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Title: The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 02 of 12)
Author: Frazer, James George
Language: English
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The Golden Bough, A Study in Magic and Religion
The Golden Bough
A Study in Magic and Religion
By
SIR James George Frazer, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
Professor of Social Anthropology in the University of Liverpool.
Third Edition.
Vol. II.
Part I
The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Vol. II
Macmillan and Co., Limited
St. Martin’s Street, London
1917
_Third Edition March 1911_
_Reprinted July 1911, 1913, 1917_
CONTENTS
Chapter VIII.—Departmental Kings of Nature Pp. 1-6
The King of the Wood at Nemi probably a departmental king of nature;
Kings of Rain in Africa; Kings of Fire and Water in Cambodia.
Chapter IX.—The Worship of Trees Pp. 7-58
§ 1. _Tree-spirits_—Great forests of ancient Europe; tree-worship
practised by all Aryan races in Europe; trees regarded as animate;
tree-spirits, sacrifices to trees; trees sensitive to wounds; apologies
for cutting down trees; bleeding trees; trees threatened to make them
bear fruit; attempts to deceive spirits of trees and plants; trees
married to each other; trees in blossom and rice in bloom treated like
pregnant women; trees tenanted by the souls of the dead; trees as the
abode, not the body, of spirits; ceremonies at felling trees;
propitiating tree-spirits in house-timber; sacred trees the abode of
spirits; sacred groves.
§ 2. _Beneficent Powers of Tree-spirits_—Tree-spirit develops into
anthropomorphic deity of the woods; tree-spirits give rain and sunshine;
tree-spirits make crops to grow; the Harvest May and kindred customs;
tree-spirits make herds and women fruitful; green boughs protect against
witchcraft; influence of tree-spirits on cattle among the Wends,
Esthonians, and Circassians; tree-spirits grant offspring or easy
delivery to women.
Chapter X.—Relics of Tree-worship in Modern Europe Pp. 59-96
May-trees in Europe, especially England; May-garlands in England; May
customs in France, Germany, and Greece; Whitsuntide customs in Russia;
May-trees in Germany and Sweden; Midsummer trees and poles in Sweden;
village May-poles in England and Germany; tree-spirit detached from tree
and represented in human form, Esthonian tale; tree-spirit represented
simultaneously in vegetable and human form; the Little May Rose; the
_Walber_; Green George; double representation of tree-spirit by tree and
man among the Oraons; double representation of harvest-goddess Gauri; W.
Mannhardt’s conclusions; tree-spirit or vegetation-spirit represented by
a person alone; leaf-clad mummers (Green George, Little Leaf Man,
Jack-in-the-Green, etc.); leaf-clad mummers called Kings or Queens (King
and Queen of May, Whitsuntide King, etc.); Whitsuntide Bridegroom and
Bride; Midsummer Bridegroom and Bride; the Forsaken Bridegroom or Bride;
St. Bride in Scotland and the Isle of Man; May Bride or Whitsuntide
Bride.
Chapter XI.—The Influence of the Sexes on Vegetation Pp. 97-119
The marriage of the King and Queen of May intended to promote the growth
of vegetation by homoeopathic magic; intercourse of the sexes practised
to make the crops grow and fruit-trees to bear fruit; parents of twins
supposed to fertilise the bananas in Uganda; relics of similar customs
in Europe; continence practised in order to make the crops grow; incest
and illicit love supposed to blight the fruits of the earth by causing
drought or excessive rain; traces of similar beliefs as to the blighting
effect of adultery and incest among the ancient Jews, Greeks, Romans,
and Irish; possible influence of such beliefs on the institution of the
forbidden degrees of kinship; explanation of the seeming contradiction
of the foregoing customs; indirect benefit to humanity of some of these
superstitions.
Chapter XII.—The Sacred Marriage Pp. 120-170
§ 1. _Diana as a Goddess of Fertility_—Dramatic marriages of gods and
goddesses as a charm to promote vegetation; Diana as a goddess of the
woodlands; sanctity of holy groves in antiquity; the breaking of the
Golden Bough a solemn rite, not a mere piece of bravado; Diana a goddess
of the teeming life of nature, both animal and vegetable; deities of
woodlands naturally the patrons of the beasts of the woods; the crowning
of hunting dogs on Diana’s day a purification for their slaughter of the
beasts of the wood; as goddess of the moon, especially the yellow
harvest moon, Diana a goddess of crops and of childbirth; as a goddess
of fertility Diana needed a male partner.
§ 2. _The Marriage of the Gods_—Marriages of the gods in Babylonia and
Assyria; marriage of the god Ammon to the Queen of Egypt; Apollo and his
prophetess at Patara; Artemis and the Essenes at Ephesus; marriage of
Dionysus and the Queen at Athens; marriage of Zeus and Demeter at
Eleusis; marriage of Zeus and Hera at Plataea; marriage of Zeus and Hera
in other parts of Greece; the god Frey and his human wife in Sweden;
similar rites in ancient Gaul; marriages of gods to images or living
women among uncivilised peoples; custom of the Wotyaks; custom of the
Peruvian Indians; marriage of a woman to the Sun among the Blackfoot
Indians; marriage of girls to fishing-nets among the Hurons and
Algonquins; marriage of the Sun-god and Earth-goddess among the Oraons;
marriage of women to gods in India and Africa; marriage of women to
water-gods and crocodiles; virgin sacrificed as a bride to the jinnee of
the sea in the Maldive Islands.
§ 3. _Sacrifices to Water-spirits_—Stories of the Perseus and Andromeda
type; water-spirits conceived as serpents or dragons; sacrifices of
human beings to water-spirits; water-spirits as dispensers of fertility;
water-spirits bestow offspring on women; love of river-spirits for women
in Greek mythology; the Slaying of the Dragon at Furth in Bavaria; St.
Romain and the Dragon at Rouen.
Chapter XIII.—The Kings of Rome and Alba Pp. 171-194
§ 1. _Numa and Egeria_—Egeria a nymph of water and the oak, perhaps a
form of Diana; marriage of Numa and Egeria a reminiscence of the
marriage of the King of Rome to a goddess of water and vegetation.
§ 2. _The King as Jupiter_—The Roman king personated Jupiter and wore
his costume; the oak crown as a symbol of divinity; personation of the
dead by masked men among the Romans; the kings of Alba as
personifications of Jupiter; legends of the deaths of Roman kings point
to their connexion with the thunder-god; local Jupiters in Latium; the
oak-groves of ancient Rome; Latian Jupiter on the Alban Mount; woods of
Latium in antiquity; Latin worship of Jupiter like the Druidical worship
of the oak; sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno; Janus and Carnathe
Flamen Dialis and Flaminica as representatives of Jupiter and Juno;
marriage of the Roman king to the oak-goddess.
Chapter XIV.—The King’s Fire Pp. 195-206
Sacred marriage of the Fire-god with a woman; legends of the birth of
Latin kings from Vestal Virgins impregnated by the fire; Vestal Virgins
as wives of the Fire-god; the Vestal fire originally the fire on the
king’s hearth; the round temple of Vesta a copy of the old round hut of
the early Latins; rude pottery used in Roman ritual; superstitions as to
the making of pottery; sanctity of the storeroom at Rome; the temple of
Vesta with its sacred fire a copy of the king’s house.
Chapter XV.—The Fire-drill Pp. 207-226
Vestal fire at Rome rekindled by the fire-drill; use of the fire-drill
by savages; the fire-sticks regarded by savages as male and female;
fire-customs of the Herero; sacred fire among the Herero maintained in
the chief’s hut by his unmarried daughter; the Herero chief as priest of
the hearth; sacred Herero fire rekindled by fire-sticks, which are
regarded as male and female, and are made from the sacred ancestral
tree; the sacred Herero hearth a special seat of the ancestral spirits;
sacred fire-sticks of the Herero represent deceased ancestors; sacred
fire-boards as family deities among the Koryaks and Chuckchees.
Chapter XVI.—Father Jove and Mother Vesta Pp. 227-252
Similarity between the fire-customs of the Herero and the ancient
Latins; rites performed by the Vestals for the fertility of the earth
and the fecundity of cattle; the Vestals as embodiments of Vesta, a
mother-goddess of fertility; the domestic fire as a fecundating agent in
marriage ritual; newborn children and the domestic fire; reasons for
ascribing a procreative virtue to fire; fire kindled by friction by
human representatives of the Fire-father and Fire-mother; fire kindled
by friction by boy and girl or by man and woman; human fire-makers
sometimes married, sometimes unmarried; holy fire and virgins of St.
Brigit in Ireland; the oaks of Erin; virgin priestesses of fire in
ancient Peru and Mexico; the _Agnihotris_ or fire-priests of the
Brahmans; kinds of wood employed for fire-sticks in India and ancient
Greece.
Chapter XVII.—The Origin of Perpetual Fires Pp. 253-265
Custom of perpetual fires probably originated in motives of convenience;
races reported to be ignorant of the means of making fire; fire probably
used by men before they knew how to kindle it; savages carry fire with
them as a matter of convenience; Prometheus the fire-bringer; perpetual
fires maintained by chiefs and kings; fire extinguished at king’s death.
Chapter XVIII.—The Succession to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium Pp.
266-323
The sacred functions of Latin kings in general probably the same as
those of the Roman kings; question of the rule of succession to the
Latin kingship; list of Alban kings; list of Roman kings; Latin kingship
apparently transmitted in female line to foreign husbands of princesses;
miraculous births of kings explained on this hypothesis; marriage of
princesses to men of inferior rank in Africa; traces of female descent
of kingship in Greece; and in Scandinavia; reminiscence of such descent
in popular tales; female descent of kingship among the Picts, the
Lydians, the Danes, and the Saxons; traces of female kinship or
mother-kin among the Aryans, the Picts, and the Etruscans; mother-kin
may survive in royal families after it has been superseded by father-kin
among commoners; the Roman kings plebeians, not patricians; the first
consuls at Rome heirs to the throne according to mother-kin; attempt of
Tarquin to change the line of succession from the female to the male
line; the hereditary principle compatible with the elective principle in
succession to the throne; combination of the hereditary with the
elective principle in succession to the kingship in Africa and Assam;
similar combination perhaps in force at Rome; personal qualities
required in kings and chiefs; succession to the throne determined by a
race; custom of racing for a bride; contests for a bride other than a
race; the Flight of the King (_Regifugium_) at Rome perhaps a relic of a
contest for the kingdom and the hand of a princess; confirmation of this
theory from the practice of killing a human representative of Saturn at
the Saturnalia; violent ends of Roman kings; death of Romulus on the
_Nonae Caprotinae_ (7th July), an old licentious festival like the
Saturnalia for the fertilisation of the fig; violent deaths of other
Roman kings; succession to Latin kingship perhaps decided by single
combat; African parallels; Greek and Italian kings may have personated
Cronus and Saturn before they personated Zeus and Jupiter.
Chapter XIX.—St. George and the Parilia Pp. 324-348
The early Italians a pastoral as well as agricultural people; the
shepherds’ festival of the Parilia on 21st April; intention of the
festival to ensure the welfare of the flocks and herds and to guard them
against witches and wolves; festival of the same kind still held in
Eastern Europe on 23rd April, St. George’s Day; precautions taken by the
Esthonians against witches and wolves on St. George’s Day, when they
drive out the cattle to pasture for the first time; St. George’s Day a
pastoral festival in Russia; among the Ruthenians, among the Huzuls of
the Carpathians; St. George as the patron of horses in Silesia and
Bavaria; St. George’s Day among the Saxons and Roumanians of
Transylvania; St. George’s Day a herdsman’s festival among the
Walachians, Bulgarians, and South Slavs; precautions taken against
witches and wolves whenever the cattle are driven out to pasture for the
first time, as in Prussia and Sweden; these parallels illustrate some
features of the Parilia; St. George as a personification of trees or
vegetation in general; St. George as patron of childbirth and love; St.
George seems to have displaced an old Aryan god of the spring, such as
the Lithuanian Pergrubiusk.
Chapter XX.—The Worship of the Oak Pp. 349-375
§ 1. _The Diffusion of the Oak in Europe_—Jupiter the god of the oak,
the sky, and thunder; of these attributes the oak is probably primary
and the sky and thunder secondary; Europe covered with oak forests in
prehistoric times; remains of oaks found in peat-bogs; ancient lake
dwellings built on oaken piles; evidence of classical writers as to oak
forests in antiquity; oak-woods in modern Europe.
§ 2. _The Aryan God of the Oak and the Thunder_—Aryan worship of the oak
and of the god of the oak; Zeus as the god of the oak, the thunder, and
the rain in ancient Greece; Jupiter as the god of the oak, the thunder,
and the rain in ancient Italy; Celtic worship of the oak; Donar and Thor
the Teutonic gods of the oak and thunder; Perun the god of the oak and
thunder among the Slavs; Perkunas the god of the oak and thunder among
the Lithuanians; Taara the god of the oak and thunder among the
Esthonians; Parjanya, the old Indian god of thunder, rain, and
fertility; gods of thunder and rain in America, Africa, and the
Caucasus; traces of the worship of the oak in modern Europe; in the
great European god of the oak, the thunder, and the rain, the original
element seems to have been the oak.
Chapter XXI.—Dianus and Diana Pp. 376-387
Recapitulation: rise of sacred kings endowed with magical or divine
powers; the King of the Wood at Nemi seems to have personified Jupiter
the god of the oak and to have mated with Diana the goddess of the oak;
Dianus (Janus) and Diana originally dialectically different forms of
Jupiter and Juno; Janus (Dianus) not originally a god of doors;
double-headed figure of Janus (Dianus) derived from a custom of placing
him as sentinel at doorways; parallel custom among the negroes of
Surinam; originally the King of the Wood at Nemi represented Dianus
(Janus), a duplicate form of Jupiter, the god of the oak, the thunder,
and the sky.
INDEX Pp. 389-417
CHAPTER VIII
DEPARTMENTAL KINGS OF NATURE
The preceding investigation has proved that the same [Sidenote:
Departmental kings of nature.] 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 shewing
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.
[Sidenote: Kings of rain in Africa.] On a hill at Bomma near the mouth
of the Congo dwells Namvulu Vumu, King of the Rain and Storm.[1] 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 in 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.[2]
[Sidenote: Priesthood of the Alfai.] 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.”[3]
[Sidenote: Kings of Fire and Water in Cambodia.] 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. The Cambodian gifts were passed from
tribe to tribe till they reached their destination; for no Cambodian
would essay the long and perilous journey. The tribe amongst whom the
Kings of Fire and Water reside is the Chréais or Jaray, a race with
European features but a sallow complexion, inhabiting the forest-clad
mountains and high tablelands which separate Cambodia from Annam. 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. Probably, however,
these are mere fables such as commonly shed a glamour of romance over
the distant and unknown. A French officer, who had an interview with the
redoubtable Fire King in February 1891, found him stretched on a bamboo
couch, diligently smoking a long copper pipe, and surrounded by people
who paid him no great deference. In spite of his mystic vocation the
sorcerer had no charm or talisman about him, and was in no way
distinguishable from his fellows except by his tall stature. Another
writer reports that the two kings are much feared, because they are
supposed to possess the evil eye; hence every one avoids them, and the
potentates considerately cough to announce their approach and to allow
people to get out of their way. They enjoy extraordinary privileges and
immunities, but their authority does not extend beyond the few villages
of their neighbourhood. 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.
[Sidenote: Supernatural powers of the Kings of Fire and Water.] 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.
[Sidenote: Gifts sent by the Kings of Fire and Water to the King of
Cambodia.] In return the Kings of Fire and Water sent him a huge wax
candle and two calabashes, one full of rice and the other of sesame. The
candle bore the impress of the Fire King’s middle finger, and was
probably thought to contain the seed of fire, which the Cambodian
monarch thus received once a year fresh from the Fire King himself This
holy candle was kept for sacred uses. On reaching the capital of
Cambodia it was entrusted to the Brahmans, who laid it up beside the
regalia, and with the wax made tapers which were burned on the altars on
solemn days. As the candle was the special gift of the Fire King, we may
conjecture that the rice and sesame were the special gift of the Water
King. The latter was doubtless king of rain as well as of water, and the
fruits of the earth were boons conferred by him on men. In times of
calamity, as during plague, floods, and war, a little of this sacred
rice and sesame was scattered on the ground “to appease the wrath of the
maleficent spirits.” 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.[4]
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.
Footnote 1:
A. Bastian, _Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste_, ii. 230.
Footnote 2:
“Excursion de M. Brun-Rollet dans la région supérieure du Nil,”
_Bulletin de la Société de Géographie_ (Paris), IVme Série, iv. (1852)
pp. 421-423; _ib._ viii. (1854) pp. 387 _sq._; Brun-Rollet, _Le Nil
Blanc et le Soudan_ (Paris, 1855), pp. 227 _sqq._ As to the
rain-making chiefs of this region see above, vol. i. pp. 345 _sqq._ As
to the distress and privations endured by these people in the dry
season, see E. de Pruyssenaere, “Reisen und Forschungen im Gebiete des
Weissen und Blauen Nil,” _Petermann’s Mittheilungen_, _Ergänzungsheft_
No. 50 (Gotha, 1877), p. 23.
Footnote 3:
W. Munzinger, _Ostafrikanische Studien_ (Schaffhausen, 1864), p. 474.
Footnote 4:
Mgr. Cuénot, in _Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_, xiii. (1841) p.
143; H. Mouhot, _Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China_ (London,
1864), ii. 35; A. Bastian, “Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Gebirgsstämme
in Kambodia,” _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin_,
i. (1866) p. 37; J. Moura, _Le Royaume du Cambodge_ (Paris, 1883), i.
432-436; E. Aymonier, “Notes sur les coutumes et croyances
superstitieuses des Cambodgiens,” in _Cochinchine Française:
Excursions et reconnaissances_, No. 16 (Saigon, 1883), pp. 172 _sq._;
_id._, _Notes sur le Laos_ (Saigon, 1885), p. 60; Le Capitaine Cupet,
“Chez les populations sauvages du Sud de l’Annam,” _Tour du monde_,
No. 1682, April 1, 1893, pp. 193-204; _id._, in _Mission Pavie,
Indo-Chine 1879-1895, Géographie et voyages_, iii. (Paris, 1900) pp.
297-318; Tournier, _Notice sur le Laos Français_ (Hanoi, 1900), pp.
111 _sq._; A. Lavallée, “Notes ethnographiques sur diverses tribus du
Sud-Est de l’Inde-Chine,” _Bulletin de l’École Française
d’Extrême-Orient_, i. (Hanoi, 1901) pp. 303 _sq._ Mgr. Cuénot mentions
only the King of Fire. Bastian speaks as if the King of Fire was also
the King of Water. Both writers report at second hand.
CHAPTER IX
THE WORSHIP OF TREES
§ 1. Tree-spirits
[Sidenote: Great forests of ancient Europe.] 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.[5] 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.[6] 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.[7] The excavation of ancient pile-villages
in the valley of the Po has shewn 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.[8] Archaeology is here
confirmed by history; for classical writers contain many references to
Italian forests which have now disappeared.[9] 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.[10]
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.[11]
[Sidenote: Tree-worship practised by all the Aryan races in Europe.]
From an examination of the Teutonic words for “temple” Grimm has made it
probable that amongst the Germans the oldest sanctuaries were natural
woods.[12] However this 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,[13] and their old
word for a sanctuary seems to be identical in origin and meaning with
the Latin _némus_, a grove or woodland glade, which still survives in
the name of Nemi.[14] Sacred groves were common among the ancient
Germans, and tree-worship is hardly extinct amongst their descendants at
the present day.[15] 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.[16] 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.[17] The heathen
Slavs worshipped trees and groves.[18] 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.[19] Proofs of the prevalence of tree-worship in ancient Greece
and Italy are abundant.[20] 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.[21] 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.[22] 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.[23]
[Sidenote: Tree-worship among the Finnish-Ugrian peoples.] 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. The Ostyaks and Woguls, two peoples of
the Finnish-Ugrian stock in Siberia, had also sacred groves in which
nothing might be touched, and where the skins of the sacrificed animals
were suspended; but these groves were not enclosed with fences.[24] Near
Kuopio, in Finland, there was a famous grove of ancient moss-grown firs,
where the people offered sacrifices and practised superstitious customs
down to about 1650, when a sturdy veteran of the Thirty Years’ War dared
to cut it down at the bidding of the pastor. Sacred groves now hardly
exist in Finland, but sacred trees to which offerings are brought are
still not very uncommon. On some firs the skulls of bears are nailed,
apparently that the hunter may have good luck in the chase.[25] The
Ostyaks are said never to have passed a sacred tree without shooting an
arrow at it as a mark of respect. In many places they hung furs and
skins on the holy trees in the forest; but having observed that these
furs were often appropriated and carried off by unscrupulous travellers,
they adopted the practice of hewing the trunks into great blocks, which
they decked with their offerings and preserved in safe places. The
custom marks a transition from the worship of trees to the worship of
idols carved out of the sacred wood. Within their sacred groves no grass
or wood might be cut, no game hunted, no fish caught, not even a draught
of water drunk. When they passed them in their canoes, they were careful
not to touch the land with the oar, and if the journey through the
hallowed ground was long, they laid in a store of water before entering
on it, for they would rather suffer extreme thirst than slake it by
drinking of the sacred stream. The Ostyaks also regarded as holy any
tree on which an eagle had built its nest for several years, and they
spared the bird as well as the tree. No greater injury could be done
them than to shoot such an eagle or destroy its nest.[26]
[Sidenote: Trees are regarded by the savage as animate.] 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?”[27] 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.[28] 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.[29] 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.”[30] In the Yasawu islands of
Fiji a man will never eat a coco-nut without first asking its leave—“May
I eat you, my chief?”[31] Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia
young people addressed the following prayer to the sunflower root before
they ate the first roots of the season: “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 have made the eater of the root
lazy, and caused him to sleep long in the morning. We are not told, but
may conjecture, that these Indians ascribed to the sunflower the sun’s
power of climbing above the mountain-tops and of rising betimes in the
morning; hence whoever ate of the plant, with all the due formalities,
would naturally acquire the same useful properties. It is not so easy to
say why women had to observe continence in cooking and digging the root,
and why, when they were cooking it, no man might come near the oven.[32]
The Dyaks ascribe souls to trees, and do not dare to cut down an old
tree. In some places, when an old tree has been blown down, they set it
up, smear it with blood, and deck it with flags “to appease the soul of
the tree.”[33] 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.”[34] 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. Buddhism in this respect borrowed
from savagery, not savagery from Buddhism.[35] According to Chinese
belief, the spirits of plants are never shaped like plants but have
commonly the form either of human beings or of animals, for example
bulls and serpents. Occasionally at the felling of a tree the
tree-spirit has been seen to rush out in the shape of a blue bull.[36]
In China “to this day the belief in tree-spirits dangerous to man is
obviously strong. In southern Fuhkien it deters people from felling any
large trees or chopping off heavy branches, for fear the indwelling
spirit may become irritated and visit the aggressor or his neighbours
with disease and calamity. Especially respected are the green banyan or
_ch’îng_, the biggest trees to be found in that part of China. In Amoy
some people even show a strong aversion from planting trees, the
planters, as soon as the stems have become as thick as their necks,
being sure to be throttled by the indwelling spirits. No explanation of
this curious superstition was ever given us. It may account to some
extent for the almost total neglect of forestry in that part of China,
so that hardly any except spontaneous trees grow there.”[37]
[Sidenote: Particular sorts of trees tenanted by spirits; sacrifices to
tree-spirits.] 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.[38] The
silk-cotton trees, which rear their [Sidenote: Silk-cotton trees in West
Africa.] 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 Ewe-speaking 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 dwells—for it is not every
silk-cotton tree that he thus honours—are 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.[39] [Sidenote: Sycamores in ancient Egypt.] Everywhere in
Egypt on the borders of the cultivated land, and even at some distance
from the valley of the Nile, you meet with fine sycamores standing
solitary and thriving as by a miracle in the sandy soil; their living
green contrasts strongly with the tawny hue of the surrounding
landscape, and their thick impenetrable foliage bids defiance even in
summer to the noonday sun. The secret of their verdure is that their
roots strike down into rills of water that trickle by unseen sluices
from the great river. Of old the Egyptians of every rank esteemed these
trees divine, and paid them regular homage. They gave them figs,
raisins, cucumbers, vegetables, and water in earthenware pitchers, which
charitable folk filled afresh every day. Passers-by slaked their thirst
at these pitchers in the sultry hours, and paid for the welcome draught
by a short prayer. The spirit that animated these beautiful trees
generally lurked unseen, but sometimes he would shew his head or even
his whole body outside the trunk, but only to retire into it again.[40]
People in Congo set calabashes of palm-wine at the foot of certain trees
for the trees to drink when they are thirsty.[41] The [Sidenote: Sacred
trees in Africa, Syria, and Patagonia.] Wanika of Eastern Africa pay
special honour to the spirits of coco-nut palms in return for the many
benefits conferred on them by the trees. To cut down a coco-nut palm is
an inexpiable offence, equivalent to matricide. They sacrifice to the
tree on many occasions. When a man in gathering the coco-nuts has fallen
from the palm, they attribute it to the wrath of the tree-spirit, and
resort to the oddest means of appeasing him.[42] The Masai particularly
reverence the _subugo_ tree, the bark of which has medical properties,
and a species of parasitic fig which they call _retete_. The green figs
are eaten by boys and girls, and older people propitiate the tree by
pouring the blood of a goat at the foot of the trunk and strewing grass
on the branches.[43] The natives of the Bissagos Islands, off the west
coast of Africa, sacrifice dogs, cocks, and oxen to their sacred trees,
but they eat the flesh of the victims and leave only the horns, fastened
to the trees, for the spirits.[44] In a Turkish village of Northern
Syria there is a very old oak-tree which the people worship, burning
incense to it and bringing offerings as they would to a shrine.[45] In
Patagonia, between the Rio Negro and the Rio Colorado, there stands
solitary an ancient acacia-tree with a gnarled and hollow trunk. The
Indians revere it as the abode of a spirit, and hang offerings of
blankets, ponchos, ribbons, and coloured threads on it, so that the tree
presents the aspect of an old clothes’ shop, the tattered, weather-worn
garments drooping sadly from the boughs. No Indian passes it without
leaving something, if it be only a little horse-hair which he ties to a
branch. The hollow trunk contains offerings of tobacco, beads, and
sometimes coins. But the best evidence of the sanctity of the tree are
the bleached skeletons of many horses which have been killed in honour
of the spirit; for the horse is the most precious sacrifice that these
Indians can offer. They slaughter the animal also to propitiate the
spirits of the deep and rapid [Sidenote: Sacrifices to trees.] rivers
which they have often to ford or swim.[46] The Kayans of Central Borneo
ascribe souls to the trees which yield the poison they use to envenom
their arrows. They think that the spirit of the _tasem_ tree (_Antiaris
toxicaria_) is particularly hard to please; but if the wood has a strong
and agreeable scent, they know that the man who felled the tree must
have contrived by his offerings to mollify the peevish spirit.[47] In
some of the Louisiade Islands there are certain large trees under which
the natives hold their feasts. These trees seem to be regarded as
endowed with souls; for a portion of the feast is set aside for them,
and the bones of pigs and of human beings are everywhere deeply imbedded
in their branches.[48] 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.[49] On Christmas Eve it is still customary in
some parts of Germany to gird fruit-trees with ropes of straw on which
the sausages prepared for the festival have lain. This is supposed to
make the trees bear fruit. In the Mark of Brandenburg the person who
ties the straw round the trees says, “Little tree, I make you a present,
and you will make me one.” The people say that if the trees receive
gifts, they will bestow gifts in return. The custom, which is clearly a
relic of tree-worship, is often observed on New Year’s night or at any
time between Christmas and Twelfth Night.[50]
[Sidenote: Trees supposed to be sensitive and to feel wounds.] 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.”[51] 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.”[52] 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.[53] 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 [Sidenote:
Apologies offered to trees for cutting them down.] less than a wounded
man his hurt. In felling a tree they beg its pardon.[54] 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.[55] So in Jarkino
the woodman craves pardon of the tree he fells.[56] 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.[57] When the Tagalogs of the
Philippines wish to pluck a flower, they ask leave of the genius
(_nono_) of the flower to do so; when they are obliged to cut down a
tree they beg pardon of the genius of the tree and excuse themselves by
saying that it was the priest who bade them fell it.[58] Among the
Tigre-speaking tribes in the north of Abyssinia people are afraid to
fell a green and fruit-bearing tree lest they incur the curse of God,
which is heard in the groaning of the tree as it sinks to the ground.
But if a man is bold enough to cut down such a tree, he will say to it,
“Thy curse abide in thee,” or he will allege that it was not he but an
elephant or a rhinoceros that knocked it down.[59] Amongst the Hos of
Togoland, in West Africa, when a man wishes to make palm-wine he hires
woodmen to fell the trees. They go into the palm-wood, set some meal on
the ground and say to the wood, “That is your food. The old man at home
sent us to cut you down. We are still children who know nothing at all.
The old man at home has sent us.” They say this because they think that
the wood is a spirit and that it is angry with them.[60] Before a Karo
Batak cuts down a tree, he will offer it betel and apologies; and if in
passing the place afterwards he should see the tree weeping or, as we
should say, exuding sap, he hastens to console it by sprinkling the
blood of a fowl on the stump.[61] 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.[62] An ancient Indian ritual directs that in
preparing to fell a tree the woodman should lay a stalk of grass on the
spot where the blow is to fall, with the words, “O plant, shield it!”
and that he should say to the axe, “O axe, hurt it not!” When the tree
had fallen, he poured melted butter on the stump, saying, “Grow thou out
of this, O lord of the forest, grow with a hundred shoots! May we grow
with a thousand shoots!” Then he anointed the severed stem and wound a
rope of grass round it.[63]
[Sidenote: Bleeding trees.] Again, when a tree or plant is cut it is
sometimes thought to bleed. Some Indians dare not cut a certain plant,
because there comes out a red juice which they take for the blood of the
plant.[64] In Samoa there was a grove of trees which no one dared hew
down. Once some strangers tried to do so, but blood flowed from the
tree, and the sacrilegious strangers fell ill and died.[65] Down to 1859
there stood a sacred larch-tree at Nauders in the Tyrol which was
thought to bleed whenever it was cut; moreover people fancied that the
steel pierced the woodman’s body to the same depth that it pierced the
tree, and that the wound on his body would not heal until the bark
closed over the scar on the trunk. So sacred was the tree that no one
would gather fuel or cut timber near it; and to curse, scold, or quarrel
in its neighbourhood was regarded as a crying sin which would be
supernaturally punished on the spot. Angry disputants were often hushed
with the warning whisper, “Don’t, the sacred tree is here.”[66]
[Sidenote: Trees threatened in order to make them bear fruit.] 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 you
not to fell me.”[67] 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.[68] 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.[69] So at the village of Ucria in
Sicily, if a tree obstinately refuses to bear fruit, the owner pretends
to hew it down. Just as the axe is about to fall, a friend intercedes
for the tree, begging him to have patience for one year more, and
promising not to interfere again if the culprit has not mended his ways
by then. The owner grants his request, and the Sicilians say that a tree
seldom remains deaf to such a menace. The ceremony is performed on
Easter Saturday.[70] In Armenia the same pantomime is sometimes
performed by two men for the same purpose on Good Friday.[71] In the
Abruzzi the ceremony takes place before sunrise on the morning of St.
John’s Day (Midsummer Day). The owner threatens the trees which are slow
to bear fruit. Thrice he walks round each sluggard repeating his threat
and striking the trunk with the head of an axe.[72] In Lesbos, when an
orange-tree or a lemon-tree does not bear fruit, the owner will
sometimes set a looking-glass before the tree; then standing with an axe
in his hand over against the tree and gazing at its reflection in the
glass he will feign to fall into a passion and will say aloud, “Bear
fruit, or I’ll cut you down.”[73] When cabbages merely curl their leaves
instead of forming heads as they ought to do, an Esthonian peasant will
go out into the garden before sunrise, clad only in his shirt, and armed
with a scythe, which he sweeps over the refractory vegetables as if he
meant to cut them down. This intimidates the cabbages and brings them to
a sense of their duty.[74]
[Sidenote: Attempts to deceive the spirits of trees and plants.] If
European peasants thus know how to work on the fears of cabbages and
fruit-trees, the subtle Malay has learned how to overreach the simple
souls of the plants and trees that grow in his native land. Thus, when a
bunch of fruit hangs from an _aren_ palm-tree, and in reaching after it
you tread on some of the fallen fruit, the Galelareese say that you
ought to grunt like a wild boar in order that your feet may not itch.
The chain of reasoning seems weak to a European mind, but the natives
find no flaw in it. They have observed that wild boars are fond of the
fruit, and run freely about among it as it lies on the ground. From this
they infer that the animal’s feet are proof against the itch which men
suffer through treading on the fruit; and hence they conclude that if,
by grunting in a natural and life-like manner, you can impress the fruit
with the belief that you are a pig, it will treat your feet as tenderly
as the feet of his friends the real pigs.[75] Again, pregnant women in
Java sometimes take a fancy to eat the wild species of a particular
plant (_Colocasia antiquorum_), which, on account of its exceedingly
pungent taste, is not commonly used as food by human beings, though it
is relished by pigs. In such a case it becomes the husband’s duty to go
and look for the plant, but before he gathers it he takes care to grunt
loudly, in order that the plant may take him for a pig, and so mitigate
the pungency of its flavour.[76] Again, in the Madiun district of Java
there grows a plant of which the fruit is believed to be injurious for
men, but not for apes. The urchins who herd buffaloes, and to whom
nothing edible comes amiss, eat this fruit also; but before plucking it
they take the precaution of mimicking the voices of apes, in order to
persuade the plant that its fruit is destined for the maw of these
creatures.[77] Once more, the Javanese scrape the rind of a certain
plant (_Sarcolobus narcoticus_) into a powder, with which they poison
such dangerous beasts as tigers and wild boars. But the rind is believed
not to be a poison for men. Hence the person who gathers the plant has
to observe certain precautions in order that its baneful quality may not
be lost in passing through his hands. He approaches it naked and
creeping on all fours to make the plant think that he is a ravenous
beast and not a man, and to strengthen the illusion he bites the stalk.
After that the deadly property of the rind is assured. But even when the
plant has been gathered and the powder made from it in strict accordance
with certain superstitious rules, care is still needed in handling the
powder, which is regarded as alive and intelligent. It may not be
brought near a corpse, nor may a corpse be carried past the house in
which the powder is kept. For if either of these things were to happen,
the powder, seeing the corpse, would hastily conclude that it had
already done its work, and so all its noxious quality would be gone.[78]
The Indians of the Upper Orinoco extract a favourite beverage from
certain palm-trees which grow in their forests. In order to make the
trees bear abundance of fruit the medicine-men blow sacred trumpets
under them; but how this is supposed to produce the desired effect does
not appear. The trumpets (_botutos_) are objects of religious
veneration; no woman may look on them under pain of death. Candidates
for initiation into the mystery of the trumpets must be men of good
character and celibate. The initiated members scourge each other, fast,
and practise other austerities.[79]
[Sidenote: Trees married to each other.] 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.”[80] The [Sidenote: Artificial fertilisation of the date-palm.]
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.[81] 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.[82]
Different from this true and fruitful marriage of the palm are the false
and barren marriages of plants which play a part [Sidenote: Marriages of
trees in India.] 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.[83]
According to another account of the ceremony, a branch of a _bar_ tree
is brought and fixed near one of the mango trees in the grove to
represent the _bar_ or bridegroom, and both are wrapt round with the
same piece of cloth by the owner of the grove and his wife. To complete
the ceremony a bamboo basket containing the bride’s belongings and dowry
on a miniature scale is provided; and after the Brahman priest has done
his part, vermilion, the emblem of a completed marriage, is applied to
the mango as to a bride.[84] Another plant which figures as [Sidenote:
Marriage of the holy basil.] a bride in Hindoo rites is the _tulasi_ or
Holy Basil (_Ocymum sanctum_). It is a small shrub, not too big to be
grown in a large flower-pot, and is often placed in rooms; indeed there
is hardly a respectable Hindoo family that does not possess one. In
spite of its humble appearance, the shrub is pervaded by the essence of
Vishnu and his wife Lakshmi, and is itself worshipped daily as a deity.
The following prayer is often addressed to it: “I adore that _tulasi_ in
whose roots are all the sacred places of pilgrimage, in whose centre are
all the deities, and in whose upper branches are all the Vedas.” The
plant is especially a woman’s divinity, being regarded as an embodiment
of Vishnu’s wife Lakshmi, or of Rama’s wife Sita, or of Krishna’s wife
Rukmini. Women worship it by walking round it and praying or offering
flowers and rice to it. Now this sacred plant, as the embodiment of a
goddess, is annually married to the god Krishna in every Hindoo family.
The ceremony takes place in the month _Karttika_ or November. In Western
India they often bring an idol of the youthful Krishna in a gorgeous
palanquin, followed by a long train of attendants, to the house of a
rich man to be wedded to the basil; and the festivities are celebrated
with great pomp.[85] Again, as the wife of Vishnu, the holy basil is
married to the _Salagrama_, a black fossil ammonite which is regarded as
an embodiment of Vishnu. In North-Western India this marriage of the
plant to the fossil has to be performed before it is lawful to taste of
the fruit of a new orchard. A man holding the fossil personates the
bridegroom, and another holding the basil represents the bride. After
burning a sacrificial fire, the officiating Brahman puts the usual
questions to the couple about to be united. Bride and bridegroom walk
six times round a small spot marked out in the centre of the
orchard.[86] Further, no well is considered lucky until the _Salagrama_
has been solemnly wedded to the holy basil, which stands for the garden
that the well is intended to water. The relations assemble; the owner of
the garden represents the bridegroom, while a kinsman of his wife
personates the bride. Gifts are given to the Brahmans, a feast is held
in the garden, and after that both garden and well may be used without
danger.[87] The same marriage of the sacred fossil to the sacred plant
is celebrated annually by the Rajah of Orchha at Ludhaura. A former
Rajah used to spend a sum equal to about thirty thousand pounds, being
one-fourth of his revenue, upon the ceremony. On one occasion over a
hundred thousand people are said to have been present at the rite, and
to have been feasted at the expense of the Rajah. The procession
consisted of eight elephants, twelve hundred camels, and four thousand
horses, all mounted and elegantly caparisoned. The most sumptuously
decorated of the elephants carried the fossil god to pay his bridal
visit to the little shrub goddess. On such an occasion all the rites of
a regular marriage are performed, and afterwards the newly-wedded couple
are left to repose together in the temple till the next year.[88] 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.[89]
[Sidenote: Trees in blossom and rice in bloom treated like pregnant
women.] 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.[90] 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.[91] The Javanese
also regard the bloom on the rice as a sign that the plant is pregnant;
and they treat it accordingly, by mingling in the water that irrigates
the fields a certain astringent food prepared from sour fruit, which is
believed to be wholesome for women with child.[92] In some districts of
Western Borneo there must be no talk of corpses or demons in the fields,
else the spirit of the growing rice would be frightened and flee away to
Java.[93] The Toboongkoos of Central Celebes will not fire a gun in a
ricefield, lest the rice should be frightened away.[94] The Chams of
Binh-Thuan, in Cochin-China, do not dare to touch the rice in the
granary at mid-day, because the rice is then asleep, and it would be
both rude and dangerous to disturb its noonday slumber.[95] In Orissa
growing rice is “considered as a pregnant woman, and the same ceremonies
are observed with regard to it as in the case of human females.”[96] In
Poso, a district of Central Celebes, when the rice-ears are beginning to
form, women go through the field feeding the young ears with soft-boiled
rice to make them grow fast. They carry the food in calabashes, and
grasping the ears in their hands bend them over into the vessels that
they may partake of the strengthening pap. The reason for boiling the
rice soft is that the ears are regarded as young children who could not
digest rice cooked in the usual way.[97] The Tomori of Central Celebes
feed the ripening rice by touching it with the contents of a broken
egg.[98] When the grain begins to form, the people of Gayo, a district
of northern Sumatra, regard the rice as pregnant and feed it with a pap
composed of rice-meal, coco-nut, and treacle, which they deposit on
leaves in the middle and at the corners of the field. And when the crop
is plentiful and the rice has been threshed, they give it water to drink
in a pitcher, which they bury to the neck in the heap of grain.[99]
[Sidenote: Trees supposed to be tenanted by the souls of the dead.]
Sometimes it is the souls of the dead which are believed to animate
trees. The Dieri tribe of South 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.[100] 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, in the
district of Lepanto, 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.[101] The natives of Bontoc, a
province in the north of Luzon, cut down the woods near their villages,
but leave a few fine trees standing as the abode of the spirits of their
ancestors (_anitos_); and they honour the spirits by depositing food
under the trees.[102] The Dyaks believe that when a man dies by
accident, as by drowning, it is a sign that the gods mean to exclude him
from the realms of bliss. Accordingly his body is not buried, but
carried into the forest and there laid down. The souls of such
unfortunates pass into trees or animals or fish, and are much dreaded by
the Dyaks, who abstain from using certain kinds of wood, or eating
certain sorts of fish, because they are supposed to contain the souls of
the dead.[103] Once, while walking with a Dyak through the jungle, Sir
Hugh Low observed that his companion, after raising his sword to strike
a great snake, suddenly arrested his arm and suffered the reptile to
escape. On asking the reason, he was told by the Dyak that the bush in
front of which they were standing had been a man, a kinsman of his own,
who, dying some ten years before, had appeared in a dream to his widow
and told her that he had become that particular bamboo-tree. Hence the
ground and everything on it was sacred, and the serpent might not be
interfered with. The Dyak further related that in spite of the warning
given to the woman in the vision, a man had been hardy enough to cut a
branch of the tree, but that the fool had paid for his temerity with his
life, for he died soon afterwards. A little bamboo altar stood in front
of the bush, on which the remnants of offerings presented to the spirit
of the tree were still visible when Sir Hugh Low passed that way.[104]
In Corea the souls of people who die of the plague or by the roadside,
and of women who expire in childbed, 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.[105] 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.[106] 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.[107] 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.[108] Trees supposed to be inhabited by spirits of the dead are
reported to be common in Southern Nigeria.[109] Thus in the Indem tribe
on the Cross River every village has a big tree into which the souls of
the villagers are believed to pass at death. Hence they will not allow
these trees to be cut, and they sacrifice to them when people are
ill.[110] Other natives of the Cross River say that the big tree of the
village is “their Life,” and that anybody who breaks a bough of it will
fall sick or die unless he pays a fine to the chief.[111] Some of the
mountaineers on the north-west coast of New Guinea think that the
spirits of their ancestors live on the branches of trees, on which
accordingly they hang rags of red or white cotton, always in the number
of seven or a multiple of seven; also, they place food on the trees or
hang it in baskets from the boughs.[112] Among the Buryats of Siberia
the bones of a deceased shaman are deposited in a hole hewn in the trunk
of a great fir, which is then carefully closed up. Thenceforth the tree
goes by the name of the shaman’s fir, and is looked upon as his abode.
Whoever cuts down such a tree will perish with all his household. Every
tribe has its sacred grove of firs in which the bones of the dead
shamans are buried. In treeless regions these firs often form isolated
clumps on the hills, and are visible from afar.[113] The Lkungen Indians
of British Columbia fancy that trees are transformed men, and that the
creaking of the branches in the wind is their voice.[114] In Croatia,
they say that witches used to be buried under old trees in the forest,
and that their souls passed into the trees and left the villagers in
peace.[115] A tree that grows on a grave is regarded by the South
Slavonian peasant as a sort of fetish. Whoever breaks a twig from it
hurts the soul of the dead, but gains thereby a magic wand, since the
soul embodied in the twig will be at his service.[116] This reminds us
of the story of Polydorus in Virgil,[117] and of the bleeding
pomegranate that grew on the grave of the fratricides Eteocles and
Polynices at Thebes[118]. Similar stories are told far away from the
classic lands of Italy and Greece. In an Annamite tale an old fisherman
makes an incision in the trunk of a tree which has drifted ashore; but
blood flows from the cut, and it appears that an empress with her three
daughters, who had been cast into the sea, are embodied in the
tree.[119] On the Slave Coast of West Africa the negroes tell how from
the mouldering bones of a little boy, who had been murdered by his
brother in the forest, there sprang up an edible fungus, which spoke and
revealed the crime to the child’s mother when she attempted to pluck
it.[120]
[Sidenote: Trees sometimes conceived not as the body but merely as the
abode of spirits.] 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
island of the Sangi group in the East Indies, 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.[121]
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.[122] On the Tanga coast of East Africa mischievous
sprites reside in great trees, especially in the fantastically shaped
baobabs. Sometimes they appear in the shape of ugly black beings, but as
a rule they enter unseen into people’s bodies, from which, after causing
much sickness and misery, they have to be cast out by the sorcerer.[123]
The Warramunga tribe of Central Australia believe that certain trees are
the abode of disembodied human spirits waiting to be born again. No
woman will strike one of these trees with an axe, lest the blow might
disturb one of the spirits, who might come forth from the tree and enter
her body.[124] In the Galla region of East Africa, where the vegetation
is magnificent, there are many sacred trees, the haunts of jinn. Most of
them belong to the sycamore and maple family, but they do not all exhale
an equal odour of sanctity. The _watêsa_, with its edible fruit, is
least revered; people climb it to get the fruit, and this disturbs the
jinn, who naturally do not care to linger among its boughs. The _gute
tubi_, which has no edible fruit, is more sacred. Every Galla tribe has
its sacred tree, which is always one individual of a particular species
called _lafto_. When a tree has been consecrated by a priest it becomes
holy, and no branch of it may be broken. Such trees are loaded with long
threads, woollen bands, and bracelets; the blood of animals is poured on
their roots and sometimes smeared on their trunks, and pots full of
butter, milk, and flesh are placed among the branches or on the ground
under them. In many Galla tribes women may not tread on the shadow of
sacred trees or even approach the trees.[125]
[Sidenote: Ceremonies at felling trees.] 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.[126] 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.[127] The Alfoors of Poso, in Central
Celebes, believe that great trees are inhabited by demons in human form,
and the taller the tree the more powerful the demon. Accordingly they
are careful not to fell such trees, and they leave offerings at the foot
of them for the spirits. But sometimes, when they are clearing land for
cultivation, it becomes necessary to cut down the trees which cumber it.
In that case the Alfoor will call to the demon of the tree and beseech
him to leave his abode and go elsewhere, and he deposits food under the
tree as provision for the spirit on his journey. Then, and not till
then, he may fell the tree. Woe to the luckless wight who should turn a
tree-spirit out of his house without giving him due notice![128] When
the Toboongkoos of Central 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.[129] Before the Tomori
of Central 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.[130] The Sundanese of the
Eastern Archipelago drive golden or silver nails into the trunk of a
sacred tree for the sake of expelling the tree-spirit before they hew
down his abode.[131] They seem to think that, though the nails will hurt
him, his vanity will be soothed by the reflection that they are of gold
or silver. In Rotti, an island to the south of Timor, when they fell a
tree to make a coffin, they sacrifice a dog as compensation to the
tree-spirit whose property they are thus making free with.[132] Before
the Gayos of Northern Sumatra clear a piece of forest for the purpose of
planting tobacco or sugar-cane, they offer a quid of betel to the spirit
whom they call the Lord of the Wood, and beg his leave to quarter
themselves on his domain.[133] 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.”[134] When
the Tagales of the Philippines are about to fell a tree which they
believe to be inhabited by a spirit, they excuse themselves to the
spirit, saying: “The priest has ordered us to do it; the fault is not
ours, nor the will either.”[135] There is a certain tree called _rara_
which the Dyaks believe to be inhabited by a spirit. Before they cut
down one of these trees they strike an axe into the trunk, leave it
there, and call upon the spirit either to quit his dwelling or to give
them a sign that he does not wish it to be meddled with. Then they go
home. Next day they visit the tree, and if they find the axe still
sticking in the trunk, they can fell the tree without danger; there is
no spirit in it, or he would certainly have ejected the axe from his
abode. But if they find the axe lying on the ground, they know that the
tree is inhabited and they will not fell it; for it must surely have
been the spirit of the tree in person who expelled the intrusive axe.
Some sceptical Europeans, however, argue that what casts out the axe is
strychnine in the sap rather than the tree-spirit. They say that if the
sap is running, the axe must necessarily be forced out by the action of
heat and the expansion of the exuding gutta; whereas if the axe remains
in the trunk, this only shews that the tree is not vigorous but ready to
die.[136]
Before they cut down a great tree, the Indians in the neighbourhood of
Santiago Tepehuacan hold a festival in order to appease the tree and so
prevent it from hurting anybody in its fall.[137] In the Greek island of
Siphnos, if woodmen have to fell a tree which they regard as possessed
by a spirit, they are most careful, when it falls, to prostrate
themselves humbly and in silence lest the spirit should chastise them as
it escapes. Sometimes they put a stone on the stump of the tree to
prevent the egress of the spirit.[138] In some parts of Sumatra, so soon
as a tree is felled, a young tree is planted on the stump, and some
betel and a few small coins are also placed on it.[139] The purpose of
the ceremony seems plain. The spirit of the tree is offered a new home
in the young tree planted on the stump of the old one, and the offering
of betel and money is meant to compensate him for the disturbance he has
suffered. Similarly, when the Maghs of Bengal were obliged by Europeans
to cut down trees which the natives believed to be tenanted by spirits,
one of them was always ready with a green sprig, which he ran and placed
in the middle of the stump when the tree fell, “as a propitiation to the
spirit which had been displaced so roughly, pleading at the same time
the orders of the strangers for the work.”[140] In Halmahera, however,
the motive for placing a sprig on the stump is said to be to deceive the
spirit into thinking that the fallen stem is still growing in its old
place.[141] The Gilyaks insert a stick with curled shavings on the stump
of the tree which they have felled, believing that in this way they give
back to the dispossessed tree-spirit his life and soul.[142] German
woodmen make a cross upon the stump while the tree is falling, in the
belief that this enables the spirit of the tree to live upon the
stump.[143] Before the Katodis fell a forest tree, they choose a tree of
the same kind and worship it by presenting a coco-nut, burning incense,
applying a red pigment, and begging it to bless the undertaking.[144]
The intention, perhaps, is to induce the spirit of the former tree to
shift its quarters to the latter. In clearing a wood, a Galelareese must
not cut down the last tree till the spirit in it has been induced to go
away.[145] When the Dyaks fell the jungle on the hills, they often leave
a few trees standing on the hill-tops as a refuge for the dispossessed
tree-spirits.[146] Sailing up the Baram river in Sarawak you pass from
time to time a clearing in the forest where manioc is cultivated. In the
middle of every one of these clearings a solitary tree is always left
standing as a home for the ejected spirits of the wood. Its boughs are
stripped off, all but the topmost, and just under its leafy crown two
cross-pieces are fastened from which rags dangle.[147] Similarly in
India, the Gonds allow a grove of typical trees to remain as a home or
reserve for the woodland spirits when they are clearing away a
jungle.[148] The Mundaris have sacred groves which were left standing
when the land was cleared, lest the sylvan gods, disquieted at the
felling of the trees, should abandon the place.[149] The Miris in Assam
are unwilling to break up new land for cultivation so long as there is
fallow land available; for they fear to offend the spirits of the woods
by hewing down trees needlessly.[150] On the other hand, when a child
has been lost, the Padams of Assam think that it has been stolen by the
spirits of the wood; so they retaliate on the spirits by felling trees
till they find the child. The spirits, fearing to be left without a tree
in which to lodge, give up the child, and it is found in the fork of a
tree.[151]
[Sidenote: Propitiating tree-spirits in house-timber.] 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 Central 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.[152] The Bahaus or Kayans of central 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 illtreat 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. The period of taboo is brought to an end by a
ceremony at which head-hunting, or the pretence of it, plays a part. The
Ooloo-Ayar Dyaks on the Mandai river are still more punctilious in their
observance of taboos after building a house. The length of the penance
depends chiefly on the kind of timber used in the construction of the
dwelling. If the timber was the valuable ironwood, the inmates of the
house must deny themselves various dainties for three years. But the
spirits of humbler trees are less exacting.[153] When the Kayans have
felled an ironwood tree in order to cut it up into planks for a roof,
they will offer a pig to the spirits of the tree, hoping thus to prevent
the spirits from molesting the souls of persons assembled under the
roof.[154]
[Sidenote: Sacred trees the abode of spirits.] Thus the tree is
regarded, sometimes as the body, sometimes as merely the house of the
tree-spirit; and when we read of sacred trees which may not be cut down
because they are the seat of spirits, it is not always possible to say
with certainty in which way the presence of the spirit in the tree is
conceived. In the following cases, perhaps, the trees are regarded as
the dwelling-place of the spirits rather than as their bodies. The Sea
Dyaks point to many a tree as sacred because it is the abode of a spirit
or spirits, and to cut one of these down would provoke the spirit’s
anger, who might avenge himself by visiting the sacrilegious woodman
with sickness.[155] The Battas of Sumatra have been known to refuse to
cut down certain trees because they were the abode of mighty spirits who
would resent the injury.[156] One of the largest and stateliest of the
forest trees in Perak is known as _toallong_; it has a very poisonous
sap which produces great irritation when it comes into contact with the
skin. Many trees of this species have large hollow knobs on their trunks
where branches have been broken off. These knobs are looked upon by the
Malays as houses of spirits, and they object strongly to cut down trees
that are thus disfigured, believing that the man who fells one of them
will die within the year. When clearings are made in the forest these
trees are generally left standing to the annoyance and expense of
planters.[157] The Siamese fear to cut down any very fine trees lest
they should incur the anger of the powerful spirits who inhabit
them.[158] The En, a tribe of Upper Burma, worship the spirits of hills
and forests, and over great tracts of country they will not lay out
fields for fear of offending the spirits. They say that if a tree is
felled a man dies.[159] In every Khond village a large grove, generally
of _sâl_ trees (_Shorea robusta_), is dedicated to the forest god, whose
favour is sought by the sacrifice of birds, hogs, and sheep, together
with an offering of rice and an addled egg. This sacred grove is
religiously preserved. The young trees are occasionally pruned, but not
a twig may be cut for use without the formal consent of the village and
the ceremonial propitiation of the god.[160] In some parts of Berar the
holy groves are so carefully preserved, that during the annual festivals
held in them it is customary to gather and burn solemnly all dead and
fallen branches and trees.[161] The Larka Kols of India believe that the
tops of trees are the abode of spirits who are disturbed by the felling
of the trees and will take vengeance.[162] The Parahiya, a Dravidian
tribe of Mirzapur, think that evil spirits live in the _sâl_, _pîpal_,
and _mahua_ trees; they make offerings to such trees and will not climb
into their branches.[163] In Travancore demons are supposed to reside in
certain large old trees, which it would be sacrilegious and dangerous to
hew down. A rough stone is generally placed at the foot of one of these
trees as an image or emblem, and turmeric powder is rubbed on it.[164]
Some of the Western tribes of British New Guinea dread certain female
devils who inhabit large trees and are very dangerous. Trees supposed to
be the abode of these demons are treated with much respect and never cut
down.[165] Near Old Calabar there is a ravine full of the densest and
richest vegetation, whence a stream of limpid water flows purling to the
river. The spot was considered by a late king to be hallowed ground, the
residence of Anansa, the tutelary god of Old Calabar. The people had
strict orders to revere the grove, and no branch of it might be
cut.[166] Among the Bambaras of the Upper Niger every village has its
sacred tree, generally a tamarind, which is supposed to be the abode of
the fetish and is carefully preserved. The fetish is consulted on every
important occasion, and sacrifices of sheep, dogs, and fowls,
accompanied with offerings of millet and fruits, are made under the
sacred tree.[167] In the deserts of Arabia a modern traveller found a
great solitary acacia-tree which the Bedouins believed to be possessed
by a jinnee. Shreds of cotton and horns of goats hung among the boughs
and nails were knocked into the trunk. An Arab strongly dissuaded the
traveller from cutting a branch of the tree, assuring him that it was
death to do so.[168] The Yourouks, who inhabit the southern coasts of
Asia Minor and the heights of Mount Taurus, have sacred trees which they
never cut down from fear of driving away the spirits that own them.[169]
The old Prussians believed that gods inhabited tall trees, such as oaks,
from which they gave audible answers to enquirers; hence these trees
were not felled, but worshipped as the homes of divinities. Amongst the
trees thus venerated by them was the elder-tree.[170] The Samagitians
thought that if any one ventured to injure certain groves, or the birds
or beasts in them, the spirits would make his hands or feet
crooked.[171] Down to the nineteenth century the Esthonians stood in
such awe of many trees, which they considered as the seat of mighty
spirits, that they would not even pluck a flower or a berry on the
ground where the shadow of the trees fell, much less would they dare to
break a branch from the tree itself.[172]
[Sidenote: Sacred groves.] Even where no mention is made of
wood-spirits, we may generally assume that when trees or groves are
sacred and inviolable, it is because they are believed to be either
inhabited or animated by sylvan deities. In Central India the _bar_ tree
(_Ficus Indica_) and the _pipal_ (_Ficus religiosa_) are sacred, and
every child learns the saying that “it is better to die a leper than
pluck a leaf of a _pipal_, and he who can wound a _bar_ will kick his
little sister.”[173] In Livonia there is a sacred grove in which, if any
man fells a tree or breaks a branch, he will die within the year.[174]
The Wotyaks have sacred groves. A Russian who ventured to hew a tree in
one of them fell sick and died next day.[175] The heathen Cheremiss of
South-Eastern Russia have sacred groves, and woe to him who dares to
fell one of the holy trees. If the author of the sacrilege is unknown,
they take a cock or a goose, torture it to death and then throw it on
the fire, while they pray to the gods to punish the sinner and cause him
to perish like the bird.[176] Near a chapel of St. Ninian, in the parish
of Belly, there stood more than a century and a half ago a row of trees,
“all of equal size, thick planted for about the length of a butt,” which
were “looked upon by the superstitious papists as sacred trees, from
which they reckon it sacrilege to take so much as a branch or any of the
fruit.”[177] So in the island of Skye some two hundred and fifty years
ago there was a holy lake, “surrounded by a fair wood, which none
presumes to cut”; and those who ventured to infringe its sanctity by
breaking even a twig either sickened on the spot or were visited
afterwards by “some signal inconvenience.”[178] Sacrifices offered at
cutting down trees are doubtless meant to appease the wood-spirits. In
Gilgit it is usual to sprinkle goat’s blood on a tree of any kind before
felling it.[179] The Akikuyu of British East Africa hold the _mugumu_ or
_mugomo_ tree, a species of fig, sacred on account of its size and fine
appearance; hence they do not ruthlessly cut it down like all other
trees which cumber a patch of ground that is to be cleared for tillage.
Groves of this tree are sacred. In them no axe may be laid to any tree,
no branch broken, no firewood gathered, no grass burnt; and wild animals
which have taken refuge there may not be molested. In these sacred
groves sheep and goats are sacrificed and prayers are offered for rain
or fine weather or in behalf of sick children. The whole meat of the
sacrifices is left in the grove for God (_Ngai_) to eat; the fat is
placed in a cleft of the trunk or in the branches as a tit-bit for him.
He lives up in the boughs but comes down to partake of the food.[180]
§ 2. Beneficent Powers of Tree-Spirits
[Sidenote: Transition of tree-spirit into anthropomorphic deity of the
woods.] 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.[181] 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 shew, 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.
[Sidenote: Trees supposed to give rain and sunshine.] 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.[182] The Mundaris in Assam think that if a tree in the sacred
grove is felled the sylvan gods evince their displeasure by withholding
rain.[183] 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.[184] In Cambodia each village or province has its sacred
tree, the abode of a spirit. If the rains are late the people sacrifice
to the tree.[185] In time of drought the elders of the Wakamba in East
Africa assemble and take a calabash of cider and a goat to a
baobab-tree, where they kill the goat but do not eat it.[186] When
Ovambo women go out to sow corn they take with them in the basket of
seed two green branches of a particular kind of tree (_Peltophorum
africanum Sond._), one of which they plant in the field along with the
first seed sown. The branch is believed to have the power of attracting
rain; hence in one of the native dialects the tree goes by the name of
the “rain-bush.”[187] To extort rain from the tree-spirit a branch is
sometimes dipped in water, as we have seen above.[188] In such cases the
spirit is doubtless supposed to be immanent in the branch, and the water
thus applied to the spirit produces rain by a sort of sympathetic magic,
exactly as we saw that in New Caledonia the rain-makers pour water on a
skeleton, believing that the soul of the deceased will convert the water
into rain.[189] There is hardly room to doubt that Mannhardt is right in
explaining as a rain-charm the European custom of drenching with water
the trees which are cut at certain popular festivals, as midsummer,
Whitsuntide, and harvest.[190]
[Sidenote: Tree-spirits supposed to make the crops grow.] 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.”[191] 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.[192]
Before harvest the Wabondëi of East Africa sacrifice a goat to the
spirit that lives in baobab-trees; the blood is poured into a hole at
the foot of one of the trees. If the sacrifice were omitted the spirit
would send disease and death among the people.[193] 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.[194] Swedish peasants stick a leafy branch in each furrow of
their corn-fields, believing that this will [Sidenote: The Harvest-May.]
ensure an abundant crop.[195] 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.[196] The Harvest-May of Germany has
its counterpart in the _eiresione_ of ancient Greece.[197] The
_eiresione_ was a branch of olive or laurel, bound about with ribbons
and hung with a variety of fruits. This branch was carried in procession
at a harvest festival and was fastened over the door of the house, where
it remained for a year. The object of preserving the Harvest-May or the
_eiresione_ for a year is that the life-giving virtue of the bough may
foster the growth of the crops throughout the year. By the end of the
year the virtue of the bough is supposed to be exhausted and it is
replaced by a new one. Following a similar train of thought some of the
Dyaks of Sarawak are careful at the rice harvest to take up the roots of
a certain bulbous plant, which bears a beautiful crown of white and
fragrant flowers. These roots are preserved with the rice in the granary
and are planted again with the seed-rice in the following season; for
the Dyaks say that the rice will not grow unless a plant of this sort be
in the field.[198]
[Sidenote: Customs like the Harvest-May in India and Africa.] Customs
like that of the Harvest-May appear to exist in India and Africa. At a
harvest festival of the Lhoosai of South-Eastern India the chief goes
with his people into the forest and fells a large tree, which is then
carried into the village and set up in the midst. Sacrifice is offered,
and spirits and rice are poured over the tree. The ceremony closes with
a feast and a dance, at which the unmarried men and girls are the only
performers.[199] Among the Bechuanas the hack-thorn is very sacred, and
it would be a serious offence to cut a bough from it and carry it into
the village during the rainy season. But when the corn is ripe in the
ear the people go with axes, and each man brings home a branch of the
sacred hack-thorn, with which they repair the village cattle-yard.[200]
According to another authority, it is a rule with the Bechuanas that
“neither the hook-thorn nor the milk-tree must be cut down while the
corn is on the ground, for this, they think, would prevent rain. When I
was at Lattakoo, though Mr. Hamilton stood in much need of some
milk-tree timber, he durst not supply himself till all the corn was
gathered in.”[201] Many tribes of South-Eastern Africa will not cut down
timber while the corn is green, fearing that if they did so, the crops
would be destroyed by blight, hail, or early frost.[202] The heathen
Cheremiss, in the Russian Government of Kasan, will not fell trees, mow
grass, or dig the ground while the corn is in bloom.[203] Again, the
fructifying power of the tree is put forth at seed-time as well as at
harvest. Among the Aryan tribes of Gilgit, on the north-western frontier
of India, the sacred tree is the _Chili_, a species of cedar (_Juniperus
excelsa_). At the beginning of wheat-sowing the people receive from the
rajah’s granary a quantity of wheat, which is placed in a skin mixed
with sprigs of the sacred cedar. A large bonfire of the cedar wood is
lighted, and the wheat which is to be sown is held over the smoke. The
rest is ground and made into a large cake, which is baked on the same
fire and given to the ploughman.[204] Here the intention of fertilising
the seed by means of the sacred cedar is unmistakable.
[Sidenote: Fertilising virtue attributed to trees.] In all these cases
the power of fostering the growth of crops, and, in general, of
cultivated plants, is ascribed to trees. The ascription is not
unnatural. For the tree is the largest and most powerful member of the
vegetable kingdom, and man is familiar with it before he takes to
cultivating corn. Hence he naturally places the feebler and, to him,
newer plant under the dominion of the older and more powerful.
[Sidenote: Tree-spirits make herds to multiply and women to bring
forth.] Again, the tree-spirit makes the herds to multiply and blesses
women with offspring. The sacred _Chili_ or cedar of Gilgit was supposed
to possess this virtue in addition to that of fertilising the corn. At
the commencement of wheat-sowing three chosen unmarried youths, after
undergoing daily washing and purification for three days, used to start
for the mountain where the cedars grew, taking with them wine, oil,
bread, and fruit of every kind. Having found a suitable tree they
sprinkled the wine and oil on it, while they ate the bread and fruit as
a sacrificial feast. Then they cut off the branch and brought it to the
village, where, amid general rejoicing, it was placed on a large stone
beside running water. “A goat was then sacrificed, its blood poured over
the cedar branch, and a wild dance took place, in which weapons were
brandished about, and the head of the slaughtered goat was borne aloft,
after which it was set up as a mark for arrows and bullet-practice.
Every good shot was rewarded with a gourd full of wine and some of the
flesh of the goat. When the flesh was finished the bones were thrown
into the stream and a general ablution took place, after which every man
went to his house taking with him a spray of the cedar. On arrival at
his house he found the door shut in his face, and on his knocking for
admission, his wife asked, ‘What have you brought?’ To which he
answered, ‘If you want children, I have brought them to you; if you want
food, I have brought it; if you want cattle, I have brought them;
whatever you want, I have it.’ The door was then opened and he entered
with his cedar spray. The wife then took some of the leaves, and pouring
wine and water on them placed them on the fire, and the rest were
sprinkled with flour and suspended from the ceiling. She then sprinkled
flour on her husband’s head and shoulders, and addressed him thus, ‘Ai
Shiri Bagerthum, son of the fairies, you have come from far!’ _Shiri
Bagerthum_, ‘the dreadful king,’ being the form of address to the cedar
when praying for wants to be fulfilled. The next day the wife baked a
number of cakes, and taking them with her, drove the family goats to the
Chili stone. When they were collected round the stone, she began to pelt
them with pebbles, invoking the Chili at the same time. According to the
direction in which the goats ran off, omens were drawn as to the number
and sex of the kids expected during the ensuing year. Walnuts and
pomegranates were then placed on the Chili stone, the cakes were
distributed and eaten, and the goats followed to pasture in whatever
direction they showed a disposition to go. For five days afterwards this
song was sung in all the houses:—
‘_Dread Fairy King, I sacrifice before you,
How nobly do you stand! you have filled up my house,
You have brought me a wife when I had not one,
Instead of daughters you have given me sons.
You have shown me the ways of right,
You have given me many children._’”[205]
[Sidenote: Fertilising virtue attributed to trees.] Here the driving of
the goats to the stone on which the cedar had been placed is clearly
meant to impart to them the fertilising influence of the cedar. 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.[206] 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.[207] 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.[208] In [Sidenote: Influence of
May-trees on cattle.] 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.[209] 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.”[210] In Suffolk there was an old custom, observed in most
farm-houses, that any servant who could bring in a branch of hawthorn in
blossom on the first of May was entitled to a dish of cream for
breakfast.[211] Similarly, “in parts of Cornwall, till certainly ten
years ago, any child who brought to a dairy on May morning a piece of
hawthorn in bloom, or a piece of fresh bracken, long enough to surround
the earthenware bowl in which cream is kept, was given a bowl of
cream.”[212] On May Day English milkmaids used to dance with garlands on
their pails. One May morning long ago Pepys on his way to Westminster
saw many of them dancing thus to the music of a fiddle while pretty Nel
Gwynne, in her smock sleeves and bodice, watched them from the door of
her lodgings in Drury-lane.[213]
[Sidenote: May-tree or May-bush a protection against witchcraft.]
However in these and similar European customs it seems that the
influence of the tree, bush, or bough is really protective rather than
generative; it does not so much fill the udders of the cows as prevent
them from being drained dry by witches, who ride on broomsticks or
pitchforks through the air on the Eve of May Day (the famous Walpurgis
Night) and make great efforts to steal the milk from the cattle. Hence
the many precautions which the prudent herdsman must take to guard his
beasts at this season from the raids of these baleful creatures. For
example, on May morning the Irish scatter primroses on the threshold,
keep a piece of red-hot iron on the hearth, or twine branches of
whitethorn and mountain-ash or rowan about the door. To save the milk
they cut and peel boughs of mountain-ash (rowan), and bind the twigs
round the milk-pails and the churn.[214] According to a writer of the
sixteenth century, whose description is quoted by Camden, the Irish
“account every woman who fetches fire on May-day a witch, nor will they
give it to any but sick persons, and that with an imprecation, believing
she will steal all the butter the next summer. On May day they kill all
the hares they find among their cattle, supposing them the old women who
have designs on the butter. They imagine the butter so stolen may be
recovered if they take some of the thatch hanging over the door and burn
it.”[215] In the north-east of Scotland pieces of rowan-tree and
woodbine, or of rowan alone, used to be placed over the doors of the
cow-houses on May Day to keep the witches from the kine; and a still
better way of attaining the same object was to tie a cross of rowan-tree
wood with a scarlet thread to each animal’s tail.[216] The Highlanders
of Scotland believe that on Beltane eve, that is the night before May
Day, the witches go about in the shape of hares and suck the milk from
the cows. To guard against their depredations tar was put behind the
ears of the cattle and at the root of the tail, and the house was hung
with rowan-tree.[217] For the same reason the Highlanders say that the
peg of the cow-shackle and the handle and cross of the churn-staff
should always be made of rowan, because that is the most potent charm
against witchcraft.[218] In the Isle of Man on May Day, old style,
people carried crosses of rowan in their hats and fastened May-flowers
over their doors as a protection against elves and witches, and for the
same purpose they tied crosses of rowan to the tails of the cattle. Also
women washed their faces in the dew early on May morning in order to
secure good luck, a fine complexion, and immunity from witches. Further,
the break of day on that morning was the signal for setting the ling or
gorse on fire, which was done for the sake of burning out the witches,
who are wont to take the shape of hares. In some places, indeed, as in
the Lezayre parish, the practice was to burn gorse in the hedge of every
field to drive away the witches, who are still feared in the Isle of
Man.[219] In Norway and Denmark branches of rowan are [Sidenote:
Precautions against witchcraft on May Day and Walpurgis Night.]
similarly used to protect houses and cattle-stalls against witches on
Walpurgis Night, and there, too, it is thought that the churn-staff
should be made of rowan.[220] In Germany a common way of keeping witches
from the cattle on Walpurgis Night is to chalk up three crosses on the
door of the cowhouse.[221] Branches of buckthorn stuck in the muck-heaps
on the eve of May Day answer the same purpose.[222] In Silesia the
precautions taken at this season against witches are many and various;
for example, pieces of buckthorn are nailed crosswise over the door of
the cowhouse; pitchforks and harrows, turned upside down, with the
prongs pointing outwards, are placed at the doors; and a sod of fresh
turf from a meadow is laid before the threshold and strewed with
marsh-marigolds. Before the witches can pass the threshold, they must
count every blade of grass in the turf and every petal of the marigolds;
and while they are still counting the day breaks and their power is
gone. For the same reason little birch-trees are set up at the
house-door, because the witches cannot enter the house till they have
counted all the leaves; and before they have done the sum it is broad
daylight, and they must flee away with the shadows.[223] On Walpurgis
Night the Germans of Moravia put knives under the threshold of the
cowhouse and twigs of birch at the door and in the muck-heap to keep the
witches from the cows.[224] For the same purpose the Bohemians at this
season lay branches of gooseberry bushes, hawthorn, and wild rose-trees
on the thresholds of the cowhouses, because the witches are caught by
the thorns and can get no farther.[225] We now see why thorny trees and
bushes, whether hawthorn, buckthorn, or what not, afford protection
against witchcraft: they serve as prickly hedges through which the
witches cannot force their way. But this explanation clearly does not
apply to the mountain-ash and the birch.
[Sidenote: Influence of tree-spirits on cattle among the Wends,
Esthonians, and Circassians.] 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.[226] Some of the Esthonians believe
in a mischievous spirit called Metsik, who lives in the forest and has
the weal of the cattle in his hands. Every year a new image of him is
prepared. On an appointed day all the villagers assemble and make a
straw man, dress him in clothes, and take him to the common pasture-land
of the village. Here the figure is fastened to a high tree, round which
the people dance noisily. On almost every day of the year prayer and
sacrifice are offered to him that he may protect the cattle. Sometimes
the image of Metsik is made of a corn-sheaf and fastened to a tall tree
in the wood. The people perform strange antics before it to induce
Metsik to guard the corn and the cattle.[227] 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.[228]
[Sidenote: Tree-spirits grant offspring or an easy delivery to women.]
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.”[229]
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.[230] 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.”[231] 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.[232] Among the Kara-Kirghiz barren women
roll themselves on the ground under a solitary apple-tree, in order to
obtain offspring.[233] Some of the hill-tribes of India have a custom of
marrying the bride and bridegroom to two trees before they are married
to each other. For example, among the Mundas the bride touches with red
lead a _mahwá_-tree, clasps it in her arms, and is tied to it; and the
bridegroom goes through a like ceremony with a mango-tree.[234] The
intention of the custom may perhaps be to communicate to the
newly-wedded pair the vigorous reproductive power of the trees.[235]
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 _bårdträd_ 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.[236] 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.[237] 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.[238]
Footnote 5:
Caesar, _Bell. Gall._ vi. 25.
Footnote 6:
Julian, Fragm. 4, ed. Hertlein, pp. 608 _sq._ On the vast woods of
Germany, their coolness and shade, see also Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi.
5.
Footnote 7:
Ch. Elton, _Origins of English History_ (London, 1882), pp. 3, 106
_sq._, 224.
Footnote 8:
W. Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_ (Leipsic, 1879), pp. 25 _sq._
Footnote 9:
H. Nissen, _Italische Landeskunde_, i. (Berlin, 1883) pp. 431 _sqq._
Footnote 10:
Livy, ix. 36-38. The Ciminian mountains (_Monte Cimino_) are still
clothed with dense woods of majestic oaks and chestnuts. Modern
writers suppose that Livy has exaggerated the terrors and difficulties
of the forest. See G. Dennis, _Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria_, 3rd
Ed., i. 146-149.
Footnote 11:
C. Neumann und J. Partsch, _Physikalische Geographie von Griechenland_
(Breslau, 1885), pp. 357 _sqq._ I am told that the dark blue waters of
the lake of Pheneus, which still reflected the sombre pine-forests of
the surrounding mountains when I travelled in Arcadia in the bright
unforgetable autumn days of 1895, have since disappeared, the
subterranean chasms which drain this basin having been, whether
accidentally or artificially, cleared so as to allow the pent-up
waters to escape. The acres which the peasants have thereby added to
their fields will hardly console future travellers for the loss of the
watery mirror, which was one of the most beautiful, as it was one of
the rarest, scenes in the parched land of Greece.
Footnote 12:
J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 4th Ed., i. 53 _sqq._; O. Schrader,
_Reallexikon der indo-germanischen Altertumskunde_ (Strasburg, 1901),
_s.v._ “Tempel,” pp. 855 _sqq._
Footnote 13:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 249 _sqq._; Maximus Tyrius, _Dissert._ viii.
8.
Footnote 14:
O. Schrader, _op. cit._ pp. 857 _sq._
Footnote 15:
Tacitus, _Germania_, 9, 39, 40, 43; _id._, _Annals_, ii. 12, iv. 73;
_id._, _Hist._ iv. 14; J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 4th Ed., pp.
541 _sqq._; _Bavaria Landes- und Volkeskunde des Königreichs Bayern_,
iii. 929 _sq._
Footnote 16:
J. Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer_, pp. 519 _sq._; W. Mannhardt,
_Baumkultus_ (Berlin, 1875), pp. 26 _sqq._
Footnote 17:
Adam of Bremen, _Descriptio insularum Aquilonis_, 27 (Migne’s
_Patrologia Latina_, vol. cxlvi. col. 644).
Footnote 18:
L. Leger, _La Mythologie slave_ (Paris, 1901), pp. 73-75, 188-190.
Footnote 19:
Mathias Michov, “De Sarmatia Asiana atque Europea,” in Simon
Grynaeus’s _Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum_
(Paris, 1532), pp. 455 _sq._ [wrongly numbered 445, 446]; Martin
Cromer, _De origine et rebus gestis Polonorum_ (Basel, 1568), p. 241;
Fabricius, _Livonicae historiae compendiosa series_ (_Scriptores rerum
Livonicarum_, ii. (Riga and Leipsic, 1848) p. 441).
Footnote 20:
See C. Bötticher, _Der Baumkultus der Hellenen_ (Berlin, 1856); L.
Preller, _Römische Mythologie_, 3rd. Ed., i. 105-114.
Footnote 21:
_The Classical Review_, xix. (1905) p. 331, referring to an
inscription found in Cos some years ago.
Footnote 22:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xv. 77; Tacitus, _Ann._ xiii. 58. The fig-tree is
represented on Roman coins and on the great marble reliefs which stand
in the Forum. See E. Babelon, _Monnaies de la République romaine_, ii.
336 _sq._; R. Lanciani, _Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome_
(London, 1897), p. 258; E. Petersen, _Vom alten Rom_ (Leipsic, 1900),
pp. 26, 27.
Footnote 23:
Plutarch, _Romulus_, 20.
Footnote 24:
K. Rhamm, “Der heidnische Gottesdienst des finnischen Stammes,”
_Globus_, lxvii. (1895) pp. 343, 348. This article is an abstract of a
Finnish book _Suomen suvun pakanillinen jumalen palvelus_, by J. Krohn
(Helsingfors, 1894).
Footnote 25:
“Heilige Haine und Bäume der Finnen,” _Globus_, lix. (1891) pp. 350
_sq._
Footnote 26:
P. S. Pallas, _Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des russischen
Reichs_ (St. Petersburg, 1771-1776), iii. 60 _sq._
Footnote 27:
Porphyry, _De abstinentia_, i. 6. This was an opinion of the Stoic and
Peripatetic philosophy.
Footnote 28:
Washington Matthews, _Ethnography and Philology of the Hidatsa
Indians_ (Washington, 1877), pp. 48 _sq._
Footnote 29:
L. H. Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_ (Rochester, 1851), pp. 162,
164.
Footnote 30:
J. L. Krapf, _Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours during an
Eighteen Years’ Residence in Eastern Africa_ (London, 1860), p. 198.
Footnote 31:
Rev. Lorimer Fison, in a letter to the author dated November 3, 1898.
Footnote 32:
J. Teit, “The Thompson Indians of British Columbia,” p. 349 (_Memoir
of the American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific
Expedition_, vol. i. part iv.).
Footnote 33:
C. Hupe, “Over de godsdienst, zeden enz. der Dajakkers,” _Tijdschrift
voor Neêrlands Indië_, 1846 (Batavia), dl. iii. p. 158.
Footnote 34:
De la Loubere, _Du royaume de Siam_ (Amsterdam, 1691), i. 382. Compare
Mgr. Bruguière, in _Annales de l’Association de la Propagation de la
Foi_, v. (1831) p. 127.
Footnote 35:
The Buddhist conception of trees as animated often comes out in the
_Jatakas_. For examples see H. Oldenberg, _Die Religion des Veda_, pp.
259 _sqq._; _The Jātaka_, bk. xii. No. 465, vol. iv. pp. 96 _sqq._
(English translation edited by E. B. Cowell).
Footnote 36:
J. J. M. de Groot, _The Religious System of China_, iv. (Leyden, 1901)
pp. 272 _sqq._
Footnote 37:
J. J. M. de Groot, _The Religious System of China_, v. (Leyden, 1907)
p. 663.
Footnote 38:
F. S. Krauss, _Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Südslaven_
(Münster i. W., 1890), p. 33.
Footnote 39:
A. B. Ellis, _The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_ (London,
1890), pp. 49 _sqq._ Compare _id._, _The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the
Gold Coast_ (London, 1887), pp. 34 _sqq._; _Missions Catholiques_, ix.
(1877) p. 71.
Footnote 40:
G. Maspero, _Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient classique: les
origines_ (Paris, 1895), pp. 121 _sq._
Footnote 41:
Merolla, “Voyage to Congo,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, xvi.
236.
Footnote 42:
C. C. von der Decken, _Reisen in Ost-Afrika_ (Leipsic and Heidelberg,
1869-1871), i. 216. The writer does not describe the mode of appeasing
the tree-spirit in the case mentioned. As to the Wanika beliefs, see
above, p. 12.
Footnote 43:
Sir Harry Johnston, _The Uganda Protectorate_ (London, 1902), ii. 832.
Footnote 44:
J. B. L. Durand, _Voyage au Sénégal_ (Paris, 1802), p. 119.
Footnote 45:
S. J. Curtiss, _Primitive Semitic Religion To-day_ (Chicago, 1902), p.
94.
Footnote 46:
A. d’Orbigny, _Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale_ (Paris and
Strasburg, 1839-1843), ii. 157, 159 _sq._
Footnote 47:
A. W. Nieuwenhuis, _In Centraal-Borneo_ (Leyden, 1900), i. 146.
Footnote 48:
H. H. Romilly, _From my Verandah in New Guinea_ (London, 1889), p. 86.
Footnote 49:
D. C. J. Ibbetson, _Outlines of Panjab Ethnography_ (Calcutta, 1883),
p. 120.
Footnote 50:
W. von Schulenberg, “Volkskundliche Mittheilungen aus der Mark,”
_Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie
und Urgeschichte_ (1896), p. 189. Compare A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz,
_Nord-deutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche_, p. 407, § 142; E. Meier,
_Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben_, p. 463, § 208; A.
Kuhn, _Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus Westfalen_, ii. pp. 108 _sq._,
§§ 326, 327, p. 116, §§ 356, 358; A. Birlinger, _Volksthümliches aus
Schwaben_, i. pp. 464 _sq._, § 6; K. Bartsch, _Sagen, Märchen und
Gebräuche aus Meklenburg_, ii. 228 _sq._; W. Kolbe, _Hessische
Volks-Sitten und Gebräuche_, 2nd Ed., p. 29; R. Andree,
_Braunschweiger Volkskunde_ (Brunswick, 1896), p. 234; R. Wuttke,
Sächsische Volkskunde 2nd Ed., (Dresden, 1901), p. 370. The custom has
been discussed by U. Jahn, _Die deutschen Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau
und Viehzucht_ (Breslau, 1884), pp. 214-220. He comes to the
conclusion, which I cannot but regard as erroneous, that the custom
was in origin a rational precaution to keep the caterpillars from the
trees. Compare the marriage of trees, below, pp. 24 _sqq._
Footnote 51:
J. Aubrey, _Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme_ (London, 1881), p.
247.
Footnote 52:
Peter Jones, _History of the Ojebway Indians_, p. 104.
Footnote 53:
J. J. M. de Groot, _Religious System of China_, iv. 274.
Footnote 54:
A. Peter, _Volksthümliches aus Österreichisch-Schlesien_ (Troppau,
1865-67), ii. 30.
Footnote 55:
P. Wagler, _Die Eiche in alter und neuer Zeit_, ii. (Berlin, 1891) p.
56 note 1.
Footnote 56:
A. Bastian, _Indonesien_, i. 154; compare _id._, _Die Völker des
östlichen Asien_, ii. 457 _sq._, iii. 251 _sq._, iv. 42 _sq._
Footnote 57:
J. de los Reyes y Florentino, “Die religiosen Anschauungen der
Ilocanen (Luzon),” _Mittheilungen der k. k. Geograph. Gesellschaft in
Wien_, xxxi. (1888) p. 556.
Footnote 58:
F. Gardner, “Philippine (Tagalog) Superstitions,” _Journal of American
Folk-lore_, xix. (1906) p. 191. These superstitions are translated
from an old and rare work _La Pratica del ministerio_, by Padre Tomas
Ortiz (Manila, 1713).
Footnote 59:
Th. Nöldeke, “Tigre-Texte,” _Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, xxiv.
(1910) p. 298, referring to E. Littmann, _Publications of the
Princeton Expedition to Abyssinia_ (Leyden, 1910).
Footnote 60:
J. Spieth, _Die Ewe-Stämme_ (Berlin, 1906), pp. 394-396.
Footnote 61:
J. H. Neumann, “De _tĕndi_ in verband met Si Dajang,” _Mededeelingen
van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap_, xlviii. (1904) pp.
124 _sq._
Footnote 62:
From a letter of the Rev. J. Roscoe, written in Busoga, 21st May,
1908.
Footnote 63:
_Satapatha-Brâhmana_, translated by J. Eggeling, Part II. pp. 165
_sq._ (_Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xxvi.); H. Oldenberg, _Die
Religion des Veda_, pp. 256 _sq._
Footnote 64:
De la Loubere, _Du royaume de Siam_ (Amsterdam, 1691), i. 383.
Footnote 65:
G. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 63.
Footnote 66:
I. v. Zingerle, “Der heilige Baum bei Nauders,” _Zeitschrift für
deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde_, iv. (1859), pp. 33 _sqq._
According to Lucan (_Pharsal._ iii. 429-431), the soldiers whom Caesar
ordered to cut down the sacred oak-grove of the Druids at Marseilles
believed that the axes would rebound from the trees and wound
themselves.
Footnote 67:
W. W. Skeat, _Malay Magic_, pp. 198 _sq._ As to the durian-tree and
its fruit, see A. R. Wallace, _The Malay Archipelago_ 6th Ed.,
(London, 1877), pp. 74 _sqq._
Footnote 68:
W. G. Aston, _Shinto_ (London, 1905), p. 165.
Footnote 69:
F. S. Krauss, _Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Südslaven_, p.
34; A. Strausz, _Die Bulgaren_ (Leipsic, 1898), p. 352. Compare R. F.
Kaindl, “Aus der Volksüberlieferung der Bojken,” _Globus_, lxxix.
(1901) p. 152.
Footnote 70:
G. Pitrè, _Spettacoli e feste popolari_ (Palermo, 1881), p. 221;
_id._, _Usi e costumi, credenze e pregiudizi del popolo siciliano_,
iii. (Palermo, 1889) p. 111; G. Vuillier, “Chez les magiciens et les
sorciers de la Corrèze,” _Tour du monde_, N.S. v. (1899) p. 512.
Footnote 71:
M. Tchéraz, “Notes sur la mythologie Arménienne,” _Transactions of the
Ninth International Congress of Orientalists_ (London, 1893), ii. 827.
Compare M. Abeghian, _Der armenische Volksglaube_ (Leipsic, 1899), p.
60.
Footnote 72:
G. Finamore, _Credenze, usi, e costumi abruzzesi_ (Palermo, 1890), pp.
162 _sq._
Footnote 73:
Georgeakis et Pineau, _Folk-lore de Lesbos_ (Paris, 1894), p. 354.
Footnote 74:
Boecler-Kreutzwald, _Der Ehsten abergläubische Gebräuche, Weisen und
Gewohnheiten_ (St. Petersburg, 1854), p. 134.
Footnote 75:
M. J. van Baarda, “Fabelen, Verhalen, en Overleveringen der
Galelareezen,” _Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van
Nederlandsch-Indië_, xlv. (1895) p. 511.
Footnote 76:
A. G. Vorderman, “Planten-animisme op Java,” _Teysmannia_, No. 2,
1896, pp. 59 _sq._; _Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, ix.
(1896) p. 175.
Footnote 77:
A. G. Vorderman, _op. cit._ p. 60; _Internationales Archiv für
Ethnographie_, ix. (1896) p. 176.
Footnote 78:
A. G. Vorderman, _op. cit._ pp. 61-63.
Footnote 79:
A. de Humboldt, _Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau
Continent_, ii. (Paris, 1819) pp. 369 _sq._, 429 _sq._
Footnote 80:
Elsdon Best, “Maori Nomenclature,” _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, xxxii. (1902) p. 197.
Footnote 81:
Herodotus, i. 193; Theophrastus, _Historia plantarum_, ii. 8. 4;
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xiii. 31, 34 _sq._ In this passage Pliny states
that naturalists distinguished the sexes of all trees and plants. On
Assyrian monuments a winged figure is often represented holding an
object which looks like a pine-cone to a palm-tree. The scene has been
ingeniously and with great probability explained by Professor E. B.
Tylor as the artificial fertilisation of the date-palm by means of the
male inflorescence. See his paper in _Proceedings of the Society of
Biblical Archaeology_, xii. (1890) pp. 383-393. On the artificial
fertilisation of the date-palm, see C. Ritter, _Vergleichende Erdkunde
von Arabien_ (Berlin, 1847), ii. 811, 827 _sq._
Footnote 82:
D. Chwolsohn, _Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus_ (St. Petersburg, 1856),
ii. 36, 251. Mohammed forbade the artificial fertilisation of the
palm, probably because of the superstitions attaching to the ceremony.
But he had to acknowledge his mistake. See D. S. Margoliouth,
_Mohammed and the Rise of Islam_, p. 230 (a passage pointed out to me
by Dr. A. W. Verrall).
Footnote 83:
Sir W. H. Sleeman, _Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official_
(Westminster, 1893), i. 38 _sq._; compare _Census of India, 1901_,
vol. xiii., _Central Provinces_, part i. p. 92.
Footnote 84:
_Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, lxxii., part iii.
(Calcutta, 1904) p. 42.
Footnote 85:
J. A. Dubois, _Mœurs, institutions et cérémonies des peuples de
l’Inde_ (Paris, 1825), ii. 448 _sq._; Monier Williams, _Religious Life
and Thought in India_, pp. 333-335; W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and
Folklore of Northern India_ (Westminster, 1896), ii. 110 _sq._
According to another account, it is Vishnu, not Krishna, to whom the
holy plant is annually married in every pious Hindoo family. See
_Census of India, 1901_, vol. xviii., _Baroda_, p. 125.
Footnote 86:
Sir Henry M. Elliot, _Memoirs on the History, Folklore, and
Distribution of the Races of the North-western Provinces of India_,
edited by J. Beames (London, 1869), i. 233 _sq._
Footnote 87:
W. Crooke, _op. cit._ i. 49.
Footnote 88:
Sir W. H. Sleeman, _Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official_
(Westminster, 1893), i. 147-149, 175. The _Salagrama_ is commonly
perforated in one or more places by worms or, as the Hindoos believe,
by the legendary insect Vajrakita or by Vishnu himself. The value of
the fossil shell depends on its colour, and the number of its
convolutions and holes. The black are prized as gracious embodiments
of Vishnu; the violet are shunned as dangerous avatars of the god. He
who possesses a black _Salagrama_ keeps it wrapped in white linen,
washes and adores it daily. A draught of the water in which the shell
has been washed is supposed to purge away all sin and to secure the
temporal and eternal welfare of the drinker. These fossils are found
in Nepaul, in the upper course of the river Gandaka, a northern
tributary of the Ganges. Hence the district goes by the name of
Salagrami, and is highly esteemed for its sanctity; a visit to it
confers great merit on a man. See Sonnerat, _Voyage aux Indes
Orientales et à la Chine_ (Paris, 1782), i. 173 _sq._; J. A. Dubois,
_Mœurs, institutions et cérémonies des peuples de l’Indie_ (Paris,
1825), ii. 446-448; Sir W. H. Sleeman, _op. cit._ i. 148 _sq._, with
the editor’s notes; Monier Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in
India_, pp. 69 _sq._; G. Watt, _Dictionary of the Economic Products of
India_, vi. Part II. (London and Calcutta, 1893) p. 384; W. Crooke,
_op. cit._ ii. 164 _sq._; _Indian Antiquary_, xxv. (1896) p. 146; G.
Oppert, _On the Original Inhabitants of Bharatavarsa or India_
(Westminster and Leipsic, 1893), pp. 337-359; _id._, “Note sur les
Sālagrāmas,” _Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres_ (Paris, 1900), pp. 472-485. The shell derives its name
of ammonite from its resemblance to a ram’s horn, recalling the
ram-god Ammon.
Footnote 89:
_Die gestriegelte Rockenphilosophie_ (Chemnitz, 1759), pp. 239 _sq._;
U. Jahn, _Die deutschen Opfergebräuche bei Ackerbau und Viehzucht_,
pp. 214 _sqq._ See above, p. 17.
Footnote 90:
Van Schmid, “Aanteekeningen nopens de zeden, gewoonten en gebruiken,
etc., der bevolking van de eilanden Saparoea, etc.” _Tijdschrift voor
Neêrlands Indië_, 1843 (Batavia), dl. ii. p. 605; A. Bastian,
_Indonesien_, i. 156.
Footnote 91:
G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoëvell, _Ambon en meer bepaaldelijk de
Oeliasers_ (Dordrecht, 1875), p. 62.
Footnote 92:
G. A. Wilken, “Het animisme bij de volken van het Indischen archipel,”
_De Indische Gids_, June 1884, p. 958; _id._, _Handleiding voor de
vergelijkende Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indië_ (Leyden, 1893), pp.
549 _sq._
Footnote 93:
E. L. M. Kühr, “Schetsen uit Borneo’s Westerafdeeling,” _Bijdragen tot
de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië_, xlvii. (1897)
pp. 58 _sq._
Footnote 94:
A. C. Kruijt, “Eenige ethnografische aanteekeningen omtrent de
Toboengkoe en de Tomori,” _Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche
Zendelinggenootschap_, xliv. (1900) p. 221.
Footnote 95:
D. Grangeon, “Les Cham et leur superstitions,” _Missions Catholiques_,
xxviii. (1896) p. 83.
Footnote 96:
_Indian Antiquary_, i. (1872) p. 170.
Footnote 97:
A. C. Kruijt, “Een en ander aangaande het geestelijk en
maatschappelijk leven van den Poso-Alfoer,” _Mededeelingen van wege
het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap_, xxxix. (1895) pp. 22, 138.
Footnote 98:
_Id._, “Eenige ethnografische aanteekeningen omtrent de Toboengkoe en
Tomori,” _ib._, xliv. (1900) p. 227.
Footnote 99:
C. Snouck Hurgronje, _Het Gajōland en zijne Bewoners_ (Batavia, 1903),
pp. 344, 345.
Footnote 100:
S. Gason, “The Dieyerie Tribe,” _Native Tribes of South Australia_, p.
280; A. W. Howitt, “The Dieri and other kindred Tribes of Central
Australia,” _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xx. (1891) p.
89.
Footnote 101:
F. Blumentritt, “Der Ahnencultus und die religiöse Anschauungen der
Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels,” _Mittheilungen der Wiener Geogr.
Gesellschaft_ (1882), pp. 159 _sq._; _id._, _Versuch einer
Ethnographie der Philippinen_ (Gotha, 1882), pp. 13, 29 (_Petermann’s
Mittheilungen, Ergänzungsheft_, No. 67); J. Mallat, _Les Philippines_
(Paris, 1846), i. 63 _sq._
Footnote 102:
A. Schadenberg, “Beiträge zur Kenntnis der im Innern Nordluzons
lebenden Stämme,” _Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für
Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte_ (1888), p. 40.
Footnote 103:
F. Grabowsky, “Der Tod, etc., bei den Dajaken,” _Internationales
Archiv für Ethnographie_, ii. (1889) p. 181.
Footnote 104:
H. Low, _Sarawak_ (London, 1848), p. 264.
Footnote 105:
Mrs. Bishop, _Korea and her Neighbours_ (London, 1898), i. 106 _sq._
Footnote 106:
J. J. M. de Groot, _Religious System of China_, ii. 462 _sqq._, iv.
277 _sq._
Footnote 107:
_La Mission lyonnaise d’exploration commerciale en Chine 1895-1897_
(Lyons, 1898), p. 361.
Footnote 108:
“Der Muata Cazembe und die Völkerstämme der Maravis, Chevas, Muembas,
Lundas und andere von Süd-Afrika,” _Zeitschrift für allgemeine
Erdkunde_, vi. (1856) p. 273.
Footnote 109:
Major A. G. Leonard, _The Lower Niger and its Tribes_ (London, 1906),
pp. 298 _sqq._
Footnote 110:
Ch. Partridge, _Cross River Natives_ (London, 1905), pp. 272 _sq._
Footnote 111:
Ch. Partridge, _op. cit._ pp. 5, 194, 205 _sq._
Footnote 112:
F. S. A. de Clercq, “De Westen Noordkust van Nederlandsch
Nieuw-Guinea,” _Tijdschrift van het kon. Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig
Genootschap_, Tweede Serie, x. (1893) p. 199.
Footnote 113:
“Shamanism in Siberia and European Russia,” _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, xxiv. (1895) p. 136.
Footnote 114:
Fr. Boas, in _Sixth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada_, p.
28 (separate reprint from the _Report of the British Association for
1890_).
Footnote 115:
F. S. Krauss, _Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Südslaven_, p.
36.
Footnote 116:
F. S. Krauss, _loc. cit._
Footnote 117:
_Aeneid_, iii. 22 _sqq._
Footnote 118:
Philostratus, _Imagines_, ii. 29.
Footnote 119:
A. Landes, “Contes et légendes annamites,” No. 9, in _Cochinchine
française: excursions et reconnaissances_, No. 20 (Saigon, 1885), p.
310.
Footnote 120:
A. B. Ellis, _The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West
Africa_, pp. 134-136.
Footnote 121:
B. C. A. J. van Dinter, “Eenige geographische en ethnographische
aanteekeningen betreffende het eiland Siaoe,” _Tijdschrift voor
Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde_, xli. (1899) pp. 379 _sq._
Footnote 122:
E. Modigliani, _Un Viaggio a Nías_ (Milan, 1890), p. 629.
Footnote 123:
O. Baumann, _Usambara und seine Nachbargebiete_ (Berlin, 1891), pp. 57
_sq._
Footnote 124:
Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 162,
330 _sq._
Footnote 125:
Ph. Paulitschke, _Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas: Die geistige Cultur
der Danâkil, Galla und Somâl_ (Berlin, 1896), pp. 34 _sq._ On the
Galla worship of trees, see further Mgr. Massaja, in _Annales de la
Propagation de la Foi_, xxx. (1858) p. 50; Coulbeaux, “Au pays de
Menelik,” _Missions Catholiques_, xxx. (1898) p. 418.
Footnote 126:
J. Kubary, “Die Religion der Pelauer,” in A. Bastian’s _Allerlei aus
Volks- und Menschenkunde_, i. 52; _id._, _Beiträge zur Kenntnis des
Karolinen Archipels_, iii. (Leyden, 1895) p. 228.
Footnote 127:
A. B. Ellis, _The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, p. 115.
Footnote 128:
A. C. Kruijt, “Een en ander aangaande het geestelijk en
maatschappelijk leven van den Poso-Alfoer,” _Mededeelingen van wege
het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap_, xl. (1896) pp. 28 _sq._
Footnote 129:
A. C. Kruijt, “Eenige ethnografische aanteekeningen omtrent de
Toboengkoe en de Tomori,” _Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche
Zendelinggenootschap_, xliv. (1900) pp. 220 _sq._
Footnote 130:
A. C. Kruijt, _op. cit._ p. 242.
Footnote 131:
J. Habbema, “Bijgeloof in de Preanger-Regentschappen,” _Bijdragen tot
de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië_, xli. (1900) pp.
113, 115.
Footnote 132:
G. Heijmering, “Zeden en Gewoonten op het eiland Rottie,” _Tijdschrift
voor Neêrlands Indië_ (1844), dl. i. p. 358.
Footnote 133:
C. Snouck Hurgronje, _Het Gajōland en zijne Bewoners_ (Batavia, 1903),
p. 351.
Footnote 134:
Th. A. L. Heyting, “Beschrijving der onder-afdeeling Groot-mandeling
en Batang-natal,” _Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig
Genootschap_, Tweede Serie, xiv. (1897) pp. 289 _sq._
Footnote 135:
F. Blumentritt, _Versuch einer Ethnographie der Philippinen_ (Gotha,
1882), p. 13 (_Petermanns Mittheilungen, Ergänzungheft_, No. 67). See
above, pp. 18 _sq._
Footnote 136:
Crossland, quoted by H. Ling Roth, _The Natives of Sarawak and British
North Borneo_, i. 286; compare _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, xxi. (1892) p. 114.
Footnote 137:
“Lettre du curé de Santiago Tepehuacan à son évêque,” _Bulletin de la
Société de Géographie_ (Paris), IIme. Série, ii. (1834) pp. 182 _sq._
Footnote 138:
J. T. Bent, _The Cyclades_, p. 37.
Footnote 139:
A. L. Van Hasselt, _Volksbeschrijving van Midden-Sumatra_ (Leyden,
1882), p. 156.
Footnote 140:
W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_
(Westminster, 1896), ii. 87.
Footnote 141:
I. M. van Baarda, “Île de Halma-heira,” _Bulletins de la Société
d’Anthropologie de Paris_, iv. (1893) p. 547.
Footnote 142:
L. Sternberg, “Die Religion der Gilyak,” _Archiv für
Religionswissenschaft_, viii. (1905) p. 246.
Footnote 143:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 83.
Footnote 144:
_Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, vii. (1843) p. 29.
Footnote 145:
A. Bastian, _Indonesien_, i. 17.
Footnote 146:
J. Perham, “Sea Dyak Religion,” _Journal of the Straits Branch of the
Royal Asiatic Society_, No. 10 (Dec. 1882), p. 217; H. Ling Roth, _The
Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo_, i. 184.
Footnote 147:
W. Kükenthal, _Forschungsreise in den Molukken und in Borneo_
(Frankfort, 1896), pp. 265 _sq._
Footnote 148:
_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxv. (1896) p. 170.
Footnote 149:
E. T. Dalton, _Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal_, pp. 186, 188; compare
A. Bastian, _Völkerstämme am Brahmaputra_, p. 9.
Footnote 150:
E. T. Dalton, _op. cit._ p. 33; A. Bastian, _op. cit._ p. 16. Compare
L. A. Waddell, “The Tribes of the Brahmaputra Valley,” _Journal of the
Asiatic Society of Bengal_, lxix. (1901) Part III. p. 16; W. Robertson
Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, 2nd Ed., pp. 132 _sq._
Footnote 151:
E. T. Dalton, _op. cit._ p. 25; A. Bastian, _op. cit._ p. 37.
Footnote 152:
A. C. Kruijt, “Het koppensnellen der Toradja’s van Midden-Celebes en
zijne beteekenis,” _Verslagen en Mededeelingen der konink. Akademie
van Wetenschappen_, Afdeeling Letterkunde, IV. Reeks, iii. (1899) p.
195.
Footnote 153:
A. W. Niewenhuis, _In Centraal-Borneo_ (Leyden, 1900), i. 146; _id._,
_Quer durch Borneo_, i. (Leyden, 1904) p. 107.
Footnote 154:
_Id._, “Tweede Reis van Pontianak naar Samarinda,” _Tijdschrift van
het konink. Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap_, II. Serie,
xvii. (1900) p. 427.
Footnote 155:
J. Perham, “Sea Dyak Religion,” _Journal of the Straits Branch of the
Royal Asiatic Society_, No. 10 (December 1882), p. 217; H. Ling Roth,
_The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo_, i. 184.
Footnote 156:
B. Hagen, “Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Battareligion,” _Tijdschrift
voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde_, xxviii. 530, note.
Footnote 157:
W. W. Skeat, _Malay Magic_, p. 202.
Footnote 158:
E. Young, _The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe_ (Westminster, 1898), pp.
192 _sq._
Footnote 159:
J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman, _Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan
States_, Part I. vol. i. (Rangoon, 1900) pp. 518 _sq._
Footnote 160:
Captain Macpherson, in _North Indian Notes and Queries_, ii. 112 §
428.
Footnote 161:
W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_
(Westminster, 1896), ii. 91.
Footnote 162:
A. Bastian, _Die Völker des östlichen Asien_, i. 134. The authority
quoted by Bastian calls the people Curka Coles. As to the Larka Kols,
see E. T. Dalton, _Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal_, pp. 177 _sqq._
Footnote 163:
W. Crooke, _Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and
Oudh_, iv. 130.
Footnote 164:
S. Mateer, _The Land of Charity_ (London, 1871), p. 206.
Footnote 165:
B. A. Hely, in _Annual Report on British New Guinea for 1894-95_, p.
57.
Footnote 166:
T. J. Hutchinson, _Impressions of Western Africa_ (London, 1858), pp.
130 _sq._
Footnote 167:
Gallieni, “Mission dans le Haut Niger et à Ségou,” _Bulletin de la
Société de Géographie_ (Paris), viiime Série, v. (1883) pp. 577 _sq._
Footnote 168:
Ch. M. Doughty, _Travels in Arabia Deserta_ (Cambridge, 1888), i. 365.
Footnote 169:
Th. Bent, “The Yourouks of Asia Minor,” _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, xx. (1891) p. 275.
Footnote 170:
Erasmus Stella, “De Borussiae antiquitatibus,” in Simon Grynaeus’s
_Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum_ (Paris,
1532), p. 510; J. Lasicius (Lasiczki), “De diis Samagitarum
caeterorumque Sarmatarum,” in _Respublica sive Status regni Poloniae,
Lituaniae, Prussiae, Livoniae, etc._ (Leyden, 1627), pp. 299 _sq._; M.
C. Hartknoch, _Alt und neues Preussen_ (Frankfort and Leipsic, 1684),
p. 120. Lasiczki’s work has been reprinted by W. Mannhardt, in
_Magazin herausgegeben von der lettisch-lite-rärischen Gesellschaft_,
xiv. 82 _sqq._ (Mitau, 1868).
Footnote 171:
Mathias Michov, in Simon Grynaeus’s _Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum
veteribus incognitarum_ (Paris, 1532), p. 457.
Footnote 172:
J. G. Kohl, _Die deutsch-russischen Ostseeprovinzen_ (Dresden and
Leipsic, 1841), ii. 277.
Footnote 173:
Capt. E. C. Luard, _in Census of India, 1901_, xix. (Lucknow, 1902) p.
76.
Footnote 174:
J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 4th ed., i. 497; compare _id._ ii.
540, 541.
Footnote 175:
Max Buch, _Die Wotjäken_ (Stuttgart, 1882), p. 124.
Footnote 176:
P. v. Stenin, “Ein neuer Beitrag zur Ethnographie der Tscheremissen,”
_Globus_, lviii. (1890) p. 204.
Footnote 177:
J. G. Dalyell, _Darker Superstitions of Scotland_ (Edinburgh, 1834),
p. 400.
Footnote 178:
J. G. Dalyell, _loc. cit._
Footnote 179:
J. Biddulph, _Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh_, p. 116.
Footnote 180:
H. R. Tate, “Further Notes on the Kikuyu Tribe of British East
Africa,” _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxiv. (1904) p.
263; _id._ “The Native Law of the Southern Gikuyu of British East
Africa,” _Journal of the African Society_, No. 35 (April 1910), pp.
242 _sq._
Footnote 181:
On the representations of Silvanus, the Roman wood-god, see H. Jordan
in L. Preller’s _Römische Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 393 note; A.
Baumeister, _Denkmäler des classischen Altertums_, iii. 1665 _sq._ A
good representation of Silvanus bearing a pine branch is given in the
Sale Catalogue of H. Hoffmann, Paris, 1888, pt. ii.
Footnote 182:
Aeneas Sylvius, _Opera_ (Bâle, 1571), p. 418 [wrongly numbered 420];
compare Erasmus Stella, “De Borussiae antiquitatibus,” in _Novus Orbis
regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum_, p. 510.
Footnote 183:
E. T. Dalton, _Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 186.
Footnote 184:
J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman, _Gazetteer of Upper Burmah and the
Shan States_, Part II. vol. iii. (Rangoon, 1901), pp. 63 _sq._
Footnote 185:
E. Aymonier, in _Cochinchine française: excursions et
reconnaissances_, No. 16 (Saigon, 1883), pp. 175 _sq._
Footnote 186:
L. Decle, _Three Years in Savage Africa_ (London, 1898), p. 489.
Footnote 187:
H. Schinz, _Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika_, pp. 295 _sq._
Footnote 188:
See above, vol. i. pp. 248, 250, 309.
Footnote 189:
Above, vol. i. p. 284.
Footnote 190:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_ (Berlin, 1875), pp. 158, 159, 170, 197,
214, 351, 514.
Footnote 191:
E. T. Dalton, _Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 188.
Footnote 192:
Villault, _Relation des costes appellées Guinée_ (Paris, 1669), pp.
266 _sq._; _Labat, Voyage du chevalier des Marchais en Guinée, isles
voisines, et à Cayenne_ (Paris, 1730), i. 338.
Footnote 193:
O. Baumann, _Usambara und seine Nachbargebiete_ (Berlin, 1891), p.
142.
Footnote 194:
C. E. X. Rochet d’Hericourt, _Voyage sur la côte orientale de la Mer
Rouge dans le pays d’Adel et le royaume de Choa_ (Paris, 1841), pp.
166 _sq._
Footnote 195:
L. Lloyd, _Peasant Life in Sweden_ (London, 1870), p. 266.
Footnote 196:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 190 _sqq._
Footnote 197:
W. Mannhardt, _Antike Wald- und Feldkulte_ (Berlin, 1877), pp. 212
_sqq._
Footnote 198:
H. Low, Sarawak, p. 274; _id._, in _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, xxv. (1896) p. 111.
Footnote 199:
T. H. Lewin, _Wild Races of South-Eastern India_ (London, 1870), p.
270.
Footnote 200:
J. Mackenzie, _Ten Years North of the Orange River_ (Edinburgh, 1871),
p. 385.
Footnote 201:
J. Campbell, _Travels in South Africa, Second Journey_ (London, 1822),
ii. 203.
Footnote 202:
Rev. J. Macdonald, MS. notes; compare _id._, _Light in Africa_, p.
210; _id._, in _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xx. (1891)
p. 140. The Nubas will not cut shoots of the _nabac_ (a thorn-tree)
during the rainy season (_Missions Catholiques_, xiv. (1882) p. 460).
Among some of the hill-tribes of the Punjaub no one is allowed to cut
grass or any green thing with an iron sickle till the festival of the
ripening grain has been celebrated; otherwise the field-god would be
angry and send frost to destroy or injure the harvest (D. C. J.
Ibbetson, _Outlines of Panjab Ethnography_, p. 121).
Footnote 203:
“Ueber die Religion der heidnischen Tscheremissen im Gouvernement
Kasan,” _Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, N. F. iii. (1857) p.
150.
Footnote 204:
J. Biddulph, _Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh_, pp. 103 _sq._
Footnote 205:
J. Biddulph, _op. cit._ pp. 106 _sq._
Footnote 206:
W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_
(Westminster, 1896), ii. 102. See also Sir H. M. Elliot, _Memoirs on
the History, Folk-lore, and Distribution of the Races of the
North-Western Provinces of India_, edited by J. Beames, ii. 217,
where, however, the object of the prayers is said to be the
fruitfulness of the tree itself, not the fruitfulness of women,
animals, and cattle.
Footnote 207:
W. Crooke, _op. cit._ ii. 106.
Footnote 208:
Th. J. Hutchinson, _Impressions of Western Africa_, p. 128.
Footnote 209:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 161; E. Meier, _Deutsche Sagen, Sitten
und Gebräuche aus Schwaben_, p. 397; A. Peter, _Volksthümliches aus
Österreichisch-Schlesien_, ii. 286.
Footnote 210:
W. Camden, _Britannia_, ed. R. Gough (London, 1779), iii. 659.
Camden’s authority is Good, a writer of the sixteenth century.
Footnote 211:
_County Folk-lore: Suffolk_, collected and edited by Lady Eveline
Camilla Gurdon (London, 1893), p. 117.
Footnote 212:
Mr. E. F. Benson, in a letter to the author dated December 15, 1892.
Footnote 213:
_Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq._, edited by Lord Braybrooke, Second
Edition (London, 1828), ii. 209, under May 1st, 1667.
Footnote 214:
Lady Wilde, _Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of
Ireland_ (London, 1887), i. 196 _sq._ If an Irish housewife puts a
ring of rowan-tree or quicken, as it is also called, on the handle of
the churn-dash when she is churning, no witch can steal her butter (P.
W. Joyce, _Social History of Ancient Ireland_ (London, 1903), i. 236
_sq._).
Footnote 215:
W. Camden, _loc. cit._
Footnote 216:
W. Gregor, _Folk-lore of the North-east of Scotland_ (London, 1881),
p. 188.
Footnote 217:
J. G. Campbell, _Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and
Islands of Scotland_, p. 270, compare _ib._, pp. 7 _sqq._
Footnote 218:
J. G. Campbell, _op. cit._ pp. 11 _sq._ In Germany also the rowan-tree
is a charm against witchcraft (A. Wuttke, _Der deutsche
Volksaberglaube_, 2nd Ed., p. 106, § 145).
Footnote 219:
Sir John Rhys, “The Coligny Calendar,” _Proceedings of the British
Academy_, vol. iv. pp. 55 _sq._ of the offprint.
Footnote 220:
A. Kuhn, _Herabkunft des Feuers_ 2nd Ed., (Gütersloh, 1886), pp. 178
_sq._; W. Mannhardt, _Germanische Mythen_ (Berlin, 1858), pp. 17 _sq._
Footnote 221:
J. D. H. Temme, _Die Volkssagen der Altmark_ (Berlin, 1839), p. 85; E.
Sommer, _Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Sachsen und Thüringen_
(Halle, 1846), p. 149; A. Kuhn, _Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus
Westfalen_, ii. p. 154, § 432, p. 155, § 436; A. Schleicher,
_Volkstümliches aus Sonnenberg_ (Weimar, 1858), p. 139; A. Peter,
_Volksthümliches aus Österreichisch-Schlesien_ (Troppau, 1865-67), ii.
252; R. Eisel, _Sagenbuch des Voigtlandes_ (Gera, 1871), p. 210;
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen_, p. 210; P.
Drechsler, _Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube in Schlesien_, i. (Leipsic,
1903) p. 109.
Footnote 222:
A. Kuhn, _Herabkunft des Feuers_, 2nd Ed., p. 166.
Footnote 223:
P. Drechsler, _op. cit._ i. 109 _sq._ Compare A. Peter, _loc. cit._
Footnote 224:
W. Müller, _Beiträge zur Volkskunde der Deutschen in Mähren_ (Vienna
and Olmütz, 1893), p. 324.
Footnote 225:
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen_, p. 210.
Footnote 226:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 174.
Footnote 227:
J. B. Holzmayer, “Osiliana,” _Verhandlungen der gelehrten Estnischen
Gesellschaft zu Dorpat_, vii. No. 2 (Dorpat, 1872), pp. 10 _sq._; W.
Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 407 _sq._
Footnote 228:
Potocki, _Voyage dans les steps d’Astrakhan et du Caucase_ (Paris,
1829), i. 309.
Footnote 229:
W. Foy, in _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, x. (1907) p. 551. For
details of the evidence see W. H. Goldie, M.D., “Maori Medical Lore,”
_Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute_, xxxvii.
(1904) pp. 93-95.
Footnote 230:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 163 _sqq._ To his authorities add for
France, A. Meyrac, _Traditions, coutumes, légendes et contes des
Ardennes_, pp. 84 _sqq._; L. F. Sauvé, _Folk-lore des Hautes-Vosges_,
pp. 131 _sq._; Bérenger-Féraud, _Superstitions et survivances_, v. 309
_sq._; Ch. Beauquier, _Les Mois en Franche-Comté_ (Paris, 1900), pp.
69-72; F. Chapiseau, _Le Folk-lore de la Beauce et du Perche_ (Paris,
1902), ii. 109-111; for Silesia, F. Tetzner, “Die Tschechen und Mährer
in Schlesien,” _Globus_, lxxviii. (1900) p. 340; P. Drechsler, _Sitte,
Brauch und Volksglaube in Schlesien_, i. 112 _sq._; for Moravia, W.
Müller, _Beiträge zur Volkskunde der Deutschen in Mähren_, p. 26; for
Sardinia, R. Tennant, _Sardinia and its Resources_ (Rome and London,
1885), pp. 185 _sq._ In Brunswick the custom is observed at
Whitsuntide (R. Andree, _Braunschweiger Volkskunde_, p. 248).
Footnote 231:
_Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern_, i. 373.
Footnote 232:
F. S. Krauss, _Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Südslaven_, p.
35.
Footnote 233:
W. Radloff, _Proben der Volkslitteratur der nördlichen Türkischen
Stämme_, v. 2 (St. Petersburg, 1885).
Footnote 234:
E. T. Dalton, _Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 194; a similar
custom is practised among the Kurmis, _ibid._, p. 319. Among the
Mundas the custom seems now to have fallen into disuse (H. H. Risley,
_Tribes and Castes of Bengal: Ethnographic Glossary_, ii. 102).
Footnote 235:
The explanation has been suggested by Mr. W. Crooke (_Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, xxviii. (1899) p. 243). There are other
facts, however, which point to a different explanation, namely, that
the practice is intended to avert possible evil consequences from
bride or bridegroom. For example, “the superstition regarding a man’s
third marriage, prevalent in Barār and, I believe in other parts of
India, is not despised by the Vēlamās. A third marriage is unlucky.
Should a man marry a third wife, it matters not whether his former
wives be alive or not, evil will befall either him or that wife. No
father would give his girl to a man whose third wife she would be. A
man therefore, who has twice entered the married state and wishes to
mate yet once again, cannot obtain as a third wife any one who has
both the wit and the tongue to say no; a tree has neither, so to a
tree he is married. I have not been able to discover why the tree, or
rather shrub, called in Marāthī _ru’i_ and in Hindūstānī _madar_
(_Asclepias gigantea_), is invariably the victim selected in Barār,
nor do I know whether the shrub is similarly favoured in other parts
of India. The ceremony consists in the binding of a _mangal sūtra_
round the selected shrub, by which the bridegroom sits, while
turmeric-dyed rice (_akṣata_) is thrown over both him and the shrub.
This is the whole of the simple ceremony. He has gone through his
unlucky third marriage, and any lady whom he may favour after this
will be his fourth wife” (Captain Wolseley Haig, “Notes on the Vēlamā
Caste in Bārār,” _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, lxx. part
iii. (1901) p. 28). Again, the Vellalas of Southern India “observe a
curious custom (derived from Brāhmans) with regard to marriage, which
is not unknown in other communities. A man marrying a second wife
after the death of his first has to marry a plantain tree, and cut it
down before tying the _tāli_, and, in case of a third marriage, a man
has to tie a _tāli_ first to the erukkan (arka: _Calotropis gigantea_)
plant. The idea is that second and fourth wives do not prosper, and
the tree and the plant are accordingly made to take their places.”
(Mr. Hemingway, quoted by E. Thurston, _Castes and Tribes of Southern
India_, vii. 387). Tying the _tali_ to the bride is the common Hindoo
symbol of marriage, like giving the ring with us. As to these Indian
marriages to trees see further my _Totemism and Exogamy_, i. 32 _sq._,
iv. 210 _sqq._; _Panjab Notes and Queries_, ii. § 252, iii. §§ 12, 90,
562, iv. § 396; _North Indian Notes and Queries_, i. § 110; D. C. J.
Ibbetson, _Settlement Report of the Karnal District_, p. 155; H. H.
Risley, _Tribes and Castes of Bengal_, i. 531; Capt. E. C. Luard, in
_Census of India, 1901_, vol. xix. 76; W. Crooke, _Tribes and Castes
of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh_, ii. 363; _id._, _Popular
Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_ (Westminster, 1896), ii.
115-121. I was formerly disposed to connect the custom with totemism,
but of this there seems to be no sufficient evidence.
Footnote 236:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 51 _sq._
Footnote 237:
Merolla, “Voyage to Congo,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, xvi.
236 _sq._
Footnote 238:
C. Bötticher, _Der Baumkultus der Hellenen_ (Berlin, 1856), pp. 30
_sq._
CHAPTER X
RELICS OF TREE-WORSHIP IN MODERN EUROPE
[Sidenote: May-trees in 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.
[Sidenote: May-trees and May-bushes in England.] 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.”[239] 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.[240] “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.”[241] In the north of
England it was [Sidenote: May garlands in England.] 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.[242] 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._”[243]
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.[244] 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. Thus on May morning the girls of the neighbouring villages
used to flock into Northampton bringing their garlands, which they
exhibited from house to house. The skeleton of the garland was formed of
two hoops of osier or hazel crossing each other at right angles, and so
twined with flowers and ribbons that no part of them could be seen. In
the centre of the garlands were placed gaily dressed dolls, one, two, or
three in number according to the size of the garland. The whole was
fixed to a staff about five feet long, by which it was carried. In
shewing their garlands the children chanted some simple ditties and
received in return pennies, which furnished forth a feast on their
return to their homes. A merry dance round the garland concluded the
festivity.[245] At Uttoxeter groups of children carry garlands of
flowers about the town on May Day. “The garlands consist of two hoops,
one passing through the other, which give the appearance of four
half-circles, and they are decorated with flowers and evergreens, and
surmounted with a bunch of flowers as a sort of crown, and in the centre
of the hoops is a pendant orange and flowers.” One or more of the
children carry a little pole or stick upright with a bunch of flowers
fastened to the top. They are themselves decorated with flowers and
ribbons, and receive pence from the houses which they visit.[246] At
Watford in Hertfordshire, groups of children, almost entirely girls, go
about the streets from door to door on May Day singing some verses, of
which two agree almost verbally with those which, as we have seen, are
sung at Abingdon in Berkshire. They are dressed in white, and adorned
with gay ribbons and sashes of many hues. “Two of the girls carry
between them on a stick what they call ‘the garland,’ which in its
simplest form, is made of two circular hoops, intersecting each other at
right angles; a more elaborate form has, in addition, smaller
semicircles inserted in the four angles formed by the meeting of the
hoops at the top of ‘the garland.’ These hoops are covered with any
wild-flowers in season, and are further ornamented with ribbons. The
‘garland’ in shape reminds me of the ‘Christmas’ which used to form the
centre of the Christmas decorations in Yorkshire some few years ago,
except that the latter had a bunch of mistletoe inside the hoops.”[247]
A similar custom was observed at Bampton-in-the-Bush in Oxfordshire down
to about the middle of the nineteenth century. The garland consisted of
two crossed hoops covered with moss, flowers, and ribbons. Two girls,
known as the Lady and her Maid, bore the garland between them on a
stick; and a boy called the Lord, who carried a stick dressed with
ribbons and flowers, collected contributions from the spectators. From
time to time the Lady sang a few lines and was then kissed by the
Lord.[248] At Sevenoaks in Kent the children carry boughs and garlands
from door to door on May Day. The boughs consist of sticks carried
upright with bunches of leaves and wild-flowers fastened to the top. The
garlands are formed of two hoops interlaced cross-wise and covered with
blue and yellow flowers from the woods and hedges. Sometimes the
garlands are fastened to the end of a stick carried perpendicularly,
sometimes they hang from the middle of a stick borne horizontally by two
children.[249] In the streets of Cambridge little girls regularly make
their appearance every May Day with female dolls enclosed in hoops,
which are covered with ribbons and flowers. These they shew to
passers-by, inviting them to remember the May Lady by paying a small sum
to her bearers.[250] At Salisbury girls go through the streets on May
Day in pairs, carrying between them on a stick a circular garland or
hoop adorned with flowers and bows; they visit the shops asking for
money. A similar custom is observed at Wilton a few miles from
Salisbury.[251] At Cawthorne in Yorkshire “on the first of May the
school-children came with hoops to beg for artificial flowers; these my
mother’s maid used to sew on to the hoops, which with ribbons and other
decorations, were used in decking out a tall May-pole planted in the
village.”[252] 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.[253]
[Sidenote: May customs in France, Germany, and Greece.] 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.[254] 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.[255] Among the Germans of Moravia on the third Sunday
before Easter, which goes by the name of _Laetare_ Sunday, it is
customary in some places for young girls to carry a small fir-tree about
from door to door, while they sing songs, for which they receive
presents. The tree is tricked out with many-coloured ribbons, and
sometimes with flowers and dyed egg-shells, and its branches are twined
together so as to form what is called a crown.[256] In Corfu the
children go about singing May songs on the first of May. The boys carry
small cypresses adorned with ribbons, flowers, and the fruits of the
season. They receive a glass of wine at each house. The girls carry
nosegays. One of them is dressed up like an angel, with gilt wings, and
scatters flowers.[257]
[Sidenote: Whitsuntide customs in Russia.] 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. “All over Russia every village and every town is
turned, a little before Whitsunday, into a sort of garden. Everywhere
along the streets the young birch-trees stand in rows, every house and
every room is adorned with boughs, even the engines upon the railway are
for the time decked with green leaves.”[258] In this Russian custom the
dressing of the birch in woman’s clothes shews how clearly the tree is
personified; and the throwing it into a stream is most probably a
rain-charm. In some villages of Altmark it was formerly the custom for
serving-men, grooms, and cowherds to go from farm to farm at Whitsuntide
distributing crowns made of birch branches and flowers to the farmers;
these crowns were hung up in the houses and left till the following
year.[259]
[Sidenote: May-trees in Germany and Sweden.] In the neighbourhood of
Zabern 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.[260] In some parts of
Sweden on the eve of May Day lads go about carrying each a bunch of
fresh-gathered birch twigs, wholly or partially 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.[261]
[Sidenote: Midsummer trees and poles in Sweden.] 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
Stănger_), 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
spruce-pine tree, stripped of its branches. “At times hoops and at
others pieces of wood, placed cross-wise, 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
Stăng’ (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.[262] 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. Many people
disguised themselves, and dramatic representations were given, amongst
others mock executions, at which the sufferer’s hat was knocked off
instead of his head. At the village of Lerbach in these fir-clad
mountains children would gather together on Midsummer Day, each with a
tiny fir-tree, which they made to revolve from left to right in the
direction of the sun, while they sang “The maiden turned herself about,”
or “Oh, thou dear Summertime! Oh, thou dear Summertime!”[263] 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.[264]
[Sidenote: Village May-poles in England.] 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.[265] 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
[Sidenote: Bringing in the May-pole.] 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.”[266] Of
the Cornish people their historian Borlase says: “From towns they make
excursions, on May eve, into the country, cut down a tall elm, bring it
into town with rejoicings, and having fitted a straight taper pole to
the end of it, and painted it, erect it in the most publick part, and
upon holidays and festivals dress it with garlands of flowers, or
ensigns and streamers.”[267] In Northumberland, down apparently to near
the end of the eighteenth century, young people of both sexes used to go
out early on May morning to gather the flowering thorn and the dew off
the grass, which they brought home with music and acclamations; then,
having dressed a pole on the green with garlands, they danced about it.
The dew was considered as a great cosmetic, and preserved the face from
wrinkles, blotches, and the traces of old age. A syllabub made of warm
milk from the cow, sweet cakes, and wine was prepared for the feast; and
a kind of divination, to discover who should be wedded first, was
practised by dropping a marriage-ring into the syllabub and fishing for
it with a ladle.[268] At Padstow in Cornwall, when shipbuilding was a
thriving industry of the port, the shipwrights used to erect a tall
May-pole at the top of Cross Street in the middle of a cross inlaid with
stone. The pole was gaily decorated with spring flowers and so forth.
But the custom has long been abandoned. A great feature of the
celebration of May Day at Padstow used to be the Hobby Horse, that is, a
man wearing a ferocious mask, who went dancing and singing before the
chief houses, accompanied by a great flower-bedecked crowd of men and
women, while the men fired pistols loaded with powder in all
directions.[269]
[Sidenote: Village May-trees and May-poles in Germany.] 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.[270] 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-tree—a
Whitsuntide 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. In the great towns of our land the custom has developed into
sport, for our spring races are in their origin nothing but the old
German horse-races, in which the victor received a prize (generally a
red cloth) from the hand of a maiden, while the last rider was greeted
with jeers and gibes by the assembled community.”[271] The custom of the
May-tree is observed by the Wends of Saxony, as well as by the Germans.
The young men of the village choose the slimmest and tallest tree in the
wood, peel it and set it up on the village green. Its leafy top is
decked with cloths and ribbons presented by the girls. Here it stands,
towering high above the roofs, till Ascension Day, or in many places
till Whitsuntide. When it is being taken down, the young folk dance
round it, and the youth who catches and breaks off the leafy crown of
the falling tree is the hero of the day. Holding the green boughs aloft
he is carried shoulder-high, with music and joyous shouts, to the
ale-house, where the dance is resumed.[272] At Bordeaux on the
[Sidenote: May-poles and May-trees in France.] 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.[273]
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.[274] The Red
Karens of [Sidenote: May-poles among the Karens of Burma.] Upper Burma
hold a festival in April, at which the chief ceremony is the erection of
a post on ground set apart for the purpose in or near each village. A
new post is set up every year; the old ones are left standing, but are
not renewed if they fall or decay. Omens are first drawn from chicken
bones as to which tree will be the best to fell for the post, which day
will be the luckiest, and so on. A pole some twenty or thirty feet long
is then hewn from the tree and ornamented with a rudely carved capital.
On the lucky day all the villagers assemble and drag the pole to the
chosen spot. When it has been set up, the people dance “a rude sort of
May-pole dance” to the music of drums and gongs. Much pork is eaten and
much liquor drunk on this festive occasion.[275]
[Sidenote: Permanent May-poles.] 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.[276] 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.”[277] 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.”[278] Thus the renewal of the May-tree is like the renewal
of the Harvest-May;[279] 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, [Sidenote:
The May-tree burnt at the end of the year.] 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.[280] In Würtemberg
the bushes which are set up on the houses on Palm Sunday are sometimes
left there for a year and then burnt.[281] The _eiresione_ (the
Harvest-May of Greece) was perhaps burnt at the end of the year.[282]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Tree-spirit detached from the tree and represented in human
form.] So much for the tree-spirit conceived as incorporate or immanent
in the tree. We have now to shew 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. These will be described
presently, but before examining them we may notice an Esthonian
folk-tale which illustrates the same train of thought very clearly. Once
upon a time, so runs [Sidenote: Esthonian story of a tree-elf.] the
tale, a young peasant was busy raking the hay in a meadow, when on the
rim of the horizon a heavy thunder-cloud loomed black and angry, warning
him to make haste with his work before the storm should break. He
finished in time, and was wending his way homeward, when under a tree he
espied a stranger fast asleep. “He will be drenched to the skin,”
thought the good-natured young fellow to himself, “if I allow him to
sleep on.” So he stepped up to the sleeper and shaking him forcibly
roused him from his slumber. The stranger started up, and at sight of
the thunder-cloud, which now darkened the sky, he blenched, fumbled in
his pockets, and finding nothing in them wherewith to reward the
friendly swain, he said, “This time I am your debtor. But the time will
come when I shall be able to repay your kindness. Remember what I tell
you. You will enlist. You will be parted from your friends for years,
and one day a feeling of homesickness will come over you in a foreign
land. Then look up, and you will see a crooked birch-tree a few steps
from you. Go to it, knock thrice on the trunk, and ask, ‘Is the Crooked
One at home?’ The rest will follow.” With these words the stranger
hastened away and was out of sight in a moment. The peasant also went
his way, and soon forgot all about the matter. Well, time went by and
part of the stranger’s prophecy came true. For the peasant turned
soldier and served in a cavalry regiment for years. One day, when he was
quartered with his regiment in the north of Finland, it fell to his turn
to tend the horses while his comrades were roistering in the tavern.
Suddenly a great yearning for home, such as he had never known before,
came over the lonely trooper; tears started to his eyes, and dear
visions of his native land crowded on his soul. Then he bethought him of
the sleeping stranger in the wood, and the whole scene came back to him
as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. He looked up, and there,
strange to tell, he was aware of a crooked birch-tree right in front of
him. More in jest than in earnest he went up to it and did as the
stranger had bidden him. Hardly had the words, “Is the Crooked One at
home?” passed his lips when the stranger himself stood before him and
said, “I am glad you have come. I feared you had forgotten me. You wish
to be at home, do you not?” The trooper said yes, he did. Then the
Crooked One cried into the tree, “Young folks, which of you is the
fleetest?” A voice from the birch replied, “Father, I can run as fast as
a moor-hen flies.” “Well, I need a fleeter messenger to-day.” A second
voice answered, “I can run like the wind.” “I need a swifter envoy,”
said the father. Then a third voice cried, “I can run like the thought
of man.” “You are after my own heart. Fill a bag full of gold and take
it with my friend and benefactor to his home.” Then he caught the
soldier by the hat, crying, “The hat to the man, and the man to the
house!” The same moment the soldier felt his hat fly from his head. When
he looked about for it, lo! he was at home in the old familiar parlour
wearing his old peasant clothes, and the great sack of money stood
beside him. Yet on parade and at the roll-call he was never missed. When
the man who told this story was asked, “Who could the stranger be?” he
answered, “Who but a tree-elf?”[283]
[Sidenote: Tree-spirit represented simultaneously in vegetable and human
form.] 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._”[284]
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.[285] In these cases the tree and the puppet are obviously
regarded as equivalent.
[Sidenote: The Little May Rose.] 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.[286] 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!”[287] In Brie (Isle de France) a May-tree is set up 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.[288] In the small towns of the Franken Wald
[Sidenote: The _Walber_.] 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.[289]
[Sidenote: Green George in Carinthia.] Amongst the Slavs of Carinthia,
on St. George’s Day (the twenty-third 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._”[290]
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.
[Sidenote: Green George among the gypsies.] 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 twenty-third 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.[291] 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.
[Sidenote: Double representation of the tree-spirit by tree and man
among the Oraons.] An example of the double representation of the spirit
of vegetation by a tree and a living man is reported from Bengal. The
Oraons have a festival in spring while the sál-trees are in blossom,
because they think that at this time the marriage of earth is celebrated
and the sál flowers are necessary for the ceremony. On an appointed day
the villagers go with their priest to the Sarna, the sacred grove, a
remnant of the old sál forest in which a goddess Sarna Burhi, or woman
of the grove, is supposed to dwell. She is thought to have great
influence on the rain; and the priest arriving with his party at the
grove sacrifices to her five fowls, of which a morsel is given to each
person present. Then they gather the sál flowers and return laden with
them to the village. Next day the priest visits every house, carrying
the flowers in a wide open basket. The women of each house bring out
water to wash his feet as he approaches, and kneeling make him an
obeisance. Then he dances with them and places some of the sál flowers
over the door of the house and in the women’s hair. No sooner is this
done than the women empty their water-jugs over him, drenching him to
the skin. A feast follows, and the young people, with sál flowers in
their hair, dance all night on the village green.[292] Here, the
equivalence of the flower-bearing priest to the goddess of the flowering
tree comes out plainly. For she is supposed to influence the rain, and
the drenching of the priest with water is, doubtless, like the ducking
of the Green George in Carinthia and elsewhere, a rain-charm. Thus the
priest, as if he were the tree goddess herself, goes from door to door
dispensing rain and bestowing fruitfulness on each house, but especially
on the women. In some parts [Sidenote: Double representation of the
harvest-goddess Gauri by a bundle of plants and an unmarried girl.] of
India the harvest-goddess Gauri, the wife of Siva, is represented both
by an unmarried girl and by a bundle of the wild flowering balsam plant
touch-me-not (_Impatiens sp._), which is tied up in a mummy-like figure
with a woman’s mask, dress, and ornaments. Before being removed from the
soil to represent the goddess the plants are worshipped. The girl is
also worshipped. Then the bundle of plants is carried and the girl who
personates the goddess walks through the rooms of the house, while the
supposed footprints of Gauri herself are imprinted on the floor with red
paste. On entering each room the human representative of Gauri is asked,
“Gauri, Gauri, whither have you come and what do you see?” and the girl
makes appropriate replies. Then she is given a mouthful of sweets and
the mistress of the house says, “Come with golden feet and stay for
ever.” The plant-formed effigy of Gauri is afterwards worshipped as the
goddess herself and receives offerings of rice-cakes and pancakes. On
the third day it is thrown into a river or tank; then a handful of
pebbles or sand is brought home from the spot and thrown all over the
house and the trees to bring good luck to the house and to protect the
trees from vermin. A remarkable feature of the ceremonies is that the
goddess Gauri is supposed to be secretly followed by her husband Siva,
who remains hidden under the fold of her garment and is represented by a
_lôṭâ_, covered by a coco-nut and filled with rice, which is carefully
measured. After the image of Gauri has been thrown into the river or
tank, the rice in the _lôṭâ_ representing Siva is carefully measured
again, in order to see whether the quantity has increased or decreased,
and according to the result an abundant or a scanty harvest is
prognosticated.[293] Hence it appears that the whole ritual aims at
ensuring a plentiful crop of rice. In this case the spirit of vegetation
thus represented in duplicate by a living girl and the effigy of a woman
is a harvest goddess, not a tree-spirit, but the principle is the same.
[Sidenote: W. Mannhardt’s summary of the evidence.] 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, shew that the idea of the spirit of
vegetation is blent with a personification of the season at which his
powers are most strikingly manifested.”[294]
[Sidenote: Tree-spirit or vegetation-spirit represented by a person
alone.] Thus 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 shew 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.
[Sidenote: Green George in Russia.] 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 then 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.[295] 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, [Sidenote: Whitsuntide customs in Russia.] 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
a district of Little Russia they take round a “poplar,” represented by a
girl wearing bright flowers in her hair.[296] At Whitsuntide in Holland
poor women used to go about begging with a little girl called
Whitsuntide Flower (_Pinxterbloem_, perhaps a kind of iris); she was
decked with flowers and sat in a waggon. In North Brabant she wears the
flowers from which she takes her name and a song is sung:—
“_Whitsuntide Flower,
Turn yourself once round._”[297]
[Sidenote: May customs in France.] All over Provence on the first of May
pretty little girls are dressed in white, decked with crowns and wreaths
of roses, and set on seats or platforms strewn with flowers in the
streets, while their companions go about begging coppers for the Mayos
or Mayes, as they are called, from the passers-by.[298] In some parts of
the Ardennes on May Day a small girl, clad in white and wearing a
chaplet of flowers on her head, used to go from house to house with her
play-mates, collecting contributions and singing that it was May, the
month of May, the pretty month of May, that the wheat was tall, the
hawthorn in bloom, and the lark carolling in the sky.[299]
[Sidenote: The Little Leaf Man.] In Ruhla (Thüringen) 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 play-mates 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.[300] At
Röllshausen on the [Sidenote: Leaf-clad mummers at Whitsuntide.]
Schwalm, in Hesse, when afternoon service is over on Whitsunday, the
schoolboys and schoolgirls go out into the wood and there clothe a boy
from head to foot in leaves so that nobody would know him. He is called
the Little Whitsuntide Man. A procession is then formed. Two boys lead
their leaf-clad playfellow; two others precede him with a basket; and
two girls with another basket bring up the rear. Thus they go from house
to house singing hymns or popular songs and collecting eggs and cakes in
the baskets. When they have feasted on these, they strip their comrade
of his verdant envelope on an open place in front of the village.[301]
In some parts of Rhenish Bavaria at Whitsuntide a boy or lad is swathed
in the yellow blossom of the broom, the dark green twigs of the firs,
and other foliage. Thus attired he is known as the Quack and goes from
door to door, whirling about in the dance, while an appropriate song is
chanted and his companions levy contributions.[302] 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
(_Pfingstlümmel_), 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.[303]
[Sidenote: Jack-in-the-Green in England.] 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.[304] The ceremony
was witnessed at Cheltenham on the second of May 1892, by Dr. W. H. D.
Rouse, who has described in detail the costume of the performers. They
were all chimney-sweeps of the town. Jack-in-the-Green or the
Bush-carrier was enclosed in a wooden framework on which leaves were
fastened so as to make a thick cone about six feet high, topped with a
crown, which consisted of two wooden hoops placed crosswise and covered
with flowers. The leafy envelope was unbroken except for a single
opening through which peered the face of the mummer. From time to time
in their progress through the streets the performers halted, and three
of them, dressed in red, blue, and yellow respectively, tripped lightly
round the leaf-covered man to the inspiring strains of a fiddle and a
tin whistle on which two of their comrades with blackened faces
discoursed sweet music. The leader of the procession was a clown
fantastically clad in a long white pinafore or blouse with coloured
fringes and frills, and wearing on his head a beaver hat of the familiar
pattern, the crown of which hung loose and was adorned with ribbons and
a bird or a bundle of feathers. Large black rings surrounded his eyes,
and a red dab over mouth and chin lent a pleasing variety to his
countenance. He contributed to the public hilarity by flapping the
yellow fringe of his blouse with quaint gestures and occasionally
fanning himself languidly. His efforts were seconded by another
performer, who wore a red fool’s cap, all stuck with flowers, and a
white pinafore enriched with black human figures in front and a black
gridiron-like pattern, crossed diagonally by a red bar, at the back. Two
boys in white pinafores, with similar figures, or stars, on the breast,
and a fish on the back, completed the company. Formerly there used to be
a man in woman’s clothes, who personated the clown’s wife.[305] In some
parts also of France a young fellow is encased in a wicker framework
covered with leaves and is led about.[306] In Frickthal, in the Swiss
[Sidenote: The Whitsuntide Basket in Switzerland.] canton of Aargau, 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 calves;
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.[307] In the
neighbourhood of Ertingen (Würtemberg) a [Sidenote: The Lazy Man in
Würtemberg.] masker of the same sort, known as the Lazy Man
(_Latzmann_), goes about the village on Midsummer Day; he is hidden
under a great pyramidal or conical frame of wickerwork, ten or twelve
feet high, which is completely covered with sprigs of fir. He has a bell
which he rings as he goes, and he is attended by a suite of persons
dressed up in character—a footman, a colonel, a butcher, an angel, the
devil, the doctor, and so on. They march in Indian file and halt before
every house, where each of them speaks in character, except the Lazy
Man, who says nothing. With what they get by begging from door to door
they hold a feast.[308]
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.
[Sidenote: Leaf-clad representative of vegetation sometimes called a
King or Queen.] 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.[309]
[Sidenote: May-Kings at Whitsuntide in Germany and Bohemia.] 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.[310] 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.[311] 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 Thüringen 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.[312] At Wahrstedt in Brunswick the boys at Whitsuntide choose
by lot a king and a high-steward (_füstje-meier_). The latter is
completely concealed in a May-bush, wears a wooden crown wreathed 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.[313] At Hildesheim, in
Hanover, 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 [Sidenote: The Leaf
King.] 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.[314] 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.[315] At Grossvargula, near
Langensalza, in [Sidenote: The Grass King.] 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.[316] 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.[317] 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.[318] The pinching and beheading of the
frog are doubtless, as Mannhardt observes,[319] 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.[320]
[Sidenote: May-Queens and Whitsuntide Queens.] 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.[321] 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.[322] 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.[323] The May Queen is common in France[324] and familiar in
England. Thus at the adjoining [Sidenote: The May Queen in
Warwickshire.] villages of Cherrington and Stourton in south
Warwickshire, the Queen of May is still represented on May Day by a
small girl dressed in white and wearing a wreath of flowers on her head.
An older girl wheels the Queen in what is called a mail-cart, that is, a
child’s perambulator on two wheels. Another girl carries a money-box.
Four boys bear the May-pole, a conical framework formed of a high tripod
with a central shaft. The whole structure is encased in a series of five
hoops, which rise one above the other, diminishing in size from bottom
to top with the tapering of the cone. The hoops, as well as the tripod
and the central shaft, are all covered with whatever flowers happen to
be in bloom, such as marsh-marigolds, primroses, or blue-bells. To the
top of the central shaft is fastened a bunch of the flower called
crown-imperial, if it is in season. The lowest hoop is crossed by two
bars at right angles to each other, and the projecting ends of the bars
serve as handles, by which the four boys carry the May-pole. Each of the
bearers has a garland of flowers slung over his shoulder. Thus the
children go from house to house, singing their songs and receiving
money, which goes to provide a treat for them in the afternoon.[325]
[Sidenote: Spirit of vegetation represented simultaneously by a King and
Queen or a Bridegroom and Bride.] 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.[326]
At Halford in south Warwickshire the children go from house to house on
May Day, [Sidenote: Whitsuntide King and Queen.] 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
school-house in the afternoon.[327] In a Bohemian village near
Königgrätz 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.[328] 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 ale-house, 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.
Meantime the clown hurried to the ale-house 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 chin, 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
presents—to wit, a many-coloured sash, a cloth, and an apron. The king
got as a prize, a vest, a neckcloth, 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 [Sidenote:
King and Queen of May.] 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.[329] Near
Grenoble, in France, a king and queen are chosen on the first of May and
are set on a throne for all to see.[330] At Headington, near Oxford,
children used to carry garlands from door to door on May Day. Each
garland was borne by two girls, and they were followed by a lord and
lady—a boy and girl linked together by a white handkerchief, of which
each held an end, and dressed with ribbons, sashes, and flowers. At each
door they sang a verse:—
“_Gentlemen and ladies,
We wish you happy May;
We come to shew you a garland,
Because it is May-day._”
On receiving money the lord put his arm about his lady’s waist and
kissed her.[331] At Fleuriers in Switzerland on the seventh of May 1843
a May-bridegroom (_Époux de Mai_) and his bride were escorted in a
procession of over two hundred children, some of whom carried green
branches of beech. A number of May Fools were entrusted with the
delicate duty of going round with the hat. The proceeds of their tact
and industry furnished a banquet in the evening, and the day ended with
a children’s ball.[332] In some Saxon villages at Whitsuntide a lad and
a lass used to disguise themselves and hide in the bushes or high grass
outside the village. Then the whole village went out with music “to seek
the bridal pair.” When they found the couple they all gathered round
them, the music struck up, and the bridal pair was led merrily to the
village. In the evening they danced. In some places the bridal pair was
called the prince and the princess.[333]
[Sidenote: Whitsuntide Bridegroom and Bride in Denmark.] In a parish of
Denmark it used to be the custom at Whitsuntide to dress up a little
girl as the Whitsun-bride (_pinse-bruden_) 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.[334]
[Sidenote: Midsummer Bridegroom and Bride in Sweden and Norway.] We have
seen that in Sweden the ceremonies associated elsewhere with May Day or
Whitsuntide commonly take place at Midsummer.[335] 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.[336] A similar ceremony seems
to be still kept up in Norway, for a correspondent writes to me as
follows in reference to the Danish custom of the Whitsun-bride: “It may
interest you to know that on June 23, 1893, I witnessed at Ullensvang,
Hardanger, Norway, a ceremony almost exactly the same as that described
in your book. Wild flowers are scarce there, and the bride wore the
usual metal crown, the attendants for the most part wearing the pretty
Hardanger costume. The dancing took place in an unlighted barn, as the
farmer was afraid of fire. There were plenty of boys at the dance, but
so far as I can remember, none in the procession. The custom is clearly
dying out, and the somewhat reluctant bridegroom was the subject of a
good deal of chaff from his fellows.”[337] In Sardinia the Midsummer
couples are known as the Sweethearts of St. John, and their association
with the growth of plants is clearly brought out by the pots of
sprouting grain which form a principal part of the ceremony.[338]
[Sidenote: Forsaken Bridegroom or Bride of May or Whitsuntide.] In the
neighbourhood of Briançon (Dauphiné) 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 folk. The lad is called the bridegroom of the month of May
(_le fiancé du mois de 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.[339] 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.[340] 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.[341]
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 wakens him the fresh verdure or the genial sunshine of
spring? It is hardly possible, on the evidence before us, to answer
these questions. The Oraons of Bengal, it may be remembered, celebrate
the marriage of earth in the springtime, when the sál-tree is in
blossom.[342] But from this we can hardly argue that in the European
ceremonies the sleeping bridegroom is “the dreaming earth” and the girl
the spring blossoms.
[Sidenote: St. Bride in Scotland and the Isle of Man.] 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.”[343]
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.”[344] 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.”[345]
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 the Celtic
goddess Brigit, who will meet us again later on.[346]
[Sidenote: May Bride or Whitsuntide Bride.] 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.[347] 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.[348] At Waggum in Brunswick, when service is over on
Whitsunday, the village girls assemble, dressed in white or bright
colours, decked with flowers, and wearing chaplets of spring flowers in
their hair. One of them represents the May Bride, and carries a crown of
flowers on a staff as a sign of her dignity. As usual the children go
about from cottage to cottage singing and begging for eggs, sausages,
cakes, or money. In other parts of Brunswick it is a boy clothed all in
birch leaves who personates the May Bride.[349] In Bresse in the month
of May a girl called _la Mariée_ is tricked out with ribbons and
nosegays and is led about by a gallant. She is preceded by a lad
carrying a green May-tree, and appropriate verses are sung.[350]
Footnote 239:
Quoted by J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, i. 246 (ed. Bohn).
Footnote 240:
T. F. Thiselton Dyer, _British Popular Customs_ (London, 1876), p.
254.
Footnote 241:
W. Borlase, _The Natural History of Cornwall_ (Oxford, 1758), p. 294.
Footnote 242:
J. Brand, _op. cit._ i. 212 _sq._
Footnote 243:
T. F. Thiselton Dyer, _Popular British Customs_, p. 233.
Footnote 244:
R. Chambers, _Book of Days_ (London and Edinburgh, 1886), i. 578; T.
F. Thiselton Dyer, _op. cit._ pp. 237 _sq._
Footnote 245:
W. Hone, _Every Day Book_ (London, N.D.), ii. 615 _sq._; T. F.
Thiselton Dyer, _British Popular Customs_, pp. 251 _sq._ At Polebrook
in Northamptonshire the verses sung by the children on their rounds
include two which are almost identical with those sung at Abingdon in
Berkshire. See Dyer, _op. cit._ pp. 255 _sq._ The same verses were
formerly sung on May Day at Hitchin in Hertfordshire (Hone, _Every Day
Book_, i. 567 _sq._; Dyer, _op. cit._ pp. 240 _sq._).
Footnote 246:
Dyer, _op. cit._ p. 263.
Footnote 247:
Percy Manning, in _Folk-lore_, iv. (1893) pp. 403 _sq._
Footnote 248:
_Id._, in _Folk-lore_, viii. (1897) p. 308. Customs of the same sort
are reported also from Combe, Headington, and Islip, all in
Oxfordshire (Dyer, _British Popular Customs_, pp. 261 _sq._). See
below, pp. 90 _sq._
Footnote 249:
Dyer, _op. cit._ p. 243.
Footnote 250:
W. H. D. Rouse, in _Folk-lore_, iv. (1893) p. 53. I have witnessed the
ceremony almost annually for many years. Many of the hoops have no
doll, and ribbons or rags of coloured cloth are more conspicuous than
flowers in their decoration.
Footnote 251:
J. P. Emslie, in _Folk-lore_, xi. (1900) p. 210.
Footnote 252:
_Memoirs of Anna Maria Wilhelmina Pickering_, edited by her son,
Spencer Pickering (London, 1903), pp. 160 _sq._
Footnote 253:
Lady Wilde, _Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland_ (London,
1890), pp. 101 _sq._ At the ancient Greek festival of the Daphnephoria
or “Laurel-bearing” a staff of olive-wood, decked with laurels, purple
ribbons, and many-coloured flowers, was carried in procession, and
attached to it were two large globes representing the sun and moon,
together with a number of smaller globes which stood for the stars.
See Proclus, quoted by Photius, _Bibliotheca_, p. 321, ed. Bekker.
Footnote 254:
E. Cortet, _Essai sur les fêtes religieuses_ (Paris, 1867) pp. 167
_sqq._
Footnote 255:
_Revue des traditions populaires_, ii. (1887) p. 200.
Footnote 256:
W. Müller, _Beiträge zur Volkskunde der Deutschen in Mähren_ (Wien und
Olmütz, 1893), pp. 319 _sq._, 355-359.
Footnote 257:
_Folk-lore_, i. (1890) pp. 518 _sqq._
Footnote 258:
W. R. S. Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_ 2nd Ed., (London,
1872), pp. 234 _sq._
Footnote 259:
A. Kuhn, _Märkische Sagen und Märchen_ (Berlin, 1843), p. 315.
Footnote 260:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 162.
Footnote 261:
L. Lloyd, _Peasant Life in Sweden_, p. 235.
Footnote 262:
L. Lloyd, _op. cit._ pp. 257 _sqq._
Footnote 263:
H. Pröhle, _Harzbilder_ (Leipsic, 1855), pp. 19 _sq._ Compare _id._,
in _Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde_, i. (1853)
pp. 81 _sq._; W. Mannhardt, _Germanische Mythen_, pp. 512 _sqq._; A.
Kuhn und W. Schwartz, _Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche_
(Leipsic, 1848), p. 390, § 80.
Footnote 264:
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_ (Prague, N.D.), pp.
308 _sq._ A fuller description of the ceremony will be given later.
Footnote 265:
For the evidence see J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, i. 234 _sqq._;
W. Hone, _Every Day Book_, i. 547 _sqq._, ii. 574 _sqq._; R. Chambers,
_Book of Days_, i. 574 _sqq._; T. F. Thiselton Dyer, _British Popular
Customs_, pp. 228 _sqq._; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 168 _sqq._
Footnote 266:
Phillip Stubbes, _The Anatomie of Abuses_, p. 149 (F. J. Furnivall’s
reprint). In later editions some verbal changes were made.
Footnote 267:
W. Borlase, _Natural History of Cornwall_ (Oxford, 1758), p. 294.
Footnote 268:
W. Hutchinson, _View of Northumberland_ (Newcastle, 1778), ii.
Appendix, pp. 13 _sq._; Dyer, _British Popular Customs_, p. 257.
Footnote 269:
“Padstow ‘Hobby Hoss,’” _Folklore_, xvi. (1905) pp. 59 _sq._
Footnote 270:
E. Meier, _Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben_
(Stuttgart, 1852), p. 396.
Footnote 271:
E. Mogk, in R. Wuttke’s _Sächsische Volkskunde_ 2nd Ed., (Dresden,
1901), pp. 309 _sq._
Footnote 272:
M. Rentsch, in R. Wuttke’s _op. cit._ p. 359.
Footnote 273:
A. De Nore, _Coutumes, mythes et traditions des provinces de France_
(Paris and Lyons, 1846), p. 137.
Footnote 274:
Bérenger-Féraud, _Superstitions et survivances_ (Paris, 1896), v. 308
_sq._ Compare _id._, _Reminiscences populaires de la Provence_, pp. 21
_sq._, 26, 27.
Footnote 275:
J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman, _Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan
States_, part i. vol. i. (Rangoon, 1900) p. 529.
Footnote 276:
W. Hone, _Every Day Book_, i. 547 _sqq._; R. Chambers, _Book of Days_,
i. 571.
Footnote 277:
_Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern_, i. 372.
Footnote 278:
W. Hone, _Every Day Book_, ii. 597 _sq._ Mr. G. W. Prothero tells me
that about the year 1875 he saw a permanent May-pole decked with
flowers on May Day on the road between Cambridge and St. Neot’s, not
far from the turning to Caxton.
Footnote 279:
See above, pp. 47 _sq._
Footnote 280:
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, p. 217; W.
Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 566.
Footnote 281:
A. Birlinger, _Volksthümliches aus Schwaben_ (Freiburg im Breisgau,
1861-1862), ii. 74 _sq._; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 566.
Footnote 282:
Aristophanes, _Plutus_, 1054; W. Mannhardt, _Antike Wald- und
Feldkulte_, pp. 222 _sq._
Footnote 283:
Boecler-Kreutzwald, _Der Ehsten abergläubische Gebräuche, Weisen und
Gewohnheiten_, pp. 112-114. Some traits in this story seem to suggest
that the return of the trooper to his old home was, like that of the
war-broken veteran in Campbell’s poem, only a soldier’s dream.
Footnote 284:
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, pp. 86 _sqq._; W.
Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 156.
Footnote 285:
R. Chambers, _Book of Days_, i. 573. Compare the Cambridge custom,
described above, p. 62.
Footnote 286:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 312.
Footnote 287:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 313.
Footnote 288:
_Ibid._ p. 314.
Footnote 289:
_Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern_, iii. 357; W.
Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 312 _sq._ The word _Walber_ probably
comes from Walburgis, which is doubtless only another form of the
better known Walpurgis. The second of May is called Walburgis Day, at
least in this part of Bavaria.
Footnote 290:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 313 _sq._
Footnote 291:
H. von Wlislocki, _Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Zigeuner_
(Münster i. W., 1891), pp. 148 _sq._
Footnote 292:
E. T. Dalton, _Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 261.
Footnote 293:
B. A. Gupte, “Harvest Festivals in honour of Gauri and Ganesh,”
_Indian Antiquary_, xxxv. (1906) p. 61.
Footnote 294:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 315 _sq._
Footnote 295:
W. R. S. Ralston, _Russian Folk-tales_, p. 345. As to Green George see
above, pp. 75 _sq._
Footnote 296:
W. R. S. Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 234.
Footnote 297:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 318; J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,
4th ed., ii. 657.
Footnote 298:
A. de Nore, _Coutumes, mythes et traditions des provinces de France_,
pp. 17 _sq._; Bérenger-Féraud, _Réminiscences populaires de la
Provence_, pp. 1 _sq._
Footnote 299:
A. Meyrac, _Traditions, coutumes, légendes et contes des Ardennes_
(Charleville, 1890), pp. 79-82. The girl was called the Trimouzette. A
custom of the same general character was practised down to recent
times in the Jura (Bérenger-Féraud, _Réminiscences populaires de la
Provence_, p. 18).
Footnote 300:
F. A. Reimann, _Deutsche Volksfeste im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_
(Weimar, 1839), pp. 159 _sq._; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 320; A.
Witzschel, _Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen_, p. 211.
Footnote 301:
W. Kolbe, _Hessische Volks-Sitten und Gebräuche im Lichte der
heidnischen Vorzeit_ (Marburg, 1888), p. 70.
Footnote 302:
_Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern_, iv. 2, pp.
359 _sq._ Similarly in the Département de l’Ain (France) on the first
of May eight or ten boys unite, clothe one of their number in leaves,
and go from house to house begging (W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p.
318).
Footnote 303:
E. Hoffmann-Krayer, “Fruchtbarkeitsriten im schweizerischen
Volksbrauch,” _Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde_, xi. (1907) p.
252.
Footnote 304:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 322; W. Hone, _Every-Day Book_, i. 583
_sqq._; T. F. Thiselton Dyer, _British Popular Customs_, pp. 230 _sq._
Footnote 305:
W. H. D. Rouse, “May-Day in Cheltenham,” _Folk-lore_, iv. (1893) pp.
50-53. On May Day 1891 I saw a Jack-in-the-Green in the streets of
Cambridge.
Footnote 306:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 323.
Footnote 307:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 323; H. Herzog, _Schweizerische
Volksfeste, Sitten und Gebräuche_ (Aarau, 1884), pp. 248 _sq._
Footnote 308:
A. Birlinger, _Volksthümliches aus Schwaben_, ii. 114 _sq._; W.
Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 325.
Footnote 309:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 314 _sq._
Footnote 310:
A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, _Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche_,
p. 380.
Footnote 311:
F. Tetzner, “Die Tschechen und Mährer in Schlesien,” _Globus_, lxviii
(1900) p. 340.
Footnote 312:
A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, _op. cit._ pp. 383 _sq._; W. Mannhardt,
_Baumkultus_, p. 342.
Footnote 313:
R. Andree, _Braunschweiger Volkskunde_ (Brunswick, 1896), pp. 249
_sq._
Footnote 314:
K. Seifart, _Sagen, Märchen, Schwänke und Gebräuche aus Stadt und
Stift Hildesheim_, Zweite Auflage (Hildesheim, 1889), pp. 180 _sq._
Footnote 315:
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, pp. 260 _sq._; W.
Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 342 _sq._
Footnote 316:
F. A. Reimann, _Deutsche Volksfeste im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_, pp.
157-159; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 347 _sq._; A. Witzschel,
_Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen_ (Vienna, 1878), p. 203.
Footnote 317:
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, pp. 253 _sqq._
Footnote 318:
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, p. 262; W.
Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 353 _sq._
Footnote 319:
_Baumkultus_, p. 355.
Footnote 320:
Above, vol. i. pp. 292, 293.
Footnote 321:
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, p. 93; W.
Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 344.
Footnote 322:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 343 _sq._
Footnote 323:
T. F. Thiselton Dyer, _British Popular Customs_, pp. 270 _sq._
Footnote 324:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 344 _sqq._; E. Cortet, _Fêtes
religieuses_, pp. 160 _sqq._; D. Monnier, _Traditions populaires
comparées_, pp. 282 _sqq._; Bérenger-Féraud, _Réminiscences populaires
de la Provence_, pp. 17 _sq._; Ch. Beauquier, _Les Mois en
Franche-Comté_ (Paris, 1900), pp. 65-69. In Franche-Comté she seems to
be generally known as _l’épousée_, “the spouse.”
Footnote 325:
From information given me by Mabel Bailey, in the service of Miss A.
Wyse of Halford. My informant’s father is a native of Stourton, and
she herself has spent much of her life there. I conjecture that the
conical flower-bedecked structure may once have been borne by a mummer
concealed within it. Compare the customs described above, pp. 82 _sq._
Footnote 326:
Above, pp. 24 _sqq._
Footnote 327:
From information given me by Miss A. Wyse of Halford.
Footnote 328:
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalendar aus Böhmen_, pp. 265 _sq._; W.
Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 422.
Footnote 329:
P. Drechsler, _Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube in Schlesien_, i.
(Leipsic, 1903) pp. 125-129.
Footnote 330:
D. Monnier, _Traditions populaires comparées_ (Paris, 1854), p. 304;
E. Cortet, _Fêtes religieuses_, p. 161; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p.
423.
Footnote 331:
J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, i. 233 _sq._; W. Mannhardt,
_Baumkultus_, p. 424. We have seen (p. 62) that a custom of the same
sort used to be observed at Bampton-in-the-Bush in Oxfordshire.
Footnote 332:
E. Hoffmann-Krayer, “Fruchtbarkeitsriten im schweizerischen
Volksbrauch,” _Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde_, xi. (1907) pp.
257 _sq._
Footnote 333:
E. Sommer, _Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Sachsen und Thüringen_
(Halle, 1843), pp. 151 _sq._; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, pp. 431 _sq._
The custom is now obsolete (E. Mogk, in R. Wuttke’s _Sächsische
Volkskunde_, 2nd Ed., Dresden, 1901, p. 309).
Footnote 334:
H. F. Feilberg, in _Folk-lore_, vi. (1895) pp. 194 _sq._
Footnote 335:
See above, p. 65.
Footnote 336:
L. Lloyd, _Peasant Life in Sweden_, p. 257.
Footnote 337:
Mr. W. C. Crofts, in a letter to me dated February 3, 1901, 9
Northwich Terrace, Cheltenham.
Footnote 338:
For details see _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, Second Edition, pp. 202 _sq._
Footnote 339:
This custom was told to W. Mannhardt by a French prisoner in the war
of 1870-71 (_Baumkultus_, p. 434).
Footnote 340:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 434 _sq._
Footnote 341:
_Ibid._ p. 435.
Footnote 342:
See above, pp. 76 _sq._
Footnote 343:
M. Martin, _Description of the Western Islands of Scotland_ (London,
1673 [1703]), p. 119; _id._ in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, iii.
613; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 436. According to Martin, the
ceremony took place on Candlemas Day, the second of February. But this
seems to be a mistake. See J. G. Campbell, _Witchcraft and Second
Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland_, pp. 247 _sq._ The
Rev. James Macdonald, of Reay in Caithness, was assured by old people
that the sheaf used in making Briid’s bed was the last sheaf cut at
harvest (J. Macdonald, _Religion and Myth_, p. 141). Later on we shall
see that the last sheaf is often regarded as embodying the spirit of
the corn, and special care is therefore taken of it.
Footnote 344:
John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, _Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth
Century_, edited by Alex. Allardyce (Edinburgh, 1888), ii. 447. At
Ballinasloe in County Galway it is customary to fasten a cross of
twisted corn in the roof of the cottages on Candlemas Day. The cross
is fastened by means of a knife stuck through a potato, and remains in
its place for months, if not for a year. This custom (of which I was
informed by Miss Nina Hill in a letter dated May 5, 1898) may be
connected with the Highland one described in the text.
Footnote 345:
J. Train, _Historical and Statistical Account of the Isle of Man_
(Douglas, Isle of Man, 1845), ii. 116.
Footnote 346:
See below, pp. 240 _sqq._ Brigit is the true original form of the
name, which has been corrupted into Breed, Bride, and Bridget. See
Douglas Hyde, _A Literary History of Ireland_ (London, 1899), p. 53,
note 2.
Footnote 347:
A. Kuhn, _Märkische Sagen und Märchen_, pp. 318 _sqq._; W. Mannhardt,
_Baumkultus_, p. 437.
Footnote 348:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 438.
Footnote 349:
R. Andree, _Braunschweiger Volkskunde_ (Brunswick, 1896), p. 248.
Footnote 350:
D. Monnier, _Traditions populaires comparées_, pp. 283 _sq._; E.
Cortet, _Fêtes religieuses_, pp. 162 _sq._; W. Mannhardt,
_Baumkultus_, pp. 439 _sq._
CHAPTER XI
THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEXES ON VEGETATION
[Sidenote: The marriage of the King and Queen of May intended to promote
the growth of vegetation by homoeopathic magic.] 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[351] 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.
[Sidenote: Intercourse of the sexes practised in order to make the crops
grow.] 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.[352] 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 the
month of December, when the alligator pears begin to ripen, the Indians
of Peru used to hold a festival called _Acatay mita_ in order to make
the fruit grow mellow. The festival lasted five days and nights, and was
preceded by a fast of five days during which they ate neither salt nor
pepper and refrained from their wives. At the festival men and boys
assembled stark naked in an open space among the orchards, and ran from
there to a distant hill. Any woman whom they overtook on the way they
violated.[353] 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.[354] 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 principle 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.[355] Among the Tangkhuls of Manipur, before the
rice is sown and when it is reaped, the boys and girls have a tug-of-war
with a tough rope of twisted creeper. Great jars of beer are set ready,
and the strictness of their ordinary morality is broken by a night of
unbridled licence.[356] 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.
[Sidenote: Intercourse of the sexes practised in order to make trees
bear fruit.] The same means which are thus adopted to stimulate the
growth of the crops are naturally employed to ensure the fruitfulness of
trees. The work known as _The Agriculture of the Nabataeans_ contained
apparently a direction that the grafting of a tree upon another tree of
a different sort should be done by a damsel, who at the very moment of
inserting the graft in the bough should herself be subjected to
treatment which can only be regarded as a direct copy of the operation
she was performing on the tree.[357] 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.[358] In Java when a palm tree is
to be tapped for wine, the man who proposes to relieve the tree of its
superfluous juices deems it necessary to approach the palm in the
character of a lover and a husband, as well as of a son. When he comes
upon a palm which he thinks suitable, he will not begin cutting at the
trunk until he has intimated as delicately as he can the reasons which
lead him to perform that surgical operation, and the ardent affection
which he cherishes for the tree. For this purpose he holds a dialogue
with the palm, in which he naturally speaks in the character of the tree
as well as in his own. “O mother _endang-reni_!” he begins, “for the
sake of you I have let myself be drenched by the rain and scorched by
the sun; long have I sought you! Now at last have I found you. How
ardently have I longed for you! Often before have you given me the
breast. Yet I still thirst. Therefore now I ask for four potfuls more.”
“Well, fair youth,” replies the tree, “I have always been here. What is
the reason that you have sought me?” “The reason I have sought you is
that I have heard you suffer from _incontinentia urinae_.” “So I do,”
says the tree. “Will you marry me?” says the man. “That I will,” says
the tree, “but first you must plight your troth and recite the usual
confession of faith.” On that the man takes a rattan leaf and wraps it
round the palm as a pledge of betrothal, after which he says the creed:
“There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.” The maidenly
and orthodox scruples of the tree having thus been satisfied, he
embraces it as his bride. At first he attaches only a small dish to the
trunk to receive the juices which exude from the cut in the bark; a
large dish might frighten the tree. In fastening the dish to the palm he
says, “_Bok-endang-reni!_ your child is languishing away for thirst. He
asks you for a drink.” The tree replies, “Let him slake his thirst!
Mother’s breasts are full to overflowing.”[359] We have already seen
that in some parts of Northern India a mock marriage between two actors
is performed in honour of a newly-planted orchard,[360] no doubt for the
purpose of making it bear fruit. In the Nicobar Islands a pregnant woman
is taken into the gardens in order to impart the blessing of fertility
to the plants.[361]
[Sidenote: In Uganda parents of twins are supposed to fertilise the
plantains.] 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. The same
belief in the fertilising power of such parents probably explains why in
Uganda the father of twins is inviolable and may go into anybody’s
garden and take the produce at will. To distinguish him from the common
herd his hair is cut in a special way, and he wears little bells at his
ankles which tinkle as he walks. His sacred character is further
manifested by a rule which he must observe after the round of visits has
been paid, and the dances in the gardens are over. He has to remain at
home until the next time that the army goes forth to battle, and in the
interval he may neither dress his hair nor cut his finger-nails. When
war has been proclaimed, his whole body is shaved and his nails cut. The
clipped hair and nails he ties up in a ball, which he takes with him to
the war, along with the bark cloth which he wore at the dances. When he
has killed a foe, he crams the ball into the dead man’s mouth, ties the
bark-cloth round his neck, and leaves them there on the
battlefield.[362] Apparently the ceremony is intended to rid him of the
peculiar sanctity or state of taboo which he contracted by the birth of
twins, and to facilitate his return to ordinary life. For, to the mind
of the savage, as we shall see later on, sanctity has its dangers and
inconveniences, and the sacred man may often be glad to divest himself
of it by stripping himself of those separable parts of his person—the
hair and nails—to which the holy contagion is apt to cling.
[Sidenote: Relics of similar customs in Europe.] 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 shew 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.”[363] In England it seems to have been customary for young
couples to roll down a slope together on May Day; on Greenwich-hill the
custom was practised at Easter and Whitsuntide,[364] as it was till
lately practised near Dublin on Whitmonday.[365] When we consider how
closely these seasons, especially May Day and Whitsuntide, are
associated with ceremonies for the revival of plant life in spring, we
shall scarcely doubt that the custom of rolling in couples at such times
had originally the same significance which it still has in Russia; and
when further we compare this particular custom with the practice of
representing the vernal powers of vegetation by a bridal pair, and
remember the traditions which even in our own country attach to May
Day,[366] we shall probably do no injustice to our forefathers if we
conclude that they once celebrated the return of spring with grosser
rites, of which the customs I have referred to are only a stunted
survival. Indeed, these rites in their grossest form are said to be
still observed in various parts of Holland at Whitsuntide.[367] In some
parts of Germany at harvest the men and women, who have reaped the corn,
roll together on the field.[368] 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. In Poso,
when the rice-crop is not thriving, the farmer’s wife sets bowls of rice
and betel in various parts of the field; then she lies down, draws her
petticoat over her head, and pretends to fall asleep. But one of her
children thereupon mimics the crowing of a cock, and at the sound she
gets up, “because a new day has dawned.” The intention of this ceremony,
which the natives could not or would not explain to the Dutch missionary
who reports it, may be to place the woman at the disposal of the god of
the field. We are expressly told that there is a special god of the
rice-fields named Puwe-wai, and that the ceremony in question is
performed in his honour.[369]
[Sidenote: Continence practised in order to make the crops grow.] 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
historians observe, a time of abstinence.[370] 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.[371] 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.[372] The same rule is observed at
Kalotaszeg in Hungary; the people think that if the custom were not
observed the corn would be mildewed.[373] 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.[374] 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.[375] In the Motu tribe of New Guinea, when rain has
fallen plentifully and there is promise of a good crop of bananas, one
of the chief men becomes holy or taboo, and must live apart from his
wife and eat only certain kinds of food. He bids the young men beat the
drum and dance, “in order that by so doing there may be a large harvest.
If the dancing is not given, there will be an end to the good growth;
but if it is continued, all will go well. People come in from other
villages to assist, and will dance all night.”[376] In the Mekeo
district of British New Guinea, when a taboo has been put on the
coco-nuts and areca-nuts to promote their growth, some fourteen or
fifteen men act as watchmen to enforce the taboo. Every evening they go
round the village armed with clubs and wearing masks or so covered with
leaves that nobody would know them. All the time they are in office they
may not chew betel nor drink coco-nut water, lest the areca-nuts (which
are eaten with betel) and the coco-nuts should fail. Moreover, they may
not live with their wives; indeed, they may not even look at a woman,
and if they pass one they must keep their eyes on the ground.[377] Among
the Kabuis of Manipur, before the rice is sown and when it is reaped,
the strictest chastity has to be observed, especially by the religious
head of the village, who, besides always taking the omens on behalf of
the villagers, is the first to sow and the first to reap.[378] Some of
the tribes of Assam believe that so long as the crops remain ungarnered,
the slightest incontinence might ruin all.[379] In the incense-growing
region of Arabia in antiquity there were three families charged with the
special care of the incense-trees. They were called sacred, and at the
time when they cut the trees or gathered the incense they were forbidden
to pollute themselves with women or with the contact of the dead; the
observance of these rules of ceremonial purity was believed to increase
the supply of incense.[380] Apparently the incense itself was deemed
holy, for on being gathered it was deposited in the sanctuary of the
Sun, where the merchants inspected and purchased it.[381] With ancient
Greek husbandmen it was a maxim that olives should always be planted and
gathered by pure boys and virgins; the uncommon fruitfulness of the
olive-trees at Anazarbus in Cilicia was attributed to their being tended
by young and innocent children. In default of such workers, the
olive-gatherer had to swear that he had been faithful to his own wife;
for his fidelity was believed to ensure an abundant crop of fruit the
following year.[382]
[Sidenote: Illicit love supposed to blight the fruits of the earth.]
Again, the sympathetic relation supposed to exist between the commerce
of the sexes and the fertility of the earth manifests itself in the
belief that illicit love tends, directly or indirectly, to mar that
fertility and to blight the crops.[383] Such a belief prevails, for
example, among the Karens of Burma. They imagine that adultery or
fornication has a powerful influence to injure the harvest. Hence if the
crops have been bad for a year or two, and no rain falls, the villagers
set down the dearth to secret sins of this kind, and say that the God of
heaven and earth is angry with them on that account; and they all unite
in making an offering to appease him. Further, whenever adultery or
fornication is detected, the elders decide that the sinners must buy a
hog and kill it. Then the woman takes one foot of the hog, and the man
takes another, and they scrape out furrows in the ground with each foot,
and fill the furrows with the blood of the hog. Next they scratch the
ground with their hands and pray: “God of heaven and earth, God of the
mountains and hills, I have destroyed the productiveness of the country.
Do not be angry with me, do not hate me; but have mercy on me, and
compassionate me. Now I repair the mountains, now I heal the hills, and
the streams and the lands. May there be no failure of crops, may there
be no unsuccessful labours, or unfortunate efforts in my country. Let
them be dissipated to the foot of the horizon. Make thy paddy fruitful,
thy rice abundant. Make the vegetables to flourish. If we cultivate but
little, still grant that we may obtain a little.” After each has prayed
thus, they return to the house and say they have repaired the
earth.[384] The Battas of Sumatra think that if an unmarried woman is
big with child, it is necessary to give her in marriage at once, even to
a man of lower rank; for otherwise the people will be infested by
tigers, and the crops in the field will not yield an abundant return.
The crime of incest, in their opinion, would blast the whole harvest if
the wrong were not speedily repaired. Epidemics and other calamities
that affect the whole people are almost always traced by them to incest,
by which is to be understood any marriage that conflicts with their
customs.[385]
[Sidenote: Dyak belief that lewdness may cause bad weather and spoil the
crops.] Similar views are held by various tribes of Borneo. Thus when
the rain pours down steadily day after day and week after week, and the
crops are rotting in the fields, the Dyaks of Borneo come to the
conclusion that some one has been indulging in fleshly lusts; so the
elders lay their heads together and adjudicate on all cases of incest
and bigamy, and purify the earth with the blood of pigs, which appears
to possess in a high degree the valuable property of atoning for moral
guilt. For three days the villages are tabooed and all labour
discontinued; the inhabitants remain at home, and no strangers are
admitted. Not long ago the offenders, whose lewdness had thus brought
the whole country into danger, would have been punished with death or at
least slavery. A Dyak may not marry his first cousin unless he first
performs a special ceremony called _bergaput_ to avert evil consequences
from the land. The couple repair to the water-side, fill a small pitcher
with their personal ornaments, and sink it in the river; or instead of a
jar they fling a chopper and a plate into the water. A pig is then
sacrificed on the bank, and its carcase, drained of blood, is thrown in
after the jar. Next the pair are pushed into the water by their friends
and ordered to bathe together. Lastly, a joint of bamboo is filled with
pig’s blood, and the couple perambulate the country and the villages
round about, sprinkling the blood on the ground. After that they are
free to marry. This is done, we are told, for the sake of the whole
country, in order that the rice may not be blasted.[386] The Bahaus or
Kayans, a tribe in the interior of Borneo, [Sidenote: Kayan belief that
adultery or fornication spoils the harvest.] believe that adultery is
punished by the spirits, who visit the whole tribe with failure of the
crops and other misfortunes. Hence in order to avert these calamities
from the innocent members of the tribe, the two culprits, with all their
possessions, are put in quarantine on a gravel bank in the middle of the
river; then in order thoroughly to disinfect them, pigs and fowls are
killed, and with the blood priestesses smear the property of the guilty
pair. Finally the two are set on a raft, with sixteen eggs, and allowed
to drift down the stream. They may save themselves by swimming ashore,
but this is perhaps a mitigation of an older sentence of death by
drowning. Young people shower long grass-stalks, which stand for spears,
at the shamefaced and dripping couple.[387] The Blu-u Kayans of the same
region similarly imagine that an intrigue between an unmarried pair is
punished by the spirits with failure of the harvest, of the fishing, and
of the hunt. Hence the delinquents have to appease the wrath of the
spirits by sacrificing a pig and some rice.[388]
[Sidenote: Incest and seduction supposed to be a cause of bad weather
and failure of crops in Celebes.] Among the Macassars and Bugineese of
Southern Celebes incest is a capital crime. “In the Bugineese language
this misdeed is called _sâpa-tâna_, which, literally translated,
signifies that the _ground_ (_tâna_) which has been polluted with the
blood of such a person must above all be _shunned_ (_sâpa_). When we
remember how afraid of evil spirits a native is in passing even a spot
that has been stained with innocent blood, we can easily conceive what
passes in his mind at the thought of the blood of one who has been
guilty of such a crime. When the rivers dry up and the supply of fish
runs short, when the harvest and the produce of the gardens miscarry,
when edible fruits fail, and especially when sickness is rife among the
cattle and horses, as well as when civil strife breaks out and the
country suffers from any other widespread calamity, the native generally
thinks that earth and air have been sullied with the blood of persons
who have committed incest. The blood of such people should naturally not
be shed. Hence the punishment usually inflicted on them is that of
drowning. They are tied up in a sack and thrown into the sea. Yet they
get with them on their journey to eternity the necessary provisions,
consisting of a bag of rice, salt, dried fish, coco-nuts and so on, not
forgetting three quids of betel.”[389] Among the Tomori of Central
Celebes a person guilty of incest is throttled; no drop of his blood may
fall on the ground, for if it did, the rice would never grow again. The
union of uncle and niece is regarded by these people as incest, but it
can be expiated by an offering. A garment of the man and one of the
woman are laid on a copper vessel; the blood of a sacrificed animal,
either a goat or a fowl, is allowed to drip on the garments, and then
the vessel with its contents is suffered to float down the river.[390]
Among the Tolalaki, another tribe of Central Celebes, persons who have
defiled themselves with incest are shut up in a basket and drowned. No
drop of their blood may be spilt on the ground, for that would hinder
the earth from ever bearing fruit again.[391] When it rains in torrents,
the Galelareese of Halmahera say that brother and sister, or father and
daughter, or in short some near relations are having illicit relations
with each other, and that every human being must be informed of it, for
then only will the rain cease to descend. The superstition has
repeatedly caused blood relations to be accused, rightfully or
wrongfully, of incest. The people also regard other alarming natural
phenomena, for instance a violent earthquake or the eruption of a
volcano, as consequences of crimes of the same sort. Persons charged
with such offences are brought to Ternate; it is said that formerly they
were often drowned on the way or, on being haled thither, were condemned
to be thrown into the volcano.[392]
[Sidenote: Breaches of sexual morality supposed to prevent rain and so
to blight the fruits of the earth in Africa.] In some parts of Africa,
also, it is believed that breaches of sexual morality disturb the course
of nature, particularly by blighting the fruits of the earth. Thus the
negroes of Loango suppose that the intercourse of a man with an immature
girl is punished by God with drought and consequent famine, until the
culprits atone for their sin by dancing naked before the king and an
assembly of the people, who throw hot gravel and bits of glass at the
pair. For example, in the year 1898, it was discovered that a long
drought was caused by the misconduct of three girls, who were with child
before they had passed through what is called the paint-house, that is,
before they had been painted red and secluded for a time in token that
they had attained to the age of puberty. The people were very angry and
tried to punish or even kill the girls.[393] Amongst the Bavili of
Loango, it is believed that if a man breaks the marriage law by marrying
a woman of his mother’s clan, God will in like manner punish the crime
by withholding the rains in their due season.[394] Similar notions of
the blighting influence of sexual crime appear to be entertained by the
Nandi of British East Africa, for amongst them a girl who has been
gotten with child by a warrior, may never look inside of a granary for
fear of spoiling the corn.[395] Among the Basutos likewise “while the
corn is exposed to view, all defiled persons are carefully kept from it.
If the aid of a man in this state is necessary for carrying home the
harvest, he remains at some distance while the sacks are filled, and
only approaches to place them upon the draught oxen. He withdraws as
soon as the load is deposited at the dwelling, and under no pretext can
he assist in pouring the corn into the baskets in which it is
preserved.”[396] The nature of the defilement which thus disqualifies a
man for handling the corn is not mentioned, but probably it would
include unchastity. We may conjecture that it was for a similar reason
that the Basoga of Central Africa used to punish severely the seduction
of a virgin. “If a man was convicted of such a crime, and the woman’s
guilt was discovered, he and she were sent at night time to Kaluba’s
village, where they were tied to a tree. This tall spreading
incense-tree was thought to be under the protection of a spirit called
_Kakua Kambuzi_. Next morning the erring couple were discovered by
people in the surrounding plantations, who released them. They were then
allowed to settle near the tree of the protecting spirit.” This practice
of tying the culprits to a sacred tree may have been thought to atone
for their crime and so to ensure the fertility of the earth which they
had imperilled. The notion perhaps was to deliver the criminals into the
power of the offended tree-spirit; if they were found alive in the
morning, it was a sign that he had pardoned them. “Curiously enough, the
Basoga also held in great abhorrence anything like incest amongst
domestic animals—that is to say, they greatly disapproved of intercourse
between a bull calf and its mother-cow, or between a bull and a cow that
were known to be brother and sister. If this occurred, the bull and cow
were sent by night to a fetish tree and tied there. The next morning the
chief of the district appropriated the animals and turned them to his
own use.”[397] Following out the same train of thought, the Toradjas of
Central Celebes ingeniously employ [Sidenote: Incest of animals employed
as a rain-charm in Africa.] the incest of animals as a rain-charm. For
they believe that the anger of the gods at incest or bestiality
manifests itself in the form of violent storms, heavy rain, or long
drought. Accordingly they think that it is always in their power to
enrage the gods by committing incest and so to procure rain when it is
needed. However, they abstain from perpetrating the crime among
themselves, first, because it would be necessary to put the culprits to
death, and second, because the storms thus raised would be so furious
that they would do more harm than good. But they fancy that the incest,
real or simulated, of animals is a lighter offence, which by
discomposing, without exasperating, the higher powers will disturb the
balance of nature just enough to improve the weather. A ceremony of this
sort was witnessed by a missionary. Rain was wanted, and the headman of
the village had to see that it fell. He took his measures accordingly.
Attended by a crowd he carried a cock and a little sow to the river.
Here the animals were killed, laid side by side in an intimate embrace,
and wrapped tightly up in a piece of cotton. Then the headman engaged in
prayer. “O gods above and gods below,” said he, “if you have pity on us,
and will that we eat food this year, give rain. If you will not give
rain, well we have here buried a cock and a sow in an intimate embrace.”
By which he meant to say, “Be angry at this abomination which we have
committed, and manifest your anger in storms.”[398]
These examples suffice to prove that among many savage races breaches of
the marriage laws are thought to blast the fruits of the earth through
excessive rain or excessive drought. Similar notions of the disastrous
effects of sexual crimes may [Sidenote: Similar notions of the blighting
effect of sexual crime may be detected among the civilised races of
antiquity, for example, among the Jews.] be detected among some of the
civilised races of antiquity, who seem not to have limited the supposed
sterilising influence of such offences to the fruits of the earth, but
to have extended it also to women and cattle.[399] Thus among the
Hebrews we read how Job, passionately protesting his innocence before
God, declares that he is no adulterer; “For that,” says he, “were an
heinous crime; yea, it were an iniquity to be punished by the judges:
for it is a fire that consumeth unto Destruction, and would root out all
mine increase.”[400] In this passage the Hebrew word translated
“increase” commonly means “the produce of the earth;”[401] and if we
give the word its usual sense here, then Job affirms adultery to be
destructive of the fruits of the ground, which is just what many savages
still believe. This interpretation of his words is strongly confirmed by
two narratives in Genesis, where we read how Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was
taken into his harem by a king who did not know her to be the wife of
the patriarch, and how thereafter God visited the king and his household
with great plagues, especially by closing up the wombs of the king’s
wives and his maid-servants, so that they bore no children. It was not
till the king had discovered and confessed his sin, and Abraham had
prayed God to forgive him, that the king’s women again became
fruitful.[402] These narratives seem to imply that adultery, even when
it is committed in ignorance, is a cause of plague and especially of
sterility among women. Again, in Leviticus, after a long list of sexual
crimes, we read:[403] “Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things:
for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out from before
you: and the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof
upon it, and the land vomiteth out her inhabitants.” This passage
appears to imply that the land itself was somehow physically tainted by
sexual transgressions so that it could no longer support the
inhabitants.
[Sidenote: Blighting effect attributed to incest by the ancient Greeks
and Irish.] It would seem that the ancient Greeks and Romans entertained
similar notions as to the wasting effect of incest. According to
Sophocles the land of Thebes suffered from blight, from pestilence, and
from the sterility both of women and of cattle under the reign of
Oedipus, who had unwittingly slain his father and wedded his mother, and
the Delphic oracle declared that the only way to restore the prosperity
of the country was to banish the sinner from it, as if his mere presence
withered plants, animals, and women.[404] No doubt the poet and his
hearers set down these public calamities in great part to the guilt of
parricide, which rested on Oedipus; but they can hardly have failed to
lay much also of the evil at the door of his incest with his mother.
Again, in ancient Italy, under the Emperor Claudius, a Roman noble was
accused of incest with his sister. He committed suicide, his sister was
banished, and the emperor ordered that certain ancient ceremonies
traditionally derived from the laws of King Servius Tullius should be
performed, and that expiation should be made by the pontiffs at the
sacred grove of Diana,[405] probably the famous Arician grove, which has
furnished the starting-point of our enquiry. As Diana appears to have
been a goddess of fertility in general and of the fruitfulness of women
in particular, the atonement made at her sanctuary for incest may
perhaps be accepted as evidence that the Romans, like other peoples,
attributed to sexual immorality a tendency to blast the fruits both of
the earth and of the womb. This inference is strengthened by a precept
laid down by grave Roman writers that bakers, cooks, and butlers ought
to be strictly chaste and continent, because it was most important that
food and cups should be handled either by persons under the age of
puberty, or at all events by persons who indulged very sparingly in
sexual intercourse; for which reason if a baker, a cook, or a butler
broke this rule of continence it was his bounden duty to wash in a river
or other running water before he applied himself again to his
professional duties. But for all such duties the services of a boy or of
a virgin were preferred.[406] The Celts of ancient Ireland similarly
believed that incest blighted the fruits of the earth. According to
legend Munster was afflicted in the third century of our era with a
failure of the crops and other misfortunes. When the nobles enquired
into the matter, they were told that these calamities were the result of
an incest which the king had committed with his sister. In order to put
an end to the evil they demanded of the king his two sons, the fruit of
his unholy union, that they might consume them with fire and cast their
ashes into the running stream. However, one of the sons, Corc by name,
is said to have been purged of his inherited taint by being sent out of
Ireland to an island, where a Druid purified him every morning, by
putting him on the back of a white cow with red ears, and pouring water
over him, till one day the cow jumped into the sea and became a rock, no
doubt taking the sin of Corc’s father away with her. After that the boy
was brought back to Erin.[407]
[Sidenote: Belief in the blighting effect of incest may have helped to
institute the forbidden degrees.] Thus the belief that incest or sexual
crime in general has power to blast the fruits of the earth is
widespread and probably goes back to a very remote antiquity; it may
long have preceded the rise of agriculture. We may conjecture that in
its origin the belief was magical rather than religious; in other words,
that the blight was at first supposed to be a direct consequence of the
act itself rather than a punishment inflicted on the criminal by gods or
spirits. Conceived as an unnatural union of the sexes, incest might be
thought to subvert the regular processes of reproduction, and so to
prevent the earth from yielding its fruits and to hinder animals and men
from propagating their kinds. At a later time the anger of spiritual
beings would naturally be invoked in order to give a religious sanction
to the old taboo. If this was so, it is possible that something of the
horror which incest has excited among most, though by no means all,
races of men, sprang from this ancient superstition and has been
transmitted as an instinct in many nations long after the imaginary
ground of it had been forgotten. Certainly a course of conduct which was
supposed to endanger or destroy the general supply of food and therefore
to strike a blow at the very life of the whole people, could not but
present itself to the savage imagination as a crime of the blackest dye,
fraught with the most fatal consequences to the public weal. How far
such a superstition may in the beginning have operated to prevent the
union of near kin, in other words, to institute the system of prohibited
degrees which still prevails among the great majority of mankind, both
savage and civilised, is a question which deserves to be considered by
the historians of marriage.[408]
[Sidenote: Explanation of the seeming contradiction in the foregoing
customs.] 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.
[Sidenote: Indirect benefit of some of these superstitious customs.] To
readers bred in a 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 [Sidenote: The ascetic view of chastity not
understood by the savage.] 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[409] 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 shew 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 over-mastering 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.[410] 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.
Footnote 351:
See above, p. 67, and below, p. 104.
Footnote 352:
Brasseur de Bourbourg, _Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et
de l’Amérique Centrale_ (Paris, 1857-1859), ii. 565; H. H. Bancroft,
_Native Races of the Pacific States_, ii. 719 _sq._, iii. 507; O.
Stoll, _Die Ethnologie der Indianerstämme von Guatemala_ (Leyden,
1889), p. 47.
Footnote 353:
P. J. de Arriaga, _Extirpacion de la idolatria del Piru_ (Lima, 1621),
pp. 36 _sq._
Footnote 354:
G. A. Wilken, “Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,”
_De Indische Gids_, June 1884, p. 958.
Footnote 355:
J. G. F. Riedel, _De sluik-en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en
Papua_, pp. 337, 372-375, 410 _sq._; G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoëvell, in
_Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde_, xxxiii. (1890)
pp. 204 _sq._, 206 _sq._; _id._, in _Internationales Archiv für
Ethnographie_, viii. (1895) p. 134; J. A. Jacobsen, _Reisen in die
Inselwelt des Banda-Meeres_ (Berlin, 1896), pp. 123, 125; J. H. de
Vries, “Reis door eenige eilandgroepen der Residentie Amboina,”
_Tijdschrift van het konink_. _Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig
Genootschap_, Tweede Serie, xvii. (1900) pp. 594, 612, 615 _sq._ The
name of the festival is variously given as _porĕke_, _porĕka_,
_porka_, and _purka_. In the island of Timor the marriage of the
Sun-god with Mother Earth is deemed the source of all fertility and
growth. See J. S. G. Gramberg, “Eene maand in de Binnenlanden van
Timor,” _Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en
Wetenschappen_, xxxvi. 206 _sq._; H. Sondervan, “Timor en de
Timoreezen,” _Tijdschriftvan het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig
Genootschap_, Tweede Serie, dl. v. (1888), Afdeeling meer uitgebreide
artikelen, p. 397.
Footnote 356:
T. C. Hodson, “The Native Tribes of Manipur,” _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, xxxi. (1901) p. 307.
Footnote 357:
Maimonides, translated by D. Chwolsohn, _Die Ssabier und der
Ssabismus_, ii. 475. It is not quite clear whether the direction,
which Maimonides here attributes to the heathen of Harran, is taken by
him from the beginning of _The Agriculture of the Nabataeans_, which
he had referred to a few lines before. The first part of that work
appears to be lost, though other parts of it exist in manuscript at
Paris, Oxford, and elsewhere. See D. Chwolsohn, _op. cit._ i. 697
_sqq._ The book is an early Mohammedan forgery; but the superstitions
it describes may very well be genuine. See A. von Gutschmid, _Kleine
Schriften_, ii. 568-713.
Footnote 358:
G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoëvell, _Ambon en meer bepaaldelijk de
Oeliasers_ (Dordrecht, 1875), pp. 62 _sq._
Footnote 359:
J. Kreemer, “Tiang-dèrès” _Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche
Zendelinggenootschap_, xxvi. (1882), pp. 128-132. This and the
preceding custom have been already quoted by G. A. Wilken (“Het
animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,” _De Indische
Gids_, June 1884, pp. 962 _sq._; and _Handleiding voor de
vorgelijkende Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië_ (Leyden, 1893), p.
550).
Footnote 360:
Above, p. 26.
Footnote 361:
W. Svoboda, “Die Bewohner des Nikobaren-Archipels,” _Internationales
Archiv für Ethnographie_, v. (1892) pp. 193 _sq._ For other examples
of a fruitful woman making trees fruitful, see above, vol. i. pp. 140
_sq._
Footnote 362:
J. Roscoe, “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,”
_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxii. (1902) pp. 32-35,
38, 80. The Peruvian custom described above (vol. i. p. 266) may in
like manner have been intended to promote the growth of beans through
the fertilising influence of the parents of twins. On the contrary
among the Bassari of Togo, in Western Africa, women who have given
birth to twins may not go near the farm at the seasons of sowing and
reaping, lest they should destroy the crop. Only after the birth of
another child does custom allow them to share again the labour of the
fields. See H. Klose, _Togo unter deutscher Flagge_ (Berlin, 1899), p.
510.
Footnote 363:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 480 _sq._; _id._, _Mythologische
Forschungen_ (Strasburg, 1884), p. 341.
Footnote 364:
J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, i. 181.
Footnote 365:
My informant is Prof. W. Ridgeway. The place was a field at the head
of the Dargle vale, near Enniskerry.
Footnote 366:
See above, p. 67.
Footnote 367:
G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoëvell, in _Internationales Archiv für
Ethnographie_, viii. (1895) p. 134 note. The custom seems to go by the
name of _dauwtroppen_ or “dew-treading.” As districts or places in
which the practice is still kept up the writer names South Holland,
Dordrecht, and Rotterdam.
Footnote 368:
L. Strackerjan, _Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg_
(Oldenburg, 1867), ii. p. 78, § 361; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p.
481; _id._, _Mythologische Forschungen_, p. 340. Compare Th. Siebs,
“Das Saterland,” _Zeitschrift für Volkskunde_, iii. (1893) p. 277.
Footnote 369:
A. C. Kruijt, “Een en ander aangaande het geestelijk en
maatschappelijk leven van den Poso-Alfoer,” _Mededeelingen van wege
het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap_, xxxix. (1895) p. 138, _ibid._
xl. (1896) pp. 16 _sq._
Footnote 370:
G. F. Oviedo y Valdes, _Histoire du Nicaragua_ (published in
Ternaux-Compans’ _Voyages, relations et mémoires originaux_, etc.),
Paris, 1840, pp. 228 _sq._; A. de Herrera, _General History of the
Vast Continent and Islands called America_ (Stevens’s translation,
London, 1725-26), iii. 298.
Footnote 371:
C. Sapper, “Die Gebräuche und religiösen Anschauungen der
Kekchi-Indianer,” _Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, viii.
(1895) p. 203. Abstinence from women for several days is also
practised before the sowing of beans and of chilis, but only by
Indians who do a large business in these commodities (_ibid._ p. 205).
Footnote 372:
A. Heinrich, _Agrarische Sitten und Gebräuche unter den Sachsen
Siebenbürgens_ (Hermannstadt, 1880), p. 7.
Footnote 373:
R. Temesvary, _Volksbräuche und Aberglauben in der Geburtshilfe und
der Pflege der Neugebornen in Ungarn_ (Leipsic, 1900), p. 16.
Footnote 374:
Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 293.
See above, vol. i. p. 88.
Footnote 375:
R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 134.
Footnote 376:
J. Chalmers, _Pioneering in New Guinea_ (London, 1887), p. 181. The
word which I have taken to mean “holy or taboo” is _helaga_. Mr.
Chalmers does not translate or explain it. Dr. C. G. Seligmann says
that the word “conveys something of the idea of ‘sacred,’ ‘set apart,’
‘charged with virtue’” (_The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p.
101, note 2).
Footnote 377:
A. C. Haddon, _Head-hunters_ (London, 1901), pp. 270-272, 275 _sq._
Footnote 378:
T. C. Hodson, “The Native Tribes of Manipur,” _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, xxxi. (1901) p. 307.
Footnote 379:
T. C. Hodson, “The _genna_ amongst the Tribes of Assam,” _Journal of
the Anthropological Institute_, xxxvi. (1906) p. 94.
Footnote 380:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xii. 54; Solinus, xxxiii. 6 _sq._, p. 166, ed. Th.
Mommsen (first edition).
Footnote 381:
Theophrastus, _Histor. plant._ ix. 4. 5 _sq._
Footnote 382:
Palladius, _De re rustica_, i. 6. 14; _Geoponica_, ix. 3. 5 _sq._
Footnote 383:
With what follows compare _Psyche’s Task_, chapter iv. pp. 31 _sqq._,
where I have adduced the same evidence to some extent in the same
words.
Footnote 384:
F. Mason, “On dwellings, works of art, laws, etc., of the Karens,”
_Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, xxxvii. (1868) Part ii.
pp. 147 _sq._ Compare A. R. M’Mahon, _The Karens of the Golden
Chersonese_ (London, 1876), pp. 334 _sq._
Footnote 385:
J. B. Neumann, “Het Pane- en Bila-stroomgebied op het eiland
Sumatra,” _Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig
Genootschap_, Tweede Serie, dl. iii. Afdeeling, meer uitgebreide
artikelen, No. 3 (1886), pp. 514 _sq._; M. Joustra, “Het leven, de
zeden en gewoonten der Bataks,” _Mededeelingen van wege het
Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap_, xlvi. (1902) p. 411.
Footnote 386:
H. Ling Roth, “Low’s natives of Borneo,” _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, xxi. (1892) pp. 113 _sq._, 133, xxii.
(1893) p. 24; _id._, _Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo_, i.
401. Compare Rev. J. Perham, “Petara, or Sea Dyak Gods,” _Journal of
the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society_, No. 8, December
1881, p. 150; H. Ling Roth, _Natives of Sarawak and British North
Borneo_, i. 180. According to Archdeacon Perham, “Every district
traversed by an adulterer is believed to be accursed of the gods until
the proper sacrifice has been offered.” In respectable Dyak families,
when an unmarried girl is found with child and the father is unknown,
they sacrifice a pig and sprinkle the doors with its blood to wash
away the sin (Spenser St. John, _Life in the Forests of the Far East_,
2nd Ed., i. 64). In Ceram a person convicted of unchastity has to
expiate his guilt by smearing every house in the village with the
blood of a pig and a fowl. See A. Bastian, _Indonesien_, i. (Berlin,
1884) p. 144.
Footnote 387:
A. W. Nieuwenhuis, _Quer durch Borneo_ (Leyden, 1904-1907), i. 367.
Footnote 388:
A. W. Nieuwenhuis, _Quer durch Borneo_, ii. 99; _id._, _In Centraal
Borneo_ (Leyden, 1900), ii. 278.
Footnote 389:
B. F. Matthes, “Over de _âdá’s_ of gewoonten der Makassaren en
Boegineezen,” _Verslagen en Mededeelingen der koninklijke Akademie van
Wetenschappen_, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Derde Reeks, II. (Amsterdam,
1885) p. 182. The similar Roman penalty for parricide (_Digest_,
xlviii. 9. 9; Valerius Maximus, i. 1. 13; J. E. B. Mayor’s note on
Juvenal _Sat._ viii. 214) may have been adopted for a similar reason.
But in that case the scourging which preceded the drowning can hardly
have been originally a part of the punishment.
Footnote 390:
A. C. Kruijt, “Eenige ethnografische aanteekeningen omtrent de
Toboengkoe en de Tomori,” _Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche
Zendelinggenootschap_, xliv. (1900) p. 235.
Footnote 391:
A. C. Kruijt, “Van Posso naar Mori,” _Mededeelingen van wege het
Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap_, xliv. (1900) p. 162.
Footnote 392:
M. J. van Baarda, “Fabelen, Verhalen en Overleveringen der
Galelareezen,” _Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van
Nederlandsch-Indië_, xlv. (1895) p. 514. In the Banggai Archipelago,
to the east of Celebes, earthquakes are explained as punishments
inflicted by evil spirits for indulgence in illicit love (F. S. A. de
Clercq, _Bijdragen tot de Kennis der Residentie Ternate_ (Leyden,
1890), p. 132).
Footnote 393:
O. Dapper, _Description de l’Afrique_ (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 326; R. E.
Dennett, _At the Back of the Black Man’s Mind_ (London, 1906), pp. 53,
67-71.
Footnote 394:
R. E. Dennett, _op. cit._ p. 52.
Footnote 395:
A. C. Hollis, _The Nandi, their Language and Folk-lore_ (Oxford,
1909), p. 76.
Footnote 396:
Rev. E. Casalis, _The Basutos_ (London, 1861), p. 252.
Footnote 397:
Sir Harry Johnston, _The Uganda Protectorate_ (London, 1902), ii. 718
_sq._
Footnote 398:
A. C. Kruijt, “Regen lokken en regen verdrijven bij de Toradja’s van
Midden Celebes,” _Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en
Volkenkunde_, xliv. (1901) p. 4.
Footnote 399:
Probably a similar extension of the superstition to animal life occurs
also among savages, though the authorities I have consulted do not
mention it. A trace, however, of such an extension appears in a belief
entertained by the Khasis of Assam, that if a man defies tribal custom
by marrying a woman of his own clan, the women of the tribe will die
in childbed and the people will suffer from other calamities. See
Colonel P. R. T. Gurdon, _The Khasis_ (London, 1907), pp. 94, 123.
Footnote 400:
Job xxxi. 11 _sq._ (Revised Version).
Footnote 401:
תבואה. See _Hebrew and English Lexicon_, by F. Brown, S. R. Driver,
and Ch. A. Briggs (Oxford, 1906), p. 100.
Footnote 402:
Genesis xii. 10-20, xx. 1-18.
Footnote 403:
Leviticus xviii. 24 _sq._
Footnote 404:
Sophocles, _Oedipus Tyrannus_, 22 _sqq._, 95 _sqq._
Footnote 405:
Tacitus, _Annals_, xii. 4 and 8.
Footnote 406:
Columella, _De re rustica_, xii. 2 _sq._, appealing to the authority
of M. Ambivius, Maenas Licinius, and C. Matius. See on this subject
below, p. 205.
Footnote 407:
G. Keating, _History of Ireland_, translated by J. O’Mahony (New York,
1857), pp. 337 _sq._; P. W. Joyce, _Social History of Ancient Ireland_
(London, 1903), ii. 512 _sq._; J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_ (London
and Edinburgh, 1888), pp. 308 _sq._
Footnote 408:
Compare _Totemism and Exogamy_, iv. 153 _sqq._
Footnote 409:
“Next (for hear me out now, readers) that I may tell ye whither my
younger feet wandered; I betook me among those lofty fables and
romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood
founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over all
Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight that he
should defend to the utmost expense of his best blood, or of his life,
if it so befell him, the honour and chastity of virgin or matron; from
whence even then I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be,
to the defence of which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of
themselves, had sworn; and if I found in the story afterward any of
them by word or deed breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault of
the poet as that which is attributed to Homer, to have written
indecent things of the gods. Only this my mind gave me, that every
free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight,
nor needed to expect the gilt spur or the laying of a sword upon his
shoulder to stir him up both by his counsel and his arm, to secure and
protect the weakness of any attempted chastity” (Milton, “Apology for
Smectymnuus,” _Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and
Miscellaneous Works of John Milton_ (London, 1738), vol. i. p. 111).
Footnote 410:
For examples of chastity observed at home by the friends of the absent
warriors, see above, vol. i. pp. 128, 131, 133. Examples of chastity
observed by the warriors themselves in the field will be given in the
second part of this work. Meanwhile see _The Golden Bough_, 2nd Ed.,
i. 328, note 2.
CHAPTER XII
THE SACRED MARRIAGE
§ 1. Diana as a Goddess of Fertility
[Sidenote: Dramatic marriages of gods and goddesses as a charm to
promote vegetation.] In the last chapter we saw 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 can 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 shew.
[Sidenote: Diana a goddess of the woodlands.] Diana was essentially a
goddess of the woodlands, as Ceres was a goddess of the corn and Bacchus
a god of the vine.[411] Her sanctuaries were commonly in groves, indeed
every grove was sacred to her,[412] and she is often associated with the
forest god Silvanus in dedications.[413] We must not [Sidenote: Sanctity
of holy groves in antiquity.] forget that to the ancients the sanctity
of a holy grove was very real and might not be violated with impunity.
For example, in Attica there was a sanctuary of Erithasean Apollo, and
it was enacted by law that any person caught in the act of cutting trees
in it, or carrying away timber, firewood, or fallen leaves, should be
punished with fifty stripes, if he was a slave, or with a fine of fifty
drachms, if he was a freeman. The culprit was denounced by the priest to
the king, that is, to the sacred official or minister of state who bore
the royal title.[414] Similarly it was the duty of the sacred men at
Andania, in Messenia, to scourge slaves and fine freemen who cut wood in
the grove of the Great Goddesses.[415] In Crete it was forbidden, under
pain of curses and fines, to fell timber, sow corn, and herd or fold
flocks within the precinct of Dictaean Zeus.[416] In Italy like customs
prevailed. Near Spoletium there was a sacred grove from which nothing
might be taken, and in which no wood might be cut except just so much as
was needed for the annual sacrifice. Any person who knowingly violated
the sanctity of the grove had to expiate his offence by sacrificing an
ox to Jupiter, and to pay besides a fine of three hundred pence.[417] In
his treatise on farming Cato directs that before thinning a grove the
Roman husbandman should offer a pig as an expiatory sacrifice to the god
or goddess of the place, and should entreat his or her favour for
himself, his children, and his household.[418] The _Fratres Arvales_ or
Brethren of the Tilled Fields were a Roman college of twelve priests,
who performed public religious rites for the purpose of making the crops
to grow, and they wore wreaths of ears of corn as a badge of their
office.[419] Their sacrifices were offered in the grove of the goddess
Dia, situated five miles down the Tiber from Rome. So hallowed was this
grove, which is known to have included laurels and holly-oaks, that
expiatory sacrifices of sows and lambs had to be offered when a rotten
bough fell to the ground, or when an old tree was laid low by a storm or
dragged down by a load of snow on its branches. And still more elaborate
expiation had to be made with the slaughter of sows, sheep, and bulls
when any of the sacred trees were struck by lightning and it was
necessary to dig them up by the roots, split them, burn them, and plant
others in their room.[420] At the annual festival of the Parilia, which
was intended to ensure the welfare of the flocks and herds, Roman
shepherds prayed to be forgiven if they had entered a hallowed grove, or
sat down under a sacred tree, or lopped a holy bough in order to feed a
sick sheep on the leaves.[421]
[Sidenote: Sense of the divinity of woods shared by polite Roman
writers.] Nor was this sense of the indwelling divinity of the woods
confined to the simple rustics who, tending their flocks in the
chequered shade, felt the presence of spirits in the solemn stillness of
the forest, heard their voices in the sough of the wind among the
branches, and saw their handiwork in the fresh green of spring and the
fading gold of autumn. The feeling was shared by the most cultivated
minds in the greatest age of Roman civilisation. Pliny says that “the
woods were formerly the temples of the deities, and even now simple
country folk dedicate a tall tree to a god with the ritual of the olden
time; and we adore sacred groves and the very silence that reigns in
them not less devoutly than images that gleam with gold and ivory.”[422]
Similarly Seneca writes: “If you come upon a grove of old trees that
have shot up above the common height and shut out the sight of the sky
by the gloom of their matted boughs, you feel there is a spirit in the
place, so lofty is the wood, so lone the spot, so wondrous the thick
unbroken shade.”[423]
[Sidenote: The breaking of the Golden Bough a rite of solemn
significance, not a mere piece of bravado.] Thus the ancients, like many
other people in various parts of the world, were deeply impressed with
the sanctity of holy groves, and regarded even the cutting of a bough in
them as a sacrilege which called for expiation. If therefore a candidate
for the priesthood of Diana at Nemi had to break a branch of a certain
tree in the sacred grove before he could fight the King of the Wood, we
may be sure that the act was a rite of solemn significance, and that to
treat it as a mere piece of bravado, a challenge to the priest to come
on and defend his domain, would be to commit the commonest of all errors
in dealing with the past, that, namely, of interpreting the customs of
other races and other generations by reference to modern European
standards. In order to understand an alien religion the first essential
is to divest ourselves, as well as we can, of our own familiar
prepossessions, and to place ourselves at the point of view of those
whose faith and practice we are studying. To do this at all is
difficult; to do it completely is perhaps impossible; yet the attempt
must be made if the enquiry is to progress instead of returning on
itself in a vicious circle.
[Sidenote: Diana not a mere goddess of trees, but, like Artemis, a
personification of the teeming life of nature, both animal and
vegetable.] 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 [Sidenote: A deity of the
woods is naturally the patron of the beasts in the woods, both game and
cattle.] to be the patron goddess both of hunters and herdsmen,[424]
just as Silvanus was the god not only of woods, but of cattle.[425]
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.[426] So in the belief of Russian peasants the
spirit Leschiy rules both the wood and all the creatures in it. The bear
is to him what the dog is to man; and the migrations of the squirrels,
the field-mice, and other denizens of the woods are carried out in
obedience to his behests. Success in the chase depends on his favour,
and to assure himself of the spirit’s help the huntsman lays an
offering, generally of bread and salt, on the trunk of a tree in the
forest. In White Russia every herdsman must present a cow to Leschiy in
summer, and in the Government of Archangel some herdsmen have won his
favour so far that he even feeds and tends their herds for them.[427]
Similarly the forest-god of the Lapps ruled over all the beasts of the
forest; they were viewed as his herds, and good or bad luck in hunting
depended on his will.[428] So, too, the Samagitians deemed the birds and
beasts of the woods sacred, doubtless because they were under the
protection of the sylvan god.[429] 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.[430]
[Sidenote: The crowning of hunting dogs on Diana’s day was probably a
purificatory ceremony to cleanse them from the guilt of having killed
game, the creatures of the goddess.] We have seen that at Diana’s
festival it was customary to crown hunting dogs, to leave wild beasts in
peace, and to perform a purificatory ceremony for the benefit of young
people.[431] Some light is thrown on the meaning of these customs by a
passage in Arrian’s treatise on hunting. He tells us that a good hound
is a boon conferred by one of the gods upon the huntsman, who ought to
testify his gratitude by sacrificing to the Huntress Artemis. Further,
Arrian goes on to say: “It is right that after a successful chase a man
should sacrifice and dedicate the first-fruits of his bag to the
goddess, in order to purify both the hounds and the hunters, in
accordance with old custom and usage.” He tells us that the Celts were
wont to form a treasury for the goddess Artemis, into which they paid a
fine of two obols for every hare they killed, a drachm for every fox,
and four drachms for every roe. Once a year, on the birthday of Artemis,
they opened the treasury, and with the accumulated fines purchased a
sacrificial victim, it might be a sheep, a goat, or a calf. Having slain
the animal and offered her share to the Huntress Artemis, they feasted,
both men and dogs; and they crowned the dogs on that day “in order to
signify,” says Arrian, “that the festival was for their benefit.”[432]
The Celts to whom Arrian, a native of Bithynia, here refers were
probably the Galatians of Asia Minor; but doubtless the custom he
describes was imported by these barbarians, along with their native
tongue[433] and the worship of the oak,[434] from their old home in
Central or Northern Europe. The Celtic divinity whom Arrian identifies
with Artemis may well have been really akin both to her and to the
Italian Diana. We know from other sources that the Celts revered a
woodland goddess of this type; thus Arduinna, goddess of the forest of
the Ardennes, was represented, like Artemis and Diana, with a bow and
quiver.[435] In any case the custom described by Arrian is good evidence
of a belief that the wild beasts belong to the goddess of the wilds, who
must be compensated for their destruction; and, taken with what he says
of the need of purifying the hounds after a successful chase, the Celtic
practice of crowning them at the annual festival of Artemis may have
been meant to purge them of the stain they had contracted by killing the
creatures of the goddess. The same explanation would naturally apply to
the same custom observed by the Italians at the festival of Diana.
[Sidenote: Cattle crowned to protect them from witchcraft.] But why, it
may be asked, should crowns or garlands cleanse dogs from the taint of
bloodshed? An answer to this question is indicated by the reason which
the South Slavonian peasant assigns for crowning the horns of his cows
with wreaths of flowers on St. George’s Day, the twenty-third of April.
He does it in order to guard the cattle against witchcraft; cows that
have no crowns are regarded as given over to the witches. In the evening
the chaplets are fastened to the door of the cattle-stall, and remain
there throughout the year. A herdsman who fails to crown his beasts is
scolded and sometimes beaten by his master.[436] The German and French
custom of crowning cattle on Midsummer Day[437] probably springs from
the same motive. For on Midsummer Eve, just as on Walpurgis Night,
witches are very busy holding their nocturnal assemblies and trying to
steal the milk and butter from the cows. To guard against them some
people at this season lay besoms crosswise before the doors of the
stalls. Others make fast the doors and stop up the chinks, lest the
witches should creep through them on their return from the revels. In
Swabia all the church bells used to be kept ringing from nine at night
till break of day on Midsummer morning to drive away the infernal rout
from honest folk’s houses. South Slavonian peasants are up betimes that
morning, gather the dew from the grass, and wash the cows with it; that
saves their milk from the hellish charms of the witches.[438]
[Sidenote: Similarly the crowning of hunting dogs may have been meant to
protect them against the angry spirits of the beasts they had killed.]
Now when we observe that garlands of flowers, like hawthorn and other
green boughs,[439] avail to ward off the unseen powers of mischief, we
may conjecture that the practice of crowning dogs at the festival of a
huntress goddess was intended to preserve the hounds from the angry and
dangerous spirits of the wild beasts which they had killed in the course
of the year. Fantastical as this explanation may sound to us, it is
perfectly in accordance with the ideas of the savage, who, as we shall
see later on, resorts to a multitude of curious expedients for disarming
the wrath of the animals whose life he has been obliged to take. Thus
conceived, the custom in question might still be termed a purification;
but its original purpose, like that of many other purificatory rites,
would be not so much to cleanse moral guilt, as to raise a physical
barrier against the assaults of malignant and mischievous spirits.[440]
[Sidenote: Conceived as the moon, Diana was also a goddess of crops and
of childbirth.] 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.[441] 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.[442] 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.[443] 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.[444] Hence too we can understand why an ancient
Roman law, attributed to King Tullius Hostilius, prescribed that, when
incest had been committed, an expiatory sacrifice should be offered by
the pontiffs in the grove of Diana.[445] For we know that the crime of
incest is commonly supposed to cause a dearth;[446] hence it would be
meet that atonement for the offence should be made to the goddess of
fertility.
[Sidenote: As a goddess of fertility Diana had herself to be fertile,
and for that purpose needed a male partner.] 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.[447] 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
[Sidenote: Marriages of the gods in Babylonia and Assyria.] 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.[448] As Bel at Babylon was identified with Marduk, the chief
god of the city,[449] the woman who thus shared his bed was doubtless
one of the “wives of Marduk” mentioned in the code of Hammurabi.[450] At
Calah, which was for some time the capital of Assyria before it was
displaced by Nineveh,[451] the marriage of the god Nabu appears to have
been annually celebrated on the third of the month Iyyar or Airu, which
corresponded to May. For on that day his bed was consecrated in the
city, and the god entered his bedchamber, to return to his place on the
following day. The ceremonies attending the consecration of the couch
are minutely described in a liturgical text. After the appropriate
offerings had been presented, the officiating priestess purified the
feet of the divine image with a sprig of reed and a vessel of oil,
approached the bed thrice, kissed the feet of the image, then retired
and sat down. After that she burned cedar wood dipped in wine, set
before the image the heart of a sheep wrapped in a cloth, and offered
libations. Aromatic woods were consecrated and burnt, more libations and
offerings were made, tables were spread for various divinities, and the
ceremony ended with a prayer for the King. The god also went in
procession to a grove, riding in a chariot beside his charioteer.[452]
[Sidenote: Marriage of the god Ammon to the Queen of Egypt.] 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.[453] 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. The pictures at Deir el
Bahari, which represent the begetting and birth of Queen Hatshopsitou,
are the more ancient, and have been reproduced with but little change at
Luxor, where they represent the begetting and birth of King Amenophis
III. The nativity is depicted in about fifteen scenes, which may be
grouped in three acts: first, the carnal union of the god with the
queen; second, the birth; and third, the recognition of the infant by
the gods. The marriage of Ammon with the queen is announced by a
prologue in heaven; Ammon summons his assessors, the gods of Heliopolis,
reveals to them the future birth of a new Pharaoh, a royal princess, and
requests them to make ready the fluid of life and of strength, of which
they are masters. Then the god is seen approaching the queen’s
bedchamber; in front of him marches Thoth, with a roll of papyrus in his
hand, who, to prevent mistakes, recites the official names of the queen,
the spouse of the reigning king (Thothmes I. at Deir el Bahari, Thothmes
IV. at Luxor), the fairest of women. Then Thoth withdraws behind Ammon,
lifting his arm behind the god in order to renew his vital fluid at this
critical moment. Next, according to the inscription, the mystery of
incarnation takes place. Ammon lays aside his godhead and becomes flesh
in the likeness of the king, the human spouse of the queen. The
consummation of the divine union follows immediately. On a bed of state
the god and the queen appear seated opposite each other, with their legs
crossed. The queen receives from her husband the symbols of life and
strength, while two goddesses, Neit and Selkit, the patronesses of
matrimony, support the feet of the couple and guard them from harm. The
text which encloses the scene sets forth clearly the reality of this
mystic union of the human with the divine. “Thus saith Ammon-Ra, king of
the gods, lord of Karnak, he who rules over Thebes, when he took the
form of this male, the King of Upper and Nether Egypt, Thothmes I. (or
Thothmes IV.), giver of life. He found the queen then when she lay in
the glory of her palace. She awoke at the fragrance of the god, and
marvelled at it. Straightway his Majesty went towards her, took
possession of her, placed his heart in her, and shewed himself to her in
his divine form. And upon his coming she was uplifted at the sight of
his beauty, the love of the god ran through all her limbs, and the smell
of the god and his breath were full of the perfumes of Pounit. And thus
saith the royal spouse, the royal mother Ahmasi (or Moutemouaa), in
presence of the majesty of this glorious god, Ammon, lord of Karnak,
lord of Thebes, ‘Twice great are thy souls! It is noble to behold thy
countenance when thou joinest thyself to my majesty in all grace! Thy
dew impregnates all my limbs.’ Then, when the majesty of the god had
accomplished all his desire with her, Ammon, the lord of the two lands,
said to her: ‘_She who is joined to Ammon, the first of the nobles_,
verily, such shall be the name of the daughter who shall open thy womb,
since such is the course of the words that came forth from thy mouth.
She shall reign in righteousness in all the earth, for my soul is hers,
my heart is hers, my will is hers, my crown is hers, truly, that she may
rule over the two lands, that she may guide the souls of all living.’”
[Sidenote: Nativity of the divine Egyptian kings represented on the
monuments.] After the begetting of the divine child—for we must remember
that the kings and queens of Egypt were regarded as divinities in their
lifetime—another series of scenes represents the fashioning of its body
and its birth. The god Khnoumou, who in the beginning of time moulded
gods and men on his potter’s wheel, is seen seated at his wheel
modelling the future king or queen and their doubles—those spiritual
duplicates or external souls which were believed to hover invisible
about both men and gods all through life. In front of Khnoumou kneels
Hiqit, the frog-headed goddess, “the great magician”; she is holding out
to the newly-created figures the symbol of life, the _crux ansata_ ♀, in
order that they may breathe and live. Another scene represents the
birth. At Deir el Bahari the queen has already been delivered, and is
presenting her daughter to several goddesses, who have acted the part of
midwives. At Luxor the double of the royal infant is born first; the
goddesses who serve as nurses have him in their arms, and the midwives
are preparing to receive the real child. Behind the queen are the
goddesses who watch over childbirth, led by Isis and Nephthys; and all
around the spirits of the East, the West, the North, and the South are
presenting the symbol of life or uttering acclamations. In a corner the
grotesque god Bes and the female hippopotamus Api keep off all evil
influence and every malignant spirit.
[Sidenote: These representations probably copied from the life.] We
shall probably not err in assuming, with some eminent authorities, that
the ceremonies of the nativity of the Pharaohs, thus emblazoned on the
walls of Egyptian temples, were copied from the life; in other words,
that the carved and painted scenes represent a real drama, which was
acted by masked men and women whenever a queen of Egypt was brought to
bed. “Here, as everywhere else in Egypt,” says Professor Maspero,
“sculptor and painter did nothing but faithfully imitate reality. Theory
required that the assimilation of the kings to the gods should be
complete, so that every act of the royal life was, as it were, a tracing
of the corresponding act of the divine life. From the moment that the
king was Ammon, he wore the costume and badges of Ammon—the tall hat
with the long plumes, the cross of life, the greyhound-headed
sceptre—and thus arrayed he presented himself in the queen’s bedchamber
to consummate the marriage. The assistants also assumed the costume and
appearance of the divinities whom they incarnated; the men put on masks
of jackals, hawks, and crocodiles, while the women donned masks of cows
or frogs, according as they played the parts of Anubis, Khnoumou,
Sovkou, Hathor, or Hiqit; and I am disposed to believe that the doubles
of the new-born child were represented by as many puppets as were
required by the ceremonies. Some of the rites were complicated, and must
have tired excessively the mother and child who underwent them; but they
are nothing to those that have been observed in similar circumstances in
other lands. In general, we are bound to hold that all the pictures
traced on the walls of the temples, in which the person of the king is
concerned, correspond to a real action in which disguised personages
played the part of gods.”[454]
[Sidenote: Human wives of Ammon in the decline of Egypt.] In the decline
of Egypt from the eleventh century onward, the wives of Ammon at Thebes
were called on to play a conspicuous part in the government of the
country. The strong grip of the Pharaohs was relaxed and under their
feeble successors the empire crumbled away into a number of petty
independent states. In this dissolution of the central authority the
crafty high priests of Ammon at Thebes contrived to usurp regal powers
and to reign far and wide in the name of the deity, veiling their
rescripts under the guise of oracles of the god, who, with the help of a
little jugglery, complacently signified his assent to their wishes by
nodding his head or even by speech. But curiously enough under this
pretended theocracy the nominal ruler was not the priest himself, but
his wife, the earthly consort of Ammon. Thus Thebes became for a time a
ghostly principality governed ostensibly by a dynasty of female popes.
Their office was hereditary, passing by rights from mother to daughter.
But probably the entail was often broken by the policy or ambition of
the men who stood behind the scenes and worked the religious puppet-show
by hidden wires to the awe and astonishment of the gaping vulgar.
Certainly we know that on one occasion King Psammetichus First foisted
his own daughter into the Holy See by dedicating her to Ammon under a
hypocritical profession of gratitude for favours bestowed on him by the
deity. And the female pope had to submit to the dictation with the best
grace she could assume, protesting her affection for the adopted
daughter who had ousted her own daughter from the throne.[455]
[Sidenote: Human concubines of Ammon in Roman times.] At a later period,
when Egypt lay under the heel of Rome, the character of “the divine
consort” of Ammon at Thebes had greatly changed. For at the beginning of
our era the custom was to appoint a young and beautiful girl, the scion
of one of the noblest houses, to serve Ammon as his concubine. The
Greeks called these maidens Pallades, apparently after their own virgin
goddess Pallas; but the conduct of the girls was by no means maidenly,
for they led the loosest of lives till puberty. Then they were mourned
over and given in marriage.[456] Their graves were shown near
Thebes.[457] The reason why their services ended at puberty may have
been that as concubines of the god they might not bear children to
mortal fathers; hence it was deemed prudent to terminate their relations
with the divinity before they were of an age to become mothers. It was
an Egyptian doctrine that a mortal woman could conceive by a god, but
that a goddess could not conceive by a mortal man.[458] The certainty of
maternity and the uncertainty of paternity suggest an obvious and
probably sufficient ground for this theological distinction.
[Sidenote: Apollo and his prophetess at Patara.] Apollo was said to
spend the winter months at Patara in Lycia and the summer months in the
island of Delos, and accordingly he gave oracles for one half of the
year in the one place, and for the other half in the other.[459] So long
as he tarried at Patara, his prophetess was shut up with him in the
temple every night.[460] At Ephesus there was a college [Sidenote: The
Essenes of Artemis at Ephesus.] of sacred men called Essenes or King
Bees who held office for a year, during which they had to observe strict
chastity and other rules of ceremonial purity.[461] How many of them
there were at a time we do not know, but there must have been several,
for in Ephesian inscriptions they are regularly referred to in the
plural. They cannot have been bound to lifelong celibacy, for in one of
the inscriptions an Essen mentions his wife.[462] Possibly they were
deemed the annual husbands of Artemis, the great many-breasted goddess
of fertility at Ephesus, whose association with the bee is vouched for
by the figures of bees which appear commonly both on her statues and on
the coins of Ephesus.[463] If this conjecture is right, the King Bees
and their bee-goddess Artemis at Ephesus would be closely parallel to
the King of the Wood and his woodland-goddess Diana at Nemi, as these
latter are interpreted by me. The rule of chastity imposed on the King
Bees during their year of office would be easily explicable on this
hypothesis. As the temporary husbands of the goddess they would be
expected for the time being to have no intercourse with mortal women,
just as the human wives of Bel and Ammon were supposed to have no
commerce with mortal men.
[Sidenote: Marriage of Dionysus to the Queen at Athens.] 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. Attic law required that
the Queen should be a burgess and should never have known any man but
her husband. She had to offer certain secret sacrifices on behalf of the
state, and was permitted to see what no foreign woman might ever behold,
and to enter where no other Athenian might set foot. She was assisted in
the discharge of her solemn functions by fourteen sacred women, one for
each of the altars of Dionysus. The old Dionysiac festival was held on
the twelfth day of the month Anthesterion, corresponding roughly to our
February, at the ancient sanctuary of Dionysus in the Marshes, which was
never opened throughout the year save on that one day. At this festival
the Queen exacted an oath of purity and chastity from the fourteen
sacred women at the altar. Possibly her marriage was celebrated on the
same day, though of that we have no positive evidence, and we learn from
Aristotle that the ceremony took place, not at the sanctuary in the
marshes, but 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.[464] But whatever the date of the
wedding, its object 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. Again, the story, dear to
poets and artists, of the forsaken and sleeping Ariadne, waked and
wedded by Dionysus, resembles so closely the little drama acted by
French peasants of the Alps on May Day,[465] that, considering the
character of Dionysus as a god of vegetation, we can hardly help
regarding it as the reflection of a spring ceremony like the French one.
In point of fact the [Sidenote: Dionysus and Ariadne.] marriage of
Dionysus and Ariadne was believed by Preller to have been acted every
spring in Crete.[466] His evidence, indeed, is inconclusive, but the
view itself is probable. If I am right in comparing the two, the chief
difference between the French and the Greek ceremonies appears to have
been that in the former the sleeper was a forsaken bridegroom, in the
latter a forsaken bride; and the group of stars in the sky, in which
fancy saw Ariadne’s wedding crown,[467] may have been only a translation
to heaven of the garland worn by the Greek girl who played the Queen of
May.
[Sidenote: Marriage of Zeus with Demeter at Eleusis.] If at Athens, and
probably elsewhere, the vine-god was married to a queen in order that
the vines might be loaded with clusters of grapes, there is reason to
think that a marriage of a different kind, intended to make the fields
wave with yellow corn, was annually celebrated not many miles off,
beyond the low hills that bound the plain of Athens on the west. 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.[468] 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.
[Sidenote: Marriage of Zeus and Hera at Plataea.] But Zeus was not
always the sky-god, nor did he always marry the corn-goddess. If in
antiquity a traveller, quitting Eleusis and passing through miles of
olive-groves and corn-fields, had climbed the pine-clad mountains of
Cithaeron and descended through the forest on their northern slope to
Plataea, he might have chanced to find the people of that little
Boeotian town celebrating a different marriage of the great god to a
different goddess. The ceremony is described by a Greek antiquary whose
note-book has fortunately preserved for us not a few rural customs of
ancient Greece, of which the knowledge would otherwise have perished.
Every few years the people of Plataea held a festival which they called
the Little Daedala. On the day of the festival they went out into an
ancient oak forest, the trees of which were of gigantic girth. There
they set some boiled meat on the ground, and watched the birds that
gathered round it. When a raven was observed to carry off a piece of the
meat and perch on an oak, the people followed it and cut down the tree.
With the wood of the tree they made an image, dressed it as a bride, and
placed it on a bullock-cart with a bridesmaid beside it. It seems then
to have been drawn to the banks of the river Asopus and back to the
town, attended by a piping and dancing crowd. After the festival the
image was put away and kept till the celebration of the Great Daedala,
which fell only once in sixty years, and was held by all the people of
Boeotia. On this occasion all the images, fourteen in number, that had
accumulated from the celebrations of the Little Daedala were dragged on
wains in procession to the river Asopus, and then to the top of Mount
Cithaeron. There an altar had been constructed of square blocks of wood
fitted together, with brushwood heaped over it. Animals were sacrificed
by being burned on the altar, and the altar itself, together with the
images, was consumed by the flames. The blaze, we are told, rose to a
prodigious height and was seen for many miles. To explain the origin of
the festival a story ran that once upon a time Hera had quarrelled with
Zeus and left him in high dudgeon. To lure her back Zeus gave out that
he was about to marry the nymph Plataea, daughter of the river Asopus.
He had a fine oak cut down, shaped and dressed as a bride, and conveyed
on a bullock-cart. Transported with rage and jealousy, Hera flew to the
cart, and tearing off the veil of the pretended bride, discovered the
deceit that had been practised on her. Her rage now turned to laughter,
and she became reconciled to her husband Zeus.[469]
[Sidenote: Resemblance of the Plataean ceremony to the spring and
midsummer festivals of modern Europe.] The resemblance of this festival
to some of the European spring and midsummer festivals is tolerably
close. We have seen that in Russia at Whitsuntide the villagers go out
into the wood, fell a birch-tree, dress it in woman’s clothes, and bring
it back to the village with dance and song. On the third day it is
thrown into the water.[470] Again, we have seen that in Bohemia on
Midsummer Eve the village lads fell a tall fir or pine-tree in the wood
and set it up on a height, where it is adorned with garlands, nosegays,
and ribbons, and afterwards burnt.[471] The reason for burning the tree
will appear afterwards; the custom itself is not uncommon in modern
Europe. In some parts of the Pyrenees a tall and slender tree is cut
down on May Day and kept till Midsummer Eve. It is then rolled to the
top of a hill, set up, and burned.[472] In Angoulême on St. Peter’s Day,
the twenty-ninth of June, a tall leafy poplar is set up in the
market-place and burned.[473] Near Launceston in Cornwall there is a
large tumulus known as Whiteborough, with a fosse round it. On this
tumulus “there was formerly a great bonfire on Midsummer Eve; a large
summer pole was fixed in the centre, round which the fuel was heaped up.
It had a large bush on the top of it. Round this were parties of
wrestlers contending for small prizes.” The rustics believed that giants
were buried in such mounds, and nothing would tempt them to disturb
their bones.[474] In Dublin on May-morning boys used to go out and cut a
May-bush, bring it back to town, and then burn it.[475]
[Sidenote: All such ceremonies were originally magical rites intended to
bring about the effects which they dramatically represented.] Probably
the Boeotian festival belonged to the same class of rites. It
represented the marriage of the powers of vegetation—the union of the
oak-god with the oak-goddess[476]—in spring or midsummer, just as the
same event is represented in modern Europe by a King and Queen or a Lord
and Lady of the May. In the Boeotian, as in the Russian, ceremony the
tree dressed as a woman stands for the English May-pole and May-queen in
one. All such ceremonies, it must be remembered, are not, or at least
were not originally, mere spectacular or dramatic exhibitions. They are
magical rites designed to produce the effect which they dramatically set
forth. If the revival of vegetation in spring is mimicked by the
awakening of a sleeper, the mimicry is intended actually to quicken the
growth of leaves and blossoms; if the marriage of the powers of
vegetation is simulated by a King and Queen of May, the idea is that the
powers thus personated will really be rendered more productive by the
ceremony. In short, all these spring and midsummer festivals fall under
the head of homoeopathic or imitative magic. The thing which people wish
to bring about they represent dramatically, and the very representation
is believed to effect, or at least to contribute to, the production of
the desired result. In the case of the Daedala the story of Hera’s
quarrel with Zeus and her sullen retirement may perhaps without
straining be interpreted as a mythical expression for a bad season and
the failure of the crops. The same disastrous effects were attributed to
the anger and seclusion of Demeter after the loss of her daughter
Proserpine.[477] Now the institution of a festival is often explained by
a mythical story, which relates how upon a particular occasion those
very calamities occurred which it is the real object of the festival to
avert; so that if we know the myth told to account for the historical
origin of the festival, we can often infer from it the real intention
with which the festival was celebrated. If, therefore, the origin of the
Daedala was explained by a story of a failure of crops and consequent
famine, we may infer that the real object of the festival was to prevent
the occurrence of such disasters; and, if I am right in my
interpretation of the festival, the object was supposed to be effected
by dramatically representing the marriage of the divinities most
concerned with the production of trees and plants. The marriage of Zeus
and Hera was acted at annual festivals in various parts of Greece,[478]
and it is at least a fair conjecture that the nature and intention of
these ceremonies were such as I have assigned to the Plataean festival
of the Daedala; in other words, that Zeus and Hera at these festivals
were the Greek equivalents of the Lord and Lady of the May. Homer’s
glowing picture of Zeus and Hera couched on fresh hyacinths and
crocuses,[479] like Milton’s description of the dalliance of Zephyr with
Aurora, “as he met her once a-Maying,” was perhaps painted from the
life.
[Sidenote: The god Frey and his human wife in Sweden.] The sacred
marriage of Zeus and Hera had, as was natural, its counterpart among the
northern kinsfolk of the Greeks. 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. Once on a time a Norwegian exile named
Gunnar Helming gave himself out to be Frey in person, and rode about on
the sacred waggon dressed up in the god’s clothes. Everywhere the simple
folk welcomed him as the deity, and observed with wonder and delight
that a god walked about among men and ate and drank just like other
people. And when the months went by, and the god’s fair young wife was
seen to be with child, their joy waxed greatly, for they thought,
“Surely this is an omen of a fruitful season.” It happened that the
weather was then so mild, and the promise of a plenteous harvest so
fair, that no man ever remembered such a year before. But one night the
god departed in haste, with his wife and all the gold and silver and
fine raiment which he had got together; and though the Swedes made after
him, they could not catch him. He was over the hills and far away in
Norway.[480] Similar ceremonies appear to have been observed by the
[Sidenote: Similar customs in Gaul.] peasantry of Gaul in antiquity; for
Gregory of Tours, writing in the sixth century of our era, says that at
Autun the people used to carry about an image of a goddess in a waggon
drawn by oxen. The intention of the ceremony was to ensure the safety of
the crops and vines, and the rustics danced and sang in front of the
image.[481] The old historian identifies the goddess with Cybele, the
Great Mother goddess of Phrygia, and the identification would seem to be
correct. For we learn from another source that men wrought up to a pitch
of frenzy by the shrill music of flutes and the clash of cymbals,
sacrificed their virility to the goddess, dashing the severed portions
of themselves against her image.[482] Now this religious castration was
a marked feature of the Phrygian worship of Cybele, but it is alien to
Western modes of thought, although it still finds favour with a section
of the barbarous, fanatical, semi-Oriental peasantry of Russia.[483] But
whether of native or of Eastern origin the rites of the goddess of Autun
closely conformed to those of the great Phrygian goddess and appear to
have been, like them, a perverted form of the Sacred Marriage, which was
designed to fertilise the earth, and in which eunuchs, strange as it may
seem, personated the lovers of the goddess.[484]
[Sidenote: The custom of marrying gods to images or to living persons is
found also among uncivilised peoples.] 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 [Sidenote: Custom of the Wotyaks.] 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
mischievous 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 this,
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 Mukylćin, the Earth-wife, in order
that she might influence him for good.”[485] This carrying of turf, like
a bride, in a waggon from a sacred grove resembles the Plataean custom
of carting an oak log as a bride from an ancient oak forest; and we have
seen ground for thinking that the Plataean ceremony, like its Wotyak
counterpart, was intended as a charm to secure fertility. When wells are
dug in Bengal, a wooden image of a god is made and married to the
goddess of water.[486]
[Sidenote: Custom of the Peruvian Indians.] Often the bride destined for
the god is not a log or a clod, 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 shewed her the utmost reverence and deemed
her divine.[487] The Blackfoot Indians of North [Sidenote: Marriage of a
woman to the Sun among the Blackfoot Indians.] America used to worship
the Sun as their chief god, and they held a festival every year in his
honour. Four days before the new moon of August the tribe halted on its
march, and all hunting was suspended. Bodies of mounted men were on duty
day and night to carry out the orders of the high priest of the Sun. He
enjoined the people to fast and to take vapour baths during the four
days before the new moon. Moreover, with the help of his council, he
chose the Vestal who was to represent the Moon and to be married to the
Sun at the festival. She might be either a virgin or a woman who had had
but one husband. Any girl or woman found to have discharged the sacred
duties without fulfilling the prescribed conditions was put to death. On
the third day of preparation, after the last purification had been
observed, they built a round temple of the Sun. Posts were driven into
the ground in a circle; these were connected with cross-pieces, and the
whole was covered with leaves. In the middle stood the sacred pole,
supporting the roof. A bundle of many small branches of sacred wood,
wrapped in a splendid buffalo robe, crowned the summit of the temple.
The entrance was on the east, and within the sanctuary stood an altar on
which rested the head of a buffalo. Beside the altar was the place
reserved for the Vestal. Here, on a bed prepared for her, she slept “the
sleep of war,” as it was called. Her other duties consisted in
maintaining a sacred fire of fragrant herbs, in presenting a lighted
pipe to her husband the Sun, and in telling the high priest the dream
she dreamed during “the sleep of war.” On learning it the priest had it
proclaimed to the whole nation to the beat of drum.[488] Every year
about the middle of March, when the season for fishing with the drag-net
began, the [Sidenote: Marriage of girls to fishing nets among the Hurons
and Algonquins.] 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.[489]
[Sidenote: Sacred Marriage of the Sun-god and Earth-goddess among the
Oraons.] The Oraons of Bengal worship the Earth as a goddess, and
annually celebrate her marriage with the Sun-god Dharmē at the time when
the _sāl_ tree is in blossom. The ceremony is as follows. All bathe,
then the men repair to the sacred grove (_sarnā_), 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, symbolizing 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.”[490] 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 a
licentious orgy. Among the Sulka of New Britain, at the village of
Kolvagat, a certain man has charge of two stone figures which are called
respectively “Our grandfather” (_ngur es_) and “Our grandmother” (_ngur
pei_). They are said to be kept in a house built specially for the
purpose. Fruits of the field are offered to them and left beside them to
rot. When their guardian puts the two figures with their faces turned
towards each other, the plantations are believed to flourish; but when
he sets them back to back, there is dearth and the people suffer from
eruptions on the skin.[491] This turning of the two images face to face
may be regarded as a simple form of Sacred Marriage between the two
divine powers represented by them, who are clearly supposed to control
the fertility of the plantations.
[Sidenote: Marriage of women to gods in India and Africa.] At the
village of Bas Doda, in the Gurgaon district of North-Western India, a
fair is held on the twenty-sixth of the month Chait and the two
following days. We are told that formerly girls of the Dhinwar class
used to be married to the god at these festivals, and that they always
died soon afterwards. Of late years the practice is said to have been
discontinued.[492] In Behar during the month of Sawan (August) crowds of
women, calling themselves Nagin or “wives of the snake,” go about for
two and a half days begging; during this time they may neither sleep
under a roof nor eat salt. Half the proceeds of their begging is given
to Brahmans, and the other half spent in salt and sweet-meats, which are
eaten by all the villagers.[493] Amongst the Ewe-speaking peoples of the
Slave Coast in West Africa human wives of gods are very common. In
Dahomey they swarm, and it has even been estimated that every fourth
woman is devoted to the service of some deity. The chief business of
these female votaries is prostitution. In every town there is at least
one seminary where the handsomest girls, between ten and twelve years of
age, are trained. They stay for three years, learning the chants and
dances peculiar to the worship of the gods, and prostituting themselves
to the priests and the inmates of the male seminaries. At the end of
their noviciate they become public harlots. But no disgrace attaches to
their profession, for it is believed that they are married to the god,
and that their excesses are caused and directed by him. Strictly
speaking, they should confine their favours to the male worshippers at
the temple, but in practice they bestow them indiscriminately. Children
born of such unions belong to the deity. As the wives of a god, these
sacred women may not marry. But they are not bound to the service of the
divinity for life. Some only bear his name and sacrifice to him on their
birthdays.[494] Amongst these polygamous West African gods the sacred
python seems to be particularly associated with the fertility of the
earth; for he is invoked in excessively wet, dry, and barren seasons,
and the time of year when young girls are sought out to be his brides is
when the millet is beginning to sprout.[495]
[Sidenote: Women married to water-gods.] 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.[496] 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.[497] In
Kengtung, one of the principal Shan states of Upper Burma, the spirit of
the Nawng Tung lake is regarded as very powerful, and is propitiated
with offerings in the eighth month (about July) of each year. A
remarkable feature of the worship of this spirit consists in the
dedication to him of four virgins in marriage. Custom requires that this
should be done once in every three years. It was actually done by the
late king or chief (Sawbwa) in 1893, but down to 1901 the rite had not
been performed by his successor. The following are the chief features of
the ceremony. The virgins who are to wed the spirit of the lake must be
of pure Hkön race. Orders are sent out for all the Hkön of the valley to
attend. From the unmarried women of suitable age, ten are selected.
These are as beautiful as may be, and must be without spot or blemish.
Four maidens out of the ten are chosen by lot, and carefully dressed in
new garments. A festival is held, usually at the house of the Chief
Minister, where the girls sit on a raised platform. Four old women,
thought to be possessed by spirits, enter and remain as long as the
feast lasts. During this time anything they may want, such as food,
betel, or cheroots, is handed to them by the four girls. Apparently the
old women pass for representatives of the spirit, and hence they are
waited on by the maidens destined to be his wives. Dotage, blindness, or
any great infirmity of age seems to be accounted possession by a spirit
for the purposes of this function. When the feast is over, the maidens
are formally presented to the spirit, along with the various sacrifices
and offerings. They are next taken to the chief’s residence, where
strings are tied round their wrists by the ministers and elders to guard
them against ill-luck. Usually they sleep a night or two at the palace,
after which they may return to their homes. There seems to be no
objection to their marrying afterwards. If nothing happens to any of the
four, it is believed that the spirit of the lake loves them but little;
but if one of them dies soon after the ceremony, it shews that she has
been accepted by him. The spirit is propitiated with the sacrifice of
pigs, fowls, and sometimes a buffalo.[498]
[Sidenote: Egyptian custom of drowning a girl as a sacrifice to the
Nile.] In this last custom the death of the woman is regarded as a sign
that the god has taken her to himself. Sometimes, apparently, it has not
been left to the discretion of the divine bridegroom to take or leave
his human bride; she was made over to him once for all in death. When
the Arabs conquered Egypt they learned that at the annual rise of the
Nile the Egyptians were wont to deck a young virgin in gay apparel and
throw her into the river as a sacrifice, in order to obtain a plentiful
inundation. The Arab general abolished the barbarous custom.[499] It is
said that under the Tang dynasty the Chinese used to marry a young girl
to the Yellow River once a year by drowning her in the water. For this
purpose the witches chose the fairest damsel they could find and
themselves superintended the fatal marriage. At last the local mandarin,
a man of sense and humanity, forbade the custom. But the witches
disregarded his edicts and made their preparations for the usual murder.
So when the day was come, the magistrate appeared on the scene with his
soldiers and had all the witches bound and thrown into the river to
drown, telling them that no doubt the god would be able to choose his
bride for himself from among them.[500] The princes of Koepang, a state
in the East Indian island of Timor, deemed themselves descended from
crocodiles; and on [Sidenote: Girls sacrificed as brides of crocodiles.]
the coronation of a new prince a solemn sacrifice was made to the
crocodiles in presence of the people. The offerings consisted of a pig
with red bristles and a young girl prettily dressed, perfumed, and
decked with flowers. She was taken down to the bank of the river and set
on a sacred stone in a cave. Then one of the prince’s guards summoned
the crocodiles. Soon one of the beasts appeared and dragged the girl
down into the water. The people thought that he married her, and that if
he did not find her a maid he would bring her back.[501] On festal
occasions in the same state a new-born girl was sometimes dedicated to a
crocodile, and then, with certain ceremonies of consecration, brought up
to be married to a priest.[502] It is said that once, when the
inhabitants of Cayeli in Buru—another East Indian island—were 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.[503]
[Sidenote: Virgin sacrificed as a bride to a jinnee of the sea in the
Maldive Islands.] 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. In time there came to them a Berber
named Abu ’lberecat, who knew the Coran by heart. He lodged in the house
of an old woman of the isle of Mahal. One day, visiting his hostess, he
found that she had gathered her family about her, and that the women
were weeping as if there were a funeral. On enquiring into the cause of
their distress, he learned that the lot had fallen on the old woman, and
that she had an only daughter, who must be slain by the evil jinnee. Abu
’lberecat said to the old dame, “I will go this night instead of thy
daughter.” Now he was quite beardless. So when the night was come they
took him, and after he had performed his ablutions, they put him in the
temple of idols. He set himself to recite the Coran; then the demon
appeared at the window, but the man went on with his recitation. No
sooner was the jinnee within hearing of the holy words than he dived
into the sea. When morning broke, the old woman and her family and the
people of the island came, according to their custom, to carry away the
girl and burn her body. They found the stranger repeating the Coran, and
took him to their king, whose name was Chenourazah, and made him relate
his adventure. The king was astonished at it. The Berber proposed to the
king that he should embrace Islam. Chenourazah said to him, “Tarry with
us till next month; if thou shalt do what thou hast done, and shalt
escape from the evil jinnee, I will be converted.” The stranger abode
with the idolaters, and God disposed the king’s heart to receive the
true faith. So before the month was out he became a Mussalman, he and
his wives and his children and the people of his court. And when the
next month began, the Berber was conducted to the temple of idols; but
the demon did not appear, and the Berber set himself to recite the Coran
till break of day. Then the Sultan and his subjects broke the idols and
demolished the temple. The people of the island embraced Islam and sent
messengers to the other isles, and their inhabitants were converted
likewise. But by reason of the demon many of the Maldive Islands were
depopulated before their conversion to Islam. When Ibn Batutah himself
landed in the country he knew nothing of these things. One night, as he
was going about his business, he heard of a sudden people saying in a
loud voice, “There is no God but God,” and “God is great.” He saw
children carrying copies of the Coran on their heads, and women beating
on basins and vessels of copper. He was astonished at what they did, and
he said, “What has happened?” They answered, “Dost thou not behold the
sea?” He looked towards the sea, and beheld in the darkness, as it were,
a great ship full of burning lamps and cressets. They said to him, “That
is the demon. It is his wont to shew himself once a month; but after we
have done that which thou hast seen, he returns to his place and does us
no manner of harm.”[504]
[Sidenote: The story based on the phosphorescence of the sea.] It
occurred to me that this myth of the demon lover may have been based on
some physical phenomenon, electrical, lunar, or otherwise, which is
periodically seen at night in the Maldive Islands. Accordingly I
consulted Professor J. Stanley Gardiner, our foremost authority on the
archipelago. His answer, which confirms my conjecture, runs thus: “A
peculiar phosphorescence, like the glow of a lamp hidden by a roughened
glass shade, is occasionally visible on lagoon shoals in the Maldives. I
imagine it to have been due to some single animal with a greater
phosphorescence than any at present known to us. A periodical appearance
at some phase of the moon due to reproduction is not improbable and has
parallels. The myth still exists in the Maldives, but in a rather
different form.” He adds that “a number of these animals might of course
appear on some shoal near Male,” the principal island of the group. To
the eyes of the ignorant and superstitious such a mysterious glow,
suddenly lighting up the sea in the dusk of the evening, might well
appear a phantom ship, hung with burning lamps, bearing down on the
devoted islands, and in the stillness of night the roar of the surf on
the barrier reef might sound in their ears like the voice of the demon
calling for his prey.[505]
§ 3. Sacrifices to Water-spirits
[Sidenote: Stories of the Perseus and Andromeda type.] 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.[506]
[Sidenote: Water-spirits conceived as serpents or dragons.] 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 water-spirits, who are
very often conceived as great serpents or dragons. Elsewhere I have
cited many instances of this belief in serpent-shaped spirits of
water;[507] here it may be worth while to add a few more. Thus the
Warramunga of Central Australia perform elaborate ceremonies to appease
or coerce a gigantic, but purely mythical water-snake who is said to
have destroyed a number of people.[508] Some of the natives of western
Australia fear to approach large pools, supposing them to be inhabited
by a great serpent, who would kill them if they dared to drink or draw
water there by night.[509] The Indians of New Granada believed that when
the mother of all mankind, named Bachue, was grown old, she and her
husband plunged into the Lake of Iguague, where they were changed into
two enormous serpents, which still live in the lake and sometimes shew
themselves.[510] The Oyampi Indians of French Guiana imagine that each
waterfall has a guardian in the shape of a monstrous snake, who lies
hidden under the eddy of the cascade, but has sometimes been seen to
lift up its huge head. To see it is fatal. Canoe and Indians are then
dragged down to the bottom, where the monster swallows all the men, and
sometimes the canoe also. Hence the Oyampis never name a waterfall till
they have passed it, for fear that the snake at the bottom of the water
might hear its name and attack the rash intruders.[511] The Huichol
Indians of Mexico adore water. Springs are sacred, and the gods in them
are mothers or serpents, that rise with the clouds and descend as
fructifying rain.[512] The Tarahumares, another Indian tribe of Mexico,
think that every river, pool, and spring has its serpent, who causes the
water to come up out of the earth. All these water-serpents are easily
offended; hence the Tarahumares place their houses some little way from
the water, and will not sleep near it when they are on a journey.
Whenever they construct weirs to catch fish, they take care to offer
fish to the water-serpent of the river; and when they are away from home
and are making pinole, that is, toasted maize-meal, they drop the first
of the pinole into the water as an offering to the serpents, who would
otherwise try to seize them and chase them back to their own land.[513]
In Basutoland the rivers Ketane and Maletsunyane tumble, with a roar of
waters and a cloud of iridescent spray, into vast chasms hundreds of
feet deep. The Basutos fear to approach the foot of these huge falls,
for they think that a spirit in the shape of a gigantic snake haunts the
seething cauldron which receives the falling waters.[514]
[Sidenote: Sacrifices of human beings to water-spirits.] The perils of
the sea, of floods, of rapid rivers, of deep pools and lakes, naturally
account for the belief that water-spirits are fickle and dangerous
beings, who need to be appeased by sacrifices. Sometimes these
sacrifices consist of animals, such as horses and bulls,[515] but often
the victims are human beings. Thus at the mouth of the Bonny River there
is a dangerous bar on which vessels trading to the river have been lost.
This is bad for business, and accordingly the negroes used to sacrifice
a young man annually to the spirit of the bar. The handsomest youth was
chosen for the purpose, and for many months before the ceremony he
lodged with the king. The people regarded him as sacred or ju-ju, and
whatever he touched, even when he passed casually through the streets,
shared his sanctity and belonged to him. Hence whenever he appeared in
public the inhabitants fled before him, lest he should touch their
garments or anything they might be carrying. He was kept in ignorance of
the fate in store for him, and no one might inform him of it under pain
of death. On an appointed day he was taken out to the bar in a canoe and
induced to jump into the water. Then the rowers plied their paddles and
left him to drown. A similar ceremony used to be performed at the New
Calabar River, but the victim was a culprit. He was thrown into the
water to be devoured by the sharks, which are there the principal fetish
or ju-ju.[516] The chiefs of Duke Town, on the same coast of Guinea,
were wont to make an annual offering to the river. A young woman of a
light colour, or an albino, was chosen as the victim. On a set day they
decked her with finery, took her down to Parrot Island, and with much
ceremony plunged her in the stream. The fishermen of Efiat, at the mouth
of the river, are said still to observe the rite in order to ensure a
good catch of fish.[517] The King of Dahomey used to send from time to
time a man, dressed out with the insignia of office, to Whydah to be
drowned at the mouth of the river. The intention of the sacrifice was to
attract merchant ships.[518] When a fisherman has been carried off by a
crocodile, some of the natives on the banks of Lake Tanganyika take this
for a sign that the spirit deems himself slighted, since he is obliged
to come and find victims for himself instead of having them presented to
him. Hence the sorcerers generally decide that a second victim is
wanted; so, having chosen one, they bind him hand and foot and fling him
into the lake to feed the crocodiles.[519] The crater of the volcano
Tolucan in Mexico encloses two lakes of clear cold water, surrounded by
gloomy forests of pine. Here, in the eighteenth month of the Toltec
year, answering to February, children beautifully dressed and decked
with flowers and gay feathers used to be drowned as an offering to
Tlaloc, the god of the waters, who had a fine temple on the spot.[520]
The Chams of Annam have traditions of a time when living men were thrown
into the sea every year in order to propitiate the deities who looked
after the fishing, and when children of good family were drowned in the
water-channels in order that the rice-fields might be duly
irrigated.[521]
[Sidenote: Water-spirits conceived as beneficent beings who dispense
fertility.] This last instance brings out a more kindly aspect of the
water-spirits. If these beings are dreaded by the fisherman and the
mariner who tempt the angry sea, and by the huntsman who has to swim or
ford the rushing rivers, they are viewed in a different light by the
shepherd and the husbandman in hot and arid lands, where the pasture for
the cattle and the produce of the fields alike depend on the supply of
water, and where prolonged drought means starvation and death for man
and beast. To men in such circumstances the spirits of the waters are
beneficent beings, the dispensers of life and fertility, whether their
blessings descend as rain from heaven or well up as springs of bubbling
water in the parched desert. In the Semitic East, for example, where the
rainfall is precarious or confined to certain seasons, the face of the
earth is bare and withered for most of the year, except where it is kept
fresh by irrigation or by the percolation of underground water. Here,
accordingly, the local gods or Baalim had their seats originally in
spots of natural fertility, by fountains and the banks of rivers, in
groves and tangled thickets and green glades of mountain hollows and
deep watercourses. As lords of the springs and subterranean waters they
were supposed to be the sources of all the gifts of the land, the corn,
the wine and the oil, the wool and the flax, the vines and the
fig-trees.[522]
[Sidenote: Water-spirits conceived as bestowing offspring on women.]
Where water-spirits are thus conceived as the authors of fertility in
general, it is natural that they should be held to extend the sphere of
their operations to men and animals; in other words, that the power of
bestowing offspring on barren women and cattle should be ascribed to
them. This ascription comes out clearly in a custom observed by Syrian
women at the present day. Some of the channels of the Orontes are used
for irrigation, but at a certain season of the year the streams are
turned off and the dry bed of the channels is cleared of mud and any
other matter that might clog the flow of the water. The first night that
the water is turned on again, it is said to have the power of
procreation. Accordingly barren women take their places in the channel,
waiting for the embrace of the water-spirit in the rush of the
stream.[523] Again, a pool of water in a cave at Juneh enjoys the same
reputation. The people think a childless couple who bathe in the water
will have offspring.[524] In India many wells are supposed to cure
sterility, which is universally attributed to the agency of evil
spirits. The water of seven wells is collected on the night of the
Diwali or feast of lamps, and barren women bathe in it in order to
remove their reproach. There is a well in Orissa where the priests throw
betel-nuts into the mud. Childless women scramble for the nuts, and she
who finds them will be a happy mother before long. For the same reason,
after childbirth an Indian mother is taken to worship the village well.
She walks round it in the course of the sun and smears the platform with
red lead, which may be a substitute for blood. A Khandh priest will take
a childless woman to the meeting of two streams, where he makes an
offering to the god of births and sprinkles the woman with water in
order to rid her of the influence of the spirit who hinders
conception.[525] In the Punjaub a barren woman who desires to become a
mother will sometimes be let down into a well on a Sunday or Tuesday
night during the Diwali festival. After stripping herself of her clothes
and bathing in the water, she is drawn up again and performs the
_chaukpurna_ ceremony with incantations taught by a wizard. When this
ceremony has been performed, the well is supposed to run dry; its
quickening and fertilising virtue has been abstracted by the woman.[526]
The Indian sect of the Vallabhacharyas or Maharajas believe that bathing
in a sacred well is a remedy for barrenness in women.[527] In antiquity
the waters of Sinuessa in Campania were thought to bless childless wives
with offspring.[528] To this day Syrian women resort to hot springs in
order to obtain children from the saint or jinnee of the waters.[529] In
Scotland the same fertilising virtue used to be, and probably still is,
ascribed to certain springs. Wives who wished to become mothers formerly
resorted to the well of St. Fillan at Comrie, and to the wells of St.
Mary at Whitekirk and in the Isle of May.[530] In the Aran Islands, off
the coast of Galway, women desirous of children pray at St. Eany’s Well,
by the Angels’ Walk, and the men pray at the rag well by the church of
the Four Comely Ones at Onaght.[531] Child’s Well in Oxford was supposed
to have the virtue of making barren women to bring forth.[532] Near
Bingfield in Northumberland there is a copious sulphur spring known as
the Borewell. On the Sunday following the fourth day of July, that is
about Midsummer Day, according to the old style, great crowds of people
used to assemble at the well from all the surrounding hamlets and
villages. The scene was like a fair, stalls for the sale of refreshments
being brought and set up for the occasion. The neighbouring slopes were
terraced, and seats formed for the convenience of pilgrims and visitors.
Barren women prayed at the well that they might become mothers. If their
faith was strong enough, their prayers were heard within the year.[533]
[Sidenote: Love of river-spirits for women in Greek mythology.] In Greek
mythology similar ideas of the procreative power of water meet us in the
stories of the loves of rivers for women and in the legends which traced
the descent of heroes and heroines from river-gods.[534] In Sophocles’s
play of _The Trachinian Women_ Dejanira tells how she was wooed by the
river Achelous, who came to her father and claimed her hand, appearing
in the likeness now of a bull, now of a serpent, and now of a being with
the body of a man and the front of an ox, while streams of water flowed
from his shaggy beard. She relates, too, how glad she was when Hercules
presented himself and vanquished the river-god in single combat and took
her to wife.[535] The legend perhaps preserves a reminiscence of that
custom of providing a water-god with a human wife which has been
practised elsewhere. The motive of such a custom may have varied with
the particular conception which happened to prevail of the character of
the water-god. Where he was supposed to be a cruel and destructive
being, who drowned men and laid waste the country, a wife would be
offered simply to keep him in good humour, and so prevent him from doing
mischief. But where he was viewed as the procreative power on whom the
fertility of the earth and the fecundity of men and animals depended,
his marriage would be deemed necessary for the purpose of enabling him
to discharge his beneficent functions. This belief in the amorous
character of rivers comes out plainly in a custom which was observed at
Troy down to classical times. Maidens about to marry were wont to bathe
in the Scamander, saying as they did so, “Scamander, take my virginity.”
A similar custom appears to have been observed at the river Maeander,
and perhaps in other parts of the Greek world. Occasionally, it would
seem, young men took advantage of the practice to ravish the girls, and
the offspring of such a union was fathered on the river-god.[536] The
bath which a Greek bride and bridegroom regularly took before marriage
appears to have been intended to bless their union with offspring
through the fertilising influence of the water-nymphs.[537]
Thus it would appear that in many parts of the world a custom has
prevailed of sacrificing human beings to water-spirits, and that in not
a few cases the ceremony has taken the form of making over a woman to
the spirit to be his wife, in order either to pacify his fury or to give
play to his generative powers. Where the water-spirit was regarded as
female, young men might be presented to her for a similar purpose, and
this may be the reason why the victims sacrificed to water-spirits are
sometimes males. Among civilised peoples these customs survive for the
most part only in popular tales, of which the legend of Perseus and
Andromeda, with its mediaeval counterpart of St. George and the Dragon,
is the most familiar example. But occasionally they appear to have left
traces of themselves in ceremonies and pageants. Thus at Furth in
Bavaria a [Sidenote: Midsummer custom of slaying the dragon at Furth in
Bavaria.] drama called the Slaying of the Dragon used to be acted every
year about Midsummer, on the Sunday after Corpus Christi Day. Crowds of
spectators flocked from the neighbourhood to witness it. The scene of
the performance was the public square. On a platform stood or sat a
princess wearing a golden crown on her head, and as many silver
ornaments on her body as could be borrowed for the purpose. She was
attended by a maid of honour. Opposite her was stationed the dragon, a
dreadful monster of painted canvas stretched on a wooden skeleton and
moved by two men inside. From time to time the creature would rush with
gaping jaws into the dense crowd of spectators, who retreated hastily,
tumbling over each other in their anxiety to escape. Then a knight in
armour, attended by his men-at-arms, rode forth and asked the princess
what she did “on this hard stone,” and why she looked so sad. She told
him that the dragon was coming to eat her up. On that the knight bade
her be of good cheer, for that with his sword he would rid the country
of the monster. With that he charged the dragon, thrusting his spear
into its maw and taking care to stab a bladder of bullock’s blood which
was there concealed. The gush of blood which followed was an
indispensable part of the show, and if the knight missed his stroke he
was unmercifully jeered and taunted by the crowd. Having despatched the
monster with sword and pistol, the knight then hastened to the princess
and told her that he had slain the dragon who had so long oppressed the
town. In return she tied a wreath round his arm, and announced that her
noble father and mother would soon come to give them half the kingdom.
The men-at-arms then escorted the knight and the princess to the tavern,
there to end the day with dance and revelry. Bohemians and Bavarians
came from many miles to witness this play of the Slaying of the Dragon,
and when the monster’s blood streamed forth they eagerly mopped it up,
along with the blood-soaked earth, in white cloths, which they
afterwards laid on the flax-fields, in order that the flax might thrive
and grow tall. For the “dragon’s blood” was thought to be a sure
protection against witchcraft.[538] This use of the blood suffices to
prove that the Slaying of the Dragon at Furth was not a mere popular
spectacle, but a magical rite designed to fertilise the fields. As such
it probably descended from a very remote antiquity, and may well have
been invested with a character of solemnity, if not of tragedy, long
before it degenerated into a farce.
[Sidenote: St. Romain delivers Rouen from a dragon.] More famous was the
dragon from which, according to legend, St. Romain delivered Rouen, and
far more impressive was the ceremony with which, down to the French
Revolution, the city commemorated its deliverance. The stately and
beautiful edifices of the Middle Ages, which still adorn Rouen, formed a
fitting background for a pageant which carried the mind back to the days
when Henry II. of England and Richard Cœur-de-Lion, Dukes of Normandy,
still had their palace in this ancient capital of their ancestral
domains. Legend ran that about the year 520 A.D. a forest or marsh near
the city was infested by a monstrous beast in the shape of a serpent or
dragon, which every day wrought great harm to Rouen and its
neighbourhood, devouring man and beast, causing boats and mariners on
the river Seine to perish, and inflicting other woes innumerable on the
commonwealth. At last the archbishop, St. Romain, resolved to beard the
monster in his den. He could get none to accompany him but a prisoner
condemned to death for murder. On their approach the dragon made as
though he would swallow them up; but the archbishop, relying on the
divine help, made the sign of the cross, and at once the monster became
so gentle that he suffered the saint to bind him with his stole and the
murderer to lead him like a lamb to the slaughter. Thus they went in
procession to a public place in Rouen, where the dragon was burnt in the
presence of the people and its ashes cast into the river. The murderer
was pardoned for his services; and the fame of the deed having gone
abroad, St. Romain, or his successor St. Ouen, whose memory is enshrined
in a church of dreamlike beauty at Rouen, obtained from King Dagobert in
perpetuity a privilege for the archbishop, dean, and canons of the
cathedral, to wit, that every year on Ascension Day, the anniversary of
the miracle, they should [Sidenote: In memory of this deliverance the
archbishop and chapter of Rouen were annually allowed to pardon a
malefactor on Ascension Day.] pardon and release from prison a
malefactor, whomsoever they chose, and whatever the crime of which he
had been guilty. This privilege, unique in France, was claimed by the
chapter of the cathedral as early as the beginning of the thirteenth
century; for in 1210, the governor of the castle of Rouen having boggled
at giving up a prisoner, the chapter appealed to King Philip Augustus,
who caused an enquiry to be made into the claim. At this enquiry nine
witnesses swore that never in the reigns of Henry II. and Richard
Cœur-de-Lion, Dukes of Normandy, had there been any difficulty raised on
the point in question. Henceforward the chapter seems to have enjoyed
the right without opposition down to 1790, when it exercised its
privilege of mercy for the last time. Next year the face of things had
changed; there was neither archbishop nor chapter at Rouen. A register
of the names of the prisoners who were pardoned, together with an
account of their crimes, was kept and still exists. Only a few of the
names in the thirteenth century are known, and there are many gaps in
the first half of the fourteenth century; but from that time onward the
register is nearly complete. Most of the crimes appear to have been
murder or homicide.
[Sidenote: Ceremony of the annual pardon and release of a prisoner at
Rouen.] The proceedings, on the great day of pardon, varied somewhat in
different ages. The following account is based in great part on a
description written in the reign of Henry III. and published at Rouen in
1587. Fifteen days before Ascension Day the canons of the cathedral
summoned the king’s officers to stop all proceedings against criminals
detained in prison. Afterwards, on the Monday of Rogations, two canons
examined the prisoners and took their confessions, going from prison to
prison till Ascension Day. On that day, about seven o’clock in the
morning, all the canons assembled in the chapter-house and invoked the
grace of the Holy Spirit by the hymn _Veni creator Spiritus_, and other
prayers. Also they made oath to reveal none of the depositions of the
criminals, but to hold them sacred under the seal of confession. The
depositions having been taken and the commissioners heard, the chapter,
after due deliberation, named him or her among the prisoners who was to
receive the benefit of the privilege. A card bearing the prisoner’s name
and sealed with the seal of the chapter was then sent to the members of
parliament, who were sitting in full assembly, clad in their red robes,
in the great hall of the palace to receive the nomination of the
prisoner and to give it legal effect. The criminal was then released and
pardoned. Immediately the minster bells began to ring, the doors of the
cathedral were flung open, the organ pealed, hymns were sung, candles
lit, and every solemnity observed in token of joy and gladness. Further,
in presence of the conclave all the depositions of the other prisoners
were burnt on the altar of the chapter-house. Then the archbishop and
the whole of the clergy of the cathedral went in procession to the great
square known as the Old Tower near the river, carrying the shrines and
reliquaries of the minster, and accompanied by the joyous music of
hautboys and clarions. Apparently the Old Tower occupies the site of the
ancient castle of the Dukes of Normandy, and the custom of going thither
in procession came down from a time when the prisoners were detained in
the castle-dungeons. In the square there stood, and still stands, a
platform of stone raised high above the ground and approached by flights
of steps. Thither they brought the shrine (_fierte_) of St. Romain, and
thither too was led the pardoned prisoner. He ascended the platform, and
after confessing his sins and receiving absolution he thrice lifted the
shrine of St. Romain, while the innumerable multitude assembled in the
square cried aloud, each time the shrine was lifted, “_Noel! Noel!
Noel!_” which was understood to mean “God be with us!” That done, the
procession re-formed and returned to the cathedral. At the head walked a
beadle clad in violet, who bore on a pole the wicker effigy of the
winged dragon of Notre Dame, holding a large fish in its mouth. The
whispers and cries excited by the appearance of the monster were drowned
in the loud fanfares of cornets, clarions, and trumpets. Behind the
musicians, who wore the liveries of the Master of the Brotherhood of
Notre Dame with his arms emblazoned on an ensign of taffeta, came the
carved silver-gilt shrine of Notre Dame. After it followed the clergy of
the cathedral to the number of two hundred, clad in robes of violet or
crimson silk, bearing banners, crosses, and shrines, and chanting the
hymn _De resurrectione Domini_. Then came the archbishop, giving his
blessing to the great multitude who thronged the streets. The prisoner
himself walked behind, bareheaded, crowned with flowers, carrying one
end of the litter which supported the shrine of St. Romain; the fetters
he had worn hung from the litter; and with him paced, with lighted
torches in their hands, the men or women who, for the last seven years,
had in like manner received their pardon. Another beadle, in a violet
livery, marched behind bearing aloft on a pole the wicker effigy of the
dragon (_Gargouille_) destroyed by St. Romain; in its mouth the dragon
sometimes held a live animal, such as a young fox, a rabbit, or a
sucking pig, and it was attended by the Brotherhood of the
Gargouillards. The clergy of the thirty-two parishes of Rouen also took
part in the procession, which moved from the Old Tower to the cathedral
amid the acclamations of the crowd, while from every church tower in the
city the bells rang out a joyous peal, the great _Georges d’Amboise_
thundering above them all. After mass had been performed in the
cathedral, the prisoner was taken to the house of the Master of the
Brotherhood of St. Romain, where he was magnificently feasted, lodged,
and served, however humble his rank. Next morning he again presented
himself to the chapter, where, kneeling in the presence of a great
assembly, he was severely reproved for his sins and admonished to give
thanks to God, to St. Romain, and to the canons for the pardon he had
received in virtue of the privilege.
[Sidenote: History and meaning of the privilege of the _Fierte_ or
shrine of St. Romain at Rouen.] What was the origin and meaning of this
remarkable privilege of the _Fierte_, as the shrine of St. Romain was
called? Its history has been carefully investigated by A. Floquet, Chief
Registrar of the Royal Court of Rouen, with the aid of all the
documentary evidence, including the archives both at Rouen and Paris. He
appears to have shewn conclusively that the association of St. Romain
with the custom is comparatively late. We possess a life of the saint in
Latin verse, dating from the eighth century, in which the miracles said
to have been wrought by him are set forth in a strain of pompous eulogy.
Yet neither in it nor in any of the other early lives of St. Romain and
St. Ouen, nor in any of the older chronicles and martyrologies, is a
single word said about the destruction of the dragon and the deliverance
of the prisoner. It is not till 1394 that we meet for the first time
with a mention of the miracle. Moreover, the deliverance of the prisoner
can hardly have been instituted in honour of St. Romain, else it would
have taken place on the twenty-third of October, the day on which the
Church of Rouen celebrates the translation of the saint’s bones to the
cathedral. St. Romain died in 638, and his bones were transferred to the
cathedral of Rouen at the end of the eleventh or the beginning of the
twelfth century. Further, Floquet has adduced strong grounds for
believing that the privilege claimed by the chapter of Rouen of annually
pardoning a condemned criminal on Ascension Day was unknown in the early
years of the twelfth century, and that it originated in the reign of
Henry I. or Stephen, if not in that of Henry II. He supposes the
ceremony to have been in its origin a scenic representation of the
triumph of Christ over sin and death, the deliverance of the condemned
prisoner symbolising the deliverance of man from the yoke of corruption,
and bringing home to the people in a visible form the great mystery
which the festival of the Ascension was instituted to commemorate. Such
dramatic expositions of Christian doctrine, he points out, were common
in the Middle Ages.
[Sidenote: Suggested origin of the custom.] Plausible as is this
solution of the problem, it can scarcely be regarded as satisfactory.
Had this been the real origin of the privilege, we should expect to find
the Ascension of Christ either plainly enacted, or at least distinctly
alluded to in the ceremony; but this, so far as we can learn, was not
so. Again, would it not savour of blasphemy to represent the sinless and
glorified Redeemer by a ruffian stained with the blackest crimes?
Moreover, the part played by the dragon in the legend and in the
spectacle seems too important to allow us to explain it away, with
Floquet, as a mere symbol of the suppression of paganism by St. Romain.
The tale of the conquest of the dragon is older than Christianity, and
cannot be explained by it. At Rouen the connexion of St. Romain with the
story seems certainly to be late, but that does not prove the story
itself to be late also. Judging from the analogy of similar tales
elsewhere, we may conjecture that in the Rouen version the criminal
represents a victim annually sacrificed to a water-spirit or other
fabulous being, while the Christian saint has displaced a pagan hero,
who was said to have delivered the victim from death and put an end to
the sacrifice by slaying the monster. Thus it seems possible that the
custom of annually pardoning a condemned malefactor may have superseded
an older practice of treating him as a public scapegoat, who died to
save the rest of the people. In the sequel we shall see that such
customs have been observed in many lands. It is not incredible that at
Rouen a usage of this sort should have survived in a modified shape from
pagan times down to the twelfth century, and that the Church should at
last have intervened to save the wretch and turn a relic of heathendom
to the glory of God and St. Romain. But this explanation of the famous
privilege of the _Fierte_ is put forward with a full sense of the
difficulties attending it, and with no wish to dogmatise on so obscure a
subject.[539]
Footnote 411:
Speaking of the one God who reveals himself in many forms and under
many names, Augustine says: “_Ipse in aethere sit Jupiter, ipse in
aëre Juno, ipse in mare Neptunus ... Liber in vineis, Ceres in
frumentis, Diana in silvis_,” etc. (_De civitate Dei_, iv. 11).
Footnote 412:
Servius on Virgil, _Georg._ iii. 332: “_Nam, ut diximus, et omnis
quercus Jovi est consecrata, et omnis lucus Dianae._”
Footnote 413:
W. H. Roscher, _Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie_, i. 1005; H.
Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, Nos. 3266-3268.
Footnote 414:
Dittenberger, _Sylloge inscriptionum Graecarum_, 2nd Ed., No. 568; Ch.
Michel, _Recueil d’inscriptions grecques_, No. 686; E. S. Roberts,
_Introduction to Greek Epigraphy_, ii., No. 139.
Footnote 415:
Dittenberger, _op. cit._ No. 653, lines 79 _sqq._; Ch. Michel, _op.
cit._, No. 694. As to the grove see Pausanias, iv. 33. 4 _sq._
Footnote 416:
Dittenberger, _op. cit._, No. 929, lines 80 _sqq._ Compare _id._ No.
569; Pausanias, ii. 28. 7.
Footnote 417:
H. Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, No. 4911.
Footnote 418:
Cato, _De agri cultura_, 139.
Footnote 419:
Varro, _De lingua Latina_, v. 85, ed. C. O. Müller; Pliny, _Nat.
Hist._ xviii. 6.
Footnote 420:
G. Henzen, _Acta Fratrum Arvalium_ (Berlin, 1874), pp. 136-143; H.
Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, ii., Nos. 5042, 5043, 5045,
5046, 5048.
Footnote 421:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 749-755.
Footnote 422:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xii. 3.
Footnote 423:
Seneca, _Epist._ iv. 12. 3. See further L. Preller, _Römische
Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 108 _sqq._ For evidence of the poets he
refers to Virgil, _Georg._ iii. 332 _sqq._; Tibullus, i. 1. 11; Ovid,
_Amores_, iii. 1. 1 _sq._
Footnote 424:
On Diana as a huntress see H. Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae
selectae_, Nos. 3257-3266. For indications of her care for domestic
cattle see Livy, i. 45; Plutarch, _Quaestiones Romanae_, 4; and above,
vol. i. p. 7.
Footnote 425:
Virgil, _Aen._, viii. 600 _sq._, with Servius’s note.
Footnote 426:
M. A. Castren, _Vorlesungen über die finnische Mythologie_ (St.
Petersburg, 1853), pp. 92-99.
Footnote 427:
P. v. Stenin, “Über den Geisterglauben in Russland,” _Globus_, lvii.
(1890), p. 283.
Footnote 428:
J. Abercromby, _The Pre- and Proto-historic Finns_ (London, 1898), i.
161.
Footnote 429:
Mathias Michov, “De Sarmatia Asiana atque Europea,” in _Novus Orbis
regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum_, p. 457.
Footnote 430:
C. Snouck Hurgronje, _Het Gajōland en zijne Bewoners_ (Batavia, 1903),
pp. 351, 359.
Footnote 431:
See vol. i. p. 14.
Footnote 432:
Arrian, _Cynegeticus_, 33 _sq._
Footnote 433:
The Galatians retained their Celtic speech as late as the fourth
century of our era, for Jerome says that in his day their language
hardly differed from that of the Treveri, a Celtic tribe on the
Moselle, whose name survives in _Treves_. See Jerome, _Commentar. in
Epist. ad Galatas_, lib. ii. praef. (Migne’s _Patrologia Latina_, vol.
xxvi. col. 357).
Footnote 434:
See below, p. 363.
Footnote 435:
H. Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, No. 4633; Ihm,
in Pauly-Wissowa’s _Real-Encyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft_, ii. 616, _s.v._ “Arduinna”; compare _id._ i.
104, _s.v._ “Abnoba.”
Footnote 436:
F. S. Krauss, _Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Südslaven_
(Münster i. W., 1890), p. 125.
Footnote 437:
J. H. Schmitz, _Sitten und Bräuche, Lieder, Sprüchwörter und Räthsel
des Eifler Volkes_ (Treves, 1856-1858), i. 42 _sq._; A. Kuhn und W.
Schwartz, _Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche_, pp. 393 _sq._;
Ch. Beauquier, _Les Mois en Franche-Comté_ (Paris, 1900), p. 90. In
Sweden and parts of Germany cattle are crowned on the day in spring
when they are first driven out to pasture, which is sometimes at
Whitsuntide (A. Kuhn, _Die Herabkunft des Feuers_, 2nd Ed., pp. 163
_sq._; L. Lloyd, _Peasant Life in Sweden_, pp. 246 _sq._; A. Kuhn,
_Märkische Sagen und Märchen_, pp. 315 sq., 327 _sq._; P. Drechsler,
_Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube in Schlesien_, i. 123). Amongst the
Romans cattle were crowned at the Ambarvalia (Tibullus, ii. 1. 7
_sq._; Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 663); and asses and mill-stones were crowned
at Vesta’s festival on the ninth of June (Propertius, v. 1. 21; Ovid,
_Fasti_, vi. 311 _sq._). The original motive of all these customs may
have been the one indicated in the text. Perhaps the same explanation
might be found to apply to certain other cases of wearing wreaths or
crowns.
Footnote 438:
Tettau und Temme, _Die Volkssagen Ostpreussens, Litthauens und
Westpreussens_, pp. 263 _sq._; A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, _Norddeutsche
Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche_, p. 392; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Das
festliche Jahr_, p. 181; _id._, _Calendrier belge_, i. 423 _sq._; A.
Birlinger, _Volksthümliches aus Schwaben_, i. p. 278, § 437; R. Eisel,
_Sagenbuch des Voigtlandes_, p. 210; F. J. Wiedemann, _Aus dem inneren
und äusseren Leben der Ehsten_, p. 363; F. S. Krauss, _Volksglaube und
religiöser Brauch der Südslaven_, p. 128.
Footnote 439:
See above, pp. 52-55.
Footnote 440:
In Nepaul a festival known as Khichâ Pûjâ is held, at which worship is
offered to dogs, and garlands of flowers are placed round the necks of
every dog in the country (W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore
of Northern India_, Westminster, 1896, ii. 221). But as the custom is
apparently not limited to hunting dogs, the explanation suggested
above would hardly apply.
Footnote 441:
Catullus, xxxiv. 9-20; Cicero, _De natura deorum_, ii. 26. 68 _sq._;
Varro, _De lingua Latina_, v. 68 _sq._ It deserves to be remembered
that Diana’s day was the thirteenth of August, which in general would
be the time when the splendid harvest moon was at the full. Indian
women in Peru used to pray to the moon to grant them an easy delivery.
See P. J. de Arriaga, _Extirpacion de la idolatria del Piru_ (Lima,
1621), p. 32.
Footnote 442:
See above, vol. i. p. 12.
Footnote 443:
In like manner the Greeks conceived of the goddess Earth as the mother
not only of corn but of cattle and of human offspring. See the Homeric
_Hymn to Earth_ (No. 30).
Footnote 444:
Strabo, iv. 1. 4 and 5, pp. 179 _sq._ The image on the Aventine was
copied from that at Marseilles, which in turn was copied from the one
at Ephesus.
Footnote 445:
Tacitus, _Annals_, xii. 8. The Romans feared that the marriage of
Claudius with his paternal cousin Agrippina, which they regarded as
incest, might result in some public calamity (Tacitus, _Annals_, xii.
5).
Footnote 446:
See above, pp. 107 _sqq._
Footnote 447:
See above, vol. i. pp. 20 _sq._, 40.
Footnote 448:
Herodotus, i. 181 _sq._
Footnote 449:
M. Jastrow, _Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, pp. 117 _sq._; L. W.
King, _Babylonian Mythology and Religion_, pp. 18, 21.
Footnote 450:
H. Winckler, _Die Gesetze Hammurabis_ 2nd Ed., (Leipsic, 1903), p. 31
§ 182. The expression is translated “votary of Marduk” by Mr C. H. W.
Johns (_Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts, and Letters_,
Edinburgh, 1904, p. 60). “The votary of Marduk is the god’s wife vowed
to perpetual chastity, and is therefore distinct from the devotees of
Ištar. Like the ordinary courtesan, these formed a separate class and
enjoyed special privileges” (S. A. Cook, _The Laws of Moses and the
Code of Hammurabi_, London, 1903, p. 148).
Footnote 451:
M. Jastrow, _op. cit._ pp. 42 _sq._
Footnote 452:
C. Johnston in _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, xviii.
First Half (1897), pp. 153-155; R. F. Harper, _Assyrian and Babylonian
Literature_ (New York, 1901), p. 249. For the equivalence of Iyyar or
Airu with May see _Encyclopaedia Biblica_, _s.v._ “Months,” iii. coll.
3193 _sq._
Footnote 453:
Herodotus, i. 182.
Footnote 454:
G. Maspero, in _Journal des Savants_, année 1899, pp. 401-406; A.
Moret, _Du caractère religieux de la royauté Pharaonique_ (Paris,
1902), pp. 48-73; A. Wiedemann, _Herodots zweites Buch_ (Leipsic,
1890), pp. 268 sq. M. Moret shares the view of Prof. Maspero that the
pictures, or rather painted reliefs, were copied from masquerades in
which the king and other men and women figured as gods and goddesses.
As to the Egyptian doctrine of the spiritual double or external soul
(_Ka_), see A. Wiedemann, _The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the
Immortality of the Soul_ (London, 1895), pp. 10 _sqq._
Footnote 455:
A. Erman, _Die ägyptische Religion_ (Berlin, 1905), pp. 75, 165 _sq._;
compare _id._, _Ägypten und ägyptisches Leben im Altertum_, pp. 400
_sq._ As to the ghostly rule of the high priests of Ammon at Thebes
see further G. Maspero, _Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient
classique, les premières mêlées des peuples_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 559
_sqq._; J. H. Breasted, _A History of the Ancient Egyptians_ (London,
1908), pp. 350 _sq._, 357 _sq._; C. P. Tiele, _Geschichte der Religion
im Altertum_, i. (Gotha, 1896), p. 66.
Footnote 456:
Strabo, xvii. 1. 46, p. 816.
Footnote 457:
Diodorus Siculus, _Bibliotheca_, i. 47.
Footnote 458:
Plutarch, _Quaestiones conviviales_, viii. 1. 6 sq.; id., _Numa_, 4.
Footnote 459:
Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ iv. 143. Compare Horace, _Odes_, iii. 62
_sqq._
Footnote 460:
Herodotus, i. 182.
Footnote 461:
Pausanias, viii. 13. 1. As to the meaning of the title Essen see
Callimachus, _Hymn to Zeus_, 16; Hesychius, Suidas, and _Etymologicum
Magnum_, _s.v._ Ἕσσην. The ancients mistook the Queen bee for a male,
and hence spoke of King bees. See Aristotle, _Histor. animal._ v. 21
_sq._, ix. 40, pp. 553, 623 _sqq._, ed. Bekker; id., _De animalium
generatione_, iii. 10, p. 760, ed. Bekker; Aelian, _Nat. animal._ i.
10, v. 10 _sq._; Virgil, _Georg._ iv. 21, 68; W. Walter-Tornow, _De
apium mellisque apud veteres significatione_ (Berlin, 1894), pp. 30
_sqq._ The Essenes or King Bees are not to be confounded with the
nominal kings (_Basileis_) of Ephesus, who probably held office for
life. See above, vol. i. p. 47.
Footnote 462:
J. T. Wood, _Discoveries at Ephesus, Inscriptions from the Temple of
Diana_, pp. 2, 14; _Inscriptions from the Augusteum_, p. 4;
_Inscriptions from the City and Suburbs_, p. 38.
Footnote 463:
See B. V. Head, _Coins of Ephesus_ (London, 1880), and above, vol. i.
pp. 37 _sq._ Modern writers sometimes assert that the priestesses of
the Ephesian Artemis were called Bees. Certain other Greek priestesses
were undoubtedly called Bees, and it seems not improbable that the
priestesses of the Ephesian Artemis bore the same title and
represented the goddess in her character of a bee. But no ancient
writer, so far as I know, affirms it. See my note on Pausanias, viii.
13. 1.
Footnote 464:
Demosthenes, _Contra Neaer._ 73-78, pp. 1369-1371; Aristotle,
_Constitution of Athens_, iii. 5; Hesychius, _s.vv._ Διονύσου γάμος
and γεραραί; _Etymologicum Magnum_, _s.v._ γεραῖραι; Pollux, viii.
108; K. F. Hermann, _Gottesdienstliche Alterthümer_, 2nd Ed., § 32.
15, § 58. 11 _sqq._; Aug. Mommsen, _Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum_
(Leipsic, 1898), pp. 391 _sqq._ From Demosthenes, _l.c._, compared
with Thucydides, ii. 15, it seems certain that the oath was
administered by the Queen at the time and place mentioned in the text.
Formerly it was assumed that her marriage to Dionysus was celebrated
at the same place and time; but the assumption as to the place was
disproved by the discovery of Aristotle’s _Constitution of Athens_,
and with it the assumption as to the time falls to the ground. As the
Greek months were commonly named after the festivals which were held
in them, it is tempting to conjecture that the sacred marriage took
place in the Marriage Month (_Gamelion_), answering to our January.
But more probably that month was named after the sacred marriage of
Zeus and Hera, which was celebrated at Athens and elsewhere. See
below, p. 143. This is the view of W. H. Roscher (_Juno und Hera_, p.
73, n. 217) and Aug. Mommsen (_Feste der Stadt Athen_, p. 383). From
the name Cattle-stall, applied to the scene of the marriage, Miss J.
E. Harrison ingeniously conjectured that in the rite Dionysus may have
been represented as a bull (_Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion_, p. 537). The conjecture was anticipated by Prof. U. von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, _Aristoteles und Athen_ (Berlin, 1893), ii.
42. Dionysus was often conceived by the Greeks in the form of a bull.
Footnote 465:
Above, pp. 92 _sq._
Footnote 466:
L. Preller, _Ausgewählte Aufsätze_ (Berlin, 1864), pp. 293-296;
compare his _Griechische Mythologie_, 4th ed., ed. C. Robert, i. 681
_sqq._
Footnote 467:
Hyginus, _Astronomica_, i. 5.
Footnote 468:
Tertullian, _Ad nationes_, ii. 7, “_Cur rapitur sacerdos Cereris si
non tale Ceres passa est?_” Asterius Amasenus, _Encomium in sanctos
martyres_, in Migne’s _Patrologia Graeca_, xl. col. 324, Οὐκ ἐκεῖ (at
Eleusis) τὸ καταβάσιον τὸ σκοτεινόν, καὶ αἱ σεμναὶ τοῦ ἱεροφάντου πρὸς
τὴν ἱερείαν συντυχίαι, μόνου πρὸς μόνην; Οὐχ αἱ λαμπάδες σβέννυνται,
καὶ ὁ πολὺς καὶ ἀναρίθμητος δῆμος τὴν σωτηρίαν αὐτῶν εἶναι νομίζουσι
τὰ ἐν τῷ σκότῳ παρὰ τῶν δύο πραττόμενα; Psellus, _Quaenam sunt
Graecorum opiniones de daemonibus_, p. 39. ed. J. F. Boissonade, τὰ δέ
γε μυστήρια τούτων, οἷα αὐτίκα τὰ Ἐλευσίνια, τὸν μυθικὸν ὑποκρίνεται
Δία μιγνύμενον τῇ Δηοῖ, ἤγουν τῇ Δήμητρι ... Ὕποκρίνεται δὲ καὶ τὰς
τῆς Δηοῦς ὠδῖνας. Ἱκετηρίαι γοῦν αὐτίκα Δηοῦς καὶ χολῆς πόσις καὶ
καρδιαλγίαι. Ἐφ’ οἷς καί τι τραγοσκελὲς μίμημα παθαινόμενον περὶ τοῖς
διδύμοις, ὅτιπερ ὁ Ζεύς, δίκας ἀποτιννὺς τῆς βίας τῇ Δήμητρι, τράγου
ὄρχεις ἀποτεμών, τῷ κόλπῳ ταύτης κατέθετο ὥσπερ δὴ καὶ ἑαυτοῦ (compare
Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, v. 20-23); Schol. on Plato, _Gorgias_,
p. 497 c, Ἐτελεῖτο δὲ ταῦτα (the Eleusinian mysteries) καὶ Δηοῖ καὶ
Κορῇ, ὅτι ταύτην μὲν Πλούτων ἁρπάξειε, Δηοῖ δὲ μιγείη Ζεύς;
Hippolytus, _Refutatio omnium haeresium_, v. 8, pp. 162, 164, ed.
Duncker and Schneidewin, Λέγουσι δὲ αύτον (God), φησί, Φρύγες καὶ
χλοερὸν στάχυν τεθερισμένον, καὶ μετὰ τοὺς Φρύγας Ἀθηναῖοι μυοῦντες
Ἐλευσίνια, καὶ ἐπιδεικνύντες τοῖς ἐποπτεύουσι τὸ μέγα καὶ θαυμαστὸν
καὶ τελειότατον ἐποπτικὸν ἐκεῖ μυστήριον ἐν σιωπῇ, τεθερισμένον
στάχυν. Ὁ δὲ στάχυς οὗτός ἐστι καὶ παρὰ Ἀθηναίοις ὁ παρὰ τοῦ
ἀχαρακτηρίστου φωστὴρ τέλειος μέγας, καθάπερ αὐτὸς ὁ ἱεροφάντης, οὐκ
ἀποκεκομμένος μέν, ὡς ὁ Ἄττις, εὐνουχισμένος δὲ διὰ κωνείου καὶ πᾶσαν
παρῃτημένος τὴν σαρκικὴν γένεσιν, νυκτὸς ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι ὑπὸ πολλῷ πυρὶ
τελῶν τὰ μεγάλα καὶ ἄρρητα μυστήρια βοᾷ καὶ κέκραγε λέγων· ἱερὸν ἔτεκε
πότνια κοῦρον Βριμὼ Βριμόν, τουτέστιν ἰσχυρὰ ἰσχυρόν. In combining and
interpreting this fragmentary evidence I have followed Mr. P. Foucart
(_Recherches sur l’origine et la nature des mystères d’Eleusis_,
Paris, 1895, pp. 48 _sq._; _id._, _Les Grands Mystères d’Eleusis_,
Paris, 1900, p. 69), and Miss J. E. Harrison (_Prolegomena to the
Study of Greek Religion_, pp. 549 _sqq._). In antiquity it was
believed that an ointment or plaster of hemlock applied to the genital
organs prevented them from discharging their function. See
Dioscorides, _De materia medica_, iv. 79; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxv.
154. Dr. J. B. Bradbury, Downing Professor of Medicine in the
University of Cambridge, informs me that this belief is correct.
“Although _conium_ [hemlock] is not used as an anaphrodisiac at the
present day, there can be no doubt that it has this effect. When
rubbed into the skin it depresses sensory nerve-endings and is
absorbed. After absorption it depresses all sympathetic nerve-cells.
Both these effects would tend to diminish organic reflexes such as
aphrodisia” (Dr. W. E. Dixon, Pharmacological Laboratory, Cambridge).
Pausanias seems to imply that the hierophant was forbidden to marry
(ii. 14. 1). It may have been so in his age, the second century of our
era; but an inscription of the first century B.C. shews that at that
time it was lawful for him to take a wife. See P. Foucart, _Les Grands
Mystères d’Eleusis_, pp. 26 _sqq._ (extract from the _Mémoires de
l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres_, vol. xxxvii.).
Footnote 469:
Pausanias, ix. 3; Plutarch, quoted by Eusebius, _Praepar. Evang._ iii.
1 _sq._
Footnote 470:
Above, p. 64.
Footnote 471:
Above, p. 66.
Footnote 472:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 177.
Footnote 473:
W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, pp. 177 _sq._
Footnote 474:
J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, i. 318 _sq._; W. Mannhardt,
_Baumkultus_, p. 178.
Footnote 475:
W. Hone, _Every Day Book_, ii. 595 _sq._; W. Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_,
p. 178.
Footnote 476:
With regard to Zeus as an oak-god see below, pp. 358 _sq._ Hera
appears with an oak-tree and her sacred bird the peacock perched on it
in a group which is preserved in the Palazzo degli Conservatori at
Rome. In the same group Pallas is represented with her olive-tree and
her owl; so that the conjunction of the oak with Hera cannot be
accidental. See W. Helbig, _Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammlungen
klassischen Altertümer in Rom_ 2nd Ed., (Leipsic, 1899), i. 397, No.
587.
Footnote 477:
Pausanias, viii. 42.
Footnote 478:
At Cnossus in Crete, Diodorus Siculus, v. 72; at Samos, Lactantius,
_Instit._ i. 17 (compare Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, vi. 7); at
Athens, Photius, _Lexicon_, _s.v._ ἱερὸν γάμον; _Etymologicum Magnum_,
_s.v._ ἱερομνήμονες, p. 468. 52. A fragment of Pherecydes relating to
the marriage of Zeus and Hera came to light some years ago. See
Grenfell and Hunt, _New Classical and other Greek and Latin Papyri_
(Oxford, 1897), p. 23; H. Weil, in _Revue des Études grecques_, x.
(1897) pp. 1-9. The subject has been discussed by W. H. Roscher (_Juno
und Hera_, Leipsic, 1875, pp. 72 _sqq._). From the wide prevalence of
the rite he infers that the custom of the sacred marriage was once
common to all the Greek tribes.
Footnote 479:
_Iliad_, xiv. 347 _sqq._ Hera was worshipped under the title of
Flowery at Argos (Pausanias, ii. 22. 1; compare _Etymol. Magn._ _s.v._
Ἄνθεια, p. 108, line 48), and women called Flower-bearers served in
her sanctuary (Pollux, iv. 78). A great festival of gathering flowers
was celebrated by Peloponnesian women in spring (Hesychius, _s.v._
ἠροσάνθεια, compare Photius, _Lexicon_, _s.v._ Ἠροάνθια). The first of
May is still a festival of flowers in Peloponnese. See _Folk-lore_, i.
(1890) pp. 518 _sqq._
Footnote 480:
J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 4th ed., i. 176; P. Herrmann,
_Nordische Mythologie_ (Leipsic, 1903), pp. 198 _sqq._, 217, 520, 529;
E. H. Meyer, _Mythologie der Germanen_ (Strasburg, 1903), pp. 366
_sq._ The procession of Frey and his wife in the waggon is doubtless
the same with the procession of Nerthus in a waggon which Tacitus
describes (_Germania_, 40). Nerthus seems to be no other than Freya,
the wife of Frey. See the commentators on Tacitus, _l.c._, and
especially K. Müllenhoff, _Deutsche Altertumskunde_, iv. (Berlin,
1900) pp. 468 _sq._
Footnote 481:
Gregory of Tours, _De gloria confessorum_, 77 (Migne’s _Patrologia
Latina_, lxxi. col. 884). Compare Sulpicius Severus, _Vita S.
Martini_, 12: “_Quia esset haec Gallorum rusticis consuetudo,
simulacra daemonum candido tecta velamine misera per agros suos
circumferre dementia_.”
Footnote 482:
“Passio Sancti Symphoriani,” chs. 2 and 6 (Migne’s _Patrologia
Graeca_, v. 1463, 1466).
Footnote 483:
These crazy wretches castrate men and mutilate women. Hence they are
known as the Skoptsy (“mutilated”). See N. Tsakni, _La Russie
sectaire_, pp. 74 _sqq._
Footnote 484:
As to this feature in the ritual of Cybele, see _Adonis, Attis,
Osiris_, Second Edition, pp. 219 _sqq._
Footnote 485:
Max Buch, _Die Wotjäken_ (Stuttgart, 1882), p. 137.
Footnote 486:
E. A. Gait, in _Census of India, 1901_, vol. vi. part i. p. 190.
Footnote 487:
P. J. de Arriaga, _Extirpacion de la idolatria del Piru_ (Lima, 1621),
p. 20.
Footnote 488:
Father Lacombe, in _Missions Catholiques_, ii. (1869) pp. 359 _sq._
Footnote 489:
_Relations des Jésuites, 1636_, p. 109, and _1639_, p. 95 (Canadian
reprint); Charlevoix, _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, v. 225;
Chateaubriand, _Voyage en Amérique_ (Paris, 1870), pp. 140-142.
Footnote 490:
Rev. F. Hahn, “Some Notes on the Religion and Superstitions of the
Orāos,” _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, lxxii. part iii.
(Calcutta, 1904) p. 12. For another account of the ceremonies held by
the Oraons in spring see above, pp. 76 _sq._
Footnote 491:
P. Rascher, “Die Sulka,” _Archiv für Anthropologie_, xxix. (1904) p.
217.
Footnote 492:
W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_
(Westminster, 1896), ii. 118.
Footnote 493:
W. Crooke, _op. cit._ ii. 138.
Footnote 494:
A. B. Ellis, _The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, pp.
139-142.
Footnote 495:
_Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, Second Edition, pp. 58 _sq._
Footnote 496:
Sir Harry Johnston, _The Uganda Protectorate_ (London, 1902), ii. 677.
Footnote 497:
From notes sent to me by Mr. A. C. Hollis, 21st May 1908.
Footnote 498:
J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman, _Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan
States_, part ii. vol. i. (Rangoon, 1901) p. 439.
Footnote 499:
E. W. Lane, _Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians_ (Paisley and
London, 1895), chap. xxvi. p. 500. The authority for the statement is
the Arab historian Makrizi.
Footnote 500:
_The North China Herald_, 4th May 1906, p. 235.
Footnote 501:
G. A. Wilken, “Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel,”
_De Indische Gids_, June 1884, p. 994 (referring to Veth, _Het eiland
Timor_, p. 21); A. Bastian, _Indonesien_, ii. (Berlin, 1885) p. 8.
Footnote 502:
A. Bastian, _op. cit._ p. 11.
Footnote 503:
A. Bastian, _Indonesien_, i. (Berlin, 1884) p. 134.
Footnote 504:
_Voyages d’Ibn Batoutah, texte arabe, accompagné d’une traduction_,
par C. Defrémery et B. R. Sanguinetti (Paris, 1853-1858), iv. 126-130.
Footnote 505:
The Thanda Pulayans, on the west coast of India, think that the
phosphorescence on the surface of the sea indicates the presence of
the spirits of their ancestors, who are fishing in the backwaters. See
E. Thurston, _Ethnographic Notes in Southern India_, p. 293. Similarly
the Sulkas of New Britain fancy that the mysterious glow comes from
souls bathing in the water. See P. Rascher, “Die Sulka,” _Archiv für
Anthropologie_, xxix. (1904) p. 216.
Footnote 506:
For a list of these tales, with references to the authorities, see my
note on Pausanias, ix. 26. 7. To the examples there referred to add I.
V. Zingerle, _Kinder- und Hausmärchen aus Tirol_, Nos. 8, 21, 35, pp.
35 _sqq._, 100 _sqq._, 178 _sqq._; G. F. Abbott, _Macedonian
Folk-lore_, pp. 270 _sqq._ This type of story has been elaborately
investigated by Mr. E. S. Hartland (_The Legend of Perseus_, London,
1894-1896), but he has not discussed the custom of the sacred
marriage, on which the story seems to be founded.
Footnote 507:
Note on Pausanias, ix. 10. 5.
Footnote 508:
Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 226
_sqq._
Footnote 509:
R. Salvado, _Mémoires historiques sur l’Australie_ (Paris, 1854), p.
262.
Footnote 510:
H. Ternaux-Compans, _Essai sur l’ancien Cundinamarca_, pp. 6 _sq._
Footnote 511:
H. Coudreau, _Chez nos Indiens_ (Paris, 1895), pp. 303 _sq._
Footnote 512:
C. Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_ (London, 1903), ii. 57.
Footnote 513:
C. Lumholtz, _op. cit._ i. 402 _sq._
Footnote 514:
T. I. Fairclough, “Notes on the Basutos,” _Journal of the African
Society_, No. 14, January 1905, p. 201.
Footnote 515:
To the examples given in my note on Pausanias viii. 7. 2, add Ph.
Paulitschke, _Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, die geistige Cultur
der Danâkil, Galla und Somâl_ (Berlin, 1896), pp. 46, 50; “De
Dajaks op Borneo,” _Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche
Zendelinggenootschap_, xiii. (1869) p. 72; A. D’Orbigny, _Voyage
dans l’Amérique Méridionale_, ii. 93, 160 (see above, pp. 16
_sq._); F. Blumentritt, “Über die Eingeborenen der Insel Palawan
und der Inselgruppe der Talamianen,” _Globus_, lix. (1891) p. 167;
W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_
(Westminster, 1896), i. 46; Father Guillemé, in _Annales de la
Propagation de la Foi_, lx. (1888) p. 252.
Footnote 516:
W. F. W. Owen, _Narrative of Voyages to explore the Shores of Africa,
Arabia, and Madagascar_ (London, 1833), ii. 354 _sq._
Footnote 517:
H. Goldie, _Calabar and its Mission_, New Edition (Edinburgh and
London, 1901), p. 43.
Footnote 518:
_Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_, xxxiii. (1861) p. 152.
Footnote 519:
Father Guillemé, in _Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_, lx. (1888)
p. 253.
Footnote 520:
Brasseur de Bourbourg, _Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et
de l’Amérique-Centrale_, i. 327 _sq._
Footnote 521:
E. Aymonier, “Les Tchames et leurs religions,” _Revue de l’histoire
des religions_, xxiv. (1891) p. 213.
Footnote 522:
W. Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, 2nd Ed., pp. 96-104.
Footnote 523:
S. I. Curtiss, _Primitive Semitic Religion To-day_ (Chicago, 1902), p.
117.
Footnote 524:
S. I. Curtiss, _op. cit._ p. 119.
Footnote 525:
W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_
(Westminster, 1896), ii. 50 _sq._, 225 _sq._
Footnote 526:
_Census of India, 1901_, vol. xvii., _Punjab_, p. 164.
Footnote 527:
W. Crooke, _Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and
Oudh_, iv. 425. As to the sect of the Maharajas, see above, vol. i.
pp. 406 _sq._
Footnote 528:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxi. 8.
Footnote 529:
S. I. Curtiss, _Primitive Semitic Religion To-day_, pp. 116 _sq._;
Mrs. H. H. Spoer, “The Powers of Evil in Jerusalem,” _Folk-lore_,
xviii. (1907) p. 55; A. Jaussen, _Coutumes des Arabes au pays de Moab_
(Paris, 1908), p. 360.
Footnote 530:
J. M. Mackinlay, _Folk-lore of Scottish Lochs and Springs_ (Glasgow,
1893), p. 112.
Footnote 531:
A. C. Haddon and C. R. Browne, “The Ethnography of the Aran Islands,”
_Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy_, ii. (1893), p. 819.
Footnote 532:
R. C. Hope, _The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England_ (London,
1893), p. 122.
Footnote 533:
R. C. Hope, _op. cit._ pp. 107 _sq._
Footnote 534:
See, for example, Pausanias, ii. 15. 5, v. 7. 2 _sq._, vi. 22. 9, vii.
23. 1 _sq._, viii. 43. 1, ix. 1. 1 _sq._, ix. 34. 6 and 9.
Footnote 535:
Sophocles, _Trachiniae_, 6 _sqq._ The combat of Hercules with the
bull-shaped river-god in presence of Dejanira is the subject of a
red-figured vase painting. See Miss J. E. Harrison, _Prolegomena to
the Study of Greek Religion_ 2nd Ed., (Cambridge, 1908), Fig. 133, p.
434.
Footnote 536:
Aeschines, _Epist._ x. The letters of Aeschines are spurious, but
there is no reason to doubt that the custom here described was
actually observed.
Footnote 537:
See the evidence collected by Mr. Floyd G. Ballentine, “Some Phases of
the Cult of the Nymphs,” _Harvard Studies in Classical Philology_, xv.
(1904) pp. 97 _sqq._
Footnote 538:
F. Panzer, _Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie_, i. 107-110, ii. 550. At
Ragusa in Sicily an enormous effigy of a dragon, with movable tail and
eyes, is carried in procession on St. George’s Day (April 23rd); and
along with it two huge sugar loaves, decorated with flowers, figure in
the procession. At the end of the festival these loaves are broken
into little bits, and every farmer puts one of the pieces in his sowed
fields to ensure a good crop. See G. Pitrè, _Feste patronali in
Sicilia_ (Turin and Palermo, 1900), pp. 323 _sq._ In this custom the
fertility charm remains, though the marriage ceremony appears to be
absent. As to the mummers’ play of St. George, see E. K. Chambers,
_The Mediaeval Stage_ (Oxford, 1903), i. 205 _sqq._; A. Beatty, “The
St. George, or Mummers’, Plays,” _Transactions of the Wisconsin
Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters_, xv. part ii. (October, 1906)
pp. 273-324. A separate copy of the latter work was kindly sent to me
by the author.
Footnote 539:
See F. N. Taillepied, _Recueil des Antiquitez et singularitez de la
ville de Rouen_ (Rouen, 1587), pp. 93-105; A. Floquet, _Histoire du
privilége de Saint Romain_ (2 vols. 8vo, Rouen, 1833). Briefer notices
of the custom and legend will be found in A. Bosquet’s _La Normandie
romanesque et merveilleuse_ (Paris and Rouen, 1845), pp. 405-409; and
A. de Nore’s _Coutumes, mythes, et traditions des provinces de France_
(Paris and Lyons, 1846), pp. 245-250. The gilt _fierte_, or portable
shrine of St. Romain, is preserved in the Chapter Library of the
Cathedral at Rouen, where I saw it in May 1902. It is in the form of a
chapel, on the roof of which the saint stands erect, trampling on the
winged dragon, while the condemned prisoner kneels in front of him.
This, however, is not the original shrine, which was so decayed that
in 1776 the Chapter decided to replace it by another. See Floquet,
_op. cit._ ii. 338-346. The custom of carrying the dragons in
procession was stopped in 1753 because of its tendency to impair the
solemnity of the ceremony (Floquet, _op. cit._ ii. 301). Even more
famous than the dragon of Rouen was the dragon of Tarascon, an effigy
of which used to be carried in procession on Whitsunday. See A. de
Nore, _op. cit._ pp. 47 _sqq._ As to other French dragons see P.
Sébillot, _Le Folk-lore de France_, i. (Paris, 1904) pp. 468-470.
CHAPTER XIII
THE KINGS OF ROME AND ALBA
§ 1. Numa and Egeria
[Sidenote: Egeria at Nemi a nymph of water and of the oak, perhaps a
form of Diana.] 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.[540] 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,[541] 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,[542] 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.[543] The identification of Egeria with Diana is confirmed by a
statement of Plutarch that Egeria was one of the oak-nymphs[544] whom
the Romans believed to preside over every green oak-grove;[545] 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.[546] 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.[547] Among the Greeks a
draught of water from certain sacred springs or wells was supposed to
confer prophetic powers.[548] This would explain the more than mortal
wisdom with which, according to tradition, Egeria inspired her royal
husband or lover Numa.[549] 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 [Sidenote: The legend of the
nuptials of Numa and Egeria may be a reminiscence of a sacred marriage
which the kings of Rome contracted with a goddess of water and of
vegetation.] 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.[550] 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.[551]
§ 2. The King as Jupiter
[Sidenote: The Roman king seems to have personated Jupiter and worn his
costume.] 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.[552] They rode a chariot drawn by four
laurel-crowned horses through the city, where every one else went on
foot;[553] 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.[554] 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.[555] The Greeks sometimes painted red
the face or the whole body of the wine-god Dionysus.[556] These customs
may have been a substitute for an older practice of feeding a god by
smearing the face, and especially the lips, of his idol with the blood
of a sacrificial victim. Many examples of such a practice might be
adduced from the religion of barbarous peoples.[557] 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,[558] 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.[559] We are expressly told that the oak crown was [Sidenote: The
oak crown as an emblem of Jupiter and of the Roman emperors.] sacred to
Capitoline Jupiter;[560] a passage of Ovid proves that it was regarded
as the god’s special emblem. Writing in exile on the shores of the Black
Sea, the poet sends the book which he has just composed to Rome to be
published there; he personifies the volume and imagines it passing along
the Sacred Way and up to the door of the emperor’s stately palace on the
Palatine hill. Above the portal hung shining arms and a crown of oak
leaves. At the sight the poet starts: “Is this, quoth I, the house of
Jove? For sure to my prophetic soul the oaken crown was reason good to
think it so.”[561] The senate had granted Augustus the right to have the
wreath of oak always suspended over his door;[562] and elsewhere Ovid
counts this among the more than mortal honours bestowed on the
emperor.[563] On the Capitol at Cirta there stood a silver image of
Jupiter wearing a silver crown of oak leaves and acorns.[564] Similarly
at Dodona, the most famous sanctuary of the oak in Greece, the image of
Zeus appears to have worn a chaplet of oak leaves; for the god is
constantly thus portrayed on coins of Epirus.[565] And just as Roman
kings appear to have personated the oak-god Jupiter, so Greek kings
appear to have personated the oak-god Zeus. The legendary Salmoneus of
Elis is certainly reported to have done so;[566] Periphas, an ancient
king of Athens, is said to have been styled Zeus by his people, and to
have been changed into an eagle by his jealous name-sake.[567] In Homer
kings are often spoken of as nurtured by Zeus and divine.[568] Indeed we
are told that in ancient days every Greek king was called Zeus.[569]
[Sidenote: To the Romans the breach between the human and the divine was
not so wide as it seems to us.] Thus we may fairly assume that on
certain solemn occasions Roman generals and magistrates personated the
supreme god, and that in so doing they revived the practice of the early
kings. To us moderns, for whom the breach which divides the human and
the divine has deepened into an impassable gulf, such mimicry may appear
impious, but it was otherwise with the ancients. To their thinking gods
and men were akin, for many families traced their descent from a
divinity, and the deification of a man probably seemed as little
extraordinary to them as the canonisation of a saint seems to a modern
Catholic. The Romans in particular were quite familiar with the
spectacle of men masquerading as spirits; for at the funerals of great
houses all the illustrious dead of the family were personated by men
specially chosen for their resemblance to the departed. These
representatives wore [Sidenote: Roman custom of representing dead
ancestors by masked men.] masks fashioned and painted in the likeness of
the originals: they were dressed in rich robes of office, resplendent
with purple and gold, such as the dead nobles had worn in their
lifetime: like them, they rode in chariots through the city preceded by
the rods and axes, and attended by all the pomp and heraldry of high
station; and when at last the funeral procession, after threading its
way through the crowded streets, defiled into the Forum, the maskers
solemnly took their seats on ivory chairs placed for them on the
platform of the Rostra, in the sight of the people, recalling no doubt
to the old, by their silent presence, the memories of an illustrious
past, and firing the young with the ambition of a glorious future.[570]
[Sidenote: The kings of Alba seem also to have claimed to represent
Jupiter.] 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.[571]
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 [Sidenote: The
Silvii and the Julii.] with oak.[572] 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. With regard to
Silvius, the first king of the Alban dynasty, we are told that he got
his name because he had been born or brought up in the forest, and that
when he came to man’s estate he contested the kingdom with his kinsman
Julus, whose name, as some of the ancients themselves [Sidenote: Julus,
the little Jupiter.] perceived, means the Little Jupiter. The people
decided in favour of Silvius, but his rival Julus was consoled for the
loss of the crown by being invested with religious authority and the
office of chief pontiff, or perhaps rather of Flamen Dialis, the highest
dignity after the kingship. From this Julus or Little Jupiter, the noble
house of the Julii, and hence the first emperors of Rome, believed
themselves to be sprung.[573] The legend of the dispute between Silvius
and Julus may preserve a reminiscence of such a partition of spiritual
and temporal powers in Alba Longa as afterwards took place in Rome, when
the old regal office was divided between the Consuls and the King of the
Sacred Rites.[574] Many more instances of such a schism will meet us
later on. That the Julian house worshipped Vejovis, the Little Jupiter,
according to the ancient rites of Alba Longa, is proved by the
inscription on an altar which they dedicated to him at their ancestral
home of Bovillae, a colony of Alba Longa, situated at the foot of the
Alban hills.[575] The Caesars, the most illustrious family of the Julian
house, took their name from their long hair (_caesaries_),[576] which
was probably in those early days, as it was among the Franks long
afterwards, a symbol of royalty.[577]
[Sidenote: The Alban kings seem to have been expected to make thunder
and rain for the good of their subjects.] But in ceding the pontificate
to their rivals, it would seem that the reigning dynasty of the Silvii
or Woods by no means renounced their own claim to personate the god of
the oak and the thunder; for the Roman annals record that one of them,
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.[578] Taken along with the similar story of Salmoneus, king of
Elis,[579] 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.[580] The priestly king Numa passed for an adept in
the art of drawing down lightning from the sky.[581] Mock thunder, we
know, has been made by various peoples as a rain-charm in modern
times;[582] why should it not have been made by kings in antiquity?
[Sidenote: The legends of the deaths of Roman kings point to a close
connexion between the king and the thunder-god.] In this connexion it
deserves to be noted that, according to the legend, Salmoneus, like his
Alban counterpart, was killed by a thunderbolt; and that one of the
Roman kings, Tullus Hostilius, is reported to have met with the same end
in an attempt to draw down Jupiter in the form of lightning from the
sky.[583] Aeneas himself, the legendary ancestor both of the Alban and
the Roman kings, vanished from the world in a violent thunderstorm, and
was afterwards worshipped as Jupiter Indiges. A mound of earth,
encircled with fine trees, on the bank of the little river Numicius was
pointed out as his grave.[584] Romulus, too, the first king of Rome,
[Sidenote: Death and deification of Romulus.] disappeared in like
manner. It was the seventh of July, and the king was reviewing his army
at the Goat’s Marsh, outside the walls of the city. Suddenly the sky
lowered and a tempest burst, accompanied by peals of thunder. Soon the
storm had swept by, leaving the brightness and serenity of the summer
day behind. But Romulus was never seen again. Those who had stood by him
said they saw him caught up to heaven in a whirlwind; and not long
afterwards a certain Proculus Julius, a patrician of Alban birth and
descent, declared on oath that Romulus had appeared to him clad in
bright armour, and announced that the Romans were to worship him as a
god under the name of Quirinus, and to build him a temple on the spot.
The temple was built and the place was henceforth known as the Quirinal
hill.[585] In this legend it is significant that the annunciation of the
king’s divinity should be put in the mouth of a member of the Julian
house, a native of Alba; for we have seen reason to believe that at Alba
the Julii had competed with the Silvii, from whom Romulus was descended,
for the kingship, and with it for the honour of personating Jupiter. If,
as seems to be philologically possible, the word Quirinus is derived
from the same root as _quercus_, “an oak,” the name of the deified
Romulus would mean no more than “the oak-god,” that is, Jupiter.[586]
Thus the tradition would square perfectly with the other indications of
custom and legend which have led us to conclude that the kings both of
Rome and of Alba claimed to embody in their own persons the god of the
sky, of thunder, and of the oak. Certainly the stories which associated
the deaths of so many of them with thunderstorms point to a close
connexion with the god of thunder and lightning. A king who had been
wont to fulminate in his lifetime might naturally be supposed at death
to be carried up in a thunderstorm to heaven, there to discharge above
the clouds the same duties which he had performed on earth. Such a tale
would be all the more likely to attach itself to the twin Romulus, if
the early Romans shared the widespread superstition that twins have
power over the weather in general and over rain and wind in
particular.[587] That tempests are caused by the spirits of the dead is
a belief of the Araucanians of Chili. Not a storm bursts upon the Andes
or the ocean which these Indians do not ascribe to a battle between the
souls of their fellow-countrymen and the dead Spaniards. In the roaring
of the wind they hear the trampling of the ghostly horses, in the peal
of the thunder the roll of the drums, and in the flashes of lightning
the fire of the artillery.[588]
[Sidenote: Every Latin town probably had its local Jupiter.] 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.[589] And who so
well fitted to perform the ceremony as the king, the living
representative of the sky-god?
[Sidenote: Many local Jupiters in Latium.] The conclusion which we have
reached as to the kings of Rome and Alba probably holds good of all the
kings of ancient Latium: each of them, we may suppose, represented or
embodied the local Jupiter. For we can hardly doubt that of old every
Latin town or settlement had its own Jupiter, as every town and almost
every church in modern Italy has its own Madonna; and like the Baal of
the Semites the local Jupiter was commonly worshipped on high places.
Wooded heights, round which the rain-clouds gather, were indeed the
natural sanctuaries for a god of the sky, the rain, and the oak. At Rome
he occupied one summit of the Capitoline hill, while the other summit
was assigned to his wife Juno, whose temple, with the long flight
[Sidenote: Capitoline Jupiter and Juno.] of stairs leading up to it, has
for ages been appropriately replaced by the church of St. Mary “in the
altar of the sky” (_in Araceli_).[590] That both heights were originally
wooded seems certain, for down to imperial times the saddle which joins
them was known as the place “between the two groves.”[591] Virgil tells
us that the hilltop where gilded temples glittered in his day had been
covered of old by shaggy thickets, the haunt of woodland elves and
savage men, “born of the tree-trunks and the heart of oak.”[592] These
thickets were probably composed of oaks, for the oak crown [Sidenote:
The hills of Rome once wooded with oaks.] was sacred to Capitoline Juno
as well as to Jupiter;[593] it was to a sacred oak on the Capitol that
Romulus fastened the spoils,[594] and there is evidence that in early
times oak-woods clothed other of the hills on which Rome was afterwards
built. Thus the Caelian hill went originally by the name of the Mountain
of the Oak Grove on account of the thickets of oak by which it was
overgrown,[595] and Jupiter was here worshipped in his character of the
oak-god;[596] one of the old gates of Rome, apparently between the
Caelian and the Esquiline hills, was called the Gate of the Oak Grove
for a similar reason;[597] and within the walls hard by was a Chapel of
the Oak Grove dedicated to the worship of the oak-nymphs.[598] These
nymphs appear on coins of the Accoleian family as three women supporting
on their shoulders a pole from which rise leafy branches.[599] The
Esquiline hill seems also to have derived its name from its oaks. After
mentioning the Chapel of the Oak and other hallowed groves which still
dotted the hill in his time, the antiquary Varro tells us that their
bounds were now much curtailed, adding with a sigh that it was no wonder
the sacred old trees should give way to the modern worship of
Mammon.[600] Apparently the Roman nobles of those days sold the ancient
woods, as their descendants sell their beautiful gardens, for
building-land. To this list of oak-clad hills on the left bank of the
Tiber must be added the Quirinal, if Quirinus, who had a very ancient
shrine on the hill, was the oak-god.[601] Under the Aventine was a grove
of evergreen oaks,[602] which appears to have been no other than the
grove of Egeria outside the Porta Capena.[603] The old grove of Vesta,
which once skirted the foot of the Palatine hill on the side of the
Forum,[604] must surely have been a grove of oaks; for not only does an
oak appear growing beside the temple of Vesta on a fine relief preserved
in the gallery of the Uffizi at Florence, but [Sidenote: The sacred
Vestal fire fed with oak-wood.] charred embers of the sacred Vestal fire
have in recent years been discovered at the temple of Vesta in the
Forum, and a microscopic analysis of them has proved that they consist
of the pith or heart of trunks or great branches of oak
(_quercus_).[605] The full significance of this discovery will appear
later on. When the plebeians seceded to the Janiculum in the third
century before Christ, the dictator Q. Hortensius summoned a meeting of
the people and passed a law in an oak grove, which perhaps grew on the
hill.[606] In this neighbourhood there was a street called the Street of
the Oak Grove; it is mentioned in an inscription found in its original
position near the modern Garibaldi bridge.[607] On the Vatican hill
there stood an evergreen oak which was believed to be older than Rome;
an inscription in Etruscan letters on a bronze tablet proclaimed the
sanctity of the tree.[608] Finally, that oak woods existed at or near
Rome in the earliest times has lately been demonstrated by the discovery
in the Forum itself of a prehistoric cemetery, which contains amongst
other sepultures the bones of several young children deposited in rudely
hollowed trunks of oak.[609] With all this evidence before us we need
not wonder that Virgil should speak of the primitive inhabitants of Rome
as “born of the tree-trunks and the heart of oak,” and that the Roman
kings should have worn crowns of oak leaves in imitation of the oak-god
Jupiter, who dwelt in his sacred grove on the Capitol.
[Sidenote: The Alban kings may have imitated Latian Jupiter, who dwelt
on the top of the Alban Mount.] 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.[610] 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.[611] The god’s oldest
sanctuary on this airy mountain-top was a grove;[612] 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.[613] We know that in antiquity Mount Algidus, an outlying
group of the Alban hills, was covered with dark forests of oak;[614] 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,[615] doubtless on account of the woods among which they dwelt.
[Sidenote: Theophrastus’s description of the woods of Latium.] 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
shew the grave of Elpenor, from which grow myrtles such as wreaths are
made of, whereas the other myrtle-trees are tall.”[616] Thus the
prospect from the top [Sidenote: The prospect from the Alban Mount in
antiquity.] 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.
Thus the Alban Mount was to the Latins what Olympus was to the Greeks,
the lofty abode of the sky-god, who hurled his thunderbolts from above
the clouds. The white steers which were here sacrificed to him in his
sacred grove, as in the Capitol at Rome,[617] remind us of the white
bulls which the Druids of Gaul sacrificed under the holy oak when
[Sidenote: Resemblance between the Latin worship of Jupiter and the
Druidical worship of the oak.] they cut the mistletoe;[618] and the
parallel would be all the closer if, as we have seen reason to think,
the Latins worshipped Jupiter originally in groves of oak. Other
resemblances between ancient Gaul and Latium will meet us later on. When
we remember that the ancient Italian and Celtic peoples spoke languages
which are nearly related to each other,[619] we shall not be surprised
at discovering traces of community in their religion, especially in what
concerns the worship of the god of the oak and the thunder. For that
worship, as we shall see presently, belongs to the oldest stratum of
Aryan civilisation in Europe.
[Sidenote: Sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno.] 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.[620] As the oak crown was sacred to
Jupiter and Juno on the Capitol,[621] 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;[622] and so on the top of Mount
Cithaeron he was periodically wedded to an oaken image of Hera.[623] 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.[624] Now on the first of June the Roman
pontiffs performed certain rites in the grove of Helernus beside the
Tiber, and on the same day, and perhaps in the same place, a nymph of
the grove, by name Carna, received offerings of lard and bean-porridge.
She was said to be a huntress, chaste and coy, who gave [Sidenote: Janus
and Carna.] the slip to her lovers in the depths of the wood, but was
caught by Janus. Some took her to be Diana herself.[625] If she were
indeed a form of that goddess, her union with Janus, that is, Dianus,
would be appropriate; and as she had a chapel on the Caelian hill, which
was once covered with oak-woods,[626] she may have been, like Egeria, an
oak-nymph. Further, Janus, or Dianus, and Diana, as we shall see later
on, were originally mere doubles of Jupiter and Juno, with whom they
coincide in name and to some extent in function. Hence it appears to be
not impossible that the rite celebrated by the pontiffs on the first of
June in the sacred grove of Helernus was the marriage of Jupiter and
Juno under the forms of Janus and Diana. It would be some confirmation
of this view if we could be sure that, as Ovid seems to imply, the
Romans were in the habit of placing branches of white thorn or buckthorn
in their [Sidenote: Ancient use of white thorn or buckthorn to ward off
witchcraft.] windows on the first of June to keep out the witches;[627]
for in some parts of Europe precisely the same custom is observed, for
the same reason, a month earlier, on the marriage day of the King and
Queen of May.[628] The Greeks certainly believed that branches of white
thorn or buckthorn fastened to a door or outside the house had power to
disarm the malignant arts of sorcerers[629] and to exclude spirits.
Hence they hung up branches of it before the door when sacrifices were
being offered to the dead, lest any of the prowling ghosts should be
tempted to revisit their old homes or to invade those of other
people.[630] When the atheist Bion lay adying, he not only caused
sacrifices to be offered on his behalf to the gods whose existence he
had denied, but got an old hag to mumble incantations over him and to
bind magical thongs about his arms, and he had boughs of buckthorn and
laurel attached to the lintel to keep out death.[631] However, the
evidence as to the rites observed by the Romans on the first of June is
too slight and dubious to allow us to press the parallel with May Day.
[Sidenote: At the sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno in later times the
parts of the deities may have been acted by the Flamen Dialis and the
Flaminica.] 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,[632] 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.[633] 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 [Sidenote: The Flamen and
Flaminica may have been the deputies of the king and queen.] 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.[634] Even if the office of Flamen Dialis existed under the kings,
as it appears to have done, the double representation of Jupiter by the
king and the flamen need not have seemed extraordinary to the Romans of
the time. The same sort of duplication, as we saw, appears to have taken
place at Alba, when the Julii were allowed to represent the supreme god
in the character of Little Jupiters, while the royal dynasty of the
Silvii continued to wield the divine thunder and lightning.[635] And
long ages afterwards, history repeating itself, another member of the
Julian house, the first emperor of Rome, was deified in his lifetime
under the title of Jupiter, while a flamen was appointed to do for him
what the Flamen Dialis did for the heavenly Jove.[636] It is said that
Numa, the typical priestly king, at first himself discharged the
functions of Flamen Dialis, but afterwards appointed a separate priest
of Jupiter with that title, in order that the kings, untrammeled by the
burdensome religious observances attached to the priesthood, might be
free to lead their armies to battle.[637] The tradition may be
substantially correct; for analogy shews that the functions of a
priestly king are too harassing and too incongruous to be permanently
united in the same hands, and that sooner or later the holder of the
office seeks to rid himself of part of his burden by deputing to others,
according to his temper and tastes, either his civil or his religious
duties. Hence we may take it as probable that the fighting kings of
Rome, tired of parading as Jupiter and of observing all the elaborate
ritual, all the tedious restrictions which the character of godhead
entailed on them, were glad to relegate these pious mummeries to a
substitute, in whose hands they left the crosier at home while they went
forth to wield the sharp Roman sword abroad. This would explain why the
traditions of the later kings, from Tullus Hostilius onwards, exhibit so
few traces of sacred or priestly functions adhering to their office.
Among the ceremonies which they henceforward performed by deputy may
have been the rite of the sacred marriage.
[Sidenote: At the sacred marriage the King and Queen of Rome probably
personated the god and goddess of the oak.] 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.[638] 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.
Footnote 540:
See above, vol. i. pp. 17 _sq._
Footnote 541:
See above, vol. i. p. 12.
Footnote 542:
Catullus, xxxiv. 9 _sqq_.
Footnote 543:
Wernicke, in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encyklopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft_, ii. coll. 1343, 1351.
Footnote 544:
Plutarch, _De fortuna Romanorum_, 9. This statement would be strongly
confirmed by etymology if we could be sure that, as Mr. A. B. Cook has
suggested, the name Egeria is derived from a root _aeg_ meaning “oak.”
The name is spelt _Aegeria_ by Valerius Maximus (i. 2. 1). See A. B.
Cook, “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_, xviii. (1904)
p. 366; _id_. “The European Sky-God,” _Folk-lore_, xvi. (1905) pp. 283
_sq._; and as to the root _aeg_ see O. Schrader, _Reallexikon der
indogermanischen Atertumskunde_ (Strasburg, 1901), p. 164.
Footnote 545:
Festus, _s.v._ “Querquetulanae,” pp. 260, 261, ed. C. O. Müller.
Footnote 546:
See below, p. 380.
Footnote 547:
Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ iii. 466.
Footnote 548:
Tacitus, _Annals_, ii. 54; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ ii. 232; Pausanias, ix.
2. 11, x. 24. 7; Lucian, _Bis accusatus_, 1.
Footnote 549:
See above, vol. i. p. 18.
Footnote 550:
See above, pp. 130 _sqq._
Footnote 551:
The first, I believe, to point out a parallelism in detail between
Rome and Aricia was Mr. A. B. Cook (_Classical Review_, xvii. (1902)
pp. 376 _sqq._); but from the similarity he inferred the humanity of
the Arician priests rather than the divinity of the Roman kings. A
fuller consideration of all the evidence has since led him, rightly as
I conceive, to reverse the inference. See his articles “Zeus, Jupiter,
and the Oak,” _The Classical Review_, xviii. (1904) pp. 360-375; “The
European Sky-God,” _Folk-lore_, xvi. (1905) pp. 260-332. In the first
and second editions of this work I had suggested that the _regifugium_
at Rome may have been a relic of a rule of succession to the throne
like that which obtained at Nemi. The following discussion of the
religious position of the old Latin kings owes much to Mr. Cook’s
sagacity and learning, of which he freely imparted to me.
Footnote 552:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ iii. 61 _sq._, iv. 74, v.
35; B. G. Niebuhr, _History of Rome_, ii. 36; Th. Mommsen, _History of
Rome_, New Edition (London, 1894), i. 83; A. J. H. Greenidge, _Roman
Public Life_ (London, 1901), pp. 44 _sq._ But Mommsen, while he held
that the costume of a Roman god and of the Roman king was the same,
denied that the king personated the god. A truer historical insight is
displayed by K. O. Müller in his treatment of the subject (_Die
Etrusker_, Stuttgart, 1877, i. 348 _sq._). For a discussion of the
evidence see Th. Mommsen, _Römisches Staatsrecht_, 3rd Ed., i. 372
_sq._, ii. 5 _sq._; J. Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, ii. 566
_sq._, iii. 2nd Ed., 507 _sq._; _id._, _Privatleben der Römer_, 2nd
Ed., 542 _sq._; K. O. Müller, _op. cit._ i. 344-350, ii. 198-200;
Aust, _s.v._ “Juppiter,” in W. H. Roscher’s _Lexikon der griech. u.
röm. Mythologie_, ii. coll. 633, 725-728. Among the chief passages of
ancient authors on the subject are Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_ll.cc._; Strabo, v. 2. 2, p. 220; Diodorus Siculus, v. 40; Appian,
_Pun._ 66; Zonaras, _Annal._ vii. 8 and 21; Livy, i. 8. 1 _sq._, v.
23. 4 _sq._, v. 41. 2, x. 7. 9 _sq._; Florus, i. 5. 6; Pliny, _Nat.
Hist._ viii. 195, xv. 127, 130, 137, xxxiii. 11. 111 _sq._; Juvenal,
x. 36-43; Ovid, _Ex Ponto_, ii. 57 _sq._; Macrobius, _Saturn._ i. 6.
7-9; Servius on Virgil, _Ecl._ vi. 22, x. 27; Ael. Lampridius,
_Alexander Severus_, 40. 8; Jul. Capitolinus, _Gordiani tres_, 4. 4;
Aulus Gellius, v. 6. 5-7; Tertullian, _De corona militis_, 13. The
fullest descriptions of a Roman triumph are those of Appian and
Zonaras (vii. 21).
Footnote 553:
Camillus triumphed in a chariot drawn by white horses like the sacred
white horses of Jupiter and the Sun. His Republican contemporaries
were offended at what they regarded as a too close imitation of the
gods (Livy, v. 23. 5 _sq._; Plutarch, _Camillus_, 7; Dio Cassius, lii.
13); but the Roman emperors followed his example, or perhaps revived
the old custom of the kings. See Dio Cassius, xliii. 14; Suetonius,
_Nero_, 25; Pliny, _Panegyric_, 22; Propertius, v. 1. 32; Ovid, _Ars
amat._ i. 214. On the sanctity of white horses among various branches
of the Aryan stock, see J. von Negelein, “Die volksthümliche Bedeutung
der weissen Farbe,” _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, xxxiii. (1901) pp.
62-66; W. Ridgeway, _The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred
Horse_ (Cambridge, 1905), pp. 105, 186, 187, 294, 295, 419. As to the
horses of the Sun, see above, vol. i. pp. 315 _sq._
Footnote 554:
Tertullian, _De corona militis_, 13, “_Coronant et publicos ordines
laureis publicae causae magistratus vero insuper aureis. Praeferuntur
etiam illis Hetruscae. Hoc vocabulum est coronarum, quas gemmis et
foliis ex auro quercinis ob Jovem insignes ad deducendas thensas cum
palmatis togis sumunt._” The _thensae_ were the sacred cars in which
the images of the gods were carried at the procession of the
Circensian games (see W. Smith’s _Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities_, 3rd Ed., _s.v._). That the Etruscan crown described by
Tertullian was the golden crown held by a slave over the head of a
general on his triumph may be inferred from Pliny, _Nat. Hist._
xxxiii. 11, “_Vulgoque sic triumphabant, et cum corona ex auro Etrusca
sustineretur a tergo, anulus tamen in digito ferreus erat aeque
triumphantis et servi fortasse coronam sustinentis._” Compare Zonaras,
_Annal._ vii. 21; Juvenal, x. 38 _sqq._ Mommsen says that the
triumphal golden crown was made in the shape of laurel leaves
(_Römisches Staatsrecht_, i. 3rd Ed., 427); but none of the ancient
authors cited by him appears to affirm this, with the exception of
Aulus Gellius (v. 6. 5-7, “_Triumphales coronae sunt aureae, quae
imperatoribus ob honorem triumphi mittuntur. Id vulgo dicitur aurum
coronarium. Haec antiquitus e lauru erant, post fieri ex aura
coeptae_”). Gellius may have confused the wreath of real laurel which
the general wore on his head (Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxiii. 127, 130,
137) with the golden crown which was held over him by a slave. The two
crowns are clearly distinguished by Zonaras (_l.c._), though he does
not describe the shape of the golden crown. Thus there is no good
ground for rejecting the express testimony of Tertullian that the
golden crown was shaped like oak-leaves. This seems to have been
Mommsen’s own earlier opinion, since he mentions “a chaplet of oaken
leaves in gold” as part of the insignia of the Roman kings (_Roman
History_, London, 1894, i. 83).
Footnote 555:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxiii. 111 _sq._; Servius on Virgil, _Ecl._ vi.
22, x. 27.
Footnote 556:
Pausanias, ii. 2. 6, vii. 26. 11, viii. 39. 6. For other examples of
idols painted red see my note on Pausanias, ii. 2. 6.
Footnote 557:
For instances see Fr. Kunstmann, “Valentin Ferdinand’s Beschreibung
der Serra Leoa,” _Abhandlungen d. histor. Classe d. kön. Bayer.
Akademie d. Wissenschaften_, ix. (Munich, 1866) p. 131; J. B. Labat,
_Relation historique de l’Éthiopie Occidentale_ (Paris, 1732), i. 250;
Gmelin, _Reise durch Sibirien_, ii. 476; “Ueber den religiösen Glauben
und die Ceremonien der heidnischen Samojeden im Kreise Mesen,”
_Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde_, N.F. viii. (1860) p. 59; E.
Rae, _The White Sea Peninsula_, p. 150; J. B. Müller, “Les Mœurs et
usages des Ostiackes,” _Recueil de voiages au Nord_, viii. (Amsterdam,
1727) pp. 414 _sq._; Delamare, in _Annales de la Propagation de la
Foi_, xii. (1840) p. 482; Sahagun, _Histoire générale des choses de la
Nouvelle-Espagne_ (Paris, 1880), p. 185; J. de Velasco, _Histoire du
royaume de Quito_, p. 121 (Ternaux-Compans, _Voyages, relations et
mémoires_, xviii., Paris, 1840); E. J. Payne, _History of the New
World called America_, i. 374 n. 1; F. B. Jevons, _Introduction to the
History of Religion_ (London, 1896), p. 158. Often we are merely told
that the blood is smeared or sprinkled on the image. See A. B. Ellis,
_Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, pp. 42, 79; _id._,
_Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, pp. 102, 106; A. F.
Mockler-Ferryman, _British Nigeria_ (London, 1902), p. 255; Fr.
Kramer, “Der Götzendienst der Niasser,” _Tijdschrift voor Indische
Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde_, xxxiii. (1890) p. 496. For more examples
see my note on Pausanias, ii. 2. 6.
Footnote 558:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xii. 3; Phaedrus, iii. 17. 1 _sqq._; Servius on
Virgil, _Georg._ iii. 332, and on _Ecl._ i. 17.
Footnote 559:
Livy, i. 10. 4 _sqq._
Footnote 560:
Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 92.
Footnote 561:
Ovid, _Tristia_, iii. 31 _sqq._
Footnote 562:
Dio Cassius, liii. 19.
Footnote 563:
Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 607 _sqq._, iv. 953 _sq._ Tiberius refused a similar
honour (Suetonius, _Tiberius_, 26); but Domitian seems to have
accepted it (Martial, viii. 82. 7). Two statues of Claudius, one in
the Vatican, the other in the Lateran Museum, represent the emperor as
Jupiter wearing the oak crown (W. Helbig, _Führer durch die
öffentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Altertümer in Rom_, 2nd Ed., i.
Nos. 312, 673).
Footnote 564:
_Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, viii. No. 6981.
Footnote 565:
J. Overbeck, _Griechische Kunstmythologie_, Besonderer Theil, i. 232
_sqq._; L. R. Farnell, _The Cults of the Greek States_, i. 107 _sq._
Footnote 566:
See above, vol. i. p. 310.
Footnote 567:
Antoninus Liberalis, _Transform._ 6. For this and the two following
passages of Tzetzes I am indebted to Mr. A. B. Cook. See further his
articles, “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_, xvii.
(1903) p. 409; “The European Sky-god,” _Folk-lore_, xv. (1904) pp. 299
_sqq._
Footnote 568:
H. Ebeling, _Lexicon Homericum_, _s.vv._ βασιλεύς, διοτρεφής, and
θεῖος.
Footnote 569:
J. Tzetzes, _Antehomerica_, 102 _sq._:
οἱ πρὶν γάρ τε Δίας πάντας κάλεον βασιλῆας,
οὕνεκά μιν καλὸς Διὸς ἀστὴρ σκῆπτρον ὀπάζει.
_id._, _Chiliades_, i. 474:
τοὺς βασιλεῖς δ’ ἀνέκαθε Δίας ἐκάλουν πάντας.
Footnote 570:
Polybius, vi. 53 _sq._
Footnote 571:
As to the situation, see Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ i. 66;
H. Nissen, _Italische Landeskunde_, ii. 582 _sq._
Footnote 572:
Virgil, _Aen._ vi. 772. I have to thank Mr. A. B. Cook for directing
my attention to the Alban kings and their interesting legends. See his
articles “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_, xviii.
(1904) pp. 363 _sq._; “The European Sky-god,” _Folk-lore_, xvi. (1905)
pp. 285 _sqq._
Footnote 573:
Virgil, _Aen._ vi. 760 _sqq._, with the commentary of Servius; Livy,
i. 3. 6 _sqq._; Ovid, _Metam._ xiv. 609 _sqq._; _id._, _Fasti_, iv. 39
_sqq._; Festus, _s.v._ “Silvi,” p. 340, ed. C. O. Müller; Aurelius
Victor, _Origo gentis Romanae_, 15-17; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_Antiquit. Rom._ i. 70; Diodorus Siculus, in Eusebius, _Chronic._ i.
coll. 285, 287, ed. A. Schoene; Diodorus Siculus, vii. 3a and 3b, vol.
ii. pp. 110-112, ed. L. Dindorf (Teubner edition); Joannes Lydus, _De
magistratibus_, i. 21. As to the derivation of the name Julus, see
Aurelius Victor, _op. cit._ 15, “_Igitur Latini Ascanium ob insignem
virtutem non solum Jove ortum crediderunt, sed etiam per diminutionem,
declinato paululum nomine, primo Jobum, dein postea Julum
appellarant_”; also Steuding, in W. H. Roscher’s _Lexikon d. griech.
u. röm. Mythologie_, ii. 574. Compare W. M. Lindsay, _The Latin
Language_ (Oxford, 1894), p. 250. According to Diodorus, the
priesthood bestowed on Julus was the pontificate; but the name Julus
or Little Jupiter suggests that the office was rather that of Flamen
Dialis, who was a sort of living embodiment of Jupiter (see below, pp.
191 _sq._), and whose name of _Dialis_ is derived from the same root
as Julus. On the Julii and their relation to Vejovis see R. H.
Klausen, _Aeneas und die Penaten_, ii. 1059 _sqq._
Footnote 574:
See above, p. 1, and vol. i. p. 44.
Footnote 575:
_Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, xiv. No. 2387; L. Preller, _Römische
Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 263 _sq._ On Vejovis as the Little Jupiter
see Festus, _s.v._ “Vesculi,” p. 379, “_Ve enim syllabam rei parvae
praeponebant, unde Veiovem parvum Iovem et vegrandem fabam minutam
dicebant_”; also Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 429-448. At Rome the sanctuary of
Vejovis was on the saddle between the two peaks of the Capitoline hill
(Aulus Gellius, v. 12. 1 _sq._; Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 429 _sq._); thus
he appropriately dwelt on the same hill as the Great Jupiter, but
lower down the slope. On coins of the Gargilian, Ogulnian and
Vergilian houses Vejovis is represented by a youthful beardless head,
crowned with oak. See E. Babelon, _Monnaies de la République Romaine_,
i. 532, ii. 266, 529. On other Republican coins his head is crowned
with laurel. See E. Babelon, _op. cit._ i. 77, 505-508, ii. 6, 8.
Circensian games were held at Bovillae in honour of the Julian family,
and Tiberius dedicated a chapel to them there. See Tacitus, _Annals_,
ii. 41, xv. 23.
Footnote 576:
Festus, _s.v._ “Caesar,” p. 57, ed. C. O. Müller. Other but less
probable explanations of the name are suggested by Aelius Spartianus
(_Helius_, ii. 3 _sq._).
Footnote 577:
As to the Frankish kings see Agathias, _Hist._ i. 3; J. Grimm,
_Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer_, pp. 239 _sqq._; _The Golden Bough_,
Second Edition, i. 368 _sq._
Footnote 578:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Roman._ i. 71; Diodorus Siculus,
in Eusebius, _Chronic._ bk. i. coll. 287, 289, ed. A. Schoene;
Diodorus Siculus, vii. 3a and 4, ed. L. Dindorf; Zonaras, _Annal._
vii. 1; Aurelius Victor, _Origo gentis Romanae_, 18; Ovid, _Metam._
xiv. 616-618; _id._, _Fasti_, iv. 50; Livy, i. 3. 9. The king is
called Romulus by Livy, Remulus by Ovid, Aremulus by Aurelius Victor,
Amulius by Zonaras, Amulius or Arramulius by Diodorus, and Allodius by
Dionysius. A tale of a city submerged in the Alban lake is still
current in the neighbourhood. See the English translators’ note to
Niebuhr’s _History of Rome_, 3rd Ed., i. 200. Similar stories are told
in many lands. See my note on Pausanias, vii. 24. 6.
Footnote 579:
See above, vol. i. p. 310.
Footnote 580:
See above, vol. i. pp. 342 _sqq._
Footnote 581:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ ii. 140, xxviii. 13 _sq._ Other writers speak only
of Numa’s skill in expiating the prodigy or evil omen of thunderbolts.
See Livy, i. 20. 7; Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 285-348; Plutarch, _Numa_, 15;
Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, v. 1-4.
Footnote 582:
See above, vol. i. pp. 248, 251.
Footnote 583:
Apollodorus, i. 9. 7; Virgil, _Aen._ vi. 592 _sqq._; Pliny, _Nat.
Hist._ ii. 140, xxviii. 14 (referring to the first book of L. Piso’s
_Annals_); Livy, i. 31. 8; Aurelius Victor, _De viris illustribus_, 4;
Zonaras, _Annal._ vii. 6. According to another account Tullus
Hostilius was murdered by his successor Ancus Martius during a violent
storm (Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ iii. 35; Zonaras,
_l.c._).
Footnote 584:
Livy, i. 2. 6; Ovid, _Metam._ xiv. 598-608; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ iii.
56; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ i. 64; Servius on
Virgil, _Aen._ i. 259; Aurelius Victor, _Origo gentis Romanae_, 14.
Only the last writer mentions the thunderstorm.
Footnote 585:
Livy, i. 16; Cicero, _De legibus_, i. 1. 3; _id._, _De re publica_, i.
16. 25, ii. 10. 20; Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. 475-512; Plutarch, _Romulus_,
27 _sq._; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ ii. 56 and 63;
Zonaras, _Annal._ vii. 4; Aurelius Victor, _De viris illustribus_, 2;
Florus, _Epitoma_, i. 1. 16-18. From Cicero (_De legibus_, i. 1. 3) we
learn that the apparition of Romulus to Proculus Julius took place
near the spot where the house of Atticus afterwards stood, and from
Cornelius Nepos (_Atticus_, 13. 2) we know that Atticus had an
agreeable villa and shady garden on the Quirinal. As to the temple of
Quirinus see also Varro, _De lingua Latina_, v. 51; Festus, pp. 254,
255, ed. C. O. Müller; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xv. 120. As to the site of
the temple and the question whether it was identical with the temple
dedicated by L. Papirius Cursor in 293 B.C. (Livy, x. 46. 7; Pliny,
_Nat. Hist._ vii. 213) see O. Richter, _Topographie der Stadt Rom_,
2nd Ed., pp. 286 _sqq._; G. Wissowa, _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_
(Munich, 1904), pp. 144 _sqq._
Footnote 586:
See A. B. Cook, “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_,
xviii. (1904) pp. 368 _sq._; _id._ “The European Sky-god,”
_Folk-lore_, xvi. (1905) p. 281. But a serious argument against the
proposed derivation of Quirinus from _quercus_ is that, as I am
informed by my learned philological friend the Rev. Prof. J. H.
Moulton, it is inconsistent with the much more probable derivation of
Perkunas from _quercus_. See below, p. 367, note 3.
Footnote 587:
See above, vol. i. pp. 262 _sqq._
Footnote 588:
J. I. Molina, _Geographical, Natural, and Civil History of Chili_
(London, 1809), ii. 92 _sq._ The savage Conibos of the Ucayali river
in eastern Peru imagine that thunder is the voice of the dead (W.
Smyth and F. Lowe, _Journey from Lima to Para_, London, 1836, p. 240);
and among them when parents who have lost a child within three months
hear thunder, they go and dance on the grave, howling turn about (De
St. Cricq, “Voyage du Pérou au Brésil,” _Bulletin de la Société de
Géographie_, ivme série, vi., Paris, 1853, p. 294). The Yuracares of
eastern Peru threaten the thunder-god with their arrows and defy him
when he thunders (A. D’Orbigny, _L’Homme américain_, i. 365), just as
the Thracians did of old (Herodotus, iv. 94). So the Kayans of Borneo,
on hearing a peal of thunder, have been seen to grasp their swords for
the purpose of keeping off the demon who causes it (A. W. Nieuwenhuis,
_In Centraal Borneo_, i. 140 _sq._, 146 _sq._).
Footnote 589:
See above, vol. i. p. 310; and for the connexion of the rite with
Jupiter Elicius see O. Gilbert, _Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt
Rom im Altertum_, ii. 154 _sq._; Aust, in W. H. Roscher’s _Lexikon der
griech. und röm. Mythologie_, ii. 657 _sq._ As to the connexion of
Jupiter with the rain-making ceremony (_aquaelicium_), the combined
evidence of Petronius (_Sat._ 44) and Tertullian (_Apologeticus_, 40)
seems to me conclusive.
Footnote 590:
Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 637 _sq._, vi. 183 _sqq._; Livy, vii. 28. 4 _sq._;
Cicero, _De divinatione_, i. 45. 101; Solinus, i. 21. Although the
temple was not dedicated until 344 B.C., the worship of the goddess of
the hill appears to have been very ancient. See H. Jordan,
_Topographie der Stadt Rom im Altertum_, i. 2, pp. 109 _sq._; W. H.
Roscher, _Lexikon d. griech. u. röm. Mythologie_, ii. coll. 592 _sq._
Footnote 591:
Livy, i. 8. 5; Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 430; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_Antiquit. Rom._ ii. 15.
Footnote 592:
Virgil, _Aen._ viii. 314-318, 347-354.
Footnote 593:
Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 92.
Footnote 594:
Livy, i. 10. 5.
Footnote 595:
_Mons Querquetulanus_; see Tacitus, _Annals_, iv. 65.
Footnote 596:
A monument found at Rome represents Jupiter beside an oak, and
underneath is the dedication: _Jovi Caelio_. See H. Dessau,
_Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, No. 3080.
Footnote 597:
_Porta Querquetulana_ or _Querquetularia_; see Pliny, _Nat. Hist._
xvi. 37; Festus, pp. 260, 261, ed. C. O. Müller.
Footnote 598:
Festus, _ll.cc._; Varro, _De lingua Latina_, v. 49.
Footnote 599:
E. Babelon, _Monnaies de la République Romaine_, i. 99 _sq._
Footnote 600:
Varro, _De lingua Latina_, v. 49, where, however, “_alii ab
aesculetis_” is a conjecture of C. O. Müller’s. I do not know what
authority O. Richter has for reading _aesculis consitae_ (“planted
with oaks”) for _excultae_ in this passage (_Topographie der Stadt
Rom_, 2nd Ed., p. 302, n. 4). Modern topographers prefer to derive the
name from _ex-colere_ in the sense of “the hill outside the city” (O.
Richter, _l.c._; O. Gilbert, _Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt Rom
im Altertum_, i. 166 _sq._).
Footnote 601:
See above, p. 182.
Footnote 602:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 295 _sq._
Footnote 603:
See above, vol. i. p. 18; and for the identification, O. Gilbert,
_Geschichte und Topographie der Stadt Rom im Altertum_, ii. 152
_sqq._; A. B. Cook, “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_,
xviii. (1904) p. 366.
Footnote 604:
Cicero, _De divinatione_, i. 45, 101.
Footnote 605:
G. Boni, in _Notizie degli Scavi_, May 1900, pp. 161, 172; _id._,
_Aedes Vestae_, p. 14 (extract from the _Nuova Antologia_, 1st August
1900). Copies of these and other papers containing Commendatore Boni’s
account of his memorable excavations and discoveries were kindly given
me by him during my stay in Rome in the winter of 1900-1901. That the
fire in question was a sacrificial one is proved by the bones,
potsherds, and rude copper money found among the ashes. Commend. Boni
thinks that the charred remains of the wood prove that the fire was
extinguished, probably by libations, and that therefore it cannot have
been the perpetual holy fire of Vesta, which would have burned up
completely all the fuel. But a new fire was annually lit on the first
of March (Ovid, _Fasti_, iii. 143 _sq._; Macrobius, _Saturn._ i. 12.
6), which may imply that the old fire was ceremonially extinguished,
as often happens in such cases.
Footnote 606:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 37.
Footnote 607:
O. Richter, _Topographie der Stadt Rom_, 2nd Ed., p. 211.
Footnote 608:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 237. The inscription was probably not in the
Etruscan language, but only in an archaic alphabet like that employed
in the inscription on the pyramidal stone which has been found under
the Black Stone in the Forum.
Footnote 609:
G. Boni, “Bimbi Romulei,” _Nuova Antologia_, 16th February 1904, pp. 5
_sqq._ (separate reprint); E. Burton-Brown, _Recent Excavations in the
Roman Forum_ (London, 1904), p. 150.
Footnote 610:
Festus, _s.v._ “Oscillantes,” p. 194, ed. C. O. Müller.
Footnote 611:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ iv. 49; A. Schwegler,
_Römische Geschichte_, i. 341; H. Nissen, _Italische Landeskunde_, ii.
580. It is to be observed that Dionysius does not here speak of the
dedication of a temple to Jupiter; when he describes the foundation of
the temple of Capitoline Jupiter by Tarquin (iv. 59 and 61) his
language is quite different. The monastery, founded in 1777 by
Cardinal York, the last of the Stuarts, has now been converted into a
meteorological station and an inn (K. Baedeker, _Central Italy and
Rome_, 13th Ed., p. 400). It is fitting enough that the atmospheric
phenomena should be observed by modern science on the spot where they
were worshipped by ancient piety.
Footnote 612:
Livy, i. 31. 3.
Footnote 613:
According to tradition, the future site of Alba Longa was marked out
by a white sow and her litter, which were found lying under evergreen
oaks (Virgil, _Aen._ viii. 43), as Mr. A. B. Cook has pointed out
(_Classical Review_, xviii. 363). The tradition seems to shew that the
neighbourhood of the city was wooded with oaks.
Footnote 614:
See below, p. 380.
Footnote 615:
Querquetulani. See Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ iii. 69; Dionysius
Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ v. 61. As to the white bulls
sacrificed at the great Latin festival and partaken of by the members
of the League, see Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, ii. 68; Dionysius
Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ iv. 49. Compare Cicero, _Pro Plancio_,
ix. 23; Varro, _De lingua Latina_, vi. 25.
Footnote 616:
Theophrastus, _Histor. plant._ v. 8. 3.
Footnote 617:
Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, ii. 68; Livy, xxii. 10. 7; Ovid, _Ex
Ponto_, iv. 4. 31; Servius on Virgil, _Georg._ ii. 146; Horace,
_Carmen Saeculare_, 49.
Footnote 618:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 250 _sq._
Footnote 619:
“Italic and Keltic are so closely bound together by important phonetic
and morphological affinities that they are sometimes spoken of as one
branch” of Aryan speech (J. H. Moulton, _Two Lectures on the Science
of Language_, Cambridge, 1903, p. 6, note). “The connection of the
Celtic and Italic languages is structural. It is much deeper than that
of Celts and Teutons, and goes back to an earlier epoch. Celts and
Latins must have dwelt together as an undivided people in the valley
of the Danube, and it must have been at a much later time—after the
Umbrians and Latins had crossed the Alps—that the contact of Celts and
Teutons came about” (Isaac Taylor, _The Origin of the Aryans_, p. 192;
compare _id._ p. 257). See also P. Giles, _Manual of Comparative
Philology_ 2nd Ed., (London, 1901), p. 26.
Footnote 620:
Livy, xlii. 7. 1, xlv. 15. 10. Compare Dio Cassius, xxxix. 20. 1. The
temple on the Alban Mount was dedicated in 168 B.C., but the worship
was doubtless far older.
Footnote 621:
See above, pp. 176, 184.
Footnote 622:
Strabo, vii. 7. 12, p. 329; Hyperides, _Or._ iii. coll. 35-37, pp. 43
_sq._, ed. Blass; G. Curtius, _Griech. Etymologie_, 5th Ed., p. 236;
W. H. Roscher, _Juno und Hera_ (Leipsic, 1875), pp. 17 _sq._; _id._,
_Lexikon d. griech. u. röm. Mythologie_, ii. coll. 576, 578 _sq._ See
below, p. 381.
Footnote 623:
See above, pp. 140 _sqq._
Footnote 624:
W. H. Roscher, _Juno und Hera_, pp. 64 _sqq._; _id._, _Lexikon d.
griech. u. röm. Mythologie_, ii. 575 _sq._, 591 _sqq._ At Falerii the
image of Juno was annually carried in procession from her sacred
grove, and in some respects the ceremony resembled a marriage
procession (Ovid, _Amores_, iii. 13; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_Antiquit. Rom._ i. 21). The name of June was _Junius_ at Rome,
_Junonius_ at Aricia, Laurentum and Lavinia, and _Junonalis_ at Tibur
and Praeneste (Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 59-63; Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 12. 30).
The forms _Junonius_ and _Junonalis_ are recognised by Festus (p. 103,
ed. C. O. Müller). Their existence among the Latins seems to render
the derivation of _Junius_ from Juno quite certain, though that
derivation is doubted by Mr. W. Warde Fowler (_Roman Festivals of the
Period of the Republic_, pp. 99 _sq._).
Footnote 625:
Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 101-168; Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 12. 31-33;
Tertullian, _Ad nationes_, ii. 9; Varro, quoted by Nonius Marcellus,
_De compendiosa doctrina_, p. 390, ed. L. Quicherat. There was a
sacred beechen grove of Diana on a hill called Corne near Tusculum
(Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 242). But _Corne_ has probably no connection
with _Carna_. The grove of Helernus was crowded with worshippers on
the first of February (Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. 67, where _Helerni_ is a
conjectural emendation for _Averni_ or _Asyli_). Nothing else is known
about Helernus, unless with Merkel (in his edition of Ovid’s _Fasti_,
pp. cxlviii. _sq._) we read _Elerno_ for _Eterno_ in Festus, p. 93,
ed. C. O. Müller. In that case it would seem that black oxen were
sacrificed to him. From the association of Carna with Janus it was
inferred by Merkel (_l.c._) that the grove of Helernus stood on or
near the Janiculum, where there was a grove of oaks (see above, p.
186). But the language of Ovid (_Fasti_, ii. 67) points rather to the
mouth of the Tiber.
Footnote 626:
See above, p. 185.
Footnote 627:
Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 129-168. A Roman bride on the way to her husband’s
house was preceded by a boy bearing a torch of buckthorn (_spina
alba_, Festus, _s.v._ “Patrimi,” p. 245, ed. C. O. Müller; Varro,
quoted by Nonius Marcellus, _De compendiosa doctrina_, _s.v._ “Fax,”
p. 116, ed. L. Quicherat). The intention probably was to defend her
from enchantment and evil spirits. Branches of buckthorn were also
thought to protect a house against thunderbolts (Columella, _De re
rustica_, x. 346 _sq._).
Footnote 628:
See above, p. 54.
Footnote 629:
Dioscorides, _De arte medica_, i. 119.
Footnote 630:
Scholiast on Nicander, _Theriaca_, 861.
Footnote 631:
Diogenes Laertius, _Vitae philosophorum_, iv. 54-57.
Footnote 632:
See above, p. 143.
Footnote 633:
Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 111 εἰκὸς μὲν οὖν ἐστι καὶ τὸν ἱερέα τοῦ Διὸς
ὥσπερ ἔμψυχον καὶ ἱερὸν ἄγαλμα καταφύξιμον ἀνεῖσθαι τοῖς δεομένοις; L.
Preller, _Römische Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 201; F. B. Jevons,
_Plutarch’s Romane Questions_, p. lxxiii.; C. Julian, in Daremberg et
Saglio, _Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines_, ii. 1156
_sqq._
Footnote 634:
Cicero, _De re publica_, iii. 13. 22; Virgil, _Aen._ x. 112; Horace,
_Sat._ ii. 1. 42 _sq._; Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 37; Varro, _De lingua
Latina_, v. 6. 7; Livy, v. 21. 2, v. 23. 7; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxv.
115; Flavius Vopiscus, _Probus_, xii. 7; L. Preller, _Römische
Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 205, 284; W. H. Roscher, _Lexikon d. griech.
u. röm. Mythologie_, ii. 600 _sqq._
Footnote 635:
See above, pp. 179 _sq._
Footnote 636:
Cicero, _Philippics_, ii. 43. 110; Suetonius, _Divus Julius_, 76; Dio
Cassius, xliv. 6. The coincidence has been pointed out by Mr. A. B.
Cook (_Classical Review_, xviii. 371).
Footnote 637:
Livy, i. 20. 1 _sq._
Footnote 638:
Numa was not the only Roman king who is said to have enjoyed the
favours of a goddess. Romulus was married to Hersilia, who seems to
have been a Sabine goddess. Ovid tells us how, when the dead Romulus
had been raised to the rank of a god under the name of Quirinus, his
widow Hersilia was deified as his consort. Thus, if Quirinus was a
Sabine oak-god, his wife would be an oak-goddess, like Egeria. See
Ovid, _Metam._ xiv. 829-851. Compare Livy, i. 11. 2; Plutarch, _Numa_,
14. On Hersilia as a goddess see A. Schwegler, _Römische Geschichte_,
i. 478, note 10; L. Preller, _Römische Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 372.
Again, of King Servius Tullius we read how the goddess Fortuna,
smitten with love of him, used to enter his house nightly by a window.
See Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 569 _sqq._; Plutarch, _Quaestiones Romanae_,
36; _id._, _De fortuna Romanorum_, 10. However, the origin and nature
of Fortuna are too obscure to allow us to base any conclusions on this
legend. For various more or less conjectural explanations of the
goddess see W. Warde Fowler, _Roman Festivals of the Period of the
Republic_, pp. 161-172.
CHAPTER XIV
THE KING’S FIRE
[Sidenote: Sacred Marriage of the Fire-god with a woman.] Thus far we
have dealt mainly with those instances of the Sacred Marriage in which a
human being is wedded to the divine powers of vegetation or water. Now
we pass to the consideration of a different class of cases, in which the
divine bridegroom is the fire and his bride a human virgin. And these
cases are particularly important for our present enquiry into the early
Latin kingship, since it appears that the old Latin kings were commonly
supposed to be the offspring of the fire-god by mortal mothers. The
evidence which points to this conclusion is as follows.
[Sidenote: Legend of the birth of King Servius Tullius from the fire.]
First, let us take the legend of the birth of King Servius Tullius. It
is said that one day the virgin Ocrisia, a slave-woman of Queen
Tanaquil, the wife of King Tarquin the elder, was offering as usual
cakes and libations of wine on the royal hearth, when a flame in the
shape of the male member shot out from the fire. Taking this for a sign
that her handmaiden was to be the mother of a more than mortal son, the
wise Queen Tanaquil bade the girl array herself as a bride and lie down
beside the hearth. Her orders were obeyed; Ocrisia conceived by the god
or spirit of the fire, and in due time brought forth Servius Tullius,
who was thus born a slave, being the reputed son of a slave mother and a
divine father, the fire-god. His birth from the fire was attested in his
childhood by a lambent flame which played about his head as he slept at
noon in the king’s palace.[639] This story, as others have pointed out
before,[640] seems clearly to imply that the mother of Servius was a
Vestal Virgin charged with the care and worship of the sacred fire in
the king’s house. Now, in Promathion’s _History of Italy_, cited by
Plutarch, a similar tale was told of the birth of Romulus himself. It is
[Sidenote: Legend of the birth of Romulus from the fire.] said that in
the house of the King of Alba a flame like to the male organ of
generation hung over the hearth for many days. Learning from an oracle
that a virgin should conceive by this phantom and bear a son of great
valour and renown, the king bade one of his daughters submit to its
embraces, but she disdained to do so, and sent her handmaid instead.
Angry at her disobedience, her father ordered both the maidens to be put
to death. But Vesta appeared to him in a dream, forbade the execution,
and commanded that both the girls should be imprisoned until they had
woven a certain web, after which they were to be given in marriage. But
the web was never finished, for as fast as they wove it by day, other
maidens, in obedience to the king’s orders, unwove it at night. Meantime
the handmaiden conceived by the flame of fire, and gave birth to Romulus
and Remus.[641] In this legend, as in the story of the birth of Servius
Tullius, it is plain that the mother of the future King of Rome was both
a slave and a priestess of Vesta. Orthodox Roman tradition always
admitted that she was a Vestal, but naturally enough represented her as
the king’s daughter rather than his slave. The god Mars, it was said,
got her with child as she drew water in his sacred grove.[642] However,
when we compare this legend with the similar story of the birth of
Servius, we may suspect that Promathion has preserved, though perhaps in
a perverted form, an old feature of the Latin kingship, namely, that one
of the king’s parents might be, and sometimes was, a slave. Whether that
was so or not, such tales at least bear witness to an old belief that
the early Roman kings were born of virgins and of the fire. Similarly
Caeculus, the founder of Praeneste, passed for a [Sidenote: Legend of
the birth of Caeculus from the fire.] son of Vulcan. It was said that
his mother conceived him through a spark, which leapt from the fire and
struck her as she sat by the hearth. She exposed the child near a temple
of Jupiter, and he was found there beside a fire by some maidens who
were going to draw water. In after-life he proved his divine birth by
working an appropriate miracle. When an infidel crowd refused to believe
that he was the son of a god, he prayed to his father, and immediately
the unbelievers were surrounded with a flame of fire.[643] More than
this, the whole of the Alban dynasty appear to have traced their descent
from a Vestal, for the wife of King Latinus, their legendary ancestor,
was named Amata[644] or Beloved, and this was the regular title bestowed
on a Vestal after her election,[645] a title which cannot be fully
understood except in the light of the foregoing traditions, which seem
to shew that the Vestals were regularly supposed to be beloved by the
fire-god. Moreover, fire is said to have played round the head of
Amata’s daughter Lavinia,[646] just as it played round the head of the
fire-born Servius Tullius. As the same prodigy was reported of Julus or
Ascanius, the son of Aeneas,[647] we may suspect that a similar legend
was told of his miraculous conception at the hearth.
[Sidenote: The Vestal Virgins seem to have been regarded as the wives of
the fire-god.] Now we may take it as certain that the Romans and Latins
would never have traced the descent of their kings from Vestal Virgins
unless they had thought that such a descent, far from being a stain,
was, under certain circumstances, highly honourable. What the
circumstances were that permitted a Vestal to become a mother, not only
with impunity but with honour and glory, appear plainly from the stories
of the birth of Caeculus, Romulus, and Servius Tullius. If she might not
know a mortal man, she was quite free, and indeed was encouraged, to
conceive and bear a son to the fire-god. In fact the legends suggest
that the Vestals were regularly regarded as the fire-god’s wives. This
would explain why they were bound to chastity during their term of
service: the bride must be true to her divine bridegroom. And the theory
of chastity could be easily reconciled with the practice of maternity by
allowing a man to masquerade as the fire-god at a sacred marriage, just
as in Egypt the king disguised himself as the god Ammon when he wedded
the queen,[648] or as among the Ewe tribes the priest poses as the
python-god when he goes in to the human brides of the serpent.[649] Thus
the doctrine of the divine birth of kings presents no serious difficulty
to people who believe that a god may be made flesh in a man, and that a
virgin may conceive and bear him a son. Of course the theory of the
divine motherhood of the Vestals applies only to the early regal and
therefore prehistoric period. Under the Republic the demand for kings
had ceased, and with it, therefore, the supply. Yet a trace of the old
view of the Vestals as virgin mothers lingered down to the latest times
in the character of Vesta herself, their patroness and type; for Vesta
always bore the official title of Mother, never that of Virgin.[650] We
may surmise that a similar belief and practice once obtained in Attica.
For Erichthonius, king of Athens, is said to have been a son of the
fire-god Hephaestus by the virgin goddess Athena: the story told of his
miraculous birth from the ground, which had been impregnated by the seed
of the fire-god, is clearly a later version devised to save the
virginity of his mother.[651] The perpetual lamp of Athena, which burned
in the Erechtheum or house of Erechtheus (who was identical with
Erichthonius) on the acropolis of Athens,[652] may have answered to the
perpetual fire of Vesta at Rome; and it is possible that the maidens
called Arrephoroi or Errephoroi, who dwelt close to the Erechtheum,[653]
may at one time have personated Athena and passed, like the Vestals, for
wives of the fire-god.
[Sidenote: Rationalistic theory of the duties of the Vestals rejected.]
It has, indeed, been held that the Vestals were of old the king’s
daughters, who were kept at home and forbidden to marry for no other
reason than that they might devote themselves to the domestic duties of
drawing water, mopping the house, tending the fire, and baking
cakes.[654] But this rationalistic theory could hardly explain the
superstitious horror which the infidelity of a Vestal always excited in
the Roman mind. Customs which begin in reason seldom end in
superstition. It is likely, therefore, that the rule of chastity imposed
on the Vestals was based from the first on a superstition rather than on
a mere consideration of practical convenience. The belief that the
Vestals were the spouses of the fire-god would explain the rule.[655] We
have seen that the practice of marrying women to gods has been by no
means uncommon. If the spirit of the water has his human wife, why not
the spirit of the fire? Indeed, primitive man has a special reason for
thinking that the fire-god should always be married. What that reason
is, I will now try to explain.
[Sidenote: The Vestal fire of later times was a continuation of the fire
on the king’s hearth.] But first it is necessary to apprehend clearly
that the Vestal fire of republican and imperial Rome was strictly the
successor or continuation of the fire which in the regal period had
burned on the king’s hearth. That it was so appears plainly from the
stories of the birth of Romulus and Servius Tullius, which shew that
Vesta was believed to be worshipped at the royal fireside by maidens who
were either the king’s daughters or his slaves. This conclusion is amply
confirmed by a study of the temple of Vesta and the adjoining edifices
in the Roman Forum. For the so-called temple of the goddess never was,
strictly speaking, a temple at all. This fact we have on the authority
of Varro himself, the greatest of Roman antiquaries.[656] The little
round building in which the sacred fire always burned was merely a copy
of the round hut in which the king, like his [Sidenote: The round temple
of Vesta a copy of the ancient Italian hut.] subjects, had dwelt in days
of old. Tradition preserved a memory of the time when its walls were
made of wattled osiers and the roof was of thatch;[657] indeed, with
that peculiar clinging to the forms of the past which is characteristic
of royalty and religion, the inmost shrine continued down even to late
times to be fashioned of the same simple materials.[658] The hut of
Romulus, or what passed for it, constructed of wood, reeds, and straw,
was always preserved and carefully repaired in the original style. It
stood on the side of the Palatine hill facing the Circus Maximus.[659] A
similar hut, roofed with thatch, was in like manner maintained on the
Capitoline hill, and traditionally associated with Romulus.[660] The
so-called temple of Vesta in historical times stood not on any of the
hills, but in the Forum, at the northern foot of the Palatine. Its
situation in the flat ground is quite consistent with the view that the
building represents the king’s house of early, though not of the very
earliest, times; for, according to tradition, it was built by Numa in
this position between the Palatine and the Capitol, at the time when he
united the two separate towns on these hills and turned the low swampy
ground between them into their common place of assembly. Here, too,
beside the temple of Vesta, the king built himself a house, which was
ever afterwards known as the Regia or palace; formerly he had dwelt on
the Quirinal.[661] In after-times this old palace of the kings was
perhaps the official residence of their successor, the King of the
Sacred Rites.[662] Adjoining it was the house of the Vestals,[663] at
first, no doubt, a simple and unpretentious edifice, but afterwards a
stately pile gathered round a spacious open court which must have
resembled the cloister of a mediaeval monastery. We may assume that the
kernel of this group of buildings was the round temple of Vesta, and
that the hearth in it, on which burned the sacred fire, was originally
the hearth of the king’s house. That the so-called temple was built on
the model of the round huts of the old Latins is proved by the
discoveries made at an ancient necropolis near Albano. The ashes of the
dead were here deposited in urns, which are shaped like [Sidenote:
Hut-urns found at Albano and Rome.] little round huts with conical
roofs, obviously in order that the souls of the dead might live in
houses such as they had inhabited during life. The roofs of these
miniature dwellings are raised on cross-beams, sometimes with one or
more holes to let out the smoke. The door is fastened by a crossbar,
which is passed through a ring on the outside and tied to the two
side-posts. In some of these hut-urns the side-posts are duplicated, or
even triplicated, for the sake of ornament; and it is probable that the
ring of columns which encircled the little temple of Vesta in historical
times was merely an extension of the door-posts of the prehistoric hut.
The necropolis in which these urns were found must be very ancient,
since it was buried under the streams of lava vomited by the Alban
Mountain in eruption. But the mountain has not been an active volcano
within historical times, unless, indeed, the showers of stones and the
rain of blood often recorded as ominous prodigies by Roman writers may
be explained as jets of pumice and red volcanic dust discharged by one
of the craters.[664] The prehistoric burial-ground lately discovered in
the Roman Forum has yielded several hut-urns of precisely the same shape
as those of the Alban cemetery. Hence we may infer with tolerable
certainty that the earliest Latin settlers both on the Alban hills and
at Rome dwelt in round huts built of wattle and dab, with peaked roofs
of thatch.[665]
[Sidenote: “Numa’s crockery,” the primitive earthenware vessels used by
the Vestals.] If further evidence were needed to convince us that the
round temple of Vesta merely reproduced a Roman house of the olden time,
it might be supplied by the primitive vessels of coarse earthenware in
which the Vestals always presented their offerings, and which, in memory
of the artlessness of an earlier age, went by the name of “Numa’s
crockery.”[666] A Greek historian, writing when Rome was at the height
of her power and glory under Augustus, praises the Romans for the
austere simplicity with which, in an age of vulgar wealth and
ostentation, they continued to honour the gods of their fathers. “I have
seen,” said he, “meals set before the gods on old-fashioned wooden
tables, in mats and earthenware dishes, the food consisting of barley
loaves and cakes and spelt and firstfruits and such-like things, all
plain and inexpensive and free from any touch of vulgarity. And I have
seen libations offered, not in vessels of silver and gold, but in little
earthen cups and jugs; and I heartily admired a people which thus walked
in the ways of their fathers, not deviating from the ancient rites into
extravagance and display.”[667] Specimens of this antique pottery have
come to light of late years at the house of the Vestals, the temple of
Vesta, and other religious centres in the Forum;[668] others had been
found previously on the Esquiline hill and in the necropolis of Alba
Longa.[669] We may conjecture that if the Romans continued to serve the
gods their meals in simple earthenware dishes long after they themselves
quaffed their wine from goblets of crystal and gold or from murrhine
cups with their cloudy iridescent hues of purple and white,[670] they
did so, not from any principle of severe good taste, but rather from
that superstitious fear of innovation which has embalmed in religious
ritual, as in amber, so many curious relics of the past. The old forms
and materials of the vessels were consecrated by immemorial usage and
might not be changed with impunity. Indeed, in the ritual of the Arval
Brothers the holy pots themselves appear to have been an object of
worship.[671] Specimens of these pots have been found on the site of the
sacred grove where the Brothers performed their quaint service, and they
shed an interesting light on the conservatism of the Roman religion.
Some of them are moulded in the most primitive fashion by [Sidenote:
Rude pottery used by the Arval Brothers.] the hand without any
mechanical appliance. But most of them belong to a stage of art, later
indeed than this rude beginning, yet earlier than the invention of the
potter’s wheel. In order to give the vessels their proper shape and
prevent the sides from collapsing, wooden hoops were inserted in them,
and the marks made by these hoops in the soft clay may still be seen on
the inside of most of the pots found in the grove. We may suppose that
when the potter’s wheel came into universal use, the old art of making
pottery by the hand was lost; but as religion would have nothing to do
with pots made in the new-fangled way, the pious workman had to imitate
the ancient ware as well as he could, eking out his imperfect skill with
the aid of wooden hoops.[672] Perhaps the _fictores Vestalium_ and the
_fictores Pontificum_, of whom we read in inscriptions,[673] were those
potters who, combining a retrograde art with sound religious principles,
provided the Vestals and Pontiffs with the coarse crockery so dear to
gods and to antiquaries. If that was so, they may have had in the
exercise of their craft to observe some such curious rules as are still
[Sidenote: Savage superstitions as to the making of pottery.] observed
in similar circumstances by the savage Yuracares, a tribe of Indians
living dispersed in the depths of beautiful tropical forests, at the
eastern foot of the Bolivian Andes. We are told by an explorer that “the
manufacture of pottery is not an everyday affair with this superstitious
people, and accordingly they surround it with singular precautions. The
women, who alone are entrusted with the duty, go away very solemnly to
look for the clay, but they do so only when there is no crop to be
gathered. In the fear of thunder they betake themselves to the most
sequestered spots of the forest in order not to be seen. There they
build a hut. While they are at work they observe certain ceremonies and
never open their mouth, speaking to each other by signs, being persuaded
that one word spoken would infallibly cause all their pots to break in
the firing; and they do not go near their husbands, for if they did, all
the sick people would die.”[674] Among the Ba-Ronga of South Africa
pottery is made by women only, and they prefer to employ a child under
puberty to light the fire in which the pots are to be baked, because the
child has pure hands and the pots are therefore less likely to crack in
the furnace than if the woman lit the fire herself.[675] If the reader
objects that Roman potters cannot have been trammelled by superstitions
like those which hamper the savage potters of America and Africa, I
would remind him of the rules laid down by grave Roman writers for the
moral guidance of cooks, bakers, and butlers. After mentioning a number
of these writers by name, Columella informs us that “all of them are of
opinion that he who engages in any one of these occupations is bound to
be [Sidenote: Chastity required in persons who handle dishes and food.]
chaste and continent, since everything depends on taking care that
neither the dishes nor the food should be handled by any one above the
age of puberty, or at least by any one who is not exceedingly abstemious
in sexual matters. Therefore a man or woman who is sexually unclean
ought to wash in a river or running water before he touches the contents
of the storeroom. That is why there should be a boy or a maid to fetch
from the storeroom the things that are needed.”[676] When Roman cooks,
bakers, and butlers were expected to be so strict in the service of
their human masters, it might naturally be thought that the potters
should be not less so whose business it was to fashion the rude yet
precious vessels meet for the worship of the gods.
[Sidenote: Sanctity of the storeroom (_penus_) and of the Penates in a
Roman house.] If the storeroom (_penus_) of a Roman house was deemed so
holy that its contents could only be handled by persons ceremonially
clean, the reason was that the Penates or gods of the storeroom dwelt in
it.[677] The domestic hearth, where the household meals were cooked in
the simple days of old, was the natural altar of the Penates;[678] their
images, together with those of the Lares, stood by it and shone in the
cheerful glow of the fire, when the family gathered round it in the
evening.[679] Thus in every house Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, was
intimately bound up with the Penates or gods of the storeroom; indeed,
she was reckoned one of them.[680] Now the temple of Vesta, being
nothing more than a type of the oldest form of Roman house, naturally
had, like an ordinary house, its sacred storeroom, and its Penates or
gods of the storeroom.[681] Hence if in every common house strict
chastity was, theoretically at least, expected of all who entered the
storeroom, we can well understand why such an obligation should have
been laid on the Vestals, who had in their charge the holiest of all
storerooms, the chamber in which were popularly supposed to be preserved
the talismans on which the safety of the state depended.[682]
[Sidenote: Thus the temple of Vesta, with its perpetual fire and its
sacred storeroom, was merely a copy of the Roman king’s house.] Thus on
the whole we may regard it as highly probable that the round temple of
Vesta in the Forum, with its sacred storeroom and perpetual fire, was
merely a survival, under changed conditions, of the old house of the
Roman kings, which again may have been a copy of the still older house
of the kings of Alba. Both were modelled on the round huts of wattled
osiers in which the early Latins dwelt among the woods and hills of
Latium in the days when the Alban Mountain was still an active volcano.
Hence it is legitimate to compare the old legends of the royal hearth
with the later practice in regard to the hearth of Vesta, and from the
comparison to explain, if we can, the meaning both of the legends and of
the practice.
Footnote 639:
Plutarch, _De fortuna Romanorum_, 10; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_Antiquit. Rom._ iv. 1 _sq._; Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 627-636; Pliny, _Nat.
Hist._ ii. 241, xxxvi. 204; Livy, i. 39; Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ ii.
683; Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, v. 18. According to the Etruscan
annals, Servius Tullius was an Etruscan by name Mastarna, who came to
Rome with his friend Caeles Vibenna, and, changing his name, obtained
the kingdom. This was stated by the Emperor Claudius in a speech of
which fragments are engraved on a bronze tablet found at Lyons. See
Tacitus, _Annals_, ed. Orelli, 2nd Ed., p. 342. As the emperor wrote a
history of Etruria in twenty books (Suetonius, _Divus Claudius_, 42)
he probably had some authority for the statement, and the historical,
or at least legendary, character of Mastarna and Caeles Vibenna is
vouched for by a painting inscribed with their names, which was found
in 1857 in an Etruscan tomb at Vulci. See G. Dennis, _Cities and
Cemeteries of Etruria_, 3rd Ed., ii. 506 _sq._ But from this it by no
means follows that the identification of Mastarna with Servius Tullius
was correct. Schwegler preferred the Roman to the Etruscan tradition
(_Römische Geschichte_, i. 720 _sq._), and so, after long hesitation,
did Niebuhr (_History of Rome_, 3rd Ed., i. 380 _sqq._). It is fair to
add that both these historians wrote before the discovery of the tomb
at Vulci.
Footnote 640:
A. Schwegler, _Römische Geschichte_, i. 715; L. Preller, _Römische
Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., ii. 344.
Footnote 641:
Plutarch, _Romulus_, 2.
Footnote 642:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ i. 76 _sq._; Livy, i. 3 _sq._;
Plutarch, _Romulus_, 3; Zonaras, _Annal._ vii. 1; Justin, xliii. 2.
1-3.
Footnote 643:
Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ vii. 678.
Footnote 644:
Virgil, _Aen._ vii. 343.
Footnote 645:
Aulus Gellius, i. 12, 14 and 19. Compare L. Preller, _Römische
Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., ii, 161, 344. There was a very ancient worship
of Vesta at Lavinium, the city named after Amata’s daughter Lavinia,
the ancestress of the Alban kings. See above, vol. i. p. 14.
Footnote 646:
Virgil, _Aen._ vii. 71-77.
Footnote 647:
Virgil, _Aen._ ii. 680-686. We may compare the halo with which the
vainglorious and rascally artist of genius, Benvenuto Cellini,
declared his head to be encircled. “Ever since the time of my strange
vision until now,” says he, “an aureole of glory (marvellous to
relate) has rested on my head. This is visible to every sort of men to
whom I have chosen to point it out; but those have been very few. This
halo can be observed above my shadow in the morning from the rising of
the sun for about two hours, and far better when the grass is drenched
with dew. It is also visible at evening about sunset. I became aware
of it in France at Paris; for the air in those parts is so much freer
from mist, that one can see it there far better manifested than in
Italy, mists being far more frequent among us.” See _The Life of
Benvenuto Cellini_, translated by J. Addington Symonds 3rd Ed.,
(London, 1889), pp. 279 _sq._
Footnote 648:
See above, pp. 131 _sqq._
Footnote 649:
A. B. Ellis, The _Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast of West
Africa_, p. 60. See above, pp. 149 _sq._
Footnote 650:
See below, p. 229.
Footnote 651:
Apollodorus iii. 14. 6; Schol. on Homer, _Iliad_, ii. 547; J. Tzetzes,
_Chiliades_, v. 669 _sq._; Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, xviii. 12.
Footnote 652:
Pausanias i. 26. 6 _sq._; Strabo ix. 1. 16, p. 396; Plutarch, _Numa_,
9; _id._, _Sulla_, 13. As to the identity of Erechtheus and
Erichthonius see my note on Pausanias, i. 18. 2 (vol. ii. p. 169).
Footnote 653:
Pausanias, i. 27. 3, with my note.
Footnote 654:
The theory was formerly advocated by me (_Journal of Philology_, xiv.
(1885) pp. 154 _sqq._) As to the duties of the Vestals see J.
Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., pp. 342 _sqq._
Footnote 655:
This explanation was first, so far as I know, given by me in my
_Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_ (London, 1905), p.
221. It has since been adopted by Mr. E. Fehrle (_Die kultische
Keuschheit im Altertum_, Giessen, 1910, pp. 210 _sqq._).
Footnote 656:
Aulus Gellius, xiv. 7. 7. Compare Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ vii. 153,
ix. 4.
Footnote 657:
_Ovid_, Fasti, vi. 261 _sq._
Footnote 658:
Festus, _s.v._ “penus,” p. 250, ed. C. O. Müller, where for _saepius_
we must obviously read _saeptus_.
Footnote 659:
Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 199, iii. 183 _sq._; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_Antiquit. Rom._ i. 79. 11. For the situation of the hut see also
Plutarch, _Romulus_, 20.
Footnote 660:
Conon, _Narrationes_, 48; Vitruvius, ii. 1. 5, p. 35, ed. Rose and
Müller-Strübing; Macrobius, _Saturn._ i. 15. 10. Compare Virgil,
_Aen._ viii. 653 _sq._ As to the two huts on the Palatine and the
Capitol see A. Schwegler, _Römische Geschichte_, i. 394; L. Jahn on
Macrobius, _l.c._
Footnote 661:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ ii. 66; Plutarch, _Numa_, 11
and 14; Solinus, i. 21; Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 263 _sqq._; _id._,
_Tristia_, iii. 1. 29 _sq._; Tacitus, _Annals_, xv. 41.
Footnote 662:
Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ viii. 363. Festus, however, distinguishes
the old royal palace (_Regia_) from the house of the King of the
Sacred Rites (_s.v._ “Sacram viam,” pp. 290, 293, ed. C. O. Müller).
In classical times the _Regia_ was the residence or office of the
Pontifex Maximus; but we can hardly doubt that formerly it was the
house of the _Rex Sacrorum_. See O. Gilbert, _Geschichte und
Topographie der Stadt Rom im Altertum_, i. 225, 235 _sq._, 341, 344.
As to the existing remains of the _Regia_, the temple of Vesta, and
the house of the Vestals, see O. Richter, _Topographie der Stadt Rom_,
2nd Ed., pp. 88 _sqq._; Ch. Huelsen, _Die Ausgrabungen auf dem Forum
Romanum_ 2nd Ed., (Rome, 1903), pp. 62 _sqq._, 88 _sqq._; Mrs. E.
Burton-Brown, _Recent Excavations in the Roman Forum_ (London, 1904),
pp. 26 _sqq._
Footnote 663:
Dio Cassius, liv. 27, who tells us that Augustus annexed the house of
the King of the Sacred Rites to the house of the Vestals, on which it
abutted.
Footnote 664:
Many such phenomena are noted by Julius Obsequens in his book of
prodigies, appended to W. Weissenborn’s edition of Livy, vol. x. 2,
pp. 193 _sqq._ (Berlin, 1881).
Footnote 665:
W. Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_, pp. 50-55; E. Burton-Brown,
_Recent Excavations in the Roman Forum_, pp. 30, 152, 154. For
pictures of these hut-urns see G. Boni in _Notizie degli Scavi_, May
1900, p. 191, fig. 52; _id._, in _Nuova Antologia_, August 1900, p.
22.
Footnote 666:
Valerius Maximus, iv. 4. 11; Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 310; Acron on Horace,
_Odes_, i. 31, quoted by G. Boni in _Notizie degli Scavi_, May 1900,
p. 179; Cicero, _Paradoxa_, i. 2; _id._, _De natura deorum_, iii. 17.
43; Persius, _Sat._ ii. 59 _sq._; Juvenal, _Sat._ vi. 342 _sqq._
Footnote 667:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ ii. 23. On earthenware vessels
used in religious rites see also Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxv. 108, “_In
sacris quidem etiam inter has opes hodie non murrinis crystallinisve,
sed fictilibus prolibatur simpulis_”; Apuleius, _De magia_, 18,
“_Eadem paupertas etiam populo Romano imperium a primordio fundavit,
proque eo in hodiernum diis immortalibus simpuvio et catino fictili
sacrificat._”
Footnote 668:
G. Boni in _Notizie degli Scavi_, May 1900, p. 179; E. Burton-Brown,
_Recent Excavations in the Roman Forum_, pp. 23 _sq._, 41.
Footnote 669:
W. Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_, pp. 82 _sqq._
Footnote 670:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxvii. 21 _sq._
Footnote 671:
G. Henzen, _Acta Fratrum Arvalium_ (Berlin, 1874), pp. 26, 30; H.
Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, No. 5039; J. Marquardt,
_Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., 456.
Footnote 672:
W. Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_, p. 87.
Footnote 673:
G. Wilmanns, _Exempla inscriptionum Latinarum_, Nos. 311, 986, 1326,
1331; H. Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, Nos. 456, 3314,
4926, 4933, 4936, 4942, 4943. Modern writers, following Varro (_De
lingua Latina_, vii. 44, “_fictores dicti a fingendis libis_”),
explain these _fictores_ as bakers of sacred cakes. See Ch. A. Lobeck,
_Aglaophamus_, pp. 1084 _sq._; J. Marquardt, _Römische
Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., 249. They may be right, but it is to
be observed that Varro does not expressly refer to the _fictores_ of
the Vestals and Pontiffs, and further, that in Latin _fictor_ commonly
means a potter, not a baker, for which the regular word is _pistor_.
Footnote 674:
A. d’Orbigny, _Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale_, iii. (Paris and
Strasburg, 1844) p. 194. Much of d’Orbigny’s valuable information as
to this tribe was drawn from the manuscript of Father Lacueva, a
Spanish Franciscan monk of wealthy family and saint-like character,
who spent eighteen or twenty years among the Yuracares in a vain
attempt to convert them. With regard to the crops mentioned in the
text, these savages plant banana-trees, manioc, sugar-cane, and
vegetables round about their huts, which they erect in clearings of
the forest. See d’Orbigny, _op. cit._ iii. 196 _sq._
Footnote 675:
H. A. Junod, “Les Conceptions physiologiques des Bantou Sud-Africains
et leurs tabous,” _Revue d’Ethnographie et de Sociologie_, i. (1910),
p. 147.
Footnote 676:
Columella, _De re rustica_, xii. 4. 2 _sq._
Footnote 677:
Cicero, _De natura deorum_, ii. 27. 68.
Footnote 678:
Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ xi. 211.
Footnote 679:
Horace, _Epodes_, ii. 65 _sq._; Martial, iii. 58. 3 _sq._; L. Preller,
_Römische Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., ii. 105 _sqq._, 155 _sqq._ See also A.
De-Marchi, _Il Culto privato di Roma antica_, i. (Milan, 1896) p. 67,
with plate iii.
Footnote 680:
Macrobius, _Saturn._ iii. 4. 11; G. Wissowa, _Religion und Kultus der
Römer_, pp. 145 _sq._
Footnote 681:
Festus, _s.v._ “penus,” pp. 250, 251, ed. C. O. Müller; Tacitus,
_Annals_, xv. 41; J. Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd
Ed., 252 _sq._
Footnote 682:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ ii. 66; Livy, xxvi. 27.
14; J. Marquardt, _op. cit._ iii. 2nd Ed., 250 _sq._
CHAPTER XV
THE FIRE-DRILL
[Sidenote: Mode of rekindling the Vestal fire at Rome by means of the
fire-drill.] In historical times, whenever the Vestal fire at Rome
happened to be extinguished, the virgins were beaten by the pontiff;
after which it was their custom, apparently with the aid of the pontiff,
to rekindle the fire by drilling a hole in a board of lucky wood till a
flame was elicited by friction. The new fire thus obtained was carried
into the temple of Vesta by one of the virgins in a bronze sieve.[683]
As this mode of producing fire is one of the most primitive known to
man, and has been commonly employed by many savage [Sidenote: Use of the
fire-drill by savages.] tribes down to modern times,[684] we need have
no difficulty in believing that its use in the worship of Vesta was a
survival from prehistoric ages, and that whenever the fire on the hearth
of the Latin kings went out it was regularly relit in the same fashion.
In its simplest form the fire-drill, as the apparatus has been
appropriately named by Professor E. B. Tylor, consists of two sticks,
the one furnished with a point and the other with a hole. The point of
the one stick is inserted into the hole of the other, which is laid flat
on the ground, while the operator holds the pointed stick upright in
position and twirls it rapidly between his hands till the rubbing of the
two sticks against each other produces sparks and at last a flame.
[Sidenote: Many savages regard the two sticks of the fire-drill as male
and female, and the rubbing of the two together as a sexual union.] Many
savages see in this operation a resemblance to the union of the sexes,
and have accordingly named the pointed stick the man and the holed stick
the woman. Thus we are told that among the Thompson Indians of British
Columbia “fire was obtained by means of the fire-drill, which consisted
of two dried sticks, each over a foot in length, and rounded off to less
than an inch in diameter. One stick was sharpened at one end; while the
other was marked with a couple of notches close to each other—one on the
side, and the other on top. The sharpened end of the first stick was
placed in the top notch of the other stick, and turned rapidly between
the straightened palms of both hands. The heat thus produced by the
friction of the sticks caused sparks to fall down the side notch upon
tinder placed underneath, which, when it commenced to smoke, was taken
in the hands, and blown upon until fanned into a flame. The tinder was
dry grass, the shredded dry bark of the sagebrush, or cedar-bark. The
sharpened stick was called the ‘man,’ and was made of black-pine root,
tops of young yellow pine, heart of yellow-pine cones, service-berry
wood, etc. The notched stick was called the ‘woman,’ and was generally
made of poplar-root. However, many kinds of wood were used for this
purpose. When hot ashes or a spark fell upon the tinder, they said, ‘The
woman has given birth.’”[685] The Hopi Indians kindle fire ceremonially
by the friction of two sticks, which are regarded respectively as male
and female. The female stick has a notch in it and is laid flat on the
floor; the point of the male stick is inserted in the notch of the
female stick and is made to revolve rapidly by twirling the stick
between the hands. Pollen is added as a male symbol, and the spark is
caught in a tinder of shredded cedar bark.[686] The Urabunna tribe of
Central Australia, who also make fire by means of the fire-drill, call
the upright piece “the child-stick,” while they give to the horizontal
or notched piece the name of “the mother-stick” or “the mother of the
fire.”[687] So in the Murray Islands, Torres Straits, the upright stick
is called the child (_werem_), and the horizontal stick the mother
(_apu_). In Mabuiag, Torres Straits, on the other hand, the vertical
stick is known as the male organ (_ini_), and the horizontal stick as
the hole (_sakai_).[688]
[Sidenote: The fire-drill among the Arabs.] “The ancient Bedouins
kindled fire by means of the fire-drill, which was composed of a
horizontal stick, the _zenda_, and an upright stick, the _zend_. The
science of language furnishes us with many parallels for this mode of
regarding the two parts as male and female; the two parts of the lock
are distinguished in like manner; the spark is then the child, _tifl_;
compare also our German _Schraubenmutter_, _Muttergewinde_. The sticks
for making fire by friction are not taken from the same tree; on the
contrary, they choose one as hard and tough as possible, and the other
soft, which allows the hard one to fit into it more easily and catches
fire the quicker on account of its loose texture. The soft wood was
naturally the horizontal stick, the _zenda_, which the Arabs made out of
_Calotropis procera_ (_’oshar_), while for the upright stick they used a
hard branch of _markh_.”[689]
[Sidenote: The fire-drill in Africa.] The Ngumbu of South Cameroons, in
West Africa, formerly made fire by rubbing two sticks against each
other. Of the sticks the one, called the male _nschio_, was put into a
hole of the other, which was called the female _nschio_.[690] In East
Africa the Masai men make fire by drilling a hole in a flat piece of
wood with a hard pointed stick. They say that the hard pointed stick is
a man and that the flat piece of wood is his wife. The former is cut
from _Ficus sycomorus_ and _Ekebergia sp._, the latter from any fibrous
tree, such as _Kigelia africana_, _Cordia ovalis_, or _Acacia albida_.
The women get their fire from the one which has thus been kindled by the
men.[691] The Nandi similarly produce fire by rapidly drilling a hard
pointed stick into a small hole in a flat piece of soft wood. The hard
stick is called the male (_kirkit_) and the piece of soft wood the
female (_kôket_). Among the Nandi, as apparently among the Masai,
fire-making is an exclusive privilege of the men of the tribe.[692] The
Baganda of Central Africa also made fire by means of the fire-drill;
they called the upright stick the male, and the horizontal stick the
female.[693] Among the Bantu tribes of south-eastern Africa, “when the
native Africans use special fire, either in connection with sacrifice or
the festival of first-fruits, it is produced by a doctor, and in the
following manner:—Two sticks, made of the _Uzwati_ tree, and called the
‘husband and wife,’ are given to him by the chief. These sticks are
prepared by the magicians, and are the exclusive property of the chief,
the ‘wife’ being the shorter of the two. The doctor cuts a piece off
each stick, and proceeds to kindle fire in the usual manner, by
revolving the one rapidly between the palms of his hands, while its end
rests in a small hollow dug in the side of the other. After he has
obtained fire, he gives it to his attendant, who gets the pots in order,
and everything ready for cooking the newly-reaped fruits. The sticks are
handed back to the chief by the doctor—no other hand must touch them—and
put away till they are required next season. They are regarded as in a
measure sacred, and no one, except the chief’s personal servant, may go
to the side of the hut where they are kept. After being repeatedly used
for fire-making, the doctor disposes of what remains, and new ones are
made and consecrated by the magician. A special pot is used for the
preparation of the feast, and no other than it may be set on a fire
produced from the ‘husband and wife.’ When the feast is over, the fire
is carefully extinguished, and the pot placed along with the sticks,
where it remains untouched for another year.”[694] But even for the
purposes of daily life these tribes still kindle fire in this manner, if
they happen to be without matches. “A native takes two special sticks,
made of a light wood. One of these he points: this is called the male
stick. He then makes a conical hole in the centre of the other stick,
which is called the female. Placing the female stick on the ground, he
holds it firmly by his feet—a native finds no difficulty in this, as he
can easily pick things off the ground with his toes if his hands are
full. He then places the pointed stick into the conical hole, and slowly
twirls the male stick between his hands. He does this while using a good
deal of pressure, and the wood becomes powdered, lying round the
revolving point in a little heap of dust. When he thinks he has made
sufficient of the wood dust, he twirls the stick very fast, and in a
moment the powder bursts into flame, which he uses to set fire to some
dried grass.”[695]
[Sidenote: Fire-customs of the Herero.] The Damaras or Herero of
Damaraland, in south-western Africa, maintain sacred fires in their
villages, and their customs and beliefs in this respect present a close
resemblance to the Roman worship of Vesta. Fortunately the Herero
fire-worship has been described by a number of independent witnesses,
and as their accounts agree substantially with each other, we may assume
that they are correct. The people are a tall, finely-built race of
nomadic herdsmen belonging to the Bantu stock, who seem to have migrated
into their present country from the north and east about a hundred and
fifty or two hundred years ago. The desert character of the country and
its seclusion from the outer world long combined to preserve the
primitive manners of the inhabitants.[696] In their native state the
Herero are a purely pastoral people, possessing [Sidenote: The Herero a
pastoral people.] immense herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and goats,
which are the pride and joy of their hearts, almost their idols. They
subsist chiefly on the milk of their herds, which they commonly drink
sour. Of the flesh they make but little use, for they seldom kill any of
their cattle, and never a cow, a calf, or a lamb. Even oxen and weathers
are only slaughtered on solemn and festal occasions, such as visits,
burials, and the like. Such slaughter is a great event in a village, and
young and old flock from far and near to partake of the meat.[697] Their
huts are of a round [Sidenote: Huts and villages of the Herero.] beehive
shape, about ten feet in diameter. The framework consists of stout
branches, of which the lower ends are rammed into the ground, while the
upper ends are bent together and tied with bark. A village is composed
of a number of these round huts arranged in a circle about the calves’
pen as a centre and surrounded by an artificial hedge of
thorn-bushes.[698] At night the cattle are driven in through the hedge
and take up their quarters in the open space round the calves’ pen.[699]
[Sidenote: Sacred fire of the Herero village maintained in or before the
hut of the chief’s principal wife.] The hut of the great or principal
wife of the chief, built and furnished in a more elaborate style than
the rest, regularly stands to the east of the calves’ pen, in the
direction of sunrise, so that from its position we can always learn
approximately the season of the year when the village was founded. The
chief or headman of the village has no special hut of his own; he passes
the day in the hut of the great wife, and the night commonly in one of
the huts of his other wives in the northern semicircle. Between the
house of the great wife and the calves’ pen, but somewhat nearer to the
pen, is a large heap of ashes on which, in good weather, a small,
faintly glimmering fire may be seen to burn at any time of the day. The
heap of ashes is the sacred hearth (_okuruo_); the fire is the holy fire
(_omurangere_ or _omurangerero_) of the village. The open space between
the sacred hearth and the house of the great wife is known as the holy
ground or the holy house (_otyizero_).[700] Betwixt the hearth and the
calves’ fold stands a great withered branch of the _omumborombonga_
(_Combretum primigenum_), the sacred tree of the Herero, from which they
believe that both they and their cattle are descended. When a branch of
this tree cannot be obtained its place is taken by a bough of the
_omwapu_ tree (_Grevia spec._)[701] At night and in rainy weather the
fire is transferred to the hut of the great wife, where it is carefully
kept alight.[702] According to another account, the fire is regularly
preserved in the house, and a brand is only brought out into the open
air when the cattle are being milked at morning and evening in order
that in presence of the fire the cow may be healthy and give much
milk.[703] The custom in this respect perhaps varies in different
villages, and may be determined in some measure by the climate. The
sacred fire is regarded as the centre of the village; from it at evening
the people fetch a light to kindle the fire on their own hearths, for
every householder has his own private hearth in front of his hut. At the
holy hearth are kept the most sacred possessions of the tribe, to wit,
the bundle of sticks which represent their ancestors; here sacrifices
are offered and enchantments performed; here the flesh of the victims is
cooked; here is the proper place of the chief; here the elders assemble
in council, and judgment is given; here strangers are received and
ambassadors entertained. At the banquets held on solemn occasions all
may partake of the flesh, whether they be friends or foes; the
stranger’s curse would rest on the churl who should refuse him his just
share; and this curse the Herero dreads above everything because he
believes its effect to be infallible. So great is the veneration felt by
the natives for the sacred hearth, with its hallowed bough, that they
dare not approach it without testifying the deepest respect. They take
off their sandals, throw themselves on the ground, and pray their great
ancestor (_Tate Mukuru_) to be gracious to them. The horns of the oxen
slaughtered at festivals lie beside the hearth; the chief sits on the
largest pair when he is engaged in performing his magical rites. Near
the fire, too, is a stone on which none but the chief has the right to
sit.[704]
[Sidenote: The sacred fire among the Herero is watched and fed by
the chief’s eldest unmarried daughter, who performs other priestly
duties.] The duty of maintaining the sacred fire and preserving it
from extinction is entrusted to the eldest unmarried daughter of
the chief by his great wife; if he has no daughter, the task
devolves on the unmarried girl who is next of kin to him. She
bears the title of _ondangere_, derived from the name of the
sacred fire (_omurangere_).[705] Besides keeping up the fire she
has other priestly functions to discharge. Before the men start on
a dangerous expedition, she rubs the holy ashes on their
foreheads.[706] When a woman brings her new-born infant to the
sacred hearth to receive its name, the maiden priestess or Vestal,
as we may call her, sprinkles water on both mother and child.[707]
Every morning, when the cattle walk out of the fold, she
besprinkles the fattest of them with a brush dipped in water.[708]
When an ox dies by accident at the village, she lays a piece of
wood on its back, praying at the same time for long life, plenty
of cattle, and so forth. Moreover, she ties a double knot in her
apron for the dead beast, for a curse would follow if she
neglected to do so.[709] Lastly, when the site of the village is
changed, the priestess walks at the head of the people and of the
herds, carrying a firebrand from the old sacred hearth and taking
the utmost care to keep it alight.[710]
The chief or headman of the village is also the priest; [Sidenote: The
Herero chief acts as a priest.] he alone may perform religious
ceremonies except such as fall within the province of the Vestal
priestess, his daughter. In his capacity of priest he keeps the sacred
bundle of sticks which represent the ancestors, and at sacrifices he
offers meat to them that they may consecrate it. When the old village is
abandoned, it is his duty to carry, like Aeneas quitting the ruins of
Troy,[711] these rude penates to the new home. However, it is deemed
enough if he merely places the holy bundle on his back, and then hands
it to a servant, who carries it for him. As a priest he introduces the
newborn children to the spirits of the ancestors at the sacred hearth,
and gives the infants their names; and as a priest he has a cow to
himself, whose milk no one else may drink. This milk is kept in vessels
which differ from the ordinary milk vessels, not only in shape and size,
but also in being marked with the badge of his paternal clan. When a man
goes forth from the village with his family and servants to herd the
cattle on a distant pasture, or to found another village, he takes with
him a burning brand from the sacred hearth wherewith to kindle the holy
fire in his new home. By [Sidenote: Fire taken from the chief’s hearth
by the founder of a new village.] doing so he acknowledges himself the
vassal of the chief from whose hearth he took the fire. In this way a
single village may give out swarm after swarm, till it has become the
metropolis or capital of a whole group of villages, the inhabitants of
which recognise the supremacy of the parent community, and regard
themselves as all sitting round its sacred fire. It is thus that a
village may grow into a tribe and its headman into a powerful chief,
who, by means of marriage alliances and the adhesion of weaker rivals,
may extend his sway over alien communities, and so gradually acquire the
rank and authority of a king.[712] The political evolution of the Herero
has indeed stopped short of this final stage; but among the more
advanced branches of the Bantu race, such as the Zulus and the
Matabeles, it is possible that the kingship has developed along these
lines.
[Sidenote: The combined office of chief and priest among the Herero
descends in the male line.] The possession of the sacred fire and of the
ancestral sticks, carrying with it both political authority and priestly
dignity, descends in the male line, and hence generally passes from
father to son. In any case, whether the deceased had a son or not, the
double office of chief and priest must always remain in his paternal
clan (_oruzo_). If it should happen that the clan becomes extinct by his
death, the [Sidenote: A chief’s sacred hearth abandoned for some time
after his death.] sacred fire is put out, the hearth destroyed, no brand
is taken from it, and the sticks representing the ancestors are laid
with the dead man in the grave. But should there be an heir, as usually
happens, he takes a fire-brand from the sacred hearth and departs with
all the people to seek a new home, abandoning the old village for years.
In time, however, they return to the spot, rebuild the huts on the same
sites, and inhabit them again. But in the interval none of the kinsmen
of the deceased may approach the deserted village under pain of
incurring the wrath of the ghost. When the return at last takes place,
and the people have announced their arrival to the dead chief at his
grave, which is generally in the cattle-pen, they make a new fire by the
friction of the two sacred fire-sticks on the old hearth; for it is not
lawful to bring with them a brand from their last settlement.[713]
[Sidenote: The sacred Herero fire rekindled by the fire-drill.] If the
sacred fire should go out through the neglect of the priestess, a sudden
shower of rain, or any other accident, the Herero deem it a very evil
omen. The whole tribe is immediately summoned and large offerings of
cattle are made as an expiation. Then the fire is relit by means of the
friction of two sacred fire-sticks, which have been handed down from
father to son. Every chief possesses such fire-sticks, and keeps them
tied up with the bundle of holy sticks that represent the ancestors. One
of the fire-sticks is pointed, the other has a hole in the middle, and
sometimes also a notch cut round it. In the notch some fungus or rotten
wood is placed as tinder. The holed stick is held fast on the ground by
the knees of the operator, who inserts the point of the other stick in
the hole and twirls it rapidly between the palms of his hands in the
usual way. As soon as a spark is emitted it catches the tinder, which
can then easily be blown up into a flame. Thus it is from the tinder, we
are told, and not from the sticks, that the flame is elicited. In this
fashion, if everything is very dry, as it generally is in Hereroland,
the native gets fire in about a minute. The names applied to the two
sticks indicate that the pointed stick (_ondume_) is regarded as male
and the holed stick (_otyiya_) as female, and that the process of making
fire by the friction of the two is compared to the intercourse of the
sexes. As to the wood of which the fire-sticks are made accounts differ.
According to Dr. H. Schinz the holed or female stick is of a soft wood,
the pointed or male stick of a hard wood, generally of the [Sidenote:
The male fire-stick made of the sacred _omumborombonga_ tree.] sacred
_omumborombonga_ tree (_Combretum primigenum_). According to Mr. C. G.
Büttner, neither of the sticks need be of a special tree, and any wood
that happens to be at hand may be employed for the purpose; only the
wood of the thorny acacias, which abound in the country, appears to be
unsuitable.[714] Probably the rule mentioned by Dr. Schinz is the
original one, and if in some places the wood of the sacred tree has
ceased to be used to light the holy fire, the reason may be simply that
the tree does not grow there, and that accordingly the people are
obliged to use such wood as they can find. We have seen that a branch of
the sacred _omumborombonga_ tree is regularly planted beside the village
hearth, but that in default of it the people have to put up with a bough
of another kind of tree, the _omuwapu_ (_Grevia spec_).[715] Such
substitutions were especially apt to be forced on the Herero in the
southern part of the country, where the _omumborombonga_ tree is very
rare and forests do not exist, the larger trees growing singly or in
clumps. In the north, on the other hand, vegetation is much richer, and
regular woods are to be found. Here, in particular, the _omumborombonga_
tree is one of the ornaments of the landscape. It grows only beside
water-courses, and generally stands solitary, surpassing a tall oak in
height, and rivalling it in girth; indeed, so thick is the trunk that
were it hollowed out a family could lodge in it. Unlike most trees in
the country it is thornless. Whole forests of it grow to the eastward of
Hereroland, in the direction of Lake Ngami. So close is the grain and so
heavy the wood that some of the early explorers gave it the name of the
“iron tree.”[716] Hence it is well adapted to form the upright stick of
the fire-drill, for which a hard wood is required.
[Sidenote: Herero tradition of the origin of men and cattle from the
sacred _omumborombonga_ tree.] The Herero have a tradition that in the
beginning they and their cattle and all four-footed beasts came forth
from the _omumborombonga_ tree in a single day, whereas birds, fish, and
creeping things sprang from the rain. However, slightly different
versions of the Herero genesis appear to be current. As to the origin of
men and cattle from the tree, public opinion is unanimous; but some
dissenters hold that sheep and perhaps goats, but certainly sheep,
issued from a flat rock in the north of the country. For some time past,
unfortunately, the tree has ceased to be prolific; it is of no use
waiting beside it in the hope of capturing such oxen and sheep as it
might bear. Yet still the Herero testify great respect for the tree
which they regard as their ancestor (_omukuru_). To injure it is deemed
a sacrilege which the ancestor will punish sooner or later. In passing
it they bow reverently and stick a bunch of green twigs or grass into
the trunk or throw it down at the foot. They address the tree, saying,
“_U-zera tate mukururume_, Thou art holy, grandfather!” and they even
enter into conversation with it, giving the answers themselves in a
changed voice. They hardly dare to sit down in its shadow. All this
reverence they display for every tree of the species.[717]
[Sidenote: Migration from one country to another sometimes involves a
change of sacred tree.] On the whole, then, we may infer that so long as
the Herero dwelt in a land where their ancestral tree abounded, they
made the male fire-stick from its wood; but that as they gradually
migrated from a region of tropical rains and luxuriant forests to the
arid mountains, open grass lands, and dry torrid climate of their
present country,[718] they had in some places to forgo its use and to
take another tree in its stead. Similarly the Aryan invaders of Greece
and Italy were obliged, under a southern sky, to seek substitutes for
the sacred oak of their old northern home; and more and more, as time
went on and the deciduous woods retreated up the mountain slopes, they
found what they sought in the laurel, the olive, and the vine. Zeus
himself had to put up with the white poplar at his great sanctuary of
Olympia in the hot lowlands of Elis;[719] and on summer days, when the
light leaves of the poplar hardly stirred in the languid air and the
buzz of the flies was more than usually exasperating, he perhaps looked
wistfully away to the Arcadian mountains, looming blue in the distance
through a haze of heat, and sighed for the shadow and the coolness of
their oak woods.
[Sidenote: The worship of the chief’s fire a form of ancestor-worship.]
Thus it appears that the sanctity ascribed by the Herero to the chief’s
fire springs from a custom of kindling it with the wood of their
ancestral tree; in fact, the cult of the fire resolves itself into a
form of ancestor-worship. For the religion of the Herero, like that of
all Bantu peoples, is first and foremost a propitiation of the spirits
of their forefathers conceived as powerful beings able and willing to
harm them. From youth to death the Herero live in constant dread of
their ancestors (_ovakuru_, plural of _omukuru_), who, sometimes seen
and sometimes unseen, return to earth and play their descendants many a
spiteful trick. They glide into the village, steal the milk, drive the
cattle from the fold, and waylay women. More than that, they can inflict
disease and death, decide the issue of war, and send or withhold rain at
pleasure. They are the cause of every vexation and misfortune, and the
whole aim of the living is by frequent sacrifices to mollify and appease
the dead.[720]
[Sidenote: The sacred hearth a special seat of the ancestral spirits.]
Now the sacred hearth seems to be in a special sense the seat of the
worship paid to the ancestral spirits. Here the head of the family sits
and communes with his forefather, giving himself the answers he thinks
fit.[721] Hither the newborn child is brought with its mother to be
introduced to the spirits and to receive its name, and the chief,
addressing his ancestors, announces, “To you a child is born in your
village; may this village never come to an end!”[722] Hither the bride
is conducted at her marriage, and a sheep having been sacrificed, its
flesh is placed on the holy bushes at the hearth.[723] Hither the sick
are carried to be commended to the care of their ghostly kinsmen, and as
the sufferer is borne round and round the fire his friends chant:—
“_See, Father, we have come here,
With this sick man to you,
That he may soon recover._”[724]
[Sidenote: Sacred sticks representing the deceased ancestors of the
Herero.] But the most tangible link between the worship of the fire and
the worship of the dead is furnished by the sacred sticks representing
the ancestors, which are kept in a bundle together with the two sticks
used for kindling the fire by friction. Each of these rude idols or
Lares, as we may call them, “symbolises a definite ancestor of the
paternal clan, and, taken together, they may be regarded as the most
sacred possession of a family. They stand in the closest relation to the
holy hearth, or rather to the priestly dignity, and must therefore
always remain in the same paternal clan.”[725] These sticks “are cut
from trees or bushes which are dedicated to the ancestors, and they
represent the ancestors at the sacrificial meals, for the cooked flesh
of the victims is always set before them first. Many people always keep
these sticks, tied up in a bundle with straps and hung with amulets, in
the branches of the sacrificial bushes which stand on the sacred hearth
(_okuruo_). The sacrificial bush serves to support the severed pieces of
the victim, and thus in a measure represents an altar or table of
sacrifice.”[726] When after an absence of years the people return to a
village where a chief died and was buried, a new fire is kindled by
friction on the old hearth, the flesh of the first animal slaughtered
here is cooked in a particular vessel, and the chief hands a portion of
it to every person present. “An image, consisting of two pieces of wood,
supposed to represent the household deity, or rather the deified parent,
is then produced, and moistened in the platter of each individual. The
chief then takes the image, and, after affixing a piece of meat to the
upper end of it, he plants it in the ground, on the identical spot where
his parent was accustomed to sacrifice. The first pail of milk produced
from the cattle is also taken to the grave; a small quantity is poured
on the ground, and a blessing asked on the remainder.” Each clan, the
writer adds, has a particular tree or shrub consecrated to it, and of
this tree or shrub the two sticks representing the deceased are
made.[727]
[Sidenote: The sacred sticks representing the ancestors are probably the
fire-sticks which were used to kindle fresh fire in the village after a
death.] In these accounts the sacred sticks which stand for the
ancestors, and to which the meat of sacrifices is first offered, are
distinguished, expressly or implicitly, from the sacred sticks which are
used to make the holy fire.[728] Other writers, however, identify the
two sets of sticks. Thus we are told that the Herero “make images of
their ancestors as follows. They take the two sticks with which they
make fire and tie them together with a fresh wisp of corn. Then they
worship this object as their ancestor. They may approach it only on
their knees. For hours together they sit before it and talk with it. If
you ask them where they imagine their ancestors to be, since they cannot
surely be these sticks, they answer that they do not know. The sticks
are kept in the house of the great wife.”[729] Again, another writer
defines the _ondume_ or male fire-stick as a “stick representing an
_omukuru_, _i.e._ ancestor, deity, with which and the _otyiza_ the holy
fire is made.”[730] Again, the Rev. G. Viehe, in describing the
ceremonies observed at the return to a deserted village where an
ancestor (_omukuru_) is buried, tells us that they bring no fire with
them, “but holy fire must now be obtained from the _omukuru_. This is
done with the _ondume_ and the _otyiza_. The meaning of these two words
plainly shows that the first represents the _omukuru_, and the other his
wife.”[731] The same excellent authority defines the _ozondume_ as
“sticks which represent the _ovakuru_, _i.e._ ancestors, deities”;[732]
and _ozondume_ is simply the plural of _ondume_, the male
fire-stick.[733] Hence it appears highly probable that the sticks
representing the ancestors are, in fact, nothing but the male
fire-sticks, each of which was cut to make a new fire on the return to
the old village after a chiefs death. The stick would be an appropriate
emblem of the deceased, who had been in his lifetime the owner of the
sacred fire, and who now after his death bestowed it on his descendants
by means of the friction of his wooden image. And the symbolism will
appear all the more natural when we remember that the male fire-stick is
generally made from the ancestral tree, that the process of fire-making
is regarded by the Herero as the begetting of a child, and that their
name for the stick, according to the most probable etymology, signifies
“the begetter.” Such sticks would be far too sacred to be thrown away
when they had served their immediate purpose of kindling a new fire, and
thus in time a whole bundle of them would accumulate, each of them
recalling, and in a sense representing, one of the great forefathers of
the tribe. When the old sticks had ceased to be used as fire-lighters,
and were preserved merely as memorials of the dead, it is not surprising
that their original function should be overlooked by some European
observers, who have thus been led to distinguish them from the sticks by
which the fire is actually produced at the present day.[734] Amongst the
[Sidenote: Sacred fire-boards among the Koryaks and Chuckchees of
north-eastern Asia.] Koryaks of north-eastern Asia, when the sacred
fire-boards, roughly carved in human form, are so full of holes that
they can no longer be used for the purpose of kindling fire, they are
still kept as holy relics in a shrine near the door of the house; and a
stranger who observed the respect with which they are treated, but who
did not know their history, might well mistake them for figures of
worshipful ancestors and never guess the practical purpose which they
once served as fire-lighters. A Koryak family regards its sacred
fire-board not only as the deity of the household fire, the guardian of
the family hearth, but also as the guardian of the reindeer, and they
call it the “master of the herd.” It is supposed to protect the reindeer
from wolves and from sickness and to prevent the animals from straying
away and being lost. When a reindeer is slaughtered, the sacred
fire-board is taken out and smeared with the blood. The maritime
Koryaks, who do not live by reindeer, regard the sacred fire-board as
the master of the underground house and the helper in the hunt of
sea-mammals. They call it “father” and feed it from time to time with
fat, which they smear on its mouth.[735] Among the neighbouring
Chuckchees in the north-eastern extremity of Asia similar ideas and
customs obtain in respect of the fire-boards. These are roughly carved
in human form and personified, almost deified, as the supernatural
guardians of the reindeer. The holes made by drilling in the board are
deemed the eyes of the figure and the squeaking noise produced by the
friction of the fire-drill in the hole is thought to be its voice. At
every sacrifice the mouth of the figure is greased with tallow or with
the marrow of bones. When a new fire-board is made, it is consecrated by
being smeared with the blood of a slaughtered reindeer, and the owner
says, “Enough! Take up your abode here!” Then the other fire-boards are
brought to the same place and set side by side on the ground. The owner
says, “Ho! these are your companions. See that I always find easily
every kind of game!” Next he slaughters another reindeer and says, “Hi!
Since you are one of my young men, go and drive the herd hither!” Then
after a pause he asks the fire-board, “Have you brought it?” to which in
the name of the fire-board he answers, “I have.” Thereupon, speaking in
his own person, he says, “Then catch some reindeer! It seems that you
will keep a good watch over the herd. There, from the actual chief of
the fire-boards, you may learn wisdom.” These sacred fire-boards are
often handed down from generation to generation as family heir-looms.
During the calving-season they are taken from their bag and placed
behind the frame in the outer tent in order that they may protect the
dams.[736]
[Sidenote: The evolution of a fire-god or fire-goddess.] These Koryak
and Chuckchee customs illustrate the evolution of a fire-god into the
patron deity of a family and his representation in human form by the
board which is used in fire-making. As the fire-board is that part of
the kindling apparatus which is commonly regarded as female in
contradistinction to the drill, which is regarded as male, we can easily
understand why the deity of the fire should sometimes, as at Rome, be
conceived as a goddess rather than as a god; whereas if the drill itself
were viewed as the essential part of the apparatus we should expect to
find a fire-god and not a fire-goddess.
Footnote 683:
Festus, _s.v._ “Ignis,” p. 106, ed. C. O. Müller: “_Ignis Vestae si
quando interstinctus esset, virgines verberibus afficiebantur a
pontifice, quibus mos erat tabulam felicis materiae tamdiu terebrare,
quousque exceptum ignem cribro aeneo virgo in aedem ferret_.” In this
passage it is not clear whether _quibus_ refers to the virgins alone
or to the virgins and the pontiff together; but the strict grammatical
construction is in favour of the latter interpretation. The point is
not unimportant, as we shall see presently. From a passage of Plutarch
(_Numa_, 9) it has sometimes been inferred that the Vestal fire was
rekindled by sunlight reflected from a burning-glass. But in this
passage Plutarch is describing a Greek, not a Roman, mode of making
fire, as has been rightly pointed out by Professor M. H. Morgan (“De
ignis eliciendi modis apud antiquos,” _Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology_, i. (1890) pp. 56 _sqq._). In this memoir Professor Morgan
has collected and discussed the passages of Greek and Latin writers
which refer to the kindling of fire.
Footnote 684:
See E. B. Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_, 3rd Ed., pp. 238 _sqq._
More evidence might easily be given. See, for example, J. Dawson,
_Australian Aborigines_, pp. 15 _sq._; C. Lumholtz, _Among Cannibals_,
p. 191; A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp.
770-773; Maximilian Prinz zu Wied-Newied, _Reise nach Brasilien_, ii.
18 _sq._; E. F. im Thurn, _Among the Indians of Guiana_, pp. 257-259;
K. von den Steinen, _Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens_, pp.
223 _sqq._; H. Ling Roth, _The Natives of Sarawak and British North
Borneo_, i. 375 _sqq._; A. Maass, _Bei liebenswürdigen Wilden, ein
Beitrag zur Kenntniss der Mentawai-Insulaner_ (Berlin, 1902), pp. 114,
116; Mgr. Le Roy, “Les Pygmées,” _Missions Catholiques_, xxix. (1897),
p. 137; E. Thurston, _Ethnographic Notes in Southern India_ (Madras,
1906), pp. 464-470; W. A. Reed, _Negritos of Zambales_ (Manila, 1904),
p. 40.
Footnote 685:
J. Teit, “The Thompson Indians of British Columbia,” pp. 203, 205
(_Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North
Pacific Expedition_, vol. i. part 4).
Footnote 686:
J. Walter Fewkes, “The Lesser New-fire Ceremony at Walpi,” _American
Anthropologist_, N.S. iii. (1901) p. 445.
Footnote 687:
Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 621.
Footnote 688:
For this information I am indebted to Mr. S. H. Ray.
Footnote 689:
G. Jacob, _Altarabisches Beduineneben_ 2nd Ed., (Berlin, 1897), p. 91.
In his _Arabic-English Lexicon_, book i. p. 1257, E. W. Lane gives the
following account of the subject: “_zand_, a piece of stick or wood,
for producing fire; the upper one of the two pieces of stick, or wood,
with which fire is produced: ... and _zanda_ is the appellation of the
lower one thereof, in which is the notch or hollow, or in which is a
hole.... One end of the _zand_ is put into the _fard_ (notch) of the
_zanda_, and the _zand_ is then rapidly twirled round in producing
fire.... The best kind of _zand_ is made of _’afār_ and the best kind
of _zanda_ of _markh_.” It will be observed that the two writers
differ as to _markh_ wood, Jacob saying that it is used to make the
upright (male) stick, and Lane that it is used to make the horizontal
(female) stick. My learned friend Professor A. A. Bevan, who directed
my attention to both passages and transliterated for me the Arabic
words in Lane, has kindly consulted the original authorities on this
point and informs me that Lane is right.
Footnote 690:
L. Concradt, “Die Ngumbu in Südkamerun,” _Globus_, lxxxi, (1902) p.
354.
Footnote 691:
A. C. Hollis, _The Masai_ (Oxford, 1905), p. 342.
Footnote 692:
A. C. Hollis, _The Nandi_ (Oxford, 1909), p. 85.
Footnote 693:
Letter of the Rev. J. Roscoe, dated Mengo, Uganda, 3rd August 1904.
Footnote 694:
J. Macdonald, _Light in Africa_ 2nd Ed., (London, 1890), pp. 216 _sq._
Footnote 695:
Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_ (London, 1904), pp. 51 _sq._
Footnote 696:
J. Irle, _Die Herero_ (Gütersloh, 1906), pp. 49 _sqq._, 53 _sqq._
Compare Josaphat Hahn, “Die Ovaherero,” _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft
für Erdkunde zu Berlin_, iv. (1869) pp. 227 _sqq._; H. Schinz,
_Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika_ (Oldenburg and Leipsic, N.D.), pp. 142 _sq._;
E. Dannert, _Zum Rechte der Herero_ (Berlin, 1906), pp. 1 _sqq._ The
people call themselves _Ovaherero_ (plural); the singular form is
_Omuherero_. The name Damaras was given them by the English and Dutch.
Under the influence of the missionaries most of the heathen customs
described in the text seem now to have disappeared. See P. H.
Brincker, “Character, Sitten, und Gebräuche, speciell der Bantu
Deutsch-Südwest-afrikas,” _Mittheilungen des Seminars für
Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p.
72.
Footnote 697:
C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_ (London, 1856), p. 230; J. Chapman,
_Travels in the Interior of South Africa_ (London, 1868), i. 325; J.
Hahn, “Die Ovaherero,” _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu
Berlin_, iv. (1869) pp. 244-247, 250; C. J. Büttner, _Das Hinterland
von Walfischbai und Angra Pequena_ (Heidelberg, 1884), pp. 228 _sq._;
H. Schinz, _Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika_, pp. 158-161; J. Irle, _Die
Herero_, pp. 32 _sqq._, 113.
Footnote 698:
Francis Galton, _Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa_
3rd Ed., (London, 1890), p. 116; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv. (1869), p.
247; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 155; J. Irle, _Die Herero_, pp. 111
_sq._
Footnote 699:
H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 159.
Footnote 700:
H. Schinz, _op. cit._ pp. 155-157; compare J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv.
(1869) p. 499; J. Irle, _Die Herero_, p. 78; E. Dannert, _Zum Rechte
der Herero_, pp. 4 _sq._ At first sight Dr. Schinz’s account appears
to differ slightly from that given by the Rev. G. Viehe, who says: “In
the werfts of the Ovaherero, the houses of the chief are on the
eastern side. Next to these, towards the west, follow, one after
another, the holy house (_otyizero_), the place of the holy fire
(_okuruo_), and the kraal [_i.e._ the calves’ pen] (_otyunda_); thus
the _otyizero_ is on the east, and the _otyunda_ on the west side of
the _okuruo_” (“Some Customs of the Ovaherero,” _South African
Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1879) p. 62). But it seems clear that by the
chief’s house Mr. Viehe means what Dr. Schinz calls the house of the
great wife; and that what Mr. Viehe calls the holy house is the open
space between the sacred hearth and the house of the great wife or
chief. That space is described as the holy ground by Dr. Schinz, who
uses that phrase (“_der geweihte Boden_”) as the equivalent of the
native _otyizero_. Thus the two writers are in substantial agreement
with each other. On the other hand Dr. C. H. Hahn gives the name of
_otyizero_ or sacred house to “the chief house of the chief, in front
of which is the place of the holy fire.” He adds that “the chief has
several houses, according to the number of wives, each wife having her
own hut” (_South African Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880) p. 62, note
1.) The name _otyizero_ seems to be derived from _zera_, “sacred,”
“taboo.” See G. Viehe, _op. cit._ pp. 39, 41, 43; Rev. E. Dannert, in
(_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880) pp. 63, 65, 105, and
the editor’s note, _ib._ p. 93.
Footnote 701:
H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 155.
Footnote 702:
C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, p. 223; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv. (1869)
p. 500; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 165.
Footnote 703:
H. Brincker, _Wörterbuch und kurzgefasste Grammatik des Otjiherero_
(Leipsic, 1886), _s.v._ “_okuruo_”; _id._ “Pyrolatrie in Südafrika,”
_Globus_, lxvii. (January 1895) p. 97; Meyer, quoted by J. Kohler,
“Das Recht der Herero,” _Zeitschrift für vergleichende
Rechtswissenschaft_, xiv. (1900) p. 315.
Footnote 704:
J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv. (1869) pp. 499 _sq._; Rev. H. Beiderbecke, in
(_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880) p. 84; C. G.
Büttner, “Ueber Handwerke und technische Fertigkeiten der Eingeborenen
in Damaraland,” _Ausland_, 7th July 1884, p. 522; P. H. Brincker, in
_Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_,
iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p. 75; _id._, _Wörterbuch des
Otjiherero_, _s.v._ “_okuruo_”; _id._, “Pyrolatrie in Südafrika,”
_Globus_, lxvii. (January 1895) p. 97; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 183;
Meyer, _l.c._
Footnote 705:
C. J. Andersson, _op. cit._ p. 223; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv. (1869) p.
500; Rev. E. Dannert, in (_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii.
(1880) p. 66; Rev. H. Beiderbecke, _ibid._ p. 83, note 4; C. G.
Büttner, _l.c._; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 165; J. Irle, _Die Herero_,
pp. 78 _sq._; E. Dannert, _Zum Rechte der Herero_, p. 5. According to
Meyer (_l.c._) and E. Dannert (_Zum Rechte der Herero_, p. 5), if the
chief’s eldest daughter marries, the duty of tending the fire passes
to his eldest wife. This statement is at variance with all the other
testimony on the subject, and for reasons which will appear presently
I regard it as improbable. At least it can hardly represent the
original custom.
Footnote 706:
Rev. H. Beiderbecke, in (_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii.
(1880) p. 84.
Footnote 707:
Rev. E. Dannert, in (_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880)
p. 66; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 168.
Footnote 708:
Francis Galton, _op. cit._ p. 115.
Footnote 709:
C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, p. 223.
Footnote 710:
C. J. Andersson, _l.c._; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv. (1869) p. 500; H.
Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 167.
Footnote 711:
Virgil, _Aen._ ii. 717 _sqq._, 747.
Footnote 712:
C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, p. 224; Rev. G. Viehe, in (_South
African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1879) p. 43; Rev. E. Dannert, in
(_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880) p. 67; C. G.
Büttner, _l.c._; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ pp. 166, 167, 186; Meyer,
quoted by J. Kohler, _op. cit._ p. 315; P. H. Brincker, in
_Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_,
iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, pp. 75 _sq._; J. Irle, _Die Herero_, p.
80; E. Dannert, _Zum Rechte der Herero_ (Berlin, 1906), p. 5.
Footnote 713:
C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, pp. 228 _sq._; Rev. G. Viehe, _op.
cit._ i. (1879) pp. 61 _sq._; C. G. Büttner, _l.c._; H. Schinz, _op.
cit._ pp. 165, 180. The Herero have a curious twofold system of
paternal clans (_otuzo_, plural; _oruzo_, singular) and maternal clans
(_omaanda_, plural; _eanda_, singular). Every person inherits an
_oruzo_ from his father and an _eanda_ from his mother. See my
_Totemism and Exogamy_, ii. 357 _sqq._
Footnote 714:
C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, pp. 223 _sq._; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv.
(1869) p. 500; Rev. G. Viehe, _op. cit._ i. (1879) pp. 39, 61; C. G.
Büttner, _l.c._; H. Brincker, _Wörterbuch des Otji-herero_, _s.vv._
_ondume_ and _otjija_; _id._ “Character, Sitten, und Gebräuche,
speciell der Bantu Deutsch-Südwest-afrikas,” _Mittheilungen des
Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_, iii. (1900) Dritte
Abtheilung, p. 75; _id._ “Pyrolatrie in Südafrika,” _Globus_, lxvii.
(January, 1895) p. 96; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ pp. 165 _sq._; J. Kohler,
_op. cit._ pp. 305, 315; J. Irle, _Die Herero_, pp. 79 _sq._ According
to Dr. Schinz, the meaning of the names applied to the fire-sticks has
been much disputed; he himself adopts the view given in the text, and
supports it by weighty reason which, taken along with analogous
designations in many other parts of the world, may be regarded as
conclusive. He tells us that _otyiza_ means _pudendum muliebre_, and
this is actually the name of the holed stick according to Mr. Viehe
(_ll.cc._), though Dr. Schinz gives _otyia_ as the name. I have
followed Dr. Brincker in accepting _otyiya_ (_otjija_) as the correct
form of the word. Further, Dr. Schinz derives _ondume_, the name of
the pointed stick, from a verb _ruma_, meaning “to have intercourse
with a woman.” Moreover, he reports that the Ai San Bushmen, near
Noihas, in the Kalahari desert, call the vertical fire-stick _tau
doro_ and the horizontal fire-stick _gai doro_, where _tau_ is the
masculine prefix and _gai_ the feminine. Finally, a Herero explained
to him the significance of the names by referring in an unmistakable
manner to the corresponding relations in the animal kingdom. That the
two sticks are regarded as male and female is positively affirmed by
Mr. Viehe, Mr. Meyer (quoted by J. Kohler), and Dr. Brincker.
Footnote 715:
See above, pp. 213 _sq._ Mr. G. Viehe says that the _omuwapu_ tree
“acts a very important part in almost all the religious ceremonies” of
the Herero (_op. cit._ i. 45). Probably it is only used where the
_omumborombonga_ cannot be had.
Footnote 716:
J. Hahn, “Das Land der Herero,” _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für
Erdkunde zu Berlin_, iii. (1868) pp. 200, 213, 214 _sq._; C. J.
Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, pp. 218, 221; _id._, _The Okavango River_
(London, 1861), pp. 21 _sq._; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 182.
Footnote 717:
C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, p. 221; Francis Galton, _op. cit._ p.
115; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iii. (1868) p. 215, iv. (1869) p. 498, note;
Rev. H. Beiderbecke, in _(South African) Folk-lore Journal_, ii.
(1880) pp. 92 _sq._; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ pp. 182 _sq._; Meyer,
quoted by J. Kohler, _op. cit._ p. 297; P. H. Brincker, in
_Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_
(1900), Dritte Abtheilung, p. 73; J. Irle, _Die Herero_, pp. 75 _sq._,
77; E. Dannert, _Zum Rechte der Herero_, pp. 3 _sq._
Footnote 718:
On the evidence for this migration see J. Chapman, _Travels in the
Interior of South Africa_, i. 325-327; J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iii. (1868)
pp. 227 _sqq._ As to the physical features and climate of Hereroland,
see J. Hahn, “Das Land der Ovaherero,” _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft
für Erdkunde zu Berlin_, iii. (1868) pp. 193 _sqq._; J. Irle, _Die
Herero_, pp. 9 _sqq._, 19 _sqq._
Footnote 719:
Pausanias, v. 13. 3, v. 14. 2. On the substitution of the poplar for
the oak, see Mr. A. B. Cook in _Folk-lore_, xv. (1904) pp. 297 _sq._
Footnote 720:
Rev. G. Viehe, “Some Customs of the Ovaherero,” (_South African_)
_Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1879) pp. 64-66; Rev. H. Beiderbecke, in
(_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880) p. 91; H. Schinz,
_op. cit._ pp. 183 _sq._; P. H. Brincker, in _Mittheilungen des
Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_, iii. (1900) Dritte
Abtheilung, pp. 89 _sq._; J. Irle, _Die Herero_, pp. 74, 75, 77.
Apparently it is only a powerful or eminent man who becomes an
_omukuru_ after his death. Or rather, perhaps, though all dead men
become _ovakuru_, only the strong and brave are feared and worshipped.
Footnote 721:
H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 183.
Footnote 722:
Rev. E. Dannert, “Customs of the Ovaherero at the Birth of a Child,”
(_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, ii. (1880) pp. 66 _sq._ Compare
Rev. G. Viehe, _op. cit._ i. (1879) p. 41; H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p.
168.
Footnote 723:
Rev. G. Viehe, in (_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1879) pp.
49 _sq._
Footnote 724:
Rev. G. Viehe, _op. cit._ i. 51.
Footnote 725:
H. Schinz, _op. cit._ p. 166. Compare J. Irle, _Die Herero_, p. 77.
Footnote 726:
J. Hahn, _op. cit._ iv. (1869) p. 500, note.
Footnote 727:
C. J. Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, pp. 228 _sq._ The ceremony is described
more fully by the Rev. G. Viehe, “Some Customs of the Ovaherero,”
(_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1879) pp. 61 _sq._, from
whose account some of the details in the text are borrowed.
Footnote 728:
The distinction is made also by Mr. J. Irle. According to him, while
the fire-sticks are called _ozondume_ (plural of _ondume_), the sticks
which represent the ancestors are called _ozohongue_ and are made from
the _omuvapu_ bush. In every chief’s house there is a bundle of about
twenty of these ancestral sticks. When a chief dies, the sticks are
wrapped in a portion of the sacred bull (_omusisi_) which is
slaughtered on this occasion, and a new stick is added to the bundle.
At the same time Mr. Irle tells us that the fire-sticks (_ozondume_)
also represent the ancestors and are made like them from the _omuvapu_
bush. See J. Irle, _Die Herero_, pp. 77, 79.
Footnote 729:
Bensen, quoted by J. Kohler, “Das Recht der Herero,” _Zeitschrift für
vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft_, xiv. (1900) p. 305.
Footnote 730:
Rev. G. Viehe, or his editor, _op. cit._ i. (1879) p. 39. The _otyiza_
(_otyiya_) is the female fire-stick. See above, p. 218 note 1.
Footnote 731:
Rev. G. Viehe, in (_South African_) _Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1879) p.
61.
Footnote 732:
_Ibid._ p. 43, compare p. 50.
Footnote 733:
J. Irle, _Die Herero_, p. 79.
Footnote 734:
I have assumed that the ancestral sticks, whatever their origin,
represent only men. This is plainly implied by Dr. Brincker, who tells
us that “each of these sticks represents the male member of generation
and in the Bantu sense a personality, which stands for the presence of
the deceased chief on all festive occasions and especially at
religious ceremonies” (“Character, Sitten, und Gebräuche, speciell der
Bantu Deutsch-Südwestafrikas,” _Mittheilungen des Seminars für
Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p.
74). In savage society women are of too little account for their
ghosts to be commonly worshipped. Speaking of the Bantu peoples, a
writer who knows them well observes: “This lack of respect for old
women is a part of the natives’ religious system, and is connected
with their conception of a future life, in which women play a
subordinate part, their spirits not being able to cause much trouble,
and therefore not being of much account” (Dudley Kidd, _The Essential
Kafir_, p. 23).
Footnote 735:
W. Jochelson, “The Koryak,” pp. 32-36 (_Memoir of the American Museum
of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition_, vol. vi.,
Leyden and New York, 1908).
Footnote 736:
W. Bogaras, “The Chukchee Religion,” pp. 349-353 (_Memoir of the
American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific
Expedition_, vol. vii. part ii., Leyden and New York, 1904).
CHAPTER XVI
FATHER JOVE AND MOTHER VESTA
[Sidenote: Similarity between the fire-customs of the Herero and the
ancient Latins.] The reader may remember that the preceding account of
the fire-customs of the Herero was introduced for the sake of comparison
with the Latin worship of Vesta. The points of similarity between the
two will now be indicated. In the first place we have seen reason to
hold that the ever-burning Vestal fire at Rome was merely a survival of
the fire on the king’s hearth. So among the Herero the sacred fire of
the village is the chief’s fire, which is kept burning or smouldering in
his house by day and by night. In Rome, as in Hereroland, the extinction
of the fire was regarded as an evil omen, which had to be expiated by
sacrifices,[737] and new fire was procured in primitive fashion by
twirling the point of one stick in the hole of another. The Roman fire
was fed with the wood of the sacred oak tree, just as the African fire
is kindled with the wood of the sacred _omumborombonga_ tree. Beside
both were kept the images of the ancestors, the Lares at Rome, the
_ozondume_ in Hereroland. The king’s house which sheltered the fire and
the images was originally in Italy what the chief’s hut still is in
Hereroland, a circular hut of osiers, not as ancient dreamers thought,
because the earth is round,[738] nor yet because a circle is the symbol
of rest, but simply because it is both easier and cheaper to build a
round hut than a square.[739]
[Sidenote: The Roman Vestals, or some of them, appear to have been
originally the king’s daughters.] Further, in Rome the sacred fire was
tended, as it still is in Hereroland, by unmarried women, and as the
Herero priestesses are the chiefs daughters, so, we may conjecture, it
was with some at least of the Vestals among the ancient Latins. The
Roman Vestals appear to have been under the _patria potestas_ of the
king, and, in republican times, of the Pontifex Maximus, who succeeded
to some of the king’s functions.[740] But if they were under the _patria
potestas_ of the king, they must have been either his wives or
daughters; as virgins they cannot have been his wives; it remains,
therefore, that they were his daughters. Various circumstances confirm
this view. Their house at Rome, as we saw, always adjoined the Regia,
the old palace of the kings; they were treated with marks of respect
usually accorded to royalty;[741] and the most famous of all the
Vestals, the mother of Romulus, was said to be a daughter of the King of
Alba.[742] The custom of putting an unfaithful Vestal to death by
immuring her in a subterranean chamber[743] may have been adopted in
order to avoid the necessity of taking the life of a princess by
violence;[744] for, as we shall learn later on, there is a very
widespread reluctance to spill royal blood.
[Sidenote: Rites performed by the Vestals for the fertility of the earth
and the fecundity of cattle.] Amongst the Herero the chief’s daughter
who tends the holy fire has also to perform certain priestly rites,
which have for their object the prosperity and multiplication of the
cattle.[745] So, too, it was with the Roman Vestals. On the fifteenth of
April every year pregnant cows were sacrificed to the Earth goddess; the
unborn calves were torn from their mothers’ wombs, the chief Vestal
burned them and kept their ashes for use at the shepherds’ festival of
the Parilia. This sacrifice of pregnant cows was a fertility charm
designed, by a curious application of homoeopathic magic, to quicken
both the seed in the ground and the wombs of the cows and the ewes.[746]
At the Parilia, held on the twenty-first of April, the Vestals mixed the
ashes of the unborn calves with the blood of a horse which had been
sacrificed in October, and this mixture they distributed to shepherds,
who fumigated their flocks with it as a means of ensuring their
fecundity and a plentiful supply of milk.[747]
[Sidenote: The Vestals were probably regarded as embodiments of Vesta,
who was a mother-goddess, the bestower of offspring on cattle and
women.] Strange as at first it may seem to find holy virgins assisting
in operations intended to promote the fertility of the earth and of
cattle, this reproductive function accords perfectly with the view that
they were of old the wives of the fire-god and the mothers of kings. On
that view, also, we can understand why down to imperial times the
Vestals adored the male emblem of generation,[748] and why Vesta
herself, the goddess of whom they were the priestesses and probably the
embodiments, was worshipped by the Romans not as a virgin but as a
mother.[749] She was sometimes identified with Venus.[750] Like Diana,
with whom she was identified at Nemi, she appears to have been a goddess
of fecundity, who bestowed offspring both on cattle and on women. That
she was supposed to multiply cattle is indicated by the ceremonies which
the Vestals performed in April; that she made women to be mothers is
hinted at not obscurely by the legends of the birth of the old Latin
kings.[751] The ancient Aryan practice of leading a bride thrice round
the hearth of her new home[752] may have been intended not merely to
introduce her to the ancestral spirits who had their seats there, but
also to promote conception, perhaps by allowing one of these very
spirits to enter into her and be born again. When the ancient Hindoo
bridegroom led his bride round the fire, he addressed the fire-god
[Sidenote: Custom of leading a bride round the fire perhaps a fertility
charm.] Agni with the words, “Mayst thou give back, Agni, to the husband
the wife together with offspring.”[753] When a Slavonian bride enters
her husband’s house after marriage she is led thrice round the hearth;
then she must stir the fire with the poker, saying, “As many sparks
spring up, so many cattle, so many male children shall enliven the new
home.”[754] At Mostar, in Herzegovina, the bride seats herself on a bag
of fruit beside the hearth in her new home and pokes the fire thrice.
While she does so, they bring her a small boy and set him on her lap.
She turns the child thrice round in order that she may give birth to
male children.[755] Still more clearly does belief in the impregnation
of a woman by fire come out in another South Slavonian custom. When a
wife wishes to have a child, she will hold a vessel full of water beside
the fire on the hearth, while her husband knocks two burning brands
together so that the sparks fly out. When some of them have fallen into
the vessel, the woman drinks the water which has thus been fertilised by
the fire.[756] The same belief seems still to linger in England; for
there is a Lincolnshire saying that if a woman’s apron is burned above
the knee by a spark or red-hot cinder flying out of a fire, she will
become a mother.[757] Thus the superstition which gave rise to the
stories of the birth of the old Roman kings holds its ground to this day
in Europe, even in our own country. So indestructible are the crude
fancies of our savage forefathers. Thus we may safely infer that the old
practice of leading a bride formally to or round the hearth was designed
to make her fruitful through the generative virtue ascribed to the fire.
The custom is not confined to peoples of the Aryan stock, for it is
observed also by the Esthonians and the Wotyaks of Russia[758] and, as
we have seen, by the Herero of South Africa.[759] It expresses in daily
life the same idea which is embodied in the myths of the birth of
Servius Tullius and the other Latin kings, whose virgin mothers
conceived through contact with a spark or tongue of fire.[760]
[Sidenote: New-born children brought to the hearth as a mode of
introducing them to the ancestral spirits.] Accordingly, where beliefs
and customs of this sort have prevailed, it is easy to understand why
new-born children should be brought to the hearth, and why their birth
should there be solemnly announced to the ancestors. This is done by the
Herero,[761] and in like manner on the fifth or seventh day after a
birth the ancient Greeks used to run naked round the hearth with the
new-born babe in their arms.[762] This Greek ceremony may perhaps be
regarded as merely a purification, in other words as a means of keeping
at bay the demons who lie in wait for infants. Certainly in other parts
of the world a custom has prevailed of passing a newly born child
backwards and forwards through the smoke of the fire for the express
purpose of warding off evil spirits or other baleful influences.[763]
Yet on the analogy of the preceding customs we may conjecture that a
practice of solemnly bringing infants to the domestic hearth has also
been resorted to as a mode of introducing them to the spirits of their
fathers.[764] In Russia the old belief that the souls of the ancestors
were somehow in the fire on the hearth has left traces of itself down to
the present time. Thus in the Nijegorod Government it is still forbidden
to break up the smouldering faggots in a stove, because to do so might
cause the ancestors to fall through into hell. And when a Russian family
moves from one house to another, the fire is raked out of the old stove
into a jar and solemnly conveyed to the new one, where it is received
with the words, “Welcome, grandfather, to the new home!”[765]
[Sidenote: Reasons why a procreative virtue was ascribed to fire.] But
why, it may be asked, should a procreative virtue be attributed to the
fire, which at first sight appears to be a purely destructive agent? and
why in particular should the ancestral spirits be conceived as present
in it? Two different reasons perhaps led savage philosophers to these
conclusions. In the first place the common mode of making fire by means
of the fire-drill has suggested, as we have seen, to many savages the
notion that fire is the child of the fire-sticks, in other words that
the rubbing of the fire-sticks together is a sexual union which begets
offspring in the shape of a flame. This of itself suffices to impress on
the mind of a savage the idea that a capacity of reproduction is innate
in the fire, and consequently that a woman may conceive by contact with
it. Strictly speaking, he ought perhaps to refer this power of
reproduction not to the fire but to the fire-sticks; but savage thought
is in general too vague to distinguish clearly between cause and effect.
If he thinks the matter out, as he may do if he is more than usually
reflective, the savage will probably conclude that fire [Sidenote: The
process of making fire by friction seems to the savage an act of
generation.] exists unseen in all wood, and is only elicited from it by
friction,[766] so that the spark or flame is the child, not so much of
the fire-sticks, as of the parent fires in them. But this refinement of
thought may well be above the reach even of a savage philosopher. The
second reason which seems to have led early man to associate the fire
with the souls of his ancestors was a superstitious veneration for the
ancestral tree which furnished either the fuel for the sacred fire or
the material out of which he carved one or both of the fire-sticks.
Among the Herero, as we [Sidenote: Again, the fire was associated with
the ancestors through the sacred ancestral tree which furnished either
the fuel or the fire-sticks.] saw, the male fire-stick commonly is, or
used to be, made out of the holy _omumborombonga_ tree, from which they
believe that they and their cattle sprang in days of old. Hence nothing
could be more natural than that they should regard the fire produced by
the friction of a piece of the ancestral tree, as akin to themselves,
the offspring of the same mighty forefather, to wit, the sacred tree.
Similarly, the Vestal fire at Rome was fed with the wood of the oak, the
sacred tree of Jupiter, and the first Romans are described as “born of
the tree trunks and the heart of oak.”[767] No wonder, then, that the
Latin kings, who claimed to represent Jupiter, and in that capacity
masqueraded in his costume and made mock thunder, should have prided
themselves on being sprung from a fire which was fed with the wood of
the god’s holy tree; such an origin was only another form of descent
from the oak and from the god of the oak, Jupiter himself.
[Sidenote: Esthonian marriage custom.] The theory that impregnation by
fire is really impregnation by the wood of the tree with which the fire
is kindled, derives some confirmation from a custom which is observed at
marriage by some of the Esthonians in the neighbourhood of Oberpahlen.
The bride is escorted to a tree, which is thereupon cut down and burned.
When the fire blazes up, she is led thrice round it and placed between
three armed men, who clash their swords over her head, while the women
sing a song. Then some coins are thrown into the fire, and when it has
died out they are recovered and knocked into the stump of the tree,
which was cut down to serve as fuel.[768] This is clearly a mode of
rewarding, first the fire, and next the tree, for some benefit they have
conferred on the bride. But in early society husband and wife desire
nothing so much as offspring; this therefore may very well be the
benefit for which the Esthonian bride repays the tree.
[Sidenote: The conception of the Fire-mother intimately bound up with
that of the female fire-stick in the fire-drill.] Thus far we have
regarded mainly the paternal aspect of the fire, which the Latins
mythically embodied in Jupiter, that is literally Father Jove, the god
of the oak. The maternal aspect of the fire was for them represented by
Mother Vesta, as they called her; and as the Roman king stood for Father
Jove, so his wife or daughter—the practice on this point appears to have
varied—stood for Mother Vesta. Sometimes, as we have seen, the Vestal
virgins, the priestesses or rather incarnations of Vesta, appear to have
been the daughters, not the wives, of the king. But, on the other hand,
there are grounds for thinking that the wife of King Latinus, the
legendary ancestor of the Latins, was traditionally regarded as a
Vestal,[769] and the analogy of the Flamen Dialis with his wife the
Flaminica, as I shall shew presently, points also to a married pair of
priestly functionaries concerned with the kindling and maintenance of
the sacred fire. However that may have been, we may take it as probable
that the notion of the fire-mother was intimately associated with, if it
did not spring directly from, the female fire-stick of the fire-drill,
just as the conception of the fire-father was similarly bound up with
the male fire-stick.
[Sidenote: The Fire-father and the Fire-mother represented by a priest
and priestess who together made the sacred fire by means of the
fire-drill.] Further, it seems that these mythical beings, the
fire-father and the fire-mother, were represented in real life by a
priest and a priestess, who together made the sacred fire, the priest
appropriately twirling the pointed male stick, while the priestess held
fast on the ground the holed female stick, ready to blow up into a flame
the spark which fell on the tinder. In the composite religion of Rome,
formed like the Roman state by the fusion of several tribes, each with
its own gods and priests, such pairs of fire-priests may at first have
been duplicated. In one or more of the tribes which afterwards made up
the Roman commonwealth the function of kindling the holy fire of oak was
perhaps assigned to the Flamen Dialis and his wife the Flaminica, the
living representatives of Jupiter and Juno; and if, as some scholars
think, the name _flamen_ comes from _flare_, “to blow up,”[770] the
derivation would fit well with this theory. But in historical Rome the
duty of making the sacred fire lay with the Vestal virgins and the chief
pontiff.[771] The mode in which they shared the work between them is not
described by ancient writers, but we may suppose that one of the virgins
held the board of lucky wood on the ground while the pontiff inserted
the point of a peg into the hole of the board and made the peg revolve
rapidly between the palms of his hands. When the likeness of this mode
of producing fire to the intercourse of the sexes had once struck
people, they would deem it unnatural, and even indecent, for a woman to
usurp the man’s function of twirling the pointed male stick. But the
Vestals certainly helped to make fire by friction; it would seem,
therefore, that the part they took in the process can only have been the
one I have conjecturally assigned to them. At all events, the conjecture
is supported by the following analogies.
[Sidenote: Among the Djakuns fire is made by the leader and his
unmarried daughter.] The Djakuns, a wild tribe of the Malay Peninsula,
are in the habit of making fire by friction. A traveller has described
the custom as follows: “When a troop was on a journey and intended
either to pitch a temporary camp, or to make a longer settlement, the
first camp fire was kindled for good luck by an unmarried girl with the
help of the fire-drill. Generally this girl was the daughter of the man
who served the troop as leader. It was deemed of special importance that
on the first night of a settlement the fire of every band should be lit
by the unmarried daughter of a leader. But she might only discharge this
duty if she had not her monthly sickness on her at the time. This custom
is all the more remarkable inasmuch as the Djakuns in their migrations
always carried a smouldering rope of bark with them.” “When the fire was
to be kindled, the girl took the piece of soft wood and held it on the
ground, while her father, or any other married man, twirled the vertical
borer upon it. She waited for the spark to spring from the wood, and
fanned it into a flame either by blowing on it or by waving the piece of
wood quickly about in her hand. For this purpose she caught the spark in
a bundle of teased bark and exposed it to a draught of air.” “Fire so
produced was employed to kindle the other fires for that night. They
ascribed to it good luck in cooking and a greater power of keeping off
tigers and so forth, than if the first fire had been kindled by a spark
from the smouldering bark rope.”[772] This account suggests a reason why
a holy fire should be tended by a number of virgins: one or more of them
might at any time be incapacitated by a natural infirmity for the
discharge of the sacred duty.
[Sidenote: Among the Slavs of the Balkans fire is made by a young girl
and boy.] Again, the Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula ascribe a healing or
protective power to “living fire,” and when an epidemic is raging in a
village they will sometimes extinguish all the fires on the hearths and
procure a “living fire” by the friction of wood. At the present day this
is done by various mechanical devices, but the oldest method, now almost
obsolete, is said to be as follows:—A girl and a boy between the ages of
eleven and fourteen, having been chosen to make the fire, are led into a
dark room, where they must strip themselves of all their clothes without
speaking a word. Then two perfectly dry cylindrical pieces of lime-wood
are given them, which they must rub rapidly against each other, turn
about, till they take fire. Tinder is then lit at the flame and used for
the purpose of healing. This mode of kindling the “living fire” is still
practised in the Schar Mountains of Old Servia. The writer who describes
it witnessed some years ago the use of the sacred fire at the village of
Setonje, at the foot of the Homolye Mountains, in the heart of the great
Servian forest. But on that occasion the fire was made in the manner
described, not by a boy and girl, but by an old woman and an old man.
Every fire in the village had previously been extinguished, and was
afterwards relit with the new fire.[773]
[Sidenote: Among the Kachins fire is made by a man and woman jointly.]
Among the Kachins of Burma, when people take solemn possession of a new
house, a new fire is made in front of it by a man and woman jointly. A
dry piece of bamboo is pegged down on the ground; the two fire-makers
sit down facing each other at either end of it, and together rub another
piece of bamboo on the horizontal piece, one of them holding the wrists
of the other and both pressing down firmly till fire is elicited.[774]
[Sidenote: Thus the conception of the fire-sticks as male and female is
carried out by requiring the male stick to be worked by a man and the
female stick to be worked by a woman.] In the first at least of these
customs, it is plain, the conception of the fire-sticks as male and
female has been logically carried out by requiring the male fire-stick
to be worked by a man and the female fire-stick to be held by a woman.
But opinions seem to differ on the question whether the fire-makers
[Sidenote: But opinions differ as to whether the fire-makers should be
married or single.] should be wedded or single. The Djakuns prefer that
the man should be married and the woman unmarried; on the other hand,
the Slavs of the Schar Mountains clearly think it better that both
should be single, since they entrust the duty of making the fire to a
boy and girl. In so far as the man’s part in the work is concerned, some
of our Scottish Highlanders agree with the Djakuns at the other end of
the world; for the natives of Lewis “did also make use of a fire called
_Tin-egin_, _i.e._ a forced fire, or fire of necessity, which they used
as an antidote against the plague or murrain in cattle; and it was
performed thus: all the fires in the parish were extinguished, and then
eighty-one married men, being thought the necessary number for effecting
this design, took two great planks of wood, and nine of them were
employed by turns, who by their repeated efforts rubbed one of the
planks against the other until the heat thereof produced fire; and from
this forced fire each family is supplied with new fire, which is no
sooner kindled than a pot full of water is quickly set on it, and
afterwards sprinkled upon the people infected with the plague, or upon
the cattle that have the murrain. And this they all say they find
successful by experiment: it was practised in the main land, opposite to
the south of Skie, within these thirty years.”[775] On the other hand,
the Germans of Halberstadt sided with the South Slavs on this point, for
they caused the forced fire, or need fire, as it is commonly called, to
be made by two chaste boys, who pulled at a rope which ran round a
wooden cylinder.[776] The theory and practice of the Basutos in South
Africa were similar. After a birth had taken place they used to kindle
the fire of the hut afresh, and “for this purpose it was necessary that
a young man of chaste habits should rub two pieces of wood quickly one
against another, until a flame sprung up, pure as himself. It was firmly
believed that a premature death awaited him who should dare to take upon
himself this office, after having lost his innocence. As soon,
therefore, as a birth was proclaimed in the village, the fathers took
their sons to undergo the ordeal. Those who felt themselves guilty
confessed their crime, and submitted to be scourged rather than expose
themselves to the consequences of a fatal temerity.”[777]
[Sidenote: Reasons for entrusting the making of fire to unmarried boys
and girls.] It is not hard to divine why the task of twirling the male
fire-stick in the hole of the female fire-stick should by some people be
assigned to married men. The analogy of the process to the intercourse
of the sexes furnishes an obvious reason. It is less easy to understand
why other people should prefer to entrust the duty to unmarried boys.
But probably the preference is based on a belief that chastity leaves
the boys with a stock of reproductive energy which they may expend on
the operation of fire-making, whereas married men dissipate the same
energy in other channels. A somewhat similar train of thought may
explain a rule of virginity enjoined on women who assist in the
production of fire by holding the female fire-stick on the ground. As a
virgin’s womb is free to conceive, so, it might be thought, will be the
womb of the female fire-stick which she holds; whereas had the female
fire-maker been already with child, she could not be reimpregnated, and
consequently the female fire-stick could not give birth to a spark.
Thus, in the sympathetic connexion between the fire-sticks and the
fire-makers we seem to reach the ultimate origin of the order of the
Vestal Virgins: they had to be chaste, because otherwise they could not
light the fire. Once when the sacred fire had gone out, the Vestal in
charge of it was suspected of having brought about the calamity by her
unchastity, but she triumphantly repelled the suspicion by eliciting a
flame from the cold ashes.[778] Ideas of the same primitive kind still
linger among the French peasantry, who think that if a girl can blow up
a smouldering candle into a flame she is a virgin, but that if she fails
to do so, she is not.[779] In ancient Greece none but persons of pure
life were allowed to blow up the holy fire with their mouths; a vile man
who had polluted his lips was deemed unworthy to discharge the
duty.[780]
[Sidenote: The holy fire and virgins of St. Brigit in Ireland.] The
French superstition, which I have just mentioned, may well date from
Druidical times, for there are some grounds for thinking that among the
old Celts, as among their near kinsmen the Latins, holy fires were
tended by virgins. In our own country perpetual fires were maintained in
the temple of a goddess whom the Romans identified with Minerva,[781]
but whose native Celtic name seems to have been Brigit. Like Minerva,
Brigit was a goddess of poetry and wisdom, and she had two sisters also
called Brigit, who presided over leechcraft and smithcraft respectively.
This appears to be only another way of saying that Brigit was the
patroness of bards, physicians, and smiths.[782] Now, at Kildare in
Ireland the nuns of St. Brigit tended a perpetual holy fire down to the
suppression of the monasteries under Henry VIII.; and we can hardly
doubt that in doing so they merely kept up, under a Christian name, an
ancient pagan worship of Brigit in her character of a fire-goddess or
patroness of smiths. The nuns were nineteen in number. Each of them had
the care of the fire for a single night in turn; and on the twentieth
evening the last nun, having heaped wood on the fire, used to say,
“Brigit, take charge of your own fire; for this night belongs to you.”
She then went away, and next morning they always found the fire still
burning and the usual quantity of fuel consumed. Like the Vestal fire at
Rome in the old days, the fire of St. Brigit burned within a circular
enclosure made of stakes and brushwood, and no male might set foot
inside the fence. The nuns were allowed to fan the fire or blow it up
with bellows, but they might not blow on it with their breath.[783]
[Sidenote: Not to breathe on a holy fire.] Similarly it is said that the
Balkan Slavs will not blow with their mouths on the holy fire of the
domestic hearth;[784] a Brahman is forbidden to blow a fire with his
mouth;[785] and among the Parsees the priests have to wear a veil over
their mouth lest they should defile the sacred fire by their
breath.[786] The custom of maintaining a perpetual fire was not peculiar
[Sidenote: Other perpetual fires in Ireland.] to Kildare, but seems to
have been common in Ireland, for the native records shew that such fires
were kept up in several monasteries, in each of which a small church or
oratory was set apart for the purpose. This was done, for example, at
the monasteries of Seirkieran, Kilmainham, and Inishmurray.[787] We may
conjecture that these holy fires were merely survivals of the perpetual
fires which in pagan [Sidenote: St. Brigit’s fire perhaps fed with
oak-wood.] times had burned in honour of Brigit. The view that Brigit
was a fire-goddess is confirmed by the observation that in the Christian
calendar her festival falls the day before Candlemas, and the customs
observed at that season by Celtic peasantry seem to prove that she was a
goddess of the crops as well as of fire.[788] If that was so, it is
another reason for comparing her to Vesta, whose priestesses performed
ceremonies to fertilise both the earth and the cattle.[789] Further,
there are some grounds for connecting Brigit, like Vesta, with the oak;
for at Kildare her Christian namesake, St. Brigit, otherwise known as
St. Bride or St. Bridget, built her church under an oak-tree, which
existed till the tenth century, and gave its name to the spot, for
Kildare is _Cilldara_, “the church of the oak-tree.”[790] The “church of
the oak” may well have displaced a temple or sanctuary of the oak, where
in Druidical days the holy fire was fed, like the Vestal fire at Rome,
with the wood of the sacred tree.
[Sidenote: Early Irish monasteries built in oak groves.] We may suspect
that a conversion of this sort was often effected in Ireland by the
early Christian missionaries. The monasteries of Derry and Durrow,
founded by St. Columba, were both named after the oak groves amidst
which they were built; and at Derry the saint spared the beautiful trees
and strictly enjoined his successors to do the same. In his old age,
when he lived an exile on the shores of the bleak storm-swept isle of
Iona, his heart yearned to the home of his youth among the oak groves of
Ireland, and he gave expression to the yearning in passionate verse:—
“_That spot is the dearest on Erin’s ground,
For the treasures that peace and purity lend,
For the hosts of bright angels that circle it round,
Protecting its borders from end to end._
“_The dearest of any on Erin’s ground,
For its peace and its beauty I gave it my love;
Each leaf of the oaks around Derry is found
To be crowded with angels from heaven above._
“_My Derry! my Derry! my little oak grove,
My dwelling, my home, and my own little cell,
May God the Eternal in Heaven above
Send death to thy foes, and defend thee well._”[791]
A feeling of the same sort came over a very different exile in a very
different scene, when growing old amid the turmoil, the gaieties, the
distractions of Paris, he remembered the German oak woods of his youth.
“_Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland.
Der Eichenbaum
Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft.
Es war ein Traum._”
[Sidenote: Virgin priestesses of fire among the Incas of Peru.] Far from
the oaks of Erin and the saint’s last home among the stormy Hebrides, a
sacred fire has been tended by holy virgins, with statelier rites and in
more solemn fanes, under the equinoctial line. The Incas of Peru, who
deemed themselves the children of the Sun, procured a new fire from
their great father at the solstice in June, our Midsummer Day. They
kindled it by holding towards the sun a hollow mirror, which reflected
his beams on a tinder of cotton wool. But if the sky happened to be
overcast at the time, they made the new fire by rubbing two sticks
against each other; and they looked upon it as a bad omen when they were
obliged to do this, for they said the Sun must be angry with them, since
he refused to kindle the flame with his own hand. The sacred fire,
however obtained, was deposited at Cuzco, the capital of Peru, in the
temple of the Sun, and also in a great convent of holy virgins, who
guarded it carefully throughout the year, and it was an evil augury if
they suffered it to go out. These [Sidenote: Wives of the Sun in Peru.]
virgins were regarded as the wives of the Sun, and they were bound to
perpetual chastity. If any of them proved unfaithful to her husband the
Sun, she was buried alive, like a Roman Vestal, and her paramour was
strangled. The reason for putting her to death in this manner was
probably, as at Rome, a reluctance to shed royal blood; for all these
virgins were of the royal family, being daughters of the Incas or of his
kinsmen. Besides tending the holy fire, they had to weave and make all
the clothes worn by the Inca and his legitimate wife, to bake the bread
that was offered to the Sun at his great festivals, and to brew the wine
which the Inca and his family drank on these occasions. All the
furniture of the convent, down to the pots, pans, and jars, were of gold
and silver, just as in the temple of the Sun, because the virgins were
deemed to be his wives. And they had a golden garden, where the very
clods were of fine gold; where golden maize reared its stalks, leaves
and cobs, all of the precious metal; and where golden shepherds, with
slings and crooks of gold, tended golden sheep and lambs.[792] The
analogy of these virgin guardians of the sacred flame furnishes an
argument in favour of the view set forth in the preceding pages; for if
the Peruvian Vestals were the brides of the Sun, may not the Roman
Vestals have been the brides of the Fire?
[Sidenote: Virgin priestesses of fire in Mexico and Yucatan.] On the
summit of the great pyramidal temple at Mexico two fires burned
continually on stone hearths in front of two chapels, and dreadful
misfortunes were supposed to follow if the fires were allowed to go out.
They were kept up by priests and maidens, some of whom had taken a vow
of perpetual virginity. But most of these girls seem to have served only
for a year or more until their marriage. They offered incense to the
idols, wove cloths for the service of the temple, swept the sacred area,
and baked the cakes which were presented to the gods but eaten by their
priests. They were clad all in white, without any ornament. A broom and
a censer were their emblems. Death was the penalty inflicted on the
faithless virgin who polluted by her incontinence the temple of the
god.[793] In Yucatan there was an order of Vestals instituted by a
princess, who acted as lady-superior and was deified after her death
under the title of the Virgin of the Fire. The members enrolled
themselves voluntarily either for life or for a term of years, after
which they might marry. Their duty was to tend the sacred fire, the
emblem of the sun. If they broke their vow of chastity or allowed the
fire to go out, they were shot to death with arrows.[794]
[Sidenote: Virgin priestesses of fire among the Baganda.] Amongst the
Baganda of Central Africa there used to be an order of Vestal Virgins
(_bakaja_) who were attached to the temples of the gods. Their duties
were to keep the fire of the god burning all night, to see that there
was a good supply of firewood, and to watch that the suppliants did not
bring to the deity anything that was tabooed to him. These maidens are
also said to have had charge of some of the vessels. All of them were
young girls; no man might touch them; and when they reached the age of
puberty, the god ordered them to be given in marriage. The place of a
girl who thus vacated office had to be supplied by another girl taken
from the same clan.[795]
[Sidenote: Resemblance between the Flamen Dialis of the Romans and the
_Agnihotri_ or fire-priest of the Brahmans.] We have seen that some
people commit the task of making fire by friction to married men; and
following the opinion of other scholars I have conjectured that in some
of the Latin tribes the duty of kindling and feeding the sacred fire may
have been assigned to the Flamen Dialis, who had always to be married;
if his wife died, he vacated his office.[796] The sanctity of his fire
is proved by the rule that no brand might be taken from his house except
for the purpose of a sacrifice.[797] Further, the importance ascribed to
the discharge of his duties is attested by another old rule which
forbade him to be absent from his house in Rome for a single night.[798]
The prohibition would be intelligible if one of his duties had formerly
been to superintend the maintenance of a perpetual fire. However that
may have been, the life of the priest was regulated by a whole code of
curious restrictions or taboos, which rendered the office so burdensome
and vexatious that, in spite of the high honours attached to the post,
for a period of more than seventy years together no man was found
willing to undertake it.[799] Some of these restrictions will be
examined later on.[800] Their similarity to the rules of life still
observed in India by the Brahmans who are fire-priests (_Agnihotris_)
seems to confirm the view that the Flamen also was originally a
fire-priest. The parallel between the two priesthoods would be all the
more remarkable if, as some scholars hold, the very names Brahman and
Flamen are philologically identical.[801] As to these Brahmanical
fire-priests or Agnihotris we are told that the number of them nowadays
is very limited, because the ceremonies involve heavy expenditure, and
the rules which regulate them are very elaborate and difficult. The
offering of food to the fire at meals is, indeed, one of the five daily
duties of every Brahman; but the regular fire-service is the special
duty of the Agnihotri. In order that he may be ceremonially pure he is
bound by certain obligations not to travel or remain away from home for
any long time; to sell nothing which is produced by himself or his
family; to pay little attention to worldly affairs; to speak the truth;
to bathe and worship the deities in the afternoon as well as in the
morning; and to sacrifice to his deceased ancestors on the fifteenth of
every month. He is not allowed to take food at night. He may not eat
alkaline salt, meat, honey, and inferior grain, such as some varieties
of pulse, millet, and the egg plant. He never wears shoes nor sleeps on
a bed, but always on the ground. He is expected to keep awake most of
the night and to study the Shâstras. He may have no connexion with, nor
unholy thoughts regarding, any woman but his wife; and he must abstain
from every other act that involves personal impurity.[802] With these
rules we may compare some of the obligations laid on the Flamen Dialis.
In the old days, as we saw, he was bound never to be absent from his
house for a single night. He might not touch or even name raw meat,
beans, ivy, and a she-goat; he might not eat leavened bread, nor touch a
dead body; and the feet of his bed had always to be smeared with
mud.[803] This last rule seems to be a mitigation of an older custom of
sleeping on the ground, a custom which is still observed by the
fire-priest in India, as it was in antiquity by the priests of Zeus at
Dodona.[804] Similarly the priest of the old Prussian god Potrimpo was
bound to sleep on the bare earth for three nights before he sacrificed
to the deity.[805]
[Sidenote: Mode in which the _Agnihotri_ procures fresh fire by the
friction of fire-sticks.] Every Agnihotri has a separate room in his
house where the sacred fire is kept burning in a small pit of a cubit
square. Should the fire chance to go out, the priest must get fresh fire
from another priest or procure it by the friction of fire-sticks
(_arani_). These comprise, first, a block of _sami_ wood (_Prosopis
spicigera_) in which a small hole is made emblematical of the female
principle (_sakti yoni_), and, second, an upright shaft which is made to
revolve in the hole of the block by means of a rope. The point in the
drill where the rope is applied to cause it to revolve is called _deva
yoni_. Two priests take part in the operation. Before they begin they
sing a hymn in honour of the fire-god Agni. When the fire has been
kindled they place it in a copper vessel and sprinkle it with powdered
cow-dung. When it is well alight, they cover it with another copper
vessel, sprinkle it with drops of water, and sing another hymn in honour
of Agni. Finally, the new fire is consigned to the fire-pit.[806]
According to another description of the modern Indian fire-drill, the
lower block is usually made of the hard wood of the _khadira_ or _khair_
tree (_Acacia catechu_), and it contains two shallow holes. In one of
these holes the revolving drill works and produces sparks by friction;
the other hole contains tinder which is ignited by means of the sparks.
This latter hole is known as the _yoni_, the female organ of generation.
The upper or revolving portion of the drill is called the _pramantha_.
It consists of a round shaft of hard wood, with a spike of softer wood
inserted in its lower end. One priest causes the shaft to revolve by
pulling a cord, while another priest presses the spike down into the
hole in the block by leaning hard upon a flat board placed on the top of
the shaft. The spike is generally made of the peepul or sacred fig-tree.
When it has become charred by friction, it is replaced by another.[807]
According to one account, the fire is made in this fashion, not by two
priests, but by the Brahman and his wife; she pulls the cord, while he
holds the borer in the hole and recites the spells necessary for the
production of the fire.[808]
[Sidenote: The Indian fire-sticks made from the sacred fig and _sami_
wood.] This practice of the modern Agnihotri or fire-priest of India is
in general accord with the precepts laid down in the ancient sacred
books of his religion. For these direct that the upper or male stick of
the fire-drill should be made of the sacred fig-tree (_asvattha_), and
the lower or female stick of _sami_ wood (_Prosopis spicigera_); and
they draw out the analogy between the process of fire-making and the
intercourse of the sexes in minute detail.[809] It deserves to be
[Sidenote: The male fire-stick made by preference from a sacred fig-tree
growing as a parasite on the female _sami_ tree.] noted that the male
fire-stick was cut by preference from a sacred fig-tree which grew as a
parasite on a _sami_ or female tree. The reason for this preference is
obvious to the primitive mind. A parasite clasping a tree with its
tendrils is conceived as a man embracing a woman, hence a pair of
fire-sticks made from a pair of trees thus interlaced will naturally
possess the power of procreating fire by friction in an unusually high
degree.[810] So completely, in the Hindoo mind, does the process of
making fire by friction blend with the union of the human sexes that it
is actually employed as part of a charm to procure male offspring.[811]
Such a confusion of thought helps us to understand the part played by
the domestic fire in the ritual of marriage and birth as well as in the
legends of the miraculous origin of the Latin kings.[812] In ancient
India the male and the female fire-stick were identified with King
Pururavas and the nymph Urvasi, whose loves and sorrows formed the theme
of a beautiful tale.[813]
[Sidenote: The Greeks also preferred to make one of the fire-sticks from
a parasitic plant.] Like the ancient Indians, the Greeks seem to have
preferred that one of the two fire-sticks should be made from a
parasitic or creeping plant. They recommended that the borer of the
fire-drill should be made of laurel and the board of ivy or another
creeper, apparently a kind of wild vine which grew like ivy upon trees;
but in practice both the borer and the board were sometimes made of
other woods, among which buckthorn, the evergreen oak, and the lime are
particularly mentioned.[814] When we consider the analogy of the Indian
preference for a borer made from a parasite, and remember how deeply
rooted in the primitive mind is the comparison of the friction of the
fire-sticks to the union [Sidenote: The reason for such a preference is
the analogy of the union of the sexes.] of the sexes, we shall hardly
doubt that the Greeks originally chose the ivy or wild vine for a
fire-stick from motives of the sort which led the Hindoos to select the
wood of a parasitic fig-tree for the same purpose. But while the Hindoos
regarded the parasite as male and the tree to which it clung as female,
the Greeks of Theophrastus’s time seem to have inverted this conception,
since they recommended that the board, which plays the part of the
female in the fire-drill, should be made of ivy or another creeper,
whereas the borer, which necessarily represents the male, was to be
fashioned out of laurel. This would imply that the ivy was a female and
the laurel a male. Yet in Greek, on the contrary, the word for ivy is
masculine, and the plant was identified mythologically with the male god
Dionysus;[815] whereas the word for laurel is feminine and the tree was
identified with a nymph. Hence we may conjecture that at first the
Greeks, like the Hindoos, regarded the clinging creeper as the male and
the tree which it embraced as the female, and that of old, therefore,
they made the borer of the fire-drill out of ivy and the board out of
laurel. If this was so, the reasons which led them to reverse the usage
can only be guessed at. Perhaps practical convenience had a share in
bringing about the change. For the laurel is, as the late Professor H.
Marshall Ward kindly informed me, a harder wood than the ivy, and to
judge by general, though not universal, practice most people find it
easier to make fire by the friction of a hard borer on a soft board than
by rubbing a hard board with a soft point. This, therefore, would be a
reason for making the borer of laurel and the board of ivy. If such a
change took place in the history of the Greek fire-drill, it would be an
interesting example of superstition modified, if not vanquished, by
utility in the struggle for existence.
Footnote 737:
Livy, xxviii. 11. 6 _sq._; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._
ii. 67. 5.
Footnote 738:
Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 265 _sqq._; Festus, p. 262, ed. C. O. Müller.
Footnote 739:
Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, pp. 11 _sq._ On the diffusion of
the round hut in Africa Sir H. H. Johnston says: “The original form of
house throughout all British Central Africa was what the majority of
the houses still are—circular and somewhat like a beehive in shape,
with round walls of wattle and daub and thatched roof. This style of
house is characteristic of (_a_) all Africa south of the Zambezi;
(_b_) all British Central Africa; as much of the Portuguese provinces
of Zambezia and Moçambique as are not under direct Portuguese or
Muhammedan influence which may have introduced the rectangular
dwelling; (_c_) all East Africa up to and including the Egyptian
Sudan, where Arab influence has not introduced the oblong rectangular
building; (_d_) the Central Nigerian Sudan, much of Senegambia, and
perhaps the West Coast of Africa as far east and south as the Gold
Coast, subject, of course, to the same limitations as to foreign
influence” (_British Central Africa_, London, 1897, P. 453).
Footnote 740:
J. Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., pp. 250, 341
_sq._
Footnote 741:
J. Marquardt, _op. cit._ iii. 2nd Ed., pp. 340 _sq._; _Journal of
Philology_, xiv. (1885) pp. 155 _sq._
Footnote 742:
Livy, i. 3 _sq._; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ i. 76
_sq._; Plutarch, _Romulus_, 3.
Footnote 743:
Plutarch, _Numa_, 10; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ ii. 67.
4, viii. 89. 5.
Footnote 744:
The suggestion is due to Mr. M. A. Bayfield (_Classical Review_, xv.
1901, p. 448). He compares the similar execution of the princess
Antigone (Sophocles, _Antigone_, 773 _sqq._). However, we must
remember that a custom of burying people alive has been practised as a
punishment or a sacrifice by Romans, Persians, and Germans, even when
the victims were not of royal blood. See Livy, xxii. 57. 6; Pliny,
_Nat. Hist._ xxviii. 12; Plutarch, _Marcellus_, 3; _id._, _Quaest.
Rom._ 83; Herodotus, vii. 114; J. Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer_,
3rd Ed., pp. 694 _sq._ As to the objection to spill royal blood, see
_The Golden Bough_, Second Edition, i. 354 _sq._
Footnote 745:
See above, p. 215.
Footnote 746:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 629-672. Compare Varro, _De lingua Latina_, vi. 15;
Joannes Lydus, _De mensibus_, iv. 49.
Footnote 747:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 731-782. See below, p. 326.
Footnote 748:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxviii. 39; “_Quamquam religione tutatur et
fascinus, imperatorum quoque, non solum infantium custos, qui deus
inter sacra Romana Vestalibus colitur_.”
Footnote 749:
Virgil, _Georg._ i. 498; Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 828; G. Henzen, _Acta
fratrum Arvalium_, pp. 124, 147; H. Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae
selectae_, Nos. 5047, 5048. Ennius represented Vesta as the mother of
Saturn and Titan. See Lactantius, _Divin. inst._ i. 14.
Footnote 750:
Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, iv. 10.
Footnote 751:
See above, pp. 195 _sqq._
Footnote 752:
_Grihya Sûtras_, translated by H. Oldenberg, vol. i. pp. 37, 168, 279,
283, 382, 384, vol. ii. pp. 46, 191, 260; M. Winternitz, “Das
altindische Hochzeitsrituell,” pp. 4, 56-62 (_Denkschriften der
kaiserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien_, xl., Vienna, 1892); H.
Zimmer, _Altindisches Leben_, p. 312; G. A. Grierson, _Bihār Peasant
Life_ (Calcutta, 1885), p. 368; F. S. Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch der
Südslaven_, pp. 386, 436, cp. 430; J. Lasicius, “De diis Samagitarum
caeterorumque Sarmatarum,” in _Magazin herausgegeben von der
Lettisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft_, xiv. 99; J. Maeletius
(Maletius), “De sacrificiis et idolatria veterum Borussorum Livonum
aliarumque vicinarum gentium,” in _Mitteilungen der Litterarischen
Gesellschaft Masovia_, viii. (1902) pp. 191, 204 (this work is also
reprinted under the name of J. Menecius in _Scriptores rerum
Livonicarum_, ii. (Riga and Leipsic, 1848) pp. 389-392); F. Woeste, in
_Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde_, ii. (1855) p.
91; A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, _Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und
Gebräuche_, pp. 433, 522; A. Kuhn, _Sagen, Gebräuche und Märchen aus
Westfalen_, ii. 38; J. H. Schmitz, _Sitten und Sagen, etc., des Eifler
Volkes_, i. 67; Montanus, _Die deutsche Volksfeste, Volksbräuche und
deutscher Volksglaube_, p. 85; Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Hochzeitsbuch_
(Leipsic, 1871), p. 222; L. v. Schroeder, _Die Hochzeitsbräuche der
Esten_ (Berlin, 1888), pp. 127 _sqq._; E. Samter, _Familienfeste der
Griechen und Römer_ (Berlin, 1901), pp. 59-62; O. Schrader,
_Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde_, pp. 356 _sq._ This
evidence proves that the custom has been practised by the Indian,
Slavonian, Lithuanian, and Teutonic branches of the Aryan race, from
which we may fairly infer that it was observed by the ancestors of the
whole family before their dispersion.
Footnote 753:
_Grihya-Sûtras_, translated by H. Oldenberg, vol. i. p. 283 (_Sacred
Books of the East_, vol. xxix.).
Footnote 754:
Prof. Vl. Titelbach, “Das heilige Feuer bei den Balkanslaven,”
_Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, xiii. (1900) p. 1.
Footnote 755:
F. S. Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven_ (Vienna, 1885), p. 430.
Footnote 756:
F. S. Krauss, _op. cit._ p. 531.
Footnote 757:
This saying was communicated to me by Miss Mabel Peacock in a letter
dated Kirton-in-Lindsey, Lincolnshire, 30th October 1905.
Footnote 758:
Max Buch, _Die Wotjäken_ (Stuttgart, 1882), pp. 52, 59; L. v.
Schroeder, _op. cit._ pp. 129, 132.
Footnote 759:
Above, pp. 221 _sq._
Footnote 760:
As it is believed that fire may impregnate human beings, so conversely
some people seem to imagine that it may be impregnated by them. Thus
Mr. T. R. Glover, Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, writes to
me (18th June 1906): “A curious and not very quotable instance of (I
suppose) Sacred Marriage was brought to my notice by Mr. Brown of the
Canadian Baptist Mission to the Telugus. He said that in Hindoo
temples (in South India chiefly?) sometimes a scaffolding is erected
over a fire. A man and a woman are got to copulate on it and allow the
human seed to fall into the fire.” But perhaps this ceremony is only
another way of conveying the fertilising virtue of the fire to the
woman, in other words, of getting her with child.
Footnote 761:
Above, pp. 215, 221.
Footnote 762:
Suidas, Harpocration, and _Etymologicum Magnum_, _s.v._ Ἀμφιδρόμια;
Hesychius, _s.v._ δρομάφιον ἧμαρ; Schol. on Plato, _Theaetetus_, p.
160 E. On this custom see S. Reinach, _Cultes, mythes, et religions_,
i. (Paris, 1905) pp. 137-145. He suggests that the running of the
naked men who carried the babies was intended, by means of sympathetic
magic, to impart to the little ones in after-life the power of running
fast. But this theory does not explain why the race took place round
the hearth.
Footnote 763:
The custom has been practised with this intention in Scotland, China,
New Britain, the Tenimber and Timorlaut Islands, and by the Ovambo of
South Africa. See Pennant’s “Second Tour in Scotland,” Pinkerton’s
_Voyages and Travels_, iii. 383; Miss C. F. Gordon Cumming, _In the
Hebrides_, ed. 1883, p. 101; _China Review_, ix. (1880-1881) p. 303;
R. Parkinson, _Im Bismarck-Archipel_, pp. 94 _sq._; J. G. F. Riedel,
_De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua_, p. 303;
H. Schinz, _Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika_, p. 307. A similar custom was
observed, probably for the same reason, in ancient Mexico and in
Madagascar. See Clavigero, _History of Mexico_, translated by Cullen,
i. 31; W. Ellis, _History of Madagascar_, i. 152. Compare my note,
“The Youth of Achilles,” _Classical Review_, vii. (1893) pp. 293 _sq._
Footnote 764:
Compare E. Samter, _Familienfeste der Griechen und Römer_ (Berlin,
1901), pp. 59-62.
Footnote 765:
W. R. S. Ralston, _The Songs of the Russian People_, pp. 120 _sq._
Ralston held that the Russian house-spirit Domovoy, who is supposed to
live behind the stove, is the modern representative of an ancestral
spirit. Compare _ibid._ pp. 84, 86, 119.
Footnote 766:
Evidence of this view will be adduced later on. See _The Golden
Bough_, Second Edition, iii. 456.
Footnote 767:
See above, pp. 185 _sq._
Footnote 768:
L. v. Schroeder, _Die Hochzeitsbräuche der Esten_ (Berlin, 1888), pp.
129 _sq._
Footnote 769:
See above, p. 197.
Footnote 770:
Th. Mommsen, _History of Rome_, New Edition (London, 1894), i. 215
_sq._; J. Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., p.
326; W. Warde Fowler, _Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic_,
p. 147. For another derivation of their name see below, p. 247.
Footnote 771:
See above, p. 207.
Footnote 772:
H. Vaughan Stevens, “Mitteilungen aus dem Frauenleben der Ôrang
Belendas, der Ôrang Djâkun und der Ôrang Lâut,” bearbeitet von Dr. Max
Bartels, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, xxviii. (1896) pp. 168 _sq._
The writer adds that any person, boy, man, or woman (provided she was
not menstruous) might light the fire, if it were more convenient that
he or she should do so. Thus the co-operation of a married man and an
unmarried girl, though apparently deemed the best, was not the only
permissible way of igniting the wood. The good faith or at all events
the accuracy of the late German traveller H. Vaughan Stevens is not, I
understand, above suspicion; but Mr. Nelson Annandale, joint author of
_Fasciculi Malayenses_, writes to me of him that “he certainly had a
knowledge and experience of the wild tribes of the Malay region which
few or none have excelled, for he lived literally as one of
themselves.”
Footnote 773:
Prof. Vl. Titelbach, “Das heilige Feuer bei den Balkanslaven,”
_Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, xiii. (1900) pp. 2-4. The
ceremony witnessed by Prof. Titelbach will be described later on in
this work. Kinglake rode through the great Servian forest on his way
from Belgrade to Constantinople, and from his description (_Eothen_,
ch. ii.) we gather that it is chiefly composed of oak. He says:
“Endless and endless now on either side the tall oaks closed in their
ranks, and stood gloomily lowering over us.”
Footnote 774:
Ch. Gilhodes, “La Culture matérielle des Katchins (Birmanie),”
_Anthropos_, v. (1910) p. 629.
Footnote 775:
M. Martin’s “Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,” in
Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, iii. 611. The first edition of
Martin’s work was published in 1703, and the second in 1716.
Footnote 776:
J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 4th ed., i. 504.
Footnote 777:
E. Casalis, _The Basutos_, pp. 267 _sq._
Footnote 778:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ ii. 68; Valerius Maximus,
i. 1. 7.
Footnote 779:
J. Lecœur, _Esquisses du Bocage Normand_, ii. (Condé-sur-Noireau,
1887) p. 27; B. Souché, _Croyances, présages et traditions diverses_
(Niort, 1880), p. 12.
Footnote 780:
Polybius, xii. 13. In Darfur a curious power over fire is ascribed to
women who have been faithful to their husbands. “It is a belief among
the Forians, that if the city takes fire, the only means of arresting
the progress of the flames is to bring near them a woman, no longer
young, who has never been guilty of intrigue. If she be pure, by
merely waving a mantle, she puts a stop to the destruction. Success
has sometimes rewarded a virtuous woman” (_Travels of an Arab
Merchant_ [Mohammed Ibn-Omar El-Tounsy] _in Soudan_, abridged from the
French by Bayle St. John (London, 1854), p. 112). Compare R. W.
Felkin, “Notes on the For Tribe of Central Africa,” _Proceedings of
the Royal Society of Edinburgh_, xiii. (1884-1886) p. 230.
Footnote 781:
Solinus, xxii. 10. The Celtic Minerva, according to Caesar (_De bello
Gallico_, vi. 17), was a goddess of the mechanical arts.
Footnote 782:
J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, pp. 73-77; P. W. Joyce, _Social History
of Ancient Ireland_, i. 260 _sq._
Footnote 783:
Giraldus Cambrensis, _The Topography of Ireland_, chaps.
xxxiv.-xxxvi., translated by Thomas Wright; P. W. Joyce, _Social
History of Ancient Ireland_, i. 334 _sq._ It is said that in the
island of Sena (the modern _Sein_), off the coast of Brittany, there
was an oracle of a Gallic deity whose worship was cared for by nine
virgin priestesses. They could raise storms by their incantations, and
turn themselves into any animals they pleased (_Mela_, iii. 48); but
it is not said that they maintained a perpetual holy fire, though Ch.
Elton affirms that they did (_Origins of English History_, p. 27). M.
Salomon Reinach dismisses these virgins as a fable based on Homer’s
description of the isle of Circe (_Odyssey_, x. 135 _sqq._), and he
denies that the Gauls employed virgin priestesses. See his article,
“Les Vierges de Sena,” _Revue Celtique_, xviii. (1897) pp. 1-8; _id._,
_Cultes, mythes, et religions_, i. (Paris, 1905) pp. 195 _sqq._ To me
the nuns of St. Brigit seem to be most probably the successors of a
Celtic order of Vestals. That there were female Druids is certain, but
it does not appear whether they were virgins. See Lampridius,
_Alexander Severus_, 60; Vopiscus, _Aurelianus_, 44; _id._,
_Numerianus_, 14 _sq._
Footnote 784:
Prof. Vl. Titelbach, “Das heilige Feuer bei den Balkanslaven,”
_Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, xiii. (1900) p. 1.
Footnote 785:
_Laws of Manu_, iv. 53, translated by G. Bühler (_Sacred Books of the
East_, vol. xxv. p. 137).
Footnote 786:
Martin Haug, _Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of
the Parsees_ 3rd Ed., (London, 1884), p. 243, note 1. Strabo describes
the mouth-veil worn by the Magian priests in Cappadocia (xiv. 3. 15,
p. 733). At Arkon, in the island of Rügen, there was a shrine so holy
that none but the priest might enter it, and even he might not breathe
in it. As often as he needed to draw in or give out breath, he used to
run out of the door lest he should taint the divine presence with his
breath. See Saxo Grammaticus, _Historia Danica_, bk. xiv. p. 824, ed.
P. E. Müller (p. 393 of Elton’s English translation).
Footnote 787:
P. W. Joyce, _Social History of Ancient Ireland_, i. 335 _sq._;
Standish H. O’Grady, _Sylva Gadelica_, translation (London, 1892), pp.
15, 16, 41.
Footnote 788:
See above, pp. 94 _sq._
Footnote 789:
See above, p. 229.
Footnote 790:
Douglas Hyde, _A Literary History of Ireland_ (London, 1899), p. 158.
The tradition of the oak of Kildare survives in the lines,
“_That oak of Saint Bride, which nor Devil nor Dane
Nor Saxon nor Dutchman could rend from her fane_,”
which are quoted by Mr. D. Fitzgerald in _Revue Celtique_, iv.
(1879-1880) p. 193.
Footnote 791:
Douglas Hyde, _op. cit._ pp. 169-171. At Kells, also, St. Columba
dwelt under a great oak-tree. The writer of his Irish life, quoted by
Mr. Hyde, says that the oak-tree “remained till these latter times,
when it fell through the crash of a mighty wind. And a certain man
took somewhat of its bark to tan his shoes with. Now, when he did on
the shoes, he was smitten with leprosy from his sole to his crown.”
Footnote 792:
Garcilasso de la Vega, _Royal Commentaries of the Yncas_, pt. i. bk.
iv. chaps. 1-3, bk. vi. chaps. 20-22 (vol. i. pp. 292-299, vol. ii.
pp. 155-164, Markham’s translation); P. de Cieza de Leon, _Travels_,
p. 134 (Markham’s translation); _id._, _Second Part of the Chronicle
of Peru_, pp. 85 _sq._ (Markham’s translation); Acosta, _Natural and
Moral History of the Indies_, bk. v. chap. 15 (vol. ii. pp. 331-333,
Hakluyt Society). Professor E. B. Tylor discredits Garcilasso’s
description of these Peruvian priestesses on the ground that it
resembles Plutarch’s account of the Roman Vestals (_Numa_, 9 _sq._)
too closely to be independent; he thinks that “the apparent traces of
absorption from Plutarch invalidate whatever rests on Garcilasso de la
Vega’s unsupported testimony.” See his _Researches into the Early
History of Mankind_, 3rd Ed., pp. 249-253. In particular, he stumbles
at the statement that an unfaithful Peruvian priestess was buried
alive. But that statement was made by Cieza de Leon, who travelled in
Peru when Garcilasso was a child, and whose book, or rather the first
part of it, containing the statement, was published more than fifty
years before that of Garcilasso. Moreover, when we understand that the
punishment in question was based on a superstition which occurs
independently in many parts of the world, the apparent improbability
of the coincidence vanishes. As to the mode of kindling the sacred
fire, Professor Tylor understands Plutarch to say that the sacred fire
at Rome was kindled, as in Peru, by a burning-glass. To me it seems
that Plutarch is here speaking of a Greek, not a Roman usage, and this
is made still clearer when his text is read correctly. For the words
ὑπὸ Μήδων, περὶ δὲ τὰ Μιθριδιατικά should be altered to ὑπὸ Μαίδων
περὶ τὰ Μιθριδιατικά. See H. Pomtow in _Rheinisches Museum_, N. F. li.
(1896) p. 365, and my note on Pausanias, x. 19. 4 (vol. v. p. 331).
Thus Plutarch gives two instances when a sacred fire was extinguished
and had to be relit with a burning-glass; but both instances are
Greek, neither is Roman. The Greek mode of lighting a sacred fire by
means of a crystal is described also in the Orphic poem on precious
stones, verses 177 _sqq._ (_Orphica_, ed. E. Abel, p. 115). Nor were
the Greeks and Peruvians peculiar in this respect. The Siamese and
Chinese have also been in the habit of kindling a sacred fire by means
of a metal mirror or burning-glass. See Pallegoix, _Description du
royaume Thai ou Siam_, ii. 55; A. Bastian, _Die Völker des östlichen
Asien_, iii. 516; J. H. Plath, “Die Religion und der Cultus der alten
Chinesen,” _Abhandlungen der k. bayer. Akademie der Wissen_, i. Cl.
ix. (1863) pp. 876 _sq._ Again, the full description of the golden
garden of the Peruvian Vestals, which may sound to us fabulous, is
given by Cieza de Leon in a work (the _Second Part of the Chronicle of
Peru_) which it is unlikely that Garcilasso ever saw, since it was not
printed till 1873, centuries after his death. Yet Garcilasso’s brief
description of the garden agrees closely with that of Cieza de Leon,
differing from it just as that of an independent witness naturally
would—namely, in the selection of some other details in addition to
those which the two have in common. He says that the virgins “had a
garden of trees, plants, herbs, birds and beasts, made of gold and
silver, like that in the temple” (vol. i. p. 298, Markham’s
translation). Thus the two accounts are probably independent and
therefore trustworthy, for a fiction of this kind could hardly have
occurred to two romancers separately. A strong confirmation of
Garcilasso’s fidelity is furnished by the close resemblance which the
fire customs, both of Rome and Peru, present to the well-authenticated
fire customs of the Herero at the present day. There seems to be every
reason to think that all three sets of customs originated
independently in the simple needs and superstitious fancies of the
savage. On the whole, I see no reason to question the good faith and
accuracy of Garcilasso.
Footnote 793:
B. de Sahagun, _Histoire des choses de la Nouvelle Espagne_, pp. 196
_sq._, 386; Acosta, _Natural and Moral History of the Indies_, bk. v.
ch. 15 (vol. ii. pp. 333 _sq._, Hakluyt Society); A. de Herrera,
_General History of the vast Continent and Islands of America_, iii.
209 _sq._, Stevens’s translation (London, 1725, 1726); Clavigero,
_History of Mexico_, i. 264, 274 _sq._; Brasseur de Bourbourg,
_Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l’Amérique
Centrale_, i. 289, iii. 661; H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the
Pacific States_, ii. 204 _sqq._, 245, 583, iii. 435 _sq._ However,
Sahagun (pp. 186, 194), Acosta (vol. ii. p. 336) and Herrera seem to
imply that the duty of maintaining the sacred fire was discharged by
men only.
Footnote 794:
Brasseur de Bourbourg, _op. cit._ ii. 6; H. H. Bancroft, _op. cit._
iii. 473. Fire-worship seems to have lingered among the Indians of
Yucatan down to about the middle of the nineteenth century, and it may
still survive among them. See D. G. Brinton, “The Folk-lore of
Yucatan,” _Folk-lore Journal_, i. (1883) pp. 247 _sq._
Footnote 795:
Letter of the Rev. J. Roscoe, dated Kampala, Uganda, 9th April 1909.
Footnote 796:
Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 22; Ateius Capito, cited by Plutarch, _Quaest.
Rom._ 50. On the other hand, Servius on Virgil, _Aen._ iv. 29, says
that the Flamen might marry another wife after the death of the first.
But the statement of Aulus Gellius and Ateius Capito is confirmed by
other evidence. See J. Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii.
2nd Ed., 329, note 8. As to the rule see my note, “The Widowed
Flamen,” _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, Second Edition, pp. 407 _sqq._
Footnote 797:
Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 7; Festus, p. 106, ed. C. O. Müller.
Footnote 798:
Livy, v. 52. 13 _sq._ In later times the rule was so far relaxed that
he was allowed to be absent from Rome for two nights or even longer,
provided he got leave from the chief pontiff on the score of
ill-health. See Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 14; Tacitus, _Annals_, iii. 71.
Footnote 799:
Tacitus, _Annals_, iii. 58; Dio Cassius, liv. 36. As to the honours
attached to the office, see Livy, xxvii. 8. 8; Plutarch, _Quaest.
Rom._ 113.
Footnote 800:
See _The Golden Bough_, Second Edition, i. 241 _sqq._
Footnote 801:
P. Kretschmer, _Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache_
(Göttingen, 1896), pp. 127 _sqq._; O. Schrader, _Reallexikon der
indogermanischen Altertumskunde_, pp. 637 _sq._ For a different
derivation of the name Flamen see above, p. 235. Being no philologer,
I do not pretend to decide between the rival etymologies. My friend
Prof. J. H. Moulton prefers the equation _Flamen_ = _Brahman_, which
he tells me is philologically correct, because if _Flamen_ came from
_flare_ we should expect a form like _flator_ rather than _flamen_.
The form _flator_ was used in Latin, though not in this sense.
Footnote 802:
W. Crooke, _The Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and
Oudh_, i. 30-32. Compare Monier Williams, _Religious Thought and Life
in India_, pp. 364, 365, 392.
Footnote 803:
Aulus Gellius, x. 15.
Footnote 804:
Homer, _Iliad_, xvi. 233-235; Sophocles, _Trachiniae_, 1166 _sq._;
Callimachus, _Hymn to Delos_, 284-286.
Footnote 805:
Ch. Hartknoch, _Selectae dissertationes historicae de variis rebus
Prussicis_, p. 163 (bound up with his edition of Düsburg’s _Chronicon
Prussiae_, Frankfort and Leipsic, 1679); Simon Grunau, _Preussischer
Chronik_, ed. M. Perlbach, i. (Leipsic, 1876) p. 95.
Footnote 806:
W. Crooke, _op. cit._ i. 31-33.
Footnote 807:
W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_
(Westminster, 1896), ii. 194 _sq._
Footnote 808:
J. C. Nesfield, in _Panjab Notes and Queries_, ii. p. 12, § 77.
Footnote 809:
_Rigveda_, iii. 29, translated by R. T. H. Griffith (Benares,
1889-1892), vol. ii. pp. 25-27; _Satapatha Brâhmana_, translated by J.
Eggeling, part i. p. 389, note 3, part ii. pp. 90 _sq._, part v. pp.
68-74; _Hymns of the Atharva-Veda_, translated by M. Bloomfield, pp.
91, 97 _sq._, 334, 460; W. Caland, _Altindisches Zauberritual_, pp.
115 _sq._; A. Kuhn, _Herabkunft des Feuers_, 2nd Ed., pp. 40, 64-78,
183-185; H. Zimmer, _Altindisches Leben_, pp. 58, 59. The _sami_ wood
is sometimes identified with the _Acacia Suma_ (_Mimosa Suma_); but
the modern Bengalee name of _Prosopis spicigera_ is _shami_ or _somi_,
which seems to be conclusive evidence of the identity of _Prosopis
spicigera_ with _sami_. The _Prosopis spicigera_ is a deciduous thorny
tree of moderate size, which grows in the arid zones of the Punjaub,
Rajputana, Gujarat, Bundelcund, and the Deccan. The heart of the wood
is of a purplish brown colour and extremely hard. It is especially
valued for fuel, as it gives out much heat. See G. Watt, _Dictionary
of the Economic Products of India_, _s.v._ “Prosopis spicigera.” For a
reference to this work I am indebted to the kindness of the late
Professor H. Marshall Ward.
Footnote 810:
A. Kuhn, _op. cit._ pp. 40, 66, 175.
Footnote 811:
_Hymns of the Atharva-Veda_, translated by M. Bloomfield, pp. 97
_sq._, 460; W. Caland, _Altindisches Zauberritual_, pp. 115 _sq._
Footnote 812:
See above, pp. 195 _sqq._, 230 _sqq._
Footnote 813:
_Rigveda_, x. 95, translated by R. T. H. Griffith, _Satapatha
Brâhmana_, translated by J. Eggeling, part v. pp. 68-74. Compare H.
Oldenberg, _Die Literatur des alten Indien_ (Stuttgart and Berlin,
1903), pp. 53-55. On the story see A. Kuhn, _Herabkunft des Feuers_,
2nd Ed., pp. 71 _sqq._; F. Max Müller _Selected Essays on Language,
Religion, and Mythology_ (London, 1881), i. 408 _sqq._; Andrew Lang,
_Custom and Myth_ (London, 1884), pp. 64 _sqq._; K. F. Pischel and
Geldner, _Vedische Studien_, i. (Stuttgart, 1889), pp. 243-295. It
belongs to the group of tales which describe the marriage of a human
with an animal mate, of a mortal with a fairy, and often, though not
always, their unhappy parting. The story seems to have its roots in
totemism. See my _Totemism and Exogamy_, ii. 566 _sqq._ It will be
illustrated more at length in a later part of _The Golden Bough_.
Footnote 814:
Homer, _Hymn to Mercury_, 108-111 (where a line has been lost; see the
note of Messrs. Allen and Sikes); Theophrastus, _Histor. plant._ v. 9.
6; _id._, _De igne_, ix. 64; Hesychius, _s.v._ στορεύς; Schol. on
Apollonius Rhodius, _Argon._ i. 1184; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 208;
Seneca, _Nat. Quaest._ ii. 22; A. Kuhn, _Herabkunft des Feuers_, 2nd
Ed., pp. 35-41; H. Blumner, _Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe
und Künste_, ii. 354-356. Theophrastus gives the name of _athragene_
to the plant which, next to or equally with ivy, makes the best board;
he compares it to a vine. Pliny (_l.c._) seems to have identified it
with a species of wild vine. According to Sprengel, the _athragene_ is
the _Clematis cirrhosa_ of Linnaeus, the French _clématite à vrilles_.
See Dioscorides, ed. C. Sprengel, vol. ii. p. 641. As to the kinds of
wood employed by the Romans in kindling fire we have no certain
evidence, as Pliny and Seneca may have merely copied from
Theophrastus.
Footnote 815:
Pausanias, i. 31. 6, with my note.
CHAPTER XVII
THE ORIGIN OF PERPETUAL FIRES
[Sidenote: The custom of maintaining a perpetual fire probably
originated in the difficulty of making fire by friction.] Whatever
superstitions may have gathered about it in the course of ages, the
custom of maintaining a perpetual fire probably sprang from a simple
consideration of practical convenience. The primitive mode of making
fire by the friction of wood is laborious at all times, and it is
especially so in wet weather. Hence the savage finds it convenient to
keep a fire constantly burning or smouldering in order to spare himself
the troubling of kindling it. This convenience becomes a necessity with
people who do not know how to make fire. That there have been such
tribes down to our own time is affirmed by witnesses whose evidence we
have no reason to doubt. Thus Mr. E. H. Man, who resided eleven years in
the Andaman Islands and was intimately acquainted with the natives,
tells us that, being ignorant of [Sidenote: Some races said to be
ignorant of the means of making fire.] the art of making fire, they take
the utmost pains to prevent its extinction. When they leave a camp
intending to return in a few days, they not only take with them one or
more smouldering logs, wrapped in leaves if the weather be wet, but they
also place a large burning log or faggot of suitable wood in some
sheltered spot, where it smoulders for several days and can be easily
rekindled when it is needed. While it is the business of the women to
gather the wood, the duty of keeping up the fires both at home and in
travelling by land or sea is not confined to them, but is undertaken by
persons of either sex who have most leisure or are least burdened.[816]
The Russian traveller, Baron Miklucho-Maclay, who lived among the
natives of the Maclay coast of northern New Guinea at a time when they
had hardly come into contact with Europeans, writes: “It is remarkable
that here almost all the inhabitants of the coast possess no means
whatever of making fire, hence they always and everywhere carry burning
or glowing brands about with them. If they go in the morning to the
plantation they carry a half-burnt brand from their hearth in order to
kindle a fire at the corner of the plantation. If they go on a longer
journey into the mountains, they again take fire with them for the
purpose of smoking, since their cigars, wrapped in green leaves,
continually go out. On sea voyages they usually keep glowing coals in a
half-broken pot partly filled with earth. The people who remain behind
in the village never forget to keep up the fire.” They repeatedly told
him that they had often to go to other villages to fetch fire when the
fires in all the huts of their own village had chanced to go out. Yet
the same traveller tells us that the mountain tribes of this part of New
Guinea, such as the Englam-Mana and Tiengum-Mana, know how to make fire
by friction. They partially cleave a log of dry wood with a stone axe
and then draw a stout cord, formed of a split creeper, rapidly to and
fro in the cleft, till sparks fly out and set fire to a tinder of dry
coco-nut fibres.[817] It is odd that the people of the coast should not
have learned this mode of producing fire from their neighbours in the
mountains. The Russian explorer’s observations, however, have been
confirmed by German writers. One of them, a Mr. Hoffmann, says of these
people: “In every house care is taken that fire burns day and night on
the hearth. For this purpose they choose a kind of wood which burns
slowly, but glimmers for a long time and retains its glow. When a man
sets out on a journey or goes to the field he has always a glimmering
brand with him. If he wishes to make fire, he waves the smouldering wood
to and fro till it bursts into a glow.” On frequented paths, crossways,
and so forth, you may often see trunks of trees lying which have been
felled for the purpose of being ignited and furnishing fire to
passers-by. Such trees continue to smoulder for weeks.[818] Similarly
the dwarf tribes of Central Africa “do not know how to kindle a fire
quickly, and in order to get one readily at any moment they keep the
burning trunks of fallen trees in suitable spots, and watch over their
preservation like the Vestals of old.”[819] It seems to be at least
doubtful whether these dwarfs of the vast and gloomy equatorial forests
are acquainted with the art of making fire at all. A German traveller
observes that the care which they take to preserve fire is extremely
remarkable. “It appears,” he says, “that the pygmies, as other
travellers have reported, do not know how to kindle fire by rubbing
sticks against each other. Like the Wambuba of the forest, in leaving a
camp, they take with them a thick glowing brand, and carry it, often for
hours, in order to light a fire at their next halting place.”[820]
[Sidenote: Fire kindled by natural causes was probably used by men long
before they learned to make it for themselves.] Whether or not tribes
ignorant of the means of making fire have survived to modern times, it
seems likely that mankind possessed and used fire long before they
learned how to kindle it. In the violent thunderstorms which accompany
the end of the dry season in Central and Eastern Africa, it is not
uncommon for the lightning to strike and ignite a tree, from which the
fire soon spreads to the withered herbage, till a great conflagration is
started. From a source of this sort a savage tribe may have first
obtained fire, and the same thing may have happened independently in
many parts of the world.[821] Other people, perhaps, procured fire from
volcanoes, the lava of which will, under favourable circumstances,
remain hot enough to kindle shavings of wood years after an eruption has
taken place.[822] Others again may have lit their first fire at the jets
of inflammable gas which spring from the ground in various parts of the
world, notably at Baku on the Caspian, where the flames burn day and
night, summer and winter, to a height of fifteen or twenty feet.[823] It
is harder to conjecture how man first learned the great secret of making
fire by friction. The discovery was perhaps made by jungle or forest
races, who saw dry bamboos or branches thus ignited by rubbing against
each other in a high wind. Fires are sometimes started in this way in
the forests of New Zealand.[824] It has also been suggested that savages
may have accidentally elicited a flame for the first time in the process
of chipping flints over dry moss, or boring holes with hard sticks in
soft wood.[825]
[Sidenote: Many savages carry fire constantly with them as a matter of
convenience.] But even when the art of fire-making has been acquired,
the process itself is so laborious that many savages keep fire always
burning rather than be at the trouble of extracting it by friction.
This, for example, was true of the roving Australian aborigines before
they obtained matches from the whites. On their wanderings they carried
about with them pieces of smouldering bark or cones of the Banksia tree
wherewith to kindle their camp fires.[826] The duty of thus transporting
fire from one place to another seems commonly to have fallen to the
women. “A stick, a piece of decayed wood, or more often the beautiful
seed-stem of the Banksia, is lighted at the fire the woman is leaving;
and from her bag, which, in damp weather, she would keep filled with dry
cones, or from materials collected in the forest, she would easily,
during her journey, preserve the fire got at the last encampment.”[827]
Another writer tells us that the Australian native always had his
fire-stick with him, and if his wife let it go out, so much the worse
for her. The dark brown velvety-looking core of the Banksia is very
retentive of fire and burns slowly, so that one of these little
fire-sticks would last a considerable time, and a bag of them would
suffice for a whole day.[828] The Tasmanians knew how to make fire by
twirling the point of a stick in a piece of soft bark; “but as it was
difficult at times to obtain fire by this means, especially in wet
weather, they generally, in their peregrinations, carried with them a
fire-stick lighted at their last encampment.”[829] With them, as with
the Australians, it was the special task of the women to keep the
fire-brand alight and to carry it from place to place.[830] When the
natives of Materbert, off New Britain, are on a voyage they carry fire
with them. For this purpose they press some of the soft fibrous husk of
the ripe coco-nut into a coco-nut shell, and then place a red-hot ember
in the middle of it. This will smoulder for three or four days, and from
it they obtain a light for their fires wherever they may land.[831] The
Polynesians made fire by the friction of wood, rubbing a score in a
board with a sharp-pointed stick till the dust so produced kindled into
sparks, which were caught in a tinder of dry leaves or grass. While they
rubbed, they chanted a prayer or hymn till the fire appeared. But in wet
weather the task of fire-making was laborious, so at such times the
natives usually carried fire about with them in order to avoid the
trouble of kindling it.[832] The Fuegians make fire by striking two
lumps of iron pyrites together and letting the sparks fall on birds’
down or on dry moss, which serves as tinder. But rather than be at the
pains of doing this they carry fire with them everywhere, both by sea
and land, taking great care to prevent its extinction.[833] The Caingua
Indians of Paraguay make fire in the usual way by the fire-drill, but to
save themselves trouble they keep fire constantly burning in their huts
by means of great blocks of wood.[834] The Indians of Guiana also
produce fire by twirling the point of one stick in the hole of another,
but they seldom need to resort to this laborious process, for they keep
fire burning in every house, and on long journeys they usually carry a
large piece of smouldering timber in their canoes. Even in walking
across the savannah an Indian will sometimes take a fire-brand with
him.[835] The Jaggas, a Bantu tribe in the Kilimanjaro district of East
Africa, keep up fire day and night in their huts on account of their
cattle. If it goes out, the women fetch glowing brands from a
neighbour’s house; these they carry wrapped up in banana leaves. Thus
they convey fire for great distances, sometimes the whole day long.
Hence they seldom need to kindle fire, though the men can make it
readily by means of the fire-drill.[836] The tribes of British Central
Africa also know how to produce fire in this fashion, but they do not
often put their knowledge in practice. For there is sure to be a burning
brand on one or other of the hearths of the village from which a fire
can be lit; and when men go on a journey they take smouldering sticks
with them and nurse the glowing wood rather than be at the trouble of
making fire by friction.[837] In the huts of the Ibos on the lower Niger
burning embers are always kept and never allowed to go out.[838] And
this is the regular practice among all the tribes of West Africa who
have not yet obtained matches. If the fire in a house should go out, a
woman will run to a neighbour’s hut and fetch a burning stick from the
hearth. Hence in most of their villages fire has probably not needed to
be made for years and years. Among domesticated tribes, like the Effiks
or Agalwa, when the men are going out to the plantation they will
enclose a burning stick in a hollow piece of a certain kind of wood,
which has a lining of its pith left in it, and they will carry this
“fire-box” with them.[839]
[Sidenote: The theft of fire by Prometheus.] Before the introduction of
matches Greek peasants used to convey fire from place to place in a
stalk of giant fennel. The stalks of the plant are about five feet long
by three inches thick, and are encased in a hard bark. The core of the
stalk consists of a white pith which, when it is dry, burns slowly like
a wick without injury to the bark.[840] Thus when Prometheus, according
to the legend, stole the first fire from heaven and brought it down to
earth hidden in a stalk of giant fennel,[841] he carried his fire just
as every Greek peasant and mariner did on a journey.
[Sidenote: When people settled in villages, it would be convenient to
keep up a perpetual fire in the house of the head man.] When a tribe
ceased to be nomadic and had settled in more or less permanent villages,
it would be a convenient custom to keep a fire perpetually burning in
every house. Such a custom, as we have seen, has been observed by
various peoples, and it appears to have prevailed universally among all
branches of the Aryans.[842] Arnobius implies that it was formerly
practised by the Romans, though in his own time the usage had fallen
into abeyance.[843] But it would be obviously desirable that there
should be some one place in the village where every housewife could be
sure of obtaining fire without having to kindle it by friction, if her
own should chance to go out. The most natural spot to look for it would
be the hearth of the head man of the village, who would come in time to
be regarded as responsible for its maintenance. This is what seems to
have happened not only among the Herero of South Africa and the Latin
peoples of Italy, but also among the ancestors of the Greeks; for in
ancient Greece the perpetual fire kept up in the Prytaneum, or
town-hall, was at first apparently the fire on the king’s hearth.[844]
From this simple origin may have sprung the custom which in various
parts of the world associates the maintenance of a perpetual fire with
chiefly or royal dignity. Thus it was a distinguishing mark of the
[Sidenote: Hence the maintenance of a perpetual fire came to be
associated with chiefly or royal dignity.] chieftainship of one of the
Samoan nobility, that his fire never went out. His attendants had a
particular name, from their special business of keeping his fire ablaze
all night long while he slept.[845] Among the Gallas the maintenance of
a perpetual fire, even when it serves no practical purpose, is a
favourite mode of asserting high rank, and the chiefs often indulge in
it.[846] The Chitomé, a grand pontiff in the kingdom of Congo, of whom
we shall hear more hereafter, kept up in his hut, day and night, a
sacred fire, of which he dispensed brands to such as came to ask for
them and could pay for them. He is said to have done a good business in
fire, for the infatuated people believed that it preserved them from
many accidents.[847] In Uganda a perpetual sacred fire, supposed to have
come down to earth with the first man Kintu, is maintained by a chief,
who is put to death if he suffers it to be extinguished. From this
sacred fire the king’s fire (_gombolola_) is lighted and kept constantly
burning at the gate of the royal enclosure during the whole of his
reign. By day it burns in a small hut, but at night it is brought out
and set in a little hole in the ground, where it blazes brightly till
daybreak, whatever the weather may be. When the king journeys the fire
goes with him, and when he dies it is extinguished. The death of a king
is indeed announced to the people by the words, “The fire has gone out.”
A man who bears a special title is charged with the duty of maintaining
the fire, and of looking after all the fuel and torches used in the
royal enclosure. When the king dies the guardian of his fire is
strangled near the hearth.[848] Similarly in Dageou, a country to the
west of Darfur, it is said that a custom prevailed of kindling a fire on
the inauguration of a king and keeping it alight till his death.[849]
Among the Mucelis of Angola, when the king of Amboin or Sanga dies, all
fires in the kingdom are extinguished. Afterwards the new king makes new
fire by rubbing two sticks against each other.[850] Such a custom is
probably nothing more than an extension of the practice of putting out a
chief’s own fire at his death. Similarly, when a new Muata Jamwo, a
great potentate in the interior of Angola, comes to the throne, one of
his first duties is to make a new fire by the friction of wood, for the
old fire may not be used.[851] Before the palace gate of the king of
Siam there burns, or used to burn, a perpetual fire, which was said to
have been lit from heaven with a fiery ball.[852]
[Sidenote: Perpetual fire maintained by the chief called the Great Sun
among the Natchez Indians.] Among the Natchez Indians of the lower
Mississippi a perpetual fire, supposed to have been brought down from
the sun, was maintained in a square temple which stood beside the hut of
the supreme chief of the nation. He bore the title of the Great Sun, and
believed himself to be a descendant or brother of the luminary his
namesake. Every morning when the sun rose he blew three whiffs of his
pipe towards it, and raising his hands above his head, and turning from
east to west, he marked out the course which the bright orb was to
pursue in the sky. The sacred fire in the temple was fed with logs of
walnut or oak, and the greatest care was taken to prevent its
extinction; for such an event would have been thought to put the whole
nation in jeopardy. Eight men were appointed to guard the fire, two of
whom were bound to be always on watch; and the Great Sun himself looked
to the maintenance of the fire with anxious attention. If any of the
guardians of the fire failed to do his duty, the rule was that he should
be put to death. When the great chief died his bones were deposited in
the temple, along with the bones of many attendants who were strangled
in order that their souls might wait upon him in the spirit land. On
such an occasion the chief’s fire was extinguished, and this was the
signal for putting out all the other fires in the country. Every village
had also its own temple in which a perpetual fire was maintained under
the guardianship of a subordinate chief. These lesser chiefs also bore
the title of Suns, but acknowledged the supremacy of the head chief, the
Great Sun. All of these Suns were supposed to be descended from a man
and woman who had come down from the luminary from which they took their
names. There were female Suns as well as male Suns, but they might not
marry among themselves; they had always to mate with a woman or a man of
lower rank. Their nobility was transmitted in the maternal line; that
is, the children of a female Sun, both sons and daughters, were Suns,
but the children of a male Sun were not. Hence a chief was never
succeeded by his own son, but always by the son either of his sister or
of his nearest female relation. The Natchez knew how to produce fire by
means of the fire-drill; but if the sacred fire in the temple went out,
they relit it, not by the friction of wood, but by a brand brought from
another temple or from a tree which had been ignited by lightning.[853]
In these customs of the Natchez we have clearly fire-worship and
sun-worship of the same general type which meets us again at a higher
state of evolution among the Incas of Peru. Both sets of customs
probably sprang originally from the perpetual fire on the chief’s
domestic hearth.
[Sidenote: Fire carried before chiefs and kings as a symbol of royalty.]
When a perpetual fire has thus become a symbol of royalty, it is natural
that it should be carried before the king or chief on the march. Among
the Indians of the Mississippi a lighted torch used to be borne in front
of a chief, and no commoner would dare to walk between a chief and his
torch-bearer.[854] A sacred fire, supposed to have descended from
heaven, was carried in a brazier before the Persian kings,[855] and the
custom was adopted as a badge of imperial dignity by later Roman
emperors.[856] The practice appears to have been especially observed in
time of war. Amongst the Ovambo of South Africa the chief appoints a
general to lead the army to battle, and next to the general the greatest
officer is he who carries a fire-brand at the head of the warriors. If
the fire goes out on the march, it is an evil omen and the army beats a
retreat.[857] When the king of Monomotapa, or Benomotapa, was at war, a
sacred fire was kept burning perpetually in a hut near his tent.[858] In
old days it is said that the king of Mombasa in East Africa could put an
army of eighty thousand men in the field. On the march his guards were
preceded by men carrying fire.[859] High above the tent of Alexander the
Great hung a fiery cresset on a pole, and “the flame of it was seen by
night, and the smoke by day.”[860] When a Spartan king was about to lead
an army abroad he first sacrificed at home to Zeus the Leader. Then a
man called the fire-bearer took fire from the altar and marched with it
at the head of the troops to the frontier. There the king again
sacrificed to Zeus and Athena, and if the omens were favourable, he
crossed the border, preceded by the fire from the sacrifices, which
thenceforth led the way and might not be quenched. To perform such
sacrifices the king always rose very early in the morning, while it was
still dark, in order to get the ear of the god before the enemy could
forestall him.[861]
[Sidenote: The custom of keeping up a perpetual fire during a king’s
reign and extinguishing it at his death, might lead to a belief that his
life was bound up with the fire.] A custom of maintaining a fire during
a king’s reign and extinguishing it at his death, even if it did not
originate in a superstition, would naturally lend itself to a
superstitious interpretation. The distinction between the sign and the
cause of an event is not readily grasped by a dull mind; hence the
extinction of the king’s fire, from being merely a signal of his death,
might come in time to be regarded as a cause of it. In other words, a
vital connexion might be supposed to exist between the king and the
fire, so that if the fire were put out the king would die. That a
sympathetic bond of some sort united the king’s life with the fire on
his hearth was apparently believed by the ancient Scythians. For their
most solemn oath was by the king’s hearth, and if any man who had taken
this oath forswore himself, they believed that the king would fall
ill.[862] The story of Meleager,[863] whose life was said to be bound up
with a brand plucked from the fire on the hearth, belongs to the same
class of ideas, which will be examined at large in a later part of this
work. Wherever a superstition of this sort gathered round the king’s
hearth, it is obvious that he would be moved to watch over the fire with
redoubled vigilance. On a certain day the Vestal Virgins at Rome used to
go to the King of the Sacred Rites, the successor of the old Roman
kings, and say to him, “Watchest thou, O King? Watch.”[864] The ceremony
may have been a reminiscence or survival of a time when the king’s life
as well as the general safety was supposed to hang on the maintenance of
the fire, to the guardianship of which he would thus be impelled by the
motive of self-preservation as well as of public duty. When natives of
the Kei Islands in the East Indies are away on a long voyage, a sacred
fire is kept up the whole time of their absence by their friends at
home. Three or four young girls are appointed to feed it and watch over
it day and night with a jealous care lest it should go out; its
extinction would be deemed a most evil omen, for the fire is the symbol
of the life of the absent ones.[865] This belief and this practice may
help us to understand the corresponding beliefs and practices concerned
with the maintenance of a perpetual fire at Rome.
Footnote 816:
E. H. Man, _On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands_
(London, N.D.), p. 82. Mr. Man’s evidence is confirmed by a German
traveller, Mr. Jagor, who says of the Andaman Islanders: “The fire
must never go out. Here also I am again assured that the Andamanese
have no means of making fire.” See _Verhandlungen der Berliner
Gesellschaft für Anthropologie_, 1877, p. (54) (bound with
_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, ix.). I regret that on this subject I
did not question Mr. A. R. Brown, Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge, who resided for about two years among the Andaman
Islanders, studying their customs and beliefs. Mr. Brown is now
(December 1910) in West Australia.
Footnote 817:
N. von Miklucho-Maclay, “Ethnologische Bemerkungen über die Papuas der
Maclay-Küste in Neu-Guinea,” _Natuurkundig Tijdschrift voor
Nederlandsch Indie_, xxxv. (1875), pp. 82, 83. Compare C. Hager,
_Kaiser Wilhelms-Land und der Bismarck-Archipel_, p. 69; M. Krieger,
_Neu-Guinea_, p. 153. The natives of the Maclay Coast are said to have
traditions of a time when they were ignorant even of the use of fire;
they ate fruits raw, which set up a disease of the gums, filling their
mouths with blood; they had a special name for the disease. See N. von
Miklucho-Maclay, in _Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für
Anthropologie_, 1882, p. (577) (bound with _Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie_, xiv.). The reports of people living in ignorance of the
use of fire have hitherto proved, on closer examination, to be fables.
See E. B. Tylor, _Researches into the Early History of Mankind_, 3rd
Ed., pp. 229 _sqq._ The latest repetition of the story that I know of
is by an American naturalist, Mr. Titian R. Peale, who confirms the
exploded statement that down to 1841 the natives of Bowditch Island
had not seen fire. See _The American Naturalist_, xviii. (1884) pp.
229-232.
Footnote 818:
B. Hagen, _Unter den Papuas_ (Wiesbaden, 1899), pp. 203 _sq._ Mr.
Hagen’s account applies chiefly to the natives of Astrolabe Bay. He
tells us that for the most part they now use Swedish matches.
Footnote 819:
G. Casati, _Ten Years in Equatoria_ (London and New York, 1891), i.
157. Another writer says that these dwarfs “keep fire alight
perpetually, starting it in some large tree, which goes on smouldering
for months at a time” (Captain Guy Burrows, _The Land of the Pigmies_
(London, 1898), p. 199).
Footnote 820:
F. Stuhlmann, _Mit Emin Pascha ins Herz von Afrika_ (Berlin, 1894),
pp. 451 _sq._
Footnote 821:
Sir Harry H. Johnston, _British Central Africa_ (London, 1897), p.
439; _id._, _The Uganda Protectorate_ (London, 1902), ii. 540. If we
may trust Diodorus Siculus (i. 13. 3), this was the origin of fire
alleged by the Egyptian priests. Among the Winamwanga and Wiwa tribes
of East Africa, to the south of Lake Tanganyika, “when lightning sets
fire to a tree, all the fires in a village are put out, and fireplaces
freshly plastered, while the head men take the fire to the chief, who
prays over it. It is then sent to all his villages, the people of the
villages rewarding his messengers.” See Dr. J. A. Chisholm, “Notes on
the Manners and Customs of the Winamwanga and Wiwa,” _Journal of the
African Society_, No. 36 (July 1910), p. 363. The Parsees ascribe
peculiar sanctity to fire which has been obtained from a tree struck
by lightning. See D. J. Karaka, _History of the Modern Parsis_
(London, 1884), ii. 213. In Siam and Cambodia such fire is carefully
preserved and used to light the funeral pyres of kings and others. See
Pallegoix, _Description du royaume Thai ou Siam_, i. 248; J. Moura,
_Le Royaume du Cambodge_, i. 360.
Footnote 822:
Oscar Peschel, _Völkerkunde_ 6th Ed. (Leipsic, 1885), p. 138. Mr. Man
thinks it likely that the Andaman Islanders got their fire from one of
the two volcanoes which exist in their island (_On the Aboriginal
Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands_, p. 82). The Creek Indians of
North America have a tradition that some of their ancestors procured
fire from a volcano. See A. S. Gatschet, _A Migration Legend of the
Creek Indians_, ii. (St. Louis, 1888) p. 11 (43).
Footnote 823:
O. Peschel, _loc. cit._ As to the fires of Baku see further, _Adonis,
Attis, Osiris_, Second Edition, p. 159.
Footnote 824:
R. Taylor, _Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants_, 2nd
Ed., p. 367; W. Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern
India_ (Westminster, 1896), ii. 194; A. Kuhn, _Herabkunft des Feuers_,
2nd Ed., pp. 92, 102. Lucretius thought that the first fire was
procured either from lightning or from the mutual friction of trees in
a high wind (_De rerum natura_, v. 1091-1101). The latter source was
preferred by Vitruvius (_De architectura_, ii. 1. 1).
Footnote 825:
Sir Harry H. Johnston, _ll.cc._ Professor K. von den Steinen
conjectures that savages, who already possessed fire, and were wont to
use tinder to nurse a smouldering brand into a blaze, may have
accidentally discovered the mode of kindling fire in an attempt to
make tinder by rubbing two dry sticks or reeds against each other. See
K. von den Steinen, _Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens_, pp.
219-228.
Footnote 826:
J. Dumont D’Urville, _Voyage autour du monde et à la recherche de la
Perouse_, i. (Paris, 1832) pp. 95, 194; Scott Nind, “Description of
the Natives of King George’s Sound,” _Journal of the Royal
Geographical Society_, i. (1832) p. 26; E. J. Eyre, _Journals of
Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia_, ii. 357; A.
Oldfield, “The Aborigines of Australia,” _Transactions of the
Ethnological Society of London_, N.S., iii. (1865) pp. 283 _sq._; J.
Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 15; _Annales de la Propagation de
la Foi_, xvii. (1845) pp. 76 _sq._
Footnote 827:
R. Brough Smyth, _The Aborigines of Victoria_, i. 396.
Footnote 828:
R. Taylor, _Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants_, 2nd
Ed., p. 567. Other writers confirm the statement that the carrying of
the fire-sticks is the special duty of the women. See W. Stanbridge,
“On the Aborigines of Victoria,” _Transactions of the Ethnological
Society of London_, N.S., i. (1861) p. 291; J. F. Mann, “Notes on the
Aborigines of Australia,” _Proceedings of the Geographical Society of
Australasia_, i. (1885) p. 29.
Footnote 829:
Melville, quoted by H. Ling Roth, _The Aborigines of Tasmania_
(London, 1890), p. 97. It has sometimes been affirmed that the
Tasmanians did not know how to kindle fire; but the evidence collected
by Mr. Ling Roth (_op. cit._, pp. xii. _sq._, 96 _sq._), proves that
they were accustomed to light it both by the friction of wood and by
striking flints together.
Footnote 830:
Mr. Dove, quoted by James Bonwick, _Daily Life and Origin of the
Tasmanians_, p. 20.
Footnote 831:
Wilfred Powell, _Wanderings in a Wild Country_ (London, 1883), p. 196.
Footnote 832:
Captain J. Wilson, _Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean_
(London, 1799), p. 357.
Footnote 833:
J. G. Wood, _Natural History of Man_, ii. 522; J. G. Garson, “On the
Inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego,” _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, xv. (1886). p. 145; _Mission scientifique du Cap Horn_,
1882-1883, vii. (Paris, 1891) p. 345.
Footnote 834:
J. B. Ambrosetti, “Los Indios Caingua del alto Paraná (misiones),”
_Boletino del Instituto Geografico Argentino_, xv. (1895) pp. 703
_sq._
Footnote 835:
E. F. im Thurn, _Among the Indians of Guiana_, pp. 257 _sq._
Footnote 836:
A. Widenmann, _Die Kilimandscharo-Bevölkerung_ (Gotha, 1899), pp. 68
_sq._ (_Petermann’s Mittheilungen: Ergänzungsheft_, No. 129).
Footnote 837:
Sir Harry H. Johnston, _British Central Africa_ (London, 1897), p.
438.
Footnote 838:
A. F. Mockler-Ferryman, _Up the Niger_ (London, 1892), p. 37.
Footnote 839:
Miss Mary H. Kingsley, _Travels in West Africa_, pp. 599 _sq._
Footnote 840:
P. de Tournefort, _Relation d’un voyage du Levant_ (Amsterdam, 1718),
i. 93 (Lettre vi.); Sibthorp, in R. Walpole’s _Memoirs relating to
European and Asiatic Turkey_ (London, 1817), pp. 284 _sq._; W. G.
Clark, _Peloponnesus_ (London, 1858), p. 111; J. T. Bent, _The
Cyclades_ (London, 1885), p. 365. The giant fennel (_Ferula communis_,
L.) is still known in Greece by its ancient name, hardly modified
(_nartheka_ instead of _narthex_), though W. G. Clark says the modern
name is _kalami_. Bent speaks of the plant as a reed, which is a
mistake. The plant is described by Theophrastus (_Histor. plant._ vi.
2. 7 _sq._).
Footnote 841:
Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 50-52; _id._, _Theogony_, 565-567;
Aeschylus, _Prometheus Bound_, 107-111; Apollodorus, _Bibliotheca_, i.
7. 1; Hyginus, _Fabulae_, 144; _id._, _Astronomica_, ii. 15.
Footnote 842:
See my article, “The Prytaneum, the Temple of Vesta, the Vestals,
Perpetual Fires,” _Journal of Philology_, xiv. (1885) pp. 169-171.
Footnote 843:
Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, ii. 67.
Footnote 844:
See my article, “The Prytaneum, the Temple of Vesta, the Vestals,
Perpetual Fires,” _Journal of Philology_, xiv. (1885) pp. 145 _sqq._
Footnote 845:
G. Turner, _Nineteen Years in Polynesia_ (London, 1861), p. 326.
Footnote 846:
Ph. Paulitschke, _Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, die materielle Cultur
der Danâkil, Galla und Somâl_ (Berlin, 1893), p. 145.
Footnote 847:
J. B. Labat, _Relation historique de l’Éthiopie Occidentale_, i. 256
_sq._
Footnote 848:
J. Roscoe, “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,”
_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxii. (1902) pp. 43, 51
_sq._; _id._, in a letter to me dated Mengo, Uganda, 3rd August 1904.
Footnote 849:
W. G. Browne, _Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria_ (London, 1799), p.
306.
Footnote 850:
J. J. Monteiro, _Angola and the River Congo_ (London, 1875), ii. 167.
Footnote 851:
P. Pogge, _Im Reiche des Muata Jamwo_ (Berlin, 1880), p. 234.
Footnote 852:
A. Bastian, _Die Völker des östlichen Asien_, iii. 515 _sq._
Footnote 853:
Du Pratz, _History of Louisiana_ (London, 1774), pp. 330-334, 346
_sq._, 351-358; Charlevoix, _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, vi. 172
_sqq._; Lafitau, _Mœurs des sauvages Ameriquains_, i. 167 _sq._;
_Lettres édifiantes et curieuses_, Nouvelle Édition, vii. (Paris,
1781) pp. 7-16 (reprinted in _Recueil de voyages au nord_, ix.
Amsterdam, 1737, pp. 3-13); “Relation de la Louisianne,” _Recueil de
voyages au Nord_, v. (Amsterdam, 1734) pp. 23 _sq._; Bossu, _Nouveaux
Voyages aux Indes Occidentales_ (Paris, 1768), i. 42-44;
Chateaubriand, _Voyage en Amérique_ (Paris, 1870), pp. 227 _sqq._; H.
R. Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, v. 68. The accounts differ from each
other in some details. Thus Du Pratz speaks as if there were only two
fire-temples in the country, whereas the writer in the _Lettres
édifiantes_ says that there were eleven villages each with its
fire-temple, and that formerly there had been sixty villages and
temples. The account in the text is based mainly on the authority of
Du Pratz, who lived among the Natchez on terms of intimacy for eight
years, from the end of 1718 to 1726.
Footnote 854:
Hennepin, _Nouvelle Découverte d’un très grand pays situé dans
l’Amérique_ (Utrecht, 1697), p. 306.
Footnote 855:
Xenophon, _Cyropaedia_, viii. 3. 12; Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 6.
34; Quintus Curtius, iii. 3. 7.
Footnote 856:
Dio Cassius, lxxi. 35. 5; Herodian, i. 8. 4, i. 16. 4, ii. 3. 2, ii.
8. 6, vii. 1. 9, vii. 6. 2.
Footnote 857:
H. Schinz, _Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika_, p. 320.
Footnote 858:
O. Dapper, _Description de l’Afrique_ (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 392.
Footnote 859:
O. Dapper, _op. cit._ p. 400.
Footnote 860:
Quintus Curtius, v. 2. 7. Curtius represents this as a signal adopted
by Alexander, because the sound of the bugle was lost in the trampling
and hum of the great multitude. But this maybe merely the historian’s
interpretation of an old custom.
Footnote 861:
Xenophon, _Respublica Lacedaemoniorum_, xiii. 2 _sq._; Nicolaus
Damascenus, quoted by Stobaeus, _Florilegium_, xliv. 41 (vol. ii. p.
188 ed. Meineke); Hesychius, _s.v._ πυρσοφόρος.
Footnote 862:
Herodotus, iv. 68.
Footnote 863:
Aeschylus, _Choëph._ 604 _sqq._; Apollodorus, _Bibliotheca_, i. 8. 2
_sq._; Diodorus Siculus, iv. 34. 6 _sq._; Ovid, _Metamorph._ viii. 445
_sqq._; Hyginus, _Fab._ 171 and 174.
Footnote 864:
Servius, on Virgil, _Aen._ x. 228.
Footnote 865:
Le P. H. Geurtjens, “Le Cérémonial des Voyages aux Îles Keij,”
_Anthropos_, v. (1910) pp. 337 _sq._
CHAPTER XVIII
THE SUCCESSION TO THE KINGDOM IN ANCIENT LATIUM
[Sidenote: The Vestal fire and the great priesthoods appear to have been
institutions common to the whole Latin race.] Thus it appears that a
variety of considerations combined to uphold, if not to originate, the
custom of maintaining a perpetual fire. The sanctity of the wood which
fed it, the belief in the generative virtue of the process by which it
was kindled, the supposed efficacy of fire in repelling the powers of
evil, the association of the hearth with the spirits of the dead and
with the majesty or even the life of the king all worked together to
invest the simple old custom with a halo of mystery and romance. If this
was so at Rome we may assume that matters were not very different in the
other Latin towns which kept up a Vestal fire. These too had their kings
of the Sacred Rites, their flamens, and their pontiffs, as well as their
Vestal Virgins.[866] All the great priesthoods of Rome appear, in fact,
to have had their doubles in the other ancient cities of Latium; all
were probably primitive institutions common to the whole Latin
race.[867]
[Sidenote: Priestly or divine functions of the Roman kings, including
the maintenance of the Vestal fire.] Accordingly, whatever is true or
probable of the Roman priesthoods, about which we know most, may
reasonably be regarded as true or probable of the corresponding
priesthoods elsewhere in Latium, about which for the most part we know
nothing more than the names. Now 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 oak, the sky, and the thunder, 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 childbirth. Moreover, he was descended from the
oak, since he was born of a virgin who conceived by contact with a fire
of sacred oak-wood. Hence he had to guard the ancestral fire and keep it
constantly burning, inasmuch as on its maintenance depended the
continuance of the royal family. Only on certain stated occasions was it
lawful and even necessary to extinguish the old fire in order to revive
it in a purer and more vigorous form by the friction of the sacred wood.
This was done once a year on the first of March,[868] and we may
conjecture that it was also done by the new king on his accession to
power; for, as we have seen, it has been customary in [Sidenote: But the
fire was formally extinguished and rekindled on certain occasions,
perhaps on the death of the king.] various places to extinguish the
king’s fire at his death.[869] Among the ancient Persians the perpetual
sacred fire was put out on the death of a king and remained unlit until
after his funeral.[870] It is a common practice to extinguish the fire
in any house where a death has taken place,[871] apparently from a fear
that the ghost may scorch or singe himself at it, like a moth at the
flame of a candle; and the custom of putting out the king’s fire at his
decease may in its origin have been nothing more than this. But when the
fire on the king’s hearth came to be viewed as bound up in a mysterious
fashion with his life, it would naturally be extinguished at his death,
not to spare his fluttering ghost the risk and pain of falling into it,
but because, as a sort of life-token or external soul, it too must die
at his death and be born again from the holy tree. At all events, it
seems probable that whenever and from whatever cause it became necessary
to rekindle the royal and sacred fire by the friction of wood, the
operation was performed jointly by the king and the Vestals, one or more
of whom may have been his daughters or the daughters of his predecessor.
Regarded as impersonations of Mother Vesta herself, these priestesses
would be the chosen vessels, not only to bring to birth the seed of fire
in working the fire-drill, but also to receive the seed of the fire-god
in their chaste wombs, and so to become the mothers of fire-begotten
kings.
[Sidenote: What is true of the Roman kings is probably true of the Latin
kings in general.] 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.
[Sidenote: What was the rule of succession to the Latin kingship?] But
we have still to ask, What was the rule of succession to the kingdom
among the old Latin tribes? We possess two lists of Latin kings both
professedly complete. One is the list of the kings of Alba, the other is
the list of the [Sidenote: The list of the Alban kings seems to imply
that the kingship was hereditary in the male line.] kings of Rome. If we
accept as authentic the list of the Alban kings, we can only conclude
that the kingdom was hereditary in the male line, the son regularly
succeeding his father on the throne.[872] But this list, if it is not,
as Niebuhr held, a late and clumsy fabrication, has somewhat the
appearance of an elastic cord which ancient historians stretched in
order to link Aeneas to Romulus.[873] Yet it would be rash to set these
names wholly aside as a chronological stop-gap deliberately foisted in
by later annalists. In early monarchies, before the invention of
writing, tradition is remarkably retentive of the names of kings. The
Baganda of Central Africa, for example, remember the names of more than
thirty of their kings in an unbroken chain of twenty-two
generations.[874] Even the occurrence of foreign names among the Alban
kings is not of itself sufficient to condemn the list as a forgery; for,
as I shall shew presently, this feature is explicable by a rule of
descent which appears to have prevailed in many ancient monarchies,
including that of Rome. Perhaps the most we can say for the history of
the Alban kings is that their names may well be genuine, and that some
general features of the monarchy, together with a few events which
happened to strike the popular imagination, may have survived in the
memory of the people till they found their way into written history. But
no dependence can be placed either on the alleged years of their reigns,
or on the hereditary principle which is assumed to have connected each
king with his predecessor.
When we come to the list of the Roman kings we are on much firmer,
though still slippery ground. According to tradition there were in all
eight kings of Rome,[875] 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.[876] 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 [Sidenote: On the other hand none of the Roman
kings was immediately succeeded by his son, but three were succeeded by
their sons-in-law, who were foreigners.] Roman kings was immediately
succeeded by his son on the throne. Yet several left sons or grandsons
behind them.[877] On the other hand, one of them was descended from a
former king through his mother, not through his father,[878] and three
of the kings, namely Tatius, the elder Tarquin, and Servius Tullius,
were succeeded by their sons-in-law,[879] who were all either foreigners
or of foreign descent.[880] This [Sidenote: This suggests that the
kingship was transmitted in the female line and was held by foreigners
who married the royal princesses.] 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;[881] and female kinship or mother-kin
is the system of tracing relationship and transmitting the family name
through women instead of through men.[882] 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.
[Sidenote: This hypothesis explains some obscure features in the
traditional history of the Latin kings, such as the stories of their
miraculous birth.] 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,[883] the fact points either to a general looseness
of life in the royal family or to a special relaxation [Sidenote: The
Latin kings perhaps begotten at a Saturnalia.] 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 the 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.
[Sidenote: The Roman festival of Midsummer was a kind of Saturnalia, and
was specially associated with the fire-born King Servius Tullius.] In
this connexion it may not be without significance 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 fire-born 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.[884] 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.[885] 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, as we shall learn later on, 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.[886]
[Sidenote: But the uncertainty as to the paternity of the Roman kings
may only mean that in later times the names of their fathers were
forgotten.] 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 on the festival of the Parilia, when
shepherds leaped across the spring bonfires,[887] 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 as not merely 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.
[Sidenote: Where descent is traced through women only, girls of the
highest rank may be married to men of humble birth, even to aliens and
slaves.] 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
women—in other words, where descent through the mother is everything,
and descent through the father is nothing—no 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.
[Sidenote: In Ashantee, where the kingdom descends through women, the
rank of the king’s father is not regarded.] The hypothesis which we have
been led to frame of the rule of succession to the Latin kingship will
be confirmed by analogy if we can shew that elsewhere, under a system of
female kinship, the paternity of the kings is a matter of
indifference—nay, that men who are born slaves may, like Servius
Tullius, marry royal princesses and be raised to the throne. Now this is
true of the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast in West Africa. Thus
in Ashantee, where the kingdom descends in the female line to the king’s
brothers and afterwards to the sons of his sister in preference to his
own sons, the sisters of the reigning monarch are free to marry or
intrigue with whom they please, provided only that their husband or
lover be a very strong and handsome man, in order that the kings whom he
begets may be men of finer presence than their subjects. It matters not
how low may be the rank and position of the king’s father. If the king’s
sisters, however, have no sons, the throne will pass to the king’s own
son, and failing a son, to the chief vassal or the chief slave. But in
the Fantee country the principal slave succeeds to the exclusion of the
son. So little regard is paid by these people to the lineage, especially
the paternal lineage, of their kings.[888] Yet Ashantee has attained a
barbaric civilisation as high perhaps as that of any negro state, and
probably not at all inferior to that of the petty Latin kingdoms at the
dawn of history.
[Sidenote: Traces of a similar state of things in Uganda.] A trace of a
similar state of things appears to survive in Uganda, another great
African monarchy. For there the queen dowager and the queen sister are,
or were, allowed to have as many husbands as they choose, without going
through any marriage ceremony. “Of these two women it is commonly said
all Uganda is their husband; they appear to be fond of change, only
living with a man for a few days and then inviting some one else to take
his place.” We are reminded of the legends of the lustful queen
Semiramis, and the likeness may be more than superficial. Yet these
women are not allowed, under pain of death, to bear children; hence they
practise abortion.[889] Both the licence and the prohibition may be
explained if we suppose that formerly the kingdom descended, as it still
does in Ashantee, first to the king’s brothers and next to the sons of
his sisters. For in that case the next heirs to the throne would be the
sons of the king’s mother and of his sisters, and these women might
accordingly be allowed, as the king’s sisters still are allowed in
Ashantee, to mate with any handsome men who took their fancy, in order
that their offspring might be of regal part. But when the line of
descent was changed from the female to the male line, in other words,
when the kings were succeeded by their sons instead of by their brothers
or their sisters’ sons, then the king’s mother and his sisters would be
forbidden to bear children lest the descent of the crown to the king’s
own children should be endangered by the existence of rivals who,
according to the old law of the kingdom, had a better right to the
throne. We may surmise that the practice of putting the king’s brothers
to death at the beginning of his reign, which survived till Uganda
passed under English protection,[890] was instituted at the same time as
the prohibition of child-bearing laid on the king’s mother and sisters.
The one custom got rid of existing rivals; the other prevented them from
being born. That the kingship in Uganda was formerly transmitted in the
female line is strongly indicated by the rule that the kings and the
rest of the royal family take their totems from their mothers, whereas
all the other people of the country get their totems from their
fathers.[891]
[Sidenote: In Loango also, where the blood royal is traced in the female
line, the princesses are free to cohabit with whom they please, and
their consorts are practically their slaves.] In Loango the blood royal
is traced in the female line, and here also the princesses are free to
choose and divorce their husbands at pleasure, and to cohabit at the
same time with other men. These husbands are nearly always plebeians,
for princes and princesses, who are very numerous and form a ruling
caste in the country, may not marry each other. The lot of a prince
consort is not a happy one, for he is rather the slave and prisoner than
the mate of his imperious princess. In marrying her he engages never
more to look at a woman during the whole time he cohabits with his royal
spouse. When he goes out he is preceded by guards who drive away all
females from the road where he is to pass. If in spite of these
precautions he should by ill-luck cast his eyes on a woman, the princess
may have his head chopped off, and commonly exercises, or used to
exercise, the right. This sort of libertinism, sustained by power, often
carries the princesses to the greatest excesses, and nothing is so much
dreaded as their anger. No wonder that commoners in general avoid the
honour of a royal alliance. Only poor and embarrassed men seek it as a
protection against their creditors and enemies. All the children of such
a man by such a wife are princes and princesses, and any one of the
princes may in time be chosen king; for in Loango the crown is not
hereditary but elective.[892] Thus it would seem that the father of the
King of Loango is nearly always a plebeian, and often little better than
a slave.
[Sidenote: Similar rights enjoyed by queens in Central Africa.] Near the
Chambezi river, which falls into Lake Bengweolo in Central Africa, there
is a small state governed by a queen who belongs to the reigning family
of Ubemba. She bears the title of _Mamfumer_ or Mother of Kings. “The
privileges attached to this dignity are numerous. The most singular is
that the queens may choose for themselves their husband among the common
people. The chosen man becomes prince-consort without sharing in the
administration of affairs. He is bound to leave everything to follow his
royal and often but little accommodating spouse. To shew that in these
households the rights are inverted and that a man may be changed into a
woman, the queen takes the title of _Monsieur_ and her husband that of
_Madame_.”[893]
[Sidenote: Traces of female descent of the kingship in ancient Greece.]
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.[894] This tradition is confirmed by the
evidence, which I shall adduce presently, that at Athens male kinship
was preceded by female kinship.
[Sidenote: With this rule of descent of the kingship males rule over
different kingdoms in successive generations.] 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. Take, for instance, the
great house of Aeacus, the grandfather of Achilles and Ajax. Aeacus
himself reigned in Aegina, but his descendants, as has been justly
observed, “from the beginning went forth to other lands.”[895] His son
Telamon migrated to the [Sidenote: Migrations of the male descendants of
Aeacus.] island of Salamis, married the king’s daughter, and reigned
over the country.[896] Telamon’s son Teucer, in his turn, migrated to
Cyprus, wedded the king’s daughter, and succeeded his father-in-law on
the throne.[897] Again, Peleus, another son of Aeacus, quitted his
native land and went away to Phthia in Thessaly, where he received the
hand of the king’s daughter, and with her a third of the kingdom.[898]
Of Achilles, the son of Peleus, we are told that in his youth he was
sent to the court of Lycomedes, King of Scyros, where he got one of the
princesses with child.[899] The tradition seems to shew that Achilles
followed the custom of his family in seeking his fortune in a foreign
land. His son Neoptolemus, after him, went away to Epirus, where he
settled and became the ancestor of the kings of the country.[900]
[Sidenote: Migrations of the male descendants of Tydeus and Pelops.]
Again, Tydeus was a son of Oeneus, the King of Calydon in Aetolia, but
he went to Argos and married the king’s daughter.[901] His son Diomede
migrated to Daunia in Italy, where he helped the king in a war with his
enemies, receiving as his reward the king’s daughter in marriage and
part of the kingdom.[902] As another example we may take the family of
the Pelopidae, whose tragic fortunes the Greek poets never wearied of
celebrating. Their ancestor was Tantalus, King of Sipylus in Asia Minor.
But his son Pelops passed into Greece, won Hippodamia, the daughter of
the King of Pisa, in the famous chariot-race, and succeeded his
father-in-law on the throne.[903] His son Atreus did not remain in Pisa,
but migrated to Mycenae, of which he became king;[904] and in the next
generation Menelaus, son of Atreus, went to Sparta, where he married
Helen, the king’s daughter, and himself reigned over the country.[905]
Further, it is very notable that, according to the old lyric poets,
Agamemnon himself, the elder brother of Menelaus, reigned not at Mycenae
but in Lacedaemon, the native land of his wife Clytaemnestra, and that
he was buried at Amyclae, the ancient capital of the country.[906]
[Sidenote: These migrations not understood in later times.] 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.
[Sidenote: Traces of similar migrations in Scandinavian tradition.] 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.[907]
[Sidenote: A reminiscence of the transmission of the kingship through
women is preserved in popular tales.] 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.[908]
[Sidenote: Where such customs prevail, the kingship is an appanage of
marriage with a princess.] 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, and her statement is all the more
significant because, as we shall see presently, it reflects the actual
practice of the Pictish kings. “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.”[909] Wherever a custom of this sort
is observed, a man may clearly acquire the kingdom just as well by
marrying the widow as the daughter of his predecessor. This is what
Aegisthus did at Mycenae, and what Hamlet’s uncle Feng and Hamlet’s
successor Wiglet did in Denmark; all three slew their predecessors,
married their widows, and then sat peacefully on the throne.[910] The
tame submission of the people to their rule would be intelligible, if
they regarded the assassins, in spite of their crime, as the lawful
occupants of the throne by reason of their marriage with the widowed
queens. Similarly, Gyges murdered Candaules, King of Lydia, [Sidenote:
The Lydian kingship apparently transmitted through women.] married his
queen, and reigned over the country.[911] Nor was this the only instance
of such a succession in the history of Lydia. The wife of King Cadys
conspired against his life with her paramour Spermus, and though her
husband recovered from the dose of poison which she administered to him,
he died soon afterwards, and the adulterer married his leman and
succeeded to the throne.[912] These cases excite a suspicion that in the
royal house of Lydia descent was traced in the female line, and the
suspicion is strengthened by the legendary character of Omphale, the
ancestress of the dynasty. For she is represented as a masculine but
dissolute queen of the Semiramis type, who wore male attire and put all
her favoured lovers to death, while on the other hand her consort
Hercules was her purchased slave, was treated with indignity, and went
about dressed as a woman.[913] This plainly implies that the queen was a
far more powerful and important personage than the king, as would
naturally happen wherever it is the queen who confers royalty on her
consort at marriage instead of receiving it from him. The story that she
prostituted the daughters of the Lydians to their male slaves[914] is of
a piece with the tradition that she herself married her slave Hercules.
It may mean little more than that the Lydians were indifferent to
paternity, and that the children of freewomen by slaves ranked as free.
Such an indifference to fatherhood, coupled with the ancient accounts of
the loose morals of the Lydian girls, who were accustomed to earn a
dowry by prostitution,[915] is a mark of the system of female kinship.
Hence we may conjecture that Herodotus was wrong in saying that from
Hercules to Candaules the crown of Lydia had descended for twenty-two
generations from father to son.[916] The old mode of transmitting the
crown of Lydia through women probably did not end with Candaules. At
least we are told that his murderer and successor Gyges, like Hercules,
the mythical founder of the dynasty, gave himself and his kingdom into
the hands of the woman he loved, and that when she died he collected all
the slaves from the country round about and raised in her memory a mound
so lofty that it could be seen from every part of the Lydian plain, and
for centuries after was known as the Harlot’s Tomb.[917]
[Sidenote: Marriage of Canute with the widow of his predecessor.] When
Canute the Dane had been acknowledged King of England, he married Emma,
the widow of his predecessor Ethelred, whose throne he had overturned
and whose children he had driven into exile. The marriage has not
unnaturally puzzled the historians, for Emma was much older than her
second husband, she was then living in Normandy, and it is very doubtful
whether Canute had ever seen her before she became his bride. All,
however, becomes plain if, as the cases of Feng and Wiglet seem to shew,
it was an old Danish custom that marriage with a king’s widow carried
the kingdom with it as a matter of right. In that case the young but
prudent Canute married the mature widow merely out of policy in order to
clinch, according to Danish notions, by a legal measure his claim to
that crown which he had already won for himself by the sword.[918] Among
the Saxons and their near kinsmen the Varini it appears to have been a
regular custom for the new king to marry his stepmother. Thus
Hermegisclus, King of the Varini, on his deathbed enjoined his son
Radigis to wed his stepmother in accordance with their ancestral
practice, and his injunction was obeyed.[919] Edbald, King of Kent,
married his stepmother after the death of his father Ethelbert;[920] and
as late as the ninth century Ethelbald, King of the West Saxons, wedded
Judith, the widow of his father Ethelwulf.[921] Such marriages are
intelligible if we suppose that old Saxon as well as old Danish law gave
the kingdom to him who married the late king’s widow.
[Sidenote: Traces of the system of female kinship among the Aryans.] To
the view that the right to the Latin kingship was derived from women and
not from men, it may be objected that the system of female kinship or
mother-kin is unknown among the Aryans,[922] and that even if faint
traces of it may be met with elsewhere, the last place in the world
where we should look for it would be Rome, the stronghold of the
patriarchal family. To meet this objection it is necessary to point to
some facts which appear to be undoubted survivals among Aryan peoples of
a custom of tracing descent through the mother only.
[Sidenote: Female kinship among the Athenians, the Epizephyrian
Locrians, the Cantabrians, and the Germans.] In Attica tradition ran
that of old the women were the common property of the men, who coupled
with them like beasts, so that while every one knew his mother, nobody
knew who his father was. This system of sexual communism was abolished
by Cecrops, the first King of Athens, who introduced individual marriage
in its place.[923] Little weight could be attached to this tradition, if
it were not supported to a certain extent by the Attic usage which
always allowed a man to marry his half-sister by the same father but not
his half-sister by the same mother.[924] Such a rule seems clearly to be
a relic of a time when kinship was counted only through women. Again,
the Epizephyrian Locrians in Italy traced all ancestral distinction in
the female, not the male line. Among them the nobles were the members of
the hundred houses from whom were chosen by lot the maidens to be sent
to Troy.[925] For in order, it is said, to expiate the sacrilege
committed by the Locrian Ajax when he violated Cassandra in the
sanctuary of Athena at Troy, the cities of Locris used annually to send
to the Trojan goddess two maidens, whom the Trojans slew, and, burning
their bodies on the wood of certain trees which bore no fruit, threw the
ashes into the sea. If the maidens contrived to escape they took refuge
in the sanctuary of Athena, which they thenceforth swept and washed,
never quitting it except at night, and always going barefoot, shorn, and
clad in a single garment. The custom is said to have been observed for a
thousand years down to the fourth century before our era.[926] Among the
Locrians, as elsewhere, the system of female kinship would seem to have
gone hand in hand with dissolute morals; for there is reason to think
that of old the Locrians, like the Lydians and Armenians, had been wont
to prostitute their daughters before marriage, though in later times the
custom fell into abeyance.[927] The Cantabrians of Spain seem also to
have had mother-kin; for among them it was the daughters who inherited
property and who portioned out their brothers in marriage.[928] Again,
the ancient Germans deemed the tie between a man and his sister’s
children as close as that between a father and his children; indeed some
regarded the bond as even closer and more sacred, and therefore in
exacting hostages they chose the children of a man’s sister rather than
his own children, believing that this gave them a firmer hold on the
family.[929] The superiority thus assigned to the maternal uncle over
the father is an infallible mark of mother-kin, either present or past,
as may be observed, for instance, in very many African tribes to this
day, among whom both property and political power pass, not from father
to son, but from the maternal uncle to his nephews.[930] Similarly, in
Melanesia the close relation of the mother’s brother to his nephew is
maintained even where the system of relationship has become
patriarchal.[931] Amongst the Germans in the time of Tacitus, it is
true, a man’s heirs were his own children,[932] but the mother’s brother
could never have attained the position he held except under a system of
maternal descent. Another vestige of mother-kin among a Teutonic people
appears to be found in the Salic law. For it was a custom with the
Salian Franks that when a widow married again, a price had to be paid to
her family, and in laying down the order in which her kinsmen were
entitled to receive this payment the law gave a decided preference to
the female over the male line; thus the first person entitled to claim
the money was the eldest son of the widow’s sister.[933]
[Sidenote: Among the Picts the kingship was transmitted through women.]
It is a moot point whether the Picts of Scotland belonged to the Aryan
family or not;[934] but among them the kingdom was certainly transmitted
through women. Bede tells us that down to his own time, in the early
part of the eighth century, whenever a doubt arose as to the succession,
the Picts chose their king from the female rather than the male
line.[935] The statement is amply confirmed by historical evidence. For
we possess a list of the Pictish kings and their fathers which was drawn
up in the reign of Cenaed, King of the Scots, towards the end of the
tenth century; and for the period from the year 583 to the year 840 the
register is authenticated by the Irish Annals of Tigernach and Ulster.
Now, it is significant that in this list the fathers of the kings are
never themselves kings; in other words, no king was succeeded on the
throne by his son. Further, if we may judge by their names, the fathers
of the Pictish kings were not Picts but foreigners—men of Irish, Cymric,
or English race. The inference from these facts seems to be that among
the Picts the royal family was exogamous, and that the crown descended
in the female line; in other words, that the princesses married men of
another clan or even of another race, and that their issue by these
strangers sat on the throne, whether they succeeded in a prescribed
order according to birth, or whether they were elected from among the
sons of princesses, as the words of Bede might be taken to imply.[936]
[Sidenote: Female kinship among the Etruscans.] Another European, though
apparently not Aryan, people among whom the system of female kinship
appears to have prevailed were the Etruscans. For in Etruscan sepulchral
inscriptions the name of the mother of the deceased is regularly
recorded along with or even without the name of the father; and where
the names of both father and mother are mentioned, greater prominence is
given to the mother’s name by writing it in full, whereas the father’s
name is, in accordance with Roman usage, merely indicated by an
initial.[937] The statement of Theopompus that among the Etruscans
sexual communism was a recognised practice, and that paternity was
unknown,[938] may be only an exaggerated way of saying that they traced
their descent through their mothers and not through their fathers. Yet
apparently in Etruria, as elsewhere, this system of relationship was
combined with a real indifference to fatherhood and with the dissolute
morals which that indifference implies; for Etruscan girls were wont to
earn a dowry by prostitution.[939] In these customs the Etruscans
resembled the Lydians, and the similarity confirms the common opinion of
antiquity, which modern historians have too lightly set aside, that the
Etruscans were of Lydian origin.[940] However that may be, in
considering the vestiges of mother-kin among the Latins, we shall do
well to bear in mind that the same archaic mode of tracing descent
appears to have prevailed among the neighbouring Etruscans, who not only
exercised a powerful influence on Rome, but gave her two, if not three,
of her kings.[941]
[Sidenote: Mother-kin may survive in the royal family after it has been
exchanged for father-kin in all others.] It would be neither unnatural
nor surprising if among the ancient Latins mother-kin survived in the
royal family after it had been exchanged for father-kin in all others.
For royalty, like religion, is essentially conservative; it clings to
old forms and old customs which have long vanished from ordinary life.
Thus in Uganda persons of royal blood still inherit their totems from
their mothers, while other people inherit them from their fathers. So in
Denmark and Scandinavia, as we have seen, the kingdom would appear to
have been transmitted through women long after the family name and
property had become hereditary in the male line among the people.
Sometimes the difference in custom between kings and commoners is
probably based rather on a distinction of race than on varying degrees
of social progress; for a dynasty is often a family of alien origin who
have imposed their rule on their subjects by force of arms, as the
Normans did on the Saxons, and the Manchus on the Chinese. More rarely,
perhaps, it may have happened that from motives of policy or
superstition a [Sidenote: Sometimes a conquering race may have left a
nominal kingship to members of the old royal house.] conquering tribe
has left a nominal kingship to the members of the old royal house. Such
a concession would be most likely to be made where the functions of the
king were rather religious than civil, and where the prosperity of the
country was supposed to depend on the maintenance of the established
relations between the people and the gods of the land. In that case the
new-comers, knowing not how to appease and conciliate these strange
deities, might be glad to let the priestly kings of the conquered race
perform the quaint rites and mumble the venerable spells, which had been
found to answer their purpose time out of mind.[942] In a commonwealth
like the Roman, formed by the union of different stocks, the royal
family might thus belong either to the conquerors or to the conquered;
in other words, either to the [Sidenote: This perhaps happened at Rome,
where many of the kings seem to have been plebeians.] patricians or to
the plebeians. But if we leave out of account Romulus and Tatius, who
are more or less legendary figures, and the two Tarquins, who came of a
noble Etruscan house, all the other Roman kings appear from their names
to have been men of plebeian, not patrician, families.[943] Hence it
seems probable that they belonged to the indigenous race, who may have
retained mother-kin, at least in the royal succession, after they had
submitted to invaders who knew father-kin only.
[Sidenote: The abolition of the monarchy at Rome may have been a
revolution whereby the patricians wrested the shadow of sovereignty from
the plebeians and transferred it to themselves, who already wielded the
substance.] If that was so, it confirms the view that the old Roman
kingship was essentially a religious office; for the conquerors would be
much more ready to leave an office of this sort in the hands of the
conquered than a kingship of the type with which we are familiar. “Let
these puppets,” they might think, “render to the gods their dues, while
we rule the people in peace and lead them in war.” Of such priestly
kings Numa was the type. But not all of his successors were willing to
model themselves on his saintly figure and, rejecting the pomps and
vanities of earth, to devote themselves to communion with heaven. Some
were men of strong will and warlike temper, who could not brook the dull
routine of the cloister. They longed to exchange the stillness and gloom
of the temple or the sacred grove for the sunshine, the dust, and the
tumult of the battlefield. Such men broke bounds, and when they
threatened to get completely out of hand and turn the tables on the
patricians, it was time that they should go. This, we may conjecture,
was the real meaning of the abolition of the kingship at Rome. It put an
end to the solemn pretence that the state was still ruled by the ancient
owners of the soil: it took the shadow of power from them and gave it to
those who had long possessed the substance. The ghost of the monarchy
had begun to walk and grow troublesome: the revolution laid it for
centuries.
[Sidenote: At first the intention seems to have been to leave the annual
kingship or consulship to the old royal family.] But though the effect
of the revolution was to substitute the real rule of the patricians for
the nominal rule of the plebeians, the break with the past was at the
outset less complete than it seems. For the first two consuls were both
men of the royal blood. One of them, L. Junius Brutus, was sister’s son
of the expelled King Tarquin the Proud.[944] As such he would have been
the heir to the throne under a strict system of mother-kin. The other
consul, L. Tarquinius Collatinus, was a son of the late king’s cousin
Egerius.[945] These facts suggest that the first intention of the
revolutionaries was neither to abolish the kingship nor to wrest it from
the royal family, but, merely retaining the hereditary monarchy, to
restrict its powers. To achieve this object they limited the tenure of
office to a year and doubled the number of the kings, who might thus be
expected to check and balance each other. But it is not impossible that
both restrictions were merely the revival of old rules which the growing
power of the kings had contrived for a time to set aside in practice.
The legends of Romulus and Remus, and afterwards of Romulus and Tatius,
may be real reminiscences of a double kingship like that of Sparta;[946]
and in the yearly ceremony of the _Regifugium_ or Flight of the King we
seem to detect a trace of an annual, not a life-long, tenure of
office.[947] The same thing may perhaps be true of the parallel change
which took place at Athens when the people deprived the Medontids of
their regal powers and reduced them from kings to responsible
magistrates, who held office at first for life, but afterwards only for
periods of ten years.[948] Here, too, the limitation of the tenure of
the kingship may have been merely the reinforcement of an old custom
which had fallen into abeyance. At Rome, however, the attempt to
maintain the hereditary principle, if it was made at all, was almost
immediately abandoned, and the patricians openly transferred to
themselves the double kingship, which thenceforth was purely elective,
and was afterwards known as the consulship.[949]
[Sidenote: The abolition of the monarchy at Rome seems to have been
hastened by an attempt of the last king to shift the succession from the
female to the male line.] The history of the last king of Rome, Tarquin
the Proud, leads us to suspect that the offence which he gave by his
ambitious and domineering character was heightened by an attempt to
shift the succession of the kingship from the female to the male line.
He himself united both rights in his own person; for he had married the
daughter of his predecessor, Servius Tullius, and he was the son or
grandson of Tarquin the Elder,[950] who preceded Servius Tullius on the
throne. But in asserting his right to the crown, if we can trust Roman
history on this point, Tarquin the Proud entirely ignored his claim to
it through women as the son-in-law of his predecessor, and insisted only
on his claim in the male line as the son or grandson of a former
king.[951] And he evidently intended to bequeath the kingdom to one of
his sons; for he put out of the way two of the men who, if the
succession had been through women in the way I have indicated, would
have been entitled to sit on the throne before his own sons, and even
before himself. One of these was his sister’s husband, the other was her
elder son. Her younger son, the famous Lucius Junius Brutus, only
escaped the fate of his father and elder brother by feigning, like
Hamlet, imbecility, and thus deluding his wicked uncle into the belief
that he had nothing to fear from such a simpleton.[952] This design of
Tarquin to alter the line of succession from the female to the male side
of the house may have been the last drop which filled his cup of
high-handed tyranny to overflowing. At least it is a strange
coincidence, if it is nothing more, that he was deposed by the man who,
under a system of female kinship, was the rightful heir, and who in a
sense actually sat on the throne from which he pushed his uncle. For the
curule chair of the consul was little less than the king’s throne under
a limited tenure.
[Sidenote: The hereditary principle does not necessarily exclude the
elective in the succession to a monarchy; many African chieftainships or
kingships are both hereditary and elective.] It has often been asked
whether the Roman monarchy was hereditary or elective. The question
implies an opposition between the two modes of succession which by no
means necessarily exists. As a matter of fact, in many African tribes at
the present day the succession to the kingdom or the chieftainship is
determined by a combination of the hereditary and the elective
principle, that is, the kings or chiefs are chosen by the people or by a
body of electors from among the members of the royal family. And as the
chiefs have commonly several wives and many children by them, the number
of possible candidates may be not inconsiderable. For example, we are
told that “the government of the Banyai is rather peculiar, being a sort
of feudal republicanism. The chief is elected, and they choose the son
of the deceased chief’s sister in preference to his own offspring. When
dissatisfied with one candidate, they even go to a distant tribe for a
successor, who is usually of the family of the late chief, a brother, or
a sister’s son, but never his own son or daughter. When first spoken to
on the subject, he answers as if he thought himself unequal to the task
and unworthy of the honour, but, having accepted it, all the wives,
goods, and children of his predecessor belong to him, and he takes care
to keep them in a dependent position.” Among these people “the children
of the chief have fewer privileges than common free men. They may not be
sold, but, rather than choose any one of them for a chief at any future
time, the free men would prefer to elect one of themselves who bore only
a very distant relationship to the family.”[953]
[Sidenote: Chiefs and kings in Africa elected from several families in
rotation.] Sometimes the field of choice is extended still further by a
rule that the chief may or must be chosen from one of several families
in a certain order. Thus among the Bangalas of the Cassange Valley in
Angola the chief is elected from three families in rotation.[954] And
Diagara, a country bordering on Senegambia, is ruled by an absolute
monarch who is chosen alternately from two families, one of which lives
in Diapina and the other in Badumar.[955] In the Winamwanga tribe, to
the south of Lake Tanganyika, “the first male child born to a chief
after he succeeds to the chieftainship is the natural heir, but many
years ago there were two claimants to the throne, whose supporters were
about equal, and to avoid a civil war the following arrangement was
made. One of them was allowed to reign, but the other claimant or his
son was to succeed him. This was carried out, so that now there are
continually alternate dynasties.”[956] So in the Matse tribe of Togoland
in West Africa, there are two royal families descended from two women,
which supply a king alternately. Hence the palm forest which belongs to
the crown is divided into two parts; the reigning king has the right to
one part, and the representative of the other royal house has a right to
the other part.[957] Among the Yorubas in western Africa the sovereign
chief is always taken from one or more families which have the
hereditary right of furnishing the community with rulers. In many cases
the succession passes regularly from one to a second family alternately;
but in one instance, apparently unique, the right of succession to the
sovereignty seems to be possessed by four princely families, from each
of which the head chief is elected in rotation. The principle of
primogeniture is not necessarily followed in the election, but the
choice of the electors must always fall on one who is related to a
former chief in the male line. For paternal descent alone is recognised
in Yorubaland, where even the greatest chief may take to wife a woman of
the lowest rank. Sometimes the choice of the ruling chief is made by
divine authority, intimated to the people through the high priest of the
principal god of the district.[958] Among the Igaras, on the lower
Niger, the royal family is divided into four branches, each of which
provides a king in turn. The capital and its district, both of which
bear the name of Idah, are always occupied by the reigning branch of the
royal family, while the three other branches, not being allowed to live
there, retreat into the interior. Hence at the death of a king a double
change takes place. On the one hand the late reigning family, with all
their dependants, have to leave the homes in which many of them have
been born and brought up, and to migrate to towns in the forest, which
they know only by name. On the other hand, the new reigning family come
into the capital, and their people settle in the houses occupied by
their forefathers four reigns ago. The king is generally elected by the
leading men of his branch of the royal family; they choose the richest
and most powerful of their number.[959]
[Sidenote: Among the Khasis of Assam, also, the succession to the
kingdom is partly hereditary and partly elective.] Again, among the
Khasis of Assam we meet with the same combination of the hereditary with
the elective principle in the succession to the kingdom. Indeed, in this
people the kingship presents several features of resemblance to the old
Latin kingship as it appears to have existed at the dawn of history. For
a Khasi king is the religious as well as the secular head of the state;
along with the sooth-sayers he consults the auspices for the public
good, and sometimes he has priestly duties to perform. Succession to the
kingship always runs in the female line, for the Khasis have a regular
system of mother-kin as opposed to father-kin; hence it is not the
king’s sons, but his uterine brothers and the sons of his uterine
sisters who succeed him on the throne in order of birth. But this
hereditary principle is controlled by a body of electors, who have the
right of rejecting unsuitable claimants to the throne. Generally the
electors are a small body composed of the heads of certain priestly
clans; but in some Khasi states the number of the electors has been
greatly increased by the inclusion of representative headmen of certain
important lay clans, or even by the inclusion of village headmen or of
the chief superintendents of the village markets. Nay, in the Langrim
state all the adult males regularly vote at the election of a monarch;
and here the royal family is divided into two branches, a Black and a
White, from either of which, apparently, the electors are free to choose
a king. Similarly, in the Nobosohpoh state there are two royal houses, a
Black and a White, and the people may select the heir to the throne from
either of them.[960]
[Sidenote: Thus the Roman monarchy may have combined the hereditary with
the elective principle.] Thus the mere circumstance that all the Roman
kings, with the exception of the two Tarquins, appear to have belonged
to different families, is not of itself conclusive against the view that
heredity was one of the elements which determined the succession. The
number of families from whom the king might be elected may have been
large. And even if, as is possible, the electors were free to chose a
king without any regard to his birth, the hereditary principle would
still be maintained if, as we have seen reason to conjecture, it was
essential that the chosen candidate should marry a woman of the royal
house, who would generally be either the daughter or the widow of his
predecessor. In this way the apparently disparate principles of
unfettered election and strict heredity would be combined; the marriage
of the elected king with the hereditary princess would furnish the link
between the two. Under such a system, to put it otherwise, the kings are
elective and the queens hereditary. This is just the converse of what
happens under a system of male kinship, where the kings are hereditary
and the queens elective.
In the later times of Rome it was held that the custom had been for the
people to elect the kings and for the senate to ratify the
election.[961] But we may suspect, with Mommsen, that this was no more
than an inference from the mode of electing the consuls. The magistrates
who, under the republic, represented the kings most closely were the
dictator and the King of the Sacred Rites, and neither of these was
elected by the people. Both were nominated, the dictator by the consul,
and the King of the Sacred Rites by the chief pontiff.[962] Accordingly
it seems probable that under [Sidenote: The king was probably nominated
either by his predecessor or by an interim king.] the monarchy the king
was nominated either by his predecessor or, failing that, by an interim
king (_interrex_) chosen from the senate.[963] Now if, as we have been
led to think, an essential claim to the throne was constituted by
marriage with a princess of the royal house, nothing could be more
natural than that the king should choose his successor, who would
commonly be also his son-in-law. If he had several sons-in-law and had
omitted to designate the one who was to reign after him, the election
would be made by his substitute, the interim king.
[Sidenote: Personal qualities which commended a man for marriage with a
princess and succession to the throne.] 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.[964] We have seen that in Ashantee the husbands or
paramours of the princesses must always be men of fine presence, because
they are to be the fathers of future kings. Among the Ethiopians in
antiquity, as among the Ashantees and many other African tribes to this
day, the crown passed in the female line to the son of the king’s
sister, but if there was no such heir they chose the handsomest and most
valiant man to reign over them.[965] We are told that the Gordioi
[Sidenote: Fat kings.] elected the fattest man to the kingship,[966] nor
is this incredible when we remember that in Africa corpulence is still
regarded as a great distinction and beauty, and that both the chiefs and
their wives are sometimes so fat that they can hardly walk. Thus among
the Caffres chiefs and rich men attain to an enormous bulk, and the
queens fatten themselves on beef and porridge, of which they partake
freely in the intervals of slumber. To be fat is with them a mark of
riches, and therefore of high rank; common folk cannot afford to eat and
drink and lounge as much as they would like to do.[967] The Syrakoi in
antiquity are reported to have bestowed the crown on the tallest man or
on the man with [Sidenote: Long-headed kings and chiefs.] the longest
head in the literal, not the figurative, sense of the word.[968] They
seem to have been a Sarmatian people to the north of the Caucasus,[969]
and are probably the same with the long-headed people described by
Hippocrates, who says that among them the men with the longest heads
were esteemed the noblest, and that they applied bandages and other
instruments to the heads of their children in infancy for the sake of
moulding them into the shape which they admired.[970] Such reports are
probably by no means fabulous, for among the Monbuttu or Mang-bettou of
Central Africa down to this day “when the children of chiefs are young,
string is wound round their heads, which are gradually compressed into a
shape that will allow of the longest head-dress. The skull thus treated
in childhood takes the appearance of an elongated egg.”[971] Similarly
[Sidenote: Heads artificially moulded as a mark of high rank.] some of
the Indian tribes on the north-west coast of America artificially mould
the heads of their children into the shape of a wedge or a sugar-loaf by
compressing them between boards; some of them regard such heads as a
personal beauty, others as a mark of high birth.[972] For instance, “the
practice among some of the Salish seems to have had a definite social,
as well as aesthetic, significance. There appear to have been recognised
degrees of contortion marking the social status of the individual. For
example slaves, of which the Salish kept considerable numbers, were
prohibited from deforming the heads of their children at all,
consequently a normal, undeformed head was the sign and badge of
servitude. And in the case of the base-born of the tribes the heads of
their children were customarily but slightly deformed, while the heads
of the children born of wealthy or noble persons, and particularly those
of chiefs, were severely and excessively deformed.”[973]
[Sidenote: Among the Bororos the best singers are the chiefs.] Among the
Bororos of Brazil at the present day the title to chieftaincy is neither
corpulence nor an egg-shaped head, but the possession of a fine musical
ear and a rich baritone, bass, or tenor voice. The best singer, in fact,
becomes the chief. There is no other way to supreme power but this.
Hence in the education of the Bororo youth the main thing is to train,
not their minds, but their voices, for the best of the tuneful quire
will certainly be chief. In this tribe, accordingly, there is no such
thing as hereditary chieftainship; for if the son of a chief has an
indifferent ear or a poor voice, he will be a commoner to the end of his
days. When two rival songsters are found in the same village, they sing
against each other, and he who is judged to have acquitted himself best
in the musical contest mounts the throne. His defeated rival sometimes
retires in a huff with his admirers and founds a new village. Once
seated in the place of power, the melodious singer is not only highly
honoured and respected, but can exact unconditional obedience from all,
and he gives his orders, like an operatic king or hero, in a musical
recitativo. It is especially at eventide, when the sun has set and the
labours of the day are over, that he pours out his soul in harmony. At
that witching hour he takes up his post in front of the men’s
club-house, and while his subjects are hushed in attention he bursts
into sacred song, passing from that to lighter themes, and concluding
the oratorio by chanting his commands to each individual for the next
day.[974] When Addison ridiculed the new fashion of the Italian opera,
in which generals sang the word of command, ladies delivered their
messages in music, and lovers chanted their billet-doux, he little
suspected that among the backwoods of Brazil a tribe of savages in all
seriousness observed a custom which he thought absurd even on the
stage.[975]
[Sidenote: Succession to the throne determined by a race.] 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.[976] Amongst the old Prussians, candidates for
nobility raced on horseback to the king, and the one who reached him
first was ennobled.[977] 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.[978] The famous story of Pelops and
Hippodamia [Sidenote: Greek traditions of princesses whose hands were
won in a race.] is perhaps only another version of the legend that the
first races at Olympia were run for no less a prize than a kingdom. For
Oenomaus was king of Pisa, a town close to Olympia; and having been
warned by an oracle that he would die by the hand of the man who married
his daughter Hippodamia, he resolved to keep her a maid. So when any one
came a-wooing her, the king made the suitor drive away in a chariot with
Hippodamia, while he himself pursued the pair in another car drawn by
fleet horses, and, overtaking the unlucky wight, slew him. In this way
he killed twelve suitors and nailed their heads to his house, the ruins
of which were shewn at Olympia down to the second century of our era.
The bodies of the suitors were buried under a lofty mound, and it is
said that in former days sacrifices were offered to them yearly. When
Pelops came to win the hand of Hippodamia, he bribed the charioteer of
Oenomaus not to put the pins into the wheels of the king’s chariot. So
Oenomaus was thrown from the car and dragged by his horses to death. But
some say he was despatched by Pelops according to the oracle. Anyhow, he
died, and Pelops married Hippodamia and succeeded to the kingdom.[979]
The grave of Oenomaus was shown at Olympia; it was a mound of earth
enclosed with stones.[980] Here, too, precincts were dedicated to Pelops
and Hippodamia, in which sacrifices were offered to them annually; the
victim presented to Pelops was a black ram, whose blood was poured into
a pit.[981] Other traditions were current in antiquity of princesses who
were offered in marriage to the fleetest runner and won by the victor in
the race. Thus Icarius at Sparta set the wooers of his daughter Penelope
to run a race; Ulysses won and wedded her. His father-in-law is said to
have tried to induce him to take up his abode in Sparta; which seems to
shew that if Ulysses had accepted the invitation he would have inherited
the kingdom through his wife.[982] So, too, the Libyan King Antaeus
placed his beautiful daughter Barce or Alceis at the end of the
racecourse; her many noble suitors, both Libyans and foreigners, ran to
her as the goal, and Alcidamus, who touched her first, gained her in
marriage.[983] Danaus, also, at Argos is said to have stationed his many
daughters at the goal, and the runner who reached them first had first
choice of the maidens.[984] Somewhat different from these traditions is
the story of Atalante, for in it the wooers are said to have contended,
not with each other, but with the coy maiden herself in a foot-race. She
slew her vanquished suitors and hung up their heads in the racecourse,
till Hippomenes gained the race and her hand by throwing down the golden
apples which she stooped to pick up.[985]
[Sidenote: Custom of racing for a bride among the Kirghiz and Calmucks.]
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. As, however, by Kirghiz custom, a suitor to the hand of a maiden
is obliged to give a certain _kalym_, or purchase-money, and an
agreement must be made with the father for the amount of dowry which he
gives his daughter, the ‘Love Chase’ is a mere matter of form.”[986]
Similarly “the ceremony of marriage among the Calmucks is performed on
horseback. A girl is first mounted, who rides off in full speed. Her
lover pursues; and if he overtakes her, she becomes his wife, and the
marriage is consummated on the spot, after which she returns with him to
his tent. But it sometimes happens that the woman does not wish to marry
the person by whom she is pursued, in which case she will not suffer him
to overtake her; and we were assured that no instance occurs of a
Calmuck girl being thus caught unless she has a partiality for her
pursuer. If she dislikes him she rides, to use the language of English
sportsmen, ‘neck or nothing,’ until she has completely escaped, or until
the pursuer’s horse is tired out, leaving her at liberty to return, to
be afterwards chased by some more favoured admirer.”[987] 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.[988]
Among some of the rude indigenous tribes of the Malay Peninsula
“marriage is preceded by a singular ceremony. An old man presents the
future couple to the assembled guests, and, followed by their families,
he leads them to a great circle, round which the girl sets off to run as
fast as she can. If the young man succeeds in overtaking her, she
becomes his mate; otherwise he loses all rights, which happens
especially when he is not so fortunate as to please his bride.”[989]
Another writer tells us that among these savages, when there is a river
at hand, the race takes place on the water, the bride paddling away in
one canoe and pursued by the bridegroom in another.[990] Before the
wedding procession starts for the [Sidenote: Caffre race for bride.]
bridegroom’s hut, a Caffre bride is allowed to make one last bid for
freedom, and a young man is told off to catch her. Should he fail to do
so, she is theoretically allowed to return to her father, and the whole
performance has to be repeated; but the flight of the bride is usually a
pretence.[991]
[Sidenote: The bride-race among Teutonic peoples, and its traces in
modern Europe.] 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.[992] Moreover, traces of the custom survived into modern
times. Thus in the Mark of Brandenburg, down to the first half of the
nineteenth century at least, it was the practice for bride and
bridegroom to run a race on their wedding day in presence of all the
guests. Two sturdy men took the bride between them and set off. The
bridegroom gave them a start and then followed hot-foot. At the end of
the course stood two or three young married women, who took from the
bride her maiden’s crown and replaced it by the matron’s cap. If the
bridegroom failed to overtake his bride, he was much ridiculed.[993] In
other parts of Germany races are still held at marriage, but the
competitors are no longer the bride and bridegroom. Thus in Hesse at the
wedding of a well-to-do farmer his friends race on horseback to the
house of the bride, and her friends similarly race on horseback to the
house of the bridegroom. The prize hangs over the gate of the farmyard
or the door of the house. It consists of a silken or woollen
handkerchief, which the winner winds round his head or fastens to his
breast. The victors have also the right to escort the marriage
procession.[994] In Upper Bavaria, down at least to some fifty years
ago, a regular feature of a rustic wedding used to be what was called
the “bride-race” or the “key-race.” It generally took place when the
bridal party was proceeding from the church to the alehouse. A course
was marked out and two goals, consisting of heaps of straw, were set up
at distances of three and four hundred yards respectively. The strongest
and fleetest of the young fellows raced barefoot, clad only in shirt and
trousers. He who first reached the further goal received the first
prize; this was regularly a key of gilt wood, which the winner fastened
to his hat. Often, as in some of the Greek legends, the bride herself
was the goal of the race. The writers who record the custom suggest that
the race was originally for the key of the bridechamber, and that the
bridegroom ran with the rest.[995] In Scotland also the guests at a
rustic wedding used to ride on horseback for a prize, which sometimes
consisted of the bride’s cake set up on a pole in front of the
bridegroom’s house. The race was known as the _broose_.[996] At
Weitensfeld, in Carinthia, a festival called the Bride-race is still
held every year. It is popularly supposed to commemorate a time when a
plague had swept away the whole people except a girl and three young
men. These three, it is said, raced with each other in order that the
winner might get the maiden to wife, and so repeople the land. The race
is now held on horseback. The winner receives as the prize a garland of
flowers called the Bride-wreath, and the man who comes in last gets a
wreath of ribbons and pig’s bristles.[997] It seems not impossible that
this custom is a relic of a fair at which the marriageable maidens of
the year were assigned in order of merit to the young men who
distinguished themselves by their feats of strength and agility. A
practice of this sort appears to have prevailed [Sidenote: Assignment of
brides to picked young men among the Samnites.] among the ancient
Samnites. Every year the youths and maidens were tested publicly, and
the young man who was adjudged best had first choice of the girls; the
second best had the next choice, and so on with the rest.[998] “They
say,” writes Strabo, “that the Samnites have a beautiful custom which
incites to virtue. For they may not give their daughters in marriage to
whom they please, but every year the ten best maidens and the ten best
youths are picked out, and the best of the ten maidens is given to the
best of the ten youths, and the second to the second, and so on. But if
the man who wins one of these prizes should afterwards turn out a knave,
they disgrace him and take the girl from him.”[999] The nature of the
test to which the young men and women were subjected is not mentioned,
but we may conjecture that it was mainly athletic.
[Sidenote: Contests for a bride other than races.] The contests for a
bride may be designed to try the skill, strength, and courage of the
suitors as well as their horsemanship and speed of foot. Speaking of
King’s County, Ireland, in the latter part of the eighteenth century,
Arthur Young says: “There is a very ancient custom here, for a number of
country neighbours among the poor people, to fix upon some young woman
that ought, as they think, to be married; they also agree upon a young
fellow as a proper husband for her; this determined, they send to the
fair one’s cabin to inform her that on the Sunday following ‘she is to
be horsed,’ that is, carried on men’s backs. She must then provide
whisky and cyder for a treat, as all will pay her a visit after mass for
a hurling match. As soon as she is horsed, the hurling begins, in which
the young fellow appointed for her husband has the eyes of all the
company fixed on him: if he comes off conqueror, he is certainly married
to the girl; but if another is victorious, he as certainly loses her,
for she is the prize of the victor. These trials are not always finished
in one Sunday, they take sometimes two or three, and the common
expression when they are over is, that ‘such a girl was goal’d.’
Sometimes one barony hurls against another, but a marriageable girl is
always the prize. Hurling is a sort of cricket, but instead of throwing
the ball in order to knock down a wicket, the aim is to pass it through
a bent stick, the ends stuck in the ground.”[1000] In the great Indian
epic the _Mahabharata_ it is [Sidenote: The Indian _Svayamvara_.]
related that the hand of the lovely Princess Draupadi or Krishna,
daughter of the King of the Panchalas, was only to be won by him who
could bend a certain mighty bow and shoot five arrows through a
revolving wheel so as to hit the target beyond. After many noble wooers
had essayed the task in vain, the disguised Arjun was successful, and
carried off the princess to be the wife of himself and his four
brothers.[1001] This was an instance of the ancient Indian practice of
_Svayamvara_, in accordance with which a maiden of high rank either
chose her husband from among her assembled suitors or was offered as the
prize to the conqueror in a trial of skill. The custom was occasionally
observed among the Rajputs down to a late time.[1002] The Tartar king
Caidu, the cousin and opponent of Cublay Khan, is said to have had a
beautiful daughter named Aijaruc, or “the Bright Moon,” who was so tall
and brawny that she outdid all men in her father’s realm in feats of
strength. She vowed she would never marry till she found a man who could
vanquish her in wrestling. Many noble suitors came and tried a fall with
her, but she threw them all; and from every one whom she had overcome
she exacted a hundred horses. In this way she collected an immense
stud.[1003] In the _Nibelungenlied_ the fair Brunhild, Queen of Iceland,
was only to be won in marriage by him who could beat her in three trials
of strength, and the unsuccessful wooers forfeited their heads. Many had
thus perished, but at last Gunther, King of the Burgundians, vanquished
and married her.[1004] It is said that Sithon, King of the Odomanti in
Thrace, had a lovely daughter, Pallene, and that many [Sidenote:
Hippoclides at Sicyon, and how he danced away his marriage.] men came
a-wooing her not only from Thrace but from Illyria and the country of
the Don. But her father said that he who would wed his daughter must
first fight himself and pay with his life the penalty of defeat. Thus he
slew many young men. But when he was grown old and his strength had
failed, he set two of the wooers, by name Dryas and Clitus, to fight
each other for the kingdom and the hand of the princess. The combat was
to take place in chariots, but the princess, being in love with Clitus,
bribed his rival’s charioteer to put no pins in the wheels of his
chariot; so Dryas came to the ground, and Clitus slew him and married
the king’s daughter.[1005] The tale agrees closely with that of Pelops
and Hippodamia. Both stories probably contain, in a legendary form,
reminiscences of a real custom. Within historical times Clisthenes,
tyrant of Sicyon, made public proclamation at the Olympian games that he
would give his daughter Agariste in marriage to that suitor who, during
a year’s trial, should prove himself the best. So many young men who
prided themselves on their persons and on their lineage assembled at
Sicyon from all parts of the Greek world. The tyrant had a racecourse
and a wrestling school made on purpose for them, and there he put them
through their paces. Of all the suitors none pleased him so much as
Hippoclides, the handsomest and richest man of Athens, a scion of the
old princely house of Cypselus. And when the year was up and the day had
come on which the award was to be made, the tyrant sacrificed a hundred
oxen and entertained the suitors and all the people of Sicyon at a
splendid banquet. Dinner being over, the wine went round and the suitors
fell to wrangling as to their accomplishments and their wit. In this
feast of reason the gay Hippoclides outshone himself and them all until,
flushed with triumph and liquor, he jumped on a table, danced to music,
and then, as a finishing touch, stood on his head and sawed the air with
his legs. This was too much. The tyrant in disgust told him he had
danced away his marriage.[1006]
[Sidenote: The annual flight of the king (_regifugium_) at Rome may have
been a relic of his contest for the kingdom and for the hand of the
princess.] 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.[1007] 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_), 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.[1008] 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.[1009] 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.
[Sidenote: The theory is confirmed by the evidence that at the
Saturnalia a man used to personate the god Saturn and to be put to death
in that character.] 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. Now this theory is to a certain extent
remarkably confirmed by an ancient account of the Saturnalia which was
discovered and published some years ago by a learned Belgian scholar,
Professor Franz Cumont of Ghent. From that account we learn that down to
the beginning of the fourth century of our era, that is, down nearly to
the establishment of Christianity by Constantine, the Roman soldiers
stationed on the Danube were wont to celebrate the Saturnalia in a
barbarous fashion which must certainly have dated from a very remote
antiquity. Thirty days before the festival they chose by lot from among
themselves a young and handsome man, who was dressed in royal robes to
resemble the god Saturn. In that character he was allowed to indulge all
his passions to the fullest extent; but when his brief reign of thirty
days was over, and the festival of Saturn was come, he had to cut his
own throat on the altar of the god he personated.[1010] We can hardly
doubt that this tragic figure, whom a fatal lot doomed to masquerade for
a short time as a deity and to die as such a violent death, was the true
original of the merry monarch or King of the Saturnalia, as he was
called, whom a happier lot invested with the playful dignity of Master
of the Winter Revels.[1011] In all probability the grim predecessor of
the frolicsome King of the Saturnalia belonged to that class of puppets
who in some countries have been suffered to reign nominally for a few
days each year merely for the sake of discharging a burdensome or fatal
obligation which otherwise must have fallen on the real king.[1012] If
that is so, we may infer that the part of the god Saturn, who was
commonly spoken of as a king,[1013] was formerly played at the
Saturnalia by the Roman king himself. And a trace of the Sacred Marriage
may perhaps be detected in the licence accorded to the human
representatives of Saturn, a licence which, if I am right, is strictly
analogous to the old orgies of May Day and other similar festivals. It
is to be observed that Saturn was [Sidenote: Saturn the god of seed, and
the Saturnalia a festival of sowing.] the god of the seed, and the
Saturnalia the festival of sowing held in December,[1014] when the
autumn sowing was over and the husbandman gave himself up to a season of
jollity after the long labours of summer and autumn.[1015] On the
principles of homoeopathic magic nothing could be more natural than
that, when the last seeds had been committed to the earth, the marriage
of the powers of vegetation should be simulated by their human
representatives for the purpose of sympathetically quickening the seed.
In short, no time could be more suitable for the celebration of the
Sacred Marriage. We have seen as a matter of fact that the sowing of the
seed has often been accompanied by sexual orgies with the express
intention of thereby promoting the growth of the crops. At all events
the view that the King’s Flight at Rome was a mitigation of an old
custom of putting him to death at the end of a year’s tenure of office,
is confirmed by the practice of annually slaying a human representative
of the divine king Saturn, which survived in some parts of the Roman
empire, though not at Rome itself, down to Christian times.
[Sidenote: If the Latin kings were begotten at the licentious festival
of the Saturnalia, we could understand why their paternity was sometimes
uncertain, and why they might be of servile parentage.] This theory
would throw light on some dark passages in the legends of the Roman
kingship, such as the obscure and humble births of certain kings and
their mysterious ends. For if the sacred marriage took place at a
licentious festival like the Saturnalia, when slaves were temporarily
granted the privileges of freemen,[1016] it might well be that the
paternity of the children begotten at this time, including those of the
royal family, was a matter of uncertainty; nay, it might be known that
the king or queen had offspring by a slave. Such offspring of a royal
father and a slave mother, or of a royal mother and a slave father,
would rank as princes and princesses according as male or female kinship
prevailed. Under a system of male kinship the union of the king with a
slave woman would give birth to a Servius Tullius, and, according to one
tradition, to a Romulus. If female kinship prevailed in the royal
family, as we have seen reason to suppose, it is possible that the
stories of the birth of Romulus and Servius from slave mothers is a
later inversion of the facts, and that what really happened was that
some of the old Latin kings were begotten by slave fathers on royal
princesses at the festival of the Saturnalia. The disappearance of
female kinship would suffice to account for the warping of the
tradition. All that was distinctly remembered would be that some of the
kings had had a slave for one of their parents; and people living under
a system of paternal descent would naturally conclude that the slave
parent of a king could only be the mother, since according to their
ideas no son of a slave father could be of royal blood and sit on the
throne.[1017]
[Sidenote: The violent ends of the Roman kings.] Again, 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. Too much stress should not, however, be laid on such
legends, for in a turbulent state of society kings, like commoners, are
apt to be knocked on the head for much sounder reasons than a claim to
divinity. Still, it is worth while to note that Romulus is said to have
vanished mysteriously like Aeneas, or to have been cut to pieces by the
patricians whom he had offended,[1018] [Sidenote: Death of Romulus on
the seventh of July, the _Nonae Caprotinae_, at a festival resembling
the Saturnalia.] and that 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. Moreover, they
feasted under a wild fig-tree, made use of a rod cut from the tree for a
certain purpose, perhaps to beat each other with, and offered the milky
juice of the tree in sacrifice to Juno Caprotina, whose name appears to
mean either the goddess of the goat (_caper_) or the goddess of the wild
fig-tree, for [Sidenote: The _Nonae Caprotinae_ seems to have been the
festival of the fertilisation of the fig.] the Romans called a wild
fig-tree a goat-fig (_caprificus_). Hence the day was called the _Nonae
Caprotinae_ after the animal or the tree. The festival was not peculiar
to Rome, but was held by women throughout Latium.[1019] It can hardly be
dissociated from a custom which was observed by ancient husbandmen at
this season. They sought to fertilise the fig-trees or ripen the figs by
hanging strings of fruit from a wild fig-tree among the boughs. The
practice appears to be very old. It has been employed in Greece both in
ancient and modern times, and Roman writers often refer to it. Palladius
recommends the solstice in June, that is Midsummer Day, as the best time
for the operation; Columella prefers July.[1020] In Sicily at the
present day the operation is performed either on Midsummer Day (the
festival of St. John the Baptist) or in the early days of July;[1021] in
Morocco and North Africa generally it takes place on Midsummer
Day.[1022] The wild fig-tree is a male and the cultivated fig-tree is a
female, and the fertilisation is effected by insects, which are
engendered in the fruit of the male tree and convey the pollen to the
blossom of the female.[1023] Thus the placing of wild figs, laden with
pollen and insects, among the boughs of the cultivated fig-tree is, like
the artificial fertilisation of the date-palm,[1024] a real marriage of
the trees, and it may well have been regarded as such by the peasants of
antiquity long before the true theory of the process was discovered. Now
the fig is an [Sidenote: Importance of the fig as an article of diet.]
important article of diet in countries bordering on the Mediterranean.
In Palestine, for example, the fruit is not, as with us, merely an
agreeable luxury, but is eaten daily and forms indeed one of the staple
productions of the country. “To sit every man under his vine, and under
his fig tree” was the regular Jewish expression for the peaceable
possession of the Holy Land; and in the fable of Jotham the fig-tree is
invited by the other trees, next after the olive, to come and reign over
them.[1025] When Sandanis the Lydian attempted to dissuade Croesus from
marching against the Persians, he represented to him that there was
nothing to be gained by conquering the inhabitants of a barren country
who neither drank wine nor ate figs.[1026] An Arab commentator on the
Koran observes that “God swears by these two trees, the fig and the
olive, because among fruit-trees they surpass all the rest. They relate
that a basket of figs was offered to the prophet Mohammed, and when he
had eaten one he bade his comrades do the same, saying, ‘Truly, if I
were to say that any fruit had come down from Paradise, I would say it
of the fig.’”[1027] Hence it would be natural that a process supposed to
be essential to the ripening of so favourite a fruit should be the
occasion of a popular festival. We may suspect that the license allowed
to slave women on this day formed part of an ancient Saturnalia, at
which the loose behaviour of men and women was supposed to secure the
fertilisation of the fig-trees by homoeopathetic magic.
[Sidenote: At the festival of the seventh of July women were probably
thought to be fertilised by the fig as well as to fertilise it.] But it
is possible and indeed probable that the fertilisation was believed to
be mutual; in other words, it may have been imagined, that while the
women caused the fig-tree to bear fruit, the tree in its turn caused
them to bear children. This conjecture is confirmed by a remarkable
African parallel. The Akikuyu of British East Africa attribute to the
wild fig-tree [Sidenote: Supposed fertilisation of barren women by the
wild fig-tree among the Akikuyu of British East Africa.] the power of
fertilising barren women. For this purpose they apply the white sap or
milk to various parts of the body of the would-be mother; then, having
sacrificed a goat, they tie the woman to a wild fig-tree with long
strips cut from the intestines of the sacrificial animal. “This seems,”
writes Mr. C. W. Hobley, who reports the custom, “to be a case of the
tree marriage of India. I fancy there is an idea of ceremonial marriage
with the ancestral spirits which are said to inhabit certain of these
fig-trees; in fact it supports the Kamba idea of the spiritual
husbands.”[1028] The belief in spiritual husbands, [Sidenote: Belief of
the Akamba that the spirits of the dead live in wild fig-trees.] to
which Mr. Hobley here briefly refers, is as follows. The Akamba of
British East Africa imagine that every married woman is at the same time
the wife of a living man and also the wife of the spirit of some
departed ancestor (_aimu_). They are firmly convinced that the fertility
of a wife depends to a great extent on the attentions of her spiritual
husband, and if she does not conceive within six months after marriage
they take it as a sign that her spiritual husband is neglecting her; so
they offer beer and kill a goat as a propitiatory sacrifice. If after
that the woman still remains barren, they make a bigger feast and kill a
bullock. On the other hand, if a wife is found to be with child soon
after marriage, they are glad and consider it a proof that she has found
favour in the eyes of her ghostly husband. Further, they believe that at
death the human spirit quits the bodily frame and takes up its abode in
a wild fig-tree (_mumbo_); hence they build miniature huts at the foot
of those fig-trees which are thought to be haunted by the souls of the
dead, and they periodically sacrifice to these spirits.[1029]
Accordingly, we may conjecture, though we are not told, that amongst the
Akamba, as among the Akikuyu, a barren woman sometimes resorts to a wild
fig-tree in order to obtain a child, since she believes that her
spiritual spouse has his abode in the tree. The Akikuyu clearly
attribute a special power of fertilisation to the milky sap of the tree,
since they apply it to various parts of the woman who desires to become
a mother: perhaps they regard it as the seed of the fig. This may
explain why the Roman slave-women offered the milky juice of the tree to
Juno Caprotina; they may have intended thereby to add to the fecundity
of the mother goddess. And we can scarcely doubt that the rods which
they cut from the wild fig-tree, for the purpose apparently of beating
each other, were supposed to communicate the generative virtue of the
tree to the women who [Sidenote: Supposed fertilisation of women by the
wild banana-tree among the Baganda.] were struck by them. The Baganda of
Central Africa appear to ascribe to the wild banana-tree the same power
of removing barrenness which the Akikuyu attribute to the wild fig-tree.
For when a wife has no child, she and her husband will sometimes repair
to a wild banana-tree and there, standing one on each side of the tree,
partake of the male organs of a goat, the man eating the flesh and
drinking the soup and the woman drinking the soup only. This is believed
to ensure conception after the husband has gone in to his wife.[1030]
Here again, as among the Akikuyu, we see that the fertilising virtue of
the tree is reinforced by the fertilising virtue of the goat; and we can
therefore better understand why the Romans called the male wild fig-tree
“goat-fig,” and why the Messenians dubbed it simply “he-goat.”
[Sidenote: The Roman king may have celebrated a sacred marriage on the
_Nonae Caprotinae_ as a charm to make the fig-trees bear fruit.] The
association of the death of Romulus with the festival of the wild
fig-tree can hardly be accidental, especially as he and his twin-brother
Remus were said to have been suckled by the she-wolf under a fig-tree,
the famous _ficus Ruminalis_, which was shewn in the forum as one of the
sacred objects of Rome and received offerings of milk down to late
times.[1031] Indeed, some have gone so far both in ancient and modern
times as to derive the names of Romulus and Rome itself from this
fig-tree (_ficus Ruminalis_); if they are right, Romulus was “the
fig-man” and Rome “the fig-town.”[1032] Be that as it may, the clue to
the association of Romulus with the fig is probably furnished by the old
belief that the king is responsible for the fruits of the earth and the
rain from heaven. We may conjecture that on this principle the Roman
king was expected to make the fig-trees blossom and bear figs, and that
in order to do so he masqueraded as the god of the fig-tree and went
through a form of sacred marriage, either with his queen or with a
slave-woman, on the July day when the husbandmen resorted to a more
efficacious means of producing the same result. The ceremony of the
sacred marriage need not have been restricted to a single day in the
year. It may well have been repeated for many different crops and
fruits. If the Queen of Athens was annually married to the god of the
vine, why should not the King of Rome have annually wedded the goddess
of the fig?
[Sidenote: The marriage of the divine king or human god often followed
by his death.] But, as we have seen, Romulus, the first king of Rome, is
said to have perished on the day of this festival of the fig, which, if
our hypothesis is correct, was also the day of his ceremonial marriage
to the tree. That the real date of his death should have been preserved
by tradition is very improbable; rather we may suppose that the reason
for dating his death and his marriage on the same day was drawn from
some ancient ritual in which the two events were actually associated.
But we have still to ask, Why should the king’s wedding-day be also the
day of his death? The answer must be deferred for the present. All we
need say now is that elsewhere the marriage of the divine king or human
god has been regularly followed at a brief interval by his violent end.
For him, as for others, death often treads on the heels of love.[1033]
[Sidenote: Violent ends of Tatius, Tullus Hostilius, and other Roman
kings.] 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.[1034] 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.[1035] 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.”[1036] This implies that
King Ancus Marcius, as well as Tarquin the Elder and Servius Tullius,
perished by the hand of an assassin. No other ancient historian, so far
as I know, records this of Ancus Marcius, though one of them says that
the king “was carried off by an untimely death.”[1037] Tarquin the Elder
was slain by two murderers whom the sons of his predecessor, Ancus
Marcius, had hired to do the deed.[1038] Lastly, Servius Tullius came by
his end in circumstances which recall the combat for the priesthood of
Diana at Nemi. He was attacked by his successor and killed by his
orders, though not by his hand. Moreover, he lived among the oak groves
of the Esquiline Hill at the head of the Slope of Virbius, and it was
here, beside a sanctuary of Diana, that he was slain.[1039]
[Sidenote: The succession to the Latin kingshipmay sometimes have been
decided by single combat.] 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.[1040] “Any one who
remembers how in the forests of Westphalia the _Femgericht_ set the
modern civil law at defiance down into the eighteenth century, and how
in the mountains of Corsica and Sardinia blood-revenge has persisted and
persists to our own days, will not wonder that hardly a century after
the union of Italy the Roman legislation had not yet succeeded in
putting down the last relics of this ancient Italian or rather
Indo-European mode of doing justice in the nests of the
Apennines.”[1041]
[Sidenote: Combats for the kingdom in Africa.] A parallel to what I
conceive to have been the rule of the old Latin kingship is furnished by
a West African custom of to-day. When the Maluango or king of Loango,
who is deemed the representative of God on earth, has been elected, he
has to take his stand at _Nkumbi_, a large tree near the entrance to his
sacred ground. Here, encouraged by one of his ministers, he must fight
all rivals who present themselves to dispute his right to the
throne.[1042] This is one of the many instances in which the rites and
legends of ancient Italy are illustrated by the practice of modern
Africa. Similarly among the Banyoro of Central Africa, whose king had to
take his life with his own hand whenever his health and strength began
to fail, the succession to the throne was determined by a mortal combat
among the claimants, who fought till only one of them was left
alive.[1043] Even in England a relic of a similar custom survived till
lately in the coronation ceremony, at which a champion used to throw
down his glove and challenge to mortal combat all who disputed the
king’s right to the crown. The ceremony was witnessed by Pepys at the
coronation of Charles the Second.[1044]
[Sidenote: In Greece and Italy kings probably personated Cronus and
Saturn, the god of the seed, before they personated Zeus and Jupiter,
the god of the oak.] In the foregoing enquiry we have found reason to
suppose that the Roman kings personated not only Jupiter the god of the
oak, but Saturn the god of the seed and perhaps also the god of the
fig-tree. The question naturally arises, Did they do so simultaneously
or successively? In other words, did the same king regularly represent
the oak-god at one season of the year, the seed-god at another, and the
fig-god at a third? or were there separate dynasties of oak-kings,
seed-kings, and fig-kings, who belonged perhaps to different stocks and
reigned at different times? The evidence does not allow us to answer
these questions definitely. But tradition certainly points to the
conclusion that in Latium and perhaps in Italy generally the seed-god
Saturn was an older deity than the oak-god Jupiter, just as in Greece
Cronus appears to have preceded Zeus. Perhaps Saturn and Cronus were the
gods of an old indigenous and agricultural people; while Jupiter and
Zeus were the divinities of a ruder invading race, which swarmed down
into Italy and Greece from the forests of central Europe, bringing their
wild woodland deities to dwell in more fertile lands, under softer
skies, side by side with the gods of the corn and the vine, the olive
and the fig. If that was so, we may suppose that before the irruption of
these northern barbarians the old kings of Greece and Italy personated
the gods of the fat field and fruitful orchard, and that it was not till
after the conquest that their successors learned to pose as the god of
the verdant oak and the thundering sky. However, on questions so obscure
we must be content to suspend our judgment. It is unlikely that the
student’s search-light will ever pierce the mists that hang over these
remote ages. All that we can do is to follow the lines of evidence
backward as far as they can be traced, till, after growing fainter and
fainter, they are lost altogether in the darkness.
Footnote 866:
J. Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., 237, 321; C.
Julian, in Daremberg et Saglio, _Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques
et romaines_, ii. 1173. As to Vesta and the Vestals, see above, vol.
i. pp. 13 _sq._
Footnote 867:
C. Julian, _l.c._
Footnote 868:
See above, p. 186 note 1.
Footnote 869:
Above, pp. 261-263.
Footnote 870:
Diodorus Siculus, xvii. 114.
Footnote 871:
Thus in some African tribes the household fire is put out after a
death, and afterwards relit by the friction of sticks (Sir H. H.
Johnston, _British Central Africa_, p. 439; L. Concradt, “Die Ngumbu
in Südkamerun,” _Globus_, lxxxi, (1902) p. 352). In Laos the fire on
the hearth is extinguished after a death and the ashes are scattered;
afterwards a new fire is obtained from a neighbour (Tournier, _Notice
sur le Laos français_, p. 68). A custom of the same sort is observed
in Burma, but there the new fire must be bought (C. J. F. S. Forbes,
_British Burma_, p. 94). Among the Miris of Assam the new fire is made
by the widow or widower (W. H. Furness, in _Journal of the Anthrop.
Institute_, xxxii. (1902) p. 462). In Armenia it is made by flint and
steel (M. Abeghian, _Der armenische Volksglaube_, p. 71). In Argos
fire was extinguished after a death, and fresh fire obtained from a
neighbour (Plutarch, _Quaest. Graec._ 24). In the Highlands of
Scotland all fires were put out in a house where there was a corpse
(Pennant’s “Tour in Scotland,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_,
iii. 49). Amongst the Bogos of East Africa no fire may be lit in a
house after a death until the body has been carried out (W. Munzinger,
_Sitten und Recht der Bogos_, p. 67). In the Pelew Islands, when a
death has taken place, fire is transferred from the house to a shed
erected beside it (J. S. Kubary, “Die Todtenbestattung auf den
Pelau-Inseln,” _Original-Mittheilungen aus der Ethnologischen
Abtheilung der Königlichen Museen zu Berlin_, i. 7). In the Marquesas
Islands fires were extinguished after a death (Vincendon-Dumoulin et
Desgraz, _Iles Marquises_, p. 251). Among the Indians of Peru and the
Moors of Algiers no fire might be lighted for several days in a house
where a death had occurred (Cieza de Leon, _Travels_, Markham’s
translation, p. 366; Dapper, _Description de l’Afrique_, p. 176). The
same custom is reported of the Mohammedans of India (Mandelsloe, in J.
Harris’s _Voyages and Travels_, i. (London, 1744) p. 770). In the East
Indian island of Wetter no fire may burn in a house for three days
after a death, and according to Bastian the reason is the one given in
the text, to wit, a fear that the ghost might fall into it and hurt
himself (A. Bastian, _Indonesien_, ii. 60). For more evidence, see my
article “On certain Burial Customs,” _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, xv. (1886) p. 90.
Footnote 872:
For the list of the Alban kings see Livy, i. 3. 5-11; Ovid, _Fasti_,
iv. 39-56; _id._, _Metam._ xiv. 609 _sqq._; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_Antiquit. Rom._ i. 70 _sq._; Eusebius, _Chronic._ bk. i. vol. i.
coll. 273, 275, 285, 287, 289, 291, ed. A. Schoene; Diodorus Siculus,
vii. 3rd ed. L. Dindorf; Sextus Aurelius Victor, _Origo gentis
Romanae_, 17-19; Zonaras, _Annales_, vii. 1.
Footnote 873:
See B. G. Niebuhr, _History of Rome_, i. 205-207; A. Schwegler,
_Römische Geschichte_, i. 339, 342-345. However, Niebuhr admits that
some of the names may have been taken from older legends.
Footnote 874:
H. M. Stanley, _Through the Dark Continent_ (London, 1878), i. 380; C.
T. Wilson and R. W. Felkin, _Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan_ (London,
1882), i. 197; Fr. Stuhlman, _Mit Emin Pascha ins Herz von Afrika_
(Berlin, 1894), pp. 192 _sq._; J. Roscoe, “Farther Notes on the
Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, xxxii. (1902) p. 25, with plates i. and ii.; Sir Harry
Johnston, _The Uganda Protectorate_, ii. 681 _sq._
Footnote 875:
Romulus and Tatius reigned for a time together; after Romulus the
kings were, in order of succession, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius,
Ancus Marcius, the elder Tarquin, Servius Tullius, and Tarquin the
Proud.
Footnote 876:
See A. Schwegler, _Römische Geschichte_, i. 579 _sq._
Footnote 877:
According to one account, Romulus had a son and a daughter (Plutarch,
_Romulus_, 14). Some held that Numa had four sons (Plutarch, _Numa_,
21). Ancus Marcius left two sons (Livy, i. 35. 1, i. 40; Dionysius
Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ iii. 72 _sq._, iv. 34. 3). Tarquin the
Elder left two sons or grandsons (Livy, i. 46; Dionysius Halic., _Ant.
Rom._ iv. 6 _sq._ iv. 28).
Footnote 878:
Pompilia, the mother of Ancus Marcius, was a daughter of Numa. See
Cicero, _De re publica_, ii. 18. 33; Livy, i. 32. 1; Dionysius
Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ ii. 76. 5, iii. 35. 3, iii. 36. 2;
Plutarch, _Numa_, 21.
Footnote 879:
Numa married Tatia, the daughter of Tatius (Plutarch, _Numa_, 3 and
21); Servius Tullius married the daughter of the elder Tarquin (Livy,
i. 39. 4); and Tarquin the Proud married Tullia the daughter of
Servius Tullius (Livy, i. 42. 1, i. 46. 5).
Footnote 880:
Numa was a Sabine from Cures (Livy, i. 18; Plutarch, _Numa_, 3;
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ ii. 58); Servius Tullius,
according to the common account, was the son of Ocrisia, a slave woman
of Corniculum (Livy, i. 39. 5; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._
iv. 1.), but according to another account he was an Etruscan (see
above, p. 196 note); and Tarquin the Proud was a son of the elder
Tarquin, who was an Etruscan from Tarquinii (Livy, i. 34; Cicero, _De
re publica_, ii. 19 _sq._, §§ 34 _sq._). The foreign birth of their
kings naturally struck the Romans themselves. See the speech put by
Livy (i. 35. 3), in the mouth of the elder Tarquin: _“Se non rem novam
petere, quippe qui non primus, quod quisquam indignari mirarive
posset, sed tertius Romae peregrinus regnum adfectet; et Tatium non ex
peregrino solum sed etiam ex hoste regem factum, et Numam ignarum
urbis non petentem in regnum ultro accitum: se, ex quo sui potens
fuerit, Romam cum conjuge ac fortunis omnibus commigrasse._” And see a
passage in a speech actually spoken by the Emperor Claudius: “_Quondam
reges hanc tenuere urbem, nec tamen domesticis successoribus eam
tradere contigit. Supervenere alieni et quidem externi, ut Numa Romulo
successerit ex Sabinis veniens, vicinus quidem sed tunec externus_,”
etc. The speech is engraved on bronze tablets found at Lyons. See
Tacitus, ed. Baiter and Orelli, i. 2nd Ed., p. 342.
Footnote 881:
“In Ceylon, where the higher and lower polyandry co-exist, marriage is
of two sorts—Deega or Beena—according as the wife goes to live in the
house and village of her husbands, or as the husband or husbands come
to live with her in or near the house of her birth” (J. F. McLennan,
_Studies in Ancient History_ (London, 1886), p. 101).
Footnote 882:
The system of mother-kin, that is, of tracing descent through females
instead of through males, is often called the matriarchate. But this
term is inappropriate and misleading, as it implies that under the
system in question the women govern the men. Even when the so-called
matriarchate regulates the descent of the kingdom, this does not mean
that the women of the royal family reign; it only means that they are
the channel through which the kingship is transmitted to their
husbands or sons.
Footnote 883:
Ancient writers repeatedly speak of the uncertainty as to the fathers
of the Roman kings. See Livy, i. 4. 2; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_Ant. Rom._ ii. 2. 3; Cicero, _De re publica_, ii. 18. 33; Seneca,
_Epist._ cviii. 30; Aelian, _Var. Hist._ xiv. 36.
Footnote 884:
Ovid, _Fasti_, vi. 773-784; Varro, _De lingua Latina_, vi. 17. Compare
L. Preller, _Römische Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., ii. 180 _sq._
Footnote 885:
See _The Golden Bough_, Second Edition, iii. 266 _sqq._, 328 _sqq._
Footnote 886:
See _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, Second Edition, pp. 203 _sqq._; _The
Golden Bough_, Second Edition, iii. 318 _sq._
Footnote 887:
Plutarch, _Numa_, 3.
Footnote 888:
T. E. Bowdich, _Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee_, New
Edition (London, 1873), pp. 185, 204 _sq._; A. B. Ellis, _The
Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast_, pp. 287, 297 _sq._; _id._,
_The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, p. 187.
Footnote 889:
J. Roscoe, “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,”
_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxii. (1902) pp. 36, 67.
In Benin “the legitimate daughters of a king did not _marry_ any one,
but bestowed their favours as they pleased.” (Mr. C. Punch, in H. Ling
Roth’s _Great Benin_ (Halifax, England, 1903), p. 37).
Footnote 890:
C. T. Wilson and R. W. Felkin, _Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan_
(London, 1882), i. 200; J. Roscoe, “Further Notes on the Manners and
Customs of the Baganda,” _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_,
xxxii. (1902) p. 67.
Footnote 891:
J. Roscoe, _op. cit._ pp. 27, 62. Mr. Roscoe says: “The royal family
traces its pedigree through the maternal clan, but the nation through
the paternal clan.” But he here refers to the descent of the totem
only. That the throne descends from father to son is proved by the
genealogical tables which he gives (Plates I. and II.).
Footnote 892:
Proyart’s “History of Loango,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_,
xvi. 570, 579 _sq._; L. Degrandpré, _Voyage à la côte occidentale
d’Afrique_ (Paris, 1801), pp. 110-114; A. Bastian, _Die deutsche
Expedition an der Loango Küste_, i. 197 _sqq._ Time seems not to have
mitigated the lot of these unhappy prince consorts. See R. E. Dennett,
_At the Back of the Black Man’s Mind_ (London, 1906), pp. 36 _sq._,
134. Mr. Dennett says that the husband of a princess is virtually her
slave and may be put to death by her. All the sisters of the King of
Loango enjoy these arbitrary rights over their husbands, and the
offspring of any of them may become king.
Footnote 893:
Father Guillemé, “Au Bengouéolo,” _Missions Catholiques_, xxxiv.
(1902) p. 16. The writer visited the state and had an interview with
the queen, a woman of gigantic stature, wearing many amulets.
Footnote 894:
Pausanias, i. 2. 6.
Footnote 895:
Pausanias, ii. 29. 4. I have to thank Mr. H. M. Chadwick for pointing
out the following Greek and Swedish parallels to what I conceive to
have been the Latin practice.
Footnote 896:
Diodorus Siculus, iv. 72. 7. According to Apollodorus (iii. 12. 7),
Cychreus, King of Salamis, died childless, and bequeathed his kingdom
to Telamon.
Footnote 897:
J. Tzetzes, _Schol. on Lycophron_, 450. Compare Pausanias, ii. 29. 4.
Footnote 898:
Apollodorus, iii. 13. 1. According to Diodorus Siculus (iv. 72. 6),
the king of Phthia was childless, and bequeathed his kingdom to
Peleus.
Footnote 899:
Apollodorus, iii. 13. 8; Hyginus, _Fabulae_, 96.
Footnote 900:
Pausanias, i. 11. 1 _sq._; Justin, xvii. 3.
Footnote 901:
Apollodorus, i. 8. 5.
Footnote 902:
Antoninus Liberalis, _Transform._ 37; Ovid, _Metam._ xiv. 459 _sq._,
510 _sq._ Compare Virgil, _Aen._ xi. 243 _sqq._
Footnote 903:
Diodorus, iv. 73; Hyginus, _Fabulae_, 82-84; Servius, on Virgil,
_Georg._ iii. 7.
Footnote 904:
Thucydides, i. 9; Strabo, viii. 6. 19, p. 377.
Footnote 905:
Apollodorus, iii. 10. 8.
Footnote 906:
Schol. on Euripides, _Orestes_, 46; Pindar, _Pyth._ xi. 31 _sq._;
Pausanias, iii. 19. 6.
Footnote 907:
H. M. Chadwick, _The Origin of the English Nation_ (Cambridge, 1907),
pp. 332 _sq._ In treating of the succession to the kingdom in
Scandinavia, the late K. Maurer, one of the highest authorities on old
Norse law, also remarked that “some ancient authorities
(_Quellenberichte_) profess to know of a certain right of succession
accorded to women, in virtue of which under certain circumstances,
though they could not themselves succeed to the kingdom, they
nevertheless could convey it to their husbands.” And he cites a number
of instances, how one king (Eysteinn Halfdanarson) succeeded his
father-in-law (Eirikr Agnarsson) on the throne; how another (Gudrodr
Halfdanarson) received with his wife Alfhildr a portion of her
father’s kingdom; and so on. See K. Maurer, _Vorlesungen über
altnordische Rechtsgeschichte_, i. (Leipsic, 1907) pp. 233 _sq._
Footnote 908:
G. W. Dasent, _Popular Tales from the Norse_, pp. 131 _sqq._; S.
Grundtvig, _Dänische Volksmärchen_, First Series (Leipsic, 1878), pp.
285 _sqq._ (Leo’s German translation); Cavallius und Stephens,
_Schwedische Volkssagen und Märchen_, No. 4, pp. 62 _sqq._
(Oberleitner’s German translation); Grimm, _Household Tales_, No. 60;
Kuhn und Schwartz, _Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche_, pp.
340 _sqq._; J. W. Wolf, _Deutsche Hausmärchen_, pp. 372 _sqq._; Philo
vom Walde, _Schlesien in Sage und Brauch_, pp. 81 _sqq._; I. V.
Zingerle, _Kinder- und Hausmärchen aus Tirol_, No. 8, pp. 35 _sqq._
No. 35, pp. 178 _sqq._; J. Haltrich, _Deutsche Volksmärchen aus dem
Sachsenlande in Siebenbürgen_, 4th ed., No. 15, pp. 103 _sqq._; J. F.
Campbell, _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, No. 4, vol. i. pp. 77
_sqq._; A. Schleicher, _Litauische Märchen, Sprichwörte, Rätsel und
Lieder_, pp. 57 _sqq._; A. Leskien und K. Brugmann, _Litauische
Volkslieder und Märchen_, No. 14, pp. 404 _sqq._; Basile,
_Pentamerone_, First day, seventh tale, vol. i. pp. 97 _sqq._
(Liebrecht’s German translation); E. Legrand, _Contes populaires
grecques_, pp. 169 _sqq._; J. G. von Hahn, _Griechische und
albanesische Märchen_, No. 98, vol. ii. pp. 114 _sq._; A. und A.
Schott, _Walachische Maehrchen_, No. 10, pp. 140 _sqq._; W. Webster,
_Basque Legends_, pp. 36-38; A. Schiefner, _Awarische Texte_ (St.
Petersburg, 1873), No. 2, pp. 21 _sqq._; J. Rivière, _Contes
populaires de la Kabylie_, pp. 195-197.
Footnote 909:
Saxo Grammaticus, _Historia Danica_, bk. iv. p. 126 (Elton’s
translation). The passage occurs on p. 158 of P. E. Müller’s edition
of Saxo.
Footnote 910:
The story of Hamlet (Amleth) is told, in a striking form, by Saxo
Grammaticus in the third and fourth books of his history. Mr. H. M.
Chadwick tells me that Hamlet stands on the border-line between legend
and history. Hence the main outlines of his story may be correct.
Footnote 911:
Herodotus, i. 7-13.
Footnote 912:
Nicolaus Damascenus, vi. frag. 49, in _Fragmenta Historicorum
Graecorum_, ed. C. Müller, iii. 380.
Footnote 913:
Athenaeus, xii. 11, pp. 515 F-516 B; Apollodorus, ii. 6. 3; Diodorus
Siculus, iv. 31; Joannes Lydus, _De magistratibus_, iii. 64; Lucian,
_Dialogi deorum_, xiii. 2; Ovid, _Heroides_, ix. 55 _sqq._; Statius,
_Theb._ x. 646-649.
Footnote 914:
Athenaeus, _l.c._
Footnote 915:
Herodotus, i. 93; Clearchus, quoted by Athenaeus, xii. 11, p. 516 A B.
The Armenians also prostituted their daughters before marriage,
dedicating them for a long time to the profligate worship of the
goddess Anaitis (Strabo, xi. 14. 16, p. 532 _sq._). The custom was
probably practised as a charm to secure the fertility of the earth as
well as of man and beast. See _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, Second Edition,
pp. 32 _sqq._
Footnote 916:
Herodotus, i. 7.
Footnote 917:
Clearchus, quoted by Athenaeus, xiii. 31, p. 573 A B.
Footnote 918:
See E. A. Freeman, _History of the Norman Conquest of England_, i. 3rd
Ed., 410-412, 733-737. I am indebted to my friend Mr. H. M. Chadwick
both for the fact and its explanation.
Footnote 919:
Procopius, _De bello Gothico_, iv. 20 (vol. ii. p. 593, ed. J. Haury).
This and the following cases of marriage with a stepmother are cited
by K. Weinhold, _Deutsche Frauen_ 2nd Ed., (Vienna, 1882), ii. 359
_sq._
Footnote 920:
Bede, _Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_, ii. 5. 102; compare i.
27. 63.
Footnote 921:
Prudentius Trecensis, “Annales,” anno 858, in Pertz’s _Monumenta
Germaniae historica_, i. 451; Ingulfus, _Historia_, quoted _ibid._
Footnote 922:
This is in substance the view of Dr. W. E. Hearn (_The Aryan
House-hold_, pp. 150-155) and of Prof. B. Delbrück (“Das Mutterrecht
bei den Indogermanen,” _Preussische Jahrbücher_, lxxix. (1895) pp.
14-27).
Footnote 923:
Clearchus of Soli, quoted by Athenaeus, xiii. 2. p. 555 D; John of
Antioch, in _Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum_, ed. C. Müller, iv.
547; Charax of Pergamus _ib._ iii. 638; J. Tzetzes, _Schol. on
Lycophron_, 111; _id._, _Chiliades_, v. 650-665; Suidas, _s.v._
Κέκροψ; Justin, ii. 6. 7.
Footnote 924:
Ὁ μὲν οὖν ἀθηναῖος Σόλων ὁμοπατρίους ἐφεὶς ἄγεσθαι, τὰς ὁμομητρίους
ἐκώλυσεν, ὁ δὲ Λακεδαιμονίων νομοθέτης ἔμπαλιν, τὸν ἐπὶ ταῖς
ὁμογαστρίοις γάμον ἐπιτρέψας, τὸν πρὸς τὰς ὁμοπατρίους ἀπεῖπεν, Philo
Judaeus, _De specialibus legibus_, vol. ii. p. 303, ed. Th. Mangey.
See also Plutarch, _Themistocles_, 32; Cornelius Nepos, _Cimon_, 1;
Schol. on Aristophanes, _Clouds_, 1371; L. Beauchet, _Histoire du
droit privé de la République Athénienne_, i. (Paris, 1897) pp. 165
_sqq._ Compare Minucius Felix, _Octavius_, 31.
Footnote 925:
Polybius, xii. 5.
Footnote 926:
Strabo, xiii. 1. 40, pp. 600 _sq._; Plutarch, _De sera numinis
vindicta_, 12; and especially Lycophron, _Cassandra_, 1141 _sqq._,
with the scholia of J. Tzetzes, who refers to Timaeus and Callimachus
as his authorities.
Footnote 927:
Justin, xxi. 3. 1-6.
Footnote 928:
Strabo, iii. 4. 18.
Footnote 929:
Tacitus, _Germania_, 20. Compare L. Dargun, _Mutterrecht und Raubehe
und ihre Reste im germanischen Recht und Leben_ (Breslau, 1883), pp.
21 _sq._
Footnote 930:
A. Giraud-Teulon, _Les Origines du mariage et de la famille_, pp. 206
_sqq._; A. H. Post, _Afrikanische Jurisprudenz_, i. 13 _sqq._; Sir
Harry H. Johnston, _British Central Africa_, p. 471; A. B. Ellis, _The
Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast_, pp. 297 _sq._; _id._, _The
Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, pp. 207 _sqq._ Much more
evidence will be found in my _Totemism and Exogamy_.
Footnote 931:
R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 50, note 2.
Footnote 932:
Tacitus, _Germania_, 20.
Footnote 933:
A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 286 _sqq._
The _reipus_ or payment made on the remarriage of a widow is discussed
by L. Dargun, _op. cit._ pp. 141-152.
Footnote 934:
W. F. Skene held that the Picts were Celts. See his _Celtic Scotland_,
i. 194-227. On the other hand, H. Zimmer supposes them to have been
the pre-Celtic inhabitants of the British Islands. See his paper “Das
Mutterrecht der Pikten,” _Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für
Rechtsgeschichte_, xv. (1894) Romanistische Abtheilung, pp. 209 _sqq._
Footnote 935:
“_Cumque uxores Picti non habentes peterent a Scottis, ea solum
conditione dare consenserunt, ut ubi res perveniret in dubium, magis
de feminea regum prosapia quam de masculina regem sibi eligerent; quod
usque hodie apud Pictos constat esse servatum_,” Bede, _Historia
ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_, ii. 1. 7.
Footnote 936:
W. F. Skene, _Celtic Scotland_, i. 232-235; J. F. McLennan, _Studies
in Ancient History_ (London, 1886), pp. 68-70; H. Zimmer, _loc. cit._
Footnote 937:
K. O. Müller, _Die Etrusker_ (Stuttgart, 1877), ii. 376 _sq._; J. J.
Bachofen, _Die Sage von Tanaquil_ (Heidelberg, 1870), pp. 282-290.
Footnote 938:
Θεόπομπος δ’ ἐν τῇ τεσσαρακοστῇ τρίτῃ τῶν ἱστοριῶν καὶ νόμον εἶναί
φησι παρὰ τοῖς Τυρρηνοῖς κοινὰς ὑπάρχειν τὰς γυναῖκας ... τρέφειν δὲ
τοὺς Τυρρηνοὺς πάντα τὰ γινόμενα παιδία, οὐκ εἰδότας ὅτου πάτρος ἐστὶν
ἕκαστον, Athenaeus, xii. 14, p. 517 D E.
Footnote 939:
“_Non enim hic, ubi ex Tusco modo Tute tibi indigne dotem quaeras
corpore_” (Plautus, _Cistellaria_, ii. 3. 20 _sq._).
Footnote 940:
Herodotus, i. 94; Strabo, v. 2. 2, p. 219; Tacitus, _Annals_, iv. 55;
Timaeus, cited by Tertullian, _De spectaculis_, 5; Festus, _s.v._
“Turannos,” p. 355, ed. C. O. Müller; Plutarch, _Romulus_, 2; Velleius
Paterculus, i. 1. 4; Justin, xx. 1. 7; Valerius Maximus, ii. 4. 4;
Servius, on Virgil, _Aen._ i. 67. On the other hand, Dionysius of
Halicarnassus held that the Etruscans were an indigenous Italian race,
differing from all other known peoples in language and customs (_Ant.
Rom._ i. 26-30). On this much-vexed question, see K. O. Müller, _Die
Etrusker_ (Stuttgart, 1877), i. 65 _sqq._; G. Dennis, _Cities and
Cemeteries of Etruria_, 3rd Ed., i. pp. xxxiii. _sqq._; F. Hommel,
_Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte des Alten Orients_, 2nd Ed.,
pp. 63 _sqq._ (in Iwan von Müller’s _Handbuch der klassischen
Altertumswissenschaft_, vol. iii.).
Footnote 941:
It is doubtful whether Servius Tullius was a Latin or an Etruscan. See
above, p. 195, note 1.
Footnote 942:
“All over India the hedge-priest is very often an autochthon, his long
residence in the land being supposed to confer upon him the knowledge
of the character and peculiarities of the local gods, and to teach him
the proper mode in which they may be conciliated. Thus the Doms
preserve to the present day the animistic and demonistic beliefs of
the aboriginal races, which the Khasiyas, who have succeeded them,
temper with the worship of the village deities, the named and
localised divine entities, with the occasional languid cult of the
greater Hindu gods. The propitiation of the vague spirits of wood, or
cliff, river or lake, they are satisfied to leave in charge of their
serfs” (W. Crooke, _Natives of Northern India_, London, 1907, pp. 104
_sq._). When the Israelites had been carried away captives into
Assyria, the new settlers in the desolate land of Israel were attacked
by lions, which they supposed to be sent against them by the god of
the country because, as strangers, they did not know how to propitiate
him. So they petitioned the king of Assyria and he sent them a native
Israelitish priest, who taught them how to worship the God of Israel.
See 2 Kings xvii. 24-28.
Footnote 943:
H. Jordan, _Die Könige im alten Italien_ (Berlin, 1884), pp. 15-25.
Footnote 944:
Livy, i. 56. 7; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ iv. 68. 1.
Footnote 945:
Livy, i. 34. 2 _sq._, i. 38. 1, i. 57. 6; Dionysius Halicarnasensis,
_Ant. Rom._ iv. 64.
Footnote 946:
I owe to Mr. A. B. Cook the interesting suggestion that the double
consulship was a revival of a double kingship.
Footnote 947:
As to the _Regifugium_ see below, pp. 308-310.
Footnote 948:
Pausanias, iv. 5. 10; G. Gilbert, _Handbuch der griech.
Staatsalterthümer_, i. 2nd Ed., 122 _sq._
Footnote 949:
The two supreme magistrates who replaced the kings were at first
called praetors. See Livy, iii. 55. 12; B. G. Niebuhr, _History of
Rome_, 3rd Ed., i. 520 _sq._; Th. Mommsen, _Römisches Staatsrecht_,
ii. 3rd Ed., 74 _sqq._ That the power of the first consuls was, with
the limitations indicated in the text, that of the old kings is fully
recognised by Livy (ii. 1. 7 _sq._).
Footnote 950:
It was a disputed point whether Tarquin the Proud was the son or
grandson of Tarquin the Elder. Most writers, and Livy (i. 46. 4) among
them, held that he was a son. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, on the other
hand, argued that he must have been a grandson; he insists strongly on
the chronological difficulties to which the ordinary hypothesis is
exposed if Servius Tullius reigned, as he is said to have reigned,
forty-four years. See Dionysius Halic. _Ant. Rom._ iv. 6 _sq._
Footnote 951:
Livy, i. 48. 2; Dionysius Halic. _Ant. Rom._ iv. 31 _sq._ and 46.
Footnote 952:
Livy, i. 56; Dionysius Halic. _Ant. Rom._ iv. 67-69, 77; Valerius
Maximus, vii. 3. 2; Aurelius Victor, _De viris illustribus_, x. The
murder of Brutus’s father and brother is recorded by Dionysius; the
other writers mention the assassination of his brother only. The
resemblance between Brutus and Hamlet has been pointed out before. See
F. York Powell, in Elton’s translation of Saxo Grammaticus’s _Danish
History_ (London, 1894), pp. 405-410.
Footnote 953:
D. Livingstone, _Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa_,
pp. 617 _sq._ Many more examples are given by A. H. Post,
_Afrikanische Jurisprudenz_ (Oldenburg and Leipsic), i. 134 _sqq._
Footnote 954:
D. Livingstone, _op. cit._ p. 434.
Footnote 955:
H. Hecquard, _Reise an die Küste und in das Innere von West-Afrika_
(Leipsic, 1854), p. 104. This and the preceding example are cited by
A. H. Post, _l.c._
Footnote 956:
J. A. Chisholm, “Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Winamwanga
and Wiwa,” _Journal of the African Society_, No. 36 (July 1910), p.
384.
Footnote 957:
J. Spieth, _Die Ewe-Stämme_ (Berlin, 1906), pp. 784 _sq._
Footnote 958:
Sir William MacGregor, “Lagos, Abeokuta, and the Alake,” _Journal of
the African Society_, No. 12 (July 1904), pp. 470 _sq._
Footnote 959:
C. Partridge, “The Burial of the Atta of Igaraland, and the
‘Coronation’ of his Successor,” _Blackwood’s Magazine_, September
1904, pp. 329 _sq._ Mr. Partridge kindly gave me some details as to
the election of the king in a letter dated 24th October 1904. He is
Assistant District Commissioner in Southern Nigeria.
Footnote 960:
Major P. R. T. Gurdon, _The Khasis_ (London, 1907), pp. 66-75.
Footnote 961:
Livy, i. 17; Cicero, _De re publica_, ii. 17. 31.
Footnote 962:
As to the nomination of the King of the Sacred Rites see Livy, xl. 42;
Dionysius Halic. _Ant. Rom._ v. 1. 4. The latter writer says that the
augurs co-operated with the pontiff in the nomination.
Footnote 963:
Th. Mommsen, _Römisches Staatsrecht_, ii. 3rd Ed., 6-8; A. H. J.
Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_, pp. 45 _sqq._ Mr. Greenidge thinks
that the king was regularly nominated by his predecessor and only
occasionally by an interim king. Mommsen holds that he was always
nominated by the latter.
Footnote 964:
Compare Lucretius, v. 1108 _sqq._:
“_Condere coeperunt urbis arcemque locare
Praesidium reges ipsi sibi perfugiumque,
Et pecus atque agros divisere atque dedere
Pro facie cujusque et viribus ingenioque;
Nam facies multum valuit viresque vigentes._”
Footnote 965:
Nicolaus Damascenus, in Stobaeus, _Florilegium_, xliv. 41 (_Frag.
Histor. Graec._ ed. C. Müller, iii. 463). Other writers say simply
that the tallest, strongest, or handsomest man was chosen king. See
Herodotus, iii. 20; Aristotle, _Politics_, iv. 4; Athenaeus, xiii. 20,
p. 566 c.
Footnote 966:
Zenobius, _Cent._ v. 25.
Footnote 967:
J. Shooter, _The Kafirs of Natal_, pp. 4 _sq._ Compare D. Livingstone,
_Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa_, p. 186; W. Max
Müller, _Asien und Europa_ (Leipsic, 1893), p. 110.
Footnote 968:
Zenobius, _Cent._ v. 25.
Footnote 969:
Strabo, xi. 21, p. 492.
Footnote 970:
Hippocrates, _De aere locis et aquis_ (vol. i. pp. 550 _sq._ ed.
Kühn).
Footnote 971:
Captain Guy Burrows, _The Land of the Pigmies_ (London, 1898), p. 95.
Speaking of this tribe, Emin Pasha observes: “The most curious custom,
however, and one which is particularly observed in the ruling
families, is bandaging the heads of infants. By means of these
bandages a lengthening of the head along its horizontal axis is
produced; and whereas the ordinary Monbutto people have rather round
heads, the form of the head in the better classes shows an
extraordinary increase in length, which certainly very well suits
their style of hair and of hats.” See _Emin Pasha in Central Africa,
being a Collection of Letters and Journals_ (London, 1888), p. 212.
Footnote 972:
Lewis and Clark, _Expedition to the Sources of the Missouri_, ch. 23,
vol. ii. 327 _sq._ (reprinted at London, 1905); D. W. Harmon, quoted
by Rev. J. Morse, _Report to the Secretary of War of the United States
on Indian Affairs_ (Newhaven, 1822), Appendix, p. 346; H. R.
Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, ii. 325 _sq._; R. C. Mayne, _Four Years
in British Columbia_, p. 277; G. M. Sproat, _Scenes and Studies of
Savage Life_, pp. 28-30; H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific
States_, i. 180.
Footnote 973:
C. Hill-Tout, _The Far West, the Home of the Salish and Déné_ (London,
1907), p. 40. As to the custom in general among these tribes, see
_ibid._ pp. 38-41. In Melanesia the practice of artificially
lengthening the head into a cone by means of bandages applied in
infancy is observed by the natives of Malikolo (Malekula) in the New
Hebrides and also by the natives of the south coast of New Britain,
from Cape Roebuck to Cape Bedder. See Beatrice Grimshaw, _From Fiji to
the Cannibal Islands_ (London, 1907), pp. 258-260; R. Parkinson,
_Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee_ (Stuttgart, 1907), pp. 204-206.
Footnote 974:
V. Fric and P. Radin, “Contributions to the Study of the Bororo
Indians,” _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxvi. (1906)
pp. 388 _sq._
Footnote 975:
See _The Spectator_, Nos. 18 and 20.
Footnote 976:
Nicolaus Damascenus, in Stobaeus, _Florilegium_, xliv. 41 (_Fragmenta
Historic. Graecorum_, ed. C. Müller, iii. 463).
Footnote 977:
Simon Grunau, _Preussische Chronik_, Tract. ii. cap. iii. § 2, p. 66,
ed. M. Perlbach. This passage was pointed out to me by Mr. H. M.
Chadwick.
Footnote 978:
Pausanias, v. 1. 4, vi. 20. 9.
Footnote 979:
Apollodorus, _Epitoma_, ii. 4-9, ed. R. Wagner (Apollodorus,
_Bibliotheca_, ed. R. Wagner, pp. 183 _sq._); Diodorus Siculus, iv.
73; Pausanias, v. 1. 6 _sq._, v. 10. 6 _sq._, v. 14. 7, v. 17. 7
_sq._, v. 20. 6 _sq._, vi. 21. 7-11.
Footnote 980:
Pausanias, vi. 21. 3.
Footnote 981:
Pausanias, v. 13. 1-6, vi. 20. 7.
Footnote 982:
Pausanias, iii. 12. 1, 20. 10 _sq._
Footnote 983:
Pindar, _Pyth._ ix. 181-220, with the Scholia.
Footnote 984:
Pindar, _Pyth._ ix. 195 _sqq._; Pausanias, iii. 12. 2.
Footnote 985:
Apollodorus, iii. 9. 2; Hyginus, _Fab._ 185; Ovid, _Metam._ x. 560
_sqq._
Footnote 986:
E. Schuyler, _Turkistan_ (London, 1876), i. 42 _sq._ This and the four
following examples of the bride-race have been already cited by J. F.
McLennan, _Studies in Ancient History_ (London, 1886), pp. 15 _sq._,
181-184. He supposes them to be relics of a custom of capturing women
from another community.
Footnote 987:
E. D. Clarke, _Travels in Various Countries_, i. (London, 1810), p.
333. In the fourth octavo edition of Clarke’s _Travels_ (vol. i.,
London, 1816), from which McLennan seems to have quoted, there are a
few verbal changes.
Footnote 988:
J. McLennan, _op. cit._ pp. 183 _sq._, referring to Kennan’s _Tent
Life in Siberia_ (1870), which I have not seen. Compare W. Jochelson,
“The Koryak” (Leyden and New York, 1908), p. 742 (_Memoir of the
American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific
Expedition_, vol. vi.).
Footnote 989:
Letter of the missionary Bigandet, dated March 1847, in _Annales de la
Propagation de la Foi_, xx. (1848) p. 431. A similar account of the
ceremony is given by M. Bourien, “Wild Tribes of the Malay Peninsula,”
_Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London_, N.S. iii. (1865)
p. 81. See further W. W. Skeat and C.O. Blagden, _Pagan Races of the
Malay Peninsula_ (London, 1906), ii. 68, 77 _sq._, 79 _sq._, 82 _sq._
Footnote 990:
J. Cameron, _Our Tropical Possessions in Malayan India_ (London,
1865), pp. 116 _sq._
Footnote 991:
Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_ (London, 1904), p. 219.
Footnote 992:
Middle High German _brûtlouf_, modern German _Brautlauf_, Anglo-Saxon
_brydhléap_, old Norse _brudhlaup_, modern Norse _bryllup_. See Grimm,
_Deutsches Wörterbuch_, _s.v._ “Brautlauf”; K. Weinhold, _Deutsche
Frauen_, 2nd Ed., i. 407. The latter writer supposes the word to refer
merely to the procession from the house of the bride to the house of
the bridegroom. But Grimm is most probably right in holding that
originally it applied to a real race for the bride. This is the view
also of K. Simrock (_Deutsche Mythologie_, 5th Ed. pp. 598 _sq._).
Another writer sees in it a trace of marriage by capture (L. Dargun,
_Mutterrecht und Raubehe_ (Breslau, 1883), p. 130). Compare K.
Schmidt, _Jus primae noctis_ (Freiburg i. B. 1881), p. 129.
Footnote 993:
A. Kuhn, _Märkische Sagen und Märchen_ (Berlin, 1843), p. 358.
Footnote 994:
W. Kolbe, _Hessische Volks-sitten und Gebräuche_ (Marburg, 1888), pp.
150 _sq._
Footnote 995:
Lentner and Dahn, in _Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs
Bayern_, i. (Munich, 1860) pp. 398 _sq._
Footnote 996:
J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, ii. 153-155 (Bohn’s edition); J.
Jamieson, _Dictionary of the Scottish Language_, _s.v._ “Broose.”
Footnote 997:
E. Herrmann, “Über Lieder und Bräuche bei Hochzeiten in Kärnten,”
_Archiv für Anthropologie_, xix. (1891) p. 169.
Footnote 998:
Nicolaus Damascenus, quoted by Stobaeus, _Florilegium_, xliv. 41;
_Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum_, ed. C. Müller, iii. 457.
Footnote 999:
Strabo, v. 4. 12, p. 250.
Footnote 1000:
Arthur Young, “Tour in Ireland,” in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_,
iii. 860.
Footnote 1001:
_Mahabharata_, condensed into English by Romesch Dutt (London, 1898),
pp. 15 _sqq._; J. C. Oman, _The Great Indian Epics_, pp. 109 _sqq._
Footnote 1002:
J. D. Mayne, _A Treatise on Hindu Law and Usage_ 3rd Ed., (Madras and
London, 1883), p. 56; _The Vikramânkadevacharita_, edited by G. Bühler
(Bombay, 1875), pp. 38-40; A. Holtzmann, _Das Mahābharata und seine
Theile_, i. (Kiel, 1895), pp. 21 _sq._; J. Jolly, _Recht und Sitte_,
pp. 50 _sq._ (in G. Bühler’s _Grundriss der indo-arischen
Philologie_).
Footnote 1003:
_The Book of Ser Marco Polo._, Yule’s translation, 2nd Ed., bk. iv.
ch. 4, vol. ii. pp. 461-463.
Footnote 1004:
_The Lay of the Nibelungs_, translated by Alice Horton (London, 1898),
Adventures vi. and vii.
Footnote 1005:
Parthenius, _Narrat. Amat._ vi. This passage was pointed out to me by
Mr. A. B. Cook, who has himself discussed the contest for the
kingship. See his article, “The European Sky-god,” _Folk-lore_, xv.
(1904) pp. 376 _sqq._
Footnote 1006:
Herodotus, vi. 126-130. It is to be observed that in this and other of
the examples cited above the succession to the kingdom did not pass
with the hand of the princess.
Footnote 1007:
See above, pp. 69, 84, 90 _sq._ These customs were observed at
Whitsuntide, not on May Day. But the Whitsuntide king and queen are
obviously equivalent to the King and Queen of May. Hence I allow
myself to use the latter and more familiar titles so as to include the
former.
Footnote 1008:
Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. 685 _sqq._; Plutarch, _Quaest. Rom._ 63; J.
Marquardt, _Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., 323 _sq._; W.
Warde Fowler, _Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic_, pp. 327
_sqq._
Footnote 1009:
Another proposed explanation of the _regifugium_ is that the king fled
because at the sacrifice he had incurred the guilt of slaying a sacred
animal. See W. Warde Fowler, _Roman Festivals of the Period of the
Republic_, pp. 328 _sqq._ The best-known example of such a ritual
flight is that of the men who slew the ox at the Athenian festival of
the _Bouphonia_. See _The Golden Bough_, Second Edition, ii. 294.
Amongst the Pawnees the four men who assisted at the sacrifice of a
girl to Ti-ra’-wa used to run away very fast after the deed was done
and wash themselves in the river. See G. B. Grinnell, _Pawnee Hero
Stories and Folk-Tales_ (New York, 1889), pp. 365 _sq._ Among the
ancient Egyptians the man whose duty it was to slit open a corpse for
the purpose of embalming it fled as soon as he had done his part,
pursued by all the persons present, who pelted him with stones and
cursed him, “turning as it were the pollution on him; for they suppose
that any one who violates or wounds or does any harm to the person of
a fellow-tribesman is hateful” (Diodorus Siculus, i. 91. 4). Similarly
in the western islands of Torres Straits the man whose duty it was to
decapitate a corpse for the purpose of preserving the skull was shot
at with arrows by the relatives of the deceased as an expiation for
the injury he had done to the corpse of their kinsman. See _Reports of
the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, v.
(Cambridge, 1904) pp. 249, 251. This explanation of the _regifugium_
certainly deserves to be considered. But on this as on so many other
points of ancient ritual we can hardly hope ever to attain to
certainty.
Footnote 1010:
F. Cumont, “Les Actes de S. Dasius,” _Analecta Bollandiana_, xvi.
(1897) pp. 5-16. See further Messrs. Parmentier and Cumont, “Le Roi
des Saturnales,” _Revue de Philologie_, xxi. (1897) pp. 143-153; _The
Golden Bough_, Second Edition, iii. 138 _sqq._ The tomb of St. Dasius,
a Christian soldier who was put to death at Durostorum in 303 A.D.
after refusing to play the part of Saturn at the festival, has since
been discovered at Ancona. A Greek inscription on the tomb records
that the martyr’s remains were brought thither from Durostorum. See F.
Cumont, “Le Tombeau de S. Dasius de Durostorum,” _Analecta
Bollandiana_, xxvii. (1908) pp. 369-372. Professor A. Erhard of
Strasburg, who has been engaged for years in preparing an edition of
the _Acta Martyrum_ for the Berlin Corpus of Greek Fathers, informed
me in conversation at Cambridge in the summer of 1910 that he ranks
the Acts of St. Dasius among the authentic documents of their class.
The plain unvarnished narrative bears indeed the stamp of truth on its
face.
Footnote 1011:
Tacitus, _Annals_, xiii. 15; Arrian, _Epicteti dissert._ i. 25. 8;
Lucian, _Saturnalia_, 4.
Footnote 1012:
As to these temporary kings see _The Golden Bough_, Second Edition,
ii. 24 _sqq._
Footnote 1013:
Varro, _Rerum rusticarum_, iii. 1. 5; Virgil, _Aen._ viii. 324;
Tibullus, i. 3. 35; Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, vii. 19. Compare
Wissowa, in W. H. Roscher’s _Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie_,
iv. 433 _sq._
Footnote 1014:
On Saturn as the god of sowing and the derivation of his name from a
root meaning “to sow,” from which comes _satus_ “sowing,” see Varro,
_De lingua Latina_, v. 64; Festus, _s.v._ “Opima spolia,” p. 186, ed.
C. O. Müller; Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, vii. 2, 3. 13, 15;
Wissowa, in W. H. Roscher’s _Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie_,
iv. 428. The derivation is confirmed by the form Saeturnus which
occurs in an inscription (_Saeturni pocolom_, H. Dessau, _Inscript.
Latinae selectae_, No. 2966). As to the Saturnalia see L. Preller,
_Römische Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., ii. 15 _sqq._; J. Marquardt, _Römische
Staatsverwaltung_, 2nd Ed., pp. 586 _sqq._; Dezobry, _Rome au siècle
d’Auguste_, iii. 143 _sqq._; W. Warde Fowler, _Roman Festivals of the
Period of the Republic_, pp. 268 _sqq._ The festival was held from the
seventeenth to the twenty-third of December. I formerly argued that in
the old days, when the Roman year began with March instead of with
January, the Saturnalia may have been held from the seventeenth to the
twenty-third of February, in which case the festival must have
immediately preceded the Flight of the King, which fell on February
the twenty-fourth. See _The Golden Bough_, Second Edition, iii. 144
_sqq._; _Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_, p. 266. But
this attempt to bring the ancient Saturnalia into immediate
juxtaposition to the King’s Flight breaks down when we observe, as my
friend Mr. W. Warde Fowler has pointed out to me, that the Saturnalia
fell in December under the Republic, long before Caesar, in his reform
of the calendar, had shifted the commencement of the year from March
to January. See Livy, xxii. 1. 19 _sq._
Footnote 1015:
Roman farmers sowed wheat, spelt, and barley in December, flax up to
the seventh of that month, and beans up to the eleventh (the festival
of Septimontium). See Palladius, _De re rustica_, xiii. 1. In the
lowlands of Sicily at the present day November and December are the
months of sowing, but in the highlands August and September. See G.
Pitrè, _Usi e costumi, credenze e pregiudizi del popolo siciliano_,
iii. (Palermo, 1889) pp. 132 _sqq._ Hence we may suppose that in the
Roman Campagna of old the last sowing of autumn was over before the
middle of December, when the Saturnalia began.
Footnote 1016:
This temporary liberty accorded to slaves was one of the most
remarkable features of the Saturnalia and kindred festivals in
antiquity. See _The Golden Bough_, Second Edition, iii. 139 _sqq._
Footnote 1017:
The learned Swiss scholar, J. J. Bachofen long ago drew out in minute
detail the parallel between these birth legends of the Roman kings and
licentious festivals like the Roman Saturnalia and the Babylonian
Sacaea. See his book _Die Sage von Tanaquil_ (Heidelberg, 1870), pp.
133 _sqq._ To be frank, I have not had the patience to read through
his long dissertation.
Footnote 1018:
Livy, i. 16; Dionysius Halic. _Ant. Rom._ ii. 56; Plutarch, _Romulus_,
27; Florus, i. 1. 16 _sq._ See above, pp. 181 _sq._
Footnote 1019:
Varro, _De lingua Latina_, vi. 18; Plutarch, _Romulus_, 29; _id._,
_Camillus_, 33; Macrobius, _Saturn._ i. 11. 36-40. The analogy of this
festival to the Babylonian Sacaea was long ago pointed out by J. J.
Bachofen. See his book _Die Sage von Tanaquil_ (Heidelberg, 1870), pp.
172 _sqq._
Footnote 1020:
Aristotle, _Hist. anim._ v. 32, p. 557_b_, ed. Bekker; Theophrastus,
_Hist. Plant._ ii. 8; _id._, _De causis plantarum_, ii. 9; Plutarch,
_Quaest. conviv._ vii. 2. 2; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xv. 79-81, xvi. 114,
xvii. 256; Palladius, iv. 10. 28, vii. 5. 2; Columella, xi. 2. 56;
_Geoponica_, iii. 6, x. 48. As to the practice in modern Greece and
the fig-growing districts of Asia Minor, see P. de Tournefort,
_Relation d’un voyage du Levant_ (Amsterdam, 1718), i. 130; W. R.
Paton, “The _Pharmakoi_ and the Story of the Fall,” _Revue
archéologique_, IVème Série, ix. (1907) p. 51. For an elaborate
examination of the process and its relation to the domestication and
spread of the fig-tree, see Graf zu Solms-Laubach, “Die Herkunft,
Domestication und Verbreitung des gewöhnlichen Feigenbaums (_Ficus
Carica_, L.),” _Abhandlungen der Königlichen Gesellschaft der
Wissenschaften zu Göttingen_, xxviii. (1882) pp. 1-106. This last
writer thinks that the operation was not practised by Italian
husbandmen, because it is not mentioned by Cato and Varro. But their
silence can hardly outweigh the express mention and recommendation of
it by Palladius and Columella. Theophrastus, it is true, says that the
process was not in use in Italy (_Hist. Plantarum_, ii. 8. 1), but he
can scarcely have had exact information on this subject.
_Caprificatio_, as this artificial fertilisation of fig-trees is
called, is still employed by the Neapolitan peasantry, though it seems
to be unknown in northern Italy. Pliny’s account has no independent
value, as he merely copies from Theophrastus. The name “goat-fig”
(_caprificus_) applied to the wild fig-tree may be derived from the
notion that the tree is a male who mounts the female as the he-goat
mounts the she-goat. Similarly the Messenians called the tree simply
“he-goat” (τράγος). See Pausanias, iv. 20. 1-3.
Footnote 1021:
G. Pitrè, _Usi e costumi, credenze e pregiudizi del popolo siciliano_,
iii. 113.
Footnote 1022:
Budgett Meakin, _The Moors_ (London, 1902), p. 258; E. Doutté, _Magie
et religion dans l’Afrique du Nord_ (Algiers, 1908), p. 568.
Footnote 1023:
A. Engler, in V. Hehn’s _Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere_, 7th Ed.,
(Berlin, 1902), p. 99. Compare Graf zu Solms-Laubach, _op. cit._;
_Encyclopaedia Biblica_, _s.v._ “Fig-tree,” vol. iv. 1519. The
ancients were well aware of the production of these insects in the
wild fig-tree and their transference to the cultivated fig-tree.
Sometimes instead of fertilising the trees by hand they contented
themselves with planting wild fig-trees near cultivated fig-trees, so
that the fertilisation was effected by the wind, which blew the
insects from the male to the female trees. See Aristotle, _l.c._;
Theophrastus, _De causis plantarum_, ii. 9; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xv.
79-81; Palladius, iv. 10. 28. On subject of the fertilisation of the
fig the late Professor H. Marshall Ward of Cambridge kindly furnished
me with the following note, which will serve to supplement and correct
the brief account in the text:—“The fig is a hollow case full of
flowers. In the wild fig a small gall wasp (_Cynips psenes_) lays its
eggs: this kind of fig is still called _Caprificus_. The eggs hatch in
the female flowers at the base of the hollow fig: at the top, near the
ostiole observable on any ripe fig, are the male flowers. When the
eggs hatch, and the little insects creep through the ostiole, the male
flowers dust the wasp with pollen, and the insect flies to another
flower (to lay its eggs), and so fertilises many of the female flowers
in return for the nursery afforded its eggs. Now, the cultivated fig
is apt to be barren of male flowers. Hence the hanging of branches
bearing wild figs enables the escaping wasps to do the trick. The
ancients knew the fact that the propinquity of the _Caprificus_ helped
the fertility of the cultivated fig, but, of course, they did not know
the details of the process. The further complexities are, chiefly,
that the fig bears two kinds of female flowers: one especially fitted
for the wasp’s convenience, the other not. The _Caprificus_ figs are
inedible. In Naples three crops of them are borne every year, viz.
_Mamme_ (in April), _Profichi_ (in June), and _Mammoni_ (in August).
It is the June crop that bears most male flowers and is most useful.”
The suggestion that the festival of the seventh of July was connected
with this horticultural operation is due to L. Preller (_Römische
Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 287).
Footnote 1024:
See above, pp. 24 _sq._
Footnote 1025:
1 Kings iv. 25; 2 Kings xviii. 31; Isaiah xxxvi. 16; Micah iv. 4;
Zechariah iii. 10; Judges ix. 10 _sq._; H. B. Tristram, _The Natural
History of the Bible_ 9th Ed. (London, 1898), pp. 350 _sqq._;
_Encyclopaedia Biblica_, _s.v._ “Fig Tree,” vol. ii. 1519 _sq._
Footnote 1026:
Herodotus, i. 71.
Footnote 1027:
Zamachschar, cited by Graf zu Solms-Laubach, _op. cit._ p. 82. For
more evidence as to the fig in antiquity see V. Hehn, _Kulturpflanzen
und Hausthiere_, 7th Ed., pp. 94 _sqq._
Footnote 1028:
Letter of Mr. C. W. Hobley to me, dated Nairobi, British East Africa,
July 27th, 1910. This interesting information was given spontaneously
and not in answer to any questions of mine.
Footnote 1029:
C. W. Hobley, _The Ethnology of A-Kamba and other East African Tribes_
(Cambridge, 1910), pp. 85, 89 _sq._ In British Central Africa “every
village has its ‘prayer-tree,’ under which the sacrifices are offered.
It stands (usually) in the _bwalo_, the open space which Mr. Macdonald
calls the ‘forum,’ and is, sometimes, at any rate, a wild fig-tree.”
“This is the principal tree used for making bark-cloth. Livingstone
says, ‘It is a sacred tree all over Africa and India’; and I learn
from M. Auguste Chevalier that it is found in every village of Senegal
and French Guinea, and looked on as ‘a fetich-tree’” (Miss A. Werner,
_The Natives of British Central Africa_, pp. 62 _sq._).
Footnote 1030:
From the unpublished papers of the Rev. John Roscoe, which he has
kindly placed at my disposal.
Footnote 1031:
Varro, _De lingua Latina_, v. 54; Livy, i. 4. 5; Ovid, _Fasti_, ii.
411 _sq._; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xv. 77; Festus, pp. 266, 270, 271, ed.
C. O. Müller; Tacitus, _Annals_, xiii. 58; Servius on Virgil, _Aen._
viii. 90; Plutarch, _Romulus_, 4; _id._, _Quaestiones Romanae_, 57;
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquitates Romanae_, iii. 71. 5. All the
Roman writers speak of the tree as a cultivated fig (_ficus_), not a
wild fig (_caprificus_), and Dionysius agrees with them. Plutarch
alone (_Romulus_, 4) describes it as a wild fig-tree (ἐρινεός). See
also above, p. 10.
Footnote 1032:
Festus, p. 266, ed. C. O. Müller; Ettore Pais, _Ancient Legends of
Roman History_ (London, 1906), pp. 55 _sqq._ Festus indeed treats the
derivation as an absurdity, and many people will be inclined to agree
with him.
Footnote 1033:
On the fifth of July a ceremony called the Flight of the People was
performed at Rome. Some ancient writers thought that it commemorated
the dispersal of the people after the disappearance of Romulus. But
this is to confuse the dates; for, according to tradition, the death
of Romulus took place on the seventh, not the fifth of July, and
therefore after instead of before the Flight of the People. See Varro,
_De lingua Latina_, vi. 18; Macrobius, _Sat._ iii. 2. 14; Dionysius
Halicarn. _Ant. Rom._ ii. 56. 5; Plutarch, _Romulus_, 29; _id._,
_Camillus_, 33; W. Warde Fowler, _Roman Festivals of the Period of the
Republic_, pp. 174 _sqq._ Mr. Warde Fowler may be right in thinking
that some connexion perhaps existed between the ceremonies of the two
days, the fifth and the seventh; and I agree with his suggestion that
“the story itself of the death of Romulus had grown out of some
religious rite performed at this time of year.” I note as a curious
coincidence, for it can hardly be more, that at Bodmin in Cornwall a
festival was held on the seventh of July, when a Lord of Misrule was
appointed, who tried people for imaginary crimes and sentenced them to
be ducked in a quagmire called Halgaver, which is explained to mean
“the goat’s moor.” See T. F. Thiselton Dyer, _British Popular
Customs_, p. 339. The “goat’s moor” is an odd echo of the “goat’s
marsh” at which Romulus disappeared on the same day of the year (Livy,
i. 16. 1; Plutarch, _Romulus_, 29; _id._, _Camillus_, 33).
Footnote 1034:
Livy, i. 14. 1 _sq._; Dionysius Halicarn. _Ant. Rom._ ii. 52. 3;
Plutarch, _Romulus_, 23.
Footnote 1035:
Dionysius Halicarn. _Ant. Rom._ iii. 35; Zonaras, _Annales_, vii. 6.
As to his reported death by lightning, see above, p. 181.
Footnote 1036:
Plutarch, _Numa_, 22. I have pruned the luxuriant periods in which
Plutarch dwells, with edifying unction, on the righteous visitation of
God which overtook that early agnostic Tullus Hostilius.
Footnote 1037:
Aurelius Victor, _De viris illustribus_, v. 5.
Footnote 1038:
Livy, i. 40; Dionysius Halicarn. _Ant. Rom._ iii. 73.
Footnote 1039:
Livy, i. 48; Dionysius Halicarn. _Ant. Rom._ iv. 38 _sq._; Solinus, i.
25. The reading _Virbium clivum_ (“the slope of Virbius”) occurs only
in the more recent manuscripts of Livy: the better-attested reading
both of Livy and Solinus is _Urbium_. But the obscure _Virbium_ would
easily and naturally be altered into _Urbium_, whereas the reverse
change is very improbable. See Mr. A. B. Cook, in _Classical Review_,
xvi. (1902) p. 380, note 3. In this passage Mr. Cook was the first to
call attention to the analogy between the murder of the slave-born
king, Servius Tullius, and the slaughter of the slave-king by his
successor at Nemi. As to the oak-woods of the Esquiline see above, p.
185.
Footnote 1040:
Nicolaus Damascenus, in Stobaeus, _Florilegium_, x. 70. _Fragmenta
Historicorum Graecorum_, ed. C. Müller, iii. 457.
Footnote 1041:
H. Jordan, _Die Könige im alten Italien_ (Berlin, 1887), pp. 44 _sq._
In this his last work Jordan argues that the Umbrian practice,
combined with the rule of the Arician priesthood, throws light on the
existence and nature of the kingship among the ancient Latins. On this
subject I am happy to be at one with so learned and judicious a
scholar.
Footnote 1042:
R. E. Dennett, _At the Back of the Black Man’s Mind_ (London, 1906),
pp. 11 _sq._, 111, 131 _sq._, 135. The word translated “sacred ground”
(_xibila_, plural _bibila_) means properly “sacred grove.” Such
“sacred groves” are common in this part of Africa, but in the “sacred
grove” of the king of Loango the tree beside which the monarch takes
post to fight for the crown appears to stand solitary in a grassy
plain. See R. E. Dennett, _op. cit._ pp. 11 _sq._, 25, 96 _sqq._, 110
_sqq._ We have seen that the right of succession to the throne of
Loango descends in the female line (above, pp. 276 _sq._), which
furnishes another point of resemblance between Loango and Rome, if my
theory of the Roman kingship is correct.
Footnote 1043:
J. G. Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, ii. 530. My authority is the
Rev. John Roscoe, formerly of the Church Missionary Society in Uganda.
Footnote 1044:
_Memoirs of Samuel Pepys_, edited by Richard, Lord Braybrooke, Second
Edition (London, 1828), i. 193 _sq._ (under April 23rd, 1661).
CHAPTER XIX
ST. GEORGE AND THE PARILIA
[Sidenote: The early Italians were as much a pastoral as an agricultural
people, and their kings would be expected to ensure the safety and
fecundity of the flocks and herds.] In the course of the preceding
investigation we found reason to assume that the old Latin kings, like
their brethren in many parts of the world, were charged with certain
religious duties or magical functions, amongst which the maintenance of
the fertility of the earth held a principal place. By this I do not mean
that they had to see to it only that the rain fell, and that the corn
grew and trees put forth their fruit in due season. In those early days
it is probable that the Italians were quite as much a pastoral as an
agricultural people, or, in other words, that they depended for their
subsistence no less on their flocks and herds than on their fields and
orchards. To provide their cattle with grass and water, to ensure their
fecundity and the abundance of their milk, and to guard them from the
depredations of wild beasts, would be objects of the first importance
with the shepherds and herdsmen who, according to tradition, founded
Rome;[1045] and the king, as the representative or embodiment of the
deity, would be expected to do his part towards procuring these
blessings for his people by the performance of sacred rites. The Greeks
of the Homeric age, as we have seen, thought that the reign of a good
king not only made the land to bear wheat and barley, but also caused
the flocks to multiply and the sea to yield fish.[1046]
[Sidenote: Numa is said to have been born and Rome to have been founded
on the shepherds’ festival of the Parilia, the twenty-first of April.]
In this connexion, accordingly, it can be no mere accident that Rome is
said to have been founded and the pious king Numa to have been born on
the twenty-first of April, the day of the great shepherds’ festival of
the Parilia.[1047] It is very unlikely that the real day either of the
foundation of the city or of Numa’s birth should have been remembered,
even if we suppose Numa to have been an historical personage rather than
a mythical type; it is far more probable that both events were
arbitrarily assigned to this date by the speculative antiquaries of a
later age on the ground of some assumed fitness or propriety. In what
did this fitness or propriety consist? The belief that the first Romans
were shepherds and herdsmen would be reason enough for supposing that
Rome was founded on the day of the shepherds’ festival, or even that the
festival was instituted to commemorate the event.[1048] But why should
Numa be thought to have been born on that day of all days? Perhaps it
was because the old sacred kings, of whom he was the model, had to play
an important part in the ceremonies of the day. The birthdays of the
gods were celebrated by festivals;[1049] the kings were divine or
semi-divine; it would be natural, therefore, that their birthdays should
be identified with high feasts and holidays. Whether this was so or not,
the festival of the Parilia presents so many points of resemblance to
some of the popular customs discussed in these volumes that a brief
examination of it may not be inappropriate in this place.[1050]
[Sidenote: The Parilia, a festival celebrated by shepherds and herdsmen
in honour of Pales, for the safety and increase of their flocks and
herds.] The spring festival of the twenty-first of April, known as the
birthday of Rome,[1051] was deemed second in importance to none in the
calendar.[1052] It was held by shepherds and herdsmen for the welfare
and increase of their flocks and herds.[1053] The pastoral deity to whom
they paid their devotions was Pales, as to whose sex the ancients
themselves were not at one. In later times they commonly spoke of her as
a goddess; but Varro regarded Pales as masculine,[1054] and we may
follow his high authority. The day was celebrated with similar rites
both in the town and the country, but in its origin it must have been a
strictly rural festival. Indeed, it could hardly be carried out in full
except among the sheepfolds and cattle-pens. At some time of the day,
probably in the morning, the people repaired to the temple of Vesta,
where they received from the Vestal Virgins ashes, blood, and bean-straw
to be used in fumigating themselves and probably their beasts. The ashes
were those of the unborn calves which had been torn from their mothers’
wombs on the fifteenth of April; the blood was that which had dripped
from the tail of a horse sacrificed in October.[1055] Both were probably
supposed to exercise a fertilising as well as a cleansing influence on
the people and on the cattle;[1056] for apparently one effect of the
ceremonies, in the popular opinion, was to quicken the wombs of women no
less than of cows and ewes.[1057] At break of day the shepherd purified
his sheep, after sprinkling and sweeping the ground. The fold was decked
with leafy boughs, and a great wreath was hung on the door.[1058] The
purification of the flocks apparently consisted in driving them over
burning heaps of grass, pine-wood, laurel, and branches of the male
olive-tree.[1059] Certainly at some time of [Sidenote: The flocks
purified by being driven through fire.] the day the sheep were compelled
to scamper over a fire.[1060] Moreover, the bleating flocks were touched
with burning sulphur and fumigated with its blue smoke.[1061] Then the
shepherd offered to Pales baskets of millet, cakes of millet, and pails
of warm milk. Next he prayed to the god that he would guard the fold
from the evil powers, including probably witchcraft;[1062] that the
flocks, the men, and the dogs might be hale and free from disease; that
the sheep might not fall a prey to wolves; that grass and leaves might
abound; that water might be plentiful; that the udders of the dams might
be full of milk; that the rams might be lusty, and the ewes prolific;
that many lambs might be born; and that there might be much wool at
shearing.[1063] This prayer the shepherd had to repeat four times,
looking to the east; then he washed his hands in the morning dew. After
that he drank a bowl of milk and wine, and, warmed with the liquor,
leaped ever burning heaps of crackling straw. This practice of jumping
over a straw fire would seem to have been a principal part of the
ceremonies: at least it struck the ancients themselves, for they often
refer to it.[1064]
[Sidenote: The shepherd’s prayer.] The shepherd’s prayer at the Parilia
is instructive, because it gives us in short a view of the chief wants
of [Sidenote: The shepherd has to propitiate the tree-spirits and
water-spirits.] the pastoral life. The supplication for grass and leaves
and water reminds us that the herdsman no less than the husbandman
depends ultimately on vegetation and rain; so that the same divine
powers which cover the fields of the one with yellow corn may be
conceived to carpet the meadows of the other with green grass, and to
diversify them with pools and rivers for the refreshment of the thirsty
cattle. And it is to be borne in mind that in countries where grass is
less plentiful than under the rainy skies of northern Europe, sheep,
goats, and cattle still subsist in great measure on the leaves and juicy
twigs of trees.[1065] Hence in these lands the pious shepherd and
goatherd cannot afford to ignore or to offend the tree-spirits, on whose
favour and bounty his flocks are dependent for much of their fodder.
Indeed, at the Parilia the shepherd made elaborate excuses to these
divine beings for any trespass he might unwittingly have committed on
their hallowed domain by entering a sacred grove, sitting in the shadow
of a holy tree, or lopping leafy branches from it with which to feed a
sickly sheep.[1066] In like manner he craved pardon of the water-nymphs,
if the hoofs of his cattle had stirred up the mud in their clear pools;
and he implored Pales to intercede for him with the divinities of
springs “and the gods dispersed through every woodland glade.”[1067]
[Sidenote: The Parilia was perhaps the time when the flocks and herds
were turned out for the first time in spring to graze in the open.] The
Parilia was generally considered to be the best time for coupling the
rams and the ewes;[1068] and it has been suggested that it was also the
season when the flocks and herds, after being folded and stalled
throughout the winter, were turned out for the first time to pasture in
spring.[1069] The occasion is an anxious one for the shepherd,
especially in countries which are infested with wolves, as ancient Italy
was.[1070] Accordingly the Italian shepherd propitiated Pales with a
slaughtered victim before he drove his flocks afield in spring;[1071]
but it is doubtful whether this sacrifice formed part of the Parilia.
None of the ancient authors who expressly describe the Parilia mention
the slaughter of a victim; and in Plutarch’s day a tradition ran that of
old no blood was shed at the festival.[1072] But such a tradition seems
to point to a contrary practice in after-times. In the absence of
decisive evidence the question must be left open; but modern analogy, as
we shall see, strongly supports the opinion that immediately at the
close of the Parilia the flocks and herds were driven out to graze in
the open pastures for the first time after their long winter
confinement. On this view a special significance is seen to attach to
some of the features of the festival, such as the prayer for protection
against the wolf; for the brute could hardly do the sheep and kine much
harm so long as they were safely pent within the walls of the sheepcote
and the cattle-stall.
[Sidenote: The Roman kings had perhaps to discharge some important
religious function at the Parilia.] As the Parilia is said to have been
celebrated by Romulus, who sacrificed to the gods and caused the people
to purify themselves by leaping over flames,[1073] some scholars have
inferred that it was customary for the king, and afterwards for his
successor, the chief pontiff, or the King of the Sacred Rites, to offer
sacrifices for the people at the Parilia.[1074] The inference is
reasonable and receives some confirmation, as we shall see presently,
from the analogy of modern custom. Further, the tradition that Numa was
born on the day of the Parilia may be thought to point in the same way,
since it is most naturally explicable on the hypothesis that the king
had to discharge some important function at the festival. Still, it must
be confessed that the positive evidence for connecting the Roman kings
with the celebration of the twenty-first of April is slight and dubious.
[Sidenote: The Parilia intended to ensure the welfare of the cattle and
to guard them against witches and wolves.] On the whole the festival of
the Parilia, which probably fell at or near the time of turning out the
cattle to pasture in spring, was designed to ensure their welfare and
increase, and to guard them from the insidious machinations or the open
attacks of their various enemies, among whom witches and wolves were
perhaps the most dreaded.
[Sidenote: A celebration of the same sort is still held in eastern
Europe on the twenty-third of April, the festival of St. George, the
patron saint of cattle, horses, and wolves.] Now it can hardly be a mere
coincidence that down to modern times a great popular festival of this
sort has been celebrated only two days later by the herdsmen and
shepherds of eastern Europe, who still cherish a profound belief in
witchcraft, and still fear, with far better reason, the raids of wolves
on their flocks and herds. The festival falls on the twenty-third of
April and is dedicated to St. George, the patron saint of cattle,
horses, and wolves. The Esthonians say that on St. George’s morning the
wolf gets a ring round his snout and a halter about his neck, whereby he
is rendered less dangerous till Michaelmas. But if the day should chance
to be a Friday at full moon, or if before the day came round any person
should have been so rash as to thump the dirty linen in the wash-tub
with two beetles, the cattle will run a serious risk of being devoured
by wolves. Many are the precautions taken by the anxious Esthonians
[Sidenote: Precautions taken by the Esthonians against wolves and
witches on St. George’s Day.] on this day to guard their herds from the
ravening beasts. Thus some people gather wolf’s dung on the preceding
night, burn it, and fumigate the cattle with it in the morning. Or they
collect bones from the pastures and burn them at a cross-road, which
serves as a charm against sickness, sorcery, and demons quite as well as
against wolves. Others smoke the cattle with _asa foetida_ or sulphur to
protect them against witchcraft and noxious exhalations. They think,
too, that if you sew stitches on St. George’s morning the cubs of the
wolves will be blind, no doubt because their eyes are sewed up by the
needle and thread. In order to forecast the fate of their herds the
peasants put eggs or a sharp weapon, such as an axe or a scythe, before
the doors of the stalls, and the animal which crushes an egg or wounds
itself will surely be rent by a wolf or will perish in some other
fashion before the year is out. So certain is its fate that many a man
prefers to slaughter the doomed beast out of hand for the sake of saving
at least the beef.
[Sidenote: The Esthonians generally drive their cattle out to pasture
for the first time on St. George’s Day.] As a rule the Esthonians drive
their cattle out to pasture for the first time on St. George’s Day, and
the herdsman’s duties begin from then. If, however, the herds should
have been sent out to graze before that day, the boys who look after
them must eat neither flesh nor butter while they are on duty; else the
wolves will destroy many sheep, and the cream will not turn to butter in
the churn. Further, the boys may not kindle a fire in the wood, or the
wolf’s tooth would be fiery and he would bite viciously. By St. George’s
Day, the twenty-third of April, there is commonly fresh grass in the
meadows. But even if the spring should be late and the cattle should
have to return to their stalls hungrier than they went forth, many
Esthonian farmers insist on turning out the poor beasts on St. George’s
Day in order that the saint may guard them against his creatures the
wolves. On this morning the farmer treats the herdsman to a dram of
brandy, and gives him two copper kopecks as “tail-money” for every cow
in the herd. This money the giver first passes thrice round his head and
then lays it on the dunghill; for if the herdsman took it from his hand,
it would in some way injure the herd. Were this ceremony omitted, the
wolves would prove very destructive, because they had not been appeased
on St. George’s Day. After receiving the “tail-money” some herdsmen are
wont to collect the herd on the village common. Here they set up their
crook in the ground, place their hat on it, and walk thrice round the
cattle, muttering spells or the Lord’s Prayer as they do so. The
pastoral crook should be cut from the rowan or mountain-ash and
consecrated by a wise man, who carves mystic signs on it. Sometimes the
upper end of the crook is hollowed out and filled with quicksilver and
_asa foetida_, the aperture being stopped up with resin. Some Esthonians
cut a cross with a scythe under the door through which the herd is to be
driven, and fill the furrows of the cross with salt to prevent certain
evil beings from harming the cattle. Further, it is an almost universal
custom in Esthonia not to hang bells on the necks of the kine till St.
George’s Day; the few who can give a reason for the rule say that the
chiming of the bells before that season would attract the wild
beasts.[1075]
[Sidenote: Sacrifices for horses offered on St. George’s Day by the
Esthonians of Dago.] In the island of Dago down to the early part of the
nineteenth century there were certain holy trees from which no one dared
to break a bough; in spite of the lack of wood in the island the fallen
branches were allowed to rot in heaps on the ground. Under such trees
the Esthonians used to offer sacrifices on St. George’s Day for the
safety and welfare of their horses. The offerings, which consist of an
egg, a piece of money, and a bunch of horse-hair tied up with a red
thread, were buried in the earth.[1076] The custom is interesting
because it exhibits St. George in the two-fold character of a patron of
horses and of trees. In the latter capacity he has already met us more
than once under the name of Green George.[1077]
[Sidenote: St. George as the patron of wolves and cattle in Russia; the
herds are driven out to pasture for the first time on his day.] In
Russia the saint is known as Yegory or Yury, and here, as in Esthonia,
he is a patron of wolves as well as of flocks and herds. Many legends
speak of the connexion which exists between St. George and the wolf. In
Little Russia the beast is known as “St. George’s Dog,” and the carcases
of sheep which wolves have killed are not eaten, it being held that they
have been made over by divine command to the beasts of the field.[1078]
The festival of St. George on the twenty-third of April has a national
as well as an ecclesiastical character in Russia, and the mythical
features of the songs which are devoted to the day prove that the saint
has supplanted some old Slavonian deity who used to be honoured at this
season in heathen times. It is not as a slayer of dragons and a champion
of forlorn damsels that St. George figures in these songs, but as a
patron of farmers and herdsmen who preserves cattle from harm, and on
whose day accordingly the flocks and herds are driven out to browse the
fresh pastures for the first time after their confinement through the
long Russian winter. “What the wolf holds in its teeth, that Yegory has
given,” is a proverb which shews how completely he is thought to rule
over the fold and the stall. Here is one of the songs:—
“_We have gone around the field,
We have called Yegory ...
‘O thou, our brave Yegory,
Save our cattle,
In the field, and beyond the field,
In the forest, and beyond the forest,
Under the bright moon,
Under the red sun,
From the rapacious wolf,
From the cruel bear,
From the cunning beast.’_”
A White-Russian song represents St. George as opening with golden keys,
probably the sunbeams, the soil which has been frost-bound all the
winter:—
“_Holy Jury, the divine envoy,
Has gone to God,
And having taken the golden keys,
Has unlocked the moist earth,
Having scattered the clinging dew
Over White-Russia and all the world._”
In Moravia they “meet the Spring” with a song in which they ask Green
Thursday, that is, the day before Good Friday, what he has done with the
keys, and he answers: “I gave them to St. George. St. George arose and
unlocked the earth, so that the grass grew—the green grass.” In White
Russia it is customary on St. George’s Day to drive the cattle afield
through the morning dew, and in Little Russia and Bulgaria young folk go
out early and roll themselves in it.[1079] In the Smolensk Government on
this day the cattle are driven out first to the rye-fields and then to
the pastures. A religious service is held in the stalls before the
departure of the herd and afterwards in the field, where the stool which
supported the holy picture is allowed to stand for several weeks till
the next procession with the pictures of the saints takes place. St.
George’s Day in this government is the herdsmen’s festival, and it is
the term from which their engagements are dated.[1080] And in the
Smolensk Government, when the herds are being sent out to graze on St.
George’s Day, the following spell is uttered:—
“_Deaf man, deaf man, dost thou hear us?_”
“_I hear not._”
“_God grant that the wolf may not hear our cattle!_”
“_Cripple, cripple, canst thou catch us?_”
“_I cannot catch._”
“_God grant that the wolf may not catch our cattle!_”
“_Blind man, blind man, dost thou see us?_”
“_I see not._”
“_God grant that the wolf may not see our cattle!_”[1081]
[Sidenote: In Russia witches try to steal the milk of the cattle on the
eve of St. George.] But in the opinion of the Russian peasant wolves are
not the only foes of cattle at this season. On the eve of St. George’s
Day, as well as on the night before Whitsunday and on Midsummer Eve,
witches go out naked in the dark and cut chips from the doors and gates
of farmyards. These they boil in a milk-pail, and thus charm away the
milk from the farms. Hence careful housewives examine their doors and
smear mud in any fresh gashes they may find in them, which frustrates
the knavish tricks of the milk-stealing witch. Not to be baffled,
however, the witches climb the wooden crosses by the wayside and chip
splinters from them, or lay their hands on stray wooden wedges. These
they stick into a post in the cattle-shed and squeeze them with their
hands till milk flows from them as freely as from the dugs of a cow. At
this time also wicked people turn themselves by magic art into dogs and
black cats, and in that disguise they suck the milk of cows, mares, and
ewes, while they slaughter the bulls, horses, and rams.[1082]
[Sidenote: St. George’s Day among the Ruthenians.] The Ruthenians of
Bukowina and Galicia believe that at midnight before St. George’s Day
(the twenty-third of April) the witches come in bands of twelve to the
hills at the boundaries of the villages and there dance and play with
fire. Moreover, they cull on the mountains the herbs they need for their
infernal enchantments. Like the Esthonians and the Russians, the
Ruthenians drive their cattle out to pasture for the first time on St.
George’s Day; hence during the preceding night the witches are very busy
casting their spells on the cows; and the farmer is at great pains to
defeat their fell purpose. With this intent many people catch a snake,
skin it, and fumigate the cows with the skin on the eve of the saint’s
day. To rub the udders and horns of the cows with serpent’s fat is
equally effective. Others strew meal about the animals, saying, “Not
till thou hast gathered up this meal, shalt thou take the milk from my
cow So-and-so.” Further, sods of turf, with thorn-branches stuck in
them, are laid on the gate-posts; and crosses are painted with tar on
the doors. These precautions keep the witches from the cows. If,
however, a beast should after all be bewitched, the farmer’s wife drags
a rope about in the dew on the morning of St. George’s Day. Then she
chops it up small, mixes salt with it, and scatters the bits among the
cow’s fodder. No sooner has the afflicted animal partaken of this
compound than the spell is broken.[1083]
[Sidenote: St. George’s Day among the Huzuls of the Carpathians.] The
Huzuls of the Carpathian Mountains believe that when a cow gives milk
tinged with blood, or no milk at all, a witch is the cause of it. These
maleficent beings play their pranks especially on the eve of St.
George’s Day and on Midsummer Eve, but they are most dangerous at the
former season, for that night they and the foul fiends hold their
greatest gathering or sabbath. To steal the cows’ milk they resort to
various devices. Sometimes they run about in the shape of dogs and smell
the cows’ udders. Sometimes they rub the udders of their own cows with
milk taken from a neighbour’s kine; then their own cows yield abundant
milk, but the udders of the neighbour’s cows shrivel up or give only
blood. Others again make a wooden cow on the spot where the real cows
are generally milked, taking care to stick into the ground the knife
they used in carving the image. Then the wooden cow yields the witch all
the milk of the cattle which are commonly milked there, while the owner
of the beasts gets nothing but blood from them.
[Sidenote: Precautions taken by the Huzuls against the witches who try
to steal milk on the eve of St. George.] Hence the Huzuls take steps to
guard their cows from the machinations of witches at this season. For
this purpose they kindle a great fire before the house on the eve of St.
George’s Day, using as fuel the dung which has accumulated during the
winter. Also they place on the gate-posts clods in which are stuck the
branches consecrated on Palm Sunday or boughs of the silver poplar, the
wood of which is deemed especially efficacious in banning fiends.
Moreover, they make crosses on the doors, sprinkle the cows with mud,
and fumigate them with incense or the skin of a snake. To tie red
woollen threads round the necks or tails of the animals is also a
safeguard against witchcraft. And in June, when the snow has melted and
the cattle are led to the high mountain pastures, the herds have no
sooner reached their summer quarters than the herdsman makes “living
fire” by the friction of wood and drives the animals over the ashes in
order to protect them against witches and other powers of evil. The fire
thus kindled is kept constantly burning in the herdsman’s hut till with
the chill of autumn the time comes to drive the herds down the mountains
again. If the fire went out in the interval, it would be an ill omen for
the owner of the pastures.[1084]
[Sidenote: Sacrifice for horses in Silesia on St. George’s Day.] In some
parts of Silesia the might of the witches is believed to be at the
highest pitch on St. George’s Day. The people deem the saint very
powerful in the matter of cattle-breeding and especially of
horse-breeding. At the Polish village of Ostroppa, not far from
Gleiwitz, a sacrifice for horses used to be offered at the little
village church. It has been described by an eye-witness. Peasants on
horseback streamed to the spot from all the neighbouring villages, not
with the staid and solemn pace of pilgrims, but with the noise and
clatter of merrymakers hastening to a revel. The sorry image of the
saint, carved in wood and about an ell high, stood in the churchyard on
a table covered with a white cloth. It represented him seated on
horseback and spearing the dragon. Beside it were two vessels to receive
offerings of money and eggs respectively. As each farmer galloped up, he
dismounted, led his horse by the bridle, knelt before the image of the
saint, and prayed. After that he made his offering of money or eggs,
according to his means, in the name of his horse. Then he led the beast
round the church and churchyard, tethered it, and went into the church
to hear mass and a sermon. Having thus paid his devotions to the saint,
every man leaped into the saddle and made for the nearest public-house
as fast as his horse could lay legs to the ground.[1085]
[Sidenote: Festival of St. George, as the patron of horses, at Ertringen
in Bavaria.] At Ertringen, in South Bavaria, there is a chapel of St.
George, where a festival of the saint used to be held on April the
twenty-fourth down to the beginning of the nineteenth century. From the
whole neighbourhood people streamed thither on horseback and in waggons
to take part in the ceremony. More than fourteen hundred riders are said
to have been present on one occasion. The foundation of the chapel was
attributed to the monastery of Holy Cross Vale (_Heiligkreuztal_), and
the abbot and prior with their suite attended the festival in state
mounted on white horses. A burgher of Ertringen had to ride as patron in
the costume of St. George, whom he represented. He alone bestrode a
fiery stallion. After the celebration of high mass the horses were
blessed at the chapel. Then the procession of men on horseback moved
round the common lands, winding up at the parish church, where it broke
up.[1086] In many villages near Freiburg in Baden St. George is the
patron of horses, and in some parts of Baden the saint’s day (April the
twenty-third) is the season when cattle are driven out to pasture for
the first time in spring.[1087]
[Sidenote: St. George’s Day among the Saxons and Roumanians of
Transylvania.] The Saxons of Transylvania think that on the eve of St.
George’s Day the witches ride on the backs of the cows into the
farmyard, if branches of wild rosebushes or other thorny shrubs are not
stuck over the gate of the yard to keep them out.[1088] Beliefs and
practices of this sort are shared by the Roumanians of Transylvania.
They hold that on St. George’s Day the witches keep their sabbath in
sequestered spots, such as woodland glades, deserted farm-steadings, and
the like. In Walachia green sods are laid on the window-sills and on the
lintels of the doors to avert the uncanny crew. But in Transylvania the
Roumanians, not content with setting a thorn-bush in the doorway of the
house, keep watch and ward all night beside the cattle or elsewhere, to
catch the witches who are at work stealing the milk from the cows. Here,
as elsewhere, the day is above all the herdsman’s festival. It marks the
beginning of spring; the shepherds are preparing to start for the
distant pastures, and they listen with all their ears to some wiseacre
who tells them how, if the milk should fail in the udders of the sheep,
they have only to thrash the shepherd’s pouch, and every stroke will
fall on the witch who is pumping the lost milk into her pails.[1089]
[Sidenote: St. George’s Day the herdsman’s festival among the
Walachians.] The Walachians look on St. George’s Day as very holy; for
they are mainly a pastoral folk, and St. George is the patron of herds
and herdsmen. On that day also, as well as on the day before and the day
after, the Walachian numbers his herd, beginning at one and counting
continuously up to the total. This he never does at any other time of
the year. On this day, too, he milks his sheep for the first time into
vessels which have been carefully scoured and are wreathed with flowers.
Then too a cake of white meal is baked in the shape of a ring, and is
rolled on the ground in sight of the herd; and from the length of its
course omens are drawn as to the good or bad luck of the cattle in their
summer pastures. If the herd is owned by several men, they afterwards
lay hold of the ring, and break it among them, and the one who gets the
largest piece will have the best luck. The milk is made into a cheese
which is divided; and the pieces of the cake are given to the shepherds.
In like manner the wreaths of flowers which crowned the pails are thrown
into the water, and from the way in which they float down-stream the
shepherds presage good or evil fortune.[1090]
[Sidenote: St. George’s Day among the Bulgarians and South Slavs.] The
Bulgarians seem to share the belief that cattle are especially exposed
to the machinations of witches at this season, for it is a rule with
them not to give away milk, butter, or cheese on the eve of St. George’s
Day; to do so, they say, would be to give away the profit of the milch
kine.[1091] They rise very early on the morning of this day, and wash
themselves in the dew, that they may be healthy.[1092] It is said, too,
that a regular sacrifice is still offered on St. George’s Day in
Bulgaria. An old man kills a ram, while girls spread grass on which the
blood is poured forth.[1093] The intention of the sacrifice may be to
make the herbage grow abundantly in the pastures. Amongst the South
Slavs the twenty-third of April, St. George’s Day, is the chief festival
of the spring. The herdsman thinks that if his cattle are well on that
day they will thrive throughout the year. As we have already seen,[1094]
he crowns the horns of his cows with garlands of flowers to guard them
against witchcraft, and in the evening the garlands are hung on the
doors of the stalls, where they remain until the next St. George’s Day.
Early in the morning of that day, when the herdsman drives the cows from
the byres, the housewife takes salt in one hand and a potsherd with
glowing coals in the other. She offers the salt to the cow, and the
beast must step over the smouldering coals, on which various kinds of
roses are smoking. This deprives the witches of all power to harm the
cow. On the eve or the morning of the day old women cut thistles and
fasten them to the doors and gates of the farm; and they make crosses
with cow’s dung on the doors of the byres to ward off the witches. Many
knock great nails into the doors, which is thought to be a surer
preventive even than thistles. In certain districts the people cut
thistles before sunrise and put some on each other’s heads, some on the
fences, the windows, the doors, and some in the shape of wreaths round
the necks of the cows, in order that the witches may be powerless to
harm man and beast, house and homestead, throughout the year. If,
nevertheless, a witch should contrive to steal through the garden fence
and into the byre, it is all over with the cows. A good housewife will
also go round her house and cattle-stalls early in the morning of the
fateful day and sprinkle them with holy water. Another approved means of
driving the witches away is furnished by the froth which is shot from
the spokes of a revolving mill-wheel; for common-sense tells us that
just as the froth flies from the wheel, so the witches will fly from our
house, if only we apply the remedy in the right way. And the right way
is this. On the eve of St. George’s Day you must send a child to fetch
froth from the mill, three stones from three cross-roads, three twigs of
a blackberry bush, three sprigs of beech, and three shoots of a wild
vine. Then you insert the plants in a buttered roll, put the stones in
the fire, boil the froth, toast the buttered roll over the glowing
stones, and speak these words: “The blackberry twigs gather together,
the beeches pull together, but the foam from the wheel shakes all evil
away.” Do this, and you may take my word for it that no witch will be
able to charm away the milk from your cows.[1095]
[Sidenote: Precautions of the same sort are taken against wolves and
witches whenever the cattle are driven out to pasture for the first time
in spring.] Thus on the whole the festival of St. George at the present
day, like the Parilia of ancient Italy, is a ceremony intended to guard
the cattle against their real and their imaginary foes, the wolves and
the witches, at the critical season when the flocks and herds are driven
out to pasture for the first time in spring. Precautions of the same
sort are naturally taken by the superstitious herdsman whenever, the
winter being over, he turns his herds out into the open for the first
time, whether it be on St. George’s Day or not. Thus in Prussia and
Lithuania, when the momentous morning broke, the herd-boy ran from house
to house in the village, knocked at the windows, and cried: “Put out the
fire, spin not, reel not, but drive the cattle out!” Meantime the
herdsman had fetched sand from the church, which he strewed on the road
by which the beasts must go from the farmyard. At the same time he laid
a woodcutter’s axe in every doorway, with the sharp edge outwards, over
which the cows had to step. Then he walked in front of them, speaking
never a word, and paying no heed to the herd, which was kept together by
the herd-boys alone. His thoughts were occupied by higher things, for he
was busy making crosses, blessing the cattle, and murmuring prayers,
till the pastures were reached. The axe in the doorway signified that
the wolf should flee from the herd as from the sharp edge of the axe:
the sand from the church betokened that the cattle should not disperse
and wander in the meadows, but should keep as close together as people
in church.[1096]
[Sidenote: Swedish observances at turning out the cattle to graze after
their winter confinement.] In Sweden the cattle are confined almost
wholly to their stalls during the long and dreary northern winter; and
the first day in spring on which they are turned out into the forest to
graze has been from time immemorial a great popular festival. The time
of its celebration depends more or less on the mildness or severity of
the season. For the most part it takes place about the middle of May. On
the preceding evening bonfires are kindled everywhere in the forest,
because so far as their flickering light extends the cattle will be safe
from the attacks of wild beasts throughout the summer. For the same
reason people go about the woods that night firing guns, blowing horns,
and making all kinds of discordant noises. The mode of celebrating the
festival, which in some places is called the feast of flowers, varies
somewhat in different provinces. In Dalsland the cattle are driven home
that day from pasture at noon instead of at evening. Early in the
morning the herd-boy repairs with the herd to the forest, where he decks
their horns with wreaths of flowers and provides himself with a wand of
the rowan or mountain-ash. During his absence the girls pluck flowers,
weave them into a garland, and hang it on the gate through which the
cattle must pass on their return from the forest. When they come back,
the herd-boy takes the garland from the gate, fastens it to the top of
his wand, and marches with it at the head of his beasts to the hamlet.
Afterwards the wand with the garland on it is set up on the muck-heap,
where it remains all the summer. The intention of these ceremonies is
not said, but on the analogy of the preceding customs we may conjecture
that both the flowers and the rowan-wand are supposed to guard the
cattle against witchcraft. A little later in the season, when the grass
is well grown in the forest, most of the cattle are sent away to the
_säter_, or summer pastures, of which every hamlet commonly has one or
more. These are clearings in the woods, and may be many miles distant
from the village. In Dalecarlia the departure usually takes place in the
first week of June. It is a great event for the pastoral folk. An
instinctive longing seems to awaken both in the people and the beasts.
The preparations of the women are accompanied by the bleating of the
sheep and goats and the lowing of the cattle, which make incessant
efforts to break through the pens near the house where they are shut up.
Two or more girls, according to the size of the herd, attend the cattle
on their migration and stay with them all the summer. Every animal as it
goes forth, whether cow, sheep, or goat, is marked on the brow with a
cross by means of a tar-brush in order to protect it against evil
spirits. But more dangerous foes lie in wait for the cattle in the
distant pastures, where bears and wolves not uncommonly rush forth on
them from the woods. On such occasions the herd-girls often display the
utmost gallantry, belabouring the ferocious beasts with sticks, and
risking their own lives in defence of the herds.[1097]
[Sidenote: These modern parallels throw light on some features of the
Parilia.] The foregoing customs, practised down to modern times by
shepherds and herdsmen with a full sense of their meaning, throw light
on some features of the Parilia which might otherwise remain obscure.
They seem to shew that when the Italian shepherd hung green boughs on
his folds, and garlands on his doors, he did so in order to keep the
witches from the ewes; and that in fumigating his flocks with sulphur
and driving them over a fire of straw he sought to interpose a fiery
barrier between them and the powers of evil, whether these were
conceived as witches or mischievous spirits.
[Sidenote: Green George a personification of a spirit of trees or of
vegetation in general.] But St. George is more than a patron of cattle.
The mummer who dresses up in green boughs on the saint’s day and goes by
the name of Green George[1098] clearly personifies the saint himself,
and such a disguise is appropriate only to a spirit of trees or of
vegetation in general. As if to make this quite clear, the Slavs of
Carinthia carry a tree decked with flowers in the procession in which
Green George figures; and the ceremonies in which the leaf-clad masker
takes a part plainly indicate that he is thought to stand in intimate
connexion with rain as well as with cattle. This counterpart of our Jack
in the Green is known in some parts of Russia, and the Slovenes call him
Green George. Dressed in leaves and flowers, he appears in public on St.
George’s Day carrying a lighted torch in one hand and a pie in the
other. Thus arrayed he goes out to the cornfields, followed by girls,
who sing appropriate songs. A circle of brushwood is then lighted, and
the pie is set in the middle of it. All who share in the ceremony sit
down around the fire, and the pie is divided among them. The observance
has perhaps a bearing on the cattle as well as on the cornfields, for in
some parts of Russia when the herds go out to graze for the first time
in spring a pie baked in the form of a sheep is cut up by the chief
herdsman, and the bits are kept as a cure for the ills to which sheep
are subject.[1099]
[Sidenote: “Ringing out the grass” on St. George’s Day.] At Schwaz, an
old Tyrolese town in the lower valley of the Inn, young lads assemble on
St. George’s Day, which is here the twenty-fourth of April, and having
provided themselves with bells, both large and small, they go in
procession ringing them to the various farms of the neighbourhood, where
they are welcomed and given milk to drink. These processions, which take
place in other parts of the Tyrol also, go by the name of “ringing out
the grass” (_Grasausläuten_), and it is believed that wherever the
bell-ringers come, there the grass grows and the crops will be abundant.
This beneficial effect appears to be ascribed to the power of the bells
to disperse the evil spirits, which are thought to be rampant on St.
George’s Day. For the same purpose of averting demoniac influence at
this time, people in Salzburg and the neighbouring districts of Upper
Austria go in procession round the fields and stick palm branches or
small crosses in them; also they fasten branches of the _Prunus Padus_,
L., at the windows of the houses and cattle-stalls.[1100] In some parts
of Germany the farmer looks to the height of his corn on St. George’s
Day, expecting that it should then be high enough to hide a crow.[1101]
[Sidenote: St. George supposed to get barren women with child.] Even
when we have said that St. George of Eastern Europe represents an old
heathen deity of sheep, cattle, horses, wolves, vegetation, and rain, we
have not exhausted all the provinces over which he is supposed to bear
sway. According to an opinion which appears to be widely spread, he has
the power of blessing barren women with offspring. This belief is
clearly at the root of the South Slavonian custom, described above,
whereby a childless woman hopes to become a mother by wearing a shirt
which has hung all night on a fruitful tree on St. George’s Eve.[1102]
Similarly, a Bulgarian wife who desires to have a child will strike off
a serpent’s head on St. George’s Day, put a bean in its mouth, and lay
the head in a hollow tree or bury it in the earth at a spot so far from
the village that the crowing of the cocks cannot be heard there. If the
bean buds, her wishes will be granted.[1103]
[Sidenote: Love-charms practised among the Slavs on St. George’s Day.]
It is natural to suppose that a saint who can bestow offspring can also
bring fond lovers together. Hence among the Slavs, with whom St. George
is so popular, his day is one of the seasons at which youths and maidens
resort to charms and divination in order to win or discover the
affections of the other sex. Thus, to take examples, a Bohemian way of
gaining a girl’s love is as follows. You catch a frog on St. George’s
Day, wrap it in a white cloth, and put it in an ant-hill after sunset or
about midnight. The creature croaks terribly while the ants are gnawing
the flesh from its bones. When silence reigns again, you will find
nothing left of the frog but one little bone in the shape of a hook and
another little bone in the shape of a shovel. Take the hook-shaped bone,
go to the girl of your choice, and hook her dress with the bone, and she
will fall over head and ears in love with you. If you afterwards tire of
her, you have only to touch her with the shovel-shaped bone, and her
affection will vanish as quickly as it came.[1104] Again, at Ceklinj, in
Crnagora, maidens go at break of day on St. George’s morning to a well
to draw water, and look down into its dark depth till tears fill their
eyes and they fancy they see in the water the image of their future
husband.[1105] At Krajina, in Servia, girls who would pry into the book
of fate gather flowers in the meadows on the eve of St. George, make
them up into nosegays, and give to the nosegays the names of the various
lads whose hearts they would win. Late at night they place the flowers
by stealth under the open sky, on the roof or elsewhere, and leave them
there till daybreak. The lad on whose nosegay most dew has fallen will
love the girl most truly throughout the year. Sometimes mischievous
young men secretly watch these doings, and steal the bunches of flowers,
which makes sore hearts among the girls.[1106] Once more, in wooded
districts of Bohemia a Czech maiden will sometimes go out on St.
George’s Eve into an oak or beech forest and catch a young wild pigeon.
It may be a ring-dove or a wood-pigeon, but it must always be a male.
She takes the bird home with her, and covers it with a sieve or shuts it
up in a box that nobody may know what she is about. Having kept and fed
it till it can fly, she rises very early in the morning, while the
household is still asleep, and goes with the dove to the hearth. Here
she presses the bird thrice to her bare breast, above her heart, and
then lets it fly away up the chimney, while she says:—
“_Out of the chimney, dove,
Fly, fly from here.
Take me, dear Hans, my love,
None, none so dear._
“_Fly to your rocks, fair dove,
Fly to your lea.
So may I get, my love,
None, none but thee._”[1107]
[Sidenote: St. George in Syria esteemed a giver of offspring to
childless women.] In the East, also, St. George is reputed to be a giver
of offspring to barren women, and in this character he is revered by
Moslems as well as Christians. His shrines may be found in all parts of
Syria; more places are associated with him than with any other saint in
the calendar. The most famous of his sanctuaries is at Kalat el Hosn, in
Northern Syria. Childless women of all sects resort to it in order that
the saint may remove their reproach. Some people shrug their shoulders
when the shrine is mentioned in this connexion. Yet many Mohammedan
women who desired offspring used to repair to it with the full consent
of their husbands. Nowadays the true character of the place is beginning
to be perceived, and many Moslems have forbidden their wives to visit
it.[1108] Such beliefs and practices [Sidenote: The Syrian St. George
may represent Tammuz.] lend some colour to the theory that in the East
the saint has taken the place of Tammuz or Adonis.[1109]
[Sidenote: In Europe St. George seems to have displaced an old Aryan god
of the spring, such as the Lithuanian Pergrubius.] But we cannot suppose
that the worship of Tammuz has been transplanted to Europe and struck
its roots deep among the Slavs and other peoples in the eastern part of
our continent. Rather amongst them we must look for a native Aryan deity
who now masquerades in the costume of the Cappadocian saint and martyr
St. George. Perhaps we may find him in the Pergrubius of the
Lithuanians, a people who retained their heathen religion later than any
other branch of the Aryan stock in Europe. This Pergrubius is described
as “the god of the spring,” as “he who makes leaves and grass to grow,”
or more fully as “the god of flowers, plants, and all buds.” On St.
George’s Day, the twenty-third of April, the heathen Prussians and
Lithuanians offered a sacrifice to Pergrubius. A priest, who bore the
title of _Wurschait_, held in his hand a mug of beer, while he thus
addressed the deity: “Thou drivest away the winter; thou bringest back
the pleasant spring. By thee the fields and gardens are green, by thee
the groves and the woods put forth leaves.” According to another
version, the prayer ran as follows: “Thou drivest the winter away, and
givest in all lands leaves and grass. We pray thee that thou wouldst
make our corn to grow and wouldst put down all weeds.” After praying
thus, the priest drank the beer, holding the mug with his teeth, but not
touching it with his hands. Then without handling it he threw the mug
backward over his head. Afterwards it was picked up and filled again,
and all present drank out of it. They also sang a hymn in praise of
Pergrubius, and then spent the whole day in feasting and dancing.[1110]
Thus it appears that Pergrubius was a Lithuanian god of the spring, who
caused the grass and the corn to grow and the trees to burst into leaf.
In this he resembles Green George, the embodiment of the fresh
vegetation of spring, whose leaf-clad representative still plays his
pranks on the very same day in some parts of Eastern Europe. Nothing,
indeed, is said of the relation of Pergrubius to cattle, and so far the
analogy between him and St. George breaks down. But our accounts of the
old Lithuanian mythology are few and scanty; if we knew more about
Pergrubius we might find that as a god or personification of spring he,
like St. George, was believed to exert all the quickening powers of that
genial season—in other words, that his beneficent activity was not
confined to clothing the bare earth with verdure, but extended to the
care of the teeming flocks and herds, as well as to the propagation of
mankind. Certainly it is not easy to draw a sharp line of division
between the god who attends to cattle and the god who provides the food
on which they subsist.
[Sidenote: The Roman equivalent of St. George was Pales, who may have
been personated by the king at the Parilia.] Thus Pergrubius may perhaps
have been the northern equivalent of the pastoral god Pales, who was
worshipped by the Romans only two days earlier at the spring festival of
the Parilia. It will be remembered that the Roman shepherds prayed to
Pales for grass and leaves, the very things which it was the part of
Pergrubius to supply. Is it too bold to conjecture that in rural
districts of Italy Pales may have been personated by a leaf-clad man,
and that in the early age of Rome the duty of thus representing the god
may have been one of the sacred functions of the king? The conjecture at
least suggests a reason for the tradition that Numa, the typical
priestly king of Rome, was born on the day of the Parilia.
Footnote 1045:
Varro, _Rerum rusticarum_, ii. 1. 9 _sq._ “_Romanorum vero populum a
pastoribus esse ortum quis non dicit?_” etc. Amongst other arguments
in favour of this view Varro refers to the Roman personal names
derived from cattle, both large and small, such as _Porcius_,
“pig-man,” _Ovinius_, “sheep-man,” _Caprilius_, “goat-man,”
_Equitius_, “horse-man,” _Taurius_, “bull-man,” and so forth. On the
importance of cattle and milk among the ancient Aryans see O.
Schrader, _Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde_
(Strasburg, 1901), pp. 541 _sq._, 689 _sqq._, 913 _sqq._
Footnote 1046:
Above, vol. i. p. 366.
Footnote 1047:
As to the foundation of Rome on this date see Varro, _Rerum
rusticarum_, ii. 1. 9; Cicero, _De divinatione_, ii. 47. 98; Festus,
_s.v._ “Parilibus,” p. 236, ed. C. O. Müller; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._
xviii. 247; Propertius, v. 4. 73 _sq._; Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 801-806;
_id._, _Metam._ xiv. 774 _sq._; Velleius Paterculus, i. 8. 4;
Eutropius, i. 1; Solinus, i. 18; Censorinus, _De die natali_, xxi. 6;
Probus on Virgil, _Georg._ iii. 1; Schol. Veronens. on Virgil, _l.c._;
Dionysius Halicarnas, _Ant. Rom._ i. 88; Plutarch, _Romulus_, 12; Dio
Cassius, xliii. 42; Zonaras, _Annales_, vii. 3; Joannes Lydus, _De
mensibus_, i. 14, iv. 50. As to the birth of Numa, see Plutarch,
_Numa_, 3. The festival is variously called Parilia and Palilia by
ancient writers, but the form Parilia seems to be the better attested
of the two. See G. Wissowa, _s.v._ “Pales,” in W. H. Roscher’s
_Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie_, iii. 1278.
Footnote 1048:
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (_Ant. Rom._ i. 88) hesitates between these
two views. With truer historical insight Plutarch (_Romulus_, 12)
holds that the rustic festival was older than the foundation of Rome.
Footnote 1049:
See, for example, vol. i. above, p. 32.
Footnote 1050:
For modern discussions of the Parilia, see L. Preller, _Römische
Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 413 _sqq._; J. Marquardt, _Römische
Staatsverwaltung_, iii. 2nd Ed., 207 _sq._; W. Mannhardt, _Antike
Wald- und Feldkulte_, pp. 309-317; W. Warde Fowler, _Roman Festivals_,
pp. 79-85; G. Wissowa, _s.v._ “Pales,” in W. H. Roscher’s _Lexikon der
griech. u. röm. Mythologie_, iii. 1276-1280; _id._, _Religion und
Kultus der Römer_, pp. 165 _sq._
Footnote 1051:
Cicero, _De divinatione_, ii. 47. 98; Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 806; Calendar
of Philocalus, quoted by W. Warde Fowler, _op. cit._ p. 79; Probus on
Virgil, _Georg._ iii. 1; Plutarch, _Romulus_, 12; Zonaras, _Annales_,
vii. 3.
Footnote 1052:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ i. 88.
Footnote 1053:
Festus, _s.v._ “Pales,” p. 222, ed. C. O. Müller; Dionysius Halic.
_l.c._
Footnote 1054:
Servius on Virgil, _Georg._ iii. 1. See also Arnobius, _Adversus
nationes_, iii. 40; Martianus Capella, i. 50.
Footnote 1055:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 637-640, 731-734; Propertius, v. 1. 19 _sq._
Footnote 1056:
See above, p. 229. As to the sacrifice of the horse in October see
_The Golden Bough_, Second Edition, ii. 315 _sqq._
Footnote 1057:
Tibullus, ii. 5. 91 _sq._:—
“_Et fetus matrona dabit, natusque parenti
Oscula comprensis auribus cripict._”
Footnote 1058:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 735-738. In his account of the festival Ovid
mentions only shepherds and sheep; but since Pales was a god of cattle
as well as of sheep (Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, iii. 23), we may
suppose that herds and herdsmen equally participated in it. Dionysius
(_l.c._) speaks of four-footed beasts in general.
Footnote 1059:
So Mr. W. Warde Fowler understands Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 735-742.
Footnote 1060:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 805 _sq._
Footnote 1061:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 739 _sq._
Footnote 1062:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 747 _sq._:—
“_Consule, dic, pecori pariter pecorisque magistris:
Effugiat stabulis noxa repulsa meis._”
With this sense of _noxa_ compare _id._ vi. 129 _sq._, where it is
said that buckthorn or hawthorn “_tristes pellere posset a foribus
noxas_.”
Footnote 1063:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 763-774. The prayer that the wolves may be kept far
from the fold is mentioned also by Tibullus (ii. 5. 88).
Footnote 1064:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 779-782; Tibullus, ii. 5. 89 _sq._; Propertius, v.
1. 19, v. 4. 77 sq.; Persius, i. 72; Probus on Virgil, _Georg._ iii.
1.
Footnote 1065:
I owe this observation to F. A. Paley, on Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 754. He
refers to Virgil, _Georg._ ii. 435, _Ecl._ x. 30; Theocritus, xi. 73
_sq._; to which may be added Virgil, _Georg._ iii. 300 _sq._, 320
_sq._; Horace, _Epist._ i. 14. 28; Cato, _De re rustica_, 30;
Columella, _De re rustica_, vii. 3. 21, xi. 2. 83 and 99-101. From
these passages of Cato and Columella we learn that the Italian farmer
fed his cattle on the leaves of the elm, the ash, the poplar, the oak,
the evergreen oak, the fig, and the laurel.
Footnote 1066:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 749-754.
Footnote 1067:
Ovid, _Fasti_, iv. 757-760.
Footnote 1068:
Columella, _De re rustica_, vii. 3. 11. In this respect the practice
of ancient Italian farmers would seem to have differed from that of
modern English breeders. In a letter (dated 8th February 1908) my
friend Professor W. Somerville of Oxford writes: “It is against all
modern custom to arrange matters so that lambs are born five months
after April 21, say the end of September.” And, again, in another
letter (dated 16th February 1908) he writes to me: “The matter of
coupling ewes and rams in the end of April is very perplexing. In this
country it is only the Dorset breed of sheep that will ‘take’ the ram
at this time of the year. In the case of other breeds the ewe will
only take the ram in autumn, say from July to November, so that the
lambs are born from January to May. We consider that lambs born late
in the season, say May or June, never thrive well.”
Footnote 1069:
The suggestion was made by C. G. Heyne in his commentary on Tibullus,
i. 5. 88.
Footnote 1070:
O. Keller, _Thiere des classischen Alterthums_ (Innsbruck, 1887), pp.
158 _sqq._
Footnote 1071:
Calpurnius, _Bucol._ v. 16-28.
Footnote 1072:
Plutarch, _Romulus_, 12.
Footnote 1073:
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Ant. Rom._ 1. 88.
Footnote 1074:
This is the view of J. Marquardt (_Römische Staatsverwaltung_, iii.
2nd Ed., 207), and Mr. W. Warde Fowler (_Roman Festivals_, p. 83, note
1).
Footnote 1075:
Boecler-Kreutzwald, _Der Ehsten abergläubische Gebräuche, Weisen und
Gewohnheiten_, pp. 82-84, 116-118; F. J. Wiedemann, _Aus dem inneren
und äusseren Leben der Ehsten_, pp. 332, 356-361; Holzmayer,
“Osiliana,” _Verhandlungen der gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft zu
Dorpat_, vii. (1872) p. 61.
Footnote 1076:
F. J. Wiedemann, _op. cit._ p. 413.
Footnote 1077:
See above, pp. 75 _sq._
Footnote 1078:
W. R. S. Ralston, _Russian Folk-tales_, pp. 344, 345.
Footnote 1079:
W. R. S. Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, pp. 229-231. In the
island of Rhodes also it is customary for people to roll themselves on
the grass for good luck on St. George’s Day. See Mary Hamilton, _Greek
Saints and their Festivals_ (Edinburgh and London, 1910), p. 166.
Footnote 1080:
Olga Bartels, “Aus dem Leben der weissrussischen Landbevölkerung,”
_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, xxxv. (1903) p. 659.
Footnote 1081:
W. R. S. Ralston, _op. cit._ p. 389. French peasants of the Vosges
Mountains believe that St. George shuts the mouths of wild beasts and
prevents them from attacking the flocks which are placed under his
protection (L. F. Sauvé, _Le Folk-lore des Hautes-Vosges_, p. 127).
Footnote 1082:
W. R. S. Ralston, _op. cit._ pp. 319 _sq._
Footnote 1083:
R. F. Kaindl, “Zauberglaube bei den Rutenen in der Bukowina und
Galizien,” _Globus_, lxi. (1892) p. 280.
Footnote 1084:
R. F. Kaindl, _Die Huzulen_ (Vienna, 1894), pp. 62 _sq._, 78, 88
_sq._; _id._, “Zauberglaube bei den Huzulen,” _Globus_, lxxvi. (1899)
p. 233.
Footnote 1085:
P. Drechsler, _Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube in Schlesien_, i.
(Leipsic, 1903) pp. 106 _sq._ The authority quoted for the sacrifice
is Tiede, _Merkwürdigkeiten Schlesiens_ (1804), pp. 123 _sq._ It is
not expressly said, but we may assume, that the sacrifice was offered
on St. George’s Day.
Footnote 1086:
A. Birlinger, _Aus Schwaben_ (Wiesbaden, 1874), ii. 166. Compare
_id._, _Volksthümliches aus Schwaben_, ii. 21 n. 1.
Footnote 1087:
E. H. Meyer, _Badisches Volksleben im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_
(Strasburg, 1900), pp. 219, 408.
Footnote 1088:
J. Haltrich, _Zur Volkskunde der Siebenbürger Sachsen_ (Vienna, 1885),
p. 281.
Footnote 1089:
W. Schmidt, _Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Brauch der Romänen
Siebenbürgens_ (Hermannstadt, 1866), pp. 9, 11. Compare R. F. Kaindl,
“Zur Volkskunde der Rumänen in der Bukowina,” _Globus_, xcii. (1907)
p. 284. It does not appear whether the shepherd’s pouch
(“_Hirtentaschen_”) in question is the real pouch or the plant of that
name.
Footnote 1090:
A. und A. Schott, _Walachische Maehrchen_ (Stuttgart and Tübingen,
1845), pp. 299 _sq._
Footnote 1091:
A. Strausz, _Die Bulgaren_ (Leipsic, 1898), p. 287.
Footnote 1092:
A. Strausz, _op. cit._ p. 337.
Footnote 1093:
W. R. S. Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 230.
Footnote 1094:
Above, pp. 126 _sq._
Footnote 1095:
F. S. Krauss, _Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Südslaven_, pp.
125-127; _id._, _Kroatien und Slavonien_ (Vienna, 1889), pp. 105 _sq._
Footnote 1096:
W. J. A. Tettau und J. D. H. Temme, _Die Volkssagen Ostpreussens,
Litthauens und Westpreussens_ (Berlin, 1837), p. 263.
Footnote 1097:
L. Lloyd, _Peasant Life in Sweden_, pp. 246-251; A. Kuhn, _Herabkunft
des Feuers_, 2nd Ed., pp. 163 _sq._
Footnote 1098:
See above, pp. 75 _sq._
Footnote 1099:
W. R. S. Ralston, _Russian Folk-tales_, p. 345.
Footnote 1100:
Marie Andree-Eysn, _Volkskundliches aus dem bayrisch-österreichischen
Alpengebiet_ (Brunswick, 1910), pp. 180-182.
Footnote 1101:
E. H. Meyer, _Badisches Volksleben im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_
(Strasburg, 1900), p. 423; K. Freiherr von Leoprechting, _Aus dem
Lechrain_ (Munich, 1855), p. 168.
Footnote 1102:
See above, pp. 56 _sq._
Footnote 1103:
A. Strausz, _Die Bulgaren_, pp. 337, 385 _sq._ There seems to be a
special connexion between St. George and serpents. In Bohemia and
Moravia it is thought that up to the twenty-third of April serpents
are innocuous, and only get their poison on the saint’s day. See J. V.
Grohmann, _Aberglauben und Gebräuche aus Böhmen und Mähren_, §§ 326,
580, pp. 51, 81; W. Müller, _Beiträge zur Volkskunde der Deutschen in
Mähren_, p. 323. Various other charms are effected by means of
serpents on this day. Thus if you tear out the tongue of a live snake
on St. George’s Day, put it in a ball of wax, and lay the ball under
your tongue, you will be able to talk down anybody. See J. V.
Grohmann, _op. cit._, §§ 576, 1169, pp. 81, 166.
Footnote 1104:
J. V. Grohmann, _op. cit._ § 1463, p. 210.
Footnote 1105:
F. S. Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven_, p. 175.
Footnote 1106:
F. S. Krauss, _op. cit._ pp. 175 _sq._
Footnote 1107:
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, _Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen_, pp. 194 _sq._; J.
V. Grohmann, _op. cit._, § 554, p. 77.
Footnote 1108:
S. J. Curtiss, _Primitive Semitic Religion To-day_, pp. 83 _sq._, 118
_sq._
Footnote 1109:
S. Baring-Gould, _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_, pp. 278 _sqq._
The authority for this identification is the nominal translator, but
real author, of the work called _The Agriculture of the Nabataeans_.
See D. A. Chwolson, _Über Tammuz und die Menschenverehrung bei den
alten Babyloniern_ (St. Petersburg, 1860), pp. 56 _sq._ Although _The
Agriculture of the Nabataeans_ appears to be a forgery (see above, p.
100, note 2), the identification of the oriental St. George with
Tammuz may nevertheless be correct.
Footnote 1110:
J. Maeletius (Menecius), “De sacrificiis et idolatria veterum
Borussorum Livonum aliarumque vicinarum gentium,” _Mitteilungen der
Litterarischen Gesellschaft Masovia_, Heft 8 (Lötzen, 1902), pp. 185,
187, 200 _sq._; _id._ in _Scriptores rerum Livonicarum_, ii. (Riga and
Leipsic, 1848), pp. 389, 390; J. Lasicius, “De diis Samagitarum
caeterorumque Sarmatarum,” ed. W. Mannhardt, in _Magazin herausgegeben
von der Lettisch-literärischen Gesellschaft_, xiv. (1868) pp. 95 _sq._
The first form of the prayer to Pergrubius is from the Latin, the
second from the German, version of Maeletius’s (Jan Malecki’s) work.
The description of Pergrubius as “he who makes leaves and grass to
grow” (“_der lest wachssen laub unnd gras_”) is also from the German.
According to M. Praetorius, Pergrubius was a god of husbandry
(_Deliciae Prussicae_, Berlin, 1871, p. 25).
CHAPTER XX
THE WORSHIP OF THE OAK
§ 1. The Diffusion of the Oak in Europe
[Sidenote: The Latin kings represented Jupiter, the god of the oak, the
sky, the thunder, and the rain.] In a preceding chapter some reasons
were given for thinking that the early Latin kings posed as living
representatives of Jupiter, the god of the oak, the sky, the rain, and
the thunder, and that in this capacity they attempted to exercise the
fertilising functions which were ascribed to the god. The probability of
this view will be strengthened if it can be proved that the same god was
worshipped under other names by other branches of the Aryan stock in
Europe, and that the Latin kings were not alone in arrogating to
themselves his powers and attributes. In this chapter I propose briefly
to put together a few of the principal facts which point to this
conclusion.
[Sidenote: Why should the god of the oak be also the god of the sky, the
thunder, and the rain?] But at the outset a difficulty presents itself.
To us the oak, the sky, the rain, and the thunder appear things totally
distinct from each other. How did our forefathers come to group them
together and imagine them as attributes of one and the same god? A
connexion may be seen between the sky, the rain, and the thunder; but
what has any of them to do with the oak? Yet one of these apparently
disparate elements was probably the original nucleus round which in time
the others gathered and crystallised into the composite conception of
Jupiter. Accordingly we must ask, Which of them was the original centre
of attraction? If men started with the idea of an oak-god, how came they
to enlarge his kingdom by annexing to it the province of the sky, the
rain, and the thunder? If, on the other hand, they set out with the
notion of a god of the sky, the rain, and the thunder, or any one of
them, why should they have added the oak to his attributes? The oak is
terrestrial; the sky, the thunder, and the rain are celestial or aerial.
What is the bridge between the two?
[Sidenote: In the composite character of Jupiter the oak is probably
primary, the sky, the rain, and the thunder secondary and derivative.]
In the sequel I shall endeavour to shew that on the principle of
primitive thought the evolution of a sky-god from an oak-god is more
easily conceivable than the converse; and if I succeed, it becomes
probable that in the composite character of Jupiter the oak is primary
and original, the sky, the rain, and the thunder secondary and
derivative.
[Sidenote: Europe covered with vast oak forests in prehistoric times.]
We have seen that long before the dawn of history Europe was covered
with vast primaeval woods, which must have exercised a profound
influence on the thought as well as on the life of our rude ancestors
who dwelt dispersed under the gloomy shadow or in the open glades and
clearings of the forest.[1111] Now, of all the trees which composed
these woods the oak appears to have been both the commonest and the most
useful. The proof of this is drawn partly from the statements of
classical writers, partly from the remains of ancient villages built on
piles in lakes and marshes, and partly from the oak forests which have
been found embedded in peat-bogs.
[Sidenote: Remains of oak forests found in peat-bogs.] These bogs, which
attain their greatest development in Northern Europe, but are met with
also in the central and southern parts of the Continent, have preserved
as in a museum the trees and plants which sprang up and flourished after
the end of the glacial epoch. Thus in Scotland the peat, which occupies
wide areas both in the highlands and lowlands, almost everywhere covers
the remains of forests, among which the commoner trees are pine, oak,
and birch. The oaks are of great size, and are found at heights above
the sea such as the tree would not now naturally attain to. Equally
remarkable for their size are the pines, but though they also had a
wider distribution than at present, they appear not to have formed any
extensive forests at the lowest levels of the country. Still, remains of
them have been dug up in many lowland peat-mosses, where the bulk of the
buried timber is oak.[1112] When Hatfield Moss in Yorkshire was drained,
there were found in it trunks of oak a hundred feet long and as black as
ebony. One giant actually measured a hundred and twenty feet in length,
with a diameter of twelve feet at the root and six feet at the top. No
such tree now exists in Europe.[1113] Sunken forests and peat occur at
many places on the coasts of England, especially on low shelving shores
where the land falls away with a gentle slope to the sea. These
submerged areas were once mud flats which, as the sea retreated from
them, gradually became clothed with dense forests, chiefly of oak and
Scotch fir, though ash, yew, alder, and other trees sooner or later
mingled with them.[1114] The great peat-bogs of Ireland shew that there
was a time when vast woods of oak and yew covered the country, the oak
growing on the hills up to a height of four hundred feet or thereabout
above the sea, while at higher levels deal was the prevailing timber.
Human relics have often been discovered in these Irish bogs, and ancient
roadways made of oak have also come to light.[1115] In the peat-bog near
Abbeville, in the valley of the Somme, trunks of oak have been dug up
fourteen feet thick, a diameter rarely met with outside the tropics in
the old Continent.[1116]
[Sidenote: Former oak woods of Denmark and Scandinavia.] At present the
woods of Denmark consist for the most part of magnificent beeches, which
flourish here as luxuriantly as anywhere in the world. Oaks are much
rarer and appear to be on the decline. Yet the evidence of the peat-bogs
proves that before the advent of the beech the country was overspread
with dense forests of tall and stately oaks. It was during the
ascendency of the oak in the woods that bronze seems to have become
known in Denmark; for swords and shields of that metal, now in the
museum of Copenhagen, have been taken out of peat in which oaks abound.
Yet at a still earlier period the oak had been preceded by the pine or
Scotch fir in the Danish forests; and the discovery of neolithic
implements in the peat-bogs shews that savages of the Stone Age had
their homes in these old pine woods as well as in the later forests of
oak. Some antiquaries are of opinion that the Iron Age in Denmark began
with the coming of the beech, but of this there is no evidence; for
aught we know to the contrary the beautiful beech forests may date back
to the Age of Bronze.[1117] The peat-bogs of Norway abound in buried
timber; and in many of them the trees occur in two distinct layers. The
lower of these layers consists chiefly of oak, hazel, ash, and other
deciduous trees; the upper is composed of Scotch firs and birches. In
the bogs of Sweden also the oak forests underlie the pine forests.[1118]
However, it appears to be doubtful whether Scandinavia was inhabited in
the age of the oak woods. Neolithic tools have indeed been found in the
peat, but generally not deeper down than two feet or so; hence one
antiquary infers that in these bogs not more than two feet of peat has
formed within historical times.[1119] But negative evidence on such a
point goes for little, as only a small portion of the bogs can have been
explored.
[Sidenote: The ancient lake dwellings of Europe were built to a great
extent on oaken piles.] Unequivocal proof of the prevalence of the oak
and its usefulness to man in early times is furnished by the remains of
the pile villages which have been discovered in many of the lakes of
Europe. In the British Islands the piles and the platforms on which
these crannogs or lake dwellings rested appear to have been generally of
oak, though fir, birch, and other trees were sometimes used in their
construction. Speaking of the Irish and Scotch crannogs a learned
antiquary remarks: “Every variety of structure observed in the one
country is to be found in the other, from the purely artificial island,
framed of oak-beams, mortised together, to the natural island,
artificially fortified or enlarged by girdles of oak-piles or ramparts
of loose stones.”[1120] Canoes hollowed out of trunks of oak have been
found both in the Scotch and in the Irish crannogs.[1121] In the lake
dwellings of Switzerland and Central Europe the piles are very often of
oak, but by no means as uniformly so as in the British Islands; fir,
birch, alder, ash, elm, and other timber were also employed for the
purpose.[1122] That the inhabitants of these villages subsisted partly
on the produce [Sidenote: The inhabitants of the lake dwellings
subsisted partly on acorns.] of the oak, even after they had adopted
agriculture, is proved by the acorns which have been found in their
dwellings along with wheat, barley, and millet, as well as beech-nuts,
hazel-nuts, and the remains of chestnuts and cherries.[1123] In the
valley of the Po the framework of logs and planks which supports the
prehistoric villages is most commonly of elm wood, but evergreen oak and
chestnut were also used; and the abundance of oaks is attested by the
great quantities of acorns which were dug up in these settlements. As
the acorns were sometimes found stored in earthenware vessels, it
appears that they were eaten by the people as well as by their
pigs.[1124]
[Sidenote: Evidence of classical writers as to the oak forests of
Europe.] The evidence of classical writers proves that great oak forests
still existed down to their time in various parts of Europe. Thus the
Veneti on the Atlantic coast of Brittany made their flat-bottomed boats
out of oak timber, of which, we are told, there was abundance in their
country.[1125] Pliny informs us that, while the whole of Germany was
covered with cool and shady woods, the loftiest trees were to be seen
not far from the country of the Chauci, who inhabited the coast of the
North Sea. Among these giants of the forest he speaks especially of the
oaks which grew on the banks of two lakes. When the waves had undermined
their roots, the oaks are said to have torn away great portions of the
bank and floated like islands on the lakes.[1126] The same [Sidenote:
The oak woods of Germany.] writer speaks of the vast Hercynian wood of
Germany as an oak forest, old as the world, untouched for ages, and
passing wonderful in its immortality. So huge were the trees, he says,
that when their roots met they were forced up above ground in the shape
of arches, through which a troop of horse could ride as through an open
gate.[1127] His testimony as to the kind of trees which composed this
famous forest is confirmed by its name, which seems to mean no more than
“oak wood.”[1128] In the second century before our era oak forests were
still so common in the valley of the Po that the herds of swine which
browsed on the acorns sufficed to [Sidenote: The oak woods of ancient
Italy and Greece.] supply the greater part of the demand for pork
throughout Italy, although nowhere in the world, according to Polybius,
were more pigs butchered to feed the gods, the people, and the
army.[1129] Elsewhere the same historian describes the immense herds of
swine which roamed the Italian oak forests, especially on the coasts of
Tuscany and Lombardy. In order to sort out the different droves when
they mingled with each other in the woods, each swineherd carried a
horn, and when he wound a blast on it all his own pigs came trooping to
him with such vehemence that nothing could stop them; for all the herds
knew the note of their own horn. In the oak forests of Greece this
device was unknown, and the swineherds there had harder work to come by
their own when the beasts had strayed far in the woods, as they were apt
to do in autumn while the acorns were falling.[1130] Down to the
beginning of our era oak woods were interspersed among the olive groves
and vineyards of the Sabine country in central Italy.[1131] Among the
beautiful woods which clothed the Heraean mountains in Sicily the oaks
were particularly remarked for their stately growth and the great size
of their acorns.[1132] In the second century after Christ the oak
forests of Arcadia still harboured wild boars, bears, and huge tortoises
in their dark recesses.[1133]
[Sidenote: The oak still the chief forest tree of Europe.] Even now the
predominance of the oak as the principal forest tree of Europe has
hardly passed away. Thus we are told that among the leaf-bearing trees
of Greece, as opposed to the conifers, the oak still plays by far the
most important part in regard both to the number of the individuals and
the number of the species.[1134] And the British oak in particular
(_Quercus robur_) is yet the prevailing tree in most of the woods of
France, Germany, and southern Russia, while in England the coppice and
the few fragments of natural forest still left are mainly composed of
this species.[1135]
[Sidenote: In Europe acorns have been used as human food both in ancient
and modern times.] Thus the old classical tradition that men lived upon
acorns before they learned to till the ground[1136] may very well be
founded on fact. Indeed acorns were still an article of diet in some
parts of southern Europe within historical times. Speaking of the
prosperity of the righteous, Hesiod declares that for them the earth
bears much substance, and the oak on the mountains puts forth
acorns.[1137] The Arcadians in their oak-forests were proverbial for
eating acorns,[1138] but not the acorns of all oaks, only those of a
particular sort.[1139] Pliny tells us that in his day acorns still
constituted the wealth of many nations, and that in time of dearth they
were ground and baked into bread.[1140] According to Strabo, the
mountaineers of Spain subsisted on acorn bread for two-thirds of the
year;[1141] and in that country acorns were served up as a second course
even at the meals of the well-to-do.[1142] In the same regions the same
practice [Sidenote: Acorns as food in modern Europe.] has survived to
modern times. The commonest and finest oak of modern Greece is the
_Quercus Aegilops_, with a beautiful crown of leaves, and the peasants
eat its acorns both roasted and raw.[1143] The sweeter acorns of the
_Quercus Ballota_ also serve them as food, especially in Arcadia.[1144]
In Spain people eat the acorns of the evergreen oak (_Quercus Ilex_),
which are known as _bellotas_, and are said to be much larger and more
succulent than the produce of the British oak. The duchess in _Don
Quixote_ writes to Sancho’s wife to send her some of them. But oaks are
now few and far between in La Mancha.[1145] Even in England and France
acorns have been boiled and eaten by the poor as a substitute for bread
in time of dearth.[1146] And naturally the use of acorns as food for
swine has also lasted into modern times. It is on acorns that those hogs
are fattened in Estremadura which make the famous Montanches hams.[1147]
Large herds of swine in all the great oak woods of Germany depend on
acorns for their autumn subsistence; and in the remaining royal forests
of England the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages still claim
their ancient right of _pannage_, turning their hogs into the woods in
October and November.[1148]
§ 2. The Aryan God of the Oak and the Thunder[1149]
[Sidenote: The many benefits received by the ancient Aryans from the oak
naturally led them to worship the tree.] Thus we may conclude that the
primitive Aryans of Europe lived among oak woods, used oak sticks for
the lighting of their fires, and oak timber for the construction of
their villages, their roads, their canoes, fed their swine on acorns,
and themselves subsisted in part on the same simple diet. No wonder,
then, if the tree from which they received so many benefits should play
an important part in their religion, and should be invested with a
sacred character. We have seen that the worship of trees has been
world-wide, and that, beginning with a simple reverence and dread of the
tree as itself animated by a powerful spirit, it has [Sidenote: The
worship of the tree itself gradually grew into a worship of the god of
the tree, but no sharp line of distinction can be drawn between the
two.] gradually grown into a cult of tree gods and tree goddesses, who
with the advance of thought become more and more detached from their old
home in the trees, and assume the character of sylvan deities and powers
of fertility in general, to whom the husbandman looks not merely for the
prosperity of his crops, but for the fecundity of his cattle and his
women. Where this evolution has taken place it has necessarily been slow
and long. Though it is convenient to distinguish in theory between the
worship of trees and the worship of gods of the trees, it is impossible
to draw a hard and fast line between them in practice, and to say, “Here
the one begins and the other ends.” Such distinctions, however useful
they may be as heads of classification to the student, evade in general
the duller wit of the tree worshipper. We cannot therefore hope to lay
our finger on that precise point in the history of the Aryans when they
ceased to worship the oak for its own sake, and began to worship a god
of the oak. That point, if it were ideally possible to mark it, had
doubtless been left far behind them by the more intelligent, at least,
of our forefathers before they emerged into the light of history. We
must be content for the most part to find among them gods of whom the
oak was an attribute or sacred adjunct rather than the essence. If we
wish to find the original worship of the tree itself we must go for it
to the ignorant peasantry of to-day, not to the enlightened writers of
antiquity. Further, it is to be borne in mind that while all oaks were
probably the object of superstitious awe, so that the felling of any of
them for timber or firewood would be attended with ceremonies designed
to appease the injured spirit of the tree,[1150] only certain particular
groves or individual oaks would in general receive that measure of
homage which we should term worship. The reasons which led men to
venerate some trees more than others might be various. Amongst them the
venerable age and imposing size of a giant oak would naturally count for
much. And any other striking peculiarity which marked a tree off from
its fellows would be apt to attract the attention, and to concentrate on
itself the vague superstitious awe of the savage. We know, for example,
that with the Druids the growth of mistletoe on an oak was a sign that
the tree was especially sacred; and the rarity of this feature—for
mistletoe does not commonly grow on oaks—would enhance the sanctity and
mystery of the tree. For it is the strange, the wonderful, the rare, not
the familiar and commonplace, which excites the religious emotions of
mankind.
[Sidenote: The worship of the oak tree or of the oak god seems to have
been common to all the Aryans of Europe.] 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
[Sidenote: Worship of the oak in Greece; its association with Zeus.]
with their highest god, Zeus or Jupiter, the divinity of the sky, the
rain, and the thunder.[1151] 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.[1152] The thunder-storms which are said to
rage at Dodona more frequently than anywhere else in Europe,[1153] 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[1154] 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.[1155] In Boeotia, as we have
seen, the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera, the oak god and the oak
goddess, was celebrated with much pomp by a religious federation of
states.[1156] 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.[1157]
[Sidenote: Zeus as the rain god of the Greeks.] 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.[1158] And in time of drought the Athenians themselves prayed,
“Rain, rain, O dear Zeus, on the cornland of the Athenians and on the
plains.”[1159] The mountains which lay round their city, and to which
they looked through the clear Attic air for signs of the weather, were
associated by them with the worship of the weather-god Zeus. It was a
sign of rain when, away to sea, a cloud rested on the sharp peak of
Aegina, which cuts the sky-line like a blue horn.[1160] On this far-seen
peak Panhellenian Zeus was worshipped,[1161] and legend ran that once,
when all Greece was parched with drought, envoys assembled in Aegina
from every quarter and entreated Aeacus, the king of the island, that he
would intercede with his father Zeus for rain. The king complied with
the request, and by sacrifices and prayers wrung the needed showers from
his sire the sky-god.[1162]
[Sidenote: Zeus as the god of fertility.] Again, it was a sign of rain
at Athens when clouds in summer lay on the top or the sides of
Hymettus,[1163] the chain of barren mountains which bounds the Attic
plain on the east, facing the westering sun and catching from his last
beams a solemn glow of purple light. If during a storm a long bank of
clouds was seen lowering on the mountain, it meant that the storm would
increase in fury.[1164] Hence an altar of Showery Zeus stood on
Hymettus.[1165] Again, omens of weather were drawn when lightning
flashed or clouds hung on the top of Mount Parnes to the north of
Athens;[1166] and there accordingly an altar was set up to sign-giving
Zeus.[1167] The climate of eastern Argolis is dry, and the rugged
mountains are little better than a stony waterless wilderness. On one of
them, named Mount Arachnaeus, or the Spider Mountain, stood altars of
Zeus and Hera, and when rain was wanted the people sacrificed there to
the god and goddess.[1168] On the ridge of Mount Tmolus, near Sardes,
there was a spot called the Birthplace of Rainy Zeus,[1169] probably
because clouds resting on it were observed to presage rain. The members
of a religious society in the island of Cos used to go in procession and
offer sacrifices on an altar of Rainy Zeus, when the thirsty land stood
in need of refreshing showers.[1170] Thus conceived as the source of
fertility, it was not unnatural that Zeus should receive the title of
the Fruitful One,[1171] and that at Athens he should be worshipped under
the surname of the Husbandman.[1172]
[Sidenote: Zeus as the god of thunder and lightning.] Again, Zeus
wielded the thunder and lightning as well as the rain.[1173] At Olympia
and elsewhere he was worshipped under the surname of Thunderbolt;[1174]
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.[1175] 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.[1176]
[Sidenote: The Greek kings personified Zeus, as the Italian kings
personified Jupiter.] Thus when ancient Greek kings claimed to be
descended from Zeus, and even to bear his name,[1177] 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[1178]
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;[1179] 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.[1180]
[Sidenote: Jupiter in Italy as the god of the oak, the thunder, and the
rain.] In ancient Italy every oak was sacred to Jupiter, the Italian
counterpart of Zeus;[1181] 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.[1182] 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.”[1183] And as
Jupiter conjured up the clouds and caused them to discharge their genial
burden on the earth, so he drove them away and brought the bright
Italian sky back once more. Hence he was worshipped under the titles of
the Serene, he who restores serenity.[1184] Lastly, as god of the
fertilising showers [Sidenote: Jupiter as the god of fertility.] he made
the earth to bring forth; so people called him the Fruitful One.[1185]
[Sidenote: The god of the oak and the thunder among the northern
Aryans.] 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.[1186] 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.[1187] “The Celts,” says a Greek writer, “worship [Sidenote:
Celtic worship of the oak.] Zeus, and the Celtic image of Zeus is a tall
oak.”[1188] 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.”[1189] Indeed the very
name of Druids is believed by good authorities to mean no more than “oak
men.”[1190] When Christianity displaced Druidism in Ireland, the
churches and monasteries were sometimes built in oak groves or under
solitary oaks,[1191] the choice of the site [Sidenote: Traces of sacred
oaks in Ireland.] being perhaps determined by the immemorial sanctity of
the trees, which might predispose the minds of the converts to receive
with less reluctance the teaching of the new faith.[1192] But there is
no positive evidence that the Irish Druids performed their rites, like
their Gallic brethren, in oak groves,[1193] so that the inference from
the churches of Kildare, Derry, and the rest is merely a conjecture
based on analogy.
In the religion of the ancient Germans the veneration for sacred groves
seems to have held the foremost place,[1194] and according to Grimm the
chief of their holy trees was the oak.[1195] It appears to have been
especially dedicated to the [Sidenote: The Teutonic god of the oak and
the thunder.] 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.”[1196] 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_.[1197] 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.”[1198] In these respects,
therefore, the Teutonic thunder god again resembled his southern
counterparts Zeus and Jupiter. And like them Thor appears to have been
the chief god of the pantheon; for in the great temple at Upsala his
image [Sidenote: The worship of Thor at Upsala.] occupied the middle
place between the images of Odin and Frey,[1199] and in oaths by this or
other Norse trinities he was always the principal deity invoked.[1200]
Beside the temple at Upsala there was a sacred grove, but the kinds of
trees which grew in it are not known. Only of one tree are we told that
it was of mighty size, with great spreading branches, and that it
remained green winter and summer alike. Here too was a spring where
sacrifices were offered. They used to plunge a living man into the
water, and if he disappeared they drew a favourable omen. Every nine
years, at the spring equinox, a great festival was held at Upsala in
honour of Thor, the god of thunder, Odin, the god of war, and Frey, the
god of peace and pleasure. The ceremonies lasted nine days. Nine male
animals of every sort were sacrificed, that their blood might appease
the gods. Each day six victims were slaughtered, of whom one was a man.
Their bodies were fastened to the trees of the grove, where dogs and
horses might be seen hanging beside men.[1201]
[Sidenote: Perun, the god of the oak and the thunder among the Slavs.]
Amongst the Slavs also the oak appears to have been the sacred tree of
the thunder god Perun, the counterpart of Zeus and Jupiter.[1202] 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.[1203] 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.”[1204]
[Sidenote: Perkunas, the chief Lithuanian god.] 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.[1205]
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.[1206] 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.[1207] 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.[1208] 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.[1209] 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.[1210]
[Sidenote: The god of the oak and the thunder among the Esthonians.]
Wedged in between the Lithuanians and the Slavs are the Esthonians, a
people who do not belong to the Aryan family. But they also shared the
reverence for the oak, and associated the tree with their thunder-god
Taara, the deity of their pantheon, whom they called “Old Father,” or
“Father of Heaven.”[1211] It is said that down to the beginning of the
nineteenth century Esthonians used to smear the holy oaks, lime-trees,
and ash-trees with the fresh blood of animals at least once a
year.[1212] The following prayer to thunder is instructive, because it
shews how easily thunder, through its association with rain, may appear
to the rustic mind in the character of a beneficent and fertilising
power. It was taken down from the lips of an Esthonian peasant
[Sidenote: Esthonian prayer to thunder.] in the seventeenth century.
“Dear Thunder,” he prayed, “we sacrifice to thee an ox, which has two
horns and four claws, and we would beseech thee for the sake of our
ploughing and sowing, that our straw may be red as copper, and our corn
yellow as gold. Drive somewhere else all black, thick clouds over great
marshes, high woods, and wide wastes. But to us ploughmen and sowers
give a fruitful time and sweet rain. Holy Thunder, guard our fields,
that they may bear good straw below, good ears above, and good grain
within.”[1213] Sometimes in time of great drought an Esthonian farmer
would carry beer thrice round a sacrificial fire, then pour it on the
flames with a prayer that the thunder-god would be pleased to send
rain.[1214]
[Sidenote: Parjanya, the old Indian god of thunder, rain, and
fertility.] In like manner, Parjanya, the old Indian god of thunder and
rain, whose name is by some scholars identified with the Lithuanian
Perkunas,[1215] was conceived as a deity of fertility, who not only made
plants to germinate, but caused cows, mares, and women to conceive. As
the power who impregnated all things, he was compared to a bull, an
animal which to the primitive herdsman is the most natural type of the
procreative energies. Thus in a hymn of the Rigveda it is said of him:—
“_The Bull, loud roaring, swift to send his bounty, lays in the
plants the seed for germination.
He smites the trees apart, he slays the demons: all life fears him
who wields the mighty weapon.
From him exceeding strong flees e’en the guiltless when thundering
Parjanya smites the wicked._
“_Like a car-driver whipping on his horses, he makes the messengers
of rain spring forward.
Far off resounds the roaring of the lion what time Parjanya fills
the sky with rain-cloud.
Forth burst the winds, down come the lightning-flashes: the plants
shoot up, the realm of light is streaming.
Food springs abundant for all living creatures what time Parjanya
quickens earth with moisture._”[1216]
In another hymn Parjanya is spoken of as “giver of growth to plants, the
god who ruleth over the waters and all moving creatures,” and it is said
that “in him all living creatures have their being.” Then the poet goes
on:—
“_May this my song to sovran lord Parjanya come near unto his heart
and give him pleasure.
May we attain the showers that bring enjoyment, and god-protected
plants with goodly fruitage.
He is the Bull of all, and their impregner: he holds the life of all
things fixed and moving._”[1217]
And in yet another hymn we read:—
“_Sing forth and laud Parjanya, son of Heaven, who sends the gift of
rain:
May he provide our pasturage.
Parjanya is the god who forms in kine, in mares, in plants of earth
And womanhood, the germ of life._”[1218]
In short, “Parjanya is a god who presides over the lightning, the
thunder, the rain, and the procreation of plants and living creatures.
But it is by no means clear whether he is originally a god of the rain,
or a god of the thunder. For, as both phenomena are always associated in
India, either of the two opinions is admissible, if no deciding evidence
comes from another quarter.”[1219] On this point something will be said
presently. Here it is enough to have indicated the ease with which the
notion of the thunder-god passes into, or is combined with, the idea of
a god of fertility in general.
[Sidenote: God of thunder, rain, and fertility among the Iroquois.] The
same combination meets us in Heno, the thunder-spirit of the Iroquois.
His office was not only to hurl his bolts at evil-doers, but to cool and
refresh the ground with showers, to ripen the harvest, and to mature the
fruits of the earth. In spring, when they committed the seeds to the
soil, the Indians prayed to him that he would water them and foster
their growth: and at the harvest festival they thanked him for his gift
of rain.[1220] The Hos [Sidenote: Goddess of lightning, rain, and
fertility among the Hos.] of Togoland in West Africa distinguish two
deities of the lightning, a god Sogble and a goddess Sodza, who are
husband and wife and talk with each other in the sound of thunder. The
goddess has epithets applied to her which seem to shew that she is
believed to send the rain and to cause the plants to grow. She is
addressed as “Mother of men and beasts, ship full of yams, ship full of
the most varied fullness.” Further, it is said to be she who blesses the
tilled land. Moreover, like the Hindoo thunder-god Parjanya, who slays
demons, the Ho thunder-goddess drives away evil spirits and witches from
people’s houses; under her protection children multiply and the inmates
of the house remain healthy.[1221] The Indians of the Andes, about
[Sidenote: Gods of thunder, rain, and fertility among the Indians of the
Andes and the Abchases of the Caucasus.] Lake Titicaca, believe in a
thunder-god named Con or Cun, whom they call the “lord” or “father” of
the mountains (_Ccollo-auqui_). He is regarded as a powerful being, but
irritable and difficult of access, who dwells on the high mountains
above the line of perpetual snow. Yet he gives great gifts to those who
win his favour; and when the crops are languishing for lack of rain, the
Indians try to rouse the god from his torpor by pouring a small libation
of brandy into a tarn below the snow-line; for they dare not set foot on
the snow lest they should meet the dreadful thunder-god face to face.
His bird is the condor as the eagle was the bird of the Greek
thunder-god Zeus.[1222] Similarly in time of drought the Abchases of the
Caucasus sacrifice an ox to Ap-hi, the god of thunder and lightning, and
an old man prays him to send rain, thunder, and lightning, telling him
that the crops are parched, the grass burnt up, and the cattle
starving.[1223] These examples shew how readily a thunder-god may come
to be viewed as a power of fertility; the connecting link is furnished
by the fertilising rain which usually accompanies a thunder-storm.
[Sidenote: Traces of the worship of the oak in modern Europe.] As might
have been expected, the ancient worship of the oak in Europe has left
its print in popular custom and superstition down to modern times. Thus
in the French department of Maine it is said that solitary oak-trees in
the fields are still worshipped, though the priests have sought to give
the worship a Christian colour by hanging images of saints on the
trees.[1224] In various parts of Lower Saxony and Westphalia, as late as
the first half of the nineteenth century, traces survived of the
sanctity of certain oaks, to which the people paid a half-heathenish,
half-Christian worship. In the principality of Minden young people of
both sexes used to dance round an old oak on Easter Saturday with loud
shouts of joy. And not far from the village of Wormeln, in the
neighbourhood of Paderborn, there stood a holy oak in the forest, to
which the inhabitants of Wormeln and Calenberg went every year in solemn
procession.[1225] Another vestige of superstitious reverence for the oak
in Germany is the custom of passing sick people and animals through a
natural or artificial opening in the trunk of an oak for the purpose of
healing them of their infirmities.[1226] At a village near Ragnit in
East Prussia there was an oak which, down to the seventeenth century,
the villagers regarded as sacred, firmly believing that any person who
harmed it would be visited with misfortune, especially with some bodily
ailment.[1227] About the middle of the nineteenth century the
Lithuanians still laid offerings for spirits under ancient oaks;[1228]
and old-fashioned people among them preferred to cook the viands for
funeral banquets on a fire of oak-wood, or at least under an
oak-tree.[1229] On the rivulet Micksy, between the governments of Pskov
and Livonia in Russia, there stood a stunted, [Sidenote: Worship of the
oak in modern Russia.] withered, but holy oak, which received the homage
of the neighbouring peasantry down at least to 1874. An eye-witness has
described the ceremonies. He found a great crowd of people, chiefly
Esthonians of the Greek Church, assembled with their families about the
tree, all dressed in gala costume. Some of them had brought wax candles
and were fastening them about the trunk and in the branches. Soon a
priest arrived, and, having donned his sacred robes, proceeded to sing a
canticle, such as is usually sung in the Orthodox Church in honour of
saints. But instead of saying as usual, “Holy saint, pray the Lord for
us,” he said, “Holy Oak Hallelujah, pray for us.” Then he incensed the
tree all round. During the service the tapers on the oak were lighted,
and the people, throwing themselves on the ground, adored the holy tree.
When the pastor had retired, his flock remained till late at night,
feasting, drinking, dancing, and lighting fresh tapers on the oak, till
everybody was drunk and the proceedings ended in an orgy.[1230]
[Sidenote: Ceremonial fires kindled by the friction of oak-wood.]
Another relic of the ancient sanctity of the oak has survived to modern
times in the practice of kindling ceremonial fires by means of the
friction of oak-wood. This has been done, either at stated seasons of
the year or on occasions of distress, by Slavs, Germans, and
Celts.[1231] Taken together with the perpetual sacred fires of oak-wood
which we have found among the Slavs, the Lithuanians, and the ancient
Romans,[1232] the wide prevalence of the practice seems clearly to point
back to a time when the forefathers of the Aryans in Europe dwelt in
forests of oak, fed their fires with oak-wood, and rekindled them, when
they chanced to go out, by rubbing two oaken sticks against each other.
[Sidenote: In the great European god of the oak, the thunder, and the
rain, the original element seems to have been the oak.] From the
foregoing survey of the facts 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.[1233] It was natural enough that the oak should loom large in
the religion of people who lived in oak forests, used oak timber for
building, oak sticks for fuel, and oak acorns for food and fodder; but
we have still to explain how they were led to associate the thunder and
the rain with the oak in their conception of this great divinity. From
the nature of the case our solution of the problem must be conjectural;
we can only guess at the [Sidenote: The clue to the development of a
lightning-god out of an oak-god may have been the notion that the
heavenly fire or lightning was made, like the earthly fire, by the
friction of oak-wood.] train of thought which prompted our forefathers
to link together things which to us seem so very different. Thunder and
rain may indeed naturally be regarded as akin since the two so often
occur together; but the difficulty is to understand why the oak should
be joined with them. Which of the three elements was the original
nucleus about which the others afterwards clustered? In our ignorance of
the facts, this question amounts to asking whether, on the principles of
savage thought, it is easier to suppose that an original god of thunder
and rain should afterwards add the oak-tree to his attributes, or that,
on the contrary, an old god of the oak should annex to himself the
thunder and the rain? In favour of the first of these suppositions it
may be said that a god of thunder and rain might in time be regarded as
a god of the oak, because thunder and rain come from the sky, and the
oak reaches skyward and is often struck by lightning.[1234] But this
train of thought is hardly likely to carry conviction even to the mind
of a savage. On the other hand, it is not difficult to imagine how early
man in Europe might suppose the thunder, or rather the lightning, to be
derived from the oak. Seeing that fire on earth was regularly kindled by
the rubbing of oaken sticks together, he might readily infer that fire
in heaven was produced in like manner; in other words, that the flash of
lightning was the spark elicited by some one who was lighting his fire
in the usual fashion up aloft; for the savage commonly explains natural
phenomena by ideas drawn from the circle of his own daily life.
Similarly, people who are accustomed to make fire by means of flints
sometimes suppose that lightning is produced in the same way. This is
reported of the Armenians,[1235] and it may be inferred of the many
peoples who believe that the flint implements of prehistoric races are
thunder-bolts.[1236]
[Sidenote: When an oak-god had once grown into a lightning-god, he would
easily develop into a god of the rain and the sky.] Thus it is easy to
conceive how a god of the oak, viewed as the source of earthly fire,
should come to be regarded as a god of the lightning, and hence, by an
easy extension of ideas, as a god of thunder and rain. Accordingly we
may provisionally assume that the great Aryan gods who combine these
various functions have been evolved in this fashion. A further step in
their promotion would be taken when the whole sky was assigned to their
dominion. The Greeks and Italians certainly advanced their Zeus and
Jupiter to this lofty position;[1237] but there seems to be no evidence
that the Aryans of the north ever raised their corresponding deities to
the rank of sky-gods in general. It is commonly indeed assumed that the
sky was the original province of all these deities, or rather of the
single Aryan god from which they are descended. But on this theory it is
hard to see why the god of the sky should have taken up with the oak,
and not only that, but should have clung to it even after he had, in
some places at least, begun to sit very loose to his old home, the vault
of heaven. Surely his fidelity to the oak from the earliest to the
latest times among all the different families of his European
worshippers is a strong argument for regarding the tree as the primary,
not a secondary, element in his composite nature.
Footnote 1111:
See above, pp. 7 _sq._
Footnote 1112:
J. Geikie, _Prehistoric Europe_ (Edinburgh, 1881), pp. 420 _sq._, 482
_sqq._, 495.
Footnote 1113:
R. Munro, _Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings or Crannogs_ (Edinburgh,
1882), p. 266, quoting Alton’s _Treatise on the Origin, Qualities, and
Cultivation of Moss Earth_.
Footnote 1114:
J. Geikie, _op. cit._ pp. 432-436.
Footnote 1115:
J. Geikie, _op. cit._ pp. 461-463.
Footnote 1116:
A. von Humboldt, _Kosmos_, i. (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1845) p. 298.
The passage is mistranslated in the English version edited by E.
Sabine.
Footnote 1117:
Sir Charles Lyell, _The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man_
4th ed., (London, 1873), pp. 8, 17, 415 _sq._; Sir John Lubbock (Lord
Avebury), _Prehistoric Times_ 5th Ed., (London, 1890), pp. 251, 387;
J. Geikie, _op. cit._ pp. 485-487.
Footnote 1118:
J. Geikie, _op. cit._ pp. 487 _sq._
Footnote 1119:
J. Geikie, _op. cit._ p. 489.
Footnote 1120:
R. Munro, _Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings_, p. 20, quoting the
article “Crannoges” in _Chambers’s Encyclopædia_.
Footnote 1121:
R. Munro, _op. cit._ p. 23. For more evidence of the use of oak in
British crannogs, see _id._, _op. cit._ pp. 6-8, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31,
32, 33 _sq._, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 51 _sq._, 53, 61, 62, 97, 122, 208,
262, 291-299; _id._ _The Lake Dwellings of Europe_ (London, Paris, and
Melbourne, 1890), pp. 350, 364, 372, 377.
Footnote 1122:
F. Keller, _The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and other Parts of
Europe_ 2nd Ed., (London, 1878), i. 37, 48, 65, 87, 93, 105, 110, 129,
156, 186, 194, 201, 214, 264, 268, 289, 300, 320, 375, 382, 434, 438,
440, 444, 446, 465, 639.
Footnote 1123:
F. Keller, _op. cit._ i. 332, 334, 375, 586.
Footnote 1124:
W. Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_ (Leipsic, 1879), pp. 12, 16
_sq._, 26. The bones of cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep prove that
these animals were bred by the people of the Italian pile villages.
See W. Helbig, _op. cit._ p. 14.
Footnote 1125:
Strabo, v. 4. 1, p. 195.
Footnote 1126:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 5.
Footnote 1127:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 6 “_Hercyniae silvae roborum vastitas ...
glandiferi maxime generis omnes, quibus honos apud Romanos
perpetuus._”
Footnote 1128:
H. Hirt, “Die Urheimat der Indogermanen,” _Indogermanische
Forschungen_, i. (1892), p. 480; P. Kretschmer, _Einleitung in die
Geschichte der griechischen Sprache_ (Göttingen, 1896), p. 81; O.
Schrader, _Reallexikon der Indogermanischen Altertumskunde_, _s.v._
“Eiche,” p. 164. This etymology assumes that _Hercynia_ represents an
original _Perkunia_, and is connected with the Latin _quercus_.
However, the derivation is not undisputed. See O. Schrader, _op. cit._
pp. 1015 _sq._
Footnote 1129:
Polybius, ii. 15. Compare Strabo, v. 1. 12, p. 218.
Footnote 1130:
Polybius, xii. 4.
Footnote 1131:
Strabo, v. 3. 1, p. 228.
Footnote 1132:
Diodorus Siculus, iv. 84.
Footnote 1133:
Pausanias, viii. 23. 8 _sq._ For notices of forests and groves of oak
in Arcadia and other parts of Greece, see _id._ ii. 11. 4, iii. 10. 6,
vii. 26. 10, viii. 11. 1, viii. 25. 1, viii. 42. 12, viii. 54. 5, ix.
3. 4, ix. 24. 5. The oaks in the Arcadian forests were of various
species (_id._ viii. 12. 1).
Footnote 1134:
C. Neumann und J. Partsch, _Physikalische Geographie von Griechenland_
(Breslau, 1885), p. 378.
Footnote 1135:
_Encyclopædia Britannica_, 9th Ed., xvii. 690.
Footnote 1136:
Virgil, _Georg._, i. 7 _sq._, 147-149; Lucretius, v. 939 _sq._, 965;
Tibullus, ii. 1. 37 _sq._, ii. 3. 69; Ovid, _Metam._ i. 106; _id._,
_Fasti_, i. 675 _sq._, iv. 399-402; Juvenal, xiv. 182-184; Aulus
Gellius, v. 6. 12; Dionysius Halicarnas. _Ars rhetorica_, i. 6, vol.
v. p. 230, ed. Reiske; Pollux, i. 234; Poryphry, _De abstinentia_, ii.
5.
Footnote 1137:
Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 232 _sq._
Footnote 1138:
Herodotus, i. 66.
Footnote 1139:
Pausanias, viii. 1, 6. According to Pausanias it was only the acorns
of the _phegos_ oak which the Arcadians ate.
Footnote 1140:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 15.
Footnote 1141:
Strabo, iii. 3. 7, p. 155.
Footnote 1142:
Pliny, _l.c._
Footnote 1143:
C. Neumann und J. Partsch, _Physikalische Geographie von
Griechenland_, p. 379.
Footnote 1144:
C. Neumann and J. Partsch, _op. cit._, p. 382, note.
Footnote 1145:
Cervantes, _Don Quixote_, part ii. ch. 50, vol. iv. p. 133 of H. E.
Watts’s translation, with the translator’s note (new edition, London,
1895); Neumann und Partsch, _op. cit._ p. 380; P. Wagler, _Die Eiche
in alter und neuer Zeit_, i. (Wurzen, 1891) p. 35. The passage in _Don
Quixote_ was pointed out to me by my friend Mr. W. Wyse.
Footnote 1146:
_Encyclopædia Britannica_, 9th. Ed., xvii. 692.
Footnote 1147:
H. E. Watts, _loc. cit._
Footnote 1148:
_Encyclopædia Britannica_, _l.c._
Footnote 1149:
To avoid misapprehension, I desire to point out that I am not here
concerned with the evolution of Aryan religion in general, but only
with that of a small, though important part of it, to wit, the worship
of a particular kind of tree. To write a general history of Aryan
religion in all its many aspects as a worship of nature, of the dead,
and so forth, would be a task equally beyond my powers and my
ambition. Still less should I dream of writing a universal history of
religion. The “general work” referred to in the preface to the first
edition of _The Golden Bough_ is a book of far humbler scope.
Footnote 1150:
For examples of such ceremonies, see above, pp. 18-20, 34-38.
Footnote 1151:
For evidence of these aspects of Zeus and Jupiter, see L. Preller,
_Griechische Mythologie_, i. 4th ed., 115 _sqq._; _id._, _Römische
Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 184 _sqq._ In former editions of this book I
was disposed to set aside much too summarily what may be called the
meteorological side of Zeus and Jupiter.
Footnote 1152:
See my note on Pausanias, ii. 17. 5; P. Wagler, _Die Eiche in alter
und neuer Zeit_, ii. (Berlin, 1891), pp. 2 _sqq._; A. B. Cook, “Zeus,
Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_, xvii. (1903) pp. 178 _sqq._
Footnote 1153:
Aug. Mommsen, _Delphika_ (Leipsic, 1878), pp. 4 _sq._
Footnote 1154:
Strabo, Frag. vii. 3; Stephanus Byzantius, _s.v._ Δωδώνη; Suidas,
_s.vv._ Δωδωναῖον χαλκεῖον and Δωδώνη; Apostolius, _Cent._ vi. 43;
Zenobius, _Cent._ vi. 5; Nonnus Abbas, _Ad S. Gregorii orat. ii.
contra Julianum_, 19 (Migne’s _Patrologia Graeca_, xxxvi. 1045). The
evidence on this subject has been collected and discussed by Mr. A. B.
Cook (“The Gong at Dodona,” _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xxii.
(1902) pp. 5-28). The theory in the text is obviously consistent, both
with the statement that the sound of the gongs was consulted as
oracular, and with the view, advocated by Mr. Cook, that it was
supposed to avert evil influences from the sanctuary. If I am right,
the bronze statuette which, according to some accounts, produced the
sound by striking the gong with a clapper would represent Zeus himself
making his thunder.
Footnote 1155:
On the natural surroundings of Dodona, see C. Carapanos, _Dodone et
ses ruines_ (Paris, 1878), pp. 7-10.
Footnote 1156:
Above, pp. 140 _sq._
Footnote 1157:
Above, vol. i. p. 309. On the oak as the tree of Zeus, see Dionysius
Halicarn. _Ars rhetorica_, i. 6, vol. v. p. 230 ed. Reiske; Schol. on
Aristophanes, _Birds_, 480. On this subject much evidence, both
literary and monumental, has been collected by Mr. A. B. Cook in his
articles “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_, xvii.
(1903) pp. 174 _sqq._, 268 _sqq._, 403 _sqq._, xviii. (1904) pp. 75
_sqq._, 327 _sq._
Footnote 1158:
Pausanias, i. 24. 3.
Footnote 1159:
Marcus Antoninus, v. 7.
Footnote 1160:
Theophrastus, _De signis tempestatum_, i. 24.
Footnote 1161:
Pausanias, i. 30. 4.
Footnote 1162:
Pausanias, ii. 29. 7 _sq._; Isocrates, _Evagoras_, 14; Apollodorus,
iii. 12. 6. Aeacus was said to be the son of Zeus by Aegina, daughter
of Asopus (Apollodorus, _l.c._). Isocrates says that his relationship
to the god marked Aeacus out as the man to procure rain.
Footnote 1163:
Theophrastus, _De signis tempestatum_, i. 20, compare 24.
Footnote 1164:
Theophrastus, _op. cit._ iii. 43.
Footnote 1165:
Pausanias, i. 32. 2.
Footnote 1166:
Theophrastus, _op. cit._ iii. 43 and 47. Compare Aristophanes,
_Clouds_, 324 _sq._; Photius, _Lexicon_, _s.v._ Πάρνης.
Footnote 1167:
Pausanias, i. 32. 2.
Footnote 1168:
Pausanias, ii. 25. 10. As to the climate and scenery of these barren
mountains, see A. Philippson, _Der Peloponnes_ (Berlin, 1891), pp. 43
_sq._, 65.
Footnote 1169:
Joannes Lydus, _De mensibus_, iv. 48.
Footnote 1170:
Paton and Hicks, _The Inscriptions of Cos_ (Oxford, 1891), No. 382;
Dittenberger, _Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum_, 2nd Ed., No. 735.
There were altars of Rainy Zeus also at Argos and Lebadea. See
Pausanias, ii. 19. 8, ix. 39. 4.
Footnote 1171:
Ἐπικάρπιος μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν καρπῶν, Aristotle, _De mundo_, 7, p. 401 a, ed.
Bekker; Plutarch, _De Stoicorum repugnantiis_, xxx. 8.
Footnote 1172:
_Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum_, iii. No. 77; E. S. Roberts,
_Introduction to Greek Epigraphy_, ii. No. 142, p. 387; Ch. Michel,
_Recueil d’inscriptions grecques_, No. 692; L. R. Farnell, _Cults of
the Greek States_, i. 66 and 172.
Footnote 1173:
Hesiod, _Theogony_, 71 _sq._; L. Preller, _Griechische Mythologie_,
4th ed., i. 119.
Footnote 1174:
Pausanias, v. 14. 7; H. Roehl, _Inscriptiones Graecae antiquissimae_
(Berlin, 1882), No. 101; Fränkel, _Inschriften von Pergamon_, i. No.
232; Joannes Malalas, _Chronographia_, viii. p. 199, ed. L. Dindorf.
Footnote 1175:
Strabo, ix. 2. 11, p. 404.
Footnote 1176:
Pollux, ix. 41; Hesychius, _s.v._ ἠλύσιον; _Etymologicum Magnum_, p.
341. 8 _sqq._; Artemidorus, _Onirocrit._ 11. 9; Pausanias, v. 14. 10;
Dittenberger, _Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum_, 2nd Ed., No. 577,
with Dittenberger’s note.
Footnote 1177:
See above, p. 177.
Footnote 1178:
See above, vol. i. p. 310.
Footnote 1179:
See above, vol. i. p. 366.
Footnote 1180:
For more evidence that the old Greek kings regularly personified Zeus,
see Mr. A. B. Cook, “The European Sky-god,” _Folk-lore_, xv. (1904)
pp. 299 _sqq._
Footnote 1181:
Virgil. _Georg._ iii. 332, with Servius’s note; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._
xii. 3.
Footnote 1182:
As to the oak of Jupiter on the Capitol and the god’s oak crown, see
above, p. 176. With regard to the Capitoline worship of Thundering
Jupiter, see Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ ii. 21, xxxiv. 10 and 79, xxxvi. 50.
He was worshipped in many places besides Rome as the god of thunder
and lightning. See Festus, p. 229, ed. C. O. Müller; Apuleius, _De
mundo_, xxxvii. 371; H. Dessau, _Inscriptones Latinae selectae_, Nos.
3044-3053.
Footnote 1183:
Petronius, _Sat._ 44. That the slope mentioned by Petronius was the
Capitoline one is made highly probable by a passage of Tertullian
(_Apologeticus_ 40: “_Aquilicia Jovi immolatis, nudipedalia populo
denuntiatis, coelum apud Capitolium quaeritis, nubila de laquearibus
exspectatis_”). The church father’s scorn for the ceremony contrasts
with the respect, perhaps the mock respect, testified for it by the
man in Petronius. The epithets Rainy and Showery are occasionally
applied to Jupiter. See Tibullus, i. 7. 26; Apuleius, _De mundo_,
xxxvii. 371; H. Dessau, _Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, No. 3043.
Footnote 1184:
H. Dessau, _op. cit._ No. 3042; Apuleius, _l.c._
Footnote 1185:
Apuleius, _l.c._, “_Plures eum Frugiferum vocant_”; H. Dessau, _op.
cit._ No. 3017.
Footnote 1186:
On this subject see H. Munro Chadwick, “The Oak and the Thunder-god,”
_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxx. (1900) pp. 22-42.
Footnote 1187:
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 249.
Footnote 1188:
Maximus Tyrius, _Dissert._ viii. 8. H. D’Arbois de Jubainville
supposed that by Celts the writer here meant Germans (_Cours de la
littérature celtique_, i. 121 _sqq._). This was not the view of J.
Grimm, to whose authority D’Arbois de Jubainville appealed. Grimm says
that what Maximus Tyrius affirms of the Celts might be applied to the
Germans (_Deutsche Mythologie_, 4th ed., i. 55), which is quite a
different thing.
Footnote 1189:
Strabo, xii. 5. 1, p. 567. As to the meaning of the name see (Sir) J.
Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 221; H. F. Tozer, _Selections from
Strabo_, p. 284. On the Galatian language see above, p. 126, note 2.
Footnote 1190:
G. Curtius, _Griech. Etymologie_, 5th Ed., pp. 238 _sq._; J. Rhys,
_op. cit._ pp. 221 _sq._; P. Kretschmer, _Einleitung in die
Geschichte der griech. Sprache_, p. 81. Compare A. Vanicek,
_Griechisch-lateinisch. etymologisches Wörterbuch_, pp. 368-370.
Oak in old Irish is _daur_, in modern Irish _dair_, _darach_, in
Gaelic _darach_. See G. Curtius, _l.c._; A. Macbain, _Etymological
Dictionary of the Gaelic Language_ (Inverness, 1896), _s.v._
“Darach.” On this view Pliny was substantially right (_Nat. Hist._
xvi. 249) in connecting Druid with the Greek _drus_, “oak,” though
the name was not derived from the Greek. However, this derivation
of Druid has been doubted or rejected by some scholars. See H.
D’Arbois de Jubainville, _Cours de la littérature celtique_, i.
(Paris, 1883), pp. 117 _sqq._; O. Schrader, _Reallexikon der
indogermanischen Altertumskunde_, pp. 638 _sq._
Footnote 1191:
See above, p. 242.
Footnote 1192:
The Gael’s “faith in druidism was never suddenly undermined; for in
the saints he only saw more powerful druids than those he had
previously known, and Christ took the position in his eyes of the
druid κατ’ ἐξοχήν. Irish druidism absorbed a certain amount of
Christianity; and it would be a problem of considerable difficulty to
fix on the point where it ceased to be druidism, and from which
onwards it could be said to be Christianity in any restricted sense of
that term” (J. Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, p. 224).
Footnote 1193:
P. W. Joyce, _Social History of Ancient Ireland_, i. 236.
Footnote 1194:
J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 4th ed., i. 55 _sq._ Tacitus often
mentions the sacred groves of the Germans, but never specifies the
kinds of trees of which they were composed. See _Annals_, ii. 12, iv.
73; _Histor._ iv. 14; _Germania_, 7, 9, 39, 40, 43.
Footnote 1195:
J. Grimm, _op. cit._ ii. 542.
Footnote 1196:
Willibald’s _Life of S. Boniface_, in Pertz’s _Monumenta Germaniae
historica_, ii. 343 _sq._; J. Grimm, _op. cit._ i. pp. 58, 142.
Footnote 1197:
J. Grimm, _op. cit._ i. 157. Prof. E. Maass supposes that the
identification of Donar or Thunar with Jupiter was first made in Upper
Germany between the Vosges mountains and the Black Forest. See his
work _Die Tagesgötter_ (Berlin, 1902), p. 280.
Footnote 1198:
Adam of Bremen, _Descriptio insularum Aquilonis_, 26 (Migne’s
_Patrologia Latina_, cxlvi. col. 643).
Footnote 1199:
Adam of Bremen, _l.c._
Footnote 1200:
E. H. Meyer, _Mythologie des Germanen_ (Strasburg, 1903), p. 290.
Footnote 1201:
Adam of Bremen, _op. cit._ 26, 27, with the Scholia (Migne’s
_Patrologia Latina_, cxlvi. coll. 642-644).
Footnote 1202:
J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 4th ed., i. 142 _sq._; L. Leger, _La
Mythologie slave_ (Paris, 1901), pp. 54-76.
Footnote 1203:
L. Leger, _op. cit._ pp. 57 _sq._, translating Guagnini’s _Sarmatiae
Europaeae descriptio_ (1578). The passage is quoted in the original by
Chr. Hartknoch (_Alt- und neues Preussen_, Frankfort and Leipsic,
1684, p. 132), who rightly assigns the work to Strykowski, not
Guagnini. See W. Mannhardt, in _Magazin herausgegeben von der
Lettisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft_, xiv. (1868) pp. 105 _sq._
Footnote 1204:
Procopius, _De bello Gothico_, iii. 14 (vol. ii. p. 357, ed. J.
Haury).
Footnote 1205:
Matthias Michov, “De Sarmatia Asiana atque Europea,” in Simon
Grynaeus’s _Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum_
(Paris, 1532), p. 457; _id._, in J. Pistorius’s _Polonicae historiae
corpus_ (Bâle, 1582), i. 144; Martin Cromer, _De origine et rebus
gestis Polonorum_ (Bâle, 1568), p. 241; J. Maeletius (Menecius, Ian
Malecki), “De sacrificiis et idolatria veterum Borussorum, Livonum,
aliarumque vicinarum gentium,” _Scriptores rerum Livonicarum_, ii.
(Riga and Leipsic, 1848) p. 390; _id._, in _Mitteilungen der
Litterarischen Gesellschaft Masovia_, Heft 8 (Lötzen, 1902), p. 187;
Chr. Hartknoch, _Alt- und neues Preussen_ (Frankfort and Leipsic,
1684), pp. 131 _sqq._; S. Rostowski, quoted by A. Brückner, _Archiv
für slavische Philologie_, ix. (1886) pp. 32, 35; M. Töppen,
_Geschichte der preussischen Historiographie_ (Berlin, 1853), p. 190
(“_Perkunos ist in allen andern Ueberlieferungen so gross und hehr,
wie nur immer der griechische und römische Donnergott, und kein
anderer der Götter darf sich ihm gleich stellen. Er ist der Hauptgott,
wie nach andern Berichten in Preussen, so auch in Litthauen und
Livland_”); Schleicher, “Lituanica,” _Sitzungsberichte der
philosoph.-histor. Classe d. kais. Akademie d. Wissen._ (Vienna), xi.
(1853 pub. 1854) p. 96; H. Usener, _Götternamen_ (Bonn, 1896), p. 97.
Footnote 1206:
M. Praetorius, _Deliciae Prussicae_ (Berlin, 1871), pp. 19 _sq._; S.
Rostowski, _op. cit._ pp. 34, 35. On the sacred oaks of the
Lithuanians see Chr. Hartknoch, _op. cit._ pp. 117 _sqq._; Tettau und
Temme, _Volkssagen Ostpreussens, Litthauens und Westpreussens_, pp.
19-22, 35-38.
Footnote 1207:
M. Praetorius, _l.c._; S. Grunau, _Preussische Chronik_, ed. M.
Perlbach, i. (Leipsic, 1876) p. 78 (ii. tract. cap. v. § 2). The
chronicler, Simon Grunau, lived as an itinerant Dominican friar at the
beginning of the sixteenth century in the part of Prussia which had
been ceded to Poland. He brought his history, composed in somewhat
rustic German, down to 1529. His familiar intercourse with the lowest
classes of the people enabled him to learn much as to their old
heathen customs and superstitions; but his good faith has been doubted
or denied. In particular, his description of the images of the three
gods in the great oak at Romove has been regarded with suspicion or
denounced as a figment. See Chr. Hartknoch, _op. cit._ pp. 127 _sqq._;
M. Toeppen, _op. cit._ pp. 122 _sqq._, 190 _sqq._; M. Perlbach’s
preface to his edition of Grunau; H. Usener, _Götternamen_, p. 83. But
his account of the sanctity of the oak, and of the perpetual sacred
fire of oak-wood, may be accepted, since it is confirmed by other
authorities. Thus, according to Malecki, a perpetual fire was kept up
by a priest in honour of Perkunas (Pargnus) on the top of a mountain,
which stood beside the river Neuuassa (Niewiaza, a tributary of the
Niemen). See Malecki (Maeletius, Menecius), _op. cit._, _Scriptores
rerum Livonicarum_, ii. 391; _id._, _Mitteilungen der Litterarischen
Gesellschaft Masovia_, Heft 8 (Lötzen, 1902), p. 187. Again, the
Jesuit S. Rostowski says that the Lithuanians maintained a perpetual
sacred fire in honour of Perkunas in the woods (quoted by A. Brückner,
_Archiv für slavische Philologie_, ix. (1886) p. 33). Malecki and
Rostowski do not mention that the fire was kindled with oak-wood, but
this is expressly stated by M. Praetorius, and is, besides,
intrinsically probable, since the oak was sacred to Perkunas.
Moreover, the early historian, Peter of Dusburg, who dedicated his
chronicle of Prussia to the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights in
1326, informs us that the high-priest of the nation, whom the
Prussians revered as a pope, kept up a perpetual fire at Romow, which
is doubtless the same with the Romowo or Romewo of Grunau
(_Preussische Chronik_, pp. 80, 81, compare p. 62, ed. M. Perlbach).
See P. de Dusburg, _Chronicon Prussiae_, ed. Chr. Hartknoch (Frankfort
and Leipsic, 1679), p. 79. Martin Cromer says that the Lithuanians
“worshipped fire as a god, and kept it perpetually burning in the more
frequented places and towns” (_De origine et rebus gestis Polonorum_,
Bâle, 1568, p. 241). Romow or Romowo is more commonly known as Romove.
Its site is very uncertain. See Chr. Hartknoch, _Alt- und neues
Preussen_, pp. 122 _sqq._ Grunau’s account of Romove and its sacred
oak, with the images of the three gods in it and the fire of oak-wood
burning before it, is substantially repeated by Alex. Guagnini. See J.
Pistorius, _Polonicae historiae corpus_ (Bâle, 1582), i. 52;
_Respublica sive status regni Poloniae, Lituaniae, Prussiae,
Livoniae_, etc. (Leyden, 1627), pp. 321 _sq._ I do not know whether
the chronicler, Simon Grunau, is the same with Simon Grynaeus, editor
of the _Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum_,
which was published at Paris in 1532.
Footnote 1208:
S. Rostowski, _op. cit._ p. 35.
Footnote 1209:
D. Fabricius, “De cultu, religione et moribus incolarum Livoniae,”
_Scriptores rerum Livonicarum_, ii. 441. Malecki (Maeletius) also says
that Perkunas was prayed to for rain. See _Mitteilungen der
Litterarischen Gesellschaft Masovia_, Heft 8 (Lötzen, 1902), p. 201.
Footnote 1210:
According to Prof. H. Hirt, the name Perkunas means “the oak-god,”
being derived from the same root _querq_, which appears in the Latin
_quercus_ “oak,” the _Hercynian_ forest, the Norse god and goddess
_Fjörygn_, and the Indian _Parjanya_, the Vedic god of thunder and
rain. See H. Hirt, “Die Urheimat der Indogermanen,” _Indogermanische
Forschungen_, i. (1892) pp. 479 _sqq._; _id._, _Die Indogermanen_
(Strasburg, 1905-1907), ii. 507; P. Kretschmer, _Einleitung in die
Geschichte der griechischen Sprache_, pp. 81 _sq._ The identity of the
names Perkunas and Parjanya had been maintained long before by G.
Bühler, though he did not connect the words with _quercus_. See his
article, “On the Hindu god Parjanya,” _Transactions of the (London)
Philological Society_, 1859, pp. 154-168. As to Parjanya, see below,
pp. 368 _sq._
Footnote 1211:
Fr. Kreutzwald und H. Neus, _Mythische und magische Lieder der Ehsten_
(St. Petersburg, 1854), pp. 16, 26, 27, 56, 57, 104; F. J. Wiedemann,
_Aus dem inneren und äusseren Leben der Ehsten_, pp. 427, 438.
Sometimes, however, a special thunder-god Kou, Koo, Piker or Pikne is
distinguished from Taara (Tar). See F. J. Wiedemann, _op. cit._ p.
427; Kreutzwald und Neus, _op. cit._ pp. 12 _sq._
Footnote 1212:
Boecler-Kreutzwald, _Der Ehsten abergläubische Gebräuche, Weisen und
Gewohnheiten_ (St. Petersburg, 1854), p. 2.
Footnote 1213:
J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 4th ed., i. 146.
Footnote 1214:
F. J. Wiedemann, _op. cit._ p. 427.
Footnote 1215:
See above, p. 367, note 3.
Footnote 1216:
_Rigveda_, Book v. Hymn 83, R. T. H. Griffith’s translation (Benares,
1889-1892), vol. ii. pp. 299 _sq._
Footnote 1217:
_Rigveda_, Book vii. Hymn 101, Griffith’s translation (vol. iii. pp.
123 _sq._).
Footnote 1218:
_Rigveda_, Book vii. Hymn 102, Griffith’s translation (vol. iii. p.
124). On Parjanya see further G. Bühler, “On the Hindu god
_Parjanya_,” _Transactions of the (London) Philological Society_,
1859, pp. 154-168; _id._ in _Orient und Occident_, i. (1862) pp.
214-229; J. Muir, _Original Sanscrit Texts_, v. 140-142; H. Oldenberg,
_Die Religion des Veda_, p. 226; A. Macdonnell, _Vedic Mythology_, pp.
83-85.
Footnote 1219:
G. Bühler, _op. cit._ p. 161.
Footnote 1220:
L. H. Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_ (Rochester, 1851), pp. 157
_sq._
Footnote 1221:
J. Spieth, _Die Ewe-Stämme_ (Berlin, 1906), pp. 424-427.
Footnote 1222:
E. J. Payne, _History of the New World called America_, i. (Oxford,
1892) pp. 407 _sq._
Footnote 1223:
N. Seidlitz, “Die Abchasen,” _Globus_, lxvi. (1894) p. 73.
Footnote 1224:
P. Wagler, _Die Eiche in alter und neuer Zeit_, ii. (Berlin, 1891) p.
37.
Footnote 1225:
J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 4th ed., i. 59.
Footnote 1226:
P. Wagler, _Die Eiche in alter und neuer Zeit_, i. (Wurzen, 1891) pp.
21-23. For many more survivals of oak-worship in Germany see P.
Wagler, _op. cit._ ii. 40 _sqq._
Footnote 1227:
M. Praetorius, _Deliciae Prussicae_ (Berlin, 1871), p. 16.
Footnote 1228:
J. G. Kohl, _Die deutsch-russischen Ostseeprovinzen_ (Dresden and
Leipsic, 1841), ii. 31; compare 33.
Footnote 1229:
Schleicher, “Lituanica,” _Sitzungsberichte der philos.-histor. Classe
der kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften_, xi. (1853, pub. 1854) p. 100.
Footnote 1230:
James Piggul, steward of the estate of Panikovitz, in a report to
Baron de Bogouschefsky, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_,
iii. (1874) pp. 274 _sq._
Footnote 1231:
The evidence will be given later on, when we come to deal with the
fire-festivals of Europe. Meantime I may refer the reader to _The
Golden Bough_, Second Edition, iii. 347 _sqq._, where, however, the
statement as to the universal use of oak-wood in kindling the
need-fire is too absolute, exceptions having since come to my
knowledge. These will be noticed in the third edition of that part of
_The Golden Bough_.
Footnote 1232:
See above, pp. 186, 365, 366.
Footnote 1233:
The only positive evidence, so far as I know, that the Celtic oak-god
was also a deity of thunder and rain is his identification with Zeus
(see above, p. 362). But the analogy of the Greeks, Italians, Teutons,
Slavs, and Lithuanians may be allowed to supply the lack of more
definite testimony.
Footnote 1234:
It is said to have been observed that lightning strikes an oak twenty
times for once that it strikes a beech (J. Grimm, _Deutsche
Mythologie_, 4th ed., iii. 64). But even if this observation were
correct, we could not estimate its worth unless we knew the
comparative frequency of oaks and beeches in the country where it was
made. The Greeks observed that a certain species of oak, which they
called _haliphloios_, or sea-bark, was often struck by lightning
though it did not grow to a great height; but far from regarding it as
thereby marked out for the service of the god they abstained from
using its wood in the sacrificial rites. See Theophrastus, _Histor.
plant._ iii. 8. 5; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 24.
Footnote 1235:
M. Abeghian, _Der armenische Volksglaube_, p. 90.
Footnote 1236:
E. B. Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_, 3rd Ed., pp. 223-227. For
more evidence of this wide-spread belief see M. Baudrouin et L.
Bonnemère, “Les Haches polies dans l’histoire jusqu’au XIXe siècle,”
_Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris_, Ve
Série, v. (1904) pp. 496-548; Lieut. Boyd Alexander, “From the Niger,
by Lake Chad, to the Nile,” _The Geographical Journal_, xxx. (1907)
pp. 144 _sq._; A. B. Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_,
pp. 37 _sq._; H. Seidel, “Der Yew’e Dienst im Togolande,” _Zeitschrift
für afrikanische und oceanischen Sprachen_, iii. (1897) p. 161; H.
Klose, _Togo unter deutscher Flagge_, pp. 197 _sq._; L. Conradt, “Die
Ngumbu in Südkamerun,” _Globus_, lxxxi. (1902) p. 353; Guerlach,
“Mœurs et superstitions des sauvages Ba-hnars,” _Missions
Catholiques_, xix. (1887) pp. 442, 454; J. A. Jacobsen, _Reisen in die
Inselwelt des Banda-Meeres_ (Berlin, 1896), pp. 49 _sq._, 232; C.
Ribbe, “Die Aru-Inseln,” _Festschrift des Vereins für Erdkunde zu
Dresden_ (Dresden, 1888), p. 165; E. Thurston, _Ethnographic Notes in
Southern India_, p. 351; Rev. P. O. Bodding, “Ancient Stone Implements
in the Santal Parganas,” _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_,
lxx. Part iii. (1901) pp. 17-20; E. M. Gordon, _Indian Folk-tales_
(London, 1908), p. 75; _County Folk-lore, III. Orkney and Shetland
Islands_, collected by G. F. Black (London, 1903), p. 153; P. Hermann,
_Nordische Mythologie_, pp. 339 _sq._, 352; M. Toeppen, _Aberglauben
aus Masuren_ 2nd Ed., (Danzig, 1867), pp. 42 _sq._ Dr. E. B. Tylor has
pointed out how natural to the primitive mind is the association of
spark-producing stones with lightning (_Primitive Culture_, 2nd Ed.,
ii. 262).
Footnote 1237:
L. Preller, _Griechische Mythologie_, 4th ed., i. 116 _sq._; _id._,
_Römische Mythologie_, 3rd Ed., i. 184 _sqq._ As to Jupiter see in
particular Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, vii. 19, “_Coelum enim esse
Jovem innumerabiliter et diligenter affirmant_”; and Ennius, quoted by
Cicero, _De natura deorum_, ii. 25, 65, “_Aspice hoc sublimen candens,
quem invocant omnes Jovem_.”
CHAPTER XXI
DIANUS AND DIANA
[Sidenote: Recapitulation.] 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.
[Sidenote: Rise of sacred kings, who are supposed to be endowed with
magical or divine powers.] 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
[Sidenote: Transition from magic to religion.] 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 [Sidenote:
Incarnate human deities.] 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.
[Sidenote: The King of the Wood at Nemi seems to have been one of these
divine kings and to have mated with the divine Queen of the Wood,
Diana.] 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.[1238] 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.
[Sidenote: Virbius, whom the King of the Wood represented, was probably
a form of Jupiter regarded as god of the greenwood, and especially of
the oak.] 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.[1239] 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.[1240] For
the perpetual holy fires of the Aryans in Europe appear to have been
commonly kindled and fed with oak-wood,[1241] and we have seen that in
Rome itself, not many miles from Nemi, the fuel of the Vestal fire
consisted of oaken sticks or logs, which in early days the holy maidens
doubtless gathered or cut in the coppices of oak that once covered the
Seven Hills.[1242] But the ritual of the various Latin towns seems to
have been marked by great uniformity;[1243] 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.[1244] 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.[1245]
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.[1246] 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.[1247]
[Sidenote: Diana and the oak.] 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. [Sidenote:
Diana, the divine partner of the King of the Wood at Nemi, seems to have
been especially associated with the oak.] For two distinct lines of
argument converge to shew 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.[1248] 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.[1249] 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.[1250] 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.[1251]
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.[1252]
[Sidenote: In nature and in name Dianus (Janus) and Diana seem to be
only dialectically different forms of Jupiter and Juno.] 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.[1253] 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.[1254] As to the true nature and functions of
Janus the ancients themselves were puzzled;[1255] 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[1256] 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[1257] points to a marriage union between the two
deities; and according to one account Janus was the husband of the
water-nymph Juturna,[1258] who according to others was beloved by
Jupiter.[1259] Moreover, Janus, like Jove, was regularly invoked, and
commonly spoken of, under the title of Father.[1260] Indeed, he was
identified with Jupiter not merely by the logic of a Christian
doctor,[1261] but by the piety of a pagan worshipper who dedicated an
offering to Jupiter Dianus.[1262] A trace of his relation to the oak may
be found in the oak-woods 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.[1263]
[Sidenote: Zeus and Dione, Jupiter and Juno, Dianus (Janus) and Diana
represent a single original pair of Aryan deities, which through purely
dialectical differences of nomenclature gradually diverged from each
other and came to be regarded as separate pairs of deities.] 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.[1264]
[Sidenote: This explanation of Janus as equivalent to Jupiter is more
probable than the view that Janus was originally nothing but the god of
the door (_janua_); for the door (_janua_) seems rather to have been
named after Janus than he after it.] 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.[1265] 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.[1266] That a deity of his dignity and importance, whom the
Romans revered as a god of gods[1267] and the father of his people,
should have started in life as a humble, though doubtless respectable,
doorkeeper appears to me, I confess, 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, _Tür_ in German, _door_ in English, _dorus_ in old Irish, and
_foris_ in Latin.[1268] 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.[1269]
[Sidenote: The double-headed figure of Janus may have originated in a
custom of placing his image as guardian of doorways so as to face both
ways, outwards and inwards, at the same time.] 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.
[Sidenote: This explanation is confirmed by the double-headed idols
which the Bush negroes of Surinam set to guard the entrances of their
villages.] 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.[1270] 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;[1271] 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 the wily Janus himself fobbed off
an anxious Roman enquirer.[1272] In the interior of Borneo the Kenyahs
generally place before the main entrance of their houses the wooden
image of Balli Atap, that is, the Spirit or God (_Balli_) of the Roof,
who protects the household from harm of all kinds.[1273] But it does not
appear that this divine watchman is provided with more than one face.
[Sidenote: Thus the King of the Wood at Nemi seems to have personated
the great Aryan god of the oak, Jupiter or Janus, and to have mated with
the oak-goddess Diana.] 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. If my analysis
of this great divinity is correct, the original element in his composite
nature was 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 had grown into 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.
Footnote 1238:
Above, vol. i. pp. 6 _sq._, 12; vol. ii. pp. 124 _sq._, 128 _sq._, 171
_sqq._
Footnote 1239:
Above, vol. i. pp. 19 _sqq._, 40 _sq._
Footnote 1240:
Above, vol. i. pp. 12 _sq._
Footnote 1241:
Above, pp. 365, 366, 372.
Footnote 1242:
Above, p. 186.
Footnote 1243:
Above, vol. i. pp. 13 _sq._, vol. ii. pp. 184, 266.
Footnote 1244:
Virgil, _Aen._ vi. 205 _sqq._
Footnote 1245:
See above, pp. 178 _sqq._
Footnote 1246:
This suggestion is due to Mr. A. B. Cook. See his articles, “Zeus,
Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_, xviii. (1904) pp. 363
_sq._; and “The European Sky-God,” _Folk-lore_, xvi. (1905) pp. 277
_sq._ On the other hand see above, pp. 1 _sq._
Footnote 1247:
Virbius may perhaps be etymologically connected with _viridis_,
“green,” and _verbena_, “a sacred bough.” If this were so, Virbius
would be “the Green One.” We are reminded of those popular
personifications of the spring, Green George and Jack in the Green.
See above, pp. 75 _sq._, 82 _sq._ As to the proposed derivation from a
root meaning “green” Professor R. S. Conway writes to me (10th January
1903): “From this meaning of the root a derivative in _-bus_ would not
strike me as so strange; _vir-bho_ might conceivably mean ‘growing
green.’” In my _Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_ (pp.
282 _sq._) I followed Mr. A. B. Cook in interpreting a passage of
Plautus (_Casina_, ii. 5. 23-29) as a reference to the priests of Nemi
in the character of mortal Jupiters. But a simpler and more probable
explanation of the passage has been given by Dr. L. R. Farnell. See A.
B. Cook, “The European Sky-god,” _Folk-lore_, xvi. (1905) pp. 322
_sqq._; L. R. Farnell, in _The Hibbert Journal_, iv. (1906) p. 932.
Footnote 1248:
See above, vol. i. p. 13, vol. ii. pp. 378 _sq._
Footnote 1249:
Above, pp. 171 _sq._
Footnote 1250:
Horace, _Odes_, i. 21. 5 _sq._, iii. 23. 9 _sq._, iv. 4. 5 _sq._,
_Carmen Saeculare_, 69; Livy, iii. 25. 6-8; E. H. Bunbury, in Smith’s
_Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography_, _s.v._ “Algidus.”
Footnote 1251:
Festus, _s.v._ “Tifata,” p. 366, ed. C. O. Müller; Velleius
Paterculus, ii. 25. 4; E. H. Bunbury, _op. cit._ _s.v._ “Tifata.” For
more evidence of the association of Diana with the oak, see Mr. A. B.
Cook, “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_, xviii. (1904)
pp. 369 _sq._
Footnote 1252:
Above, vol. i. pp. 17 _sq._, vol. ii pp. 172 _sq._
Footnote 1253:
The original root appears plainly in _Diovis_ and _Diespiter_, the
older forms of _Jupiter_ (Varro, _De lingua Latina_, v. 66; Aulus
Gellius, v. 12). The form Dianus is attested by an inscription found
at Aquileia (_Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, v. 783), and the form
Jana by Varro (_Rerum rusticarum_, i. 37. 3) and Macrobius (_Saturn._
i. 9. 8). In _Zeus_, _Dione_, _Jupiter_, and _Juno_ the old root _DI_
appears in the expanded form _DIV_. As to the etymology of these
names, see Ch. Ploix, “Les Dieux qui proviennent de la racine _DIV_,”
_Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris_, i. (1868) pp.
213-222; G. Curtius, _Grundzüge der griechischen Etymologie_, 5th Ed.,
pp. 236 _sq._, 616 _sq._; A. Vanicek, _Griechisch-lateinisches
etymologisches Wörterbuch_, i. 353 _sqq._; W. H. Roscher, _Lexikon der
griech. u. röm. Mythologie_, ii. 45 _sq._, 578 _sq._, 619; S. Linde,
_De Jano summo Romanorumdeo_ (Lund, 1891), pp. 7 _sq._; J. S. Speijer,
“Le Dieu romain Janus,” _Revue de l’Histoire des Religions_, xxvi.
(1892) pp. 37-41; H. Usener, _Götternamen_, pp. 16, 35 _sq._, 326; P.
Kretschmer, _Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache_,
pp. 78 _sqq._, 91, 161 _sq._ Messrs. Speijer and Kretschmer reject the
derivation of Janus from the root _DI_.
Footnote 1254:
As to Juno in these aspects, see L. Preller, _Römische Mythologie_,
3rd Ed., i. 271 _sqq._; G. Wissowa, _Religion und Kultus der Römer_,
pp. 117 _sqq._; W. H. Roscher, _Lexikon der griech. u. röm.
Mythologie_, ii. 578 _sqq._ As to Diana, see above, vol. i. p. 12,
vol. ii. pp. 124, 128 _sq._
Footnote 1255:
Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 89 _sqq._; Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 9; Servius, on
Virgil, _Aen._ vii. 610; Joannes Lydus, _De mensibus_, iv. 1 _sq._
Footnote 1256:
Varro, quoted by Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, vii. 28; Joannes Lydus,
_De mensibus_, iv. 2. Compare Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 9. 11. See R.
Agahd, _M. Terentii Varronis rerum divinarum libri I. XIV. XV. XVI._
(Leipsic, 1898) pp. 117 _sqq._, 203 _sq._
Footnote 1257:
Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 9. 15, i. 15. 19; Servius, on Virgil, _Aen._ vii.
610; Joannes Lydus, _De mensibus_, iv. 1. Prof. G. Wissowa thinks that
sacrifices were offered to Janus as well as to Juno on the first of
every month (_Religion und Kultus der Römer_, pp. 91 _sq._); but this
view does not seem to me to be supported by the evidence of Macrobius
(_Sat._ i. 9. 16, i. 15. 18 _sq._), to which he refers. Macrobius does
not say that the first of every month was sacred to Janus.
Footnote 1258:
Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, iii. 29.
Footnote 1259:
Virgil, _Aen._ xii. 138 _sqq._; Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. 585 _sqq._
Footnote 1260:
Cato, _De agri cultura_, 134; Virgil, _Aen._ viii. 357; Horace,
_Epist._ i. 16. 59, compare _Sat._ ii. 6. 20; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._
xxxvi. 28; Juvenal, vi. 394; Martial, x. 28. 6 _sq._; Aulus Gellius,
v. 12. 5; Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, iii. 29; H. Dessau,
_Inscriptiones Latinae selectae_, Nos. 3320, 3322, 3323, 3324, 3325,
5047; G. Henzen, _Acta fratrum Arvalium_, p. 144; Athenaeus, xv. 46,
p. 692 D, E.
Footnote 1261:
Augustine, _De civitate Dei_, vii. 9 _sq._
Footnote 1262:
_Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_, v. No. 783.
Footnote 1263:
Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 7. 19; Servius, on Virgil, _Aen._ viii. 319 and
357; Arnobius, _Adversus nationes_, iii. 29; Athenaeus, xv. 46, p. 692
D. As to the oak-woods of the Janiculum, see above, p. 186.
Footnote 1264:
As dialectal differences in the ancient Italian languages seem to have
created a multiplicity of deities, so in the Malay language they
appear to have created a multiplicity of fabulous animals. See R. J.
Wilkinson, _Malay Beliefs_ (London and Leyden, 1906), p. 56: “The
wealth of Malay nomenclature in the province of natural history is in
itself a fruitful source of error. The identity of different dialectic
names for the same animal is not always recognized: the local name is
taken to represent the real animal, the foreign name is assumed to
represent a rare or fabulous variety of the same genus.” In these
cases mythology might fairly enough be described as a disease of
language. But such cases cover only a small part of the vast mythical
field.
Footnote 1265:
Mr. A. B. Cook, who accepts in substance my theory of the original
identity of Jupiter and Janus, Juno and Diana, has suggested that
Janus and Diana were the deities of the aborigines of Rome, Jupiter
and Juno the deities of their conquerors. See his article, “Zeus,
Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical Review_, xviii. (1904) pp. 367 _sq._
Footnote 1266:
This is the opinion of Dr. W. H. Roscher (_Lexikon der griech. u. röm.
Mythologie_, ii. 47), Mr. W. Warde Fowler (_Roman Festivals of the
Period of the Republic_, pp. 282 _sqq._), and Prof. G. Wissowa
(_Religion und Kultus der Römer_, p. 96). It is rejected for the
reasons given in the text by Ph. Buttmann (_Mythologus_, ii. pp. 72,
79) and S. Linde (_De Jano summo Romanorum deo_, pp. 50 _sqq._).
Footnote 1267:
He was so saluted in the ancient hymns of the Salii. See Macrobius,
_Sat._ i. 9. 14; compare Varro, _De lingua Latina_, vii. 26 _sq._
Footnote 1268:
G. Curtius, _Grundzüge der griechischen Etymologie_, 5th Ed.,, p. 258;
O. Schrader, _Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde_, p.
866.
Footnote 1269:
This theory of the derivation of _janua_ from _Janus_ was suggested,
though not accepted, by Ph. Butmann (_Mythologus_, ii. 79 _sqq._). It
occurred to me independently. Mr. A. B. Cook also derives _janua_ from
_Janus_, but he would explain the derivation in a different way by
supposing that the lintel and two side-posts of a door represented a
triple Janus. See his article “Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak,” _Classical
Review_, xviii. (1904) p. 369.
Footnote 1270:
K. Martin, “Bericht über eine Reise ins Gebiet des Oberen-Surinam,”
_Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië_,
xxxv. (1886) pp. 28 _sq._ I am indebted to Mr. A. van Gennep for
pointing out this confirmation of my theory as to the meaning of the
double-headed Janus. See his article “Janus Bifrons,” _Revue des
traditions populaires_, xxii. (1907) pp. 97 _sq._
Footnote 1271:
Macrobius, _Saturn._ i. 9. 7, “_Sed apud nos Janum omnibus praeesse
januis nomen ostendit, quod est simile_ θυραίῳ. _Nam et cum clavi ac
virga figuratur, quasi omnium et portarum custos et rector viarum_”;
Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 95, 99, “_Sacer ancipiti mirandus imagine Janus ...
tenens dextra baculum clavemque sinistra_.”
Footnote 1272:
Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 89 _sqq._
Footnote 1273:
C. Hose and W. McDougall, “The Relations between Men and Animals in
Sarawak,” _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxi. (1901) p.
175.
INDEX
Abbas Effendi, i. 402
Abchases of the Caucasus, the, ii. 370
Abolition of the kingship at Rome, ii. 289 _sqq._
Abraham and Sarah, ii. 114
Acacia-tree worshipped, ii. 16
Achelous and Dejanira, ii. 161 _sq._
Achilles, ii. 278
Acorns as food, ii. 353, 355 _sq._;
as fodder for swine, 354, 356
Adam of Bremen, ii. 364
Adonis at Byblus, i. 30
—— and Venus (Aphrodite), i. 21, 25, 40, 41
—— or Tammuz, ii. 346
Adoption, pretence of birth at, i. 74 _sq._
Adultery supposed to blight the fruits of the earth, ii. 107 _sq._, 114
Aeacus, ii. 278, 359
Aegira, priestess of Earth at, i. 381 _sq._
Aegisthus, ii. 281
Aeneas and the Golden Bough, i. 11, ii. 379;
his disappearance in a thunderstorm, 181
Aeolus, i. 326
Aeschines, spurious epistles of, ii. 162 _n._ 2
Aesculapius brings Hippolytus to life, i. 20;
at Cos, ii. 10
Africa, rise of magicians, especially rain-makers, to chieftainship and
kingship in, i. 342 _sqq._, 352;
human gods in, 392 _sqq._
—— North, magical images in, i. 65 _sq._
Afterbirth (placenta), contagious magic of, i. 182-201;
placed in tree, 182, 187, 190, 191, 194, 199;
part of child’s spirit in, 184;
regarded as brother or sister of child, 189, 191, 192, 193;
regarded as a second child, 195;
seat of external soul, 200 _sq._
Agamemnon, ii. 279;
sceptre of, i. 365
Agni, the fire-god, ii. 249
_Agnihotris_, Brahman fire-priests, ii. 247 _sqq._
_Agriculture of the Nabataeans_, ii. 100
Ainos, i. 60
Akamba, the, ii. 317
Akikuyu, the, ii. 44, 150, 316, 317;
pretence of new birth among the, i. 75 _sq._, 96 _sq._
Alba Longa, the kings of, ii. 178 _sqq._, 268 _sq._
Alban Hills, i. 2
—— Mountain, the, ii. 187 _sq._, 202
Albigenses, the, i. 407
_Alcheringa_, legendary time, i. 98
Alfai, priesthood of the, ii. 3
Algidus, Mount, ii. 187, 380
Algonquins, the, ii. 147
Amata, “Beloved,” title of Vestals, ii. 197;
Amata, wife of King Latinus, 197
Amboyna, ii. 28
Amenophis III., birth of, ii. 131 _sqq._
American Indians, power of medicine-men among the, i. 355 _sqq._
Amethyst, i. 165
Ammon, the god, married to the Queen of Egypt, ii. 130 _sqq._;
human wives of the god, 130 _sqq._;
costume of the god, 133;
King of Egypt masqueraded as, 133;
at Thebes, high priests of, 134
Ammonite, black fossil, ii. 26, 27 _n._ 2
Amphictyon, ii. 277
Amulius Sylvius, ii. 180
Anaitis, Oriental goddess, i. 16 _sq._, 37 _n._ 2
_Anatomie of Abuses_, ii. 66
Anazarbus, the olives of, ii. 107
Ancestor-worship among the Bantu peoples, ii. 221;
in relation to fire-worship, 221
Ancestors, prayers to, i. 285, 287, 345, 352;
sacrifices to, 339;
souls of, in trees, ii. 30, 31, 32;
dead, regarded as mischievous beings, 221;
represented by sacred fire-sticks, 222 _sqq._;
souls of, in the fire on the hearth, 232
Ancestral spirits worshipped at the hearth, ii. 221 _sq._
Ancestral tree, fire kindled from, ii. 221, 233 _sq._
Ancus Martius, his death, ii. 320
Andaman Islanders, ii. 253
Andania, ii. 122
Anderida, forest of, ii. 7
Andromeda and Perseus, ii. 163
Animals, homoeopathic magic of, i. 150 _sqq._;
rain-making by means of, 287 _sqq._
Animism passing into polytheism, ii. 45
_Anitos_, spirits of ancestors, ii. 30
Anjea, mythical being, who causes conception in women, i. 100, 184
Annals of Tigernach and Ulster, ii. 286
Annandale, Nelson, ii. 237 _n._
Anointing weapon which caused wound, i. 202 _sqq._
Antaeus, ii. 300
Antigone, death of, ii. 228 _n._ 5
Antigonus, i. 391 _n._ 1
Antimores of Madagascar, i. 354
Apaches, land of the, i. 306
Apepi, Egyptian fiend, i. 67
Apes thought to be related to twins, i. 265
Ap-hi, god of thunder and lightning, ii. 370
Aphrodite and Adonis, i. 25
—— Askraia, i. 26
Apollo, i. 384, 386;
at Delos, 32, 34 _sq._;
at Delphi, 28;
grave of, at Delphi, 35;
Erithasean, ii. 121;
at Patara, 135
—— and Artemis, birthdays of, i. 32
—— Diradiotes, i. 381
Apologies offered to trees for cutting them down, ii. 18 _sq._, 36
_sq._
Apples at festival of Diana, i. 14, 16
April 15th, sacrifice on, ii. 229, 326
—— 21st, date of the Parilia, ii. 325, 326
—— 23rd, St. George’s Day, ii. 330 _sqq._
—— 24th, in some places St. George’s Day, ii. 337, 343
Arab charms, i. 152, 153, 157, 165 _sq._, 181, 303
Arabs of Moab, i. 276
Aratus, sacrifices to, i. 105
Araucanians of Chili, the, ii. 183
Arden, forest of, ii. 7
Ardennes, goddess of the, ii. 126
_Aren_ palm-tree, ii. 22
Ariadne and Dionysus, ii. 138
Aricia, i. 3, 4, 10, ii. 2;
“many Manii at,” i. 22
Arician grove, the sacred, i. 20, 22, ii. 115;
horses excluded from, i. 20
Arikara Indians, i. 115
Aristotle, ii. 137
Arkon, in Rügen, ii. 241 _n._ 4
Armenia, rain-making in, i. 275 _sq._
Arrephoroi at Athens, the, ii. 199
Arrian, on sacrifices to Artemis, ii. 125 _sq._
Arrows shot at sacred trees, ii. 11;
fire-tipped, shot at sun during an eclipse, i. 311
Artemis, temple dedicated to her by Xenophon, i. 7;
birthday of, i. 32, ii. 125;
the Asiatic, i. 7;
at Delos, 28;
of Ephesus, 7, 37 _sq._, ii. 128, 136;
a goddess of the wild life of nature, i. 35 _sq._;
sacrifices to, ii. 125;
worshipped by the Celts, 125 _sq._;
Saronian, i. 26;
Wolfish, 26 _sq._
—— and Apollo, birthdays of, i. 32;
and Hippolytus, 19 _sq._, 24 _sqq._
—— _Parthenos_, i. 36
Arunta, the, of Central Australia, i. 98;
magical ceremonies among, 85 _sqq._;
burial customs of the, 102
Arval Brothers, the, ii. 203
Aryan god of the oak and thunder, ii. 356 _sqq._;
god of the sky, 374 _sq._
Aryans, magical powers ascribed to kings among the, i. 366 _sqq._;
perpetual fires among the, ii. 260;
female kinship among the, 283 _sqq._
Ascanius or Julus, ii. 197
Ascension Day, ii. 69, 166
Ashantee, licence accorded to king’s sisters in, ii. 274 _sq._
Ashes scattered as rain-charm, i. 304;
in magic, 314;
of unborn calves used in a fertility charm, ii. 229, 326
Asia Minor, pontiffs in, i. 47
Assimilation of rain-maker to water, i. 269 _sqq._
Association of ideas, magic based on a misapplication of the, i. 221
_sq._
Assumption of the Virgin in relation to the festival of Diana, i. 14-16
Astarte at Byblus, i. 30
Atalante, ii. 301
Athenian sacrifices to the Seasons, i. 310
Athens, barrow of Hippolytus at, i. 25;
new fire brought to, 32 _sq._;
King and Queen at, 44 _sq._;
marriage of Dionysus at, ii. 136 _sq._;
female kinship at, 277
Atkinson, J. C., i. 199
Atreus, ii. 279
Attacking the wind, i. 327 _sqq._
Attica, traces of female kinship in, ii. 284
Attis and Cybele (Mother of the Gods), i. 18, 21, 40, 41
_Atua_, Polynesian term for god, i. 387 _n._ 1
August, the Ides (13th) of, Diana’s day, i. 12, 14-17
—— 15th, the day of the Assumption of the Virgin, i. 14-16
Augustine on the one God, i. 121 _n._ 1
Australia, aboriginal paintings in, i. 87 _n._ 1;
magic universally practised but religion nearly unknown among the
aborigines of, 234;
government of old men in aboriginal, 334 _sq._;
influence of magicians in aboriginal, 334 _sqq._
—— Central, magical ceremonies for the supply of food in, i. 85 _sqq._
Australian aborigines, magical images among the, i. 62;
ceremonies of initiation among the, 92 _sqq._;
contagious magic of teeth among the, 176;
magic of navel-string and afterbirth among the, 183 _sq._
Autun, procession of goddess at, ii. 144
Auxesia and Damia, i. 39
Avebury, Lord, i. 225 _n._
Aventine, Diana on the, ii. 128
Baal, prophets of, cutting themselves, i. 258
Baalim, the, lords of underground waters, ii. 159
Babar Archipelago, i. 72, 131
Babaruda, i. 273
Babylon, magical images in ancient, i. 66 _sq._;
sanctuary of Bel at, ii. 129 _sq._
Babylonian kings, divinity of the early, i. 417
Bacchanals chew ivy, i. 384
Bachofen, J. J., ii. 313 _n._ 1, 314 _n._ 1
Bacon, Francis, on anointing weapon that caused wound, i. 202
Badonsachen, King of Burma, i. 400
Baganda, the, i. 395;
superstitions as to the navel-string and afterbirth (placenta), 195
_sq._;
their customs in regard to twins, ii. 102 _sq._;
their belief in the influence of the sexes on vegetation, 101 _sq._;
Vestal Virgins among the, 246;
their list of kings, 269
Bagba, a fetish, i. 327
Bagishu, i. 103
Bahaus or Kayans of Borneo, ii. 40, 109
Bakers, Roman, required to be chaste, ii. 115 _sq._, 205
Balli Atap, ii. 385
_Baloi_, mythical beings, i. 177
Bambaras, the, ii. 42
Banana-tree, wild, supposed to fertilise barren women, ii. 318
Bandicoot in rain-charm, i. 288
Bangalas, the, ii. 293
Banks’ Islanders, i. 314
Bantu peoples, ancestor-worship among the, ii. 221
Banyai, chieftainship among the, ii. 292
Banyoro, the, ii. 322;
king of the, as rain-maker, i. 348
Baobab-trees, ii. 47
Baptist, St. John the, i. 277
_Bar_-tree (_Ficus Indica_), ii. 25, 43
Barea, the, ii. 3
Barenton, fountain of, i. 306, 307
Bari, rain-making among the, i. 346 _sq._
Barotse, the, i. 392 _sq._
Barren women, charms to procure offspring for, i. 70 _sqq._;
thought to sterilise gardens, 142;
fertilised by trees, ii. 51, 56 _sq._, 316 _sq._;
thought to blight the fruits of the earth, 102;
fertilised by water-spirits, 159 _sqq._
_Basilai_ at Olympia, i. 46 _n._ 4
Basoga, the, ii. 19, 112
Basutos, the, i. 71, 177
Bath before marriage, intention of, ii. 162
Bathing as a rain-charm, i. 277 _sq._
Battas or Bataks of Sumatra, i. 71, 398 _sq._, ii. 108
Battus, King, i. 47
Bayfield, M. A., ii. 228 _n._ 5
Bean, sprouting of, in superstitious ceremony, i. 266
Beasts, sacred, in Egypt held responsible for failure of crops, i. 354
Bechuana charms, i. 150 _sq._
Bechuanas, the, i. 313
Bedouins, fire-drill of the ancient, ii. 209
Beech-woods of Denmark, ii. 351
_Beena_ marriage, ii. 271
Bees, the King Bees (Essenes) at Ephesus, ii. 135 _sq._
Bel of Babylon, ii. 129
Belep, the, of New Caledonia, i. 150
Bell-ringing as a charm to dispel evil influences, ii. 343 _sq._
Benefits conferred by magic, i. 218 _sq._
Benin, king of, as a god, i. 396
Benvenuto Cellini, ii. 197 _n._ 6
Benzoni, G., i. 57 _n._
Bes, the god, ii. 133
Betsileo, the, i. 397
Bevan, Professor A. A., ii. 210 _n._
Bezoar stone in rain-charms, i. 305
Bhagavati, goddess of Cochin, i. 280
Birch, crowns of, ii. 64;
leaves, girl clad in, 80;
tree dressed in woman’s clothes, 64;
a protection against witches, 54
Birth, pretence of, at adoption, i. 74 _sq._;
at return of supposed dead man, 75;
at circumcision, 75 _sq._;
simulation of a new, 380 _sq._;
from the fire, ii. 195 _sqq._
Birthday, Greek custom of sacrificing to a dead man on his, i. 105
Birthdays of Apollo and Artemis, i. 32
“Birthplace of Rainy Zeus,” ii. 360
Black animals in rain-charms, i. 250, 290 _sqq._;
colour in magic, 83;
in rain-making ceremonies, 269 _sq._
Blackfoot Indians, i. 116, 150;
their worship of the sun, ii. 146 _sq._
Bleeding trees, ii. 18, 20, 33
Blighting effect of illicit love on the fruits of the earth, ii. 107
_sqq._
Blindness, charm to cause, i. 147
Blood drawn from virgin bride, i. 94;
shed at circumcision and subincision, uses of, 92, 94 _sq._;
sympathetic connexion between wounded person and his shed blood, 205;
used to imitate rain, 256, 257 _sq._;
as a means of inspiration, 381 _sqq._;
offered to trees, ii. 13, 16, 34, 44, 47;
of pigs in purificatory rites, 107, 108, 109;
of incestuous persons, blighting effects attributed to the, 110
_sq._;
reluctance to spill royal, 228;
smeared on sacred trees, 367
Blood, human, in _intichiuma_ ceremonies, i. 85, _sqq._ 90, _sqq._;
offered at grave, 90 _sq._;
given to sick people, 91;
used to knit men together, 92
Blood-stone, i. 165
Bloomfield, Professor M., i. 229
Boanerges, i. 266
Bodio, fetish king, i. 353
Bogomiles, the, i. 407
Boiled meat offered to the Seasons, i. 310
Bones of dead in magic, i. 148;
human, buried as rain-charm, 287;
burned as a charm against sorcery, ii. 330
Bonfires at midsummer, ii. 65
Bongo, the, i. 347
Boni, G., ii. 186 _n._ 1
Borewell, the, ii. 161
Borlase, W., ii. 67
Born thrice, said of Brahmans, i. 381
Borneo, i. 59, 73;
beliefs as to the blighting effect of sexual crime in, ii. 108 _sqq._
Bororos, the, ii. 298
Bough, the Golden, plucked by Aeneas, i. 11, ii. 379;
the plucking of it not a piece of bravado, 123 _sq._;
grew on an evergreen oak, 379
Boughs, green, a charm against witches, ii. 52-55, 127.
_See also_ Branches
Bovillae, ii. 179
Bradbury, Professor J. B., ii. 139 _n._ 1
Brahman, derivation of name, i. 229
—— fire-priests, ii. 247 _sqq._;
marriage ceremony, i. 160;
householder, temporary inspiration of, i. 380 _sq._
Brahmans deemed superior to the gods, i 226;
divinity of the, 403 _sq._;
thrice-born, 381
Branches dipped in water as a rain-charm, i. 248, 250, 309.
_See also_ Boughs
Brazil, Indians of, power of medicine-men among the, i. 358 _sq._
Breath, holy fire not to be blown upon with the, ii. 241
Brethren of the Free Spirit, i. 408;
of the Tilled Fields (_Fratres Arvales_), ii. 122
Brhaspati, as a magician, i. 241
Bride tied to tree at marriage, ii. 57;
the Whitsuntide, 89, 96;
the May, 95;
race for a, 301 _sqq._;
contests for a, 305 _sqq._
—— of God, the, i. 276
—— race among Teutonic peoples, ii. 303 _sqq._
Bridegroom of May, ii. 91, 93
Bridget in Scotland and the Isle of Man, ii. 94 _sq._
Brigit, a Celtic goddess, ii. 95, 240 _sqq._
Brimo and Brimos, ii. 139
Brincker, Dr. P. H., ii. 224 _n._ 4
Brooke, Rajah, i. 361
Brotherhood formed with trees by sucking their sap, ii. 19 _sq._
Brothers reviled by sisters for good luck, i. 279
Brown, A. R., ii. 254 _n._
Brown, Dr. George, i. 340
Brunhild, Queen of Iceland, ii. 306
Brutus, L. Junius, ii. 290, 291
Bryant, Jacob, i. 334
Buckthorn, a protection against witches, ii. 54, 191
Buddha, images of, drenched as a rain-charm, i. 308
Buddhas, living, i. 410 _sq._
Buddhist animism not a philosophical theory, ii. 13 _sq._
Bühler, G., ii. 367 _n._ 3, 369
Bulgaria, rain-making in, i. 274
Bull, the thunder-god compared to a, ii. 368
Bull-roarer used as a wind-charm, i. 324
Bull’s blood drunk as means of inspiration, i. 381 _sq._;
as ordeal, i. 382 _n._ 1
Bulls, white, sacrificed, ii. 188 _sq._
Bunjil Kraura, i. 324
Bunsen, on St. Hippolytus, i. 21 _n._ 2
Burglars, charms employed by, to cause sleep, i. 148 _sq._
Burgundians and their kings, i. 366
Burial alive, punishment of unfaithful virgins, ii. 244
—— customs intended to ensure re-incarnation, i. 101 _sqq._
Burma, magical images in, i. 62 _sq._
Burning of sacred trees or poles, ii. 141 _sq._
Burning-glass or mirror, fire kindled by, ii. 243, 244 _n._ 1
Buryats, the, ii. 32
Bush negroes of Surinam, ii. 385
Bushmen, i. 123
Butlers, Roman, required to be chaste, ii. 115 _sq._, 205
Buttmann, P., i. 40 _n._ 2
Büttner, C. G., ii. 218
Byblus, Astarte at, i. 30
Cabbages, charm to make cabbages grow, i. 136 _sq._
Cactus, sacred, telepathy in search for, i. 123 _sq._
Cadys, ii. 281
Caeculus born from the fire, ii. 197
Caelian hill at Rome, ii. 185
Caesar, Julius, his villa at Nemi, i. 5
Caesars, their name derived from _caesaries_, ii. 180
Caingua Indians, the, ii. 258
Calah, ancient capital of Assyria, ii. 130
Caland, Dr. W., i. 229
Caldwell, Bishop R., i. 382
_Calica Puran_, i. 63
Caligula, his barges on the lake of Nemi, i. 5;
and the priest of Nemi, 11
Calmucks, race for a bride among the, ii. 301 _sq._
Cambodia, the regalia in, i. 365;
Kings of Fire and Water in, ii. 3 _sqq._
Cambridge, May Day custom at, ii. 62
Camden, W., ii. 53.
Camillus, his triumph, ii. 174 _n._ 2
Camphor, taboos observed in search for, i. 114 _sq._;
telepathy in search for, 124 _sq._
Candaules, ii. 281, 282
Candlemas, ii. 94
Cannibalism in Australia, i. 106 _sq._
Cantabrians, mother-kin among the, ii. 285
Canute, King of England, his marriage with Emma, ii. 282 _sq._
Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, i. 99, 100
Capena, the Porta, at Rome, i. 18
Capitol, temple of Jupiter on the, ii. 174, 176, 184
_Caprificatio_, ii. 314 _n._ 2
_Caprificus_, the wild fig-tree, ii. 314 _sq._
Car Nicobar, i. 314
Caribs, war custom of the, i. 134
Carna, nymph, ii. 190
Carpenter, son of, as a human god, i. 376
Carpet-snakes, magical ceremony for the multiplication of, i. 90
Castor and Pollux, i. 49 _sq._
Cat in rain-charm, i. 289, 291, 308 _sq._
Cat’s cradle as a charm to catch the sun, i. 316 _sq._
Catlin, G., i. 356
Cato the Elder on dedication of Arician grove to Diana, i. 22, 23
Cato, on expiation, ii. 122
Cattle crowned, ii. 75, 126 _sq._, 339, 341;
charm to recover strayed, i. 212;
influence of tree-spirits on, ii. 55
—— stall, the, at Athens, ii. 137
Caul, superstitions as to, i. 187 _sq._, 190 _sq._, 199 _sq._
Caves, prehistoric paintings of animals in, i. 87 _n._ 1
Cecrops, ii. 277;
said to have instituted marriage, 284
Cedar, sacred, ii. 49, 50 _sq._;
smoke of, inhaled as mode of inspiration, i. 383 _sq._
—— tree, girl annually sacrificed to, ii. 17
—— wood burned as a religious rite, ii. 130
Celebes, i. 109;
magical virtue of regalia in, 362 _sqq._
Celtic divinity akin to Artemis, ii. 126
—— and Italian languages akin, ii. 189
—— Vestals, ii. 241 _n._ 1
Celts, their worship of the Huntress Artemis, ii. 125 _sq._;
their worship of the oak, 362 _sq._;
of Gaul, their harvest festival, i. 17;
of Ireland, their belief in the blighting effect of incest, ii. 116
Ceos, funeral customs in, i. 105
Ceremonies, initiatory, of Central Australian aborigines, i. 92 _sqq._
Chadwick, H. M., ii. 278 _n._ 1, 283 _n._ 1
Chaka, the Zulu despot, i. 350
Champion at English coronation ceremony, ii. 322
Chams, the, i. 120, 131, 144
Chariot in rain-charm, i. 309
—— and horses dedicated to the sun, i. 315
Charles II. touches for scrofula, i. 368 _sq._
Charms to ensure long life, i. 168 _sq._;
to prevent the sun from going down, 316 _sqq._
_See also_ Magic
Chastity observed for sake of absent persons, i. 123, 124, 125, 131;
practised to make the crops grow, ii. 104 _sqq._;
required of persons who handle dishes and food, 115 _sq._, 205;
Milton on, 118 _n._ 1;
as a virtue not understood by savages, 118;
observed by sacred men, perhaps the husbands of a goddess, 135, 136;
observed by sacred women, 137;
required in those who make fire by friction, 238 _sq._
_See also_ Continence
Chauci, the, ii. 353
Cheremiss, the, ii. 44, 49
Cherokees, homoeopathic magic of plants among the, i. 144, 146 _sq._;
homoeopathic magic of animals among the, i. 155 _sq._
Chibchas, the, i. 416
Chi-chi Mama, i. 276
Chiefs, supernatural power of, in Melanesia, i. 338 _sqq._;
as magicians, especially rain-makers, in Africa, 342 _sqq._;
not allowed to leave their premises, 349;
punished for drought and dearth, 352 _sqq._;
as priests, ii. 215 _sq._;
chosen from several families in rotation, 292 _sqq._
Chilcotin Indians, i. 312
Child’s Well at Oxford, ii. 161
Childbirth, Diana as goddess of, i. 12, ii. 128
Children, newborn, brought to the hearth, ii. 232
_Chili_, sacred cedar, ii. 49, 50 _sq._
China, emperors of, i. 47;
homoeopathic magic of city sites in, 169 _sq._;
the Emperor of, superior to the gods, 416 _sq._
_See also_ Chinese
Chinchvad, human gods at, i. 405 _sq._
Chinese, magical images among the, i. 60 _sq._
—— belief in spirits of plants, ii. 14
—— charms to ensure long life, i. 168 _sq._
—— emperor responsible for drought, i. 355
—— empire, incarnate human gods in the, i. 412 _sqq._
—— modes of compelling the rain-god to give rain, i. 297 _sqq._
—— superstition as to placenta (after-birth), i. 194
Chingilli, the, i. 99
Chios, kings of, i. 45
Chissumpe, the, i. 393
Chitomé, the, a pontiff of Congo, ii. 261
Christians, pretenders to divinity among, i. 407 _sqq._
Christs, Russian sect of the, i. 407 _sq._
Chuckchees, sacred fire-boards of the, ii. 225 _sq._
_Churinga_, in Australia, i. 88, 199, 335
Cimbrians, the, i. 331 _n._ 2
Ciminian forest, ii. 8
Circassians, their custom as to pear-trees, ii. 55 _sq._
Circumcision, pretence of new birth at, i. 76, 96 _sq._;
uses of blood shed at, 92, 94 _sq._;
suggested origin of, 96 _sq._
Cithaeron, Mount, ii. 140
Clans, paternal and maternal, of the Herero, ii. 217
Cleanliness promoted by contagious magic, i. 175, 342
Clisthenes and Hippoclides, ii. 307 _sq._
Clitus and Pallene, ii. 307
Clothes, sympathetic connexion between a person and his, i. 205-207
Clouds imitated by smoke, i. 249;
by stones, i. 256;
by rain-maker, 261, 262, 263
Clouds, magicians painted in imitation of, i. 323
Clove-trees in blossom treated like pregnant women, ii. 28
Cloves, ceremony to make cloves grow ii. 100
Clown in spring ceremonies, ii. 82, 89
Clytaemnestra, ii. 279
Cockatoos, ceremony for the magical multiplication of, i. 89
Coco-nut sacred, ii. 51
—— palms worshipped, ii. 16
Codrington, Dr. R. H., quoted, i. 227 _sq._, 338
Coligny calendar, i. 17 _n._ 2
Collatinus, L. Tarquinius, ii. 290
Columella, ii. 314;
quoted, 205
Combat, mortal, for the kingdom, ii. 322
Communism, tradition of sexual, ii. 284
Compelling rain-gods to give rain, i. 296 _sqq._
Complexity of social phenomena, i. 332
Comrie, ii. 161
Con or Cun, a thunder-god, ii. 370
Conception in women, supposed cause of, i. 100;
caused by trees, ii. 51, 56 _sq._, 316-318
Concord, temple of, at Rome, i. 11, 21 _n._ 2
Concordia, nurse of St. Hippolytus, i. 21 _n._ 2
Condor, the bird of the thunder-god, ii. 370
Confession of sins, i. 266
Conflicts, sanguinary, as rain-charm, i. 258
Conquerors sometimes leave a nominal kingship to the conquered, ii. 288
_sq._
“Consort, the divine,” ii. 131, 135
Consuls, the first, ii. 290
Consulship at Rome, institution of, ii. 290 _sq._
Contact or contagion in magic, law of, i. 52, 53
Contagious Magic, i. 174-214;
of teeth, 176-182;
of navel-string and afterbirth (placenta), 182-201;
of wound and weapon, 201 _sqq._;
of footprints, 207-212;
of other impressions, 213 _sq._
—— taboos, i. 117
Contest for the kingship at Whitsuntide, ii. 89
Contests for a bride, ii. 305 _sqq._
Continence required in magical ceremonies, i. 88;
required at rain-making ceremonies, 257, 259;
required of parents of twins, 266;
practised in order to make the crops grow, ii. 104 _sqq._
_See also_ Chastity
Conway, Professor R. S., ii. 379 _n._ 5
Conybeare, F. C., i. 407 _n._ 3
Cook, A. B., i. 23 _n._, 40 _n._ 3 and 4, 42 _n._ 1, ii. 172 _n._ 3,
173 _n._ 2, 177 _n._ 6, 178 _n._ 3, 187 _n._ 4, 220 _n._ 3, 290 _n._
3, 307 _n._ 2, 321 _n._ 1, 358 _n._ 4, 379 _n._ 4 and _n._ 5, 380
_n._ 4, 383 _n._ 2
Cooks, Roman, required to be chaste, ii. 115 _sq._, 205
Cora Indians, i. 55 _sq._
Corc, his purification, ii. 116
Corn, defiled persons kept from the, ii. 112;
reaped ear of, displayed at mysteries of Eleusis, 138 _sq._
—— -mother, the, at Eleusis, ii. 139
—— -reaping in Greece, date of, i. 32
Cornel-tree, sacred, ii. 10
Cornish customs on May Day, ii. 52, 67
_Corp chre_, i. 68, 69
Corpus Christi Day, ii. 163
Cos, King of, i. 45
Crab in rain-charm, i. 289
Crannogs, ii. 352
Crannon in Thessaly, i. 309
Crawley, E., i. 201 _n._ 1
Crocodiles, girls sacrificed to, ii. 152
Cronus and Zeus, ii. 323
Crooke, W., i. 406 _n._ 1, ii. 57 _n._ 4, 288 _n._ 1
Cross River, i. 349
Crossbills in magic, i. 81 _sq._
Crown of oak leaves, ii. 175, 176 _sq._, 184
Crowning cattle, ii. 75, 126 _sq._, 339, 341
—— dogs, custom of, i. 14, ii. 125 _sq._, 127 _sq._
Crowns, magical virtue of royal, i. 364 _sq._;
of birch at Whitsuntide, ii. 64;
or wreaths, custom of wearing, 127 _n._ 2
Crows in magic, i. 83
Crystals, magic of, i. 176;
used in rain-making, 254, 255, 304, 345, 346
Cumont, Professor Franz, ii. 310
Cup-and-ball as a charm to hasten the return of the sun, i. 317
Curses, public, i. 45;
supposed beneficial effects of, i. 279 _sqq._
Cursing at sowing, i. 281
—— fishermen and hunters for good luck, i. 280 _sq._
Curtiss, Professor S. I., i. 402
Cuzco, ii. 243
Cybele, ii. 144 _sq._;
and Attis, i. 18, 21, 40, 41
Cyrene, kingship at, i. 47
Daedala, festival of the, ii. 140 _sq._
Dainyal or Sibyl, i. 383
Dalai Lama of Lhasa, i. 411 _sq._
Damaras or Herero, their fire-customs, ii. 211 _sqq._
Damia and Auxesia, i. 39
Danaus, ii. 301
Dance at giving of oracles, i. 379;
of milkmaids on May-day, ii. 52
Dances of women while men are away fighting, i. 131-134;
as means of inspiration, 408 _n._ 1;
round sacred trees, ii. 47, 55;
found the May-pole, 65, 69, 74 _sq._;
on graves, 183 _n._ 2
Dancing as a fertility charm, i. 137 _sqq._, ii. 106
Danes, female descent of the kingship among the, ii. 282 _sq._
Daphnephoria, ii. 63 _n._ 2
Date-month, the, ii. 25
—— -palm, artificial fertilisation of the, ii. 24 _sq._
Dawn, the rosy, i. 334
Day of Stones, i. 279
De Groot, J. J. M., i. 416 _sq._, ii. 14
Dead, hair offered to the, i. 31;
pretence of new birth at return of supposed dead man, 75;
homoeopathic magic of the, 147 _sqq._;
sacrifices to, 163;
making rain by means of the, 284 _sqq._;
trees animated by the souls of the, ii. 29 _sqq._;
the illustrious, represented by masked men, 178;
thunder and lightning made by the, 183;
spirits of the, in wild fig-trees, 317
Death, pretence of, in magic, i. 84;
infection of, 143;
at ebb tide, 167 _sq._;
puppet called, carried out of village, ii. 73 _sq._
Deceiving the spirits of plants and trees, ii. 22 _sqq._
Deir el Bahari, paintings at, ii. 131, 133
Deities duplicated through dialectical differences in their names, ii.
380 _sq._
Dejanira and Achelous, ii. 161 _sq._
Delivery, easy, granted to women by trees, ii. 57 _sq._
Delos, graves of Hyperborean maidens in, i. 28, 33 _sqq._;
Apollo and Artemis at, 28, 32-35
Delphi, Apollo at, i. 28;
new fire sent from, 32 _sq._;
King of, 45 _sq._
Demeter and Zeus, their marriage at Eleusis, ii. 138 _sq._
Demetrius Poliorcetes deified at Athens, i. 390 _sq._
Denmark, Whitsun bride in, ii. 91 _sq._;
the beech-woods of, 351
Dennett, R. E., ii. 277 _n._ 1
_Deòce_, a divine spirit, i. 410
Departmental kings of nature, ii. 1 _sqq._
Derry, the oaks of, ii. 242 _sq._
Devil-dancers, i. 382
Dew on May morning, custom of washing in the, ii. 54, 67, 327, 339;
rolling in the, 333
“Dew-treading” in Holland, ii. 104 _n._ 2
Dhurma Rajah, i. 410
_DI_, Aryan root meaning “bright,” ii. 381
Dia, grove of the goddess, ii. 122
Dialectical differences a cause of the duplication of deities, ii. 382
_sq._
Diana, her sanctuary at Nemi, i. 2 _sqq._;
as huntress at Nemi, 6;
as patroness of cattle, 7, ii. 124;
her priest at Nemi, i. 8 _sqq._;
the Tauric, 10 _sq._, 24;
as goddess of childbirth, 12, ii. 128;
as Vesta at Nemi, i. 13, ii. 380;
in relation to vines, i. 15 _sq._;
the mate of the King of the Wood at Nemi, 40, 41, ii. 380;
as a goddess of fertility, 120 _sqq._;
in relation to animals of the woods, 124, 125 _sqq._;
as the moon, 128;
the goddess of fruits, 128;
as a goddess of the oak at Nemi, 380
—— and Dianus, ii. 376 _sqq._
—— (Jana), a double of Juno, ii. 190 _sq._, 381 _sq._
“Diana’s Mirror,” i. 1
Dianus (Janus), a double of Jupiter, ii. 190 _sq._, 381 _sq._
Diels, Professor H., i. 390 _n._ 2
Dieri, the, i. 90, 177, ii. 29;
rain-making ceremonies of the, i. 255 _sqq._
Dinka or Denka nation, i. 347
Diodorus Siculus, i. 74
Diomede, ii. 278;
at Troezen, i. 27;
sacred grove of, 27
Dione, wife of Zeus at Dodona, ii. 189;
the old consort of Zeus, 381, 382
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, quoted, ii. 202 _sq._
Dionysus, marriage of, to the Queen of Athens, ii. 136 _sq._;
and Ariadne, 138
Discovery of fire, ii. 255 _sqq._
Disease-makers in Tana, i. 341 _sq._
“Divine consort, the,” ii. 131
Divinity of kings, i. 48 _sqq._;
among the Hovas, 397;
among the Malays, 398;
in great historical empires, 415 _sqq._;
growth of the conception of the, ii. 376 _sqq._
—— of the Brahmans, i. 403 _sq._
Division of labour in relation to social progress, i. 420
Diwali, the feast of lamps, ii. 160
Dixon, Dr. W. E., ii. 139 _n._ 1
Djakuns, their mode of making fire, ii. 236
Djuldjul, i. 274
Dodola, the, i. 273
Dodona, oracular spring at, ii. 172;
Zeus at, 177;
Zeus and Dione at, 189;
oracular oak at, 358
Dog, black, sacrificed for rain, i. 291;
used to stop rain, 303
Dogs crowned, i. 14, ii. 125 _sq._, 127 _sq._
Dollar-bird associated with rain, i. 287 _sq._
Domalde, a Swedish king, i. 366 _sq._
Donar or Thunar, the German thunder god, ii. 364
Doors, Janus as a god of, ii. 383 _sq._
Doreh, in New Guinea, i. 125
Dos Santos, J., i. 392
Double-headed fetish among the Bush negroes of Surinam, ii. 385;
Janus, explanation of, ii. 384 _sq._
Dragon, rain-god represented as, i. 297;
or serpent of water, ii. 155 _sqq._;
of Rouen, destroyed by St. Romain, 164 _sqq._;
the Slaying of the, at Furth, 163 _sq._
Dramas, magical, to promote vegetation, ii. 120
Dramatic exhibitions sometimes originate in magical rites, ii. 142;
weddings of gods and goddesses, ii. 121
Draupadi or Krishna, ii. 306
Dreams, modes of counteracting evil, i. 172 _sq._
Drenching people with water as a rain-charm, i. 250, 251, 269 _sq._,
272, 273, 274, 275, 277 _sq._, ii. 77
Dropsy, ancient Greek mode of preventing, i. 78
Drought supposed to be caused by unburied dead, i. 287;
and dearth, chiefs and kings punished for, 352 _sqq._;
supposed to be caused by sexual crime, ii. 110, 111, 113
Drowning as a punishment, ii. 109, 110, 111;
sacrifice by, 364
Druids, oak-worship of the, ii. 9;
of Gaul, their sacrifices of white bulls, 189;
female, 241 _n._ 1;
venerate the oak and the mistletoe, 358, 362;
derivation of the name, 363
Drums, homoeopathic magic at the making of, i. 134 _sq._;
beaten as a charm against a storm, 328
Drynemetum, ii. 363
Du Pratz, ii. 263 _n._ 1
Dudulé, the, i. 274
Duplication of deities an effect of dialectical differences, ii. 382
_sq._
Durostorum, martyrdom of St. Dasius at, ii. 310 _n._ 1
Dwarf tribes of Central Africa, ii. 255
Dyaks of Borneo, the, i. 73, 127, ii. 13;
the Sea, 127
Ea, the inventor of magic, i. 240
Eagle hunters, taboos observed by, i. 116;
charms employed by, 149 _sq._
—— -wood, telepathy in search for, i. 120
Eagles, sacred, ii. 11
Earth and Sun, marriage of the, ii. 98 _sq._, 148
—— goddess, pregnant cows sacrificed to, ii. 229
Earthquakes supposed to be caused by incest, ii. 111
Ebb tide, death at, i. 167 _sq._
Eclipse, ceremonies at an, i. 311 _sq._
Economic progress a condition of intellectual progress, i. 218
Egeria, water nymph at Nemi, i. 17-19, 41, ii. 171 _sq._;
an oak-nymph, 172;
a double of Diana, 380;
and Numa, i. 18, ii. 172 _sqq._, 193, 380
Egerius Baebius or Laevius, i. 22
Eggs collected at spring ceremonies, ii. 65, 78, 81, 84, 85;
or egg-shells, painted, in spring ceremonies, 63, 65;
in purificatory rite, 109
Egypt, magical images in ancient, i. 66, 67 _sq._;
magicians in ancient, 225;
confusion of magic and religion in ancient, 230 _sq._;
kings of, deified in their lifetime, 418 _sqq._;
the Queen of, married to the god Ammon, ii. 131 _sq._;
king of, masquerading as Ammon, 133
Egyptian kings and queens, their begetting and birth depicted on the
monuments, ii. 131 _sqq._
—— worship of sacred beasts, i. 29 _sq._
Egyptians, the ancient, worshipped men and animals, i. 389 _sq._;
sycamores worshipped by the ancient, ii. 15
_Eiresione_, ii. 48
Elder-tree, ii. 43
Elective and hereditary monarchy, combination of the two, ii. 292
_sqq._
Electric lights on mast-heads, spears, etc., i. 49 _sq._
Elephant-hunters, telepathy of, i. 123
Eleusis, mysteries of, ii. 138 _sq._
Elipandus of Toledo, i. 407
Elizabeth, Queen, i. 368
_Emblica officinalis_, a sacred tree, ii. 51
Emin Pasha, ii. 297 _n._ 7
Empedocles, his claim to divinity, i. 390
Emus, ceremony for the multiplication of, i. 85 _sq._
Endymion, ii. 299
Ephesian Artemis, ii. 128
Ephesus, Artemis of, i. 37 _sq._;
nominal kings at, 47;
the Essenes or King Bees at, ii. 135 _sq._
Epicurus, sacrifices offered to, i. 105
Erechtheum, the, ii. 199
Erechtheus and Erichthonius, ii. 199
Erhard, Professor A., ii. 310 _n._ 1
Erichthonius, i. 21;
and Erechtheus, ii. 199
Eruptions of volcanoes supposed to be caused by incest, ii. 111
Esquiline hill at Rome, ii. 185
Esquimaux, i. 70, 113, 121, 316, 327
Essenes or King Bees at Ephesus, i. 47 _n._ 2, ii. 135 _sq._
Esthonian folk-tale of a tree-elf, ii. 71 _sqq._;
marriage custom, 234
Esthonians, St. George’s Day among the, ii. 330 _sqq._;
their thunder-god Taara, 367
Etruscans, female kinship among the, ii. 286 _sq._
Eudanemi, the, at Athens, i. 325 _n._ 1
Europe, contagious magic of footprints in, i. 210 _sq._;
confusion of magic and religion in modern, 231-233;
forests of ancient, ii. 7 _sq._;
relics of tree-worship in modern, 59 _sqq._;
diffusion of the oak in, 349 _sqq._
—— South-Eastern, rain-making ceremonies in, i. 272 _sqq._
Euros, magical ceremony for the multiplication of, i. 89
Evelyn, John, i. 369
Evergreen oak, the Golden Bough grew on, ii. 379
—— trees in Italy, i. 8
Evolution of kings out of magicians or medicine-men, i. 420 _sq._;
industrial, from uniformity to diversity of function, 421;
political, from democracy to despotism, 421
Exaggerations of anthropological theories, i. 333
Exogamy, ii. 271
Expiation for adultery or fornication, ii. 107 _sq._;
for incest, 115, 116
External soul in afterbirth or navel-string, i. 200 _sq._
Extinction of fires at king’s death, ii. 261 _sqq._, 267;
in houses after any death, 267 _sq._
Ezekiel, i. 87 _n._ 1
Falerii, Juno at, ii. 190 _n._ 2
Falstaff, death of, i. 168
Families, royal, kings chosen from several, ii. 292 _sqq._
Fan tribe, i. 349
Farnell, Dr. L. R., i. 36, ii. 379 _n._ 5
Fasting obligatory, i. 124, 131
Father Jove and Mother Vesta, ii. 227 _sqq._
Fattest men chosen kings, ii. 297
February, first of, St. Bride’s day, i. 94 _sq._
Fehrle, E., ii. 199 _n._ 5
Female descent of the kingship in Rome, ii. 270 _sqq._;
in Africa, 274 _sqq._;
in Greece, 277 _sq._;
in Scandinavia, 279 _sq._;
in Lydia, 281 _sq._;
among Danes and Saxons, 282 _sq._
—— kinship in descent of the Roman kingship, ii. 271;
indifference to paternity of kings under female kinship, 274 _sqq._;
at Athens, 277;
indifference to paternity in general under, 282;
among the Aryans, 283 _sqq._
_See also_ Mother-kin
Female slaves, licence accorded to them on the _Nonae Caprotinae_, ii.
313 _sq._
Feng and Wiglet, ii. 281, 283
Fennel, fire carried in giant, ii. 260
Fertilisation, artificial, of the date palm, ii. 24 _sq._;
of the fig-tree, 314 _sq._
—— of women by the wild fig-tree, ii. 316;
by the wild banana-tree, 318
Fertilising virtue attributed to trees, ii. 49 _sqq._, 316 _sqq._
Fertility, Diana as a goddess of, ii. 120 _sqq._;
the thunder-god conceived as a deity of fertility, 368 _sqq._
_Fictores Vestalium, fictores Pontificum_, ii. 204
_Ficus Ruminalis_, ii. 318
_Fierte_ or shrine of St. Romain, ii. 167, 168, 170 _n._ 1
Fig, as an article of diet, ii. 315 _sq._
Fig-tree of Romulus (_ficus Ruminalis_), ii. 10, 318
—— artificial fertilisation (_caprificatio_) of the, ii. 314 _sq._
—— sacred, ii. 44, 99, 249, 250
—— the wild, a male, ii. 314 _sq._;
supposed to fertilise women, 316 _sq._;
haunted by spirits of the dead, 317
Fiji, catching the sun in, i. 316
Fijians, gods of the, i. 389
Finnish-Ugrian peoples, sacred groves of the, ii. 10 _sq._
Finnish wizards and witches, i. 325
Fire in the worship of Diana, i. 12 _sq._;
supposed to be subject to Catholic priests, 231;
used to stop rain, 252 _sq._;
as a charm to rekindle the sun, 311, 313;
of Vesta at Rome fed with oak wood, ii. 186;
birth from the, 195 _sqq._;
the king’s, 195 _sqq._;
impregnation of women by, 195 _sqq._, 230 _sqq._, 234;
taken from sacred hearth to found a new village, 216;
on the hearth, souls of ancestors in the, 232;
reasons for attributing a procreative virtue to, 233 _sq._;
made jointly by man and woman or boy and girl, 235 _sqq._;
custom of extinguishing fire and rekindling it by the friction of
wood, 237 _sq._;
need-fire made by married men, 238;
holy, not to be blown upon with the breath, 240, 241;
tribes reported to be ignorant of the art of kindling, 253 _sqq._;
discovery of, by mankind, 255 _sqq._;
carried about by savages, 257 _sqq._;
kept burning in houses of chiefs and kings, 260 _sqq._;
carried before king or chief, 263 _sq._;
a symbol of life, 265;
leaping over a, 327, 329
Fire and Water, Kings of, ii. 3 _sqq._
—— -bearer, the, i. 33
—— -boards, sacred, of the Chuckchees and Koryaks, ii. 225 _sq._
—— customs of the Herero or Damaras, ii. 211 _sqq._;
compared to those of the Romans, ii. 227 _sqq._
—— -drill, the, ii. 207 _sqq._, 248 _sqq._, 258 _sq._, 263;
the kindling of fire by it regarded by savages as a form of sexual
intercourse, 208 _sqq._, 218, 233, 235 _sq._, 239, 249 _sq._;
of the Herero, 217 _sq._
—— -god married to a human virgin, ii. 195 _sqq._
—— kindled by the friction of wood, ii. 207 _sqq._, 235 _sqq._, 243,
248 _sqq._, 258 _sq._, 262, 263, 336, 366, 372;
from ancestral tree, 221, 233 _sq._;
by natural causes, 256;
by lightning, 263
—— “living,” ii. 237;
a charm against witchcraft, 336
—— “new,” ii. 237;
sent from Delos and Delphi, i. 32 _sq._;
made at beginning of king’s reign, ii. 262, 267;
made at Midsummer, 243
—— -priests (_Agnihotris_) of the Brahmans, ii. 247 _sqq._
—— -sticks of fire-drill regarded as male and female, ii. 208 _sqq._,
235, 238, 239, 248 _sqq._
—— -worship a form of ancestor-worship, ii. 221
Fires ceremonially extinguished, i. 33;
kept up for sake of absent persons, 120 _sq._, 128, 129;
extinguished at death of kings, ii. 261 _sqq._, 267;
at any death, 267 _sq._;
ceremonial, kindled by the friction of oak-wood, 372
—— perpetual, of Vesta, i. 13 _sq._;
in Ireland, ii. 240 _sqq._;
in Peru and Mexico, 243 _sqq._;
origin of, 253 _sqq._;
associated with royal dignity, 261 _sqq._;
of oak-wood, 365, 366
First-fruits, dedication of, i. 32
Fish, magical ceremony for the multiplication of, i. 90;
in rain-charm, 288 _sq._
Fishermen, Shetland, i. 69
—— and hunters cursed for good luck, i. 280 _sq._
Fishing and hunting, homoeopathic magic in, i. 108 _sqq._;
telepathy in, 120 _sqq._
Fison, Rev. Lorimer, i. 316, 331 _n._ 2, 378, 389 _n._ 3, ii. 13 _n._ 1
Fladda’s chapel, i. 322
_Flamen_, derivation of the name, ii. 235, 247
—— Dialis, the, ii. 179, 235, 246, 247, 248;
an embodiment of Jupiter, 191 _sq._
Flaminica, the, ii. 191, 235
Flax, charms to make flax grow tall, i. 138 _sq._, ii. 86, 164
Flight of the king (_Regifugium_) at Rome, ii. 308 _sqq._, 311 _n._ 4;
of sacrificer after the sacrifice, 309;
of the People at Rome, 319 _n._ 1
Flint implements supposed to be thunderbolts, ii. 374
Floquet, A., ii. 168, 169
Flowers, divination from, ii. 345
Food, homoeopathic magic for the supply of, i. 85 _sqq._
Foods tabooed, i. 117 _sqq._
Footprints, contagious magic of, i. 207-212
“Forced fire” or need-fire, ii. 238
Foreigners marry princesses and receive the kingdom with them, ii. 270
_sqq._
Foreskins removed at circumcision, uses of, i. 92 _sq._, 95;
used in rain-making, 256 _sq._
Forests of ancient Europe, ii. 7 _sq._
Fortuna and Servius Tullius, ii. 193 _n._ 1, 272
Forum at Rome, prehistoric cemetery in the, ii. 186, 202
Foucart, P., ii. 139 _n._ 1
Fowler, W. Warde, ii. 311 _n._ 4, 319 _n._ 1, 327 _n._ 2, 329 _n._ 6,
383 _n._ 3
Fox in magic, i. 151
_Fratres Arvales_, ii. 122
Free Spirit, Brethren of the, i. 408
French peasants ascribe magical powers to priests, i. 231-233
Frey, the god of fertility and his human wife, ii. 143 _sq._;
his image and festival at Upsala, 364 _sq._
Friction of wood, fire kindled by, ii. 207 _sqq._, 235 _sqq._, 243, 248
_sqq._, 258 _sq._, 262, 263, 336, 366, 372
Frog, magic of, i. 151;
worshipped, 294 _sq._;
love-charm made from the bone of a, ii. 345
—— flayer, the, ii. 86
Frogs in relation to rain, i. 292 _sqq._
Froth from a mill-wheel as a charm against witches, ii. 340
Fruit-trees fertilised by women, i. 140 _sq._
Fruits blessed on day of Assumption of the Virgin, i. 14 _sqq._;
Artemis and Diana as patronesses of, 15 _sq._
Fuegians, the, ii. 258
Fumigating flocks and herds as a charm against witchcraft, ii. 327,
330, 335, 336, 339, 343
Furth in Bavaria, the Slaying of the Dragon at, ii. 163 _sqq._
Furtwängler, A., i. 309 _n._ 6
Futuna, i. 388
_Fylgia_ or guardian spirit in Iceland, i. 200
Galatians, their Celtic language, ii. 126 _n._ 2
Galelareesc, the, i. 110, 113, 131, 143, 145, ii. 22
Gallas, kings of the, i. 48;
sacred trees of the, ii. 34
Garcilasso de la Vega, ii. 244 _n._ 1
Gardiner, Professor J. Stanley, ii. 154
_Gargouille_ or dragon destroyed by St. Romain, ii. 167
Garlands on May Day, ii. 60 _sqq._, 90 _sq._
Gaul, the Druids of, ii. 189
Gauri, harvest-goddess, ii. 77 _sq._
Gayos, the, ii. 125
Gennep, A. van, ii. 385 _n._ 1
Geomancy in China, i. 170
George, Green, ii. 75, 76, 79
Germans, worship of women among the ancient, i. 391;
tree-worship among the ancient, ii. 8 _sq._;
evidence of mother-kin among the, 285;
worship of the oak among the ancient, 363 _sq._
_Gerontocracy_ in Australia, i. 335
Gervasius of Tilbury, i. 301
Getae, the, i. 392
Ghosts in Melanesia, supposed powers of, i. 338 _sq._
Gilyaks, the, i. 122, ii. 38
Girl annually sacrificed to cedar-tree, ii. 17
Girls married to nets, ii. 147;
sacrificed to crocodiles, 152
Glory, the Hand of, i. 149
Glover, T. R., ii. 231 _n._ 6
Goat, blood of, drunk as means of inspiration, i. 382, 383
God, Bride of, i. 276;
savage ideas of, different from those of civilised men, 375 _sq._
“God-boxes,” i. 378
Gods viewed as magicians, i. 240 _sqq._, 375;
sacrifice themselves by fire, 315 _n._ 1;
conception of, slowly evolved, 373 _sq._;
incarnate human, 373 _sqq._;
gods and men, no sharp line of distinction between, in Fiji, 389;
and goddesses, dramatic weddings of, ii. 121;
the marriage of the, 129 _sqq._;
married to women, 129 _sqq._, 143 _sq._, 146 _sq._, 149 _sqq._
Gold in magic, i. 80 _sq._
Golden Bough plucked by Aeneas, i. 11, ii. 379;
the breaking of it not a piece of bravado, i. 123 _sq._;
grew on an evergreen oak, ii. 379
Golden lamb of Mycenae, i. 365
“Golden summer,” the, i. 32
Gonds, their belief in reincarnation, i. 104 _sq._
Gongs beaten in a storm, i. 328 _sq._;
at Dodona, ii. 358
Government of old men in aboriginal Australia, i. 334 _sq._
Grafting, superstitious ceremony at, ii. 100
Granger, Professor F., i. 42 _n._ 1
_Grasausläuten_, ii. 344
Grass King, the, ii. 85 _sq._
—— seed, magical ceremony for the multiplication of, i. 87 _sq._;
continence at magical ceremony for growth of, ii. 105
Graveclothes, homoeopathic magic of, in China, i. 168 _sq._
Graves, rain-charms at, i. 268, 286, 291;
trees planted on graves, ii. 31;
dances on, 183 _n._ 2;
of Hyperborean maidens at Delos, i. 28, 33 _sqq._
Great Sun, the, title of chief, ii. 262, 263
Greece, priestly kings in, i. 44 _sqq._;
kings and chiefs sacred or divine in ancient, 366;
human gods in ancient, 390 _sq._;
forests of, ii. 8;
female descent of kingship in ancient, 278 _sq._
Greek kings called Zeus, ii. 177, 361
Greeks, the modern, rain-making ceremonies among, i. 272 _sq._;
and Romans, rain-charms among the ancient, 309 _sq._
Green boughs a charm against witches, ii. 52-55, 127, 342 _sq._
—— George, ii. 75, 76, 79, 343
—— Thursday, ii. 333
Greenwich-hill, custom of rolling down, ii. 103
Gregory of Tours, ii. 144
Grimm, J., ii. 8, 362 _n._ 6, 364
Grizzly bears supposed to be related to human twins, i. 264 _sq._
Groves, sacred, ii. 10 _sq._, 44;
Arician, i. 20, 22, ii. 115;
in Chios, i. 45;
in ancient Greece and Rome, ii. 121 _sqq._
Grunau, Simon, ii. 366 _n._ 2
Guanches of Teneriffe, i. 303
Guardian spirit associated with caul, i. 199 _sq._
Guaycurus, the, i. 330
Gunkel, H., i. 101 _n._ 2
Gunnar Helming, ii. 144
Gunputty, elephant-headed god, human incarnation of, i. 405 _sq._
Gyges, ii. 281, 282
Gypsies, Green George among the, ii. 75 _sq._
Gypsy ceremonies for stopping rain, i. 295 _sq._
Hack-thorn sacred, ii. 48
Haddon, Dr. A. C., i. 262
Hahn, Dr. C. H., ii. 213 _n._ 2
Haida Indians, i. 70, 133
Hair offered to gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, i. 28 _sq._;
offered to the dead, 31, 102;
offered to rivers, 31;
clippings of, used in magic, 57, 64, 65, 66;
charms to make hair grow, 83, 145, 153 _sq._, 154;
loose as a charm, 136;
human, used in rain-making, 251 _sq._;
long, a symbol of royalty, ii. 180
Hakea flowers, ceremony for the multiplication of, i. 86
Hakim Singh, i. 409
Halford in Warwickshire, May Day customs at, ii. 88 _sq._
Hamlet, ii. 281, 291
Hammer worshipped, i. 317 _sq._
Hammurabi, code of, ii. 130
Hand of Glory, i. 149
Hardy, Thomas, i. 136
Hares as witches, i. 212, ii. 53
Harran, the heathen of, i. 383, ii. 25, 100 _n._ 2
Harris, J. Rendel, i. 15 _n._ 1, 21 _n._ 2
Harrison, Miss J. E., ii. 137 _n._ 1, 139 _n._ 1
Hartland, E. S., i. 52 _n._ 1, ii. 156 _n._ 2
Harvest in Greece, date of, i. 32
—— May, the, ii. 47 _sq._
Hatshopsitou, birth of Queen, ii. 131 _sqq._
Hawaii, insignia of royal family of, i. 388 _n._ 3
Hawthorn on May Day, ii. 52, 60;
a protection against witches, 55, 127
Head-hunters, rules observed by people at home in absence of, i. 129
Headmen of totem clans in Central Australia, i. 335
Heads, custom of moulding heads artificially, ii. 297 _sq._
Hearn, Dr. W. E., ii. 283 _n._ 5
Hearth, the king’s, at Rome, ii. 195, 200, 206;
sacred, of the Herero, 213, 214;
the sacred, seat of the ancestral spirits, 221;
custom of leading a bride round the, 230, 231;
new-born children brought to the, 232
Hearts of men and animals offered to the sun, i. 315
Heaven, vault of, imitated in rain-charm, i. 261, 262
Heavenly Master, the, i. 413
Hebrew prohibition of images, i. 87 _n._ 1
—— prophets, their ethical religion, i. 223
Hebrews, their notion of the blighting effect of sexual crime, ii. 114
_sq._
Hegel on magic and religion, i. 235 _n._ 1, 423 _sqq._
Hehn, V., on evergreens in Italy, i. 8 _n._ 4
_Heimskringla_, ii. 280
Heine, H., _Pilgrimage to Kevlaar_, i. 77
Hekaerge and Hekaergos, i. 33, 34, 35
_Helaga_, taboo, ii. 106 _n._ 2
Helbig, W., i. 20 _n._ 5
Helernus, grove of, ii. 190 _sq._
Hellebore, curses at cutting black, i. 281
Hemlock as an anaphrodisiac, ii. 138, 139 _n._ 1
Hemp, charms to make hemp grow tall, i. 137 _sq._
Heno, the thunder-spirit of the Iroquois, ii. 369 _sq._
Hera and Hercules, i. 74
Hercules, sacrifice to, i. 281
—— and Achelous, ii. 162
—— and Hera, i. 74
—— and Omphale, ii. 281
Hercynian forest, the, ii. 7, 354;
etymology of the name, 354 _n._ 2
Hereditary and elective monarchy, combination of the two, ii. 292
_sqq._
Herero or Damaras, their fire-customs, ii. 211 _sqq._
Hermutrude, legendary queen of Scotland, ii. 281
Herodotus, i. 49, 331
Hersilia, a Sabine goddess, ii. 193 _n._ 1
Heyne, C. G., ii. 329 _n._ 1
Hidatsa Indians, ii. 12
Hierapolis, i. 29
Hierophant at Eleusis temporarily deprived of his virility, ii. 138
Highlands of Scotland, St. Bride’s day in, ii. 94
Hindoo Koosh, sacred cedar of the, i. 383;
the Kafirs of the, 385
—— Trinity, i. 225
Hindoos, magical images among the, i. 63 _sqq._
Hippoclides and Clisthenes, ii. 307 _sq._
Hippocrates, sacrifices offered to, i. 105
Hippodamia and Pelops, ii. 279, 299 _sq._
Hippolytus in relation to Virbius at Nemi, i. 19 _sq._;
offerings of hair to, 28
—— and Artemis, i. 19 _sq._, 24 _sqq._
—— Saint, martyrdom of, i. 21
Hirn, Y., i. 52 _n._ 1, 54 _n._ 1
Hirt, Professor H., ii. 367 _n._ 3
Hobby Horse at Padstow, ii. 68
Hobley, C. W., ii. 316
Hog’s blood, purifying virtue of, i. 107
Holed stone in magic, i. 313
Holland, Whitsuntide customs in, ii. 104
Holy Basil, ii. 26
Homoeopathic taboos, i. 116;
magic for the making of rain, 247 _sqq._
_See also_ Magic
Hopi Indians, the, ii. 208 _sq._
Horse, sacred, i. 364;
sacrificed at Rome in October, ii. 229, 326
Horses excluded from Arician grove, i. 20;
dedicated by Hippolytus to Aesculapius, 21 _n._ 2, 27;
branded with mark of wolf, 27;
in relation to Diomede, 27;
sacrifice of white, 27;
sacrificed to the sun, 315 _sq._;
sacrificed to trees, ii. 16;
sanctity of white, 174 _n._ 2;
sacrifices for, on St. George’s Day, 332, 336 _sq._
Horus, the golden, i. 418
Hos, the, of Togoland, i. 396 _sq._, ii. 19, 370
Hot water drunk as a charm, i. 129
House-timber, homoeopathic magic of, i. 146
Housebreakers, charms employed by, to cause sleep, i. 148 _sq._
Hovas, divinity of kings among the, i. 397
Howitt, A. W., i. 176, 207, 208
Hubert and Mauss, Messrs., i. 111 _n._ 2
Huichol Indians, i. 71, 123
Human gods, i. 373 _sqq._
—— victims sacrificed to water-spirits, ii. 157 _sqq._
Humboldt, A. von, i. 416
Hunters employ contagious magic of footprints, i. 211 _sq._
Huntin, a tree-god, ii. 15
Hunting and fishing, homoeopathic magic in, i. 108 _sqq._;
telepathy in, 120 _sqq._
“Hurling” for a bride, ii. 305 _sq._
Hurons, the, ii. 147;
reincarnation among the, i. 105;
their mode of counteracting an evil dream, 172 _sq._
Husbands, spiritual, ii. 316 _sq._
Hut-urns of ancient Latins, ii. 201 _sq._
Huts, round, of the ancient Latins, ii. 200 _sqq._;
in Africa, 227 _n._ 3
Huzuls, the, i. 113, 137;
their precautions against witches, ii. 336
Hymettus, ii. 360
Hyperborean maidens at Delos, i. 33
Ibn Batutah, ii. 153
Icarius, ii. 300
Iceland, superstitions as to the caul in, i. 199 _sqq._
Iddah, king of, i. 396
Igaras, succession to the kingship among the, ii. 294
Illicit love supposed to blight the fruits of the earth, ii. 107 _sqq._
Images, Hebrew prohibition of, i. 87 _n._ 1
—— magical, to injure people, i. 55 _sqq._;
to procure offspring, 70-74;
to win love, 77
Impressions, bodily, contagious magic of, i. 213 _sq._
Incarnate human gods, i. 373 _sqq._
Incarnation of gods in human form temporary or permanent, i. 376;
examples of temporary incarnation, 376 _sqq._;
examples of permanent incarnation, 386 _sqq._;
mystery of, 396 _n._ 5
Incas, the children of the Sun, i. 415
Incense, fumes of, inhaled to produce inspiration, i. 379, 384
—— -gatherers, chastity of, ii. 106 _sq._
Incest, blighting effects attributed to, ii. 108, 110 _sq._, 113, 115
_sqq._;
of domestic animals abhorred by the Basoga, 112 _sq._;
of animals employed as a rain-charm, 113
India, ancient, confusion of magic and religion in, i. 228 _sq._;
magical power of kings in, 366;
incarnate human gods in, 376, 402 _sqq._
Indifference to paternity of kings under female kinship, ii. 274 _sqq._
Indra, thunderbolt of, i. 269
Industrial evolution from uniformity to diversity of function, i. 421
Infidelity of wife disastrous to absent husband, i. 123, 131
Influence of the sexes on vegetation, ii. 97 _sqq._
Initiatory ceremonies of Central Australian aborigines, i. 92 _sqq._
—— rites of Australian aborigines, suggested explanation of, i. 106.
Inquisition, the, i. 407, 408
Insects, homoeopathic magic of, i. 152
Inspiration, i. 376 _sqq._;
by incense, 379;
by blood, 381 _sqq._;
by sacred plant or tree, 383 _sqq._;
of victims, 384 _sqq._
Inspired or religious type of man-god, i. 244
—— priests and priestesses, i. 377 _sqq._
Intellectual progress dependent on economic progress, i. 218
Intercourse of the sexes practised to make the crops and fruits grow,
ii. 98 _sqq._
_Intichiuma_, magical totemic ceremonies in Central Australia, i. 85
Invulnerability, charm to produce, i. 146 _sq._
Ireland, perpetual fires in, ii. 240 _sqq._
—— sacred oak groves in ancient, 242 _sq._
Irish kings, magical virtues attributed to, i. 367
Irle, J., ii. 223 _n._ 2
Iron, homoeopathic magic of, i. 159 _sq._
Iroquois, the, ii. 12;
their thunder-god, 369 _sq._
Isle of Man, St. Bridget in the, ii. 94 _sq._
—— of May, ii. 161
Ivy chewed by Bachanals, i. 384;
in fire-making, ii. 251 _sq._
Jack-in-the-Green, ii. 82
Jana, another form of Diana, ii. 381, 382, 383
_Jangam_, priest of the Lingayats, i. 404
Janiculum hill, the, ii. 186
_Janua_, derived from Janus, ii. 384
Janus, as a god of doors, ii. 383 _sq._;
explanation of the two-headed, 384 _sq._
—— and Carna, ii. 190
—— (Dianus) and Diana, doubles of Jupiter and Juno, ii. 190 _sq._, 381
_sq._
Jaundice treated by homoeopathic magic, i. 79 _sqq._
Java, ceremonies to procure offspring in, i. 73;
ceremonies for preventing rain in, 270 _sq._
Jerome of Prague, i. 317
Jevons, F. B., i. 105, 225 _n._
Jewitt, J. R., i. 264
Jinnee of the sea, virgins married to, ii. 153 _sq._
Job’s protest, ii. 114
Johnson, Dr. S., i. 368, 370
Johnston, Sir H. H., ii. 227 _n._ 3
Jordan, H., ii. 321 _n._ 3
Joubert, quoted, i. 223 _n._ 2
Jove (Father) and Mother Vesta, ii. 227 _sqq._
Jubainville, H. d’Arbois de, ii. 362 _n._ 6
Judah, idolatrous kings of, i. 315
Jukagirs, the, i. 122
Julian, the Emperor, ii. 7
Julii, the, ii. 179, 192
Julus, the Little Jupiter, ii. 179, 197
July the 7th, the _Nonae Caprotinae_, a Roman festival, ii. 313 _sqq._
June, the first of, a Roman festival, ii. 190
Juno on the Capitol, ii. 184;
at Falerii, 190 _n._ 2;
a duplicate of Diana, 381 _sq._
—— Caprotina, ii. 313, 317
—— Moneta, ii. 189
Jupiter, costume of, ii. 174 _sq._;
the Roman kings in the character of, 174 _sqq._;
Capitoline, 176;
the Little, 179, 192;
Latian, 187, 379;
as god of the oak, the thunder, the rain, and the sky, 358, 361
_sq._;
as sky-god, 374;
a duplicate of Janus (Dianus), 381 _sq._
—— and Juno, doubles of Janus and Diana, ii. 190 _sq._;
sacred marriage of, 190
—— Dianus, ii. 382
—— Elicius, ii. 183
—— Indiges, ii. 181
Jupiters, many local, in Latium, ii. 184
Juturna, a nymph, ii. 382
Kachins of Burma, the, ii. 237
Kafirs of the Hindoo Koosh, i. 133 _sq._, 385
Kaitish tribe of Central Australia, i. 87
Kali, the goddess, i. 383
Kamilaroi, the, i. 101
Kangaroos, ceremony for the multiplication of, i. 87 _sq._
Kara-Kirghiz, ii. 57
Karens of Burma, i. 209;
their custom in regard to fornication and adultery, ii. 107 _sq._
Karo-Bataks, the, of Sumatra, i. 277
_Kausika Sutra_, i. 209, 229
Kayans or Bahaus of Borneo, i. 328, ii. 109
Kei Islands, i. 126, 131, 145
Kenyahs of Borneo, i. 59, ii. 385
Keremet, a god of the Wotyaks, ii. 145 _sq._
Kevlaar, Virgin Mary of, i. 77
“Key-race,” ii. 304
Keys, the golden, ii. 333
Khasis of Assam, succession to the kingdom among the, ii. 294 _sq._
Khnoumou, the god, ii. 132
Kidd, Dudley, i. 49 _n._ 3, 350, ii. 211, 224 _n._ 4
Kildare, fire and nuns of St. Brigit at, ii. 240 _sq._
Kimbugwe, high official in Uganda, i. 196
King, J. E., i. 105 _n._ 4
King gives oracles, i. 377;
the Grass, ii. 85 _sq._;
the Leaf, 85;
the Roman, as Jupiter, 174 _sqq._
—— and Queen at Athens, i. 44 _sq._
—— of Sacred Rites at Rome, i. 44, ii. 201;
his flight, 309
—— of the Saturnalia, ii. 311
—— of the Wood at Nemi, i. 1 _sqq._, ii. 1;
a mate of Diana, i. 40, 41, ii. 380;
a personification of the oak-god Jupiter, 378 _sqq._
_See also_ Priest of Nemi
—— Bees (Essenes) at Ephesus, ii. 135 _sq._
Kingdom, mortal combat for the, ii. 322;
in ancient Latium, succession to, 266 _sqq._
Kings, priestly, i. 44 _sqq._;
titular or sacred, in Greece, 44 _sqq._;
Teutonic, 47;
magicians as, 332 _sqq._;
as rain-makers in Africa, 348, 350 _sqq._;
punished for drought and dearth, 353 _sqq._;
among the Aryans, magical powers attributed to, 366 _sqq._;
divinity of, in great historical empires, 415 _sqq._;
of nature, ii. 1 _sqq._;
of rain, 2;
Roman, as deities in a Sacred Marriage, 172 _sq._, 192, 193 _sq._;
Greek, called Zeus, 177, 361;
expected to make thunder, 180 _sq._;
the Latin, thought to be the sons of the fire-god by mortal mothers,
195 _sqq._;
perpetual fire in houses of, 261 _sq._;
Roman, as personifications of Jupiter, 266 _sq._;
paternity of, a matter of indifference under female kinship, 274
_sqq._;
sometimes of a different race from their subjects, 288 _sq._;
chosen from several royal families in rotation, 292 _sqq._;
fat, 297;
handsomest men, 297;
long-headed, 297;
sacred or divine, development of, 376 _sqq._
_See also_ Latin _and_ Roman
Kings’ Evil (scrofula), touching for the, i. 368 _sqq._
—— fire, the, ii. 195 _sqq._
—— Race, the, ii. 84
—— sisters, licence accorded to, ii. 274 _sqq._
Kingship, annual, in ancient Greece, i. 46
—— contest for the, at Whitsuntide, ii. 89
—— descent of the, in the female line, at Rome, ii. 270 _sqq._;
in Africa, 274 _sqq._;
in Greece, 277 _sq._;
in Scandinavia, 279 _sq._;
in Lydia, 281 _sq._;
among the Danes and Saxons, 282 _sq._
—— evolution of the sacred, i. 420 _sq._
—— nominal, left by conquerors to indigenous race, ii. 288 _sq._
—— Roman, abolition of the, ii. 289 _sqq._
—— the old Roman, a religious office, ii. 289
Kingsley, Miss Mary H., i. 411 _n._ 1
Kintu, ii. 261
Kirghiz, “Love Chase” among the, ii. 301
Knocking out of teeth as initiatory ceremony in Australia, i. 97 _sqq._
Knots, tying up the wind in, i. 326
Kolkodoons, the, i. 93
Kondhs, their belief in reincarnation, i. 104
Koniags, the, i. 121
Koryaks, sacred fire-boards of the, ii. 225;
race for a bride among the, 302
Krishna, i. 406;
marriage of, to the Holy Basil, ii. 26
Kunama, the, ii. 3
Kvasir, i. 241
Kwakiutl Indians, their superstitions as to twins, i. 263
Lac, taboos observed in gathering, i. 115
Lacueva, Father, ii. 205 _n._
Ladder to facilitate the descent of the sun, ii. 99
_Laetare_ Sunday, ii. 63
_Laibon_, i. 343
Lake-dwellings of prehistoric Europe, ii. 352 _sq._
Lakes, gods of lakes married to women, ii. 150 _sq._
Lakshmi, wife of Vishnu, ii. 26
Lamas, transmigrations of the Grand, i. 410 _sqq._
Lamb of Mycenae, the golden, i. 365
Lamb, blood of, as means of inspiration, i. 381
Lambing, time of, ii. 328 _n._ 4
Lamps, dedication of burning, i. 12 _sq._
Lane, E. W., ii. 209 _n._ 4
Language, special, for kings and persons of blood royal, i. 401
_Lapis manalis_ at Rome, i. 310
Larch-tree, sacred, ii. 20
Lares, the, ii. 206
Latin confederacy, the, in relation to sacred Arician grove, i. 22
_sq._
—— kings thought to be the sons of the fire-god by mortal mothers, ii.
195 _sqq._;
lists of, 268 _sqq._;
stories of their miraculous birth, 272
Latinus, changed into Latian Jupiter, ii. 187;
his wife a Vestal, 235
Latium, many local Jupiters in, ii. 184;
in antiquity, the woods of, 188;
succession to the kingdom in ancient, 266 _sqq._
Latuka, rain-makers among the, i. 346, 354
Laurel chewed as means of inspiration, i. 384;
in fire-making, ii. 251 _sq._
Lavinium, worship of Vesta at, i. 14
Lazy Man, the, ii. 83
Leaf-clad mummers, ii. 74 _sqq._, 78 _sqq._;
mock marriage of, ii. 97
Leaf King, the, ii. 85
—— Man, the Little, ii. 80 _sq._
Leafy bust at Nemi, portrait of the King of the Wood, i. 41 _sq._
Leaping over a fire, ii. 327, 329
—— and dancing to make the crops grow high, i. 137 _sqq._
Lemnos, new fire brought to, i. 32
Lengua Indians, i. 313, 330, 359
Lent, fourth Sunday in, ii. 73, 87
Lerons of Borneo, i. 59
Leschiy, a woodland spirit, ii. 124 _sq._
Leto, ii. 58
Lévi, Professor Sylvain, i. 228
Lhasa, i. 411 _sq._
Licence accorded to slaves at the Saturnalia, ii. 312;
to female slaves at the _Nonae Caprotinae_, 313 _sq._
Lightning, charm against, i. 82;
imitation of, 248, 303;
thought to be the father of twins, 266;
wood of tree that has been struck by, 319;
fire kindled by, ii. 263;
African deities of, 370;
supposed to be produced by means of flints, 374;
Zeus, i. 33, ii. 361
Lime-trees sacred, ii. 366, 367
Lindus in Rhodes, i. 281
Lingayats, the, i. 404
Lithuanians, the heathen, i. 317, ii. 46;
tree-worship among the, 9;
sacrifice to Pergrubius, 347;
the thunder-god Perkunas of the, 365 _sqq._;
their reverence for oaks, 366, 371
Little Jupiter, the, ii. 179, 192
—— Leaf Man, ii. 80 _sq._
“Living fire,” ii. 237;
as a charm against witchcraft, 336
Lo Bengula, i. 351, 352, 394
Loango, king of, revered as a god, i. 396;
fights all rivals for his crown, ii. 322
—— licence of princesses in, ii. 276 _sq._
_Lobo_, spirit-house, ii. 39
Local totem centres, i. 96
Locrians, the Epizephyrian, ii. 284 _sq._
“Longevity garments,” i. 169
Long-headed men chosen kings, ii. 297
Loon, the bird, associated with rain, i. 288
Lord of the Wood, ii. 36;
of Misrule, 319 _n._ 1
—— and Lady of the May, ii. 90 _sq._
Loucheux, the, i. 356
Love, cure for, i. 161;
illicit, thought to blight the fruits of the earth, ii. 107 _sqq._
Love-charms practised on St. George’s Day, ii. 345 _sq._
“Love Chase” among the Kirghiz, ii. 301
Lovers of goddesses, their unhappy ends, i. 39 _sq._
Low, Sir Hugh, ii. 30, 31
_Lubare_, god, i. 395
Lucian on hair offerings, i. 28
Lucius, E., i. 13 _n._ 1
Luxor, paintings at, ii. 131, 133
Lyall, Sir A. C., i. 224 _n._ 1
Lycaeus, Mount, ii. 359
Lycurgus, king of Thrace, i. 366
Lydia, female descent of kingship in, ii. 281 _sq._
Mabuiag, i. 59, 263, 323
Macdonald, Rev. J., i. 110, ii. 210 _sq._
“Macdonald’s disease, the,” i. 370 _n._ 3
MacGregor, Sir William, i. 337
“Macleod’s Fairy Banner,” i. 368
Macrobius, ii. 385 _n._ 2
Madagascar, King of, i. 47 _sq._;
foods tabooed in, 117 _sq._;
custom of women in Madagascar while men are at war, 131;
modes of counteracting evil omens in, 173 _sq._
Madness, cure of, i. 161
Maeander, the river, supposed to take the virginity of brides, ii. 162
Magian priests, ii. 241 _n._ 4
Magic, principles of, i. 52 _sqq._;
negative, 111 _sqq._;
public and private, 214 _sq._;
benefits conferred by, 218 _sq._;
its analogy to science, 220 _sq._;
attraction of, 221;
fatal flaw of, 221 _sq._;
based on a misapplication of the association of ideas, 221 _sq._;
opposed in principle to religion, 224;
older than religion, 233 _sqq._;
universality of belief in, 234-236;
transition from magic to religion, 237 _sqq._, ii. 376 _sq._;
the fallacy of, not easy to detect, i. 242 _sq._
Magic, Contagious, i. 52-54, 174-214;
of teeth, 176-182;
of navel-string and afterbirth (placenta), 182-201;
ofwound and weapon, 201 _sqq._;
of foot-prints, 207-212;
of other impressions, 213 _sq._
—— Homoeopathic or Imitative, i. 52 _sqq._;
in medicine, 78 _sqq._;
for the supply of food, 85 _sqq._;
in fishing and hunting, 108 _sqq._;
to make plants grow, 136 _sqq._;
of the dead, 147 _sqq._;
of animals, 150 _sqq._;
of inanimate things, 157 _sqq._;
to annul evil omens, 170-174;
for the making of rain, 247 _sqq._
—— Sympathetic, i. 51 _sqq._;
the two branches of, 54;
examples of, 55 _sqq._
—— and religion, i. 220-243, 250, 285, 286, 347, 352;
confused together, 226 _sqq._;
their historical antagonism comparatively late, 226;
Hegel on, 423 _sqq._
Magical control of rain, i. 247 _sqq._;
of the sun, 311 _sqq._;
of the wind, 319 _sqq._
—— dramas to promote vegetation, ii. 120
—— origin of certain religious dramas, ii. 142 _sq._
—— type of man-god, i. 244
Magician, public, his rise to power, i. 215 _sqq._
Magician’s progress, the, i. 214 _sqq._, 335 _sqq._
Magicians claim to compel the gods, i. 225;
gods viewed as, 240 _sqq._;
importance of rise of professional magicians, 245 _sqq._;
as kings, 332 _sqq._;
develop into kings, 420 _sq._
_See also_ Medicine-men
_Mahabharata_, the, ii. 306
Maharajas, a Hindoo sect, i. 406, ii. 160
Maidu Indians, i. 122, 357
_Maillotins_, ii. 63
Maimonides, i. 140, ii. 100 _n._ 2
Maize, continence at sowing, ii. 105
Makalakas, the, i. 394
Makatisses, the, i. 71
Makrizi, i. 252, ii. 151 _n._ 2
Malay charms, i. 57 _sq._
—— magic, i. 110 _sq._, 114 _sq._, 127
—— Peninsula, the wild tribes of the, i. 360
—— region, divinity of kings in, i. 398
Malays, their superstitious veneration for their rajahs, i. 361;
regalia among the, 362
Maldive Islands, ii. 153, 154
Malecki (Maeletius, Menecius), J., ii. 366 _n._ 2
Man, E. H., ii. 253
“Man, the True,” i. 413
—— -god, the two types of, i. 244 _sq._;
notion of a man-god belongs to early period of religious history, 374
_sq._
_Mana_, supernatural or magical power in Melanesia, i. 111 _n._ 2, 227,
228 _n._ 1, 339
Mangaia, i. 378
_Mania_, a bogey, i. 22
Manii at Aricia, i. 22
Manius Egerius, i. 22
Manna, ceremony for the magical multiplication of, i. 88 _sq._
Mannhardt, W., i. 140 _n._ 6, ii. 47, 78 _sq._, 84, 87
_Mantras_, sacred texts, i. 403 _sq._
_Manu, the Laws of_, i. 366, 402
Maoris, the, i. 71;
magic of navel-string and afterbirth among the, 182 _sq._;
their belief as to fertilising virtue of trees, ii. 56
Maraves, the, i. 393, ii. 31
Marcellus of Bordeaux, i. 84
Marduk, chief Babylonian god, as a magician, i. 240 _sq._;
his wives, ii. 130
Marett, R. R., i. 111 _n._ 2
Marigolds, magic of, i. 211
Marquesas or Washington Islands, human gods in the, i. 386 _sq._
Marriage to trees, i. 40 _sq._, ii. 57;
of trees to each other, 24 _sqq._;
mock, of leaf-clad mummers, 97;
the Sacred, 121 _sqq._;
of the gods, 129 _sqq._;
bath before, 162
Marsh-marigolds, a protection against witches, ii. 54;
on May Day, 63
Martius, C. F. Phil. von, i. 359
Martyrdom of St. Hippolytus, i. 21
Masai, power of medicine-men among the, i. 343 _sq._
Mashona, the, i. 393
Maskers, representing the dead, ii. 178
Maspéro, Sir Gaston, i. 230, ii. 133 _sq._
“Mass of the Holy Spirit,” i. 231 _sq._
Mass of Saint Sécaire, i. 232 _sq._
Master, the Heavenly, i. 413
—— of Sorrows, i. 280
Matabeles, king of the, i. 48;
as rain-maker, 351 _sq._
—— magical effigies among the, i. 63
Maternal uncle preferred to father, mark of mother-kin, ii. 285
Maurer, K., ii. 280 _n._ 1
Mauss and Hubert, Messrs., i. 111 _n._ 2
May Bride, the, ii. 95, 96
May bridegroom, ii. 91, 93
—— -bush, ii. 84, 85, 89, 90, 142
—— Day, celebration of, ii. 59 _sqq._;
licence of, 67, 103 _sq._
—— Fools, ii. 91
—— garlands, ii. 60 _sqq._, 90 _sq._
—— King, ii. 85 _sq._
—— Lady, the, ii. 62
—— -poles, ii. 59, 65 _sqq._
—— Queen, ii. 84, 87 _sq._
—— Rose, the Little, ii. 74
—— -trees, ii. 59 _sq._, 64, 68 _sq._;
or may-poles, fertilising virtue of, 52
Mayos or Mayes, ii. 80
Medicine-men (magicians, sorcerers), power of, among African tribes, i.
342 _sqq._;
power of, among the American Indians, 355 _sqq._;
progressive differentiation of, 420 _sq._;
develop into kings, 420 _sq._;
the oldest professional class, 420.
_See also_ Magicians
Melampus and Iphiclus, i. 158
Melanesia, homoeopathic magic of stones in, i. 164;
supernatural power of chiefs in, 338 _sqq._
Merker, Captain M., i. 343
Merlin, i. 306
Messiah, pretended, i. 409
Metsik, a forest spirit, ii. 55
Mexican kings, their oath, i. 356
Mexicans, human sacrifices of the ancient, i. 314 _sq._
Micah, quoted, i. 223
Mice and rats, teeth of, in magic, i. 178 _sqq._
Midsummer, new fire made at, ii. 242;
festival of, 272 _sq._
—— bonfires, ii. 65, 141
—— Bride, ii. 92
—— customs, ii. 127;
in Sweden, ii. 65
—— Eve, a witching time, ii. 127
Mikado, the, an incarnation of the sun goddess, i. 417
Miklucho-Maclay, Baron von, ii. 253 _sq._
Milk, witches steal milk on Walpurgis Night or May Day, ii. 52 _sqq._;
witches steal milk on Midsummer Eve, 127;
witches steal milk on Eve of St. George, 334 sqq;
not given away on St. George’s Eve, 339
—— -pails wreathed with flowers, ii. 338, 339
—— -stones, i. 165
Milkmen of the Todas sacred or divine, i. 402 _sq._
Milton on chastity, ii. 118 _n._ 1
Minangkabauers of Sumatra, i. 58, 140
Miris of Assam, the, ii. 39
Mirror or burning-glass, fire made by means of, ii. 243, 245 _n._
Mistletoe venerated by the Druids, ii. 358, 362
Moab, Arabs of, i. 276
Mock sun, i. 314
Moffat, Dr. R., i. 351
Mohammed, on the fig, ii. 316
Mommsen, Th., i. 23 _n._ 3, ii. 174 _n._ 1, 175 _n._ 1, 296
Monarchy in ancient Greece and Rome, tradition of its abolition, i. 46;
rise of, 216 _sqq._;
essential to emergence of mankind from savagery, 217;
hereditary and elective, combination of the two, ii. 292 _sqq._
Money, old Italian, i. 23
Montanus, the Phrygian, i. 407
Montezuma, i. 416
Moon, singing to the, i. 125;
charm to hasten the, 319;
in relation to child-birth, ii. 128;
woman chosen to represent the, 146
_Morbus regius_, jaundice, i. 371 _n._ 4
Morgan, Professor M. H., ii. 207 _n._ 1
“Mother of Kings,” ii. 277
—— of the Gods, i. 21
—— of the Rain, i. 276
Mother-kin, ii. 271;
in succession to Roman kingship, 271;
among the Aryans, 283 _sqq._;
superiority of maternal uncle to father under mother-kin, 285.
_See also_ Female Kinship
Mother’s brother preferred to father, mark of mother-kin, ii. 285
Motu, the, i. 317, ii. 106
Motumotu, the, i. 317, 327, 337;
or Toaripi, the, in New Guinea, 125
Moulton, Professor J. H., ii. 182 _n._ 2, 189 _n._ 3, 247 _n._ 5
Moxos Indians, i. 123
Muata Jamwo, the, ii. 262
Mukasa, god of the Baganda, ii. 150
Müller, Max, i. 333 _sq._
_Mulongo_, “twin,” name applied by the Baganda to the navel-string, i.
195, 196
Mummers dressed in leaves, branches, and flowers, ii. 74 _sqq._, 78
_sqq._
Mundaris, the, ii. 39, 46
Mundas, the, ii. 57
Munro, Dr. R., ii. 352
Mura-muras, i. 255 _sq._
Mycenae, golden lamb of, i. 365
Mysteries of Eleusis, ii. 138 _sq._
Mytilene, kings at, i. 45
_Nabataeans, Agriculture of the_, ii. 100
Nabu, marriage of the god, ii. 130
_Nahak_, rubbish used in magic, i. 341
Nails knocked into trees, ii. 36, 42;
a charm against witchcraft, 339 _sq._
—— pegs, or pins knocked into images, i. 61, 64, 65, 68, 69
Nails, parings of, used in magic, i. 57, 64, 65, 66
Names of kings changed to procure rain, i. 355
Nandi, power of medicine-men among the, i. 344
_Nanja_ spots or local totem centres, i. 96, 97
_Nat_, spirit, ii. 46
Natchez, the, i. 249;
their perpetual fires, ii. 262 _sq._
“Nativity of the sun’s walking-stick,” i. 312
Navarre, rain-making in, i. 307 _sq._
Navel-string, contagious magic of, i. 182-201;
regarded as brother or sister of child, 186, 189;
called the “twin,” 195;
seat of external soul, 200 _sq._
Navel-strings hung on trees, ii. 56
Negative magic or taboo, i. 111 _sqq._
Nemi, the lake of, i. 1 _sqq._;
sanctuary of Diana at, 2 _sqq._;
the priest of, 8 _sqq._, 40, 41, ii. 376, 386, 387
Neoptolemus, ii. 278
Nerthus, procession of, ii. 144 _n._ 1
Nets, marriage of girls to, ii. 147
New birth, simulation of, i. 380 _sq._
—— -born children brought to the hearth, ii. 232
—— Caledonia, i. 78;
homoeopathic magic of stones in, 162 _sqq._
—— Caledonians, the, i. 312, 313, 314
—— fire, ii. 237;
made at Midsummer, 243;
made at beginning of a king’s reign, 262, 267
—— Guinea, influence of magicians in, i. 337 _sq._
—— Year festival, i. 251
_Ngai_, god, ii. 44, 150
Nias, i. 109, 143
Nicholson, General, worshipped, i. 404
Niebuhr, B. G., ii. 269
Nightingale in magic, i. 154
Nile, the Upper, rain-makers on the, i. 345 _sqq._;
the bride of the, ii. 151
Nine animals sacrificed daily at a festival, ii. 365
—— years’ festival at Upsala, ii. 364 _sq._
Noah’s ark, i. 334
_Nonae Caprotinae_, ii. 314
Nootkas, superstitions as to twins among the, i. 263 _sq._
Norse trinities, ii. 364
Noses bored, i. 94
Numa, his birthday, ii. 273;
a priestly king, 289
—— and Egeria, i. 18, ii. 172 _sq._, 193, 380
Numa’s birthday, ii. 325, 348;
“Numa’s crockery,” ii. 202
Numbering the herds on St. George’s Day, ii. 338
Numicius, the river, ii. 181
Nuns of St. Brigit, ii. 240 _sq._
Nurin, i. 275, 276
Nusku, Babylonian fire-god, i. 67
Nyanza, Lake, god of, i. 395
Oak, its diffusion in Europe, ii. 349 _sqq._;
worship of the, 349 _sqq._;
oracular, at Dodona, 358;
worshipped in modern Europe, 370 _sqq._
—— and thunder, the Aryan god of the, ii. 356 _sqq._;
sky, rain, and thunder, god of the, 349 _sq._
—— evergreen, in making fire, ii. 251;
the Golden Bough grew on an, 379
—— branch in rain charm, i. 309
—— -god married to the oak-goddess, ii. 142;
and oak-goddess, marriage of, 189;
how he became a god of lightning, thunder, and rain, 372 _sqq._
—— groves in ancient Ireland, ii. 242 _sq._
—— leaves, crown of, ii. 175, 176 _sq._, 184
—— -nymphs at Rome, ii. 172, 185
—— -tree guarded by the King of the Wood at Nemi, i. 42
—— -trees, sacrifices to, ii. 366
—— -wood, Vesta’s fire at Rome fed with, ii. 186;
perpetual fire of, 365, 366;
ceremonial fires kindled by the friction of, 372
—— -woods on the site of ancient Rome, ii. 184 _sqq._
—— -worship of the Druids, ii. 9
Oaken image dressed as a bride, ii. 140 _sq._
Oaks at Troezen, i. 26;
of Ireland, ii. 363;
sacred among the old Prussians, 43
Oaths on stones, i. 160 _sq._
Ocrisia, ii. 195
Octopus in magic, i. 156
Odin as a magician, i. 241 _sq._;
the Norse god of war, ii. 364
Oedipus, ii. 115
Oenomaus, ii. 300
Oesel, island of, i. 329
Offspring, charms to procure, i. 70 _sqq._
Ojebways, magical images among the, i. 55
Olaf, King, i. 367
Old men, government by, in aboriginal Australia, i. 334 _sq._
Oldenberg, Professor H., i. 225 _n._, 228, 235 _n._ 1, 269, 270
Olives planted and gathered by pure boys and virgins, ii. 107
Olympia, races for the kingdom at, ii. 299 _sq._
Omahas, the, i. 249, 320
Omens, homoeopathic magic to annul evil omens, i. 170-174
Omphale and Hercules, ii. 281
_Omumborombonga_ (_Combretum primigenum_), the sacred tree of the
Herero, ii. 213 _sq._, 218, 219 _sq._, 233
_Omuwapu_ tree (_Grevia spec._), ii. 219
Opprobrious language levelled at goddess to please her, i. 280
Oracles given by king, i. 377
Oraons, marriage of Sun and Earth among the, ii. 148;
spring festival of the, 76 _sq._
Oracular spring at Dodona, ii. 172
Ordeal of battle among the Umbrians, ii. 321
Orestes at Nemi, i. 10 _sq._, 21 _n._ 2, 24;
at Troezen, 26;
cured of his madness, 161
Orgies, sexual, as fertility charms, ii. 98 _sqq._
Orontes, the river, ii. 160
Osiris threatened by magicians, i. 225
Ostyaks, tree-worship among the, ii. 11
Ovambo, the, i. 63, 209, ii. 46
Ovid, ii. 176, 177, 191;
on Nemi, i. 4, 17
Pacific, human gods in the, i. 386 _sqq._
Padstow, custom of the Hobby Horse at, ii. 68
_Pages_, medicine-men, i. 358
Paint-house, the, ii. 111
Paintings, prehistoric, of animals in caves, i. 87 _n._ 1
Pais, E., i. 23 _n._
Pales, ii. 326, 327, 328, 329, 348
Pallades, female consorts of Ammon, ii. 135
Palladius, ii. 314
Pallene, daughter of Sithon, ii. 307
Palm-tree, ceremony of tapping it for wine, ii. 100 _sq._
_See also_ Date-palm
Panamara in Caria, i. 29
Paparuda, i. 273
Parasitic plants, superstitions as to, ii. 250, 251 _sq._
Parilia, the, ii. 123, 229, 273;
a shepherds’ festival, 325 _sqq._
Parjanya, the ancient Hindoo god of thunder and rain, i. 270, ii. 368
_sq._
Parkinson, R., i. 175
Parricide, Roman punishment of, ii. 110 _n._ 2
Parsees, the, ii. 241
_Partheniai_, i. 36 _n._ 2
_Parthenos_ as applied to Artemis, i. 36
Parthian monarchs brothers of the Sun, i. 417 _sq._
Partridge, C., ii. 394 _n._ 2
Patara, Apollo at, ii. 135
Paternity, uncertainty of, a ground for a theological distinction, ii.
135;
of kings a matter of indifference under female kinship, 274 _sqq._,
282
Patriarchal family at Rome, ii. 283
Paulicians, the, i. 407
Payaguas, the, i. 330
Payne, E. J., i. 415 _n._ 2
Pear-tree as protector of cattle, ii. 55
Peat-bogs of Europe, ii. 350 _sqq._
_Peking Gazette_, i. 355
Peleus, ii. 278
Pelew Islands, human gods in, i. 389
Pelopidae, the, ii. 279
Pelops, ii. 279
—— and Hippodamia, ii. 299 _sq._
Penates, the, ii. 205 _sq._
Pennefather River in Queensland, i. 99, 100
Peoples said to be ignorant of the art of kindling fire, ii. 253 _sqq._
Peperuga, i. 274
Pepys, S., i. 369, ii. 52, 333
Pergrubius, a Lithuanian god of the spring, ii. 347 _sq._
Periphas, king of Athens, ii. 177
Perkunas or Perkuns, the Lithuanian god of thunder and lightning, ii.
365 _sqq._;
derivation of his name, 367 _n._ 3
Perperia, i. 273
Perpetual fires, origin of, ii. 253 _sqq._;
associated with royal dignity, ii. 261 _sqq._
Perseus and Andromeda, ii. 163
Peru, Indians of, i. 265, ii. 146;
the Incas of, 243 _sq._
Perun, the thunder-god of the Slavs, ii. 365
Peruvian Indians, i. 56
—— Vestals, ii. 243 _sqq._
Pessinus, i. 47
Peter of Dusburg, ii. 366 _n._ 2
Phaedra and Hippolytus, i. 25
Pheneus, lake of, ii. 8
Phigalia, i. 31
Philostratus, i. 167
Phosphorescence of the sea, superstitions as to the, ii. 154 _sq._
Picts, female descent of kingship among the, ii. 280 _sq._, 286
Piers, Sir Henry, ii. 59
Pig, blood of, drunk as a means of inspiration, i. 382;
in purificatory rites, ii. 107, 108, 109;
expiatory sacrifice of, 122
Pigeon used in a love-charm, ii. 345 _sq._
Pile-villages in the valley of the Po, ii. 8;
of Europe, 352 _sq._
Pipal-tree (_ficus religiosa_), ii. 43
Pipiles, the, of Central America, ii. 98
Pity of rain-gods, appeal to, i. 302 _sq._
Placenta (afterbirth) and navel-string, contagious magic of, i. 182-201
Plantain-trees, navel-strings of Baganda buried at foot of, i. 195
Plants, homoeopathic magic to make plants grow, i. 136 _sqq._;
influenced homoeopathically by a person’s act or state, 139 _sqq._;
influence persons homoeopathically, 144 _sqq._;
sexes of, ii. 24;
marriage of, 26 _sqq._
Plataea, festival of the Daedala at, ii. 140 _sq._
Plato, i. 45, 104
Plebeians, the Roman kings, ii. 289
Pleiades, rising of the, i. 32
Pliny the Elder, i. 49;
on sacredness of woods, ii. 123;
the Younger, i. 6
Ploughing by women as a rain-charm, i. 282 _sq._
Plover in connexion with rain, i. 259, 261
Plutarch, i. 28, 80, ii. 172, 196, 320 _n._ 3, 325 _n._ 3;
on Numa and Egeria, i. 18
Pole-star, homoeopathic magic of the, i. 166
Political evolution from democracy to despotism, i. 421
Polybius, ii. 354
Polydorus, ii. 31
Poplar, the white, at Olympia, a substitute for the oak, ii. 220
Porphyry, i. 390, ii. 12
Porta Capena at Rome, i. 18
_Porta Querquetulana_, ii. 185 _n._ 3
Poso in Celebes, i. 379, ii. 29
Potrimpo, old Prussian god, ii. 248
Pottery, primitive, employed in Roman ritual, ii. 202 _sqq._;
superstitions as to the making of, 204 _sq._
_Pramantha_, ii. 249
Prayers for rain, ii. 359, 362;
to Thunder, 367 _sq._;
to an oak, 372
Precautions against witches, ii. 52 _sqq._
Precious stones, homoeopathic magic of, i. 164 _sq._
Pregnancy, ceremony in seventh month of, i. 72 _sq._
Pregnant cows sacrificed to the Earth goddess, ii. 229;
victims sacrificed to ensure fertility, i. 141;
women employed to fertilise crops and fruit-trees, i. 140 _sq._
Pretenders to divinity among Christians, i. 407 _sqq._
Priest drenched with water as a rain-charm, ii. 77;
rolled on fields as fertility charm, 103;
of Diana at Nemi, i. 8 _sqq._
—— of Nemi, i. 8 _sqq._, 40, 41, ii. 376, 386, 387.
_See also_ King of the Wood
Priestesses, inspired, i. 379 _sq._, 381 _sq._
Priestly kings, i. 44 _sqq._
Priests, magical powers attributed to priests by French peasants, i.
231-233;
inspired, 377 _sqq._
Princesses married to foreigners or men of low birth, ii. 274 _sqq._
Private magic, i. 214 _sq._
Procopius, ii. 365
Procreative virtue attributed to fire, ii. 233
Proculus Julius, ii. 182
Progress, intellectual, dependent on economic progress, i. 218;
social, 421
Promathion’s _History of Italy_, ii. 196, 197
Prometheus, ii. 260
Prophetic powers conferred by certain springs, ii. 172
Prophets, the Hebrew, their ethical religion, i. 223
Propitiation essential to religion, i. 222
Prostitution before marriage, practice of, ii. 282, 285, 287
Prothero, G. W., ii. 71 _n._ 1
Provence, magical powers attributed to priests in, i. 232
Prpats, i. 274
_Prunus Padus_, L., ii. 344
Prussians, the old, their worship of trees, ii. 43
Prytaneum, fire in the, ii. 260
Psylli, the, i. 331
Public magic, i. 215
Purification by fire, ii. 327, 329
Purificatory rites for sexual crimes, ii. 107 _sqq._, 115, 116
Pururavas and Urvasi, ii. 250
Pythagoras, maxims of, i. 211, 213 _sq._
Pythaists at Athens, i. 33
Python, sacred, ii. 150
Quack, the, ii. 81
Quartz-crystals used in rain-making, i. 254, 255, 304
Queen of Egypt married to the god Ammon, ii. 131 _sqq._;
of Athens married to Dionysus, 136 _sq._;
of May, ii. 84, 87 _sq._;
Charlotte Islands, i. 70;
sister in Uganda, licence accorded to the ii. 275 _sq._
Queensland, rain-making in, i. 254 _sq._
_Querquetulani_, Men of the Oak, ii. 188
Quirinal hill, the, ii. 182, 185
Quirinus, ii. 182, 185, 193 _n._ 1
Quiteve, the, i. 392
Quivering of the body in a rain-charm, i. 260, 361
Ra, the Egyptian sun-god, i. 418, 419
Race, the King’s, ii. 84;
succession to kingdom determined by a, 299 _sqq._;
for a bride, 301 _sqq._
Races at Whitsuntide, ii. 69, 84
Raccoons in rain-charm, i. 288
Rain, extraction of teeth in connexion with, i. 98 _sq._;
the magical control of, 247 _sqq._;
made by homoeopathic or imitative magic, 247 _sqq._;
Mother of the, 276;
supposed to fall only as a result of magic, 353;
excessive, supposed to be an effect of sexual crime, ii. 108, 113;
Zeus as the god of, 359 _sq._
Rain-bird, i. 287
“Rain-bush,” ii. 46
—— -charm by ploughing, i. 282 _sq._
—— Country, i. 259
—— -doctor, i. 271
—— -god as dragon, i. 297
—— -gods compelled to give rain by threats and violence, i. 296 _sqq._;
appeal to the pity of the, 302 _sq._
Rain King, i. 275, ii. 2
—— -maker among the Arunta, costume of the, i. 260;
assimilates himself to water, 269 _sqq._
—— makers, their importance in savage communities, i. 247;
in Africa, their rise to political power, 342 _sqq._, 352;
on the Upper Nile, 345 _sqq._;
unsuccessful, punished or killed, 345, 352 _sqq._
—— -making by means of the dead, i. 284 _sqq._;
by means of animals, 287 _sqq._;
by means of stones, 304 _sqq._
“Rain-stick,” i. 254
“Rain-stones,” i. 254, 305, 345, 346
—— -temple, i. 250
—— totem, i. 258
Rainbow in rain-charm, picture of, i. 258
Rajahs among the Malays, supernatural powers attributed to, i. 361
Ramsay, Sir W. M., i. 36 _n._ 2
Rats and mice, teeth of, in magic, i. 178 _sqq._
Raven in wind-charm, i. 320
Raven’s eggs in magic, i. 154
Ray, S. H., ii. 208 _n._ 3
Red colour in magic, i. 79, 81, 83
—— Karens of Burma, ii. 69
—— woollen threads, a charm against witchcraft, ii. 336
Reddening the faces of gods, custom of, ii. 175 _sq._
Regalia of Malay kings, i. 362 _sq._;
supernatural powers of, 398
Regia, the king’s palace at Rome, ii. 201
_Regifugium_ at Rome, ii. 290;
perhaps a relic of a contest for the kingdom, 308 _sqq._
Regillus, battle of Lake, i. 50
Reinach, Salomon, i. 27 _n._ 6, 87 _n._ 1, ii. 232 _n._ 2, 241 _n._ 1
Reincarnation, belief of the aboriginal Australians in, i. 96, 99
_sq._;
certain funeral rites perhaps intended to ensure, 101 _sqq._
Religion defined, i. 222;
two elements of, a theoretical and a practical, 222 _sq._;
opposed in principle to science, 224;
transition from magic to, 237 _sqq._, ii. 376 _sq._
—— and magic, i. 220-243, 250, 285, 286, 347;
Hegel on, 423 _sqq._
Religious dramas sometimes originate in magical rites, ii. 142 _sq._
Remulus, ii. 180
Renan, E., i. 236 _n._ 1
Renouf, Sir P. le P., i. 418
_Rex Nemorensis_, i. 11
Rhetra, i. 383
Rheumatism caused by magic, i. 207 _sq._, 213
Rhodians worship the sun, i. 315
Rhys, Sir John, i. 17 _n._ 2, ii. 363 _n._ 4
Ribald songs in rain-charm, i. 267
Rice, charm to make rice grow, i. 140;
in bloom treated like pregnant woman, ii. 28 _sq._;
chastity at sowing, 106
Ridgeway, Professor W., ii. 103
Rig Veda, i. 294;
quoted, ii. 368 _sq._
“Ringing out the grass,” ii. 344
Rivers as lovers of women in Greek mythology, ii. 161 _sq._
Rivers, Dr. W. H. R., i. 230 _n._, 403 _n._ 1, 421 _n._ 1
Rivos, harvest-god of Celts in Gaul, i. 17
Rivros, a Celtic month, i. 17 _n._ 2
Robertson, Sir George Scott, i. 133
Rock-crystals in rain-charms, i. 345
Rogations, Monday of, ii. 166
Rolling on the fields as a fertility charm, ii. 103;
at harvest, ii. 104
—— cakes on the ground for omens, ii. 338
Roman fire-customs compared to those of the Herero, ii. 227 _sqq._
—— kings as deities in a Sacred Marriage, ii. 172 _sq._, 192, 193
_sq._;
as personifications of Jupiter, 266 _sq._;
list of, 269 _sq._;
rule of succession among, 270 _sq._;
plebeians, not patricians, 289;
how nominated, 295 _sq._;
their mysterious or violent ends, 312 _sqq._;
their obscure birth, 312 _sq._
—— kingship, descent of, in the female line, ii. 270 _sq._;
abolition of the, 289 _sqq._;
a religious office, 289
—— punishment of parricide, 110 _n._ 2
Rome, the kings of, ii. 171 _sqq._;
oak woods on the site of ancient, 184 _sqq._
Romove, Romow, or Romowo, ii. 366 _n._ 2
Romulus, fig-tree of, ii. 10, 318;
legend of his birth from the fire, 196;
hut of, 200;
death of, 181 _sq._, 313
Roscher, W. H., ii. 137 _n._ 1, 383 _n._ 3
Roscoe, Rev. J., ii. 276 _n._ 2, 318 _n._ 1, 322 _n._ 2
Rose, the Little May, ii. 74
Rostowski, S., ii. 366 _n._ 2.
Rouen, St. Romain at, ii. 164 _sqq._
Roumania, rain-making ceremonies in, i. 273 _sq._
Round huts of the ancient Latins, ii. 200 _sqq._
Rouse, Dr. W. H. D., i. 15 _n._ 3, ii. 82
Rowan or mountain-ash used as a charm, ii. 331
—— tree, a protection against witches, ii. 53, 54
Royalty conservative of old customs, ii. 288
Rukmini, wife of Krishna, ii. 26
Runaway slave, charm to bring back a, i. 317
Runes, the magic, i. 241
Russia, St. George’s Day in, ii. 332 _sqq._
Russian celebration of Whitsuntide, ii. 64, 93
—— sect of the Christs, i. 407 _sq._
Sacred beasts in Egypt, i. 29 _sq._
—— groves in ancient Greece and Rome, ii. 121 _sqq._
—— Marriage, the, ii. 120 _sqq._
—— men, i. 386
—— sticks representing ancestors, ii. 222 _sqq._
—— women, i. 391
Sacrifices offered to regalia, i. 363, 365;
to trees, 366
Sacrificial King at Rome, i. 44
St. Anthony’s fire treated by homoeopathic magic, i. 81 _sq._
—— Bride in the Highlands of Scotland, ii. 94
—— Bridget, ii. 94 _sq._, 242.
_See_ St. Brigit
—— Brigit, holy fire and nuns of, at Kildare, ii. 240 _sqq._
—— Columba, i. 407, ii. 242 _sq._
—— Dasius, ii. 310 _n._ 1
—— Eany’s Well, ii. 161
—— Fillan, well of, ii. 161
—— Francis of Paola, i. 300
—— George and the Dragon, ii. 163 _sq._;
and the Parilia, 324 _sqq._;
patron saint of cattle, horses, and wolves, 330, 336, 337, 338;
chapel of, 337;
as a spirit of trees or vegetation, 343 _sq._;
as giver of offspring to women, 344 _sqq._;
in relation to serpents, 344 _n._ 4;
in Syria, 346
—— George’s Day (23rd April), ii. 56, 75, 79, 103, 164 _n._ 1, 330
_sqq._;
eve of, a time when witches steal milk from the cows, 334 _sqq._
—— Gervais, spring of, i. 307
—— Hippolytus, i. 21
—— James, i. 266;
quoted, 223, 224
St. John, Eve of, in Sweden, ii. 65;
Sweethearts of, 92
—— John the Baptist, day of, i. 377;
his Midsummer festival, ii. 273
—— Leonhard, i. 7 _sq._
—— Mary, Wells of, ii. 161;
_in Araceli_, 184
—— Ouen, ii. 165, 168
—— Paul, i. 407
—— Peter, as giver of rain, i. 307
—— Peter’s Day (29th June), ii. 141
—— Romain and the dragon of Rouen, ii. 164 _sqq._;
the shrine (_fierte_) of, 167, 168, 170 _n._ 1
—— Sécaire, Mass of, i. 232 _sq._
Saints, violence done to images of saints in Sicily to procure rain, i.
300;
images of saints dipped in water as a rain-charm, 307 _sq._
Sakai, the, i. 360
Sakkalava, the, i. 397
Ṣakvarī song, i. 269 _sq._
_Sâl_ trees, ii. 41;
and flowers, 76 _sq._
_Salagrama_, fossil ammonite, ii. 26, 27 _n._ 2
Salic law, re-marriage of widow under, ii. 285
Salmon, twins thought to be, i. 263
Salmoneus, King of Elis, i. 310, ii. 177, 181
Salt, abstinence from, i. 124, 266, ii. 98, 105, 149;
as a charm, 331
Samagitians, the, ii. 125;
their sacred groves, 43
_Sami_ wood (_Prosopis spicigera_), ii. 248, 249, 250 _n._
Samnites, marriage custom of the, ii. 305
Samoa, gods of, in animal and human form, i. 389
Sandwich Islands, King of, i. 377.
_See also_ Hawaii
Santiago, the horse of, i. 267
Sarah and Abraham, ii. 114
Sardinia, Midsummer customs in, ii. 92
_Satapatha-Brâhmana_, i. 380
Saturn personified at the Saturnalia, ii. 310 _sq._
—— and Jupiter, ii. 323
Saturnalia, ii. 272;
as a fertility rite, 99;
how celebrated by Roman soldiers on the Danube, 310;
Saturn personified at the, 310 _sq._;
King of the, 311;
the festival of sowing, 311 _sq._
Savile, Lord, his excavations at Nemi, i. 3 _n._ 2
Saxo Grammaticus, i. 160, ii. 280
Saxons, marriage with a stepmother among the, ii. 283;
of Transylvania, 337
_Scaloi_, i. 274
Scamander, the river, supposed to take the virginity of brides, ii. 162
Scandinavia, female descent of the kingship in, ii. 279 _sq._
Sceptre of Agamemnon, i. 365
Schinz, Dr. H., ii. 213 _n._ 2, 218
Scotland, magical images in, i. 68-70
Scott, Sir Walter, i. 326
Scratching the person with the fingers forbidden, i. 254
Scrofula, kings thought to heal scrofula by their touch, i. 368 _sqq._
Scythian kings, their regalia, i. 365
Scythians put their kings in bonds, i. 354
Sea, virgins married to the jinnee of the, ii. 153 _sq._;
phosphorescence of the, 154 _sq._
Seasons, Athenian sacrifices to the, i. 310
Secret societies, i. 340
Semiramis, ii. 275
Sena, island of, ii. 241 _n._ 1
Seneca, on sacred groves, ii. 123
Serpent, dried, in ceremony for stopping rain, i. 295 _sq._;
or dragon of water, 155 _sqq._
Serpents in relation to St. George, ii. 344 _n._ 4
Servia, rain-making ceremony in, i. 273
Servius on Virbius, i. 20 _sq._, 40
—— Tullius, laws of, ii. 115, 129;
and Fortuna, 193 _n._ 1, 272;
legend of his birth from the fire, 195 _sq._;
his death, 320 _sq._
Sewing forbidden, i. 121, 128
Sexes, influence of the, on vegetation, ii. 97 _sqq._;
of plants, 24
Sexual communism, tradition of, ii. 284
—— crime, blighting effects attributed to, ii. 107 _sqq._
—— intercourse practised to make the crops and fruits grow, ii. 98
_sqq._
—— orgies as a fertility charm, ii. 98 _sqq._
Shaking of victim as sign of its acceptance, i. 384 _sq._
Shans of Burma, i. 128
Sheaf of oats made up to represent St. Bride or Bridget, ii. 94 _sq._;
the last, 94 _n._ 2
Sheep, black, sacrificed for rain, i. 290
—— driven through fire, ii. 327
Shepherd’s prayer, ii. 327 _sq._
Shepherds’ festival, ancient Italian, ii. 326 _sqq._
Shetland, witches in, i. 326
Shrew-mouse in magic, i. 83
Shuswap Indians, i. 265
Siam, King of, ii. 262;
divinity of, i. 401
Sibyl, the, and the Golden Bough, i. 11
Sicily, attempts to compel the saints to give rain in, i. 299 _sq._
Sick people passed through a hole in an oak, ii. 371
Sickness, homoeopathic magic for the cure of, i. 78 _sqq._
Silesia, Whitsuntide customs in, ii. 89
Silk-cotton trees reverenced, ii. 14 _sq._
Silvanus, forest god, ii. 121, 124
Silver poplar a charm against witchcraft, ii. 336
Silvii, the family name of the kings of Alba, ii. 178 _sqq._, 192
Silvius, first king of Alba, ii. 179
Similarity in magic, law of, i. 52, 53
Simplification, danger of excessive simplification in science, i. 332
_sq._
Singer, the best, chosen chief, ii. 298 _sq._
Sins, confession of, i. 266
Sinuessa, waters of, ii. 161
Sister’s children preferred to man’s own children, mark of mother-kin,
ii. 285
Sisters of king, licence accorded to, ii. 274 _sqq._
Siva, i. 404, ii. 77, 78
Skeat, W. W., i. 360 _sq._
Skeleton in rain-charm, i. 284
Skene, W. F., ii. 286 _n._ 2
Skoptsy, the, a Russian sect, ii. 145 _n._ 2
Skulls, ancestral, used in magical ceremonies, i. 163;
in rain-charm, 285
Sky, twins called the children of the, i. 267, 268;
Aryan god of the, ii. 374 _sq._
Slave, charm to bring back a runaway, i. 152, 317
—— priests at Nemi, i. 11
Slaves, licence granted to, at Saturnalia, ii. 312;
female, licence accorded to, at the _Nonae Caprotinae_, 313 _sq._
Slavs, tree-worship among the heathen, ii. 9;
the thunder-god Perun, of the, 365
Sleep, charms employed by burglars to cause, i. 148 _sq._
“Sleep of war,” ii. 147
Smith, W. Robertson, i. 301 _n._ 2
Smiths sacred, i. 349
Smoke made as a rain-charm, i. 249;
of cedar inhaled as means of inspiration, 383 _sq._;
as a charm against witchcraft, ii. 330
Snake-bites, charms against, i. 152 _sq._
—— skin a charm against witchcraft, ii. 335
Snakes, human wives of, ii. 149, 150
“Sober” sacrifices, i. 311 _n._ 1
Social progress, i. 420
Sodza, a lightning goddess, ii. 370
Sofala, King of, i. 392
Sogamozo, the pontiff of, i. 416
Sogble, a lightning god, ii. 370
Solar myth theory, i. 333
Somerville, Professor W., ii. 328 _n._ 4
Sophocles, ii. 115, 161
Sorcerers. _See_ Magicians, Medicine-men
Sorcery. _See_ Magic
Sorrows, Master of, i. 280
Soul, external, in afterbirth (placenta) or navel-string, i. 200 _sq._
Souls ascribed to trees, ii. 12 _sqq._;
of ancestors supposed to be in fire on the hearth, 232
Sowing, curses at, i. 281;
homoeopathic magic at, 136 _sqq._;
sexual intercourse before, ii. 98;
continence at, 105, 106;
in Italy and Sicily, time of, 311 _n._ 5
Sparks of fire supposed to impregnate women, ii. 197, 231
Sparta, the two kings of, i. 46 _sq._;
their relation to Castor and Pollux, 48-50
Spartan sacrifice of horses to the sun, i. 315 _sq._
Spencer and Gillen, i. 89, 107 _n._ 4
Spieth, J., i. 397
Spinning forbidden, i. 113 _sq._
Spirit, Brethren of the Free, i. 408
Spiritual husbands, ii. 316 _sq._
Spittle, divination by, i. 99;
used in magic, 57
Spring, oracular at Dodona, ii. 172
Springs troubled to procure rain, i. 301;
which confer prophetic powers, ii. 172
Squirting water as a rain-charm, i. 249 _sq._, 277 _sq._
Star, falling, in magic, i. 84
Stepmother, marriage with a, among the Saxons, ii. 283
Stewart, C. S., i. 387 _n._ 1
Sticks, sacred, representing ancestors, ii. 222 _sqq._
Stone, holed, in magic, i. 313
—— curlew in magic, i. 80
—— throwing as a fertility charm, i. 39
Stones tied to trees to make them bear fruit, i. 140;
oaths upon, 160 _sq._;
homoeopathic magic of, 160 _sqq._;
employed to make fruits and crops grow, 162 _sqq._;
precious, homoeopathic magic of, 164 _sq._;
the Day of, 279;
rain-making by means of, 304 _sqq._;
in charms to make the sun shine, 312, 313, 314;
put in trees to prevent sun from setting, 318;
in wind charms, 319, 322 _sq._
Storeroom (_penus_), sacred, ii. 205 _sq._
Strabo, ii. 305
Stubbes, P., ii. 66
Subincision, use of blood shed at, i. 92, 94 _sq._
Succession to the chieftainship or kingship alternating between several
families, ii. 292 _sqq._
—— to the kingdom, in ancient Latium, ii. 266 _sqq._;
determined by a race, 299 _sqq._;
determined by mortal combat, ii. 322
Sulka, the, of New Britain, ii. 148
Sumatra, i. 58, 71
Summer, bringing in the, ii. 74
Sun, homoeopathic magic of setting, i. 165 _sq._;
supposed to send new teeth, 181;
magical control of the, 311 _sqq._;
charms to cause the sun to shine, 311 _sqq._;
eclipse of, ceremonies at 311, 312;
human sacrifices to the 314 _sq._;
chief deity of the Rhodians, 315;
supposed to drive in chariot, 315;
caught by net or string, 316;
charms to prevent the sun from going down, 316 _sqq._;
the father of the Incas, 415;
Parthian monarchs the brothers of the, 417 _sq._;
sanctuary of the, ii. 107;
high priest of the, 146 _sq._;
marriage of a woman to the, 146 _sq._;
worshipped by the Blackfoot Indians, 146;
round temple of the, 147;
temple of the Sun at Cuzco, 243;
virgins of the Sun in Peru, 243 _sqq._;
the Great, title of chief, 262, 263
—— and Earth, marriage of the, ii. 98 _sq._, 148
—— -god, no wine offered to the, i. 311
—— -god Ra in Egypt, i. 418, 419
—— goddess, i. 417
Superstitions as to the making of pottery, ii. 204 _sq._
_Svayamvara_, ii. 306
Swami Bhaskaranandaji Saraswati, i. 404
Swearing on stones, i. 160 _sq._
Sweden, midsummer customs in, ii. 65;
Frey and his priestess in, 143 _sq._;
customs observed in, at turning out the cattle to graze for the first
time in spring, 341 _sq._
Swedes sacrifice their kings, i. 366 _sq._
Sweethearts of St. John, ii. 92
Swine, herds of, in ancient Italy, ii. 354
Sycamores worshipped, ii. 15;
sacred among the Gallas, 34
Sylvii or Woods, the kings of Alba, ii. 379
Sympathetic Magic, i. 51 _sqq._;
its two branches, 54;
examples of, 55 _sqq._
_See also_ Magic
Syria, St. George in, ii. 346
Taara, the thunder-god of the Esthonians, ii. 367
Taboo, a negative magic, i. 111 _sqq._
Taboos, homoeopathic, i. 116;
contagious, 117;
on food, 117 _sqq._;
laid on the parents of twins, 262, 263 _sq._, 266;
observed after house-building, ii. 40
Tacitus, ii. 285
Tagales, the, ii. 36
Tahiti, kings of, deified, i. 388
“Tail-money,” ii. 331
_Tāli_, tying the, ii. 57 _n._ 4
Tamarinds, sacred, ii. 42, 44
Tammuz or Adonis, ii. 346
Tana, power of the disease-makers in, i. 341
Tanaquil, the Queen, ii. 195
Taoism, religious head of, i. 413 _sqq._
Tapio, woodland god, ii. 124
Tarahumares of Mexico, i. 249
Tarquin the Elder, ii. 195
—— the Proud, his attempt to shift the line of descent of the kingship,
ii. 291 _sq._
Tasmanians, the, ii. 257
Tatius, death of, ii. 320
Tauric Diana, i. 10 _sq._, 24
Taylor, Isaac, ii. 189 _n._ 3
Teeth, ceremony of knocking out teeth at initiation, i. 97 _sqq._;
extraction of teeth in connexion with rain, 98 _sq._;
charms to strengthen, 153, 157;
contagious magic of, 176-182;
of rats and mice in magic, 178 _sqq._
Telamon, ii. 278
Telchines, the, of Rhodes, i. 310
Telepathy, magical, i. 119 _sqq._;
in hunting and fishing, 120 _sqq._;
in war, 126 _sqq._;
in voyages, 126
Tertullian, i. 407;
on the Etruscan crown, ii. 175 _n._ 1
Teucer, ii. 278
Teutonic kings, i. 47;
thunder god, ii. 364
Thargelion, Greek harvest month, i. 32
Thebes, the Egyptian, ii. 130, 134;
high priests of Ammon at, 134
Theocritus, witch in, i. 206
_Theogamy_, divine marriage, ii. 121
Theophrastus, on the woods of Latium, ii. 188
Theopompus, ii. 287
Thevet, F. A., i. 358
Thieves’ candles, i. 148, 149
Things, homoeopathic magic of inanimate, i. 157 _sqq._
Thistles, a charm against witchcraft, ii. 339, 340
Thompson Indians, i. 70, 132;
the fire-drill of the, ii. 208
Thor, the Norse thunder god, ii. 364
Thorn-bushes as charms against witches, ii. 338
Thoth, Egyptian god, ii. 131
Threatening the thunder god, ii. 183 _n._ 2
Thrice born, said of Brahmans, i. 381
Thrones, sanctity of, i. 365
Thunder, imitation of, i. 248;
kings expected to make, ii. 180 _sqq._;
thought to be the roll of the drums of the dead, 183;
rain, sky, and oak, god of the, 349 _sq._;
Esthonian prayer to, 367 _sq._
—— and oak, the Aryan god of the, ii. 356 _sqq._
Thunder-bird, i. 309
—— god, threatening the, ii. 183 _n._ 2;
conceived as a deity of fertility, 368 _sqq._
Thunderbolt of Indra, i. 269
—— Zeus, ii. 361
Thunderbolts, kings killed by, ii. 181;
flint implements regarded as, 374
Thunderstorms, disappearance of Roman kings in, ii. 181 _sqq._
Thurston, E., i. 56 _n._ 3
Thyiads, the, i. 46
Tibet, the Grand Lamas of, i. 411 _sq._
Tides, homoeopathic magic of the, i. 166 _sqq._
Tiele, C. P., i. 419 _sq._
Tifata, Mount, ii. 380
Timber, homoeopathic magic of house timber, i. 146;
of houses, tree-spirits propitiated in, ii. 39 _sq._
Timor, telepathy of high-priest of, in war, i. 128 _sq._
Tinneh Indians, the, i. 357
Toad in charm against storms, i. 325
Toaripi or Motumotu, the, in New Guinea, i. 125, 337
Toboongkoos, the, ii. 35
Todas, the, i. 56;
divine milkmen of the, 402 _sq._;
magic and medicine among the, 421 _n._ 1
Togoland, i. 265
Tomori, the, of Celebes, ii. 29, 35, 110
Tonga, chiefs of, believed to heal scrofula, i. 371
Tonquin, kings of, responsible for drought and dearth, i. 355
Töppen, M., ii. 365 _n._ 5
Toradjas, the, i. 109, 114, 129, 159
Torres Straits, i. 59
Tortoise, magic of, i. 151, 170
Totem, confusion between a man and his totem, i. 107 _sq._
Totemism in Central Australia not a religion, i. 107 _sq._
Totems in Central Australia, magical ceremonies for the multiplication
of, i. 85 _sqq._;
custom of eating the, 107
Touch-me-not (_Impatiens sp._), ii. 77
Touching for the King’s Evil (scrofula), i. 368 _sqq._
Transmigrations of human deities, i. 410 _sqq._
Tree, life of child connected with, i. 184;
that has been struck by lightning, 319;
culprits tied to sacred, ii. 112 _sq._;
fire kindled from ancestral, 221;
spirit represented simultaneously in vegetable and human form, ii. 73
_sqq._
—— -spirits, ii. 7 _sqq._;
in house-timber propitiated, 39 _sq._;
beneficent powers of, 45 _sqq._;
give rain and sunshine, 45 _sq._;
make crops grow, 47 _sqq._;
make cattle and women fruitful, 50 _sqq._, 55 _sqq._;
in human form or embodied in living people, 71 _sqq._
Tree-worship among the European families of the Aryan stock, ii. 9
_sqq._;
in modern Europe, relics of, 59 _sqq._
Trees, marriage to, i. 40 _sq._, ii. 57;
extracted teeth placed in, i. 98;
burial in, 102;
navel-strings placed in, 182, 183, 185, 186;
afterbirth (placenta) placed in, 182, 187, 190, 191, 194, 199;
worship of, ii. 7 _sqq._;
regarded as animate, 12 _sqq._;
sacrifices to, 15, 16 _sq._, 34, 44, 46, 47;
sensitive, 18;
apologies offered to trees for cutting them down, 18 _sq._, 36 _sq._;
bleeding, 18, 20, 33;
threatened to make them bear fruit, 20 _sqq._;
married to each other, 24 _sqq._;
animated by the souls of the dead, 29 _sqq._;
planted on graves, 31;
as the abode of spirits, 33 _sqq._;
ceremonies at cutting down, 34 _sqq._;
drenched with water as a rain-charm, 47;
grant women an easy delivery, 57 _sq._
—— and plants, attempts to deceive the spirits of, ii. 22 _sqq._
—— sacred, ii. 40 _sqq._;
smeared with blood, 367
Trinity, the Hindoo, i. 225, 404;
the Norse, ii. 364
Triumph, the Roman, ii. 174
Troezen, sanctuary of Hippolytus at, i. 24 _sq._
Troy, sanctuary of Athena at, ii. 284
“True Man, the,” i. 413
Trumpets, sacred, ii. 24
Tshi-speaking peoples of Gold Coast, i. 132
Tullius Hostilius, killed by lightning, ii. 181, 320
Tumleo, i. 213
Turner, Dr. George, i. 341
Turner’s picture of “The Golden Bough,” i. 1
Turning or whirling round, custom of, observed by mummers, i. 273, 275,
ii. 74, 80, 81, 87
“Twin,” name applied by the Baganda to the navel-string, i. 195, 196
Twins, i. 145;
in war, 49 _n._ 3;
taboos laid on parents of, 262, 263 _sq._;
supposed to possess magical powers, especially over the weather and
rain, 262-269;
supposed to be salmon, 263;
thought to be related to grizzly-bears, 264 _sq._;
thought to be related to apes, 265;
thought to be the sons of lightning, 266;
called the children of the sky, 267, 268;
water poured on graves of twins as a rain-charm, 268;
customs of the Baganda in regard to, ii. 102 _sq._
Two-headed bust at Nemi, portrait of the King of the Wood, i. 41 _sq._
Tydeus, ii. 278
Tylor, E. B., i. 53 _n._ 1, ii. 208, 244 _n._ 1, 374 _n._ 2;
on fertilisation of date-palm, 25 _n._
Tyndarids (Castor and Pollux), i. 49
Uganda, Queen Dowager and Queen Sister in, ii. 275 _sq._
Ulysses and Aeolus, i. 326;
and Penelope, ii. 300
Umbrians, ordeal of battle among the, ii. 321
Uncle, maternal, preferred to father, mark of mother-kin, ii. 285
Upsala, sacred grove at, ii. 9;
temple of Frey at, 144;
great temple and festival at, 364 _sq._
Urns, funereal, in shape of huts, ii. 201 _sq._
Urvasi and Pururavas, ii. 250
Vallabhacharyas, the, Hindoo sect, ii. 160
Varro, ii. 185, 200, 326, 381
Vatican hill, the, ii. 186
Vaughan Stevens, H., ii. 236 _n._ 1
Vegetation, influence of the sexes on, ii. 97 _sqq._;
spirit of, represented by a king or queen, ii. 84, 87, 88;
newly awakened in spring, ii. 70;
brought to houses, 74;
represented by mummers dressed in leaves, branches, and flowers, 74
_sqq._, 78 _sqq._;
represented by a tree and a living man, 76;
represented in duplicate by a girl and an effigy, 78;
men and women masquerading as, 120
Vejovis, the Little Jupiter, ii. 179
Veleda, deified woman, i. 391
Veneti, the, ii. 353;
breeders of horses, i. 27
Ventriloquism a basis of political power, i. 347
Venus (Aphrodite) and Adonis, i. 21, 25, 40, 41
Verrall, A. W., ii. 25 _n._ 2
Vesta, her sacred fires in Latium, i. 13 _sq._;
at Rome, the grove of, ii. 185;
called Mother, not Virgin, 198;
round temple of, 200 _sq._;
as Mother, 227 _sqq._;
a goddess of fecundity, 229 _sq._;
her fire at Rome fed with oak wood, ii. 186
Vestal fire at Rome a successor of the fire on the king’s hearth, ii.
200 _sqq._;
kindled by the friction of wood, 207;
at Nemi, 378 _sq._, 380;
Virgins in Latium, i. 13 _sq._;
become mothers by the fire, ii. 196 _sq._;
regarded as wives of the fire-god, 198, 199, 229;
among the Baganda, 246
Vestals, house of the, ii. 201;
of the Herero, 213, 214;
custom of burying alive unfaithful Vestals, 228;
adore the male organ, 229;
rites performed by them for the fertility of the earth and the
fecundity of cattle, 229, 326;
African, 150;
at Rome the wives or daughters of the kings, 228;
Celtic, 241 _n._ 1;
Peruvian, 243 _sqq._;
in Yucatan, 245 _sq._
Victims give signs of inspiration by shaking themselves, i. 384 _sq._
Victoria, the late Queen, worshipped in Orissa, i. 404
Victoria Nyanza, god of the, ii. 150
Viehe, Rev. G., ii. 213 _n._ 2, 223 _sq._
Vines blessed on the Assumption of the Virgin (15th August), i. 14
_sq._
Violent deaths of the Roman kings, ii. 313 _sqq._
Viracocha, i. 56
Virbius, the slope of, i. 4 _n._ 5, ii. 321;
the mate of Diana at Nemi, i. 19-21, 40 _sq._, ii. 129;
etymology of the name, 379 _n._ 5
Virgil, ii. 184, 186, 379;
an antiquary as well as a poet, 178
Virgin, the Assumption of the, in relation to Diana, i. 14-16;
festival of the, in the Armenian Church, 16;
Mary of Kevlaar, i. 77;
priestesses in Peru, Mexico, and Yucatan, ii. 243 _sqq._
Virginity offered to rivers, ii. 162
Virility, hierophant at Eleusis temporarily deprived of his, ii. 130;
sacrifice of, to a goddess, 144 _sq._
Vishnu, ii. 26
Vitellius at Nemi, i. 5
Vituperation thought to cause rain, i. 278
Votive offerings at Nemi, i. 4, 6, 12, 19, 23
Voyages, telepathy in, i. 126
Vulcan, father of Caeculus, ii. 197
Vulture, magic of, i. 151
Wagogo, the, i. 123
Wagtail, the yellow, in magic, i. 79
_Walber_, the, ii. 75
Waldemar, I., King of Denmark, i. 367
Wallace, Sir D. Mackenzie, i. 407 _sq._
Walos, the, of Senegal, i. 370
Walpurgis Night, ii. 52, 54, 55, 127
Walton, Izaak, i. 326 _n._ 2
War, telepathy in, i. 126 _sqq._
“War, the sleep of,” ii. 147
Ward, Professor H. Marshall, ii. 252, 315 _n._ 1
Ward, Professor James, i. 423
Warramunga, the, i. 93, 95, 99
Wasps in magic, i. 152
Water sprinkled as rain-charm, i. 248 _sqq._;
serpent or dragon of, ii. 155 _sqq._
—— and Fire, kings of, ii. 3 _sqq._
—— -lilies, charms to make water-lilies grow, i. 95, 97, 98
—— nymphs, fertilising virtue of, ii. 162
—— -spirits, propitiation of, ii. 76;
sacrifices to, 155 _sqq._;
as beneficent beings, 159;
bestow offspring on women, 159 _sqq._
—— totem, i. 259
Waterfalls, spirits of, ii. 156, 157
Wax melted in magic, i. 77
Wealth acquired by magicians, i. 347, 348, 351, 352
Weapon and wound, contagious magic of, i. 201 _sqq._
Weaving and twining thread forbidden, i. 131
Wellhausen, J., i. 303
Wells cleansed as rain-charm, i. 267;
married to the holy basil, ii. 26 _sq._;
bestow offspring on women, 160 _sq._
Wends, their superstition as to oaks, ii. 55
Werner, Miss A., ii. 317 _n._ 1
Wernicke, quoted, i. 35 _sq._
Wetting people with water as a rain-charm, i. 250, 251, 269 _sq._, 272,
273, 274, 275, 277 _sq._, ii. 77
Whale-fishing, telepathy in, i. 121
Whirling or turning round, custom of, observed by mummers, i. 273, 275,
ii. 74, 80, 81, 87
Whirlwind, attacking the, i. 329 _sqq._
White bulls sacrificed, ii. 188 _sq._
—— horses, sacred, ii. 174 _n._ 2
—— poplar, the, at Olympia, ii. 220
—— thorn, a charm against witches, ii. 191
—— victims sacrificed for sunshine, i. 291, 292
Whitekirk, ii. 161
Whit-Monday, the king’s game on, ii. 89, 103
Whitsun-bride in Denmark, ii. 91 _sq._
Whitsunday customs in Russia, ii. 64, 93;
races, ii. 69, 84;
contest for the kingship at, 89;
custom of rolling on the fields at, 103;
customs in Holland, 104
—— Bride, the, ii. 89, 96
—— Basket, the, ii. 83
—— Flower, ii. 80
—— King, ii. 84, 89, 90
—— -lout, the, ii. 81
—— Man, the Little, ii. 81
—— Queen, ii. 87, 90
Widow, re-marriage of, in Salic law, ii. 285 _sq._
Wiedemann, A., i. 230 _sq._
Wiglet and Feng, ii. 281, 283
Wilhelmina, a Bohemian woman, worshipped, i. 409
Wilkinson, R. J., ii. 383 _n._ 1
William the Third, i. 369
Willow tree on St. George’s Day, ii. 76
Wind, magical control of the, i. 319 _sqq._;
charms to make the wind drop, 320;
fighting and killing the spirit of the, 327 _sqq._
—— clan, i. 320
—— of the Cross, i. 325
—— doctor, i. 321
Winds tied up in knots, i. 326
Wine not offered to the sun-god, i. 311
Wiradjuri tribe, i. 335
Wissowa, Professor G., i. 22 _n._ 5, 23 _n._, ii. 382 _n._ 1
Witches raising the wind, i. 322, 326;
buried under trees, ii. 32;
steal milk on May Day or Walpurgis Night, 52 _sqq._;
steal milk on Midsummer Eve, 127;
steal milk on Eve of St. George, 334 _sqq._;
precautions against, 52 _sqq._;
as cats and dogs, 334, 335
Witches’ sabbath on the Eve of St. George, ii. 335, 338
Witchetty grubs, ceremony for the multiplication of, i. 85
“Wives of Marduk,” ii. 130
Wizards who raise winds, i. 323 _sqq._;
Finnish, 325
Wolves in relation to horses, i. 27;
feared by shepherds, ii. 327, 329, 330 _sq._, 333, 334, 340, 341
Women, fruitful, supposed to fertilise crops and fruit-trees, i. 140
_sq._;
employed to sow the fields, 141 _sq._;
ploughing as a rain-charm, 282 _sq._;
worshipped by the ancient Germans, 391;
married to gods, ii. 129 _sqq._, 143 _sq._, 146 _sq._, 149 _sqq._;
fertilised by water-spirits, 159 _sqq._;
impregnated by fire, 195 _sqq._, 230 _sq._;
alone allowed to make pottery, 204 _sq._
—— barren, thought to sterilise gardens, i. 142;
fertilised by trees, ii. 316 _sqq._
Wood, fire kindled by the friction of, ii. 207 _sqq._, 235 _sqq._, 243,
248 _sqq._, 258 _sq._, 262, 263, 336, 366, 372
Wood, the King of the, i. 1 _sqq._;
Lord of the, ii. 36
Woods, species of, used in making fire by friction, ii. 248-252
Wordsworth, W., i. 104
Worship of trees, ii. 7 _sqq._;
of the oak, 349 _sqq._
Wotyaks, the, ii. 43, 145, 146
Wound and weapon, contagious magic of, i. 201 _sqq._
Wyse, Miss A., ii. 88 _n._ 1
Wyse, William, i. 101 _n._ 2, 105 _n._ 5, ii. 356 _n._ 3
Yakuts, the, i. 319
Yam vines, continence at training, ii. 105 _sq._
Yegory or Yury (St. George), ii. 332, 333
Yellow birds in magic, i. 79 _sq._
—— colour in magic, i. 79 _sqq._
—— River, girls married to the, ii. 152
Ynglingar family, ii. 279
Yorubas, the, i. 364;
chieftainship among the, ii. 293 _sq._;
rule of succession to the chieftainship among the, 293 _sq._
Yucatan, Vestals in, ii. 245 _sq._
Yuracares, the, of Bolivia, ii. 204
Zela, i. 47
Zeus, Greek kings called, ii. 177, 361;
as god of the oak, the rain, the thunder, and the sky, 358 _sqq._;
surnamed Lightning, 361;
surnamed Thunderbolt, 361;
as sky-god, 374
—— and Demeter, their marriage at Eleusis, ii. 138 _sq._
—— and Dione, at Dodona, ii. 189
—— and Hera, sacred marriage of, ii. 140 _sq._, 142 _sq._
—— at Dodona, ii. 177;
priests of, 248
—— at Panamara in Caria, i. 28
—— Dictaean, ii. 122
—— Lightning, i. 33
—— Lycaeus, i. 309
—— Panhellenian, ii. 359
—— Rainy, ii. 376
—— Showery, ii. 360
—— the Descender, ii. 361
Zimmer, H., ii. 286 _n._ 2
Zulus, foods tabooed among the, i. 118 _sq._
THE END
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
Works by Sir J. G. FRAZER, D.C.L., LL.D.
THE GOLDEN BOUGH
A STUDY IN MAGIC AND RELIGION
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● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are
referenced.
○ Sidenotes are placed in the text where, in the original book, they
were in
the left margin near the text.
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