cure for the murrain, we hear of the rite being accompanied by the sacrifice
of a sick heifer, which was cut in pieces and burnt. Slavonian and Bulgarian
peasants conceive cattle-plague as a foul fiend or vampyre which can be kept
at bay by interposing a barrier of fire between it and the herds. A similar
conception may perhaps have originally everywhere underlain the use of the
need-fire as a remedy for the murrain. It appears that in some parts of
Germany the people did not wait for an outbreak of cattleplague, but, taking
time by the forelock, kindled a need-fire annually to prevent the calamity.
Similarly in Poland the peasants are said to kindle fires in the village
streets every year on St. Rochus's day and to drive the cattle thrice through
them in order to protect the beasts against the murrain. We have seen that in
the Hebrides the cattle were in like manner driven annually round the Beltane
fires for the same purpose. In some cantons of Switzerland children still
kindle a need-fire by the friction of wood for the sake of dispelling a mist.

Chapter 63. The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals.

1. On the Fire-festivals in general

THE FOREGOING survey of the popular fire-festivals of Europe suggests some
general observations. In the first place we can hardly help being struck by
the resemblance which the ceremonies bear to each other, at whatever time of
the year and in whatever part of Europe they are celebrated. The custom of
kindling great bonfires, leaping over them, and driving cattle through or
round them would seem to have been practically universal throughout Europe,
and the same may be said of the processions or races with blazing torches
round fields, orchards, pastures, or cattle-stalls. Less widespread are the
customs of hurling lighted discs into the air and trundling a burning wheel
down hill. The ceremonial of the Yule log is distinguished from that of the
other fire-festivals by the privacy and domesticity which characterise it; but
this distinction may well be due simply to the rough weather of midwinter,
which is apt not only to render a public assembly in the open air
disagreeable, but also at any moment to defeat the object of the assembly by
extinguishing the all-important fire under a downpour of rain or a fall of
snow. Apart from these local or seasonal differences, the general resemblance
between the fire-festivals at all times of the year and in all places is
tolerably close. And as the ceremonies themselves resemble each other, so do
the benefits which the people expect to reap from them. Whether applied in the
form of bonfires blazing at fixed points, or of torches carried about from
place to place, or of embers and ashes taken from the smouldering heap of
fuel, the fire is believed to promote the growth of the crops and the welfare
of man and beast, either positively by stimulating them, or negatively by
averting the dangers and calamities which threaten them from such causes as
thunder and lightning, conflagration, blight, mildew, vermin, sterility,
disease, and not least of all witchcraft.

But we naturally ask, How did it come about that benefits so great and
manifold were supposed to be attained by means so simple? In what way did
people imagine that they could procure so many goods or avoid so many ills by
the application of fire and smoke, of embers and ashes? Two different
explanations of the fire-festivals have been given by modern enquirers. On the
one hand it has been held that they are sun-charms or magical ceremonies
intended, on the principle of imitative magic, to ensure a needful supply of
sunshine for men, animals, and plants by kindling fires which mimic on earth
the great source of light and heat in the sky. This was the view of Wilhelm
Mannhardt. It may be called the solar theory. On the other hand it has been
maintained that the ceremonial fires have no necessary reference to the sun
but are simply purificatory in intention, being designed to burn up and
destroy all harmful influences, whether these are conceived in a personal form
as witches, demons, and monsters, or in an impersonal form as a sort of
pervading taint or corruption of the air. This is the view of Dr. Edward
Westermarck and apparently of Professor Eugen Mogk. It may be called the
purificatory theory. Obviously the two theories postulate two very different
conceptions of the fire which plays the principal part in the rites. On the
one view, the fire, like sunshine in our latitude, is a genial creative power
which fosters the growth of plants and the development of all that makes for
health and happiness; on the other view, the fire is a fierce destructive
power which blasts and consumes all the noxious elements, whether spiritual or
material, that menace the life of men, of animals, and of plants. According to
the one theory the fire is a stimulant, according to the other it is a
disinfectant; on the one view its virtue is positive, on the other it is
negative.

Yet the two explanations, different as they are in the character which
they attribute to the fire, are perhaps not wholly irreconcilable. If we
assume that the fires kindled at these festivals were primarily intended to
imitate the sun's light and heat, may we not regard the purificatory and
disinfecting qualities, which popular opinion certainly appears to have
ascribed to them, as attributes derived directly from the purificatory and
disinfecting qualities of sunshine? In this way we might conclude that, while
the imitation of sunshine in these ceremonies was primary and original, the
purification attributed to them was secondary and derivative. Such a
conclusion, occupying an intermediate position between the two opposing
theories and recognising an element of truth in both of them, was adopted by
me in earlier editions of this work; but in the meantime Dr. Westermarck has
argued powerfully in favour of the purificatory theory alone, and I am bound
to say that his arguments carry great weight, and that on a fuller review of
the facts the balance of evidence seems to me to incline decidedly in his
favour. However, the case is not so clear as to justify us in dismissing the
solar theory without discussion, and accordingly I propose to adduce the
considerations which tell for it before proceeding to notice those which tell
against it. A theory which had the support of so learned and sagacious an
investigator as W. Mannhardt is entitled to a respectful hearing.

Chapter 63. The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals.

2. The Solar Theory ofthe Fire-festivals
IN AN EARLIER part of this work we saw that savages resort to charms for
making sunshine, and it would be no wonder if primitive man in Europe did the
same. Indeed, when we consider the cold and cloudy climate of Europe during a
great part of the year, we shall find it natural that sun-charms should have
played a much more prominent part among the superstitious practices of
European peoples than among those of savages who live nearer the equator and
who consequently are apt to get in the course of nature more sunshine than
they want. This view of the festivals may be supported by various arguments
drawn partly from their dates, partly from the nature of the rites, and partly
from the influence which they are believed to exert upon the weather and on
vegetation.

First, in regard to the dates of the festivals it can be no mere accident
that two of the most important and widely spread of the festivals are timed to
coincide more or less exactly with the summer and winter solstices, that is,
with the two turning-points in the sun's apparent course in the sky when he
reaches respectively his highest and his lowest elevation at noon. Indeed with
respect to the midwinter celebration of Christmas we are not left to
conjecture; we know from the express testimony of the ancients that it was
instituted by the church to supersede an old heathen festival of the birth of
the sun, which was apparently conceived to be born again on the shortest day
of the year, after which his light and heat were seen to grow till they
attained their full maturity at midsummer. Therefore it is no very far-fetched
conjecture to suppose that the Yule log, which figures so prominently in the
popular celebration of Christmas, was originally designed to help the
labouring sun of midwinter to rekindle his seemingly expiring light.

Not only the date of some of the festivals but the manner of their
celebration suggests a conscious imitation of the sun. The custom of rolling a
burning wheel down a hill, which is often observed at these ceremonies, might
well pass for an imitation of the sun's course in the sky, and the imitation
would be especially appropriate on Midsummer Day when the sun's annual
declension begins. Indeed the custom has been thus interpreted by some of
those who have recorded it. Not less graphic, it may be said, is the mimicry
of his apparent revolution by swinging a burning tar-barrel round a pole.
Again, the common practice of throwing fiery discs, sometimes expressly said
to be shaped like suns, into the air at the festivals may well be a piece of
imitative magic. In these, as in so many cases, the magic force may be
supposed to take effect through mimicry or sympathy: by imitating the desired
result you actually produce it: by counterfeiting the sun's progress through
the heavens you really help the luminary to pursue his celestial journey with
punctuality and despatch. The name fire of heaven, by which the midsummer
fire is sometimes popularly known, clearly implies a consciousness of a
connexion between the earthly and the heavenly flame.

Again, the manner in which the fire appears to have been originally
kindled on these occasions has been alleged in support of the view that it was
intended to be a mock-sun. As some scholars have perceived, it is highly
probable that at the periodic festivals in former times fire was universally
obtained by the friction of two pieces of wood. It is still so procured in
some places both at the Easter and the Midsummer festivals, and it is
expressly said to have been formerly so procured at the Beltane celebration
both in Scotland and Wales. But what makes it nearly certain that this was
once the invariable mode of kindling the fire at these periodic festivals is
the analogy of the needfire, which has almost always been produced by the
friction of wood, and sometimes by the revolution of a wheel. It is a
plausible conjecture that the wheel employed for this purpose represents the
sun, and if the fires at the regularly recurring celebrations were formerly
produced in the same way, it might be regarded as a confirmation of the view
that they were originally sun-charms. In point of fact there is, as Kuhn has
indicated, some evidence to show that the midsummer fire was originally thus
produced. We have seen that many Hungarian swine-herds make fire on Midsummer
Eve by rotating a wheel round a wooden axle wrapt in hemp, and that they drive
their pigs through the fire thus made. At Obermedlingen, in Swabia, the fire
of heaven, as it was called, was made on St. Vitus's Day (the fifteenth of
June) by igniting a cart-wheel, which, smeared with pitch and plaited with
straw, was fastened on a pole twelve feet high, the top of the pole being
inserted in the nave of the wheel. This fire was made on the summit of a
mountain, and as the flame ascended, the people uttered a set form of words,
with eyes and arms directed heavenward. Here the fixing of a wheel on a pole
and igniting it suggests that originally the fire was produced, as in the case
of the need-fire, by the revolution of a wheel. The day on which the ceremony
takes place (the fifteenth of June) is near midsummer; and we have seen that
in Masuren fire is, or used to be, actually made on Midsummer Day by turning a
wheel rapidly about an oaken pole, though it is not said that the new fire so
obtained is used to light a bonfire. However, we must bear in mind that in all
such cases the use of a wheel may be merely a mechanical device to facilitate
the operation of fire-making by increasing the friction; it need not have any
symbolical significance.

Further, the influence which these fires, whether periodic or occasional,
are supposed to exert on the weather and vegetation may be cited in support of
the view that they are sun-charms, since the effects ascribed to them resemble
those of sunshine. Thus, the French belief that in a rainy June the lighting
of the midsummer bonfires will cause the rain to cease appears to assume that
they can disperse the dark clouds and make the sun to break out in radiant
glory, drying the wet earth and dripping trees. Similarly the use of the
need-fire by Swiss children on foggy days for the purpose of clearing away the
mist may very naturally be interpreted as a sun-charm. In the Vosges Mountains
the people believe that the midsummer fires help to preserve the fruits of the
earth and ensure good crops. In Sweden the warmth or cold of the coming season
is inferred from the direction in which the flames of the May Day bonfire are
blown; if they blow to the south, it will be warm, if to the north, cold. No
doubt at present the direction of the flames is regarded merely as an augury
of the weather, not as a mode of influencing it. But we may be pretty sure
that this is one of the cases in which magic has dwindled into divination. So
in the Eifel Mountains, when the smoke blows towards the corn-fields, this is
an omen that the harvest will be abundant. But the older view may have been
not merely that the smoke and flames prognosticated, but that they actually
produced an abundant harvest, the heat of the flames acting like sunshine on
the corn. Perhaps it was with this view that people in the Isle of Man lit
fires to windward of their fields in order that the smoke might blow over
them. So in South Africa, about the month of April, the Matabeles light huge
fires to the windward of their gardens, their idea being that the smoke, by
passing over the crops, will assist the ripening of them. Among the Zulus
also medicine is burned on a fire placed to windward of the garden, the
fumigation which the plants in consequence receive being held to improve the
crop. Again, the idea of our European peasants that the corn will grow well
as far as the blaze of the bonfire is visible, may be interpreted as a remnant
of the belief in the quickening and fertilising power of the bonfires. The
same belief, it may be argued, reappears in the notion that embers taken from
the bonfires and inserted in the fields will promote the growth of the crops,
and it may be thought to underlie the customs of sowing flax-seed in the
direction in which the flames blow, of mixing the ashes of the bonfire with
the seed-corn at sowing, of scattering the ashes by themselves over the field
to fertilise it, and of incorporating a piece of the Yule log in the plough to
make the seeds thrive. The opinion that the flax or hemp will grow as high as
the flames rise or the people leap over them belongs clearly to the same class
of ideas. Again, at Konz, on the banks of the Moselle, if the blazing wheel
which was trundled down the hillside reached the river without being
extinguished, this was hailed as a proof that the vintage would be abundant.
So firmly was this belief held that the successful performance of the ceremony
entitled the villagers to levy a tax upon the owners of the neighbouring
vineyards. Here the unextinguished wheel might be taken to represent an
unclouded sun, which in turn would portend an abundant vintage. So the
waggon-load of white wine which the villagers received from the vineyards
round about might pass for a payment for the sunshine which they had procured
for the grapes. Similarly in the Vale of Glamorgan a blazing wheel used to be
trundled down hill on Midsummer Day, and if the fire were extinguished before
the wheel reached the foot of the hill, the people expected a bad harvest;
whereas if the wheel kept alight all the way down and continued to blaze for a
long time, the farmers looked forward to heavy crops that summer. Here, again,
it is natural to suppose that the rustic mind traced a direct connexion
between the fire of the wheel and the fire of the sun, on which the crops are
dependent.

But in popular belief the quickening and fertilising influence of the
bonfires is not limited to the vegetable world; it extends also to animals.
This plainly appears from the Irish custom of driving barren cattle through
the midsummer fires, from the French belief that the Yule log steeped in water
helps cows to calve, from the French and Serbian notion that there will be as
many chickens, calves, lambs, and kids as there are sparks struck out of the
Yule log, from the French custom of putting the ashes of the bonfires in the
fowls' nests to make the hens lay eggs, and from the German practice of mixing
the ashes of the bonfires with the drink of cattle in order to make the
animals thrive. Further, there are clear indications that even human fecundity
is supposed to be promoted by the genial heat of the fires. In Morocco the
people think that childless couples can obtain offspring by leaping over the
midsummer bonfire. It is an Irish belief that a girl who jumps thrice over the
midsummer bonfire will soon marry and become the mother of many children; in
Flanders women leap over the midsummer fires to ensure an easy delivery; in
various parts of France they think that if a girl dances round nine fires she
will be sure to marry within the year, and in Bohemia they fancy that she will
do so if she merely sees nine of the bonfires. On the other hand, in Lechrain
people say that if a young man and woman, leaping over the midsummer fire
together, escape unsmirched, the young woman will not become a mother within
twelve months; the flames have not touched and fertilised her. In parts of
Switzerland and France the lighting of the Yule log is accompanied by a prayer
that the women may bear children, the she-goats bring forth kids, and the ewes
drop lambs. The rule observed in some places that the bonfires should be
kindled by the person who was last married seems to belong to the same class
of ideas, whether it be that such a person is supposed to receive from, or to
impart to, the fire a generative and fertilising influence. The common
practice of lovers leaping over the fires hand in hand may very well have
originated in a notion that thereby their marriage would be blessed with
offspring; and the like motive would explain the custom which obliges couples
married within the year to dance to the light of torches. And the scenes of
profligacy which appear to have marked the midsummer celebration among the
Esthonians, as they once marked the celebration of May Day among ourselves,
may have sprung, not from the mere licence of holiday-makers, but from a crude
notion that such orgies were justified, if not required, by some mysterious
bond which linked the life of man to the courses of the heavens at this
turning-point of the year.

At the festivals which we are considering the custom of kindling bonfires
is commonly associated with a custom of carrying lighted torches about the
fields, the orchards, the pastures, the flocks and the herds; and we can
hardly doubt that the two customs are only two different ways of attaining the
same object, namely, the benefits which are believed to flow from the fire,
whether it be stationary or portable. Accordingly if we accept the solar
theory of the bonfires, we seem bound to apply it also to the torches; we must
suppose that the practice of marching or running with blazing torches about
the country is simply a means of diffusing far and wide the genial influence
of the sunshine of which these flickering flames are a feeble imitation. In
favour of this view it may be said that sometimes the torches are carried
about the fields for the express purpose of fertilising them, and with the
same intention live coals from the bonfires are sometimes placed in the fields
to prevent blight. On the eve of Twelfth Day in Normandy men, women, and
children run wildly through the fields and orchards with lighted torches,
which they wave about the branches and dash against the trunks of the
fruit-trees for the sake of burning the moss and driving away the moles and
field-mice. They believe that the ceremony fulfills the double object of
exorcising the vermin whose multiplication would be a real calamity, and of
imparting fecundity to the trees, the fields, and even the cattle; and they
imagine that the more the ceremony is prolonged, the greater will be the crop
of fruit next autumn. In Bohemia they say that the corn will grow as high as
they fling the blazing besoms into the air. Nor are such notions confined to
Europe. In Corea, a few days before the New Year festival, the eunuchs of the
palace swing burning torches, chanting invocations the while, and this is
supposed to ensure bountiful crops for the next season. The custom of
trundling a burning wheel over the fields, which used to be observed in Poitou
for the express purpose of fertilising them, may be thought to embody the same
idea in a still more graphic form; since in this way the mock-sun itself, not
merely its light and heat represented by torches, is made actually to pass
over the ground which is to receive its quickening and kindly influence. Once
more, the custom of carrying lighted brands round cattle is plainly equivalent
to driving the animals through the bonfire; and if the bonfire is a suncharm,
the torches must be so also.

3. The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals

THUS far we have considered what may be said for the theory that at the
European fire-festivals the fire is kindled as a charm to ensure an abundant
supply of sunshine for man and beast, for corn and fruits. It remains to
consider what may be said against this theory and in favour of the view that
in these rites fire is employed not as a creative but as a cleansing agent,
which purifies men, animals, and plants by burning up and consuming the
noxious elements, whether material or spiritual, which menace all living
things with disease and death.

First, then, it is to be observed that the people who practise the
fire-customs appear never to allege the solar theory in explanation of them,
while on the contrary they do frequently and emphatically put forward the
purificatory theory. This is a strong argument in favour of the purificatory
and against the solar theory; for the popular explanation of a popular custom
is never to be rejected except for grave cause. And in the present case there
seems to be no adequate reason for rejecting it. The conception of fire as a
destructive agent, which can be turned to account for the consumption of evil
things, is so simple and obvious that it could hardly escape the minds even of
the rude peasantry with whom these festivals originated. On the other hand the
conception of fire as an emanation of the sun, or at all events as linked to
it by a bond of physical sympathy, is far less simple and obvious; and though
the use of fire as a charm to produce sunshine appears to be undeniable,
nevertheless in attempting to explain popular customs we should never have
recourse to a more recondite idea when a simpler one lies to hand and is
supported by the explicit testimony of the people themselves. Now in the case
of the fire-festivals the destructive aspect of fire is one upon which the
people dwell again and again; and it is highly significant that the great evil
against which the fire is directed appears to be witchcraft. Again and again
we are told that the fires are intended to burn or repel the witches; and the
intention is sometimes graphically expressed by burning an effigy of a witch
in the fire. Hence, when we remember the great hold which the dread of
witchcraft has had on the popular European mind in all ages, we may suspect
that the primary intention of all these fire-festivals was simply to destroy
or at all events get rid of the witches, who were regarded as the causes of
nearly all the misfortunes and calamities that befall men, their cattle, and
their crops.

This suspicion is confirmed when we examine the evils for which the
bonfires and torches were supposed to provide a remedy. Foremost, perhaps,
among these evils we may reckon the diseases of cattle; and of all the ills
that witches are believed to work there is probably none which is so
constantly insisted on as the harm they do to the herds, particularly by
stealing the milk from the cows. Now it is significant that the need-fire,
which may perhaps be regarded as the parent of the periodic fire-festivals, is
kindled above all as a remedy for a murrain or other disease of cattle; and
the circumstance suggests, what on general grounds seems probable, that the
custom of kindling the need-fire goes back to a time when the ancestors of the
European peoples subsisted chiefly on the products of their herds, and when
agriculture as yet played a subordinate part in their lives. Witches and
wolves are the two great foes still dreaded by the herdsman in many parts of
Europe; and we need not wonder that he should resort to fire as a powerful
means of banning them both. Among Slavonic peoples it appears that the foes
whom the need-fire is designed to combat are not so much living witches as
vampyres and other evil spirits, and the ceremony aims rather at repelling
these baleful beings than at actually consuming them in the flames. But for
our present purpose these distinctions are immaterial. The important thing to
observe is that among the Slavs the need-fire, which is probably the original
of all the ceremonial fires now under consideration, is not a sun-charm, but
clearly and unmistakably nothing but a means of protecting man and beast
against the attacks of maleficent creatures, whom the peasant thinks to burn
or scare by the heat of the fire, just as he might burn or scare wild animals.

Again, the bonfires are often supposed to protect the fields against hail
and the homestead against thunder and lightning. But both hail and
thunderstorms are frequently thought to be caused by witches; hence the fire
which bans the witches necessarily serves at the same time as a talisman
against hail, thunder, and lightning. Further, brands taken from the bonfires
are commonly kept in the houses to guard them against conflagration; and
though this may perhaps be done on the principle of homoeopathic magic, one
fire being thought to act as a preventive of another, it is also possible that
the intention may be to keep witch-incendiaries at bay. Again, people leap
over the bonfires as a preventive of colic, and look at the flames steadily in
order to preserve their eyes in good health; and both colic and sore eyes are
in Germany, and probably elsewhere, set down to the machinations of witches.
Once more, to leap over the midsummer fires or to circumambulate them is
thought to prevent a person from feeling pains in his back at reaping; and in
Germany such pains are called witch-shots and ascribed to witchcraft.

But if the bonfires and torches of the fire-festivals are to be regarded
primarily as weapons directed against witches and wizards, it becomes probable
that the same explanation applies not only to the flaming discs which are
hurled into the air, but also to the burning wheels which are rolled down hill
on these occasions; discs and wheels, we may suppose, are alike intended to
burn the witches who hover invisible in the air or haunt unseen the fields,
the orchards, and the vineyards on the hillside. Certainly witches are
constantly thought to ride through the air on broomsticks or other equally
convenient vehicles; and if they do so, how can you get at them so effectually
as by hurling lighted missiles, whether discs, torches, or besoms, after them
as they flit past overhead in the gloom? The South Slavonian peasant believes
that witches ride in the dark hail-clouds; so he shoots at the clouds to bring
down the hags, while he curses them, saying, Curse, curse Herodias, thy
mother is a heathen, damned of God and fettered through the Redeemer's blood.
Also he brings out a pot of glowing charcoal on which he has thrown holy oil,
laurel leaves, and wormwood to make a smoke. The fumes are supposed to ascend
to the clouds and stupefy the witches, so that they tumble down to earth. And
in order that they may not fall soft, but may hurt themselves very much, the
yokel hastily brings out a chair and tilts it bottom up so that the witch in
falling may break her legs on the legs of the chair. Worse than that, he
cruelly lays scythes, bill-hooks, and other formidable weapons edge upwards so
as to cut and mangle the poor wretches when they drop plump upon them from the
clouds.

On this view the fertility supposed to follow the application of fire in
the form of bonfires, torches, discs, rolling wheels, and so forth, is not
conceived as resulting directly from an increase of solar heat which the fire
has magically generated; it is merely an indirect result obtained by freeing
the reproductive powers of plants and animals from the fatal obstruction of
witchcraft. And what is true of the reproduction of plants and animals may
hold good also of the fertility of the human sexes. The bonfires are supposed
to promote marriage and to procure offspring for childless couples. This happy
effect need not flow directly from any quickening or fertilising energy in the
fire; it may follow indirectly from the power of the fire to remove those
obstacles which the spells of witches and wizards notoriously present to the
union of man and wife.

On the whole, then, the theory of the purificatory virtue of the
ceremonial fires appears more probable and more in accordance with the
evidence than the opposing theory of their connexion with the sun.

Chapter 64. The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires.

1. The Burning ofEffigies in the Fires

WE have still to ask, What is the meaning of burning effigies in the fire at
these festivals? After the preceding investigation the answer to the question
seems obvious. As the fires are often alleged to be kindled for the purpose of
burning the witches, and as the effigy burnt in them is sometimes called the
Witch, we might naturally be disposed to conclude that all the effigies
consumed in the flames on these occasions represent witches or warlocks, and
that the custom of burning them is merely a substitute for burning the wicked
men and women themselves, since on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative
magic you practically destroy the witch herself in destroying her effigy. On
the whole this explanation of the burning of straw figures in human shape at
the festivals is perhaps the most probable.

Yet it may be that this explanation does not apply to all the cases, and
that certain of them may admit and even require another interpretation. For
the effigies so burned, as I have already remarked, can hardly be separated
from the effigies of Death which are burned or otherwise destroyed in spring;
and grounds have been already given for regarding the so-called effigies of
Death as really representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.
Are the other effigies, which are burned in the spring and midsummer bonfires,
susceptible of the same explanation? It would seem so. For just as the
fragments of the so-called Death are stuck in the fields to make the crops
grow, so the charred embers of the figure burned in the spring bonfires are
sometimes laid on the fields in the belief that they will keep vermin from the
crop. Again, the rule that the last married bride must leap over the fire in
which the straw-man is burned on Shrove Tuesday, is probably intended to make
her fruitful. But, as we have seen, the power of blessing women with offspring
is a special attribute of tree-spirits; it is therefore a fair presumption
that the burning effigy over which the bride must leap is a representative of
the fertilising tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. This character of the
effigy, as representative of the spirit of vegetation, is almost unmistakable
when the figure is composed of an unthreshed sheaf of corn or is covered from
head to foot with flowers. Again, it is to be noted that, instead of a puppet,
trees, either living or felled, are sometimes burned both in the spring and
midsummer bonfires. Now, considering the frequency with which the tree-spirit
is represented in human shape, it is hardly rash to suppose that when
sometimes a tree and sometimes an effigy is burned in these fires, the effigy
and the tree are regarded as equivalent to each other, each being a
representative of the tree-spirit. This, again, is confirmed by observing,
first, that sometimes the effigy which is to be burned is carried about
simultaneously with a May-tree, the former being carried by the boys, the
latter by the girls; and, second, that the effigy is sometimes tied to a
living tree and burned with it. In these cases, we can scarcely doubt, the
tree-spirit is represented, as we have found it represented before, in
duplicate, both by the tree and by the effigy. That the true character of the
effigy as a representative of the beneficent spirit of vegetation should
sometimes be forgotten, is natural. The custom of burning a beneficent god is
too foreign to later modes of thought to escape misinterpretation. Naturally
enough the people who continued to burn his image came in time to identify it
as the effigy of persons, whom, on various grounds, they regarded with
aversion, such as Judas Iscariot, Luther, and a witch.

The general reasons for killing a god or his representative have been
examined in a preceding chapter. But when the god happens to be a deity of
vegetation, there are special reasons why he should die by fire. For light and
heat are necessary to vegetable growth; and, on the principle of sympathetic
magic, by subjecting the personal representative of vegetation to their
influence, you secure a supply of these necessaries for trees and crops. In
other words, by burning the spirit of vegetation in a fire which represents
the sun, you make sure that, for a time at least, vegetation shall have plenty
of sun. It may be objected that, if the intention is simply to secure enough
sunshine for vegetation, this end would be better attained, on the principles
of sympathetic magic, by merely passing the representative of vegetation
through the fire instead of burning him. In point of fact this is sometimes
done. In Russia, as we have seen, the straw figure of Kupalo is not burned in
the midsummer fire, but merely carried backwards and forwards across it. But,
for the reasons already given, it is necessary that the god should die; so
next day Kupalo is stripped of her ornaments and thrown into a stream. In this
Russian custom the passage of the image through the fire, if it is not simply
a purification, may possibly be a sun-charm; the killing of the god is a
separate act, and the mode of killing himby drowningis probably a
rain-charm. But usually people have not thought it necessary to draw this fine
distinction; for the various reasons already assigned, it is advantageous,
they think, to expose the god of vegetation to a considerable degree of heat,
and it is also advantageous to kill him, and they combine these advantages in
a rough-and-ready way by burning him.

2. The Burning of Men and Animals in the Fires

IN THE POPULAR customs connected with the fire-festivals of Europe there are
certain features which appear to point to a former practice of human
sacrifice. We have seen reasons for believing that in Europe living persons
have often acted as representatives of the tree-spirit and corn-spirit and
have suffered death as such. There is no reason, therefore, why they should
not have been burned, if any special advantages were likely to be attained by
putting them to death in that way. The consideration of human suffering is not
one which enters into the calculations of primitive man. Now, in the
fire-festivals which we are discussing, the pretence of burning people is
sometimes carried so far that it seems reasonable to regard it as a mitigated
survival of an older custom of actually burning them. Thus in Aachen, as we
saw, the man clad in peas-straw acts so cleverly that the children really
believe he is being burned. At Jumiges in Normandy the man clad all in green,
who bore the title of the Green Wolf, was pursued by his comrades, and when
they caught him they feigned to fling him upon the midsummer bonfire.
Similarly at the Beltane fires in Scotland the pretended victim was seized,
and a show made of throwing him into the flames, and for some time afterwards
people affected to speak of him as dead. Again, in the Hallowe'en bonfires of
Northeastern Scotland we may perhaps detect a similar pretence in the custom
observed by a lad of lying down as close to the fire as possible and allowing
the other lads to leap over him. The titular king at Aix, who reigned for a
year and danced the first dance round the midsummer bonfire, may perhaps in
days of old have discharged the less agreeable duty of serving as fuel for
that fire which in later times he only kindled. In the following customs
Mannhardt is probably right in recognising traces of an old custom of burning
a leaf-clad representative of the spirit of vegetation. At Wolfeck, in
Austria, on Midsummer Day, a boy completely clad in green fir branches goes
from house to house, accompanied by a noisy crew, collecting wood for the
bonfire. As he gets the wood he sings:

Forest trees I want,
No sour milk for me,
But beer and wine,
So can the wood-man be jolly and gay.

In some parts of Bavaria, also, the boys who go from house to house
collecting fuel for the midsummer bonfire envelop one of their number from
head to foot in green branches of firs, and lead him by a rope through the
whole village. At Moosheim, in Wurtemberg, the festival of St. John's Fire
usually lasted for fourteen days, ending on the second Sunday after Midsummer
Day. On this last day the bonfire was left in charge of the children, while
the older people retired to a wood. Here they encased a young fellow in leaves
and twigs, who, thus disguised, went to the fire, scattered it, and trod it
out. All the people present fled at the sight of him.

But it seems possible to go farther than this. Of human sacrifices offered
on these occasions the most unequivocal traces, as we have seen, are those
which, about a hundred years ago, still lingered at the Beltane fires in the
Highlands of Scotland, that is, among a Celtic people who, situated in a
remote corner of Europe and almost completely isolated from foreign influence,
had till then conserved their old heathenism better perhaps than any other
people in the West of Europe. It is significant, therefore, that human
sacrifices by fire are known, on unquestionable evidence, to have been
systematically practised by the Celts. The earliest description of these
sacrifices has been bequeathed to us by Julius Caesar. As conqueror of the
hitherto independent Celts of Gaul, Caesar had ample opportunity of observing
the national Celtic religion and manners, while these were still fresh and
crisp from the native mint and had not yet been fused in the melting-pot of
Roman civilisation. With his own notes Caesar appears to have incorporated the
observations of a Greek explorer, by name Posidonius, who travelled in Gaul
about fifty years before Caesar carried the Roman arms to the English Channel.
The Greek geographer Strabo and the historian Diodorus seem also to have
derived their descriptions of the Celtic sacrifices from the work of
Posidonius, but independently of each other, and of Caesar, for each of the
three derivative accounts contain some details which are not to be found in
either of the others. By combining them, therefore, we can restore the
original account of Posidonius with some probability, and thus obtain a
picture of the sacrifices offered by the Celts of Gaul at the close of the
second century before our era. The following seem to have been the main
outlines of the custom. Condemned criminals were reserved by the Celts in
order to be sacrificed to the gods at a great festival which took place once
in every five years. The more there were of such victims, the greater was
believed to be the fertility of the land. If there were not enough criminals
to furnish victims, captives taken in war were immolated to supply the
deficiency. When the time came the victims were sacrificed by the Druids or
priests. Some they shot down with arrows, some they impaled, and some they
burned alive in the following manner. Colossal images of wicker-work or of
wood and grass were constructed; these were filled with live men, cattle, and
animals of other kinds; fire was then applied to the images, and they were
burned with their living contents.

Such were the great festivals held once every five years. But besides
these quinquennial festivals, celebrated on so grand a scale, and with,
apparently, so large an expenditure of human life, it seems reasonable to
suppose that festivals of the same sort, only on a lesser scale, were held
annually, and that from these annual festivals are lineally descended some at
least of the fire-festivals which, with their traces of human sacrifices, are
still celebrated year by year in many parts of Europe. The gigantic images
constructed of osiers or covered with grass in which the Druids enclosed their
victims remind us of the leafy framework in which the human representative of
the tree-spirit is still so often encased. Hence, seeing that the fertility of
the land was apparently supposed to depend upon the due performance of these
sacrifices, Mannhardt interpreted the Celtic victims, cased in osiers and
grass, as representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.

These wicker giants of the Druids seem to have had till lately, if not
down to the present time, their representatives at the spring and midsummer
festivals of modern Europe. At Douay, down at least to the early part of the
nineteenth century, a procession took place annually on the Sunday nearest to
the seventh of July. The great feature of the procession was a colossal
figure, some twenty or thirty feet high, made of osiers, and called the
giant, which was moved through the streets by means of rollers and ropes
worked by men who were enclosed within the effigy. The figure was armed as a
knight with lance and sword, helmet and shield. Behind him marched his wife
and his three children, all constructed of osiers on the same principle, but
on a smaller scale. At Dunkirk the procession of the giants took place on
Midsummer Day, the twenty-fourth of June. The festival, which was known as the
Follies of Dunkirk, attracted multitudes of spectators. The giant was a huge
figure of wicker-work, occasionally as much as forty-five feet high, dressed
in a long blue robe with gold stripes, which reached to his feet, concealing
the dozen or more men who made it dance and bob its head to the spectators.
This colossal effigy went by the name of Papa Reuss, and carried in its pocket
a bouncing infant of Brobdingnagian proportions. The rear was brought up by
the daughter of the giant, constructed, like her sire, of wicker-work, and
little, if at all, inferior to him in size. Most towns and even villages of
Brabant and Flanders have, or used to have, similar wicker giants which were
annually led about to the delight of the populace, who loved these grotesque
figures, spoke of them with patriotic enthusiasm, and never wearied of gazing
at them. At Antwerp the giant was so big that no gate in the city was large
enough to let him go through; hence he could not visit his brother giants in
neighbouring towns, as the other Belgian giants used to do on solemn
occasions.

In England artificial giants seem to have been a standing feature of the
midsummer festival. A writer of the sixteenth century speaks of Midsommer
pageants in London, where to make the people wonder, are set forth great and
uglie gyants marching as if they were alive, and armed at all points, but
within they are stuffed full of browne paper and tow, which the shrewd boyes,
underpeering, do guilefully discover, and turne to a greate derision. At
Chester the annual pageant on Midsummer Eve included the effigies of four
giants, with animals, hobby-horses, and other figures. At Coventry it appears
that the giant's wife figured beside the giant. At Burford, in Oxfordshire,
Midsummer Eve used to be celebrated with great jollity by the carrying of a
giant and a dragon up and down the town. The last survivor of these
perambulating English giants lingered at Salisbury, where an antiquary found
him mouldering to decay in the neglected hall of the Tailors' Company about
the year 1844. His bodily framework was a lath and hoop, like the one which
used to be worn by Jack-in-the-Green on May Day.

In these cases the giants merely figured in the processions. But sometimes
they were burned in the summer bonfires. Thus the people of the Rue aux Ours
in Paris used annually to make a great wicker-work figure, dressed as a
soldier, which they promenaded up and down the streets for several days, and
solemnly burned on the third of July, the crowd of spectators singing Salve
Regina. A personage who bore the title of king presided over the ceremony
with a lighted torch in his hand. The burning fragments of the image were
scattered among the people, who eagerly scrambled for them. The custom was
abolished in 1743. In Brie, Isle de France, a wicker-work giant, eighteen feet
high, was annually burned on Midsummer Eve.

Again, the Druidical custom of burning live animals, enclosed in
wicker-work, has its counterpart at the spring and midsummer festivals. At
Luchon in the Pyrenees on Midsummer Eve a hollow column, composed of strong
wicker-work, is raised to the height of about sixty feet in the centre of the
principal suburb, and interlaced with green foliage up to the very top; while
the most beautiful flowers and shrubs procurable are artistically arranged in
groups below, so as to form a sort of background to the scene. The column is
then filled with combustible materials, ready for ignition. At an appointed
hourabout 8 P.M.a grand procession, composed of the clergy, followed by
young men and maidens in holiday attire, pour forth from the town chanting
hymns, and take up their position around the column. Meanwhile, bonfires are
lit, with beautiful effect, in the surrounding hills. As many living serpents
as could be collected are now thrown into the column, which is set on fire at
the base by means of torches, armed with which about fifty boys and men dance
around with frantic gestures. The serpents, to avoid the flames, wriggle their
way to the top, whence they are seen lashing out laterally until finally
obliged to drop, their struggles for life giving rise to enthusiastic delight
among the surrounding spectators. This is a favourite annual ceremony for the
inhabitants of Luchon and its neighbourhood, and local tradition assigns it to
a heathen origin. In the midsummer fires formerly kindled on the Place de
Grve at Paris it was the custom to burn a basket, barrel, or sack full of
live cats, which was hung from a tall mast in the midst of the bonfire;
sometimes a fox was burned. The people collected the embers and ashes of the
fire and took them home, believing that they brought good luck. The French
kings often witnessed these spectacles and even lit the bonfire with their own
hands. In 1648 Louis the Fourteenth, crowned with a wreath of roses and
carrying a bunch of roses in his hand, kindled the fire, danced at it and
partook of the banquet afterwards in the town hall. But this was the last
occasion when a monarch presided at the midsummer bonfire in Paris. At Metz
midsummer fires were lighted with great pomp on the esplanade, and a dozen
cats, enclosed in wicker cages, were burned alive in them, to the amusement of
the people. Similarly at Gap, in the department of the High Alps, cats used to
be roasted over the midsummer bonfire. In Russia a white cock was sometimes
burned in the midsummer bonfire; in Meissen or Thuringia a horse's head used
to be thrown into it. Sometimes animals are burned in the spring bonfires. In
the Vosges cats were burned on Shrove Tuesday; in Alsace they were thrown into
the Easter bonfire. In the department of the Ardennes cats were flung into the
bonfires kindled on the first Sunday in Lent; sometimes, by a refinement of
cruelty, they were hung over the fire from the end of a pole and roasted
alive. The cat, which represented the devil, could never suffer enough.
While the creatures were perishing in the flames, the shepherds guarded their
flocks and forced them to leap over the fire, esteeming this an infallible
means of preserving them from disease and witchcraft. We have seen that
squirrels were sometimes burned in the Easter fire.

Thus it appears that the sacrificial rites of the Celts of ancient Gaul
can be traced in the popular festivals of modern Europe. Naturally it is in
France, or rather in the wider area comprised within the limits of ancient
Gaul, that these rites have left the clearest traces in the customs of burning
giants of wicker-work and animals enclosed in wicker-work or baskets. These
customs, it will have been remarked, are generally observed at or about
midsummer. From this we may infer that the original rites of which these are
the degenerate successors were solemnised at midsummer. This inference
harmonises with the conclusion suggested by a general survey of European
folk-custom, that the midsummer festival must on the whole have been the most
widely diffused and the most solemn of all the yearly festivals celebrated by
the primitive Aryans in Europe. At the same time we must bear in mind that
among the British Celts the chief fire-festivals of the year appear certainly
to have been those of Beltane (May Day) and Hallowe'en (the last day of
October); and this suggests a doubt whether the Celts of Gaul also may not
have celebrated their principal rites of fire, including their burnt
sacrifices of men and animals, at the beginning of May or the beginning of
November rather than at Midsummer.

We have still to ask, What is the meaning of such sacrifices? Why were men
and animals burnt to death at these festivals? If we are right in interpreting
the modern European fire-festivals as attempts to break the power of
witchcraft by burning or banning the witches and warlocks, it seems to follow
that we must explain the human sacrifices of the Celts in the same manner;
that is, we must suppose that the men whom the Druids burnt in wicker-work
images were condemned to death on the ground that they were witches or
wizards, and that the mode of execution by fire was chosen because burning
alive is deemed the surest mode of getting rid of these noxious and dangerous
beings. The same explanation would apply to the cattle and wild animals of
many kinds which the Celts burned along with the men. They, too, we may
conjecture, were supposed to be either under the spell of witchcraft or
actually to be the witches and wizards, who had transformed themselves into
animals for the purpose of prosecuting their infernal plots against the
welfare of their fellow-creatures. This conjecture is confirmed by the
observation that the victims most commonly burned in modern bonfires have been
cats, and that cats are precisely the animals into which, with the possible
exception of hares, witches were most usually supposed to transform
themselves. Again, we have seen that serpents and foxes used sometimes to be
burnt in the midsummer fires; and Welsh and German witches are reported to
have assumed the form both of foxes and serpents. In short, when we remember
the great variety of animals whose forms witches can assume at pleasure, it
seems easy on this hypothesis to account for the variety of living creatures
that have been burnt at festivals both in ancient Gaul and modern Europe; all
these victims, we may surmise, were doomed to the flames, not because they
were animals, but because they were believed to be witches who had taken the
shape of animals for their nefarious purposes. One advantage of explaining the
ancient Celtic sacrifices in this way is that it introduces, as it were, a
harmony and consistency into the treatment which Europe has meted out to
witches from the earliest times down to about two centuries ago, when the
growing influence of rationalism discredited the belief in witchcraft and put
a stop to the custom of burning witches. Be that as it may, we can now perhaps
understand why the Druids believed that the more persons they sentenced to
death, the greater would be the fertility of the land. To a modern reader the
connexion at first sight may not be obvious between the activity of the
hangman and the productivity of the earth. But a little reflection may satisfy
him that when the criminals who perish at the stake or on the gallows are
witches, whose delight it is to blight the crops of the farmer or to lay them
low under storms of hail, the execution of these wretches is really calculated
to ensure an abundant harvest by removing one of the principal causes which
paralyse the efforts and blast the hopes of the husbandman.

The Druidical sacrifices which we are considering were explained in a
different way by W. Mannhardt. He supposed that the men whom the Druids burned
in wicker-work images represented the spirits of vegetation, and accordingly
that the custom of burning them was a magical ceremony intended to secure the
necessary sunshine for the crops. Similarly, he seems to have inclined to the
view that the animals which used to be burnt in the bonfires represented the
cornspirit, which, as we saw in an earlier part of this work, is often
supposed to assume the shape of an animal. This theory is no doubt tenable,
and the great authority of W. Mannhardt entitles it to careful consideration.
I adopted it in former editions of this book; but on reconsideration it seems
to me on the whole to be less probable than the theory that the men and
animals burnt in the fires perished in the character of witches. This latter
view is strongly supported by the testimony of the people who celebrate the
fire-festivals, since a popular name for the custom of kindling the fires is
burning the witches, effigies of witches are sometimes consumed in the
flames, and the fires, their embers, or their ashes are supposed to furnish
protection against witchcraft. On the other hand there is little to show that
the effigies or the animals burnt in the fires are regarded by the people as
representatives of the vegetation-spirit, and that the bonfires are
sun-charms. With regard to serpents in particular, which used to be burnt in
the midsummer fire at Luchon, I am not aware of any certain evidence that in
Europe snakes have been regarded as embodiments of the tree-spirit or
corn-spirit, though in other parts of the world the conception appears to be
not unknown. Whereas the popular faith in the transformation of witches into
animals is so general and deeply rooted, and the fear of these uncanny beings
is so strong, that it seems safer to suppose that the cats and other animals
which were burnt in the fire suffered death as embodiments of witches than
that they perished as representatives of vegetation-spirits.

Chapter 65. Balder and the Mistletoe
THE READER may remember that the preceding account of the popular
fire-festivals of Europe was suggested by the myth of the Norse god Balder,
who is said to have been slain by a branch of mistletoe and burnt in a great
fire. We have now to enquire how far the customs which have been passed in
review help to shed light on the myth. In this enquiry it may be convenient to
begin with the mistletoe, the instrument of Balder's death.

From time immemorial the mistletoe has been the object of superstitious
veneration in Europe. It was worshipped by the Druids, as we learn from a
famous passage of Pliny. After enumerating the different kinds of mistletoe,
he proceeds: In treating of this subject, the admiration in which the
mistletoe is held throughout Gaul ought not to pass unnoticed. The Druids, for
so they call their wizards, esteem nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and
the tree on which it grows, provided only that the tree is an oak. But apart
from this they choose oak-woods for their sacred groves and perform no sacred
rites without oak-leaves; so that the very name of Druids may be regarded as a
Greek appellation derived from their worship of the oak. For they believe that
whatever grows on these trees is sent from heaven, and is a sign that the tree
has been chosen by the god himself. The mistletoe is very rarely to be met
with; but when it is found, they gather it with solemn ceremony. This they do
above all on the sixth day of the moon, from whence they date the beginnings
of their months, of their years, and of their thirty years' cycle, because by
the sixth day the moon has plenty of vigour and has not run half its course.
After due preparations have been made for a sacrifice and a feast under the
tree, they hail it as the universal healer and bring to the spot two white
bulls, whose horns have never been bound before. A priest clad in a white robe
climbs the tree and with a golden sickle cuts the mistletoe, which is caught
in a white cloth. Then they sacrifice the victims, praying that God may make
his own gift to prosper with those upon whom he has bestowed it. They believe
that a potion prepared from mistletoe will make barren animals to bring forth,
and that the plant is a remedy against all poison.

In another passage Pliny tells us that in medicine the mistletoe which
grows on an oak was esteemed the most efficacious, and that its efficacy was
by some superstitious people supposed to be increased if the plant was
gathered on the first day of the moon without the use of iron, and if when
gathered it was not allowed to touch the earth; oak-mistletoe thus obtained
was deemed a cure for epilepsy; carried about by women it assisted them to
conceive; and it healed ulcers most effectually, if only the sufferer chewed a
piece of the plant and laid another piece on the sore. Yet, again, he says
that mistletoe was supposed, like vinegar and an egg, to be an excellent means
of extinguishing a fire.

If in these latter passages Pliny refers, as he apparently does, to the
beliefs current among his contemporaries in Italy, it will follow that the
Druids and the Italians were to some extent agreed as to the valuable
properties possessed by mistletoe which grows on an oak; both of them deemed
it an effectual remedy for a number of ailments, and both of them ascribed to
it a quickening virtue, the Druids believing that a potion prepared from
mistletoe would fertilise barren cattle, and the Italians holding that a piece
of mistletoe carried about by a woman would help her to conceive a child.
Further, both peoples thought that if the plant were to exert its medicinal
properties it must be gathered in a certain way and at a certain time. It
might not be cut with iron, hence the Druids cut it with gold; and it might
not touch the earth, hence the Druids caught it in a white cloth. In choosing
the time for gathering the plant, both peoples were determined by observation
of the moon; only they differed as to the particular day of the moon, the
Italians preferring the first, and the Druids the sixth.

With these beliefs of the ancient Gauls and Italians as to the wonderful
medicinal properties of mistletoe we may compare the similar beliefs of the
modern Aino of Japan. We read that they, like many nations of the Northern
origin, hold the mistletoe in peculiar veneration. They look upon it as a
medicine, good in almost every disease, and it is sometimes taken in food and
at others separately as a decoction. The leaves are used in preference to the
berries, the latter being of too sticky a nature for general purposes . But
many, too, suppose this plant to have the power of making the gardens bear
plentifully. When used for this purpose, the leaves are cut up into fine
pieces, and, after having been prayed over, are sown with the millet and other
seeds, a little also being eaten with the food. Barren women have also been
known to eat the mistletoe, in order to be made to bear children. That
mistletoe which grows upon the willow is supposed to have the greatest
efficacy. This is because the willow is looked upon by them as being an
especially sacred tree.

Thus the Aino agree with the Druids in regarding mistletoe as a cure for
almost every disease, and they agree with the ancient Italians that applied to
women it helps them to bear children. Again, the Druidical notion that the
mistletoe was an all-healer or panacea may be compared with a notion
entertained by the Walos of Senegambia. These people have much veneration for
a sort of mistletoe, which they call tob; they carry leaves of it on their
persons when they go to war as a preservative against wounds, just as if the
leaves were real talismans (gris-gris). The French writer who records this
practice adds: Is it not very curious that the mistletoe should be in this
part of Africa what it was in the superstitions of the Gauls? This prejudice,
common to the two countries, may have the same origin; blacks and whites will
doubtless have seen, each of them for themselves, something supernatural in a
plant which grows and flourishes without having roots in the earth. May they
not have believed, in fact, that it was a plant fallen from the sky, a gift of
the divinity?

This suggestion as to the origin of the superstition is strongly confirmed
by the Druidical belief, reported by Pliny, that whatever grew on an oak was
sent from heaven and was a sign that the tree had been chosen by the god
himself. Such a belief explains why the Druids cut the mistletoe, not with a
common knife, but with a golden sickle, and why, when cut, it was not suffered
to touch the earth; probably they thought that the celestial plant would have
been profaned and its marvellous virtue lost by contact with the ground. With
the ritual observed by the Druids in cutting the mistletoe we may compare the
ritual which in Cambodia is prescribed in a similar case. They say that when
you see an orchid growing as a parasite on a tamarind tree, you should dress
in white, take a new earthenware pot, then climb the tree at noon, break off
the plant, put it in the pot and let the pot fall to the ground. After that
you make in the pot a decoction which confers the gift of invulnerability.
Thus just as in Africa the leaves of one parasitic plant are supposed to
render the wearer invulnerable, so in Cambodia a decoction made from another
parasitic plant is considered to render the same service to such as make use
of it, whether by drinking or washing. We may conjecture that in both places
the notion of invulnerability is suggested by the position of the plant,
which, occupying a place of comparative security above the ground, appears to
promise to its fortunate possessor a similar security from some of the ills
that beset the life of man on earth. We have already met with examples of the
store which the primitive mind sets on such vantage grounds.

Whatever may be the origin of these beliefs and practices concerning the
mistletoe, certain it is that some of them have their analogies in the
folk-lore of modern European peasants. For example, it is laid down as a rule
in various parts of Europe that mistletoe may not be cut in the ordinary way
but must be shot or knocked down with stones from the tree on which it is
growing. Thus, in the Swiss canton of Aargau all parasitic plants are
esteemed in a certain sense holy by the country folk, but most particularly so
the mistletoe growing on an oak. They ascribe great powers to it, but shrink
from cutting it off in the usual manner. Instead of that they procure it in
the following manner. When the sun is in Sagittarius and the moon is on the
wane, on the first, third, or fourth day before the new moon, one ought to
shoot down with an arrow the mistletoe of an oak and to catch it with the left
hand as it falls. Such mistletoe is a remedy for every ailment of children.
Here among the Swiss peasants, as among the Druids of old, special virtue is
ascribed to mistletoe which grows on an oak: it may not be cut in the usual
way: it must be caught as it falls to the ground; and it is esteemed a panacea
for all diseases, at least of children. In Sweden, also, it is a popular
superstition that if mistletoe is to possess its peculiar virtue, it must
either be shot down out of the oak or knocked down with stones. Similarly, so
late as the early part of the nineteenth century, people in Wales believed
that for the mistletoe to have any power, it must be shot or struck down with
stones off the tree where it grew.

Again, in respect of the healing virtues of mistletoe the opinion of
modern peasants, and even of the learned, has to some extent agreed with that
of the ancients. The Druids appear to have called the plant, or perhaps the
oak on which it grew, the all-healer; and all-healer is said to be still a
name of the mistletoe in the modern Celtic speech of Brittany, Wales, Ireland,
and Scotland. On St. John's morning (Midsummer morning) peasants of Piedmont
and Lombardy go out to search the oak-leaves for the oil of St. John, which
is supposed to heal all wounds made with cutting instruments. Originally,
perhaps, the oil of St. John was simply the mistletoe, or a decoction made
from it. For in Holstein the mistletoe, especially oak-mistletoe, is still
regarded as a panacea for green wounds and as a sure charm to secure success
in hunting; and at Lacaune, in the south of France, the old Druidical belief
in the mistletoe as an antidote to all poisons still survives among the
peasantry; they apply the plant to the stomach of the sufferer or give him a
decoction of it to drink. Again, the ancient belief that mistletoe is a cure
for epilepsy has survived in modern times not only among the ignorant but
among the learned. Thus in Sweden persons afflicted with the falling sickness
think they can ward off attacks of the malady by carrying about with them a
knife which has a handle of oak mistletoe; and in Germany for a similar
purpose pieces of mistletoe used to be hung round the necks of children. In
the French province of Bourbonnais a popular remedy for epilepsy is a
decoction of mistletoe which has been gathered on an oak on St. John's Day and
boiled with rye-flour. So at Bottesford in Lincolnshire a decoction of
mistletoe is supposed to be a palliative for this terrible disease. Indeed
mistletoe was recommended as a remedy for the falling sickness by high medical
authorities in England and Holland down to the eighteenth century.

However, the opinion of the medical profession as to the curative virtues
of mistletoe has undergone a radical alteration. Whereas the Druids thought
that mistletoe cured everything, modern doctors appear to think that it cures
nothing. If they are right, we must conclude that the ancient and widespread
faith in the medicinal virtue of mistletoe is a pure superstition based on
nothing better than the fanciful inferences which ignorance has drawn from the
parasitic nature of the plant, its position high up on the branch of a tree
seeming to protect it from the dangers to which plants and animals are subject
on the surface of the ground. From this point of view we can perhaps
understand why mistletoe has so long and so persistently been prescribed as a
cure for the falling sickness. As mistletoe cannot fall to the ground because
it is rooted on the branch of a tree high above the earth, it seems to follow
as a necessary consequence that an epileptic patient cannot possibly fall down
in a fit so long as he carries a piece of mistletoe in his pocket or a
decoction of mistletoe in his stomach. Such a train of reasoning would
probably be regarded even now as cogent by a large portion of the human
species.

Again the ancient Italian opinion that mistletoe extinguishes fire appears
to be shared by Swedish peasants, who hang up bunches of oak-mistletoe on the
ceilings of their rooms as a protection against harm in general and
conflagration in particular. A hint as to the way in which mistletoe comes to
be possessed of this property is furnished by the epithet thunder-bosom,
which people of the Aargau canton in Switzerland apply to the plant. For a
thunder-besom is a shaggy, bushy excrescence on branches of trees, which is
popularly believed to be produced by a flash of lightning; hence in Bohemia a
thunder-besom burnt in the fire protects the house against being struck by a
thunder-bolt. Being itself a product of lightning it naturally serves, on
homoeopathic principles, as a protection against lightning, in fact as a kind
of lightning-conductor. Hence the fire which mistletoe in Sweden is designed
especially to avert from houses may be fire kindled by lightning; though no
doubt the plant is equally effective against conflagration in general.

Again, mistletoe acts as a master-key as well as a lightning-conductor;
for it is said to open all locks. But perhaps the most precious of all the
virtues of mistletoe is that it affords efficient protection against sorcery
and witchcraft. That, no doubt, is the reason why in Austria a twig of
mistletoe is laid on the threshold as a preventive of nightmare; and it may be
the reason why in the north of England they say that if you wish your dairy to
thrive you should give your bunch of mistletoe to the first cow that calves
after New Year's Day, for it is well known that nothing is so fatal to milk
and butter as witchcraft. Similarly in Wales, for the sake of ensuring good
luck to the dairy, people used to give a branch of mistletoe to the first cow
that gave birth to a calf after the first hour of the New Year; and in rural
districts of Wales, where mistletoe abounded, there was always a profusion of
it in the farmhouses. When mistletoe was scarce, Welsh farmers used to say,
No mistletoe, no luck; but if there was a fine crop of mistletoe, they
expected a fine crop of corn. In Sweden mistletoe is diligently sought after
on St. John's Eve, the people believing it to be, in a high degree, possessed
of mystic qualities; and that if a sprig of it be attached to the ceiling of
the dwelling-house, the horse's stall, or the cow's crib, the Troll will then
be powerless to injure either man or beast.

With regard to the time when the mistletoe should be gathered opinions
have varied. The Druids gathered it above all on the sixth day of the moon,
the ancient Italians apparently on the first day of the moon. In modern times
some have preferred the full moon of March and others the waning moon of
winter when the sun is in Sagittarius. But the favourite time would seem to be
Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day. We have seen that both in France and Sweden
special virtues are ascribed to mistletoe gathered at Midsummer. The rule in
Sweden is that mistletoe must be cut on the night of Midsummer Eve when sun
and moon stand in the sign of their might. Again, in Wales it was believed
that a sprig of mistletoe gathered on St. John's Eve (Midsummer Eve), or at
any time before the berries appeared, would induce dreams of omen, both good
and bad, if it were placed under the pillow of the sleeper. Thus mistletoe is
one of the many plants whose magical or medicinal virtues are believed to
culminate with the culmination of the sun on the longest day of the year.
Hence it seems reasonable to conjecture that in the eyes of the Druids, also,
who revered the plant so highly, the sacred mistletoe may have acquired a
double portion of its mystic qualities at the solstice in June, and that
accordingly they may have regularly cut it with solemn ceremony on Midsummer
Eve.

Be that as it may, certain it is that the mistletoe, the instrument of
Balder's death, has been regularly gathered for the sake of its mystic
qualities on Midsummer Eve in Scandinavia, Balder's home. The plant is found
commonly growing on pear-trees, oaks, and other trees in thick damp woods
throughout the more temperate parts of Sweden. Thus one of the two main
incidents of Balder's myth is reproduced in the great midsummer festival of
Scandinavia. But the other main incident of the myth, the burning of Balder's
body on a pyre, has also its counterpart in the bonfires which still blaze, or
blazed till lately, in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden on Midsummer Eve. It does
not appear, indeed, that any effigy is burned in these bonfires; but the
burning of an effigy is a feature which might easily drop out after its
meaning was forgotten. And the name of Balder's balefires (Balder's Balar),
by which these midsummer fires were formerly known in Sweden, puts their
connexion with Balder beyond the reach of doubt, and makes it probable that in
former times either a living representative or an effigy of Balder was
annually burned in them. Midsummer was the season sacred to Balder, and the
Swedish poet Tegner, in placing the burning of Balder at midsummer, may very
well have followed an old tradition that the summer solstice was the time when
the good god came to his untimely end.

Thus it has been shown that the leading incidents of the Balder myth have
their counterparts in those fire-festivals of our European peasantry which
undoubtedly date from a time long prior to the introduction of Christianity.
The pretence of throwing the victim chosen by lot into the Beltane fire, and
the similar treatment of the man, the future Green Wolf, at the midsummer
bonfire in Normandy, may naturally be interpreted as traces of an older custom
of actually burning human beings on these occasions; and the green dress of
the Green Wolf, coupled with the leafy envelope of the young fellow who trod
out the midsummer fire at Moosheim, seems to hint that the persons who
perished at these festivals did so in the character of tree-spirits or deities
of vegetation. From all this we may reasonably infer that in the Balder myth
on the one hand, and the fire-festivals and custom of gathering mistletoe on
the other hand, we have, as it were, the two broken and dissevered halves of
an original whole. In other words, we may assume with some degree of
probability that the myth of Balder's death was not merely a myth, that is, a
description of physical phenomena in imagery borrowed from human life, but
that it was at the same time the story which people told to explain why they
annually burned a human representative of the god and cut the mistletoe with
solemn ceremony. If I am right, the story of Balder's tragic end formed, so to
say, the text of the sacred drama which was acted year by year as a magical
rite to cause the sun to shine, trees to grow, crops to thrive, and to guard
man and beast from the baleful arts of fairies and trolls, of witches and
warlocks. The tale belonged, in short, to that class of nature myths which are
meant to be supplemented by ritual; here, as so often, myth stood to magic in
the relation of theory to practice.

But if the victimsthe human Balderswho died by fire, whether in spring
or at midsummer, were put to death as living embodiments of tree-spirits or
deities of vegetation, it would seem that Balder himself must have been a
tree-spirit or deity of vegetation. It becomes desirable, therefore, to
determine, if we can, the particular kind of tree or trees, of which a
personal representative was burned at the fire-festivals. For we may be quite
sure that it was not as a representative of vegetation in general that the
victim suffered death. The idea of vegetation in general is too abstract to be
primitive. Most probably the victim at first represented a particular kind of
sacred tree. But of all European trees none has such claims as the oak to be
considered as pre-eminently the sacred tree of the Aryans. We have seen that
its worship is attested for all the great branches of the Aryan stock in
Europe; hence we may certainly conclude that the tree was venerated by the
Aryans in common before the dispersion, and that their primitive home must
have lain in a land which was clothed with forests of oak.

Now, considering the primitive character and remarkable similarity of the
fire-festivals observed by all the branches of the Aryan race in Europe, we
may infer that these festivals form part of the common stock of religious
observances which the various peoples carried with them in their wanderings
from their old home. But, if I am right, an essential feature of those
primitive fire-festivals was the burning of a man who represented the
tree-spirit. In view, then, of the place occupied by the oak in the religion
of the Aryans, the presumption is that the tree so represented at the
fire-festivals must originally have been the oak. So far as the Celts and
Lithuanians are concerned, this conclusion will perhaps hardly be contested.
But both for them and for the Germans it is confirmed by a remarkable piece of
religious conservatism. The most primitive method known to man of producing
fire is by rubbing two pieces of wood against each other till they ignite; and
we have seen that this method is still used in Europe for kindling sacred
fires such as the need-fire, and that most probably it was formerly resorted
to at all the fire-festivals under discussion. Now it is sometimes required
that the need-fire, or other sacred fire, should be made by the friction of a
particular kind of wood; and when the kind of wood is prescribed, whether
among Celts, Germans, or Slavs, that wood appears to be generally the oak. But
if the sacred fire was regularly kindled by the friction of oak-wood, we may
infer that originally the fire was also fed with the same material. In point
of fact, it appears that the perpetual fire of Vesta at Rome was fed with
oak-wood, and that oak-wood was the fuel consumed in the perpetual fire which
burned under the sacred oak at the great Lithuanian sanctuary of Romove.
Further, that oak-wood was formerly the fuel burned in the midsummer fires may
perhaps be inferred from the custom, said to be still observed by peasants in
many mountain districts of Germany, of making up the cottage fire on Midsummer
Day with a heavy block of oak-wood. The block is so arranged that it smoulders
slowly and is not finally reduced to charcoal till the expiry of a year. Then
upon next Midsummer Day the charred embers of the old log are removed to make
room for the new one, and are mixed with the seed-corn or scattered about the
garden. This is believed to guard the food cooked on the hearth from
witchcraft, to preserve the luck of the house, to promote the growth of the
crops, and to keep them from blight and vermin. Thus the custom is almost
exactly parallel to that of the Yule-log, which in parts of Germany, France,
England, Serbia, and other Slavonic lands was commonly of oak-wood. The
general conclusion is, that at those periodic or occasional ceremonies the
ancient Aryans both kindled and fed the fire with the sacred oak-wood.

But if at these solemn rites the fire was regularly made of oakwood, it
follows that any man who was burned in it as a personification of the
tree-spirit could have represented no tree but the oak. The sacred oak was
thus burned in duplicate; the wood of the tree was consumed in the fire, and
along with it was consumed a living man as a personification of the
oak-spirit. The conclusion thus drawn for the European Aryans in general is
confirmed in its special application to the Scandinavians by the relation in
which amongst them the mistletoe appears to have stood to the burning of the
victim in the midsummer fire. We have seen that among Scandinavians it has
been customary to gather the mistletoe at midsummer. But so far as appears on
the face of this custom, there is nothing to connect it with the midsummer
fires in which human victims or effigies of them were burned. Even if the
fire, as seems probable, was originally always made with oak-wood, why should
it have been necessary to pull the mistletoe? The last link between the
midsummer customs of gathering the mistletoe and lighting the bonfires is
supplied by Balder's myth, which can hardly be disjoined from the customs in
question. The myth suggests that a vital connexion may once have been believed
to subsist between the mistletoe and the human representative of the oak who
was burned in the fire. According to the myth, Balder could be killed by
nothing in heaven or earth except the mistletoe; and so long as the mistletoe
remained on the oak, he was not only immortal but invulnerable. Now, if we
suppose that Balder was the oak, the origin of the myth becomes intelligible.
The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of life of the oak, and so long as it was
uninjured nothing could kill or even wound the oak. The conception of the
mistletoe as the seat of life of the oak would naturally be suggested to
primitive people by the observation that while the oak is deciduous, the
mistletoe which grows on it is evergreen. In winter the sight of its fresh
foliage among the bare branches must have been hailed by the worshippers of
the tree as a sign that the divine life which had ceased to animate the
branches yet survived in the mistletoe, as the heart of a sleeper still beats
when his body is motionless. Hence when the god had to be killedwhen the
sacred tree had to be burntit was necessary to begin by breaking off the
mistletoe. For so long as the mistletoe remained intact, the oak (so people
might think) was invulnerable; all the blows of their knives and axes would
glance harmless from its surface. But once tear from the oak its sacred
heartthe mistletoeand the tree nodded to its fall. And when in later times
the spirit of the oak came to be represented by a living man, it was logically
necessary to suppose that, like the tree he personated, he could neither be
killed nor wounded so long as the mistletoe remained uninjured. The pulling of
the mistletoe was thus at once the signal and the cause of his death.

On this view the invulnerable Balder is neither more nor less than a
personification of a mistletoe-bearing oak. The interpretation is confirmed by
what seems to have been an ancient Italian belief, that the mistletoe can be
destroyed neither by fire nor water; for if the parasite is thus deemed
indestructible, it might easily be supposed to communicate its own
indestructibility to the tree on which it grows, so long as the two remain in
conjunction. Or, to put the same idea in mythical form, we might tell how the
kindly god of the oak had his life securely deposited in the imperishable
mistletoe which grew among the branches; how accordingly so long as the
mistletoe kept its place there, the deity himself remained invulnerable; and
how at last a cunning foe, let into the secret of the god's invulnerability,
tore the mistletoe from the oak, thereby killing the oak-god and afterwards
burning his body in a fire which could have made no impression on him so long
as the incombustible parasite retained its seat among the boughs.
 19

But since the idea of a being whose life is thus, in a sense, outside
himself, must be strange to many readers, and has, indeed, not yet been
recognised in its full bearing on primitive superstition, it will be worth
while to illustrate it by examples drawn both from story and custom. The
result will be to show that, in assuming this idea as the explanation of
Balder's relation to the mistletoe, I assume a principle which is deeply
engraved on the mind of primitive man.

Chapter 66. The External Soul in Folk-Tales

IN A FORMER part of this work we saw that, in the opinion of primitive
people, the soul may temporarily absent itself from the body without causing
death. Such temporary absences of the soul are often believed to involve
considerable risk, since the wandering soul is liable to a variety of mishaps
at the hands of enemies, and so forth. But there is another aspect to this
power of disengaging the soul from the body. If only the safety of the soul
can be ensured during its absence, there is no reason why the soul should not
continue absent for an indefinite time; indeed a man may, on a pure
calculation of personal safety, desire that his soul should never return to
his body. Unable to conceive of life abstractly as a permanent possibility of
sensation or a continuous adjustment of internal arrangements to external
relations, the savage thinks of it as a concrete material thing of a definite
bulk, capable of being seen and handled, kept in a box or jar, and liable to
be bruised, fractured, or smashed in pieces. It is not needful that the life,
so conceived, should be in the man; it may be absent from his body and still
continue to animate him by virtue of a sort of sympathy or action at a
distance. So long as this object which he calls his life or soul remains
unharmed, the man is well; if it is injured, he suffers; if it is destroyed,
he dies. Or, to put it otherwise, when a man is ill or dies, the fact is
explained by saying that the material object called his life or soul, whether
it be in his body or out of it, has either sustained injury or been destroyed.
But there may be circumstances in which, if the life or soul remains in the
man, it stands a greater chance of sustaining injury than if it were stowed
away in some safe and secret place. Accordingly, in such circumstances,
primitive man takes his soul out of his body and deposits it for security in
some snug spot, intending to replace it in his body when the danger is past.
Or if he should discover some place of absolute security, he may be content to
leave his soul there permanently. The advantage of this is that, so long as
the soul remains unharmed in the place where he has deposited it, the man
himself is immortal; nothing can kill his body, since his life is not in it.

Evidence of this primitive belief is furnished by a class of folk-tales of
which the Norse story of The giant who had no heart in his body is perhaps
the best-known example. Stories of this kind are widely diffused over the
world, and from their number and the variety of incident and of details in
which the leading idea is embodied, we may infer that the conception of an
external soul is one which has had a powerful hold on the minds of men at an
early stage of history. For folk-tales are a faithful reflection of the world
as it appeared to the primitive mind; and we may be sure that any idea which
commonly occurs in them, however absurd it may seem to us, must once have been
an ordinary article of belief. This assurance, so far as it concerns the
supposed power of disengaging the soul from the body for a longer or shorter
time, is amply corroborated by a comparison of the folk-tales in question with
the actual beliefs and practices of savages. To this we shall return after
some specimens of the tales have been given. The specimens will be selected
with a view of illustrating both the characteristic features and the wide
diffusion of this class of tales.

In the first place, the story of the external soul is told, in various
forms, by all Aryan peoples from Hindoostan to the Hebrides. A very common
form of it is this: A warlock, giant, or other fairyland being is invulnerable
and immortal because he keeps his soul hidden far away in some secret place;
but a fair princess, whom he holds enthralled in his enchanted castle, wiles
his secret from him and reveals it to the hero, who seeks out the warlock's
soul, heart, life, or death (as it is variously called), and by destroying it,
simultaneously kills the warlock. Thus a Hindoo story tells how a magician
called Punchkin held a queen captive for twelve years, and would fain marry
her, but she would not have him. At last the queen's son came to rescue her,
and the two plotted together to kill Punchkin. So the queen spoke the magician
fair, and pretended that she had at last made up her mind to marry him. And
do tell me, she said, are you quite immortal? Can death never touch you? And
are you too great an enchanter ever to feel human suffering? It is true, he
said, that I am not as others. Far, far away, hundreds of thousands of miles
from this, there lies a desolate country covered with thick jungle. In the
midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm trees, and in the centre of the
circle stand six chattees full of water, piled one above another: below the
sixth chattee is a small cage, which contains a little green parrot;on the
life of the parrot depends my life;and if the parrot is killed I must die. It
is, however, he added, impossible that the parrot should sustain any injury,
both on account of the inaccessibility of the country, and because, by my
appointment, many thousand genii surround the palm trees, and kill all who
approach the place. But the queen's young son overcame all difficulties, and
got possession of the parrot. He brought it to the door of the magician's
palace, and began playing with it. Punchkin, the magician, saw him, and,
coming out, tried to persuade the boy to give him the parrot. Give me my
parrot! cried Punchkin. Then the boy took hold of the parrot and tore off one
of his wings; and as he did so the magician's right arm fell off. Punchkin
then stretched out his left arm, crying, Give me my parrot! The prince
pulled off the parrot's second wing, and the magician's left arm tumbled off.
Give me my parrot! cried he, and fell on his knees. The prince pulled off
the parrot's right leg, the magician's right leg fell off; the prince pulled
off the parrot's left leg, down fell the magician's left. Nothing remained of
him except the trunk and the head; but still he rolled his eyes, and cried,
Give me my parrot! Take your parrot, then, cried the boy; and with that he
wrung the bird's neck, and threw it at the magician; and, as he did so,
Punchkin's head twisted round, and, with a fearful groan, he died! In another
Hindoo tale an ogre is asked by his daughter, Papa, where do you keep your
soul? Sixteen miles away from this place, he said, is a tree. Round the
tree are tigers, and bears, and scorpions, and snakes; on the top of the tree
is a very great fat snake; on his head is a little cage; in the cage is a
bird; and my soul is in that bird. The end of the ogre is like that of the
magician in the previous tale. As the bird's wings and legs are torn off, the
ogre's arms and legs drop off; and when its neck is wrung he falls down dead.
In a Bengalee story it is said that all the ogres dwell in Ceylon, and that
all their lives are in a single lemon. A boy cuts the lemon in pieces, and all
the ogres die.

In a Siamese or Cambodian story, probably derived from India, we are told
that Thossakan or Ravana, the King of Ceylon, was able by magic art to take
his soul out of his body and leave it in a box at home, while he went to the
wars. Thus he was invulnerable in battle. When he was about to give battle to
Rama, he deposited his soul with a hermit called Fire-eye, who was to keep it
safe for him. So in the fight Rama was astounded to see that his arrows struck
the king without wounding him. But one of Rama's allies, knowing the secret of
the king's invulnerability, transformed himself by magic into the likeness of
the king, and going to the hermit asked back his soul. On receiving it he
soared up into the air and flew to Rama, brandishing the box and squeezing it
so hard that all the breath left the King of Ceylon's body, and he died. In a
Bengalee story a prince going into a far country planted with his own hands a
tree in the courtyard of his father's palace, and said to his parents, This
tree is my life. When you see the tree green and fresh, then know that it is
well with me; when you see the tree fade in some parts, then know that I am in
an ill case; and when you see the whole tree fade, then know that I am dead
and gone. In another Indian tale a prince, setting forth on his travels, left
behind him a barley plant, with instructions that it should be carefully
tended and watched; for if it flourished, he would be alive and well, but if
it drooped, then some mischance was about to happen to him. And so it fell
out. For the prince was beheaded, and as his head rolled off, the barley plant
snapped in two and the ear of barley fell to the ground.

In Greek tales, ancient and modern, the idea of an external soul is not
uncommon. When Meleager was seven days old, the Fates appeared to his mother
and told her that Meleager would die when the brand which was blazing on the
hearth had burnt down. So his mother snatched the brand from the fire and kept
it in a box. But in after-years, being enraged at her son for slaying her
brothers, she burnt the brand in the fire and Meleager expired in agonies, as
if flames were preying on his vitals. Again, Nisus King of Megara had a purple
or golden hair on the middle of his head, and it was fated that whenever the
hair was pulled out the king should die. When Megara was besieged by the
Cretans, the king's daughter Scylla fell in love with Minos, their king, and
pulled out the fatal hair from her father's head. So he died. In a modern
Greek folk-tale a man's strength lies in three golden hairs on his head. When
his mother pulls them out, he grows weak and timid and is slain by his
enemies. In another modern Greek story the life of an enchanter is bound up
with three doves which are in the belly of a wild boar. When the first dove is
killed, the magician grows sick; when the second is killed, he grows very
sick; and when the third is killed, he dies. In another Greek story of the
same sort an ogre's strength is in three singing birds which are in a wild
boar. The hero kills two of the birds, and then coming to the ogre's house
finds him lying on the ground in great pain. He shows the third bird to the
ogre, who begs that the hero will either let it fly away or give it to him to
eat. But the hero wrings the bird's neck, and the ogre dies on the spot.

In a modern Roman version of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, the
magician tells the princess, whom he holds captive in a floating rock in
mid-ocean, that he will never die. The princess reports this to the prince her
husband, who has come to rescue her. The prince replies, It is impossible but
that there should be some one thing or other that is fatal to him; ask him
what that one fatal thing is. So the princess asked the magician, and he told
her that in the wood was a hydra with seven heads; in the middle head of the
hydra was a leveret, in the head of the leveret was a bird, in the bird's head
was a precious stone, and if this stone were put under his pillow he would
die. The prince procured the stone, and the princess laid it under the
magician's pillow. No sooner did the enchanter lay his head on the pillow than
he gave three terrible yells, turned himself round and round three times, and
died.

Stories of the same sort are current among Slavonic peoples. Thus a
Russian story tells how a warlock called Koshchei the Deathless carried off a
princess and kept her prisoner in his golden castle. However, a prince made up
to her one day as she was walking alone and disconsolate in the castle garden,
and cheered by the prospect of escaping with him she went to the warlock and
coaxed him with false and flattering words, saying, My dearest friend, tell
me, I pray you, will you never die? Certainly not, says he. Well, says
she, and where is your death? is it in your dwelling? To be sure it is,
says he, it is in the broom under the threshold. Thereupon the princess
seized the broom and threw it on the fire, but although the broom burned, the
deathless Koshchei remained alive; indeed not so much as a hair of him was
singed. Balked in her first attempt, the artful hussy pouted and said, You do
not love me true, for you have not told me where your death is; yet I am not
angry, but love you with all my heart. With these fawning words she besought
the warlock to tell her truly where his death was. So he laughed and said,
Why do you wish to know? Well then, out of love I will tell you where it
lies. In a certain field there stand three green oaks, and under the roots of
the largest oak is a worm, and if ever this worm is found and crushed, that
instant I shall die. When the princess heard these words, she went straight
to her lover and told him all; and he searched till he found the oaks and dug
up the worm and crushed it. Then he hurried to the warlock's castle, but only
to learn from the princess that the warlock was still alive. Then she fell to
wheedling and coaxing Koshchei once more, and this time, overcome by her
wiles, he opened his heart to her and told her the truth. My death, said he,
is far from here and hard to find, on the wide ocean. In that sea is an
island, and on the island there grows a green oak, and beneath the oak is an
iron chest, and in the chest is a small basket, and in the basket is a hare,
and in the hare is a duck, and in the duck is an egg; and he who finds the egg
and breaks it, kills me at the same time. The prince naturally procured the
fateful egg and with it in his hands he confronted the deathless warlock. The
monster would have killed him, but the prince began to squeeze the egg. At
that the warlock shrieked with pain, and turning to the false princess, who
stood by smirking and smiling, Was it not out of love for you, said he,
that I told you where my death was? And is this the return you make to me?
With that he grabbed at his sword, which hung from a peg on the wall; but
before he could reach it, the prince had crushed the egg, and sure enough the
deathless warlock found his death at the same moment. In one of the
descriptions of Koshchei's death, he is said to be killed by a blow on the
forehead inflicted by the mysterious eggthat last link in the magic chain by
which his life is darkly bound. In another version of the same story, but told
of a snake, the fatal blow is struck by a small stone found in the yolk of an
egg, which is inside a duck, which is inside a hare, which is inside a stone,
which is on an island.

Amongst peoples of the Teutonic stock stories of the external soul are not
wanting. In a tale told by the Saxons of Transylvania it is said that a young
man shot at a witch again and again. The bullets went clean through her but
did her no harm, and she only laughed and mocked at him. Silly earthworm,
she cried, shoot as much as you like. It does me no harm. For know that my
life resides not in me but far, far away. In a mountain is a pond, on the pond
swims a duck, in the duck is an egg, in the egg burns a light, that light is
my life. If you could put out that light, my life would be at an end. But that
can never, never be. However, the young man got hold of the egg, smashed it,
and put out the light, and with it the witch's life went out also. In a German
story a cannibal called Body without Soul or Soulless keeps his soul in a box,
which stands on a rock in the middle of the Red Sea. A soldier gets possession
of the box and goes with it to Soulless, who begs the soldier to give him back
his soul. But the soldier opens the box, takes out the soul, and flings it
backward over his head. At the same moment the cannibal drops dead to the
ground.

In another German story and old warlock lives with a damsel all alone in
the midst of a vast and gloomy wood. She fears that being old he may die and
leave her alone in the forest. But he reassures her. Dear child, he said, I
cannot die, and I have no heart in my breast. But she importuned him to tell
her where his heart was. So he said, Far, far from here in an unknown and
lonesome land stands a great church. The church is well secured with iron
doors, and round about it flows a broad deep moat. In the church flies a bird
and in the bird is my heart. So long as the bird lives, I live. It cannot die
of itself, and no one can catch it; therefore I cannot die, and you need have
no anxiety. However the young man, whose bride the damsel was to have been
before the warlock spirited her away, contrived to reach the church and catch
the bird. He brought it to the damsel, who stowed him and it away under the
warlock's bed. Soon the old warlock came home. He was ailing, and said so. The
girl wept and said, Alas, daddy is dying; he has a heart in his breast after
all. Child, replied the warlock, hold your tongue. I can't die. It will
soon pass over. At that the young man under the bed gave the bird a gentle
squeeze; and as he did so, the old warlock felt very unwell and sat down. Then
the young man gripped the bird tighter, and the warlock fell senseless from
his chair. Now squeeze him dead, cried the damsel. Her lover obeyed, and
when the bird was dead, the old warlock also lay dead on the floor.

In the Norse tale of the giant who had no heart in his body, the giant
tells the captive princess, Far, far away in a lake lies an island, on that
island stands a church, in that church is a well, in that well swims a duck,
in that duck there is an egg, and in that egg there lies my heart. The hero
of the tale, with the help of some animals to whom he had been kind, obtains
the egg and squeezes it, at which the giant screams piteously and begs for his
life. But the hero breaks the egg in pieces and the giant at once bursts. In
another Norse story a hill-ogre tells the captive princess that she will never
be able to return home unless she finds the grain of sand which lies under the
ninth tongue of the ninth head of a certain dragon; but if that grain of sand
were to come over the rock in which the ogres live, they would all burst and
the rock itself would become a gilded palace, and the lake green meadows. The
hero finds the grain of sand and takes it to the top of the high rock in which
the ogres live. So all the ogres burst and the rest falls out as one of the
ogres had foretold.

In a Celtic tale, recorded in the West Highlands of Scotland, a giant is
questioned by a captive queen as to where he keeps his soul. At last, after
deceiving her several times, he confides to her the fatal secret: There is a
great flagstone under the threshold. There is a wether under the flag. There
is a duck in the wether's belly, and an egg in the belly of the duck, and it
is in the egg that my soul is. On the morrow when the giant was gone, the
queen contrived to get possession of the egg and crushed it in her hands, and
at that very moment the giant, who was coming home in the dusk, fell down
dead. In another Celtic tale, a sea beast has carried off a king's daughter,
and an old smith declares that there is no way of killing the beast but one.
In the island that is in the midst of the loch is Eillid Chaisfhionthe
white-footed hind, of the slenderest legs, and the swiftest step, and though
she should be caught, there would spring a hoodie out of her, and though the
hoodie should be caught, there would spring a trout out of her, but there is
an egg in the mouth of the trout, and the soul of the beast is in the egg, and
if the egg breaks, the beast is dead. As usual the egg is broken and the
beast dies.

In an Irish story we read how a giant kept a beautiful damsel a prisoner
in his castle on the top of a hill, which was white with the bones of the
champions who had tried in vain to rescue the fair captive. At last the hero,
after hewing and slashing at the giant all to no purpose, discovered that the
only way to kill him was to rub a mole on the giant's right breast with a
certain egg, which was in a duck, which was in a chest, which lay locked and
bound at the bottom of the sea. With the help of some obliging animals, the
hero made himself master of the precious egg and slew the giant by merely
striking it against the mole on his right breast. Similarly in a Breton story
there figures a giant whom neither fire nor water nor steel can harm. He tells
his seventh wife, whom he has just married after murdering all her
predecessors, I am immortal, and no one can hurt me unless he crushes on my
breast an egg, which is in a pigeon, which is in the belly of a hare; this
hare is in the belly of a wolf, and this wolf is in the belly of my brother,
who dwells a thousand leagues from here. So I am quite easy on that score. A
soldier contrived to obtain the egg and crush it on the breast of the giant,
who immediately expired. In another Breton tale the life of a giant resides in
an old box-tree which grows in his castle garden; and to kill him it is
necessary to sever the tap-root of the tree at a single blow of an axe without
injuring any of the lesser roots. This task the hero, as usual, successfully
accomplishes, and at the same moment the giant drops dead.

The notion of an external soul has now been traced in folk-tales told by
Aryan peoples from India to Ireland. We have still to show that the same idea
occurs commonly in the popular stories of peoples who do not belong to the
Aryan stock. In the ancient Egyptian tale of The Two Brothers, which was
written down in the reign of Rameses II., about 1300 B.C., we read how one of
the brothers enchanted his heart and placed it in the flower of an acacia
tree, and how, when the flower was cut at the instigation of his wife, he
immediately fell down dead, but revived when his brother found the lost heart
in the berry of the acacia and threw it into a cup of fresh water.

In the story of Seyf el-Mulook in the Arabian Nights the jinnee tells
the captive daughter of the King of India, When I was born, the astrologers
declared that the destruction of my soul would be effected by the hand of one
of the sons of the human kings. I therefore took my soul, and put it into the
crop of a sparrow, and I imprisoned the sparrow in a little box, and put this
into another small box, and this I put within seven other small boxes, and I
put these within seven chests, and the chests I put into a coffer of marble
within the verge of this circumambient ocean; for this part is remote from the
countries of mankind, and none of mankind can gain access to it. But Seyf
el-Mulook got possession of the sparrow and strangled it, and the jinnee fell
upon the ground a heap of black ashes. In a Kabyle story an ogre declares that
his fate is far away in an egg, which is in a pigeon, which is in a camel,
which is in the sea. The hero procures the egg and crushes it between his
hands, and the ogre dies. In a Magyar folk-tale, an old witch detains a young
prince called Ambrose in the bowels of the earth. At last she confided to him
that she kept a wild boar in a silken meadow, and if it were killed, they
would find a hare inside, and inside the hare a pigeon, and inside the pigeon
a small box, and inside the box one black and one shining beetle: the shining
beetle held her life, and the black one held her power; if these two beetles
died, then her life would come to an end also. When the old hag went out,
Ambrose killed the wild boar, and took out the hare; from the hare he took the
pigeon, from the pigeon the box, and from the box the two beetles; he killed
the black beetle, but kept the shining one alive. So the witch's power left
her immediately, and when she came home, she had to take to her bed. Having
learned from her how to escape from his prison to the upper air, Ambrose
killed the shining beetle, and the old hag's spirit left her at once. In a
Kalmuck tale we read how a certain khan challenged a wise man to show his
skill by stealing a precious stone on which the khan's life depended. The sage
contrived to purloin the talisman while the khan and his guards slept; but not
content with this he gave a further proof of his dexterity by bonneting the
slumbering potentate with a bladder. This was too much for the khan. Next
morning he informed the sage that he could overlook everything else, but that
the indignity of being bonneted with a bladder was more than he could bear;
and he ordered his facetious friend to instant execution. Pained at this
exhibition of royal ingratitude, the sage dashed to the ground the talisman
which he still held in his hand; and at the same instant blood flowed from the
nostrils of the khan, and he gave up the ghost.

In a Tartar poem two heroes named Ak Molot and Bulat engage in mortal
combat. Ak Molot pierces his foe through and through with an arrow, grapples
with him, and dashes him to the ground, but all in vain, Bulat could not die.
At last when the combat has lasted three years, a friend of Ak Molot sees a
golden casket hanging by a white thread from the sky, and bethinks him that
perhaps this casket contains Bulat's soul. So he shot through the white thread
with an arrow, and down fell the casket. He opened it, and in the casket sat
ten white birds, and one of the birds was Bulat's soul. Bulat wept when he saw
that his soul was found in the casket. But one after the other the birds were
killed, and then Ak Molot easily slew his foe. In another Tartar poem, two
brothers going to fight two other brothers take out their souls and hide them
in the form of a white herb with six stalks in a deep pit. But one of their
foes sees them doing so and digs up their souls, which he puts into a golden
ram's horn, and then sticks the ram's horn in his quiver. The two warriors
whose souls have thus been stolen know that they have no chance of victory,
and accordingly make peace with their enemies. In another Tartar poem a
terrible demon sets all the gods and heroes at defiance. At last a valiant
youth fights the demon, binds him hand and foot, and slices him with his
sword. But still the demon is not slain. So the youth asked him, Tell me,
where is your soul hidden? For if your soul had been hidden in your body, you
must have been dead long ago. The demon replied, On the saddle of my horse
is a bag. In the bag is a serpent with twelve heads. In the serpent is my
soul. When you have killed the serpent, you have killed me also. So the youth
took the saddle-bag from the horse and killed the twelve-headed serpent,
whereupon the demon expired. In another Tartar poem a hero called Kk Chan
deposits with a maiden a golden ring, in which is half his strength.
Afterwards when Kk Chan is wrestling long with a hero and cannot kill him, a
woman drops into his mouth the ring which contains half his strength. Thus
inspired with fresh force he slays his enemy.

In a Mongolian story the hero Joro gets the better of his enemy the lama
Tschoridong in the following way. The lama, who is an enchanter, sends out his
soul in the form of a wasp to sting Joro's eyes. But Joro catches the wasp in
his hand, and by alternately shutting and opening his hand he causes the lama
alternately to lose and recover consciousness. In a Tartar poem two youths cut
open the body of an old witch and tear out her bowels, but all to no purpose,
she still lives. On being asked where her soul is, she answers that it is in
the middle of her shoe-sole in the form of a seven-headed speckled snake. So
one of the youths slices her shoe-sole with his sword, takes out the speckled
snake, and cuts off its seven heads. Then the witch dies. Another Tartar poem
describes how the hero Kartaga grappled with the Swan-woman. Long they
wrestled. Moons waxed and waned and still they wrestled; years came and went,
and still the struggle went on. But the piebald horse and the black horse knew
that the Swan-woman's soul was not in her. Under the black earth flow nine
seas; where the seas meet and form one, the sea comes to the surface of the
earth. At the mouth of the nine seas rises a rock of copper; it rises to the
surface of the ground, it rises up between heaven and earth, this rock of
copper. At the foot of the copper rock is a black chest, in the black chest is
a golden casket, and in the golden casket is the soul of the Swan-woman. Seven
little birds are the soul of the Swan-woman; if the birds are killed the
Swan-woman will die straightway. So the horses ran to the foot of the copper
rock, opened the black chest, and brought back the golden casket. Then the
piebald horse turned himself into a bald-headed man, opened the golden casket,
and cut off the heads of the seven birds. So the Swan-woman died. In another
Tartar poem the hero, pursuing his sister who has driven away his cattle, is
warned to desist from the pursuit because his sister has carried away his soul
in a golden sword and a golden arrow, and if he pursues her she will kill him
by throwing the golden sword or shooting the golden arrow at him.

A Malay poem relates how once upon a time in the city of Indrapoora there
was a certain merchant who was rich and prosperous, but he had no children.
One day as he walked with his wife by the river they found a baby girl, fair
as an angel. So they adopted the child and called her Bidasari. The merchant
caused a golden fish to be made, and into this fish he transferred the soul of
his adopted daughter. Then he put the golden fish in a golden box full of
water, and hid it in a pond in the midst of his garden. In time the girl grew
to be a lovely woman. Now the King of Indrapoora had a fair young queen, who
lived in fear that the king might take to himself a second wife. So, hearing
of the charms of Bidasari, the queen resolved to put her out of the way. She
lured the girl to the palace and tortured her cruelly; but Bidasari could not
die, because her soul was not in her. At last she could stand the torture no
longer and said to the queen, If you wish me to die, you must bring the box
which is in the pond in my father's garden. So the box was brought and
opened, and there was the golden fish in the water. The girl said, My soul is
in that fish. In the morning you must take the fish out of the water, and in
the evening you must put it back into the water. Do not let the fish lie
about, but bind it round your neck. If you do this, I shall soon die. So the
queen took the fish out of the box and fastened it round her neck; and no
sooner had she done so than Bidasari fell into a swoon. But in the evening,
when the fish was put back into the water, Bidasari came to herself again.
Seeing that she thus had the girl in her power, the queen sent her home to her
adopted parents. To save her from further persecution her parents resolved to
remove their daughter from the city. So in a lonely and desolate spot they
built a house and brought Bidasari thither. There she dwelt alone, undergoing
vicissitudes that corresponded with the vicissitudes of the golden fish in
which was her soul. All day long, while the fish was out of the water, she
remained unconscious; but in the evening, when the fish was put into the
water, she revived. One day the king was out hunting, and coming to the house
where Bidasari lay unconscious, was smitten with her beauty. He tried to waken
her, but in vain. Next day, towards evening, he repeated his visit, but still
found her unconscious. However, when darkness fell, she came to herself and
told the king the secret of her life. So the king returned to the palace, took
the fish from the queen, and put it in water. Immediately Bidasari revived,
and the king took her to wife.

Another story of an external soul comes from Nias, an island to the west
of Sumatra. Once on a time a chief was captured by his enemies, who tried to
put him to death but failed. Water would not drown him nor fire burn him nor
steel pierce him. At last his wife revealed the secret. On his head he had a
hair as hard as a copper wire; and with this wire his life was bound up. So
the hair was plucked out, and with it his spirit fled.

A West African story from Southern Nigeria relates how a king kept his
soul in a little brown bird, which perched on a tall tree beside the gate of
the palace. The king's life was so bound up with that of the bird that whoever
should kill the bird would simultaneously kill the king and succeed to the
kingdom. The secret was betrayed by the queen to her lover, who shot the bird
with an arrow and thereby slew the king and ascended the vacant throne. A tale
told by the Ba-Ronga of South Africa sets forth how the lives of a whole
family were contained in one cat. When a girl of the family, named Titishan,
married a husband, she begged her parents to let her take the precious cat
with her to her new home. But they refused, saying, You know that our life is
attached to it; and they offered to give her an antelope or even an elephant
instead of it. But nothing would satisfy her but the cat. So at last she
carried it off with her and shut it up in a place where nobody saw it; even
her husband knew nothing about it. One day, when she went to work in the
fields, the cat escaped from its place of concealment, entered the hut, put on
the warlike trappings of the husband, and danced and sang. Some children,
attracted by the noise, discovered the cat at its antics, and when they
expressed their astonishment, the animal only capered the more and insulted
them besides. So they went to the owner and said, There is somebody dancing
in your house, and he insulted us. Hold your tongues, said he, I'll soon
put a stop to your lies. So he went and hid behind the door and peeped in,
and there sure enough was the cat prancing about and singing. He fired at it,
and the animal dropped down dead. At the same moment his wife fell to the
ground in the field where she was at work; said she, I have been killed at
home. But she had strength enough left to ask her husband to go with her to
her parents' village, taking with him the dead cat wrapt up in a mat. All her
relatives assembled, and bitterly they reproached her for having insisted on
taking the animal with her to her husband's village. As soon as the mat was
unrolled and they saw the dead cat, they all fell down lifeless one after the
other. So the Clan of the Cat was destroyed; and the bereaved husband closed
the gate of the village with a branch, and returned home, and told his friends
how in killing the cat he had killed the whole clan, because their lives
depended on the life of the cat.

Ideas of the same sort meet us in stories told by the North American
Indians. Thus the Navajoes tell of a certain mythical being called the Maiden
that becomes a Bear, who learned the art of turning herself into a bear from
the prairie wolf. She was a great warrior and quite invulnerable; for when she
went to war she took out her vital organs and hid them, so that no one could
kill her; and when the battle was over she put the organs back in their places
again. The Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia tell of an ogress, who could
not be killed because her life was in a hemlock branch. A brave boy met her in
the woods, smashed her head with a stone, scattered her brains, broke her
bones, and threw them into the water. Then, thinking he had disposed of the
ogress, he went into her house. There he saw a woman rooted to the floor, who
warned him, saying, Now do not stay long. I know that you have tried to kill
the ogress. It is the fourth time that somebody has tried to kill her. She
never dies; she has nearly come to life. There in that covered hemlock branch
is her life. Go there, and as soon as you see her enter, shoot her life. Then
she will be dead. Hardly had she finished speaking when sure enough in came
the ogress, singing as she walked. But the boy shot at her life, and she fell
dead to the floor.

Chapter 67. The External Soul in Folk-Custom.

1. The External Soul in Inanimate Things

THUS the idea that the soul may be deposited for a longer or shorter time in
some place of security outside the body, or at all events in the hair, is
found in the popular tales of many races. It remains to show that the idea is
not a mere figment devised to adorn a tale, but is a real article of primitive
faith, which has given rise to a corresponding set of customs.

We have seen that in the tales the hero, as a preparation for battle,
sometimes removes his soul from his body, in order that his body may be
invulnerable and immortal in the combat. With a like intention the savage
removes his soul from his body on various occasions of real or imaginary
peril. Thus among the people of Minahassa in Celebes, when a family moves into
a new house, a priest collects the souls of the whole family in a bag, and
afterwards restores them to their owners, because the moment of entering a new
house is supposed to be fraught with supernatural danger. In Southern Celebes,
when a woman is brought to bed, the messenger who fetches the doctor or the
midwife always carries with him something made of iron, such as a
chopping-knife, which he delivers to the doctor. The doctor must keep the
thing in his house till the confinement is over, when he gives it back,
receiving a fixed sum of money for doing so. The chopping-knife, or whatever
it is, represents the woman's soul, which at this critical time is believed to
be safer out of her body than in it. Hence the doctor must take great care of
the object; for were it lost, the woman's soul would assuredly, they think, be
lost with it.

Among the Dyaks of Pinoeh, a district of South-eastern Borneo, when a
child is born, a medicine-man is sent for, who conjures the soul of the infant
into half a coco-nut, which he thereupon covers with a cloth and places on a
square platter or charger suspended by cords from the roof. This ceremony he
repeats at every new moon for a year. The intention of the ceremony is not
explained by the writer who describes it, but we may conjecture that it is to
place the soul of the child in a safer place than its own frail little body.
This conjecture is confirmed by the reason assigned for a similar custom
observed elsewhere in the Indian Archipelago. In the Kei Islands, when there
is a newly-born child in a house, an empty coco-nut, split and spliced
together again, may sometimes be seen hanging beside a rough wooden image of
an ancestor. The soul of the infant is believed to be temporarily deposited in
the coco-nut in order that it may be safe from the attacks of evil spirits;
but when the child grows bigger and stronger, the soul will take up its
permanent abode in its own body. Similarly among the Esquimaux of Alaska, when
a child is sick, the medicine-man will sometimes extract its soul from its
body and place it for safe-keeping in an amulet, which for further security he
deposits in his own medicine-bag. It seems probable that many amulets have
been similarly regarded as soul-boxes, that is, as safes in which the souls of
the owners are kept for greater security. An old Mang'anje woman in the West
Shire district of British Central Africa used to wear round her neck an ivory
ornament, hollow, and about three inches long, which she called her life or
soul. Naturally, she would not part with it; a planter tried to buy it of her,
but in vain. When Mr. James Macdonald was one day sitting in the house of a
Hlubi chief, awaiting the appearance of that great man, who was busy
decorating his person, a native pointed to a pair of magnificent ox-horns, and
said, Ntame has his soul in these horns. The horns were those of an animal
which had been sacrificed, and they were held sacred. A magician had fastened
them to the roof to protect the house and its inmates from the thunder-bolt.
The idea, adds Mr. Macdonald, is in no way foreign to South African
thought. A man's soul there may dwell in the roof of his house, in a tree, by
a spring of water, or on some mountain scaur. Among the natives of the
Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain there is a secret society which goes by the
name of Ingniet or Ingiet. On his entrance into it every man receives a stone
in the shape either of a human being or of an animal, and henceforth his soul
is believed to be knit up in a manner with the stone. If it breaks, it is an
evil omen for him; they say that the thunder has struck the stone and that he
who owns it will soon die. If nevertheless the man survives the breaking of
his soul-stone, they say that it was not a proper soul-stone and he gets a new
one instead. The emperor Romanus Lecapenus was once informed by an astronomer
that the life of Simeon, prince of Bulgaria, was bound up with a certain
column in Constantinople, so that if the capital of the column were removed,
Simeon would immediately die. The emperor took the hint and removed the
capital, and at the same hour, as the emperor learned by enquiry, Simeon died
of heart disease in Bulgaria.

Again, we have seen that in folk-tales a man's soul or strength is
sometimes represented as bound up with his hair, and that when his hair is cut
off he dies or grows weak. So the natives of Amboyna used to think that their
strength was in their hair and would desert them if it were shorn. A criminal
under torture in a Dutch Court of that island persisted in denying his guilt
till his hair was cut off, when he immediately confessed. One man, who was
tried for murder, endured without flinching the utmost ingenuity of his
torturers till he saw the surgeon standing with a pair of shears. On asking
what this was for, and being told that it was to cut his hair, he begged they
would not do it, and made a clean breast. In subsequent cases, when torture
failed to wring a confession from a prisoner, the Dutch authorities made a
practice of cutting off his hair.

Here in Europe it used to be thought that the maleficent powers of witches
and wizards resided in their hair, and that nothing could make any impression
on the miscreants so long as they kept their hair on. Hence in France it was
customary to shave the whole bodies of persons charged with sorcery before
handing them over to the torturer. Millaeus witnessed the torture of some
persons at Toulouse, from whom no confession could be wrung until they were
stripped and completely shaven, when they readily acknowledged the truth of
the charge. A woman also, who apparently led a pious life, was put to the
torture on suspicion of witchcraft, and bore her agonies with incredible
constancy, until complete depilation drove her to admit her guilt. The noted
inquisitor Sprenger contented himself with shaving the head of the suspected
witch or wizard; but his more thoroughgoing colleague Cumanus shaved the whole
bodies of forty-seven women before committing them all to the flames. He had
high authority for this rigorous scrutiny, since Satan himself, in a sermon
preached from the pulpit of North Berwick church, comforted his many servants
by assuring them that no harm could befall them sa lang as their hair wes on,
and sould newir latt ane teir fall fra thair ene. Similarly in Bastar, a
province of India, if a man is adjudged guilty of witchcraft, he is beaten by
the crowd, his hair is shaved, the hair being supposed to constitute his power
of mischief, his front teeth are knocked out, in order, it is said, to prevent
him from muttering incantations . Women suspected of sorcery have to undergo
the same ordeal; if found guilty, the same punishment is awarded, and after
being shaved, their hair is attached to a tree in some public place. So among
the Bhils of India, when a woman was convicted of witchcraft and had been
subjected to various forms of persuasion, such as hanging head downwards from
a tree and having pepper put into her eyes, a lock of hair was cut from her
head and buried in the ground, that the last link between her and her former
powers of mischief might be broken. In like manner among the Aztecs of
Mexico, when wizards and witches had done their evil deeds, and the time came
to put an end to their detestable life, some one laid hold of them and cropped
the hair on the crown of their heads, which took from them all their power of
sorcery and enchantment, and then it was that by death they put an end to
their odious existence.

2. The External Soul in Plants

FURTHER it has been shown that in folk-tales the life of a person is
sometimes so bound up with the life of a plant that the withering of the plant
will immediately follow or be followed by the death of the person. Among the
M'Bengas in Western Africa, about the Gaboon, when two children are born on
the same day, the people plant two trees of the same kind and dance round
them. The life of each of the children is believed to be bound up with the
life of one of the trees; and if the tree dies or is thrown down, they are
sure that the child will soon die. In the Cameroons, also, the life of a
person is believed to be sympathetically bound up with that of a tree. The
chief of Old Town in Calabar kept his soul in a sacred grove near a spring of
water. When some Europeans, in frolic or ignorance, cut down part of the
grove, the spirit was most indignant and threatened the perpetrators of the
deed, according to the king, with all manner of evil.

Some of the Papuans unite the life of a new-born babe sympathetically with
that of a tree by driving a pebble into the bark of the tree. This is supposed
to give them complete mastery over the child's life; if the tree is cut down,
the child will die. After a birth the Maoris used to bury the navel-string in
a sacred place and plant a young sapling over it. As the tree grew, it was a
tohu oranga or sign of life for the child; if it flourished, the child would
prosper; if it withered and died, the parents augured the worst for the little
one. In some parts of Fiji the navel-string of a male infant is planted
together with a coco-nut or the slip of a breadfruit-tree, and the child's
life is supposed to be intimately connected with that of the tree. Amongst the
Dyaks of Landak and Tajan, districts of Dutch Borneo, it is customary to plant
a fruit-tree for a baby, and henceforth in the popular belief the fate of the
child is bound up with that of the tree. If the tree shoots up rapidly, it
will go well with the child; but if the tree is dwarfed or shrivelled, nothing
but misfortune can be expected for its human counterpart.

It is said that there are still families in Russia, Germany, England,
France, and Italy who are accustomed to plant a tree at the birth of a child.
The tree, it is hoped, will grow with the child, and it is tended with special
care. The custom is still pretty general in the canton of Aargau in
Switzerland; an apple-tree is planted for a boy and a pear-tree for a girl,
and the people think that the child will flourish or dwindle with the tree. In
Mecklenburg the afterbirth is thrown out at the foot of a young tree, and the
child is then believed to grow with the tree. Near the Castle of Dalhousie,
not far from Edinburgh, there grows an oak-tree, called the Edgewell Tree,
which is popularly believed to be linked to the fate of the family by a
mysterious tie; for they say that when one of the family dies, or is about to
die, a branch falls from the Edgewell Tree. Thus, on seeing a great bough drop
from the tree on a quiet, still day in July 1874, an old forester exclaimed,
The laird's deid noo! and soon after news came that Fox Maule, eleventh Earl
of Dalhousie, was dead.

In England children are sometimes passed through a cleft ash-tree as a
cure for rupture or rickets, and thenceforward a sympathetic connexion is
supposed to exist between them and the tree. An ash-tree which had been used
for this purpose grew at the edge of Shirley Heath, on the road from Hockly
House to Birmingham. Thomas Chillingworth, son of the owner of an adjoining
farm, now about thirty-four, was, when an infant of a year old, passed through
a similar tree, now perfectly sound, which he preserves with so much care that
he will not suffer a single branch to be touched, for it is believed the life
of the patient depends on the life of the tree, and the moment that is cut
down, be the patient ever so distant, the rupture returns, and a mortification
ensues, and terminates in death, as was the case in a man driving a waggon on
the very road in question. It is not uncommon, however, adds the writer,
for persons to survive for a time the felling of the tree. The ordinary mode
of effecting the cure is to split a young ash-sapling longitudinally for a few
feet and pass the child, naked, either three times or three times three
through the fissure at sunrise. In the West of England it is said that the
passage should be against the sun. As soon as the ceremony has been
performed, the tree is bound tightly up and the fissure plastered over with
mud or clay. The belief is that just as the cleft in the tree closes up, so
the rupture in the child's body will be healed; but that if the rift in the
tree remains open, the rupture in the child will remain too, and if the tree
were to die, the death of the child would surely follow.

A similar cure for various diseases, but especially for rupture and
rickets, has been commonly practised in other parts of Europe, as Germany,
France, Denmark, and Sweden; but in these countries the tree employed for the
purpose is usually not an ash but an oak; sometimes a willow-tree is allowed
or even prescribed instead. In Mecklenburg, as in England, the sympathetic
relation thus established between the tree and the child is believed to be so
close that if the tree is cut down the child will die.

3. The External Soul in Animals

BUT in practice, as in folk-tales, it is not merely with inanimate objects
and plants that a person is occasionally believed to be united by a bond of
physical sympathy. The same bond, it is supposed, may exist between a man and
an animal, so that the welfare of the one depends on the welfare of the other,
and when the animal dies the man dies also. The analogy between the custom and
the tales is all the closer because in both of them the power of thus removing
the soul from the body and stowing it away in an animal is often a special
privilege of wizards and witches. Thus the Yakuts of Siberia believe that
every shaman or wizard keeps his soul, or one of his souls, incarnate in an
animal which is carefully concealed from all the world. Nobody can find my
external soul, said one famous wizard, it lies hidden far away in the stony
mountains of Edzhigansk. Only once a year, when the last snows melt and the
earth turns black, do these external souls of wizards appear in the shape of
animals among the dwellings of men. They wander everywhere, yet none but
wizards can see them. The strong ones sweep roaring and noisily along, the
weak steal about quietly and furtively. Often they fight, and then the wizard
whose external soul is beaten, falls ill or dies. The weakest and most
cowardly wizards are they whose souls are incarnate in the shape of dogs, for
the dog gives his human double no peace, but gnaws his heart and tears his
body. The most powerful wizards are they whose external souls have the shape
of stallions, elks, black bears, eagles, or boars. Again, the Samoyeds of the
Turukhinsk region hold that every shaman has a familiar spirit in the shape of
a boar, which he leads about by a magic belt. On the death of the boar the
shaman himself dies; and stories are told of battles between wizards, who send
their spirits to fight before they encounter each other in person. The Malays
believe that the soul of a person may pass into another person or into an
animal, or rather that such a mysterious relation can arise between the two
that the fate of the one is wholly dependent on that of the other.

Among the Melanesians of Mota, one of the New Hebrides islands, the
conception of an external soul is carried out in the practice of daily life.
In the Mota language the word tamaniu signifies something animate or
inanimate which a man has come to believe to have an existence intimately
connected with his own . It was not every one in Mota who had his tamaniu;
only some men fancied that they had this relation to a lizard, a snake, or it
might be a stone; sometimes the thing was sought for and found by drinking the
infusion of certain leaves and heaping together the dregs; then whatever
living thing was first seen in or upon the heap was the tamaniu. It was
watched but not fed or worshipped; the natives believed that it came at call,
and that the life of the man was bound up with the life of his tamaniu, if a
living thing, or with its safety; should it die, or if not living get broken
or be lost, the man would die. Hence in case of sickness they would send to
see if the tamaniu was safe and well.

The theory of an external soul deposited in an animal appears to be very
prevalent in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria, the Cameroons, and the
Gaboon. Among the Fans of the Gaboon every wizard is believed at initiation to
unite his life with that of some particular wild animal by a rite of
blood-brotherhood; he draws blood from the ear of the animal and from his own
arm, and inoculates the animal with his own blood, and himself with the blood
of the beast. Henceforth such an intimate union is established between the two
that the death of the one entails the death of the other. The alliance is
thought to bring to the wizard or sorcerer a great accession of power, which
he can turn to his advantage in various ways. In the first place, like the
warlock in the fairy tales who has deposited his life outside of himself in
some safe place, the Fan wizard now deems himself invulnerable. Moreover, the
animal with which he has exchanged blood has become his familiar, and will
obey any orders he may choose to give it; so he makes use of it to injure and
kill his enemies. For that reason the creature with whom he establishes the
relation of blood-brotherhood is never a tame or domestic animal, but always a
ferocious and dangerous wild beast, such as a leopard, a black serpent, a
crocodile, a hippopotamus, a wild boar, or a vulture. Of all these creatures
the leopard is by far the commonest familiar of Fan wizards, and next to it
comes the black serpent; the vulture is the rarest. Witches as well as wizards
have their familiars; but the animals with which the lives of women are thus
bound up generally differ from those to which men commit their external souls.
A witch never has a panther for her familiar, but often a venomous species of
serpent, sometimes a horned viper, sometimes a black serpent, sometimes a
green one that lives in banana-trees; or it may be a vulture, an owl, or other
bird of night. In every case the beast or bird with which the witch or wizard
has contracted this mystic alliance is an individual, never a species; and
when the individual animal dies the alliance is naturally at an end, since the
death of the animal is supposed to entail the death of the man.

Similar beliefs are held by the natives of the Cross River valley within
the provinces of the Cameroons. Groups of people, generally the inhabitants of
a village, have chosen various animals, with which they believe themselves to
stand on a footing of intimate friendship or relationship. Amongst such
animals are hippopotamuses, elephants, leopards, crocodiles, gorillas, fish,
and serpents, all of them creatures which are either very strong or can easily
hide themselves in the water or a thicket. This power of concealing themselves
is said to be an indispensable condition of the choice of animal familiars,
since the animal friend or helper is expected to injure his owner's enemy by
stealth; for example, if he is a hippopotamus, he will bob up suddenly out of
the water and capsize the enemy's canoe. Between the animals and their human
friends or kinsfolk such a sympathetic relation is supposed to exist that the
moment the animal dies the man dies also, and similarly the instant the man
perishes so does the beast. >From this it follows that the animal kinsfolk may
never be shot at or molested for fear of injuring or killing the persons whose
lives are knit up with the lives of the brutes. This does not, however,
prevent the people of a village, who have elephants for their animal friends,
from hunting elephants. For they do not respect the whole species but merely
certain individuals of it, which stand in an intimate relation to certain
individual men and women; and they imagine that they can always distinguish
these brother elephants from the common herd of elephants which are mere
elephants and nothing more. The recognition indeed is said to be mutual. When
a hunter, who has an elephant for his friend, meets a human elephant, as we
may call it, the noble animal lifts up a paw and holds it before his face, as
much as to say, Don't shoot. Were the hunter so inhuman as to fire on and
wound such an elephant, the person whose life was bound up with the elephant
would fall ill.

The Balong of the Cameroons think that every man has several souls, of
which one is in his body and another in an animal, such as an elephant, a wild
pig, a leopard, and so forth. When a man comes home, feeling ill, and says, I
shall soon die, and dies accordingly, the people aver that one of his souls
has been killed in a wild pig or a leopard and that the death of the external
soul has caused the death of the soul in his body. A similar belief in the
external souls of living people is entertained by the Ibos, an important tribe
of the Niger delta. They think that a man's spirit can quit his body for a
time during life and take up its abode in an animal. A man who wishes to
acquire this power procures a certain drug from a wise man and mixes it with
his food. After that his soul goes out and enters into an animal. If it should
happen that the animal is killed while the man's soul is lodged in it, the man
dies; and if the animal be wounded, the man's body will presently be covered
with boils. This belief instigates to many deeds of darkness; for a sly rogue
will sometimes surreptitiously administer the magical drug to his enemy in his
food, and having thus smuggled the other's soul into an animal will destroy
the creature, and with it the man whose soul is lodged in it.

The negroes of Calabar, at the mouth of the Niger, believe that every
person has four souls, one of which always lives outside of his or her body in
the form of a wild beast in the forest. This external soul, or bush soul, as
Miss Kingsley calls it, may be almost any animal, for example, a leopard, a
fish, or a tortoise; but it is never a domestic animal and never a plant.
Unless he is gifted with second sight, a man cannot see his own bush soul, but
a diviner will often tell him what sort of creature his bush soul is, and
after that the man will be careful not to kill any animal of that species, and
will strongly object to any one else doing so. A man and his sons have usually
the same sort of animals for their bush souls, and so with a mother and her
daughters. But sometimes all the children of a family take after the bush soul
of their father; for example, if his external soul is a leopard, all his sons
and daughters will have leopards for their external souls. And on the other
hand, sometimes they all take after their mother; for instance, if her
external soul is a tortoise, all the external souls of her sons and daughters
will be tortoises too. So intimately bound up is the life of the man with that
of the animal which he regards as his external or bush soul, that the death or
injury of the animal necessarily entails the death or injury of the man. And,
conversely, when the man dies, his bush soul can no longer find a place of
rest, but goes mad and rushes into the fire or charges people and is knocked
on the head, and that is an end of it.

Near Eket in North Calabar there is a sacred lake, the fish of which are
carefully preserved because the people believe that their own souls are lodged
in the fish, and that with every fish killed a human life would be
simultaneously extinguished. In the Calabar River not very many years ago
there used to be a huge old crocodile, popularly supposed to contain the
external soul of a chief who resided in the flesh at Duke Town. Sporting
vice-consuls used from time to time to hunt the animal, and once an officer
contrived to hit it. Forthwith the chief was laid up with a wound in his leg.
He gave out that a dog had bitten him, but no doubt the wise shook their heads
and refused to be put off with so flimsy a pretext. Again, among several
tribes on the banks of the Niger between Lokoja and the delta there prevails
a belief in the possibility of a man possessing an alter ego in the form of
some animal such as a crocodile or a hippopotamus. It is believed that such a
person's life is bound up with that of the animal to such an extent that,
whatever affects the one produces a corresponding impression upon the other,
and that if one dies the other must speedily do so too. It happened not very
long ago that an Englishman shot a hippopotamus close to a native village; the
friends of a woman who died the same night in the village demanded and
eventually obtained five pounds as compensation for the murder of the woman.

Amongst the Zapotecs of Central America, when a woman was about to be
confined, her relations assembled in the hut, and began to draw on the floor
figures of different animals, rubbing each one out as soon as it was
completed. This went on till the moment of birth, and the figure that then
remained sketched upon the ground was called the child's tona or second
self. When the child grew old enough, he procured the animal that represented
him and took care of it, as it was believed that health and existence were
bound up with that of the animal's, in fact that the death of both would occur
simultaneously, or rather that when the animal died the man would die too.
Among the Indians of Guatemala and Honduras the nagual or naual is that
animate or inanimate object, generally an animal, which stands in a parallel
relation to a particular man, so that the weal and woe of the man depend on
the fate of the nagual. According to an old writer, many Indians of
Guatemala are deluded by the devil to believe that their life dependeth upon
the life of such and such a beast (which they take unto them as their familiar
spirit), and think that when that beast dieth they must die; when he is
chased, their hearts pant; when he is faint, they are faint; nay, it happeneth
that by the devil's delusion they appear in the shape of that beast (which
commonly by their choice is a buck, or doe, a lion, or tigre, or dog, or
eagle) and in that shape have been shot at and wounded. The Indians were
persuaded that the death of their nagual would entail their own. Legend
affirms that in the first battles with the Spaniards on the plateau of
Quetzaltenango the naguals of the Indian chiefs fought in the form of
serpents. The nagual of the highest chief was especially conspicuous,
because it had the form of a great bird, resplendent in green plumage. The
Spanish general Pedro de Alvarado killed the bird with his lance, and at the
same moment the Indian chief fell dead to the ground.

In many tribes of South-Eastern Australia each sex used to regard a
particular species of animals in the same way that a Central American Indian
regarded his nagual, but with this difference, that whereas the Indian
apparently knew the individual animal with which his life was bound up, the
Australians only knew that each of their lives was bound up with some one
animal of the species, but they could not say with which. The result naturally
was that every man spared and protected all the animals of the species with
which the lives of the men were bound up; and every woman spared and protected
all the animals of the species with which the lives of the women were bound
up; because no one knew but that the death of any animal of the respective
species might entail his or her own; just as the killing of the green bird was
immediately followed by the death of the Indian chief, and the killing of the
parrot by the death of Punchkin in the fairy tale. Thus, for example, the
Wotjobaluk tribe of South-Eastern Australia held that 'the life of
Ngunungunut (the Bat) is the life of a man, and the life of Yrtatgurk (the
Nightjar) is the life of a woman,' and that when either of these creatures is
killed the life of some man or of some woman is shortened. In such a case
every man or every woman in the camp feared that he or she might be the
victim, and from this cause great fights arose in this tribe. I learn that in
these fights, men on one side and women on the other, it was not at all
certain which would be victorious, for at times the women gave the men a
severe drubbing with their yamsticks, while often women were injured or killed
by spears. The Wotjobaluk said that the bat was the man's brother and that
the nightjar was his wife. The particular species of animals with which the
lives of the sexes were believed to be respectively bound up varied somewhat
from tribe to tribe. Thus whereas among the Wotjobaluk the bat was the animal
of the men, at Gunbower Creek on the Lower Murray the bat seems to have been
the animal of the women, for the natives would not kill it for the reason that
if it was killed, one of their lubras [women] would be sure to die in
consequence. But whatever the particular sorts of creature with which the
lives of men and women were believed to be bound up, the belief itself and the
fights to which it gave rise are known to have prevailed over a large part of
South-Eastern Australia, and probably they extended much farther. The belief
was a very serious one, and so consequently were the fights which sprang from
it. Thus among some tribes of Victoria the common bat belongs to the men, who
protect it against injury, even to the half-killing of their wives for its
sake. The fern owl, or large goatsucker, belongs to the women, and, although a
bird of evil omen, creating terror at night by its cry, it is jealously
protected by them. If a man kills one, they are as much enraged as if it was
one of their children, and will strike him with their long poles.

The jealous protection thus afforded by Australian men and women to bats
and owls respectively (for bats and owls seem to be the creatures usually
allotted to the two sexes) is not based upon purely selfish considerations.
For each man believes that not only his own life but the lives of his father,
brothers, sons, and so on are bound up with the lives of particular bats, and
that therefore in protecting the bat species he is protecting the lives of all
his male relations as well as his own. Similarly, each woman believes that the
lives of her mother, sisters, daughters, and so forth, equally with her own,
are bound up with the lives of particular owls, and that in guarding the owl
species she is guarding the lives of all her female relations besides her own.
Now, when men's lives are thus supposed to be contained in certain animals, it
is obvious that the animals can hardly be distinguished from the men, or the
men from the animals. If my brother John's life is in a bat, then, on the one
hand, the bat is my brother as well as John; and, on the other hand, John is
in a sense a bat, since his life is in a bat. Similarly, if my sister Mary's
life is in an owl, then the owl is my sister and Mary is an owl. This is a
natural enough conclusion, and the Australians have not failed to draw it.
When the bat is the man's animal, it is called his brother; and when the owl
is the woman's animal, it is called her sister. And conversely a man addresses
a woman as an owl, and she addresses him as a bat. So with the other animals
allotted to the sexes respectively in other tribes. For example, among the
Kurnai all emu-wrens were brothers of the men, and all the men were
emu-wrens; all superb warblers were sisters of the women, and all the women
were superb warblers.

But when a savage names himself after an animal, calls it his brother, and
refuses to kill it, the animal is said to be his totem. Accordingly in the
tribes of South-Eastern Australia which we have been considering the bat and
the owl, the emu-wren and the superb warbler, may properly be described as
totems of the sexes. But the assignation of a totem to a sex is comparatively
rare, and has hitherto been discovered nowhere but in Australia. Far more
commonly the totem is appropriated not to a sex, but to a clan, and is
hereditary either in the male or female line. The relation of an individual to
the clan totem does not differ in kind from his relation to the sex totem; he
will not kill it, he speaks of it as his brother, and he calls himself by its
name. Now if the relations are similar, the explanation which holds good of
the one ought equally to hold good of the other. Therefore, the reason why a
clan revere a particular species of animals or plants (for the clan totem may
be a plant) and call themselves after it, would seem to be a belief that the
life of each individual of the clan is bound up with some one animal or plant
of the species, and that his or her death would be the consequence of killing
that particular animal, or destroying that particular plant. This explanation
of totemism squares very well with Sir George Grey's definition of a totem or
kobong in Western Australia. He says: A certain mysterious connexion exists
between a family and its kobong, so that a member of the family will never
kill an animal of the species to which his kobong belongs, should he find it
asleep; indeed he always kills it reluctantly, and never without affording it
a chance to escape. This arises from the family belief that some one
individual of the species is their nearest friend, to kill whom would be a
great crime, and to be carefully avoided. Similarly, a native who has a
vegetable for his kobong may not gather it under certain circumstances, and
at a particular period of the year. Here it will be observed that though each
man spares all the animals or plants of the species, they are not all equally
precious to him; far from it, out of the whole species there is only one which
is specially dear to him; but as he does not know which the dear one is, he is
obliged to spare them all from fear of injuring the one. Again, this
explanation of the clan totem harmonises with the supposed effect of killing
one of the totem species. One day one of the blacks killed a crow. Three or
four days afterwards a Boortwa (crow) [i.e. a man of the Crow clan] named
Larry died. He had been ailing for some days, but the killing of his wingong
[totem] hastened his death. Here the killing of the crow caused the death of
a man of the Crow clan, exactly as, in the case of the sex-totems, the killing
of a bat causes the death of a Bat-man or the killing of an owl causes the
death of an Owl-woman. Similarly, the killing of his nagual causes the death
of a Central American Indian, the killing of his bush soul causes the death of
a Calabar negro, the killing of his tamaniu causes the death of a Banks
Islander, and the killing of the animal in which his life is stowed away
causes the death of the giant or warlock in the fairy tale.

Thus it appears that the story of The giant who had no heart in his body
may perhaps furnish the key to the relation which is supposed to subsist
between a man and his totem. The totem, on this theory, is simply the
receptacle in which a man keeps his life, as Punchkin kept his life in a
parrot, and Bidasari kept her soul in a golden fish. It is no valid objection
to this view that when a savage has both a sex totem and a clan totem his life
must be bound up with two different animals, the death of either of which
would entail his own. If a man has more vital places than one in his body,
why, the savage may think, should he not have more vital places than one
outside it? Why, since he can put his life outside himself, should he not
transfer one portion of it to one animal and another to another? The
divisibility of life, or, to put it otherwise, the plurality of souls, is an
idea suggested by many familiar facts, and has commended itself to
philosophers like Plato, as well as to savages. It is only when the notion of
a soul, from being a quasi-scientific hypothesis, becomes a theological dogma
that its unity and indivisibility are insisted upon as essential. The savage,
unshackled by dogma, is free to explain the facts of life by the assumption of
as many souls as he thinks necessary. Hence, for example, the Caribs supposed
that there was one soul in the head, another in the heart, and other souls at
all the places where an artery is felt pulsating. Some of the Hidatsa Indians
explain the phenomena of gradual death, when the extremities appear dead
first, by supposing that man has four souls, and that they quit the body, not
simultaneously, but one after the other, dissolution being only complete when
all four have departed. Some of the Dyaks of Borneo and the Malays of the
Peninsula believe that every man has seven souls. The Alfoors of Poso in
Celebes are of opinion that he has three. The natives of Laos suppose that the
body is the seat of thirty spirits, which reside in the hands, the feet, the
mouth, the eyes, and so on. Hence, from the primitive point of view, it is
perfectly possible that a savage should have one soul in his sex totem and
another in his clan totem. However, as I have observed, sex totems have been
found nowhere but in Australia; so that as a rule the savage who practises
totemism need not have more than one soul out of his body at a time.

If this explanation of the totem as a receptacle in which a man keeps his
soul or one of his souls is correct, we should expect to find some totemic
people of whom it is expressly said that every man amongst them is believed to
keep at least one soul permanently out of his body, and that the destruction
of this external soul is supposed to entail the death of its owner. Such a
people are the Bataks of Sumatra. The Bataks are divided into exogamous clans
(margas) with descent in the male line; and each clan is forbidden to eat
the flesh of a particular animal. One clan may not eat the tiger, another the
ape, another the crocodile, another the dog, another the cat, another the
dove, another the white buffalo, and another the locust. The reason given by
members of a clan for abstaining from the flesh of the particular animal is
either that they are descended from animals of that species, and that their
souls after death may transmigrate into the animals, or that they or their
forefathers have been under certain obligations to the creatures. Sometimes,
but not always, the clan bears the name of the animal. Thus the Bataks have
totemism in full. But, further, each Batak believes that he has seven or, on a
more moderate computation, three souls. One of these souls is always outside
the body, but nevertheless whenever it dies, however far away it may be at the
time, that same moment the man dies also. The writer who mentions this belief
says nothing about the Batak totems; but on the analogy of the Australian,
Central American, and African evidence we may conjecture that the external
soul, whose death entails the death of the man, is housed in the totemic
animal or plant.

Against this view it can hardly be thought to militate that the Batak does
not in set terms affirm his external soul to be in his totem, but alleges
other grounds for respecting the sacred animal or plant of his clan. For if a
savage seriously believes that his life is bound up with an external object,
it is in the last degree unlikely that he will let any stranger into the
secret. In all that touches his inmost life and beliefs the savage is
exceedingly suspicious and reserved; Europeans have resided among savages for
years without discovering some of their capital articles of faith, and in the
end the discovery has often been the result of accident. Above all, the savage
lives in an intense and perpetual dread of assassination by sorcery; the most
trifling relics of his personthe clippings of his hair and nails, his
spittle, the remnants of his food, his very nameall these may, he fancies, be
turned by the sorcerer to his destruction, and he is therefore anxiously
careful to conceal or destroy them. But if in matters such as these, which are
but the outposts and outworks of his life, he is so shy and secretive, how
close must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he
enshrouds the inner keep and citadel of his being! When the princess in the
fairy tale asks the giant where he keeps his soul, he often gives false or
evasive answers, and it is only after much coaxing and wheedling that the
secret is at last wrung from him. In his jealous reticence the giant resembles
the timid and furtive savage; but whereas the exigencies of the story demand
that the giant should at last reveal his secret, no such obligation is laid on
the savage; and no inducement that can be offered is likely to tempt him to
imperil his soul by revealing its hiding-place to a stranger. It is therefore
no matter for surprise that the central mystery of the savage's life should so
long have remained a secret, and that we should be left to piece it together
from scattered hints and fragments and from the recollections of it which
linger in fairy tales.

4. The Ritual of Death and Resurrection

THIS view of totemism throws light on a class of religious rites of which no
adequate explanation, so far as I am aware, has yet been offered. Amongst many
savage tribes, especially such as are known to practice totemism, it is
customary for lads at puberty to undergo certain initiatory rites, of which
one of the commonest is a pretence of killing the lad and bringing him to life
again. Such rites become intelligible if we suppose that their substance
consists in extracting the youth's soul in order to transfer it to his totem.
For the extraction of his soul would naturally be supposed to kill the youth
or at least to throw him into a death-like trance, which the savage hardly
distinguishes from death. His recovery would then be attributed either to the
gradual recovery of his system from the violent shock which it had received,
or, more probably, to the infusion into him of fresh life drawn from the
totem. Thus the essence of these initiatory rites, so far as they consist in a
simulation of death and resurrection, would be an exchange of life or souls
between the man and his totem. The primitive belief in the possibility of such
an exchange of souls comes clearly out in a story of a Basque hunter who
affirmed that he had been killed by a bear, but that the bear had, after
killing him, breathed its own soul into him, so that the bear's body was now
dead, but he himself was a bear, being animated by the bear's soul. This
revival of the dead hunter as a bear is exactly analogous to what, on the
theory here suggested, is supposed to take place in the ceremony of killing a
lad at puberty and bringing him to life again. The lad dies as a man and comes
to life again as an animal; the animal's soul is now in him, and his human
soul is in the animal. With good right, therefore, does he call himself a Bear
or a Wolf, etc., according to his totem; and with good right does he treat the
bears or the wolves, etc., as his brethren, since in these animals are lodged
the souls of himself and his kindred.

Examples of this supposed death and resurrection at initiation are as
follows. In the Wonghi or Wonghibon tribe of New South Wales the youths on
approaching manhood are initiated at a secret ceremony, which none but
initiated men may witness. Part of the proceedings consists in knocking out a
tooth and giving a new name to the novice, indicative of the change from youth
to manhood. While the teeth are being knocked out an instrument known as a
bull-roarer, which consists of a flat piece of wood with serrated edges tied
to the end of a string, is swung round so as to produce a loud humming noise.
The uninitiated are not allowed to see this instrument. Women are forbidden to
witness the ceremonies under pain of death. It is given out that the youths
are each met in turn by a mythical being, called Thuremlin (more commonly
known as Daramulun) who takes the youth to a distance, kills him, and in some
instances cuts him up, after which he restores him to life and knocks out a
tooth. Their belief in the power of Thuremlin is said to be undoubted.

The Ualaroi of the Upper Darling River said that at initiation the boy met
a ghost, who killed him and brought him to life again as a young man. Among
the natives on the Lower Lachlan and Murray Rivers it was Thrumalun
(Daramulun) who was thought to slay and resuscitate the novices. In the
Unmatjera tribe of Central Australia women and children believe that a spirit
called Twanyirika kills the youth and afterwards brings him to life again
during the period of initiation. The rites of initiation in this tribe, as in
the other Central tribes, comprise the operations of circumcision and
subincision; and as soon as the second of these has been performed on him, the
young man receives from his father a sacred stick (churinga), with which, he
is told, his spirit was associated in the remotest past. While he is out in
the bush recovering from his wounds, he must swing the bull-roarer, or a being
who lives up in the sky will swoop down and carry him off. In the Binbinga
tribe, on the western coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, the women and children
believe that the noise of the bull-roarer at initiation is made by a spirit
named Katajalina, who lives in an ant-hill and comes out and eats up the boy,
afterwards restoring him to life. Similarly among their neighbours the Anula
the women imagine that the droning sound of the bull-roarer is produced by a
spirit called Gnabaia, who swallows the lads at initiation and afterwards
disgorges them in the form of initiated men.

Among the tribes settled on the southern coast of New South Wales, of
which the Coast Murring tribe may be regarded as typical, the drama of
resurrection from the dead was exhibited in a graphic form to the novices at
initiation. The ceremony has been described for us by an eye-witness. A man,
disguised with stringy bark fibre, lay down in a grave and was lightly covered
up with sticks and earth. In his hand he held a small bush, which appeared to
be growing in the soil, and other bushes were stuck in the ground to heighten
the effect. Then the novices were brought and placed beside the grave. Next, a
procession of men, disguised in stringy bark fibre, drew near. They
represented a party of medicine-men, guided by two reverend seniors, who had
come on pilgrimage to the grave of a brother medicine-man, who lay buried
there. When the little procession, chanting an invocation to Daramulun, had
defiled from among the rocks and trees into the open, it drew up on the side
of the grave opposite to the novices, the two old men taking up a position in
the rear of the dancers. For some time the dance and song went on till the
tree that seemed to grow from the grave began to quiver. Look there! cried
the men to the novices, pointing to the trembling leaves. As they looked, the
tree quivered more and more, then was violently agitated and fell to the
ground, while amid the excited dancing of the dancers and the chanting of the
choir the supposed dead man spurned from him the superincumbent mass of sticks
and leaves, and springing to his feet danced his magic dance in the grave
itself, and exhibited in his mouth the magic substances which he was supposed
to have received from Daramulun in person.

Some tribes of Northern New Guineathe Yabim, Bukaua, Kai, and Tamilike
many Australian tribes, require every male member of the tribe to be
circumcised before he ranks as a full-grown man; and the tribal initiation, of
which circumcision is the central feature, is conceived by them, as by some
Australian tribes, as a process of being swallowed and disgorged by a mythical
monster, whose voice is heard in the humming sound of the bull-roarer. Indeed
the New Guinea tribes not only impress this belief on the minds of women and
children, but enact it in a dramatic form at the actual rites of initiation,
at which no woman or uninitiated person may be present. For this purpose a hut
about a hundred feet long is erected either in the village or in a lonely part
of the forest. It is modelled in the shape of the mythical monster; at the end
which represents his head it is high, and it tapers away at the other end. A
betel-palm, grubbed up with the roots, stands for the backbone of the great
being and its clustering fibres for his hair; and to complete the resemblance
the butt end of the building is adorned by a native artist with a pair of
goggle eyes and a gaping mouth. When after a tearful parting from their
mothers and women folk, who believe or pretend to believe in the monster that
swallows their dear ones, the awe-struck novices are brought face to face with
this imposing structure, the huge creature emits a sullen growl, which is in
fact no other than the humming note of bull-roarers swung by men concealed in
the monster's belly. The actual process of deglutition is variously enacted.
Among the Tami it is represented by causing the candidates to defile past a
row of men who hold bull-roarers over their heads; among the Kai it is more
graphically set forth by making them pass under a scaffold on which stands a
man, who makes a gesture of swallowing and takes in fact a gulp of water as
each trembling novice passes beneath him. But the present of a pig,
opportunely offered for the redemption of the youth, induces the monster to
relent and disgorge his victim; the man who represents the monster accepts the
gift vicariously, a gurgling sound is heard, and the water which had just been
swallowed descends in a jet on the novice. This signifies that the young man
has been released from the monster's belly. However, he has now to undergo the
more painful and dangerous operation of circumcision. It follows immediately,
and the cut made by the knife of the operator is explained to be a bite or
scratch which the monster inflicted on the novice in spewing him out of his
capacious maw. While the operation is proceeding, a prodigious noise is made
by the swinging of bull-roarers to represent the roar of the dreadful being
who is in the act of swallowing the young man.

When, as sometimes happens, a lad dies from the effect of the operation,
he is buried secretly in the forest, and his sorrowing mother is told that the
monster has a pig's stomach as well as a human stomach, and that unfortunately
her son slipped into the wrong stomach, from which it was impossible to
extricate him. After they have been circumcised the lads must remain for some
months in seclusion, shunning all contact with women and even the sight of
them. They live in the long hut which represents the monster's belly. When at
last the lads, now ranking as initiated men, are brought back with great pomp
and ceremony to the village, they are received with sobs and tears of joy by
the women, as if the grave had given up its dead. At first the young men keep
their eyes rigidly closed or even sealed with a plaster of chalk, and they
appear not to understand the words of command which are given them by an
elder. Gradually, however, they come to themselves as if awakening from a
stupor, and next day they bathe and wash off the crust of white chalk with
which their bodies had been coated.

It is highly significant that all these tribes of New Guinea apply the
same word to the bull-roarer and to the monster, who is supposed to swallow
the novices at circumcision, and whose fearful roar is represented by the hum
of the harmless wooden instruments. Further, it deserves to be noted that in
three languages out of the four the same word which is applied to the
bull-roarer and to the monster means also a ghost or spirit of the dead, while
in the fourth language (the Kai) it signifies grandfather. From this it
seems to follow that the being who swallows and disgorges the novices at
initiation is believed to be a powerful ghost or ancestral spirit, and that
the bull-roarer, which bears his name, is his material representative. That
would explain the jealous secrecy with which the sacred implement is kept from
the sight of women. While they are not in use, the bull-roarers are stowed
away in the men's club-houses, which no woman may enter; indeed no woman or
uninitiated person may set eyes on a bull-roarer under pain of death.
Similarly among the Tugeri or Kaya-Kaya, a large Papuan tribe on the south
coast of Dutch New Guinea, the name of the bull-roarer, which they call
sosom, is given to a mythical giant, who is supposed to appear every year
with the south-east monsoon. When he comes, a festival is held in his honour
and bull-roarers are swung. Boys are presented to the giant, and he kills
them, but considerately brings them to life again.

In certain districts of Viti Levu, the largest of the Fijian Islands, the
drama of death and resurrection used to be acted with much solemnity before
the eyes of young men at initiation. In a sacred enclosure they were shown a
row of dead or seemingly dead men lying on the ground, their bodies cut open
and covered with blood, their entrails protruding. But at a yell from the high
priest the counterfeit dead men started to their feet and ran down to the
river to cleanse themselves from the blood and guts of pigs with which they
were beslobbered. Soon they marched back to the sacred enclosure as if come to
life, clean, fresh, and garlanded, swaying their bodies in time to the music
of a solemn hymn, and took their places in front of the novices. Such was the
drama of death and resurrection.

The people of Rook, an island between New Guinea and New Britain, hold
festivals at which one or two disguised men, their heads covered with wooden
masks, go dancing through the village, followed by all the other men. They
demand that the circumcised boys who have not yet been swallowed by Marsaba
(the devil) shall be given up to them. The boys, trembling and shrieking, are
delivered to them, and must creep between the legs of the disguised men. Then
the procession moves through the village again, and announces that Marsaba has
eaten up the boys, and will not disgorge them till he receives a present of
pigs, taro, and so forth. So all the villagers, according to their means,
contribute provisions, which are then consumed in the name of Marsaba.

In the west of Ceram boys at puberty are admitted to the Kakian
association. Modern writers have commonly regarded this association as
primarily a political league instituted to resist foreign domination. In
reality its objects are purely religious and social, though it is possible
that the priests may have occasionally used their powerful influence for
political ends. The society is in fact merely one of those widely-diffused
primitive institutions, of which a chief object is the initiation of young
men. In recent years the true nature of the association has been duly
recognised by the distinguished Dutch ethnologist, J. G. F. Riedel. The Kakian
house is an oblong wooden shed, situated under the darkest trees in the depth
of the forest, and is built to admit so little light that it is impossible to
see what goes on in it. Every village has such a house. Thither the boys who
are to be initiated are conducted blindfold, followed by their parents and
relations. Each boy is led by the hand of two men, who act as his sponsors or
guardians, looking after him during the period of initiation. When all are
assembled before the shed, the high priest calls aloud upon the devils.
Immediately a hideous uproar is heard to proceed from the shed. It is made by
men with bamboo trumpets, who have been secretly introduced into the building
by a back door, but the women and children think it is made by the devils, and
are much terrified. Then the priests enter the shed, followed by the boys, one
at a time. As soon as each boy has disappeared within the precincts, a dull
chopping sound is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword or spear,
dripping with blood, is thrust through the roof of the shed. This is a token
that the boy's head has been cut off, and that the devil has carried him away
to the other world, there to regenerate and transform him. So at sight of the
bloody sword the mothers weep and wail, crying that the devil has murdered
their children. In some places, it would seem, the boys are pushed through an
opening made in the shape of a crocodile's jaws or a cassowary's beak, and it
is then said that the devil has swallowed them. The boys remain in the shed
for five or nine days. Sitting in the dark, they hear the blast of the bamboo
trumpets, and from time to time the sound of musket shots and the clash of
swords. Every day they bathe, and their faces and bodies are smeared with a
yellow dye, to give them the appearance of having been swallowed by the devil.
During his stay in the Kakian house each boy has one or two crosses tattooed
with thorns on his breast or arm. When they are not sleeping, the lads must
sit in a crouching posture without moving a muscle. As they sit in a row
cross-legged, with their hands stretched out, the chief takes his trumpet, and
placing the mouth of it on the hands of each lad, speaks through it in strange
tones, imitating the voice of the spirits. He warns the lads, under pain of
death, to observe the rules of the Kakian society, and never to reveal what
has passed in the Kakian house. The novices are also told by the priests to
behave well to their blood relations, and are taught the traditions and
secrets of the tribe.

Meantime the mothers and sisters of the lads have gone home to weep and
mourn. But in a day or two the men who acted as guardians or sponsors to the
novices return to the village with the glad tidings that the devil, at the
intercession of the priests, has restored the lads to life. The men who bring
this news come in a fainting state and daubed with mud, like messengers
freshly arrived from the nether world. Before leaving the Kakian house, each
lad receives from the priest a stick adorned at both ends with a cock's or
cassowary's feathers. The sticks are supposed to have been given to the lads
by the devil at the time when he restored them to life, and they serve as a
token that the youths have been in the spirit land. When they return to their
homes they totter in their walk, and enter the house backward, as if they had
forgotten how to walk properly; or they enter the house by the back door. If a
plate of food is given to them, they hold it upside down. They remain dumb,
indicating their wants by signs only. All this is to show that they are still
under the influence of the devil or the spirits. Their sponsors have to teach
them all the common acts of life, as if they were newborn children. Further,
upon leaving the Kakian house the boys are strictly forbidden to eat of
certain fruits until the next celebration of the rites has taken place. And
for twenty or thirty days their hair may not be combed by their mothers or
sisters. At the end of that time the high priest takes them to a lonely place
in the forest, and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their
heads. After these initiatory rites the lads are deemed men, and may marry; it
would be a scandal if they married before.

In the region of the Lower Congo a simulation of death and resurrection
is, or rather used to be, practised by the members of a guild or secret
society called ndembo. In the practice of Ndembo the initiating doctors get
some one to fall down in a pretended fit, and in that state he is carried away
to an enclosed place outside the town. This is called 'dying Ndembo.' Others
follow suit, generally boys and girls, but often young men and women . They
are supposed to have died. But the parents and friends supply food, and after
a period varying, according to custom, from three months to three years, it is
arranged that the doctor shall bring them to life again . When the doctor's
fee has been paid, and money (goods) saved for a feast, the Ndembo people
are brought to life. At first they pretend to know no one and nothing; they do
not even know how to masticate food, and friends have to perform that office
for them. They want everything nice that any one uninitiated may have, and
beat them if it is not granted, or even strangle and kill people. They do not
get into trouble for this, because it is thought that they do not know better.
Sometimes they carry on the pretence of talking gibberish, and behaving as if
they had returned from the spirit-world. After this they are known by another
name, peculiar to those who have 'died Ndembo.'  We hear of the custom far
along on the upper river, as well as in the cataract region.

Among some of the Indian tribes of North America there exist certain
religious associations which are only open to candidates who have gone through
a pretence of being killed and brought to life again. In 1766 or 1767 Captain
Jonathan Carver witnessed the admission of a candidate to an association
called the friendly society of the Spirit (Wakon-Kitchewah) among the
Naudowessies, a Siouan or Dacotan tribe in the region of the great lakes. The
candidate knelt before the chief, who told him that he himself was now
agitated by the same spirit which he should in a few moments communicate to
him; that it would strike him dead, but that he would instantly be restored
again to life; to this he added, that the communication, however terrifying,
was a necessary introduction to the advantages enjoyed by the community into
which he was on the point of being admitted. As he spoke this, he appeared to
be greatly agitated; till at last his emotions became so violent, that his
countenance was distorted, and his whole frame convulsed. At this juncture he
threw something that appeared both in shape and colour like a small bean, at
the young man, which seemed to enter his mouth, and he instantly fell as
motionless as if he had been shot. For a time the man lay like dead, but
under a shower of blows he showed signs of consciousness, and finally,
discharging from his mouth the bean, or whatever it was that the chief had
thrown at him, he came to life. In other tribes, for example, the Ojebways,
Winnebagoes, and Dacotas or Sioux, the instrument by which the candidate is
apparently slain is the medicine-bag. The bag is made of the skin of an animal
(such as the otter, wild cat, serpent, bear, raccoon, wolf, owl, weasel), of
which it roughly preserves the shape. Each member of the society has one of
these bags, in which he keeps the odds and ends that make up his medicine or
charms. They believe that from the miscellaneous contents in the belly of the
skin bag or animal there issues a spirit or breath, which has the power, not
only to knock down and kill a man, but also to set him up and restore him to
life. The mode of killing a man with one of these medicine-bags is to thrust
it at him; he falls like dead, but a second thrust of the bag restores him to
life.

A ceremony witnessed by the castaway John R. Jewitt during his captivity
among the Indians of Nootka Sound doubtless belongs to this class of customs.
The Indian king or chief discharged a pistol close to his son's ear, who
immediately fell down as if killed, upon which all the women of the house set
up a most lamentable cry, tearing handfuls of hair from their heads, and
exclaiming that the prince was dead; at the same time a great number of the
inhabitants rushed into the house armed with their daggers, muskets, etc.,
enquiring the cause of their outcry. These were immediately followed by two
others dressed in wolf-skins, with masks over their faces representing the
head of that animal. The latter came in on their hands and feet in the manner
of a beast, and taking up the prince, carried him off upon their backs,
retiring in the same manner they entered. In another place Jewitt mentions
that the young princea lad of about eleven years of agewore a mask in
imitation of a wolf's head. Now, as the Indians of this part of America are
divided into totem clans, of which the Wolf clan is one of the principal, and
as the members of each clan are in the habit of wearing some portion of the
totem animal about their person, it is probable that the prince belonged to
the Wolf clan, and that the ceremony described by Jewitt represented the
killing of the lad in order that he might be born anew as a wolf, much in the
same way that the Basque hunter supposed himself to have been killed and to
have come to life again as a bear.

This conjectural explanation of the ceremony has, since it was first put
forward, been to some extent confirmed by the researches of Dr. Franz Boas
among these Indians; though it would seem that the community to which the
chief's son thus obtained admission was not so much a totem clan as a secret
society called Tlokoala, whose members imitated wolves. Every new member of
the society must be initiated by the wolves. At night a pack of wolves,
personated by Indians dressed in wolf-skins and wearing wolf-masks, make their
appearance, seize the novice, and carry him into the woods. When the wolves
are heard outside the village, coming to fetch away the novice, all the
members of the society blacken their faces and sing, Among all the tribes is
great excitement, because I am Tlokoala. Next day the wolves bring back the
novice dead, and the members of the society have to revive him. The wolves are
supposed to have put a magic stone into his body, which must be removed before
he can come to life. Till this is done the pretended corpse is left lying
outside the house. Two wizards go and remove the stone, which appears to be
quartz, and then the novice is resuscitated. Among the Niska Indians of
British Columbia, who are divided into four principal clans with the raven,
the wolf, the eagle, and the bear for their respective totems, the novice at
initiation is always brought back by an artificial totem animal. Thus when a
man was about to be initiated into a secret society called Olala, his friends
drew their knives and pretended to kill him. In reality they let him slip
away, while they cut off the head of a dummy which had been adroitly
substituted for him. Then they laid the decapitated dummy down and covered it
over, and the women began to mourn and wail. His relations gave a funeral
banquet and solemnly burnt the effigy. In short, they held a regular funeral.
For a whole year the novice remained absent and was seen by none but members
of the secret society. But at the end of that time he came back alive, carried
by an artificial animal which represented his totem.

In these ceremonies the essence of the rite appears to be the killing of
the novice in his character of a man and his restoration to life in the form
of the animal which is thenceforward to be, if not his guardian spirit, at
least linked to him in a peculiarly intimate relation. It is to be remembered
that the Indians of Guatemala, whose life was bound up with an animal, were
supposed to have the power of appearing in the shape of the particular
creature with which they were thus sympathetically united. Hence it seems not
unreasonable to conjecture that in like manner the Indians of British Columbia
may imagine that their life depends on the life of some one of that species of
creature to which they assimilate themselves by their costume. At least if
that is not an article of belief with the Columbian Indians of the present
day, it may very well have been so with their ancestors in the past, and thus
may have helped to mould the rites and ceremonies both of the totem clans and
of the secret societies. For though these two sorts of communities differ in
respect of the mode in which membership of them is obtaineda man being born
into his totem clan but admitted into a secret society later in lifewe can
hardly doubt that they are near akin and have their root in the same mode of
thought. That thought, if I am right, is the possibility of establishing a
sympathetic relation with an animal, a spirit, or other mighty being, with
whom a man deposits for safe-keeping his soul or some part of it, and from
whom he receives in return a gift of magical powers.

Thus, on the theory here suggested, wherever totemism is found, and
wherever a pretence is made of killing and bringing to life again the novice
at initiation, there may exist or have existed not only a belief in the
possibility of permanently depositing the soul in some external objectanimal,
plant, or what notbut an actual intention of so doing. If the question is
put, why do men desire to deposit their life outside their bodies? the answer
can only be that, like the giant in the fairy tale, they think it safer to do
so than to carry it about with them, just as people deposit their money with a
banker rather than carry it on their persons. We have seen that at critical
periods the life or soul is sometimes temporarily stowed away in a safe place
till the danger is past. But institutions like totemism are not resorted to
merely on special occasions of danger; they are systems into which every one,
or at least every male, is obliged to be initiated at a certain period of
life. Now the period of life at which initiation takes place is regularly
puberty; and this fact suggests that the special danger which totemism and
systems like it are intended to obviate is supposed not to arise till sexual
maturity has been attained, in fact, that the danger apprehended is believed
to attend the relation of the sexes to each other. It would be easy to prove
by a long array of facts that the sexual relation is associated in the
primitive mind with many serious perils; but the exact nature of the danger
apprehended is still obscure. We may hope that a more exact acquaintance with
savage modes of thought will in time disclose this central mystery of
primitive society, and will thereby furnish the clue, not only to totemism,
but to the origin of the marriage system.

Chapter 68. The Golden Bough

THUS the view that Balder's life was in the mistletoe is entirely in harmony
with primitive modes of thought. It may indeed sound like a contradiction
that, if his life was in the mistletoe, he should nevertheless have been
killed by a blow from the plant. But when a person's life is conceived as
embodied in a particular object, with the existence of which his own existence
is inseparably bound up, and the destruction of which involves his own, the
object in question may be regarded and spoken of indifferently as his life or
his death, as happens in the fairy tales. Hence if a man's death is in an
object, it is perfectly natural that he should be killed by a blow from it. In
the fairy tales Koshchei the Deathless is killed by a blow from the egg or the
stone in which his life or death is secreted; the ogres burst when a certain
grain of sanddoubtless containing their life or deathis carried over their
heads; the magician dies when the stone in which his life or death is
contained is put under his pillow; and the Tartar hero is warned that he may
be killed by the golden arrow or golden sword in which his soul has been
stowed away.

The idea that the life of the oak was in the mistletoe was probably
suggested, as I have said, by the observation that in winter the mistletoe
growing on the oak remains green while the oak itself is leafless. But the
position of the plantgrowing not from the ground but from the trunk or
branches of the treemight confirm this idea. Primitive man might think that,
like himself, the oak-spirit had sought to deposit his life in some safe
place, and for this purpose had pitched on the mistletoe, which, being in a
sense neither on earth nor in heaven, might be supposed to be fairly out of
harm's way. In a former chapter we saw that primitive man seeks to preserve
the life of his human divinities by keeping them poised between earth and
heaven, as the place where they are least likely to be assailed by the dangers
that encompass the life of man on earth. We can therefore understand why it
has been a rule both of ancient and of modern folk-medicine that the mistletoe
should not be allowed to touch the ground; were it to touch the ground, its
healing virtue would be gone. This may be a survival of the old superstition
that the plant in which the life of the sacred tree was concentrated should
not be exposed to the risk incurred by contact with the earth. In an Indian
legend, which offers a parallel to the Balder myth, Indra swore to the demon
Namuci that he would slay him neither by day nor by night, neither with staff
nor with bow, neither with the palm of the hand nor with the fist, neither
with the wet nor with the dry. But he killed him in the morning twilight by
sprinkling over him the foam of the sea. The foam of the sea is just such an
object as a savage might choose to put his life in, because it occupies that
sort of intermediate or nondescript position between earth and sky or sea and
sky in which primitive man sees safety. It is therefore not surprising that
the foam of the river should be the totem of a clan in India.

Again, the view that the mistletoe owes its mystic character partly to its
not growing on the ground is confirmed by a parallel superstition about the
mountain-ash or rowan-tree. In Jutland a rowan that is found growing out of
the top of another tree is esteemed exceedingly effective against witchcraft:
since it does not grow on the ground witches have no power over it; if it is
to have its full effect it must be cut on Ascension Day. Hence it is placed
over doors to prevent the ingress of witches. In Sweden and Norway, also,
magical properties are ascribed to a flying-rowan (flgrnn), that is to a
rowan which is found growing not in the ordinary fashion on the ground but on
another tree, or on a roof, or in a cleft of the rock, where it has sprouted
from seed scattered by birds. They say that a man who is out in the dark
should have a bit of flying-rowan with him to chew; else he runs a risk of
being bewitched and of being unable to stir from the spot. Just as in
Scandinavia the parasitic rowan is deemed a countercharm to sorcery, so in
Germany the parasitic mistletoe is still commonly considered a protection
against witch-craft, and in Sweden, as we saw, the mistletoe which is gathered
on Midsummer Eve is attached to the ceiling of the house, the horse's stall or
the cow's crib, in the belief that this renders the Troll powerless to injure
man or beast.

The view that the mistletoe was not merely the instrument of Balder's
death, but that it contained his life, is countenanced by the analogy of a
Scottish superstition. Tradition ran that the fate of the Hays of Errol, an
estate in Perthshire, near the Firth of Tay, was bound up with the mistletoe
that grew on a certain great oak. A member of the Hay family has recorded the
old belief as follows: Among the low country families the badges are now
almost generally forgotten; but it appears by an ancient MS., and the
tradition of a few old people in Perthshire, that the badge of the Hays was
the mistletoe. There was formerly in the neighbourhood of Errol, and not far
from the Falcon stone, a vast oak of an unknown age, and upon which grew a
profusion of the plant: many charms and legends were considered to be
connected with the tree, and the duration of the family of Hay was said to be
united with its existence. It was believed that a sprig of the mistletoe cut
by a Hay on Allhallowmas eve, with a new dirk, and after surrounding the tree
three times sunwise, and pronouncing a certain spell, was a sure charm against
all glamour or witchery, and an infallible guard in the day of battle. A spray
gathered in the same manner was placed in the cradle of infants, and thought
to defend them from being changed for elfbairns by the fairies. Finally, it
was affirmed, that when the root of the oak had perished, 'the grass should
grow in the hearth of Errol, and a raven should sit in the falcon's nest.' The
two most unlucky deeds which could be done by one of the name of Hay was, to
kill a white falcon, and to cut down a limb from the oak of Errol. When the
old tree was destroyed I could never learn. The estate has been sold out of
the family of Hay, and of course it is said that the fatal oak was cut down a
short time before. The old superstition is recorded in verses which are
traditionally ascribed to Thomas the Rhymer:

While the mistletoe bats on Errol's aik,
And that aik stands fast,
The Hays shall flourish, and their good grey hawk
Shall nocht flinch before the blast.
But when the root of the aik decays,
And the mistletoe dwines on its withered breast,
The grass shall grow on Errol's hearthstane,
And the corbie roup in the falcon's nest.

It is not a new opinion that the Golden Bough was the mistletoe. True,
Virgil does not identify but only compares it with mistletoe. But this may be
only a poetical device to cast a mystic glamour over the humble plant. Or,
more probably, his description was based on a popular superstition that at
certain times the mistletoe blazed out into a supernatural golden glory. The
poet tells how two doves, guiding Aeneas to the gloomy vale in whose depth
grew the Golden Bough, alighted upon a tree, whence shone a flickering gleam
of gold. As in the woods in winter cold the mistletoea plant not native to
its treeis green with fresh leaves and twines its yellow berries about the
boles; such seemed upon the shady holm-oak the leafy gold, so rustled in the
gentle breeze the golden leaf. Here Virgil definitely describes the Golden
Bough as growing on a holm-oak, and compares it with the mistletoe. The
inference is almost inevitable that the Golden Bough was nothing but the
mistletoe seen through the haze of poetry or of popular superstition.

Now grounds have been shown for believing that the priest of the Arician
grovethe King of the Woodpersonified the tree on which grew the Golden
Bough. Hence if that tree was the oak, the King of the Wood must have been a
personification of the oakspirit. It is, therefore, easy to understand why,
before he could be slain, it was necessary to break the Golden Bough. As an
oak-spirit, his life or death was in the mistletoe on the oak, and so long as
the mistletoe remained intact, he, like Balder, could not die. To slay him,
therefore, it was necessary to break the mistletoe, and probably, as in the
case of Balder, to throw it at him. And to complete the parallel, it is only
necessary to suppose that the King of the Wood was formerly burned, dead or
alive, at the midsummer fire festival which, as we have seen, was annually
celebrated in the Arician grove. The perpetual fire which burned in the grove,
like the perpetual fire which burned in the temple of Vesta at Rome and under
the oak at Romove, was probably fed with the sacred oak-wood; and thus it
would be in a great fire of oak that the King of the Wood formerly met his
end. At a later time, as I have suggested, his annual tenure of office was
lengthened or shortened, as the case might be, by the rule which allowed him
to live so long as he could prove his divine right by the strong hand. But he
only escaped the fire to fall by the sword.

Thus it seems that at a remote age in the heart of Italy, beside the sweet
Lake of Nemi, the same fiery tragedy was annually enacted which Italian
merchants and soldiers were afterwards to witness among their rude kindred,
the Celts of Gaul, and which, if the Roman eagles had ever swooped on Norway,
might have been found repeated with little difference among the barbarous
Aryans of the North. The rite was probably an essential feature in the ancient
Aryan worship of the oak.

It only remains to ask, Why was the mistletoe called the Golden Bough? The
whitish-yellow of the mistletoe berries is hardly enough to account for the
name, for Virgil says that the bough was altogether golden, stems as well as
leaves. Perhaps the name may be derived from the rich golden yellow which a
bough of mistletoe assumes when it has been cut and kept for some months; the
bright tint is not confined to the leaves, but spreads to the stalks as well,
so that the whole branch appears to be indeed a Golden Bough. Breton peasants
hang up great bunches of mistletoe in front of their cottages, and in the
month of June these bunches are conspicuous for the bright golden tinge of
their foliage. In some parts of Brittany, especially about Morbihan, branches
of mistletoe are hung over the doors of stables and byres to protect the
horses and cattle, probably against witchcraft.

The yellow colour of the withered bough may partly explain why the
mistletoe has been sometimes supposed to possess the property of disclosing
treasures in the earth; for on the principles of homoeopathic magic there is a
natural affinity between a yellow bough and yellow gold. This suggestion is
confirmed by the analogy of the marvellous properties popularly ascribed to
the mythical fern-seed, which is popularly supposed to bloom like gold or fire
on Midsummer Eve. Thus in Bohemia it is said that on St. John's Day fern-seed
blooms with golden blossoms that gleam like fire. Now it is a property of
this mythical fern-seed that whoever has it, or will ascend a mountain holding
it in his hand on Midsummer Eve, will discover a vein of gold or will see the
treasures of the earth shining with a bluish flame. In Russia they say that if
you succeed in catching the wondrous bloom of the fern at midnight on
Midsummer Eve, you have only to throw it up into the air, and it will fall
like a star on the very spot where a treasure lies hidden. In Brittany
treasure-seekers gather fern-seed at midnight on Midsummer Eve, and keep it
till Palm Sunday of the following year; then they strew the seed on the ground
where they think a treasure is concealed. Tyrolese peasants imagine that
hidden treasures can be seen glowing like flame on Midsummer Eve, and that
fern-seed, gathered at this mystic season, with the usual precautions, will
help to bring the buried gold to the surface. In the Swiss canton of Freiburg
people used to watch beside a fern on St. John's night in the hope of winning
a treasure, which the devil himself sometimes brought to them. In Bohemia they
say that he who procures the golden bloom of the fern at this season has
thereby the key to all hidden treasures; and that if maidens will spread a
cloth under the fast-fading bloom, red gold will drop into it. And in the
Tryol and Bohemia if you place fern-seed among money, the money will never
decrease, however much of it you spend. Sometimes the fern-seed is supposed to
bloom on Christmas night, and whoever catches it will become very rich. In
Styria they say that by gathering fern-seed on Christmas night you can force
the devil to bring you a bag of money.

Thus, on the principle of like by like, fern-seed is supposed to discover
gold because it is itself golden; and for a similar reason it enriches its
possessor with an unfailing supply of gold. But while the fern-seed is
described as golden, it is equally described as glowing and fiery. Hence, when
we consider that two great days for gathering the fabulous seed are Midsummer
Eve and Christmasthat is, the two solstices (for Christmas is nothing but an
old heathen celebration of the winter solstice)we are led to regard the fiery
aspect of the fern-seed as primary, and its golden aspect as secondary and
derivative. Fern-seed, in fact, would seem to be an emanation of the sun's
fire at the two turning-points of its course, the summer and winter solstices.
This view is confirmed by a German story in which a hunter is said to have
procured fern-seed by shooting at the sun on Midsummer Day at noon; three
drops of blood fell down, which he caught in a white cloth, and these
blood-drops were the fern-seed. Here the blood is clearly the blood of the
sun, from which the fern-seed is thus directly derived. Thus it may be taken
as probable that fern-seed is golden, because it is believed to be an
emanation of the sun's golden fire.

Now, like fern-seed, the mistletoe is gathered either at Midsummer or at
Christmasthat is, either at the summer or at the winter solsticeand, like
fern-seed, it is supposed to possess the power of revealing treasures in the
earth. On Midsummer Eve people in Sweden make divining-rods of mistletoe, or
of four different kinds of wood one of which must be mistletoe. The
treasure-seeker places the rod on the ground after sundown, and when it rests
directly over treasure, the rod begins to move as if it were alive. Now, if
the mistletoe discovers gold, it must be in its character of the Golden Bough;
and if it is gathered at the solstices, must not the Golden Bough, like the
golden fern-seed, be an emanation of the sun's fire? The question cannot be
answered with a simple affirmative. We have seen that the old Aryans perhaps
kindled the solstitial and other ceremonial fires in part as sun-charms, that
is, with the intention of supplying the sun with fresh fire; and as these
fires were usually made by the friction or combustion of oak-wood, it may have
appeared to the ancient Aryan that the sun was periodically recruited from the
fire which resided in the sacred oak. In other words, the oak may have seemed
to him the original storehouse or reservoir of the fire which was from time to
time drawn out to feed the sun. But if the life of the oak was conceived to be
in the mistletoe, the mistletoe must on that view have contained the seed or
germ of the fire which was elicited by friction from the wood of the oak.
Thus, instead of saying that the mistletoe was an emanation of the sun's fire,
it might be more correct to say that the sun's fire was regarded as an
emanation of the mistletoe. No wonder, then, that the mistletoe shone with a
golden splendour, and was called the Golden Bough. Probably, however, like
fern-seed, it was thought to assume its golden aspect only at those stated
times, especially midsummer, when fire was drawn from the oak to light up the
sun. At Pulverbatch, in Shropshire, it was believed within living memory that
the oak-tree blooms on Midsummer Eve and the blossom withers before daylight.
A maiden who wishes to know her lot in marriage should spread a white cloth
under the tree at night, and in the morning she will find a little dust, which
is all that remains of the flower. She should place the pinch of dust under
her pillow, and then her future husband will appear to her in her dreams. This
fleeting bloom of the oak, if I am right, was probably the mistletoe in its
character of the Golden Bough. The conjecture is confirmed by the observation
that in Wales a real sprig of mistletoe gathered on Midsummer Eve is similarly
placed under the pillow to induce prophetic dreams; and further the mode of
catching the imaginary bloom of the oak in a white cloth is exactly that which
was employed by the Druids to catch the real mistletoe when it dropped from
the bough of the oak, severed by the golden sickle. As Shropshire borders on
Wales, the belief that the oak blooms on Midsummer Eve may be Welsh in its
immediate origin, though probably the belief is a fragment of the primitive
Aryan creed. In some parts of Italy, as we saw, peasants still go out on
Midsummer morning to search the oak-trees for the oil of St. John, which,
like the mistletoe, heals all wounds, and is, perhaps, the mistletoe itself in
its glorified aspect. Thus it is easy to understand how a title like the
Golden Bough, so little descriptive of its usual appearance on the tree,
should have been applied to the seemingly insignificant parasite. Further, we
can perhaps see why in antiquity mistletoe was believed to possess the
remarkable property of extinguishing fire, and why in Sweden it is still kept
in houses as a safeguard against conflagration. Its fiery nature marks it out,
on homoeopathic principles, as the best possible cure or preventive of injury
by fire.

These considerations may partially explain why Virgil makes Aeneas carry a
glorified bough of mistletoe with him on his descent into the gloomy
subterranean world. The poet describes how at the very gates of hell there
stretched a vast and gloomy wood, and how the hero, following the flight of
two doves that lured him on, wandered into the depths of the immemorial forest
till he saw afar off through the shadows of the trees the flickering light of
the Golden Bough illuminating the matted boughs overhead. If the mistletoe, as
a yellow withered bough in the sad autumn woods, was conceived to contain the
seed of fire, what better companion could a forlorn wanderer in the nether
shades take with him than a bough that would be a lamp to his feet as well as
a rod and staff to his hands? Armed with it he might boldly confront the
dreadful spectres that would cross his path on his adventurous journey. Hence
when Aeneas, emerging from the forest, comes to the banks of Styx, winding
slow with sluggish stream through the infernal marsh, and the surly ferryman
refuses him passage in his boat, he has but to draw the Golden Bough from his
bosom and hold it up, and straightway the blusterer quails at the sight and
meekly receives the hero into his crazy bark, which sinks deep in the water
under the unusual weight of the living man. Even in recent times, as we have
seen, mistletoe has been deemed a protection against witches and trolls, and
the ancients may well have credited it with the same magical virtue. And if
the parasite can, as some of our peasants believe, open all locks, why should
it not have served as an open Sesame in the hands of Aeneas to unlock the
gates of death?

Now, too, we can conjecture why Virbius at Nemi came to be confounded with
the sun. If Virbius was, as I have tried to show, a tree-spirit, he must have
been the spirit of the oak on which grew the Golden Bough; for tradition
represented him as the first of the Kings of the Wood. As an oak-spirit he
must have been supposed periodically to rekindle the sun's fire, and might
therefore easily be confounded with the sun itself. Similarly we can explain
why Balder, an oak-spirit, was described as so fair of face and so shining
that a light went forth from him, and why he should have been so often taken
to be the sun. And in general we may say that in primitive society, when the
only known way of making fire is by the friction of wood, the savage must
necessarily conceive of fire as a property stored away, like sap or juice, in
trees, from which he has laboriously to extract it. The Senal Indians of
California profess to believe that the whole world was once a globe of fire,
whence that element passed up into the trees, and now comes out whenever two
pieces of wood are rubbed together. Similarly the Maidu Indians of California
hold that the earth was primarily a globe of molten matter, and from that the
principle of fire ascended through the roots into the trunk and branches of
trees, whence the Indians can extract it by means of their drill. In Namoluk,
one of the Caroline Islands, they say that the art of making fire was taught
men by the gods. Olofaet, the cunning master of flames, gave fire to the bird
mwi and bade him carry it to earth in his bill. So the bird flew from tree
to tree and stored away the slumbering force of the fire in the wood, from
which men can elicit it by friction. In the ancient Vedic hymns of India the
fire-god Agni is spoken of as born in wood, as the embryo of plants, or as
distributed in plants. He is also said to have entered into all plants or to
strive after them. When he is called the embryo of trees or of trees as well
as plants, there may be a side-glance at the fire produced in forests by the
friction of the boughs of trees.

A tree which has been struck by lightning is naturally regarded by the
savage as charged with a double or triple portion of fire; for has he not seen
the mighty flash enter into the trunk with his own eyes? Hence perhaps we may
explain some of the many superstitious beliefs concerning trees that have been
struck by lightning. When the Thompson Indians of British Columbia wished to
set fire to the houses of their enemies, they shot at them arrows which were
either made from a tree that had been struck by lightning or had splinters of
such wood attached to them. Wendish peasants of Saxony refuse to burn in their
stoves the wood of trees that have been struck by lightning; they say that
with such fuel the house would be burnt down. In like manner the Thonga of
South Africa will not use such wood as fuel nor warm themselves at a fire
which has been kindled with it. On the contrary, when lightning sets fire to a
tree, the Winamwanga of Northern Rhodesia put out all the fires in the village
and plaster the fireplaces afresh, while the head men convey the
lightning-kindled fire to the chief, who prays over it. The chief then sends
out the new fire to all his villages, and the villagers reward his messengers
for the boon. This shows that they look upon fire kindled by lightning with
reverence, and the reverence is intelligible, for they speak of thunder and
lightning as God himself coming down to earth. Similarly the Maidu Indians of
California believe that a Great Man created the world and all its inhabitants,
and that lightning is nothing but the Great Man himself descending swiftly out
of heaven and rending the trees with his flaming arms.

It is a plausible theory that the reverence which the ancient peoples of
Europe paid to the oak, and the connexion which they traced between the tree
and their sky-god, were derived from the much greater frequency with which the
oak appears to be struck by lightning than any other tree of our European
forests. This peculiarity of the tree has seemingly been established by a
series of observations instituted within recent years by scientific enquirers
who have no mythological theory to maintain. However we may explain it,
whether by the easier passage of electricity through oak-wood than through any
other timber, or in some other way, the fact itself may well have attracted
the notice of our rude forefathers, who dwelt in the vast forests which then
covered a large part of Europe; and they might naturally account for it in
their simple religious way by supposing that the great sky-god, whom they
worshipped and whose awful voice they heard in the roll of thunder, loved the
oak above all the trees of the wood and often descended into it from the murky
cloud in a flash of lightning, leaving a token of his presence or of his
passage in the riven and blackened trunk and the blasted foliage. Such trees
would thenceforth be encircled by a nimbus of glory as the visible seats of
the thundering sky-god. Certain it is that, like some savages, both Greeks and
Romans identified their great god of the sky and of the oak with the lightning
flash which struck the ground; and they regularly enclosed such a stricken
spot and treated it thereafter as sacred. It is not rash to suppose that the
ancestors of the Celts and Germans in the forests of Central Europe paid a
like respect for like reasons to a blasted oak.

This explanation of the Aryan reverence for the oak and of the association
of the tree with the great god of the thunder and the sky, was suggested or
implied long ago by Jacob Grimm, and has been in recent years powerfully
reinforced by Mr. W. Warde Fowler. It appears to be simpler and more probable
than the explanation which I formerly adopted, namely, that the oak was
worshipped primarily for the many benefits which our rude forefathers derived
from the tree, particularly for the fire which they drew by friction from its
wood; and that the connexion of the oak with the sky was an after-thought
based on the belief that the flash of lightning was nothing but the spark
which the sky-god up aloft elicited by rubbing two pieces of oak-wood against
each other, just as his savage worshipper kindled fire in the forest on earth.
On that theory the god of the thunder and the sky was derived from the
original god of the oak; on the present theory, which I now prefer, the god of
the sky and the thunder was the great original deity of our Aryan ancestors,
and his association with the oak was merely an inference based on the
frequency with which the oak was seen to be struck by lightning. If the
Aryans, as some think, roamed the wide steppes of Russia or Central Asia with
their flocks and herds before they plunged into the gloom of the European
forests, they may have worshipped the god of the blue or cloudy firmament and
the flashing thunderbolt long before they thought of associating him with the
blasted oaks in their new home.

Perhaps the new theory has the further advantage of throwing light on the
special sanctity ascribed to mistletoe which grows on an oak. The mere rarity
of such a growth on an oak hardly suffices to explain the extent and the
persistence of the superstition. A hint of its real origin is possibly
furnished by the statement of Pliny that the Druids worshipped the plant
because they believed it to have fallen from heaven and to be a token that the
tree on which it grew was chosen by the god himself. Can they have thought
that the mistletoe dropped on the oak in a flash of lightning? The conjecture
is confirmed by the name thunder-besom which is applied to mistletoe in the
Swiss canton of Aargau, for the epithet clearly implies a close connexion
between the parasite and the thunder; indeed thunder-besom is a popular name
in Germany for any bushy nest-like excrescence growing on a branch, because
such a parasitic growth is actually believed by the ignorant to be a product
of lightning. If there is any truth in this conjecture, the real reason why
the Druids worshipped a mistletoe-bearing oak above all other trees of the
forest was a belief that every such oak had not only been struck by lightning
but bore among its branches a visible emanation of the celestial fire; so that
in cutting the mistletoe with mystic rites they were securing for themselves
all the magical properties of a thunder-bolt. If that was so, we must
apparently conclude that the mistletoe was deemed an emanation of the
lightning rather than, as I have thus far argued, of the midsummer sun.
Perhaps, indeed, we might combine the two seemingly divergent views by
supposing that in the old Aryan creed the mistletoe descended from the sun on
Midsummer Day in a flash of lightning. But such a combination is artificial
and unsupported, so far as I know, by any positive evidence. Whether on
mythical principles the two interpretations can really be reconciled with each
other or not, I will not presume to say; but even should they prove to be
discrepant, the inconsistency need not have prevented our rude forefathers
from embracing both of them at the same time with an equal fervour of
conviction; for like the great majority of mankind the savage is above being
hidebound by the trammels of a pedantic logic. In attempting to track his
devious thought through the jungle of crass ignorance and blind fear, we must
always remember that we are treading enchanted ground, and must beware of
taking for solid realities the cloudy shapes that cross our path or hover and
gibber at us through the gloom. We can never completely replace ourselves at
the standpoint of primitive man, see things with his eyes, and feel our hearts
beat with the emotions that stirred his. All our theories concerning him and
his ways must therefore fall far short of certainty; the utmost we can aspire
to in such matters is a reasonable degree of probability.

To conclude these enquiries we may say that if Balder was indeed, as I
have conjectured, a personification of a mistletoe-bearing oak, his death by a
blow of the mistletoe might on the new theory be explained as a death by a
stroke of lightning. So long as the mistletoe, in which the flame of the
lightning smouldered, was suffered to remain among the boughs, so long no harm
could befall the good and kindly god of the oak, who kept his life stowed away
for safety between earth and heaven in the mysterious parasite; but when once
that seat of his life, or of his death, was torn from the branch and hurled at
the trunk, the tree fellthe god diedsmitten by a thunderbolt.

And what we have said of Balder in the oak forests of Scandinavia may
perhaps, with all due diffidence in a question so obscure and uncertain, be
applied to the priest of Diana, the King of the Wood, at Aricia in the oak
forests of Italy. He may have personated in flesh and blood the great Italian
god of the sky, Jupiter, who had kindly come down from heaven in the lightning
flash to dwell among men in the mistletoethe thunder-besomthe Golden
Boughgrowing on the sacred oak in the dells of Nemi. If that was so, we need
not wonder that the priest guarded with drawn sword the mystic bough which
contained the god's life and his own. The goddess whom he served and married
was herself, if I am right, no other than the Queen of Heaven, the true wife
of the sky-god. For she, too, loved the solitude of the woods and the lonely
hills, and sailing overhead on clear nights in the likeness of the silver moon
looked down with pleasure on her own fair image reflected on the calm, the
burnished surface of the lake, Diana's Mirror.

Chapter 69. Farewell to Nemi

WE are at the end of our enquiry, but as often happens in the search after
truth, if we have answered one question, we have raised many more; if we have
followed one track home, we have had to pass by others that opened off it and
led, or seemed to lead, to far other goals than the sacred grove at Nemi. Some
of these paths we have followed a little way; others, if fortune should be
kind, the writer and the reader may one day pursue together. For the present
we have journeyed far enough together, and it is time to part. Yet before we
do so, we may well ask ourselves whether there is not some more general
conclusion, some lesson, if possible, of hope and encouragement, to be drawn
from the melancholy record of human error and folly which has engaged our
attention in this book.

If then we consider, on the one hand, the essential similarity of man's
chief wants everywhere and at all times, and on the other hand, the wide
difference between the means he has adopted to satisfy them in different ages,
we shall perhaps be disposed to conclude that the movement of the higher
thought, so far as we can trace it, has on the whole been from magic through
religion to science. In magic man depends on his own strength to meet the
difficulties and dangers that beset him on every side. He believes in a
certain established order of nature on which he can surely count, and which he
can manipulate for his own ends. When he discovers his mistake, when he
recognises sadly that both the order of nature which he had assumed and the
control which he had believed himself to exercise over it were purely
imaginary, he ceases to rely on his own intelligence and his own unaided
efforts, and throws himself humbly on the mercy of certain great invisible
beings behind the veil of nature, to whom he now ascribes all those
far-reaching powers which he once arrogated to himself. Thus in the acuter
minds magic is gradually superseded by religion, which explains the succession
of natural phenomena as regulated by the will, the passion, or the caprice of
spiritual beings like man in kind, though vastly superior to him in power.

But as time goes on this explanation in its turn proves to be
unsatisfactory. For it assumes that the succession of natural events is not
determined by immutable laws, but is to some extent variable and irregular,
and this assumption is not borne out by closer observation. On the contrary,
the more we scrutinise that succession the more we are struck by the rigid
uniformity, the punctual precision with which, wherever we can follow them,
the operations of nature are carried on. Every great advance in knowledge has
extended the sphere of order and correspondingly restricted the sphere of
apparent disorder in the world, till now we are ready to anticipate that even
in regions where chance and confusion appear still to reign, a fuller
knowledge would everywhere reduce the seeming chaos to cosmos. Thus
the keener minds, still pressing forward to a deeper solution of the mysteries
of the universe, come to reject the religious theory of nature as inadequate,
and to revert in a measure to the older standpoint of magic by postulating
explicitly, what in magic had only been implicitly assumed, to wit, an
inflexible regularity in the order of natural events, which, if carefully
observed, enables us to foresee their course with certainty and to act
accordingly. In short, religion, regarded as an explanation of nature, is
displaced by science.

But while science has this much in common with magic that both rest on a
faith in order as the underlying principle of all things, readers of this work
will hardly need to be reminded that the order presupposed by magic differs
widely from that which forms the basis of science. The difference flows
naturally from the different modes in which the two orders have been reached.
For whereas the order on which magic reckons is merely an extension, by false
analogy, of the order in which ideas present themselves to our minds, the
order laid down by science is derived from patient and exact observation of
the phenomena themselves. The abundance, the solidity, and the splendour of
the results already achieved by science are well fitted to inspire us with a
cheerful confidence in the soundness of its method. Here at last, after
groping about in the dark for countless ages, man has hit upon a clue to the
labyrinth, a golden key that opens many locks in the treasury of nature. It is
probably not too much to say that the hope of progressmoral and intellectual
as well as materialin the future is bound up with the fortunes of science,
and that every obstacle placed in the way of scientific discovery is a wrong
to humanity.

Yet the history of thought should warn us against concluding that because
the scientific theory of the world is the best that has yet been formulated,
it is necessarily complete and final. We must remember that at bottom the
generalisations of science or, in common parlance, the laws of nature are
merely hypotheses devised to explain that ever-shifting phantasmagoria of
thought which we dignify with the high-sounding names of the world and the
universe. In the last analysis magic, religion, and science are nothing but
theories of thought; and as science has supplanted its predecessors, so it may
hereafter be itself superseded by some more perfect hypothesis, perhaps by
some totally different way of looking at the phenomenaof registering the
shadows on the screenof which we in this generation can form no idea. The
advance of knowledge is an infinite progression towards a goal that for ever
recedes. We need not murmur at the endless pursuit:

Fatti non foste a viver come bruti
Ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza.

Great things will come of that pursuit, though we may not enjoy them.
Brighter stars will rise on some voyager of the futuresome great Ulysses of
the realms of thoughtthan shine on us. The dreams of magic may one day be the
waking realities of science. But a dark shadow lies athwart the far end of
this fair prospect. For however vast the increase of knowledge and of power
which the future may have in store for man, he can scarcely hope to stay the
sweep of those great forces which seem to be making silently but relentlessly
for the destruction of all this starry universe in which our earth swims as a
speck or mote. In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to
control, the wayward courses of the winds and clouds, but hardly will his puny
hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or
rekindle the dying fire of the sun. Yet the philosopher who trembles at the
idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these
gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and the sun themselves, are only parts of
that unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and
that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked to-day she may ban
to-morrow. They too, like so much that to common eyes seems solid, may melt
into air, into thin air.

Without dipping so far into the future, we may illustrate the course which
thought has hitherto run by likening it to a web woven of three different
threadsthe black thread of magic, the red thread of religion, and the white
thread of science, if under science we may include those simple truths, drawn
from observation of nature, of which men in all ages have possessed a store.
Could we then survey the web of thought from the beginning, we should probably
perceive it to be at first a chequer of black and white, a patchwork of true
and false notions, hardly tinged as yet by the red thread of religion. But
carry your eye farther along the fabric and you will remark that, while the
black and white chequer still runs through it, there rests on the middle
portion of the web, where religion has entered most deeply into its texture, a
dark crimson stain, which shades off insensibly into a lighter tint as the
white thread of science is woven more and more into the tissue. To a web thus
chequered and stained, thus shot with threads of diverse hues, but gradually
changing colour the farther it is unrolled, the state of modern thought, with
all its divergent aims and conflicting tendencies, may be compared. Will the
great movement which for centuries has been slowly altering the complexion of
thought be continued in the near future? or will a reaction set in which may
arrest progress and even undo much that has been done? To keep up our parable,
what will be the colour of the web which the Fates are now weaving on the
humming loom of time? will it be white or red? We cannot tell. A faint
glimmering light illumines the backward portion of the web. Clouds and thick
darkness hide the other end.

Our long voyage of discovery is over and our bark has drooped her weary
sails in port at last. Once more we take the road to Nemi. It is evening, and
as we climb the long slope of the Appian Way up to the Alban Hills, we look
back and see the sky aflame with sunset, its golden glory resting like the
aureole of a dying saint over Rome and touching with a crest of fire the dome
of St. Peter's. The sight once seen can never be forgotten, but we turn from
it and pursue our way darkling along the mountain side, till we come to Nemi
and look down on the lake in its deep hollow, now fast disappearing in the
evening shadows. The place has changed but little since Diana received the
homage of her worshippers in the sacred grove. The temple of the sylvan
goddess, indeed, has vanished and the King of the Wood no longer stands
sentinel over the Golden Bough. But Nemi's woods are still green, and as the
sunset fades above them in the west, there comes to us, borne on the swell of
the wind, the sound of the church bells of Aricia ringing the Angelus.
Ave Maria! Sweet and solemn they chime out from the distant town and die
lingeringly away across the wide Campagnan marshes. Le roi est mort,
vive le roi! Ave Maria!


